Baseball, Life, and Other Stuff

Worst Baseball Movie Ever

Last week I watched Elmer the Great a 1933 movie starring Joe E. Brown as a Chicago Cub rookie who leads the Cubs into the World Series only to run afoul of, and then thwart a group of gamblers.  There are some great shots of Wrigley Field before there was any ivy growing on its hallowed walls, as well as some footage of the actual Yankees.  Then too, Joe E. Brown, who was a pretty good amateur ball player looked great in a batting practice scene, demonstrating a very fluid swing.  Taken all together, however, this movie was a total dud.  One of its best features is that it runs only 72 minutes.  Elmer the Great got me to thinking, however, what is the worst baseball movie ever?

There are plenty of nominees including the Babe Ruth Story, but my choice for worst baseball movie is one that many fans, fans whom I respect, really love:  The Natural.  I don't get this movie.  I read the book in college and I didn't get the book.  I don't get why the girl shoots the main character, I don't get the significance of "Wonder Boy," and the climactic scene when the ball is hit into the lights, putting them out, is so melodramatic as to be laughable.

If there is anyone out there who can explain this movie to me, I'm all ears.  Or "comments section."  Whatever.  If there is anyone out there with other nominees, post them!

Game Day

During our Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, Becky, Jesse, and Sarah began comparing notes on the different games that they had played and enjoyed.  These were all electronic games, of course, some of which I had heard of, none of which I really understood.  It got me to wondering on this holiday often noted for nostalgia, does anyone play board games anymore?

My parents and I played many a round of Scrabble when I was very young.  Even then, I had a definite preference for symmetry and since there were four tile holders, I insisted that four players play.  Therefore, we propped up a stuffed animal at the card table.  My father would help "Baby Bear" and my mother would help me.  As I grew older, we played rousing games of Skunk.  I still have this game, but don't remember a thing about it except that dice were rolled and on each die was a picture of a skunk.

Television shows became a big source for games and I distinctly remember The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Combat when I was in elementary school.

Monopoly was never big at our house because it always took so long to really get going.  By the time I got to junior high, however, my neighbor and I kept a summer-long Monopoly game going.  At one point, we actually robbed the bank and then simply kept track of our finances on paper.  (Considering what happened with Fannie May and Freddie Mac, this must have been the way Barney Frank played when he was a kid.)

Avalon Hill Games were popular when I was in high school and Al and I both had a game called Tactics II.  This was a modern warfare game pitting two industrial nations with equal armies, but different assets against one another.  One night we placed the two boards together and played for 8 hours before we had a winner.

When we were first married, Martha and I frequently played Boggle until Martha started making up words that happened to be in the dictionary and I lost all the time.

I must admit that Becky and Sarah always enjoyed board games and will still play them.  I have fond memories of endless Hi-Ho Cherrio games with Sarah and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves with Becky.  I think I traumatized poor Rebecca while playing the latter, which was a race-across-the-board game, by taking a shortcut at the end and beating her after she led for almost the entire contest.  She has "fairness issues" now.

Anyway, did anyone turn off the third football game last night and break out the old-fashioned board games to go along with an old fashioned food and family gathering?

Baseball Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving upon us and with the focus of this blog primarily on baseball, I thought it would be a good idea to reflect upon what this seamhead is thankful for this year.  Therefore, in no particular order I am thankful for . . .

Buck Showalter coming to Baltimore.

Finding all those extra baseballs.

Watching Kevin Brown of the Rebels really blossom as a hitter.

Sharing in the excitement of the Rebels' Blaine Sims signing a professional contract with Atlanta.

The good times we had in the Rebel webcast booth this summer.

The folks who joined us in the booth, either in person or via e-mail.

Another season of "Old-Timer" workouts with Al.  (While "middle-aged timer" has no ring to it, we have to come up with a better description than "old-timer"!  That makes my knee hurt just typing it.)

Sharing in Jesse's blossoming interest in baseball; not that he had a choice since he married Becky.

Being part of the ceremony honoring Mo Weber upon his retirement.

The many friendships that I have made or strengthened at the ole ballpark, whatever ballpark that may be.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

 

Baseballs, Baseballs, Baseballs!

One of the wonderful rituals of spring when I was a boy was receiving a new baseball for the upcoming summer.  It was sooo white and pristine; not a stitch was broken and the name was still fresh and unsmudged.  Hopefully, the ball read "Rawlings" or "Wilson" or some other such brand that was wound tightly and had a cork center.  Sometimes our parents would buy a ball that read "Cheap" (not really, but it may as well have) and it was filled with sawdust.  After one or two vigorous days of playing with it, the sawdust usually shifted and the ball was lopsided.

The trick, of course, was not to lose that baseball all summer.  If it landed in the neighbor's hedge, the hedge had to be searched until the ball was found and scratches be damned.  If the dog scooped it up, then you had to chase the dog and hopefully, catch him before he slobbered on it so badly that it became water-logged.

If you were lucky, you kept that ball all summer, by the end of which, the ball was about as brown as the leaves were turning.

All of which brings me to this summer.  Al and I began our "old-timers'" season with 18 balls.  We played yesterday again--catch, two rounds of batting practice, some infield--and it appears that we will finish the season with 40.  Forty balls!  Had we been given 40 baseballs all at one time when we were kids, our eyes would have rolled back in our heads and we would have fainted.

How did our ball supply increase instead of decrease?  For one thing, we still have that mentality that we must hunt down every ball as though it were the only one we owned.  For another, the younger generation is used to a largesse of baseballs and so they don't chase down batting practice home runs and they leave them lying about in bullpens and dugouts.  Al and I simply make it a point to scour a certain ballpark that we visit often and turn the young guys' carelessness into the old guys' gain.  I won't reveal where this ballpark is, but let's just say many of our new-found baseballs read "Valley League." 

Betwixt and Between

Regular readers of this blog might well note that am I late posting today's entry.  I just arrived back home from attending the Valley Baseball League Board of Directors meeting as one of New Market's representatives.  In another 20 minutes or so, I am heading to Baltimore to attend the Baltimore Writers' Conference at Towson State University.  Rather than rush an entry and make it less than my best, I've decided to simply post a pretty picture!  I invite you to stare at it while you are listening to "Kokomo" by the Beach Boys and take a 3 minute mental vacation to the Caribbean.

Follow Your Passion

On a whim yesterday, I asked my Facebook friends if anyone had a suggestion for a topic for today's blog.  I received a single response; a single response that said so much and reminds us of what this day, and all our other days are about.

Jill Lively, mom to Jay Lively, our color analyst on the Rebel webcasts and a former Rebel, wrote to say the following:

Follow your passion; life is so short.  Just lost my 45 year old sister to pneumonia.  The thing everyone remembers about her is her spunky spirit, smile and contagious laugh.    She enjoyed every day and was passionate about her daughters and her work as a coroner/nurse.  Her life was far from easy, but you would never know it from talking to her.  Her love/life/legacy in 45 years is far greater than most people achieve in 100.  God bless Julie for the lessons she taught all of us . . .

I am struck by certain words in Jill's description of her sister:  smile, laugh, enjoyed, passionate.  I can't think of another word that I would want to describe my life.

Jill, I never met your sister, but after reading your words, I'm sorry that I never had the chance.  Take heart in the fact that her life is still touching people, even strangers.  Smiling, laughing, enjoying life, and being passionate about our endeavors is the most fitting tribute that any of us can pay to Julie and to those, living or deceased who have touched our lives.  Let's resolve to do so.

 

Paper Trails

Last week, I bought a space heater from Sears as a birthday present for Becky.  That was it; one item.  As the clerk was putting it in a bag, the cash register whizzed and churned and finally produced the receipt after a fit and two starts.  The receipt was 16 inches long.  It gave me the information about my purchase; it told me that Sears "values" my feedback to the point that if I went on-line and filled out a form, I might win a $4,000.00 gift card. Then it told me that same information in Spanish.  Finally, it said my "satisfaction was guaranteed."  On the back was the Sears return policy.

The cash register wasn't finished, however.  It spit out an 8 3/4", 20% off men's clothing or shoes coupon.  A good 2 1/2" of this notice listed all the things this coupon could not be used for, including Levi's jeans.  Next it spit out a 9 3/8", $5.00 off Home Fashions/Goods coupon.  Finally, it regurgitated a 9 1/4" coupon for $10.00 off any oil change.  All of the coupons listed the various conditions, limitations, and dates.  The return policy was printed on the reverse side.  All together, it took Sears 3 feet, 7 3/8 inches of paper to note that I had received 1 item.

I should have just asked them for the receipts.  Becky could burn them and the fire would probably last as long as the space heater will.  Over a yard of paper for a single item.  If you feel as I do, that Sears--and the rest of the world for that matter--is turning our lives into a convoluted trail of paper, then join with me in what I think is a very clever plan.  Each coupon states that its cash value is 1/20 of a sent.  Let's save up about 20,000 of these coupons and march in to Sears with all that paper in a couple of Craftsman wheelbarrows.  That many coupons would give us $1,000.00 and that would make for a fun party.  Or give it to charity.  Heck, just watching the people at Sears deal with 20,000 coupons at one time would make me feel as if I had struck a blow for normalcy.  Who's with me?  Start saving those coupons.

Oh, by the way, this blog is void where prohibited by law and may not be reprinted or reproduced without the express written consent of Major League Baseball.  The return policy for this blog is printed on the reverse side of your computer.

National Football Loquaciousness

As I write this, it is half-time in the  game between the Ravens and the Falcons which is being broadcast on the NFL Network.  I'm surprised my ears aren't bleeding.  The team of Bob Papa, Matt Millen, and Joe Theisman have set a new standard in broadcast idiocy.  So far, they've identified Matt Ryan as Joe Flacco and Willis McGahee as Le'ron McClain.  Joe Theisman stated that it was good for the Ravens that their secondary was better because "they got cornerback Fabian Washington back," when it was reported before the game that he had been benched for poor play.  Theisman then added this gem late in the first half:  "The Falcons have been successful on these third downs all night and what the Ravens have to do is stop them."   . . . Insert your own facetious comment here.

These guys sound as if they showed up to broadcast the game about 5 minutes before it started.  In fact, it sounds as if they were hanging out in a bar before making their way to the Georgia Dome.  And they got to the bar early.

Then, too, just as we discussed Wednesday, Theisman and Millen are suffering from serious FAS.  They WILL NOT shut up.  About anything.  At all.  Why Matt Millen is even allowed to speak about football is beyond me considering what he did to the Detroit Lions when he was general manager there.

The second half is about to start, so I better get back to the television.  I don't want to miss some brilliant insight such as "The Ravens will need to outscore the Falcons in order to win this game."

Postscript:  They didn't.

Sports "Narrators"

First, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Becky!   Hope it's a great day.

I had already intended to follow up Monday's entry in which I did a "literary analysis" of baseball, with a piece on baseball's "narrators," that is the game's announcers, when word came down that ESPN was dumping Jon Miller and Joe Morgan from its Sunday night broadcast.  Baseball's current narrators are not as good as the generation past.  Miller and Morgan are examples of what I'm talking about, although I must confess that I don't listen to them that often because I refuse to watch the Yankees versus the Red Sox every other Sunday night.  Nevertheless, Miller, certainly in his final years in Baltimore, came to believe that he was the entertainment rather than the game.  The play-by-play man's job is to be entertaining while focusing the listener's attention on the real entertainment--the game.  Harry Cary, Ernie Harwell, Phil Rizzuto, Herb Carneal, Chuck Thompson, Jack Brickhouse and others understood this principle.  LIstening to those guys was like going to the game with your favorite uncle.  He pointed out things about the game that you might not have noticed, but he didn't chirp in your ear to the point that you couldn't enjoy your hotdog or the sunshine or your own thoughts.

As for Joe Morgan, he and Tim McCarver both suffer from FAS or "Football Announcer Syndrome" which is the notion that every single play is important and must be analyzed with the utmost technical seriousness. 

In literary terms, the insights that these baseball and football color analysts offer may be interesting, but the "read" is tedious.  Indeed, football itself has removed all the colorful description from its own terminology, substituting scientific-sounding euphemisms that do nothing to help the listener visualize what's going on.  I mean the first time that I heard the term "neutral zone infraction" I thought that perhaps the two Koreas were back at war. 

On the most recent Monday Night Football broadcast, Ron Jaworski commented that a Pittsburgh running back "caught the ball on the periphery with space in front of him," and for a second I thought I was listening to a description of a shuttle mission.  Of course, listening to Jaworski gush about "cover twos" and "gap integrity" and every two yard gain as if it were the greatest event since the invention of the hand pump to keep the footballs firm, is only slighly less painful than if you were to collect a sack full of alley cats, throw the sack in the dryer, and then turn it on high heat.

Color analysts should provide what the name clearly states--color.  I don't need to be assaulted by everything they know.  The best I ever heard in the TV booth was former Oriole outfielder John Lowenstein.  "Hitting the ball over the fence tends to minimize the outfielders' mobility," he once remarked.  Now that's some colorful narration!

"Brother Lo":  1980 Topps

Baseball, Football, and Literary Analysis

The death of beloved manager Sparky Anderson got me to thinking about why he was so beloved.  It's not just that he was an excellent manager and a winner; it is the fact that he was a character.  He told funny stories, he made outlandish (but not outrageous) statements, and he understood his role and played it to the hilt.  I mean,the guy went by "Sparky" for goodness sake (his given name was "George.")  Can you imagine say 30 years from now anyone except his family regarding Mike Shanahan as "beloved"?  Or a character?  Can you imagine that for any NFL coach for that matter?

That's the beauty of baseball, really.  In literary terms, it's all about character and dialogue and while the plot is important, the climax of each season's story is usually not as important as the journey we took to get there.  Even at the peak of the plot line, we remember the color surrounding the plot moreso than the results.  Some remember the guy (Scott Spezio) who hit the three-run homer in the 7th inning of game 6 that gave the Angels life and propelled them to a World's Championship in 2002, but everyone remembers that was the Rally Monkey World Series.  When the details of this year's World Series fade, the image of Aubrey Huff and his red rally thong are sure to stay with us.  (For good or bad.)

For that matter, many baseball fans are content with a beautiful or historic setting (see Wrigley Field or Rebel Park, for example) and the plot outcome, that is winning or losing, is secondary.

Modern football, on the other hand, is all about plot.  Let's face it; how many times do you watch the NFL and see a guy you thought was still on your team playing on another team and you didn't even realize that he was gone?  Football used to have its share of characters in the 50s and 60s including Alex Karras, Joe Namath, Paul Hornung, Artie Donovan, Big Daddy Lipscomb, Wahoo McDaniel Dandy Don Meredith, and others, but name one guy now who would be considered a "character" in the Sparky Anderson/Aubrey Huff mode?  And I'm not talking about "villain"; the NFL is full of those, I'm talking about character.  I can't think of any.

No one tunes in to watch Peyton Manning play quarterback.  They tune in to watch the Indy Pretenders win or lose.  Plenty of people tuned in, however, just to see Stephen Strasburg pitch without caring whether the Nationals win or lose.

Put it this way:  The "chapters" in the NFL season are entitled, "Week 1," "Week 2," etc.  Unimaginative, colorless, but appropriate.  Baseball's chapter titles include "June Swoon" and the "Dog Days."

Football fans in other cities don't root for Mike Shanahan, John Harbaugh, or Mike Tomlin, but baseball fans everywhere rooted for Sparky Anderson, even if they didn't root for the teams he managed.

Rest in peace, Sparky, and thanks for the great read.