Notes #453 — Tell Me a Story

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

#453                                                                                                                        JULY 29, 2008
 

                                                            TELL ME A STORY
 

            It’s still July, yet with most of my traveling for 2008 behind me now, it feels a little like the summer is over. The mostly awful play of the Pirates since the All Star break has contributed to that feeling. Once again, .500 looks unlikely, and once again, I need to find another team to root through the playoffs to the World Series.
 

            The obvious choice is the Cubs. But winning a world championship exactly 100 years after their last one, seems just too perfect, too Hollywoodish, and therefore unlikely. So I’ll root for them anyway , for the sake of my Cub-fan friends. If they can do it, it would make for a great story.
 

            And that’s my theme this issue, starting with an ex-Cub coach, Buck O’Neil. Baseball is loaded with great stories, and I think that’s what got me hooked, more than anything else. It’s a great game to play and to watch and to listen to on the radio, but take away the stories and is it nearly so great?  We see a web gem, and right away we want to talk about it: Did you see that?  Holy cow! Every at bat is a potential conversation piece.
 

            Two months to go in this season, and perhaps the best stories of 2008 lie ahead. Tampa Bay, the Cubs, no-hitters as yet unthrown, feats of glovework and batsmanship. Playoffs, the Series. It’s a familiar rhythm, and while my “retirement” has sometimes made dates elusive (I’m pretty good on days of the week), I remain keenly aware of the pace of the baseball season. That pace was always interfered with by the school year, and then by job responsibilities, but now, it could be my primary calendar. It’s not, but maybe someday.
 

 

BUCK O’NEIL IN THE HALL … SORT OF  
 

            As I process these words on Saturday, July 26, a statue of Buck O’Neil is being unveiled in Cooperstown’s Hall of Fame. My newspaper tells me it will be hard to miss as you enter the Hall, a six-foot bronze Buck, wearing suit and tie, smiling hello. When Buck was not voted into the Hall in 2006, a special tribute was promised, and this is it.
 

            Back in Notes #382 (October 18, 2006), I wrote this:
 

Buck had become, ever since Ken Burns featured him in his 1994 epic Baseball , the most visible spokesman for the old Negro Leaguers, and a true ambassador for Baseball, with a capital B. The case for Buck to be a Hall of Famer, however, was not that strong. Some argued he should go in as a coach, but the fact is that Buck probably got more press and support than any of the 17 inductees — because he was not voted in. Buck was already famous, he didn’t need the Hall; most of the 17 surely did. And if Buck goes in for story-telling and good humor, why not Joe Garagiola and Bob Uecker, and so many others? I mean into the Hall , not just the mythical “Wing” which is really a display in the museum that honors recipients of the Frick and Spink Awards.
 

But wait — it ain’t over till it’s over. Not in America, not when it comes to elections. The Hall of Fame has announced that it will honor Buck O’Neil anyway . Never mind how, leave that to the Hall, they know best anyway. I’m hoping that whatever they do, they do quickly, so I can see their decision when I’m there October 21. A mini-plaque?  A regular plaque, but something less than bronze?  Or a plaque just off the gallery?  The best tribute would probably be an edited video of Buck telling his tales, that could play non-stop in the area devoted to the Negro Leagues.
 

            I concluded that piece with a little satire, imagining that Buck gets a plaque, and the Hall gets phone calls, first from a guy that has more hits than anyone in the HOF, then maybe from Greenville, SC, about a guy with the third-best batting average of all time.
 

            I was really hoping that the Hall might do that video tribute, and maybe they will, someday. I’m sure that it is much easier to commission a statue, than to get all the necessary permissions from the Burns folks — and a lot less expensive. And a bronze statue is nice, even though today (thanx to Disneyworld) we expect statues to move and talk. If Buck’s statue did that, it just might create a traffic problem for HOF visitors.
 

            All kidding aside, I like the idea of honoring Buck O’Neil with a statue, giving him more bronze than a plaque would. I met Buck at a SABR Negro League workshop some years back, in Memphis, and had a catfish lunch with him, and came away with this impression: Buck is one of the great story-tellers of all time. If there was a Hall for story-tellers, Buck would be voted in, and honored with a plaque, while many great ballplayers would have to settle for a statue.
 

            As a writer, I am obviously biased when it comes to story-telling. Stories are the glue that binds fans to players, and generations to generations, as statistics cannot. Baseball has spawned stories effortlessly — every game has them. So every game can be written about almost endlessly, to the dismay of editors. When the stories overflowed the pages of the daily newspapers, baseball spawned magazines and papers of its own. The story-telling did not end when the seasons wound down, it carried on all winter, in “hot stove leagues.” The Hall of Fame itself is built on a foundation not of concrete, but of stories.
 

            Baseball’s appeal was always partly the activity of the players on the field — the game — and partly the conversation in the stands. We got to movies or plays or concerts and we sit in silence, but at the park, we talk, we cheer, we boo, and we tell stories. What we see on the diamond jogs memories of stuff we have seen elsewhere or heard about or read about. Thus all games are connected, in a way, knit together by stories. So loud music at a ballpark is offensive. Fans do not need to be told when to cheer.
 

            Longtime readers of Notes will remember that I often write that giving credit where it is due is not at all an easy thing. So often, credit goes to the wrong folks, while the truly deserving are overlooked. With the unveiling of Buck O’Neil’s statue, Cooperstown is doing the right thing. And I, for one, would not mind if the statue was captioned simply, “The Story-Teller.” 
 

 

COVERING-UP: STANDARD OPERATION PROCEDURE  
 

            In my B-Sox research I came across a number of earlier instances of bribery and game-tossing, so many that I started to think (and occasionally say or write) that covering-up these sins against the game’s integrity was practically “standard operating procedure” — SOP — for MLB, and probably for the minors, too. A couple examples, the bribe offered Boston catcher Lou Criger before the start of the first World Series in 1903 (his affidavit was made public decades later by Ban Johnson); and the case of Hal Chase, brought to a head (specifically, the head of the NL, John Heydler) in 1918; Prince Hal’s exoneration early in 1919 was a kind of green light for future fixers and bribers.
 

            At the recent SABR convention, Steve Steinberg, no stranger to Notes readers, pointed me to the SABR book Deadball Stars of the National League (2004) for another example: Jack Taylor. Now here is a pretty good pitcher, who tossed 187 straight complete games between 6/20/1901 and 8/9/1906. Those interested can look up his biography easy enough.
 

            What interested me was his pitching for the Cubs in the Chicago City Series after the 1903 season. After 21 regular-season wins, Taylor drew the series opener start, and won 11-0. But he lost his next three starts to the White Sox, 10-2, 9-3, and 4-2. He was traded in the off-season to the Cardinals, and when he returned with the Cards to Chicago, his three losses the previous fall were remembered and he was jeered by the fans.
 

            “Why should I have won? I got $100 from [Cubs president Jim] Hart for winning and I got $500 for losing.” Hart charged Taylor publicly with tanking, but nothing was done. In July, he was accused of tossing a game to the Pirates, and Natl Commission Chairman Garry Herrmann responded by declaring that Taylor “was not an honest ballplayer.”  Taylor finished the season 20-19, and 39 CGs. A hearing after the season was held — Taylor said he’d been out drinking before the game in question — he was acquitted but fined $300 for bad conduct. Taylor angrily refused to pay.
 

            Then he was called before the Commission on charges that he tanked the 1903 City Series games, and Hart was armed with plenty of testimony. The Commission found the evidence insufficient. Taylor resumed pitching for the Cardinals, and went 15-21 the next season, 1905. In the St Louis City Series, he was again accused of tossing games, but no action was taken. He went on to win 20 in 1906, the last twelve after he was traded back to the Cubs!  After a 7-5 1907, he left the majors.
 

            Thanx to Dan “The Fix is In” Ginsburg for the Deadball Stars material. Surprising?  Perhaps, but it reminds me that exhibition games were looked upon by at least some players, as less important that the regular season or “championship” games. And if the players felt that they were not getting a big enough cut of the post-season revenues, they just might cut a deal elsewhere. The lawyers defending the Black Sox had hinted that they might try that defense, in the 1921 trial — if the players contracts expired at the end of the season, then the players were under no obligation to do their best in the post-season. The prosecution was ready to counter that, and the argument never was central.
 

            It seems odd to us today, because so many fans care so deeply about the post-season … it’s when many tune in , after paying scant attention from April thru September. But it was easier 90 or 100 years ago for a ballplayer to rationalize, Hey, it’s only a post-season EXHIBITION game, what’s the big deal if I make a few bucks on the side by a little tipping to the opposition?  And I ought to mention that Jack Taylor — along with Hal Chase — is NOT on baseball’s ineligible list.
 

 

HARD TO DIGEST  
 

            A friend occasionally gives me a subscription to Reader’s Digest , and I typically save them to read on planes, because of their size. RD is about as mainstream USA as you can get.
 

            The August 2008 issue has an eye-catching cover, with the bold statement, Yes, you can believe in baseball again!  Well, I had to see what they meant, so I turned to page 132.
 

            And there I found a story about Sal Fasano, called in the RD headline, Mr, Clean. According to Jeff Pearlman, Fasano was struggling in the 2000 season, had the chance to take steroids in order to bulk up — to compete — and he refused. He has gone on to compile a .219 average in 1,063 ML at bats and more than twice that number in the minors. “My career has really been a disappointment,” he said. He’s played for 23 different teams.
 

            Fasano noticed that the Mitchell Report listed among its 89 offenders, nine catchers. He thinks others have gone undetected. Again, those interested can read the biography for themselves.
 

            What interested me was Fasano’s view, that “performance-enhancing drugs were all over the sport.” If I could ask Pearlman a question, it would be this: How hard did you have to look, to find someone who admitted that he was not taking steroids?  And if the reply is even only somewhat hard, that says a lot. We are probably very naive to think Mitchell’s 89 were it ; they may well have been the tip of the iceberg.
 

            Conspicuously absent from the article, I thought, was any sign that Fasano refusal might have saved his health, maybe even his life. The article focuses on his uneasiness with steroids, because they are wrong , without any hint as to why they are wrong. No, the legal/illegal thing doesn’t come up, either. Readers are asked to look on Fasano as a hero for saying NO, period. I think young athletes need a lot more info.
 

 

ONE STRANGE BASEBALL BOOK    
 

            I was remarkably restrained in the vendors’ room at the SABR convention last month. Strolling day after day among tables piled with books, I ended up buying exactly one.
 

            The Mascots of 1911: The Year God Met the Devil in the World Seriesby Bob Schroeder (iUniverse, 2007), is one of the strangest baseball books I’ve come across yet. And I mean that as a compliment.
 

            I was disposed to enjoy this book: I knew the Giants and Athletics of 1911, having role-played John McGraw and Connie Mack in many APBA simulations with those rosters. NOT on my rosters were the two apparently key players — the team mascots. I was fascinated by the true story of Victory Faust, even before reading Gabriel Schechter’s fine book on this character. And I’ve written some fiction involving Faust and McGraw myself. I was less familiar with the hunchback mascot of the A’s, Louis van Zelst. Louis was as effective a lucky charm as Faust, or moreso: in his five summers with the A’s, the Mackmen won four AL pennants and finished second once. Faust could claim two pennants and two seconds.
 

            Both mascots died in the spring of 1915, and both the A’s and the Giants finished that season in last place. So it would be easy to attribute the fall in their fortunes to the loss of their mascots, except that you would have to overlook the changes in the team rosters, due to the economics brought on by the Federal League in 1914-15.
 

            The 1911 World Series becomes Schroeder’s battleground between the mascots, although they never really face off like good and evil, or God and the Devil. McGraw probably had a satanic streak, and Mack an angelic, but history prevents us from painted them as black and white, too. But that’s OK, it’s a great story anyway.
 

            The trouble with historical fiction, as I’ve noted before many times, is that you are never quite sure what is factual. I knew more about Faust and felt I could distinguish the fiction better in his case, but in the end, I recommend that readers just enjoy this story without worrying too much about the facts.
 

            Along the way, we also meet Rastus, “a nine-year-old colored boy,” the personal mascot of Ty Cobb; apparently rubbing his head before his at bats made Cobb the game’s greatest hitter, and we wonder what performance-enhancing substance the Peach picked up from the kid’s hair. (Would a Mitchell Commission of 1911 have looked into what team mascots were permitted to hex, jinx, charm and otherwise inspire?  Gotta keep the playing field level.)
 

            We also run into Addie Joss, sort of — Addie dies suddenly in 1911, and we actually get to know his sister much better. I’ve done a lot of research on Addie and the benefit game played that July for his widow and children, but never knew he had a sister. If he did, did she get to know and admire young Louis of the A’s, as well as the superstitious Red Ames of McGraw’s Giants?  If she did, then Bob Schroeder has done some truly remarkable research!
 

            This is, I repeat, one strange book. It is written in short bites, a page or two per chapter. It zig-zags between McGraw and Mack meeting in the first All Star Game as rival managers in 1933, and 1911, when both ride their charmed teams to October. The story is straight out of the Twilight Zone, Schroeder putting words in the mouths of all of these characters, imagining how it might have gone, after the fortune teller sent Faust to McGraw.
 

            I guess I enjoyed the idea of the book more than the execution. But I recommend it anyway — it’s a wild ride.
 

 

COMING DISTRACTIONS  
 

            The past couple summers, I’ve organized several book signings at ballparks, billed as “SABR Authors Nights.”  Thanx to the proximity of the Cooperstown research center, central NY is a haven for baseball authors, and it was always easy to recruit two or three or four to join me at these events. I think the larger roster of authors made the event easier to publicize; for us, it made the event fun, no matter how many books we sold, because we had each other’s company during the games.
 

            The next such event promises to be bigger than ever. We will not only have six or seven SABR authors on hand at the Sunday, August 31, Syracuse Chiefs game; another author will join us, Denny McLain. Yes, that Denny McLain, a guest of the Chiefs.
 

            Fans know McLain mainly as the last pitcher to win 30 games, as he went 31-6 for the Detroit Tigers in 1968. Cy Young, MVP, and in the ’68 World Series, after losing two games to the Card ace Bob Gibson, McLain won Game Six on two days rest, setting up Fat Mickey Lolich’s Game Seven win and the Tigers’ championship. He was on Ed Sullivan and other TV shows, wore a white mink coat, fly his own Cessna, and seemed to have an unlimited bright future.
 

            After a 24-9 1969 and a second (shared) Cy Young, things started to go wrong. Suspended at the outset of 1970 for a 1967 bookmaking incident, by the season’s end McLain filed for bankruptcy, was suspended again, and then was traded. After a 10-22 season in Washington and a final 4-7 for Oakland and Atlanta in 1972, it was all over as far as baseball was concerned. He made more headlines, but they were not pretty.
 

            I am not familiar (yet) with any books that McLain has written, no doubt telling his story in his own way. Whether I will meet him on August 31, I cannot say — I really don’t know what I could say to him. He’s a few years older, so I guess we can talk about what “active retirement” is for someone who has done time at the top, and some time in prison. On the other hand, I’ve been hanging around for almost six years with banished and disgraced ballplayers, the so-called “Black Sox,” so maybe with Denny McLain I’ll feel right at home. In case anyone is wondering — YES, I’d much rather meet any of the guys from 1919, because I have a LOT of questions for them. For McLain, not so many.