Notes #232 — The Undiscovered Country

                             NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
                                           Observations from Outside the Lines
                                     By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@adelphia.net)
 

#232                                                                                                                          April 20, 2001
                                               THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
 

            When I decided upon this title for this issue, Opening Day was still fresh in mind. I was going to write about how each fresh season is the undiscovered country — I think it is a Shakespearian image for the future. The season stretches ahead of us like a vast unexplored continent. On Opening Day we begin our trek, knowing when it will end (October’s Game) but not where, and between now and then we will make countless discoveries.
 

            And indeed, 2001 has already treated us to an unlikely no-hitter (anyone predict Hideo Nomo?), a 500th HR by Barry Bonds (no surprise there), and the Red Sox winning without Nomar. We can be dazzled daily if we comb the box scores and have half a memory, for players discarded now starring, hot prospects now fizzling, salvaged players now aces (Rick Reed of the Mets comes to mind) — and on and on and on.
 

            Then along came a week that changed the whole tone of my baseball world, and thus this issue. First, Willie Stargell passed away, just as the Pirates new park was being unveiled. This was not a shock, Willie’s health had been poor a long time. But it took some of the joy out of the game.
 

            Then I received word from Linda Schacht that her husband Mike had died, after a long struggle with cancer. If Willie’s loss felt a little like that of a distant relative, because he was, after all, Fam-a-lee for Pirate fans — then Mike’s passing hit like that of a close friend, even though we had met less than ten years ago, and had drifted apart in recent years.
 

            For newcomers to Notes , Mike Schacht was one of the top sports artists on the planet, and a damn fine baseball editor. You may not have heard of his little literary magazine, FAN , but perhaps you’ve seen Mudville Diaries , a book he edited out of FAN . SABR members are likely to be familiar with Mike’s player silhouettes and portraits, which also found their way into art galleries. Mike was prolific, and his background in printing took him into producing cards. Last I knew, he was doing baseball jewelry as well. Mike clearly resided in the undiscovered country , like all artists, and his vision transformed all he touched — including the hundreds or thousands of fellow fans who were privileged to meet him.
 

            So there are two Requiems in this issue, with only an index and a page of humor to offset their nostalgia. Happens that way.
 

 

RECENT BASEBALL VIDEOS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED  
 

            Autumn in New York. The Subway Series inspired this low-budget sleeper, filmed a la Blair Witch . A team of documentary filmmakers enter the City that Never Sleeps and are never heard from again.
 

            Hollow Man. Bud Selig is the subject of this horror flick, set in the summer of 1994. Anthony Hopkins said “Playing Don Fehr was terrific preparation for the Hannibal role.”
 

            Coyote Ugly. Randy Johnson is exposed as a handsome midget who experimented with growth hormones, becoming a dominating athlete — but with striking side effects.
 

Minus Man. Nostalgia piece shamelessly but mistakenly argues for the elimination of the Designated Hitter. NL propaganda.
 

Charlie’s Angels. Fantasy silent movie has Chaplin as mustachioed immigrant with odd walk and cane who finds winning lottery ticket inside shoe he was boiling, buys nearest California ball club.
 

Judgement. Biography of famous umpire Bill “I never called one wrong (in my heart)” Klem, stars (who else) Tom Hanks, who tries early on to convince batters “There’s no arguing in baseball.”
 

Brotherhood of Murder. Toned-down, G-rated treatment of the 1927 Yankees’ riotous season, Murderer’s Row ineptly cast to include Saturday Night Live alumni (Belushi as Ruth, Bill Murray as manager Miller Huggins, Eddie Murphy as Gehrig, Lazzeri & Combs.
 

Three-Bagger Vance. Loosely based on the life of triples king Owen “Chief” Wilson, this fictionalized attempt to bring the 1912 season to life follows the wrong team and is tagged out.
 

The Yards. Mystery set in contemporary Baltimore, opens with fans choking on poisoned crab cakes. Villain Christopher Walken meets his doom when he tumbles into Boog Powell’s barbecue pit in the film’s climactic ending.
 

Finding Forrester. Super scout Jon Lovitz reprises his role in A League of Their Own . This time he is sent to sign the first female ballplayer for MLB (dodging assassins along the way), Fanny “Knuckles” Forrester, who will draw huge numbers for the struggling Montreal franchise, but he finds her too late, she’s already had the operation. And her knuckler wasn’t that good.
 

Scary Movie. Thoughtful examination of the economics of baseball, with experts making predictions about its future. Playing at many theaters with Men of Honor, a short commissioned by the Players’ Association to counteract the newspeak so rampant in the earlier owners’ product, Wonder Boys. True baseball fans will want to skip all of these, and take in a minor league game — or better, a Little League game in their neighborhood.
 

 

REQUIEM FOR A PATRIARCH  
 

            I was saddened by the April 9 passing of Willie Stargell. Another death in the family, but without the need to travel for the funeral. I mourn him here, and next time I visit his plaque in Cooperstown, its shape will remind me of a tombstone. Willie had been in failing health a long time. Rest in peace.
 

            I first heard of Willie Stargell in 1961, when I was fifteen and he was a twenty-year-old, in his third season as a pro, playing for the Pirate farm team Asheville in the Sally League. Willie hit 22 HRs that summer and the Pirates needed a lefty slugger. Willie was, in the lingo of the Pirate yearbooks of that era, a “Pirate Possibility.”  The next summer, Willie hit 27 HRs at the top farm, Columbus, earning him a cup of coffee with the Bucs. He never played in the minors again.
 

            Willie was the first (and, come to think of it, the only) ballplayer that I ever followed from prospect to Hall-of-Famer. As a former teacher, I can say that it is a bit like seeing a kid you taught as an awkward, insecure freshman in high school, rise to graduate from college summa cum laude , and go on to have a great career.
 

            I regret two things when I think of Willie Stargell. First, I regret not making the short trip to Cooperstown in the summer of 1988, when he was inducted. Someone gave me a souvenir program from that event, but now, when I look at it, it brings to mind the words of ace pitcher Henry Wiggen in Bang the Drum Slowly . Wiggen befriends dying backup catcher Bruce Pearson. I often quote Mark Harris’ line, delivered in the film version by Michael Moriarty, like a cynical slider: “Everybody knows everybody else is dying — that’s why we treat each other so well.”  Let Willie’s passing make us ponder that.
 

            But my program reminds me of a different line, the last pitch Moriarty delivers in the film. Pearson’s health fails down the stretch, he is in the hospital during the World Series. Wiggen had promised to send him a souvenir scorecard.
 

We breezed through the playoffs, then wrapped up the Series on a Sunday, my win. I took the scorecard home and threw it on a shelf and let it lay there. It would have been simple to shove it in the mail. How long would it have took? Couldn’t I afford the stamps?
 

[At Pearson’s funeral, where Wiggen was a pallbearer] … there were flowers from the club, but no person from the club. They couldda sent somebody. He wasn’t a bad fella, no worse than most, and probably better than some … and not a bad ballplayer, neither, when they gave him a chance, when they layed off him long enough.
 

From here on in, I rag nobody.
 

            My other regret is that I never got to have dinner with Willie. This may sound odd, but back in 1989-90, when I first started writing baseball, I wrote — well, here is the excerpt from my first venture into baseball writing, a book called Dear Patrick: Hot Stove Deliveries from a Father to a Son . Each chapter was a “letter” addressed to my son Patrick (then ten), and each covered a different baseball subject. This excerpt is from Chapter 15, “Willies” (I wrote some about Mays, too.)
 

March 21, 1990
 

Dear Patrick,
 

            When the Pirates won the NL Pennant again in 1979 — the last time they’ve done it — your mother was pregnant for Mary Ellen, your sister.  “The Family” was the Buc theme and it fit us that summer, too.
 

     The 1970’s had been a good decade for the Buccos.  They had won six division titles, and finished close the other four seasons. And it closed on a high note.
 

     The half-pennant was made whole that October with a sweep over Cincinnati — the Big Red Machine was still running, but slower by then, and the Pirates were due.  After leading the Bucs down the stretch with key hits and homers, Willie Stargell slugged out two more HRs and drove in six in the Playoffs. 
 

     In the Series, the Bucs took on the Baltimore Orioles, so it was a rematch of 1971, the last time Pittsburgh was in the Series.
 

            Game One was on a night we had a LaMaze class (for couples to prepare for the birth of their child — I was “Coach” that fall), making for a tough call.  This was before we had a VCR, so there was a clear risk of missing something historic, by going to LaMaze.  I took the risk.  Your mother couldn’t quite believe it when the nurses instructing us called class a little early that night so the husbands could get home for the Series. A collective sigh of relief and a cheer from the future dads!
 

            While driving home, listening to the game on the car radio, I learned that I was too late — the Orioles had broken on top, and would not be caught — at least not in that game.
 

     Baseball teaches hope. Losing a game is not losing a series, during the season or in post-season play. Winning a game shouldn’t make anyone cocky, either. The Bucs were managed that year by Chuck Tanner, as positive-thinking a person as there is in the sport. Someone once said of him that if he were the Skipper on the Titanic, he’d have reacted to that ship’s catastrophe with something like, “Don’t worry, we’re just stopping for ice.”  A wonderfully naive optimism, that I always enjoyed.
 

            The Pirates did come back to win the Series in seven games and were World Champs again, for the third time in twenty years.  Willie Stargell was the hitting hero again, three more longshots and seven RBIs, although the Bucs as a team had a tremendous Series at the plate.  It was as if they were trying to erase from the record books all the hitting marks set by the Yankees in 1960 against Pittsburgh.  The media hyped Willie as “Pops”, the father (or grand-father) of the Fam-a-lee, but I couldn’t use that tag myself. Hey, “Pops” was just a few years older than I was!
 

            The following summer, I got to see that Pirate team up close — in the unique setting of Cooperstown’s Doubleday Field, near the Hall.  A volunteer friend from Red Cross got the tickets and I went with Ed Jecko, a co-worker who was old enough to be my father, and full of good baseball stories.
 

     Ed insisted that we go early, to get a convenient parking space. But I suspect that he really wanted to get to the field in time for the pre-game warmups and batting practice.  He’d played some semi-pro ball himself, I believe — I could see him as a scrappy infielder as feisty as Tim Foli or Phil Garner, who led the Pirates in calisthenics that day, putting on a good show.  I think “real fans show up early” is the maxim Ed was teaching.
 

            Doubleday Field was wonderful for fans, especially if you were looking for a suntan.  But it is a nightmarish park for major league pitchers who lack a good sinker.  The Bucs played the Chicago White Sox in the annual Hall of Fame game that year, and the two clubs must have hit ten home runs between them.  I think the Pirates hit more, and won.  Stargell conked one — an intentional gopher, I think, so the fans could re-live his heroics of the previous Fall. I still have the scorecard somewhere.
 

            ,,, Willie Stargell had a great grin, too [like Mays].  I guess he’s the first player I followed all the way from the minor leagues, through a twenty-one-season, four hundred and seventy-five homer career, to the Cooperstown Hall in 1988. Number Eight became a regular the summer I left Pittsburgh for good (1964), so I only saw him in person maybe eight games, including that close-up at Doubleday Field.
 

     So I missed seeing him launch homers over the stands in right at Forbes — I’d grown up being sure that it took a Ruth to achieve that. If you took two Green Monsters and stood one atop the other, the barrier would still be twelve feet shorter than the Forbes’ grandstand.  It was where Babe’s and baseball’s fabled number seven-hundred-and-fourteen went, his third of the game (he was playing for the Boston Braves, against the Pirates) and last of his career. Babe went out in style, summing up his career by doing what no one else had done before, what no one else had thought possible.
 

     Willie Stargell matched that “impossible” homer more than once, and left his mark on more than one stadium around the league — when Willie connected, look out.  But distance records, like all others, are made to be broken.  Maybe by Bobby Bonilla.  Or maybe by someone who isn’t even born yet!
 

     Maybe of all the Pirates I’ve cheered since 1957, Willie Stargell is the one I’d most like to have over for dinner.  I’d ask him how he came up with that twirling-windmill batting stance.  How he felt as a part-Indian, part-Black twenty-one-year old kid from Oklahoma (like Mickey Mantle and the Waners), sent out on the major league stage to perform.  How he managed to rise above his many strikeouts (like Mantle, again) to keep his poise and pride. Is he still active in sickle cell anemia education and screenings, something I learned about at the Red Cross?
 

     And then I’d ask him about Pete Rose.
 

            I never got to meet Willie in person. So I never got to ask him his take on Pete Rose. That’s OK. But I’ll tell you on thing. I will be in Cooperstown this summer, when Bill Mazeroski is inducted into the Hall. It won’t be to meet Maz, I’ve done that, shook his hand, cheered him last October in Pittsburgh when he and I visited the old 406′ mark on the wall still standing from old Forbes Field, on the 40th anniversary of his historic homer. No, I’ll go simply to honor the man, and what he did, and what he has come to stand for. That’s why I should have gone in ’88, for Willie. Live and learn.
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            I guess I have another regret: my poem on Stargell was done a few months too late to make it into Romancing the Horsehide . My “portrait” poems normally are titled with the player’s nickname, but as you see below, I was still resisting “Pops” (although I worked the word in.) 
 

WILLIE
 

Like fine wine
This Willie seemed to get better with age
And wiser
 

Wilver Dornel Stargell
Broke into Pirate yearbooks
As a skinny Oklahoman labeled
Pittsburgh Pirate Possibility,
Eyes full of “I think I can” —
Left the city to the sound of
Pops of champagne
Cover story on a
Hall of Fame program,
Smile shouting “I knew I could”
 

In between,
Willie’s two decades of play
Created a windmill full of memories:
Blasts up on the roof at Forbes
Third deck at Three Rivers and Busch
Over the bleachers in L.A. —
Stargell was a longer version
Of another Willie’s motto:
Hit ’em where nothing ain’t
 

Caught Roberto’s royal touch
Caught teammates doing things right
Rewarding them with gold stars:
Every employee’s fantasy
 

Black native American power
Star to gel a team together
Foreman of the Lumber Company
Good provider of Chicken on the Hill
Willie left the game right:
October talent show
Fall fireworks lighting up
Starry nights and shining back
Over star-spangled
Banner summers:
Tip of the cap —
Applause still echoing
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            Some years ago, I bought a book about Willie Stargell, Out of Left Field. It’s an unauthorized (by either Willie or the Pirates) book, but nevertheless an interesting one. Bob Adelman and Susan Hall spent much of 1973 following Willie and the Bucs, taking lots of photos, taping lots of interviews. The book is not as well-written as Ball Four, and its edges are rougher. The portrait of Stargell I recall from Out of Left Fieldis one I respect and admire very much. Stargell seemed to have a great deal of respect for others, so it is easy to respect him.
 

            I (and others) rate the 1972 Pirates the best team in franchise history. In 1973, they were struggling to adjust to the loss of their superstar, Roberto Clemente. Willie Stargell was up to the task of taking over the leadership role. Mound ace Steve Blass was struggling to find himself that summer, too, winning just three after a nineteen-win season. Danny Murtaugh took over for Bill Virdon as manager for the stretch run, but the team fell just short at the end. Adelman & Hall’s book is full of race, women, drugs, and baseball, and records more failure than success, but Willie Stargell emerged from that book and that season as a pillar around which the Pirates built for another six seasons.
 

            The book also portrays Willie as a family man — off the field. His wife is frequently quoted. The authors state that Stargell was not a player who had a Baseball Annie in every city, and that he did not use drugs — although the clubhouse seemed to have been a sort of pharmacy-in-progress. (The drug trials of the mid-1970s took place in Pittsburgh, and a number of Pirates were stained by them; Willie survived intact. There was a time when athletes taking “greenies” or pep pills probably raised eyebrows in a clubhouse about as much as folks smoking cigarettes in the 1940s or 50s — not at all. The rules were grayer, less was known about the effects and side-effects. Not to excuse, just to put in context. Live and learn.)
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            Willie Stargell has showed up here in NOTESa few times over the years. In the spring of 1994, I took in a game with my kids at the old Durham Athletic Park (the one where Bull Durham was filmed). Among the numerous between-innings giveaways, were tickets to Willie Stargell narrating “A Lincoln Portrait” at the Durham Symphony, the following Sunday, and I wondered, “Pops at the Pops?”
 

            That summer I was in Pittsburgh for the All Star Game, and the day before, my son and I visited Three Rivers for the HR Derby and Old Timers’ Game, which was re-named “Heroes of Baseball” by Upper Deck. My notes say, “the biggest cheers went to Mickey Mantle and Willie Stargell. Oh yes — a standing O for Bill Mazeroski!”
 

            It would have been more satisfying than thrilling to see Willie in Cooperstown next summer, congratulating Bill Mazeroski. It would have been delightful to hear Willie talk about his old teammate (they were together eleven seasons.)  I don’t know if they were ever as close as their now-retired uniform numbers (eight and nine) — at first glance, they would seem to have little in common, off the diamond. But they shared much, and what they shared, touched all Pirate fans.
 

            Somehow, I doubt that Willie would have wanted his passing to mean less joy in Mudville, in the country of baseball. The sadness will pass, as surely as slumps and losing streaks, and the game will go on. So let us toast Willie Stargell, and hope he inspires more players — and not just players — to lead by example, to recognize each other, and to devote their best efforts to the game for as long as their physical abilities permit. Let them be strong family men, giving more to their communities than they receive, and gently but firmly raising awareness of unpopular causes. May we all live and learn, and never stop learning, as long as we live.
 

 

ANOTHER NOTES INDEX  
 

            In the NOTES Archive (at the baseball1.comweb site), there is a Master Index, which gives you a rough idea of the content of the first 206 issues of NOTES .
 

            At the very end (page 14 if you have a hard copy) of Notes #220 you can find a listing of back issues that are available. This has changed some since last September, some are no longer available, but others are; the list is substantially accurate. If you really want a certain issue, make the request. (All issues since #184 are in the Archive — no need to request them .)
 

            I realize that the occasional NOTES IndexI include within Notes is not the most interesting stuff for most readers, but I know some find them useful — and I sure do, when I want to look something up while I’m working on the next issue. So without further explanation, here is the latest NOTES Index!
 

 #   DATE    PGS   TITLE / MAIN TOPIX                           
207  Feb 2000 12   Warming Up. John Rocker, Revisited; Fisk &                   Perez; Very Good Year; Is Anything         Certain Dept; A Commish?;
            Card Games; 20,000 Leagues Under.
 

208  Feb 2000  12  A Baseball Valentine. Two Behind Third ; Magic             Moments (from #9); For Love of the Game (from #40); Taking
            Time for Paradise (from #77); Wait ’til Next Year (fm 132);
            Me & Shoeless Joe; April Duet (from Mornings After .)
 

209  Mar 1, 00  13 Peculiar Beings. Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice         … and John? (Rocker); The Home Team; Feel for the Game;
            C.J. Nitkowski; Drag Bunt; BB for Brain Surgeons & Other
            People (a review); NOTES index of Cooperstown tales.
 

210  Mar 24, 00 10  Here Comes the Sun. Rogers Hornsby (review);
            Ruminations on Spring Training (a Florida diary.)
 

211  Apr 9, 00  12  Throw Away the Clocks. Every Pitcher Tells a   Story ; Uncle Robbie (reviews); More BB haikus; Selig House       Rules; Why Time Ends on Opening Day; Highlight Reel.
 

212 Apr 30, 00  12  Catch of the Day; For Better & Worse (the
            suffering of fans); April Wow-ers; Babe of Holland Patent .
 

213  May 15, 00 15  Baseball is a Funny Game. Playing w Titles;
            Safe at Home (review); Myth of Juiced Ball; 11 pgs of humor.
 

214  May 30, 00 12  Looking It Up. Prelude to the World Series
            (1902 Post-season); More on AL 1900; Stealing First; GBA
            Tribute; Sands of Time (Alex.Cartwright) from NFSC #17.
 

215  Jun 15, 00 12  Home. Interleague Plague, Eyewitness Report;
            Ballpark (from #77); More Trouble with Triples!; Three    Rivers Stadium; Fam-a-lee (Sally O’Leary’s Black & Gold .)
 

 

216  Jun 30, 00  12  Epworth League Memorandum. Updates; Second
            thoughts on 2000 season, L.League, & technology; BB Brunch;            Accomplice Theory; Past Time (review); Shoudda Saids.
 

217  Jul 15, 00  12  The Summer Game. Summer re-runs from NOTES
            past, including BB 3 R’s; Big Adventures; Heroes & Bums.
 

218  Jul 31, 00  12  Around the Horn. Mr Shortstop; Marquee             Players; A False Spring (review); What ESPN Missed; Mr’s.
 

219  Aug 15, 00  12  The Road Thru Harrisburg. An issue devoted
            100% to the SABR Negro League Committee’s annual conference.
 

220  Aug 31, 00  14  Effa Manley for the Hall. Dear Veterans
            Committee (by Amy Essington); Victory Faust (review); John    Holway; Behind the Nicknames, 6 (Negro Lgs); Another Record          for Spahn (by Tim Wiles); Got to be Carefully Taught Dept.
 

221  Sep 15, 00 12  The Joys of Summer. Chasing .400; Blue Sox
            Blues; Moods of September (excerpts from early NOTES.)
 

222  Sep 30, 00  14  Fireside & Filmside. I Gave It My Best Shot
            (review); 32 excerpts from past book & film reviews.
 

223  Oct 15, 00  15  The Cut-Off Man. Then There Were Eight
            (Playoffs); Eavesdropping on SABR-L; Farewell to TRS;
            Blue Ribbon Critique (by Doug Pappas); Then There Were Four.
 

224  Oct 30, 00  12  Celebrations. Then There Were Two; Over the
            Rainbow (Maz’ Day in Pgh); No Talking in Church.
 

225  Nov 15, 00  17  How Life Imitates the World Series.
            Subliminal Series; 18 more Fireside & Filmside excerpts;
            So That’s Where You Went, Joe DiMaggio!!; My Baseball
            Diary (by James T Farrell), review.
 

226  Dec 3, 00  10  If Baseball Imitated Life. An issue devoted
            to satire in the fuzzy aftermath of the election in Florida.
 

227  Jan 17, 00  9  It Could Be!US Supreme Court Pulls Plug on        Baseball; Eve of Destruction? (A-Rod A-pex); The W Factor;
            Confessions of a Baseball Purist (by Jon Miller), review.
 

228  Feb 2001  15  ‘Ol Man Baseball. Dummy (mostly from #65);
            Notes from Shea (Cliff Floyd); Shoeless Joe (review);
            Field of Crackerjack ; Field of Dreams (poem); PS on Pride;
            Don’t Want No Short People; Congrats to Kirby & Dave.
 

229  Feb 24, 00  15  All Together Again. Brooklyn ‘s Babe      (review); Who Was Piper Davis? (by Nevard & Marasco);
            Menologies: Green Mt Boys of Summer (review.)
 

 

 

REQUIEM FOR A FAN  
 

            A lot of “Requiems” have appeared here in Notes over its seven or eight seasons. Too many. I’ve requiemed sluggers like Mickey Mantle, voices like Harry Caray, and rebels like Curt Flood; I’ve requiemed Whiz Kids, Submariners, Southpaws, and earlier in this issue, Patriarchs.
 

            This may be, to bend a phrase from Franklin P. Adams, the saddest of possible requiems — baseball has lost a unique fan, my friend Mike Schacht. Indeed, Mike was the ideal editor for a baseball magazine called FAN , which he launched from his classroom at the New School for Social Research in NY City in the late 1980s. Why?  Because he rooted as hard for his contributors (many of them rookies looking for advice and feeling their way), as he did for his Cincinnati Reds, and later, the Atlanta Braves.
 

            I am honored to call Mike my friend. I caught up with Mike in 1991, through SABR. He was working on an issue of FAN with a father-son theme, and put an ad in the SABR Bulletin. I had just written Dear Patrick , a whole book with that theme, so I distilled it into three or four pages and sent it off to Mike.
 

            I can still recall the night that I came home from a Utica Blue Sox game, and my wife Barbara told me that a fellow from NY City called. On a sticky note, she wrote Mike’s name and phone number, and the words “Excited about what you sent.”  “I told him you were at a baseball game, and he said ‘Perfect — that’s right where he should be.'”
 

            Mike went on to tell Barb that he had read my story, The Stickpin [it’s been reprinted here in NOTES many times; in the NOTES Archive , it is in #125.]  He read it at lunch, and was moved to tears. He was still emotional when he called that evening.
 

            I was a rookie writer, looking for advice and feeling my way. Meeting Mike Schacht was like being introduced to my guardian angel. I honestly do not think I could have found better mentors than Mike and his FAN editors, if I had sold a piece to The New Yorker . In the seasons that followed, every poem, every short essay, every story I submitted to FAN turned out better than it was when it left the Shadows of Cooperstown. Mike did not accept everything I sent (he’d have instantly lost my respect if he did!), but he tried hard to squeeze something of mine into each issue. Most times, he succeeded.
 

            Especially in that first season, Mike and I were on the same wavelength. Soon after I started drawing ballplayer portraits in poetry, and learned that Mike had already painted them in oils or watercolor, Romancing the Horsehide was conceived. Mike gave the idea birth in a letter, December 5, 1991:
 

Seeing your poems of Ty Cobb, Roberto and Honus Wagner gave me an idea. Maybe we could collaborate on a book? I do the portraits and you do the poems.
 

            We signed on with McFarland in 1992, and the book came out the next spring (just as NOTES was born.) It did not make us rich, but it made our friendship richer.
 

            My medium was the word-processor, Mike preferred telephone. So my documentation of our ongoing conversation over the years is truly lop-sided. My letters were almost always dense, single-space, and rarely short. His were always hand-written, betraying his artist’s creativity, and to the point. When I told Mike that McFarland did not do color, he graciously offered to step aside and let them do Romancing text-only. Then I remembered Mike had a bag of player silhouettes, black-and-white, which might work. He responded with this note:
 

You’re irrepressible! Silhouettes! Why didn’t I think of my silhouettes to accompany your poems. Do you like the idea? If so, propose it to McFarland. … Thank you for all the acknowledgement, but it’s part of the package, the Baseball package.
 

            The word “baseball” rolled out of Mike’s mouth and off his pen with reverence and awe, and a touch of James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams . He was fully aware that baseball was a sport and a business, but it was also, for Mike, a network of friends who shared things, who shared themselves.
 

            Mike was one of the editors with whom I was corresponding so frequently in 1993, that creating NOTES became almost a necessity. I hate repeating myself, hate writing the same words for different people. (I love the “copy” feature on computers.) So NOTES was a way of talking to a number of editors all at once, without repeating myself. And I could insert in NOTES , material that any editor could pluck and use. The number of editors was about five or six at first, and grew to over twenty as NOTES itself evolved from four to six to ten pages, and then more.
 

            Mike was never a typical NOTES reader. For example, most editors I befriended in those days sent me their magazines or newsletters free, in exchange for NOTES . Mike did not, but I kept subscribing to FAN . (Paul White never exchanged his Baseball Weekly for my NOTES , either.) But Mike was the first to help me with the expenses of copying and mailing out my newsletter:
 

Twenty six weeks, 26 envelopes x 29 cents, on and on. Let me defray a little out of pocket. Keep up the inspiration you’re furnishing for many.
 

            A check for twenty dollars accompanied that note of June 12, when NOTES was just three months old. It meant more than that.
 

            Mike did not usually pick up items from NOTES for his baby, FAN — as most editors did. But he continued to respond favorably to the stuff I sent directly to him. I think he felt NOTES was my thing, and was sure to take me somewhere, someday. I no longer needed him, but others did — FAN was attracting lots of creative writers and poets and artists. We never talked about this directly, but we did not have to.
 

            When I sent Mike my short story Snoozer , which featured a ball game that takes place in a Civil War POW camp, he and his editors were stumped. They liked it, but it was ‘way too long for FAN . So they went to work, and put me to work, and together, over many months, we whittleded it down to eight pages, with illustrations. I think it was the longest piece to appear in FAN up to that time, and turned out well enough so that one of Mike’s readers offered to buy the film rights! Mike was a gatekeeper on a par with the Hanes lady: “It doesn’t fit into FAN ’til I say it fits.”  That instinct caused the quality of FAN to keep rising with every new issue.
 

            Before attending the workshop on baseball writing in Atlanta that Mike and his team organized and hosted in March 1998, I had met Mike in person only a few times. First in Cooperstown, where he and Linda stopped while on a Jay Buckley tour. (One of the favors for which I am forever grateful to Mike, was his recommending me to Jay as an assistant, the following summer.) At one of his exhibitions, in Lenox, MA, with my wife Barb. At a SABR convention or two. Cooperstown again. He was a man in perpetual motion, and easier to talk to when he was tied to his phone!
 

            Mike had a way of communicating his passion for baseball and life, in his art as well as his words. He could get me exited about some story or poem or event, from out of the blue, with a Sunday night call. Yet he insisted that he was the one drawing inspiration. A Christmas card (his own silk screen print, of course): “Have you ever thought how many people in the baseball business are counting on & working off your inexhaustible energy?” (I had not.) A postcard: “Thank you for those kind words [on the Acknowledgement page of Romancing the Horsehide .] It’s been a pleasure seeing your work and feeling a small part of its inspiration. Don’t forget WE you’ve acknowledged, have been inspired by your enthusiasm, determination and encouragement.”
 

            This was Ted Williams thanking a rookie for a hitting tip.
 

            I plugged FAN in NOTES as often as possible. I wish we were both on the internet then, instead of printing a very limited number of copies of our very different publications. I think NOTES was too much for Mike to handle, given his schedule and the burden of editing FAN . He thought NOTES was “perfect” for me (I could write as much as I wanted and as often.) Occasionally he picked out issues he enjoyed. A postcard: “‘Your backyard to Rizzuto to Drysdale’ — Best issue ever, it all came together in Week #15 [issue #23, July 11, 1993.] Congratulations, a homerun! What you’re doing, I realize, is so difficult: all you every week, it’s so personal, no place to hide, whatever mood you’re in comes across. It takes courage. I’d do it every other week.”
 

            In November 1993, Mike again commented on the frequency of NOTES , and I reprint his words here because of what they say about how Mike saw FAN :
 

I truly believe with Fan that one of my obligations is to leave my readers wanting more — anticipating a next issue. Weeklies pile up on too many people I think. … Life for me is a series of things I have to struggle not to fall behind in. To catch up is a pleasure we don’t get to experience enough. … Ahhh pace, we all know how important that is to the game of baseball. Think about it. You know I love what you’re doing. Maybe I’m upset because I’m not enjoying it as much as I want to.
 

            Mike then went on to give me some great feedback on the contents of the last issue of NOTES he’d seen. Four months later, this note: “I thoroughly enjoyed your last two issues. Now I feel I’m back in the loop.” A month or so later, “I wish I’d read #69 and 70 before we spoke — great issues both. Keep up the good work.”  I knew Mike was my busiest reader, by far, which made his comments that much more special.
 

            In October 1994 Mike sent me two pages of notes he took at a workshop (at Sunrise Inn) given by John Dufresne. I wish I could insert those pages here — they seem now to me to be so much like the words Mike lived by, edited by. Here are a few examples:
 

Words are what we build with. Use the thesaurus.
 

Sometimes one right word revision can make the day.
 

Challenge every exclamation mark. You get 3 in your lifetime. They tell rather than show.
 

Get rid of every cliche. If you’ve heard it before, drop it.
 

Don’t use one single word that is not absolutely necessary.
 

            I could write a page or more about Mike (and Linda’s) reaction to my full-length play, Mornings After . Obviously not a candidate for FAN , Mike held off reading it, then finally gave it a shot. If it is ever produced (as a musical), I will remember Mike, because his portrait of Addie Joss is at the play’s roots.
 

            I will never forget Mike’s excitement about Mudville Diaries , the book that was carefully harvested out of FAN . More than elegant rhyming poems, or the longer essays (including pictorial) that filled the pages of FAN , Mike loved the short bits and pieces of baseball that he collected in “Mudville.” I think it was because they were from the hearts of fans, not their heads. And of course, Mike would figure out a way to revise one word to make that little fragment a gem.
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            I still keep in touch with some of the folks I met at that Atlanta workshop, and I think that would please Mike very much. If I listed all the fellow fans with whom he put me in touch, it would be a very long list indeed. Mike enjoyed growing the community of baseball, and so do I. I steered a few people to Mike, but on this score, it was as lop-sided as our writings.
 

            I’m not sure which issue of FAN I received last, #30 in Fall 1998 (Mark McGwire is on the cover, smiling like seventy), or the unique Haiku issue that came out that year. I think it was #30. Mike found space in that one for a “Mudville” of mine:
 

My wife Barbara is an avid reader, and I believe this helps her tolerate my baseball habit. When she’s ripping through a page-turner (often a mystery), she cannot pause mid-sentence, mid-paragraph, and sometimes not even mid-chapter. So she understands perfectly when I need to see one more pitch, one more out, one more inning.
 

            In #30, Mike looked back on the 1998 season, with great satisfaction. Fans were enthused again, as Mike had been when he tossed a no-hitter at age nine, pitched a Knothole League game at Crosley Field, and was a Trinity College teammate of Mo Drabowski in the spring of ’56. Mike’s other personal highlights were Mudville Diaries , the Atlanta conference, and his art.
 

But my greatest baseball enjoyment, and what I’m most proud of, has been creating and publishing Fan Magazine over the past ten years. Nothing compares with being able to turn a vision into a reality.
 

            Mike then announced that his current health condition might mean that the final issue of Fan was on deck.
 

            Through 1999 and 2000, I heard little from Mike. He had taken on a brand-new challenge, one which would demand all of his strength. I mostly kept in touch through mutual friends.
 

            I learned from a letter from Linda and Mike last February that the last few seasons had indeed been hard times. Mike had spent most of the last four months of 1999 in a hospital. Home again, his triumphs last year were things we all take for granted: being able to eat food again, to climb stairs, to go to church. Last Christmas, Mike and Linda celebrated their fifth anniversary, which no doubt was much more joyous than celebrating a year out of the ICU.
 

 

            That letter also tipped me off to Mike’s website (www.dreamfire.com/schacht/), and provided me his e-mail address. Mike had been online for a year, and I never knew. Maybe he was afraid to tell me, fearing that he’d be bombarded with NOTES . And of course, he’d have felt obliged to respond, maybe edit some. Mike would have been a great internet editor.
 

            I have a not-so-small collection of articles about Mike that stretch back to before we met, and I’m forwarding them to Cooperstown, along with this issue. Mike deserves not only a file in the library there, he deserves a bronze plaque. Maybe someday the Veterans’ Committee will be loaded with poets and artists, and it will happen.
 

            And now I have to find some final words for Mike, and I feel a little like I did about Willie Stargell, I feel regret. That we did not keep in better touch, the last couple years. That I did not get to say farewell in person. Or better, over the phone, the way I will best remember Mike.
 

            I have a little essay, by the way, that Mike asked me to write — he often gave me ideas, then waited for my letters — called “Once Upon a Time.” But in honor of Mike, I will include it in the next issue. Leave my readers wanting more.
 

            So here are my final words. Mike, you are sorely missed. Wait, that’s a cliche, strike it. But it fits! (Lose the !) Sorely — we hurt. Missed — there is a void in the country of baseball, one that no one else can fill.
 

            There is no joy in Mudville. Not for a while, anyway.
 

            But there are some terrific memories.
 

            I am deeply humbled and honored to have crossed paths with Mike Schacht, and to have walked some together with him.