Notes #458 — Play It Again, Jocko

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

#458                                                                                                         SEPTEMBER 16, 2008
                                                        PLAY IT AGAIN, JOCKO
 

            You gotta like an umpire with the name “Jocko,” and indeed Mr Conlan was a genial fellow, feisty and full of spunk, and he called ’em as he saw ’em for 25 years. There is a story that Jocko once left a game voluntarily in 1955, when his arthritis prevented him from bending enough to see low pitches. So I wonder how Jocko, an ump I enjoyed, or Bill Klem, and ump I enjoy reading about, would receive instant replay .
 

            Replay has made its debut in MLB, and seems off to a good start. It is too late to correct some past blunders (see my comments on Jeffrey Maier below), but I, for one, hope it is here to stay.
 

            These days, avoiding blunders seems to be what political campaigns are all about. Replays make gaffes (or just plain looney ideas) widely accessible, no matter where they are voiced. We all mis-speak, but we are not all willing to accept correction or to apologize or to admit we are wrong. When we fail to admit our humanity, we lose respect, I think.
 

            On Friday, September 19, there will be a panel to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the film Bull Durham , and I hope to be there, and to report on it in the next issue of Notes . This is an event that was scheduled over five years ago, and it was cancelled because of a blunder over politics. In case you were not following things then, I will replay here my take in Notes , which was not nearly as perceptive and instructive as the takes of several others, also reprinted below. If you are a political junkie and just can’t get enough of my horsehide satire, go to the Notes Archive, #226 , for a feast served up in 2000.
 

            But this issue is not all politics, and ends with something that might bring us together, no matter the color of our skin or our politics (blue or red).
 

 

A BASEBALL HISTORY POSTSCRIPT  
 

            In Notes #437-447 , I wrote a history of baseball — my own version. It was fun, and I recommend it to every fan. I think we all have strong suits (certain teams or eras or themes), and probably, because the subject is so vast, certain blind spots. I tried to remove some of the latter by researching the seasons with which I was not familiar. But when I was done, it was very obvious to me that I had skipped a lot.
 

            For example, in writing about the 1930s, I made no mention of the innovation that came along in 1933 — the All Star Game. I am not a fan of the ‘Star Games, but I should have mentioned it. I do like the idea of players & coaches voting annually on who is the top player at each position — peer recognition. But that’s not the way it is anymore, making the ‘Star teams an annual log to toss on the Hot Stove, a subject for argument — which is OK, but unnecessary. The games themselves no longer interest me, and I think that would be the case even if they were played during the daytime, or started at 7 PM, eastern. Or if my team, the Pirates, was represented better. Or if we didn’t see so much of the All Stars on a regular basis on highlight shows. Or if we eliminated interleague plague .
 

            The other glaring omission in my history is the Negro Leagues. I still don’t feel qualified to write much about the Negro Leagues, even though I’ve attended a couple of terrific workshops sponsored by SABR’s NL Committee, one in Harrisburg (see NOTES #219 ), and another in Memphis (see #264 ). I know that research continues to fill in blanks in this chapter of baseball history, and for those interested, there is much more available today than ever before — certainly more than was available when I was growing up and reading about baseball; much more than just a decade ago. And so much more that it deserves more than just the passing references I could have added to my history. But I should have added something . I think the future is bright, for the Negro Leagues — I know young fans who are interested, and I’ve donated my small library of NL books to a local school — not just any school, but one with an active SABR chapter.
 

 

INSIDERS  
 

            Over the past six years or so, I’ve learned a lot about the B-Sox, and I’ve learned some things about the newspaper business. We all want to believe that what we read is the unvarnished, unbiased truth. Hey, it’s in print. Alas, it turns out that bias is omnipresent. So when we look it up , we need to ask a couple questions. What is the bias of the publication?  Of the author?
 

            This was never more plain than when I was learning about Ban Johnson and Charles Comiskey, and toss in Judge Landis, too. Many editors had aligned themselves for or against these men, and that was often reflected in their coverage, and in their quotes. And writers were not always objective, either. Frank Menke was a booster of Ban Johnson, Hugh Fullerton a close friend of Commy.
 

            And then I learned that there was a group of writers who took a special interest in the B-Sox case. Their names appear more often than others, if you try to read everything written about the B-Sox, not just near the events of 1919-1921, but in the decades that followed. When he was nagging baseball to look into the post-Series rumors, Hugh Fullerton mentioned some of the reporters (besides himself) who were “in the know”: Ed Wray of St Louis, and Jimmy Crusinberry of the Chicago Tribune . He could have added Ed Bang (Cleveland), Joe Jackson (Detroit), maybe Otto Floto (Denver) and certainly Christy Mathewson, except that Matty had already decided to go in the other direction.
 

            Harry Williams (Los Angeles) seemed to get hooked on the B-Sox early on, as Joe Williams (no relation, far as I know) did later, altho Joe may have been more interested in the case of Shoeless Joe Jackson, than in the larger story. Irving Vaughn (Chicago) got hooked, and so did Menke, and Earl Obenshain ( Sporting News ) and F.C. Lane ( Baseball Magazine ); Lane, of course, was the one who took Fullerton to task for tossing mud at baseball with his prying questions. Even after the scandal broke, Lane would not apologize. Bert Collyer and Frank O. Klein of Collyer’s Eye deserve special mention, of course. We can wish that Ring Lardner wrote more about it; Damon Runyon, too. As much as, say, Alan Hynd wrote in True Detective , November 1938, just months after Ring’s son John Lardner wrote “Remember the Black Sox?” in The Saturday Evening Post .
 

            On it goes, but this is really just a long intro to a salute to one other B-Sox addict from the inner circle. James L. Kilgallen was a United News Staff Correspondent and I discovered his stuff when ProQuest added The Atlanta Constitution to its menu. Take, for example, his column of October 31, 1920.
 

            The scandal was just a month old when JLK topped his piece with the brash headline, “Here’s the Inside Story Of the Baseball Scandal.”  As if he had it all. Well, maybe he did, but that Halloween he only gave out a few treats. He “broke” the story of how James Crusinberry and Sam Pass combined in the undoing of the cover-up (my phrase, not JLK’s). Pass was the best man of Ray Schalk and godfather his baby, and so much a Sox fan that he traveled with the team.
 

            According to JLK, the Cook County grand jury was getting nowhere (nowhere near the WS fix of 1919, that is), when an unnamed witness told them to quiz Crusinberry. “I know a little,” JC said, “but Sam Pass knows a whole lot. Call him, too.”  To refresh memories, Crusinberry was among those who listened to Abe Attell spill his beans to Kid Gleason, in July 1920, at the famous Dinty Moore meeting. Ring Lardner was along, too. JC had heard that Attell and Hal Chase and Arnold Rothstein were behind the plot, had heard of the $100,000 price tag. But apparently the grand jury had been sheltered from these particulars, until JC took the stand.
 

            Sam Pass knew all the Sox and not only traveled with them, he partied with them, so who knows what he had heard over the past year. JLK: “He was on the inside.”  It was Pass, according to JLK, who told the grand jury to call on Mrs Henrietta Kelley, who then became “the mystery woman” of the day. Even after she testified — after Cicotte blew the lid off the cover-up, I’m pretty sure — JFK knew her only as Cicotte’s landlady, and not his sister.
 

            Reading old newspaper accounts can be maddening. Sometimes the editors ran short of space, and seemed to just lop off whole sections of a story. For example, “Hugh S. Fullerton Vividly Describes the Full Details Of Great Baseball Scandal,” appeared in The Atlanta Constitution on October 3, 1920. The same article appeared days before in the Chicago Journal — with twelve paragraphs removed. The AC 10/31/20 JLK article has this, about midway through:
 

Pass said he got this information [about a Warner Hotel conference between the Sox and gamblers, to fix the Series] from one of the gamblers who was present. At the time Pass didn’t know he was a gambler.
bers has been saying of the others, and how former friendships on the club had been severed.
 

            Huh?  What was lopped off there ?  If someone has the Chicago Journal (or any paper which carried JLK) handy, please let me know! 
 

            Above, I said that Eddie Cicotte testified before Henrietta Kelley, and I think he did. He may even have testified to prevent his sister from needing to give him up, in her story. (Remember, she overheard Eddie tell his brother in the bathroom, “Well, what do I care — I got mine.”  That is usually understood to mean that Cicotte had taken his money up front. I like to play Devil’s Advocate, or Eddie’s Lawyer, and argue that the Cicotte brothers were discussing not bribery, but integrity.)
 

            But Kilgallen has it the other way around: he has Mrs Kelley testifying, Eddie reading her testimony the next day, and then he “began to weaken,” so when he is called by Harry Grabiner from his morning practice on 9/28/20 to go to Alfred Austrian’s office (he “cools his heels” for half an hour in the corridor outside), Eddie is ready to spill his beans.
 

* * * * *
 

            If the name Kilgallen rings a bell with older readers, it should: he was the father of columnist and TV panelist on What’s My Line? , Dorothy Kilgallen. James L. was just at the start of a long career in journalism (1919 – 1978) when he probed the B-Sox. Daughter Dorothy did some probing of her own, into Frank Sinatra’s connections, and the assassination of John Kennedy. I hope to follow up on JLK with his It’s a Great Life: My 50 Years as a Newspaperman .  
 

 

WHERE WAS REPLAY WHEN WE NEEDED IT?  
 

            NOTES has sometimes been a chronicle of the baseball seasons, especially when I’ve kept “Stretch Run Diaries” or “October Journals.” In those seasons, I tried to write something daily, something to capture the feel of the pennant chases or the playoffs or the World Series. I think I did that because I always enjoyed reading Roger Angell’s recaps in The New Yorker , so much that it was sometimes more enjoyable reading his takes, than watching the games.
 

            In 1996, I was busily chronicling the stretch runs in both leagues, when I funny thing happened. I stopped. I ended the diary on Sunday, September 29, in #149 , then turned away from MLB (after a farewell issue, #150 ) for a whole year. I did not plan that hiatus, and looking back, I still cannot fully explain it.
 

            But there are a couple clues in #149 : “The 1996 season began with the death of an umpire, and it ended with Roberto Alomar spitting in an umpire’s face, for which he was punished with a five-game suspension, starting next spring.”  The Orioles made the playoffs, and Alomar was allowed to play, and in their first game against the Yankees, a fan named Jeffrey Maier turned an out into a Derek Jeter home run, spoiling the game and that series, won by the Yankees in best-of-five. There was no doubt that the call was blown, and that a replay would have erased any doubt about it being blown. I don’t know which bothered me most, Selig’s call (not punishing Alomar at once), or the umpires (were they punishing the O’s?)  But I took a break from writing about the playoffs, and then sat out a season.
 

 

BULL DURHAM IN COOPERSTOWN, FIVE YEARS LATER  
 

            In the spring of 2003, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were scheduled to appear on a panel at the Hall of Fame, to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the film Bull Durham . At the time, I was a card-carrying “Friend of the Hall” and had purchased tickets, and my wife and I were looking forward to the event. Then all of a sudden, it was cancelled. Here is my reaction, in NOTES #291 :
 

SAY IT AIN’T SO, DALE
 

            I would like to begin this issue of Notes by thanking Mr Dale Petroskey, still President of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown as I process these words. I had been stumped for a topic for this issue. I was also avoiding it, finding excuses (“Hey, I can see the ground, let’s go for a walk,” for example) and busying myself with the editing my book is requiring of me.
 

            For a while, it looked like readers of Notes would have to endure, “How about those Pirates !” (They have not finished a season above .500 since I started Notes in March 1993.)
 

            Then along came Dale Petroskey, cancelling a Cooperstown event that made national news. Thank you, Mr P.
 

            This whole issue is not devoted to the flap over Petroskey censoring two actors, in an act of misguided patriotism. Thank goodness for that. No, instead I dug into the Notes Archive for related material, which I think is worth reprinting.
 

            And as I re-read what I wrote back in 1996, it occurred to me that Mr Petroskey finds himself today exactly where Marge Schott found herself a bit over seven years ago: at the mercy of the media. If the media persists, they will keep this in the news until the temperature rises to the point where Petroskey will be forced to resign. If they let it go, he will survive.
 

            So while I express in this issue my disappointment over not meeting Susan Sarandon in person — no wait — I mean, my disappointment over Petroskey’s political action and statements, while representing an institution and a game that has nothing to do with political parties — yes, that’s it, I’m sure — I know I may well be defending him next issue, if he is done in by an unfair media blitz. It will be interesting to see how much the media has changed, or not, in seven years.
 

            Baseball should bring us together. We enjoy season after season, no matter who is in the White House, and while the game is not divorced from the issues that divide us, we can forget those divisions while watching or playing the game. I suggest that Dale Petroskey lighten up, admit his error, and extend a peace branch to the actors he has snubbed. Plenty of time to reschedule. As a card-carrying Friend of the Hall, I stand ready to forgive and forget.
 

THE SHOW MUST GO ON — NOT!  
 

            I am a “Friend of the Hall of Fame.”  And for the first time, I am embarrassed to say that.
 

            I’ve been a FotHOF off and on for the last twelve or thirteen years. The benefits I enjoyed most in the early years were free admissions to the National Baseball Museum, and the coffee mugs, caps or T-shirts. In recent years, the main treat is admission to the Hall to watch Game One of the World Series on a large screen in a room packed with fans and free ballpark food. And I get the Hall’s newsletter.
 

            The last newsletter announced that to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the film Bull Durham , the Hall was sponsoring a roundtable discussion. Tim “Nuke” Robbins and everyone’s favorite Baseball Annie, Susan Sarandon, would be there, along with the film’s director Ron Shelton and critic Jeffrey Lyons. The price was right, $5, so I called and made reservations for two. It would be my wife’s first-ever visit to the Hall, and I don’t think Lyons was the draw.
 

            The newsletter made it seem like the event was all nailed down. But when I reserved my tickets, I was cautioned that it was not — but they would know for sure within the week.
 

            Then came the news in my morning paper that the show was cancelled. And the reason given in the AP story was that the Hall’s president, Dale Petroskey, decided to punish Robbins and Sarandon for their activity and speeches in peace rallies, protesting the war in Iraq.
 

            The remarks from Petroskey were very disturbing to me. I did not reserve tickets to hear anti-war speech, but to hear a group discussion of how Bull Durham was made. I doubt Iraq would have come up at all, and if it did — say, in a parting shot by one of the actors — Mr Petroskey could easily have arranged to have the final word. (I was more disturbed when I read later in Time that a United Way had un-invited Sarandon to speak at one of their events. Is there a list circulating somewhere — a black one?)
 

            The whole thing is disturbing for a couple of reasons. First, I like the Hall of Fame, not so much for its bronze plaques, but it really is a first-rate museum, and its library is the place to do baseball research. And I hate to see the Hall politicized, because I believe baseball, like museums and libraries, is democratic — small d — or should be.
 

            I am not impressed by celebrities who champion causes, and I regret that causes need to recruit celebrities to get the attention of the media. However, celebrities have the right to voice their opinions, like everyone else, and that’s a really important right, regardless of the opinions they hold. And I hate to see anyone punished for exercising that right.
 

            The first time I was out on this limb here in Notes , I was defending, of all people, Marge Schott. Baseball punished Marge for expressing some of her odd views — as if every baseball owner was free of any hint of racism, sexism, and so on. I want everyone to feel free to speak their mind — so racists or extremists can find out, by the public’s reaction, how off-base their views are to most Americans. Much better to let them spout, than to drive them underground, where they might build a bomb to bring down a building. The last time on the limb, John Rocker was in the news, feeling the wrath of the politically correct. As if his opinions mattered to fans. As if they deserved amplification and repeating. (See the Archive, #206, 207 & 209; in 209 you’ll see the rare transcript of John Rocker in a sensitivity training group.)
 

 

            On the SABR-L, I found just a few comments on the incident, but one of them steered me to a website: www.baseballprimer.com /clutch/archives/00006706.shtml#comments. And there, I found 58 pages of comments. Among the very best was this from historian Jules Tygiel:
 

I just sent the following message to Dale Petroskey:
 

Dear Dale:
 

As the holder of a lifetime membership in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, someone whose personal papers currently reside in the library at the Hall of Fame, and the author of the introductory sections (including those on patriotism and nationalism) to the Hall of Fame publication, Baseball As America: Seeing Ourselves Through Our National Game , I wish to strongly protest your imperious decision to cancel the commemoration of the anniversary of Bull Durham in Cooperstown, due to the opposition to the Iraq war voiced by its stars Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.
 

The presidency of the Baseball Hall of Fame is, in effect, a sacred trust. By politicizing the Hall of Fame, you have violated that trust. Your position does not give you the right to impose your own political views on the events at the Hall to the exclusion of all others. One must assume that if people who protest American military actions are not welcome at the Hall of Fame, then Abraham Lincoln who opposed the Mexican War, Mark Twain who opposed the Spanish-American and Philippine Wars, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who opposed the war in Vietnam would not be welcome at the Baseball Hall of Fame. I also must assume that this letter jeopardizes my own future relationship with the Hall.
           
You write of Sarandon and Robbins, “We believe your very public criticism of President Bush at this important — and sensitive — time in our nation’s history helps undermine the U.S. position, which ultimately could put our troops in even more danger. As an institution, we stand behind our President and our troops in this conflict.” How was this institutional position arrived at? Were the employees or trustees polled? Were the people who pay dues to the organization asked? Were those enshrined consulted? Or is this the fiat of one person, yourself? Since when does the Hall of Fame take a position on political issues or voice open support for political figures and why is the opinion of the head a baseball museum more valid or valued than those of other public figures, like movie stars?
 

I doubt very much that the expressed opinions of two celebrities “put our troops in danger.” But actions like yours place our basic constitutional rights in dire jeopardy and disqualify you from representing the American national pastime. If you cannot see clear to reverse your position, then hopefully you will have the decency to resign.
 

            The very last post on the 58th page was from Rob Neyer:        
 

I’ve been accused by a few people here, and by a lot of people who have sent me e-mail yesterday and today, of venturing into “politics.”
 

But I’m not talking about politics. I happen to spend a great deal of time reading and thinking about politics, but in this case the politics are irrelevant to me.
 

Because free speech shouldn’t be a political issue. I am against punishing Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon for their speech, just as I was against punishing John Rocker for his.
 

If you’re interested in free speech and the ways in which it’s limited even in this great country, I recommend a book by Nat Hentoff called Free Speach for Me, But Not for Thee . He really gets into the ways speech can be squelched without falling under the technical definition of “censorship” (something that a lot of small minds simply can’t grasp).
 

p.s. Jules Tygiel has become one of my heroes
 

THE PLOT THICKENS  
 

            After writing the above, I received in my mail, a personal letter from Dale Petroskey. I’m guessing it’s because I had bought tickets for the event now squelched, and not because I was a Friend of the Hall. Actually, it was not a personal letter, it was the same one that the media had gotten hold of. All except the last line: “We value you as a Friend of the Hall of Fame and trust your respect our decision.”
 

            Of course, I do not respect “their” decision. Dale started off, “We are cancelling ….” but nowhere does he suggest who else agreed with him. I know he didn’t consult me. I suspect he ran it past the Hall’s Board or the Chairman of the Board, Jane Forbes Clark. Other Board members include Joe Morgan, Frank Robinson, along with former union men Robin Roberts, Tom Seaver and Brooks Robinson. So Mr P might not have smooth sailing when his contract comes up for renewal, if he chooses to hang on, instead of resigning.
 

 

            I understand that the Hall received thousands of letters, e-mails and phone calls in the wake of Petroskey’s blunder. The reports do not say if more than one in ten supported his action and explanation; I hope that is eventually made public.
 

            Petroskey himself was back-pedalling as fast as he could, on radio and to the Associated Press. Ira Berkow’s column in the NY Times had the headline, “Baseball Hall of Fame President Acknowledges Mistake.”  He seems to regret, however, not that he did and said what he did and said, but that he didn’t explain himself better. He does not seem to get it — he dragged his politics into baseball. Looking back, he’d have done it differently, he’d have called the actors first to see if they were going to talk baseball, or ask them to stick to that.
 

            Don’t know if it’s still there, but check out Jim Caple’s article, “What a Load of Bull” on ESPN’s page two site:
                                   www.espn.go.com/page2/s/caple/030411.html
 

            He has some great humor, imagining how the dialog in Bull Durham might have gone, if it was filmed today, with Nuke questioning everything from the Florida election to the war in Iraq, while his catcher Crash and his manager try to set him straight. Annie takes on Crash over the Kennedy assassination. (My own take on the fuzzy aftermath of the 2000 Florida election is in #226. It’s pure baseball, pure satire.)
 

AND, from NOTES #293:
 

Petroskey and the Hall of Fame
by Dorothy Seymour Mills in her newsletter, Vol 2, #5, May 2003
 

            When Dale Petroskey cancelled the Hall of Fame’s showing of “Bull Durham” because two actors who had opposed the war in Iraq were to appear, many fans protested. Petroskey finally recognized that he had made a mistake in asserting that these two actors were unpatriotic and that they might be endangering our soldiers.
 

            Ethan Casey, editor of the on-line magazine Blue Ear (www.BlueEar.com), asked me to prepare a short piece for the magazine about baseball’s historic connection with patriotism. I’ll reprint it for you here:
 

            I think the real beginning of baseball’s effort to link itself with patriotism was an event in the spring of 1889, when Albert Spalding’s Chicago Club returned from a world tour promoting what he called “the American National Game.” The event took place at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York City, where celebrities had gathered to praise the returned ball players. At this event Abraham G. Mills (no relation of mine!), appropriately known in some quarters as Awful Gall Mills, declared that baseball was American in origin. Cheers greeted this claim. From then on, few would venture to point out that baseball actually came from England.
 

            During World War One, major-league baseball’s patriotic activities in selling war bonds and having players march around the park like soldiers, drilling with their bats, were part of the owners’ push to keep baseball going despite the government imposition of the draft. Patriotism, or the appearance of it, was good for business.
 

            Patriotism, or the appearance of it, has always been good for business, including the baseball business. Petroskey represents baseball to many, or believes he does, and evidently he feels that, as a representative of an institution close to the hearts of many Americans, he must also appear to be patriotic. To him, patriotism demands agreement with the president’s decisions. But being patriotic doesn’t require compromising one’s personal opinions about presidential decisions. It stands on its own, well outside the consideration of today’s presidential move or tomorrow’s.
 

            At least Petroskey now grasps that he made the wrong choice, that his reason for canceling the appearance of two film stars at a showing of “Bull Durham” was misguided. Tim Robbins has since revealed that he had no intention of mentioning the war at Cooperstown anyway. Surely both stars realized that such a mention would have been entirely inappropriate at this occasion.
 

            Moreover, Petroskey’s assumption that any disagreement with Bush’s decision puts our troops in danger sounds far-fetched. I think it’s more likely that he was personally embarrassed to discover that he had invited to such a public baseball occasion two prominent people who had publicly disagreed with the President of the United States. Just their appearance at this event would serve to remind the audience that not everyone approved of the President’s actions.
 

            I’m sure that the heavy criticism of Petroskey’s decision to cancel the event has taught him that in this country we can disagree on political decisions without stooping to censorship.
 

[Dale Petroskey resigned from his position at the Hall of Fame earlier this year, under a cloud of sorts. So there is no danger of him cancelling the BULL DURHAM panel — again.]
 

 

HUTCH  
 

            Fred Hutchinson was nicknamed The Bear, although some books have The Moose and The Great Stone Face as well. I only remember The Bear, and it seemed to fit, if you think of bears as gruff types who will trash a clubhouse after the loss of an argument to an umpire, or the loss of a game that he felt he should have won. I knew Hutch as the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, because that’s what we became midway thru the 1959 season. Before that he had been a pitcher, and had managed other teams, but he’s stuck in my memory as the Reds’ skipper. In 1961, he piloted the Reds to a pennant, but his greatest success was muted by a Series loss to the NY Yankees of Maris & Mantle — ’61 was their year, too.
 

            I hadn’t thought of Hutch in a long time, then in 2006, the SABR convention was in Seattle, and I learned that Hutch had been a legend there, long before he ever came on my radar screen. Seattle was his hometown, he was born there in 1919, in the summer the city staged an amazingly successful general strike.
Hutch was a Pacific Coast League hero before he made it to the bigs, and before he served in the Navy. His career as a pitcher was OK, 95-71, 3.73 in eleven summers; he was also a decent hitter, for a pitcher, .263. In 1959, I was 13 and Hutch was just 40, but he seemed grizzled and wizened and a tough old man.
 

            About a week after the SABR convention in Seattle, my daughter moved to that city, and eventually was hired to work at the Fred Hutchinson Center for cancer research — “The Hutch.” His father and brother were doctors, and the brother dedicated the center to Hutch, and it makes sense to me, because if we are ever going to defeat cancer, it will take a lot of grit, Fred Hutchinson’s strong suit.
 

            But that is not why I am writing this. Not because I remember The Bear, calling the shots as the Reds went at it with my Pirates. And not because, by coincidence, my daughter now works at The Hutch.
 

            What I want to recall here is 1964. That’s when Fred Hutchinson, at age 44, was diagnosed with cancer. And this may sound strange today, but Hutch decided not to let it beat him. In those days, cancer was a word that people whispered, a disease they feared. It was worse than death, it meant months or years of pain. And it was feared because it was often terminal. If you know Mark Harris’ Bang the Drum Slowly , you know what I mean. If you had cancer, you kept it quiet, and you quietly faded away.
 

            But Fred Hutchinson did not do that. He kept on managing, and talked freely about cancer. He coached in the 1964 All Star game, “moving with great effort and pain, but he would not miss it” (Norman Macht, in The Ballplayers ). He was unable to finish the season, and died on November 12, 1964, spending his last months at his home in Bradenton, Florida. He was voted Most Courageous Athlete, and his death inspired many fund-raisers for cancer research.
 

            And Hutch inspired something else, too. An essay in a book by Mickey Mantle, published in 1964. Whether Mantle wrote the piece, “Brave and Honest Hutch,” doesn’t matter. (My guess is that few know about The Quality of Courage , and we have to wonder if the words came back to Mantle at the end of his own life, when he showed his own courage, publicly battling alcoholism and calling attention to the need for organ donations.)
 

            Mantle’s essay contains a story about Hutch’s father taking on the trolley company when they raised the fare, and the expected praises of Hutch’s competitiveness. Hutch was not only liked, as a manager, but widely respected. He was not the most successful player or manager, but he was candid. “It takes a lot of courage to be honest all the time. Think of the times you’ve bent the truth a little to get out of an awkward or embarrassing situation.”
 

            Another story has Hutch, as manager of the Cardinals, bumping heads with GM Frank Lane and owner Busch. They wanted him to play a colorful first-baseman who couldn’t hit. “If you want a clown to play first base, why don’t you hire Emmett Kelly?” is the line that has survived. Not polite, not diplomatic. But it was honest and right.
 

            About 80% of Mantle’s essay is prelude, as if he is having a hard time typing the word “cancer.” He postpones it a bit, using the word “malignancy.” He recalls his own reaction to that word: he felt sick. Then the miracle: Hutch talked freely about it. He talked plainly about his treatment and his chances. And he told them the truth with a grin.
 

            “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”  Those words are Lou Gehrig’s, and looking back, we marvel at them because now we know he spoke them as a dying man. And we might think the fans in Yankee Stadium heard them that way, but they probably didn’t, Gehrig lived a few more years.
 

            Mantle’s essay — you can read the whole thing in The Third Fireside Book of Baseball , edited by Charles Einstein in 1968 — ends with this:
 

Happily, courage like [Hutch’s] rubs off on other people. One of the reporters said, “I thought I would feel sorry for Hutch. Instead, I feel — I don’t know  — proud. I feel proud to be a human being because Hutchinson is one. I mean, he has cancer but instead of letting me feel sorry for him he makes me feel good just because I know him. What a man he is.”
 

            To me, the book and movie version of Bang the Drum Slowly are summed up in the words of Henry Wiggen: “Everybody knows everybody’s dying, that’s why people are as good as they are.” (For more on Mark Harris, see Notes #399 , “Requiem for an Arthur.”)  In that fiction, we see a group of ballplayers and others, before and after: that is, before and after they learn that Bruce Pearson has a terminal illness. The contrast in how they treat Pearson is striking, but so is the difference in the way they see their own lives.
 

* * * * *
 

            We have come a long way since 1964. Cancer is no longer a word we whisper, and now we can battle it in many ways, often defeating it. It looks like there will always be a need for more research, to give us more weapons. But I bet we all know people who have battled, or are battling cancer. In 1964, Fred Hutchinson stood out, and his honesty made others uncomfortable. Well, that still happens. But his courage was contagious, and has lived on long after he passed.
 

            This issue began with my take on replays ; I think they are a good idea, because even umpires are human. Then I mentioned an error or two of my own, some omissions in my baseball history in Notes 437-447 . Then we looked at some imperfect reporting and editing from the B-Sox days, and managed to stretch a link between that conspiracy and cover-up to JFK’s assassination. The main piece was a look back to an incident five years ago, that had politics intruding into baseball, and I ended with something that is as far from politics as we can get. If there’s a theme here, I guess it is the cliche: “Honesty is the best policy.” But I could be wrong.