Fidel Castro, once a pitching prospect, still in the baseball news via Ozzie Guillen.
Speaking (tangentially, needless to say) of all the above subjects, you literary types might be interested in this entrevista cubana del Ernest Hemingway, and his intimate connection to the neighboring island-nation.
Can this man manage a Grapefruit League camp for baseball prospects? You bet! All's possible in Hollywood.
It wound up the first Opening Day meltdown for Mariano Rivera that I (Evander) can recall since 1997, when MR was first given the job of closer and promptly gave something in return: a pitch turned around to a mammoth home run, at the former Yankee Stadium, by Mark McGwire. (I was there. It remains the longest home run I’ve ever seen in person: rocketing about 420 feet.)
Back to yesterday. Manager Joe Girardi pulled an astonishing stunt of brinksmanship that I had never seen on TV or at the ballpark—which may save saved the 2001 World Series in Arizona had he been managing then—by pulling Nick Swisher from left field and inserting an extra infielder. In essence, the Yankees had seven infielders (including the battery). Girardi also ordered the walking of two batters once the score was tied—to load the bases for a potential double-play to end the regulation nine innings in a tie—another move of confidence that did not pan out. (Cricket enthusiasts will not be so surprised, with the more fluid field positioning of that game.)
In a recent podcast, I predict Tampa Bay for first place and the Yankees for one of two Wild Cards in 2012. It is unlikely the Rays will go 162-0 or the Yankees 0-162. I’d have a better chance buying the winning Mega Millions ticket.
To calm my nerves on this holy evening, I settled in to watch Big Leaguer (1953). It stars Edward G. Robinson (to keep to the holiday season, the Yiddish-theater-trained actor who played Dathan in The Ten Commandments) as the manager of a New York (before the move to San Francisco) Giants spring-training tryout camp in Florida. In Right Off the Bat, Martin and I survey some of the outstanding baseball and cricket films. Not to make too many excuses (cough cough), it is tough (of course!) to include everything in those few pages allotted. We leave “out” Eight Men Out from John Sayles, and others possibly even more worthy in our readers’ eyes.
The E. G. Robinson picture includes every baseball nugget imaginable: actors meant to be eighteen but looking to be closer to thirty-five, as well as the Old Pro Stuffed Shirt (Robinson) no longer wanted by management in those early rock-and-roll, cold war days before age-discrimination legislation—though he is still much loved and needed by his baseball-groupie niece.
It all turns out OK. The son of a stern-European-hates-baseball type winds up a top prospect under minor-league contract, with a proud-as-punch dad; the son of a gloating father (I think a former ballplayer himself) doesn’t make it, as his father sadly but in sportsmanlike fashion agrees; and the cocky pitcher cut by Robinson (whom EGR believes at the time might be “the one that got away”) catches a break with the rival Brooklyn Dodgers. Girl (groupie, more-or-less Anne Francis-like dancer and period-actress Vera-Ellen) also gets boy. Carl Hubbell has a significant role as does the lesser-recognized Al Campanis.
Mister Met approaches 50! Mets Golden Anniversary conference is at Hofstra University this month.
“Aaron methodically went about his business on the ball field. He turned the other cheek. But the bitterness remained.” (from Right off the Bat) (Photo by Louis Requena/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
The Hollywood Reporter announces a film on Hank Aaron. It will be made by the director of The Natural. As he approached and surpassed Babe Ruth’s sacrosanct lifetime home-run record, Aaron—who was playing in Atlanta at the time—was subject to racist abuse (in the early 1970s) as flagrant as any even Jackie Robinson experienced.
Amid the endless rounds of bi- and tri-lateral tournaments that dominate the cricket calendar, there are really only two honors that the major cricket-playing nations covet. One is to win the quadrennial World Cup, which uses the one-day (50-over) form of the game and is a knockout competition. The other is to be the best Test team in the world—a position that requires excellence over a certain length of time, and right now appears to be cursed.
From the 1970s to the late 2000s, it was pretty obvious which countries were the best Test teams: Australia (1975–1979), West Indies (1980–1995), and Australia again (1996–2009). True, these teams may have lost the occasional series; but, rankings aside, they consistently produced winning results and overwhelmed their opponents with what we might call “total cricket.” They were simply much, much better than everyone else.
In the last couple of years, however, the cricketing order has been overturned. The West Indies went into a steep decline in the late 1990s; the once-in-a-generation talent that propelled Australia to the top retired. Into the breach stepped India, winning the 2011 World Cup and beating their opponents often enough to take the Test number one slot. It seemed that India could do no wrong; it turned out that they could do no right. The side promptly lost virtually every game they played, which as of January 2012, allowed England to vault into their spot at the top.
England have now lost four Test matches in a row, the most recent of which was to Sri Lanka. To lose one or two games may be considered a misfortune, but four in a row looks like complacency, and England are now almost certain to lose their number-one ranking to a steadily resurgent South Africa. Given what happens to a side when it reaches number one these days, the Proteas may not be relishing the prospect.
It all connects....
According to the Boston Globe, pitcher Ben Henderson may be the first individual to have used the word jazz. An April 2, 1912, headline says so. Different dictionaries, such as Webster’s Third and The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, furnish alternate etymologies: TCOED places the first use in 1909; Webster’s has its own funky (and wagnalls) origins and meanings.
In Right Off the Bat, Martin and I recount something of the historic relationship between baseball and race. (We touch on music and baseball, but only to the degree that the sport inspired a couple of memorable songs, mainly about legendary players.) The story is well known; and not writing a history but more of an appreciation, there was no attempt to belabor it.
If the Civil War marked a sea-change (a term from The Tempest) in race relations within American society, the struggle continued in baseball till Jackie Robinson took a big-league field, and still (sadly, in baseball as in life) continues. As the United States healed and grew, baseball became the National Pastime. There are complex, prismatic reasons for this, but whatever each of them may be, such is a truism.
Henderson was white, using a term that was not generally part of “a white vocabulary” one-hundred years ago. Of course since then, Africa and African-Americans have much to do with the music (and dance and literature and film and the general culture) enjoyed by a good portion of the world, of which jazz is a kind of cynosure or essence.
On this centennial (in a couple of days) of the use of the word jazz, as well as the recent one-hundredth anniversary (November 13, 2011) of the birth of legendary Buck O’Neil, I present the list of greatest Negro Leagues players as compiled in a recent issue of the Sporting News. Catcher: Josh Gibson (who may or may not be the only player to have hit a fair ball clear out of the old Yankee Stadium, during an exhibition). First Base: Buck Leonard. Second Base: Newt Allen. Third Base: Ray Dandridge. Shortstop: Willie Wells. Outfielder: Turkey Stearnes. Outfielder: Oscar Charleston. Outfielder: James “Cool Papa” Bell. Right-handed Pitcher: Satchel Paige. Left-handed Pitcher: Willie Foster. Manager: C.I. Taylor. The collective active dates are fifty, from 1904 (C. I Taylor) to 1954 (Willie Wells’s last season). Paige is the only one to have a career in Major League Baseball in addition to his playing days in the Negro Leagues.
It is amazing that a century removed from the Negro Leagues, and fewer than two by half from the Civil War, Magic Johnson is the face of a group purchasing the Los Angeles Dodgers for a record sum: the same franchise for whom Jackie Robinson, who changed everything, played.
With his six-wicket haul in the third Test match against New Zealand, South African bowler Vernon Philander has taken over fifty wickets in only seven Test matches: the quickest to that feat since—wait for it!—1893. Unlike his bowling partners in the formidable South African unit—Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, and Marchant de Lange—Philander isn’t express pace and doesn’t get steepling bounce. He’s simply extremely accurate and can move the ball both ways in the air and off the pitch.
It’s unlikely that Philander will be able to maintain this extraordinary run of wicket-taking, since batsmen will eventually figure out how to play him. Nonetheless, his mountainous accomplishment will take some climbing. What’s amazing is that he’s thriving in a unit that features the best fast-bowler in the world (Dale Steyn) and he bowls in situations where he might be expected to take one or two wickets, but not five or six, each innings. If South Africa win this Test match, they will replace England as the best Test team in the world. England (currently in Sri Lanka) will play South Africa at home this summer, in a contest that will be mouthwatering—not least because the English conditions will suit Philander. Lots to look forward to. Here’s Philander in action against Australia:
Incorruptible
We at Right Off the Bat have already turned our magisterial attentions to cricketers-turned-politicians here, but it’s worth dwelling on the phenomenon that is Imran Khan. Simply put, Khan was probably the greatest all-rounder of his generation. (His heyday was the 1980s.) Like Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, Khan was a playboy in his youth—a handsome man-about-town who eventually turned his attention to his native land, where he was lionized as the man who led Pakistan to World Cup triumph in 1992.
Like King Henry V, Khan has now assumed a sterner, more conservative demeanor. He’s vocal in his opposition to the American drone attacks (not a particularly controversial position in Pakistan) and against corruption (popular but difficult to achieve). In a land where the Bhuttos and the Sharifs have carved out so much power (when the army lets them, that is) Khan represents a refreshing change, and he’s riding a wave of support at the moment.
Khan is an interesting figure: at once familiar and disconcerting. Although as Anglophone, smooth, and cosmopolitan as presidents Zardawi and Musharraf, should Khan come to power he would represent a sterner test to American diplomacy than these two. He seems his own man, with the sort of regal self-possession that only a man with a last name like his could carry off. He also represents a challenge to Western perceptions of Pakistan. His first wife, Jemima Goldsmith (they had two sons together), was not only a foreigner (English) but a scion of one of England’s most prominent Jewish families, which has left Khan open to accusations of being a Jewish agent (ones we won’t dignify with a link). The divorce was amicable, and Jemima still comes to Pakistan. If Khan became president it would offer the chance for Pakistan to be at once more assertive of its interests independent of American military aid and one more welcoming of developmental and regional assistance. As on the cricket field, Imran Khan is one to watch.
As the more discerning of our readers will know, the 2012 World Twenty20 cricket championship is due to take place in September in Sri Lanka. In addition to ten places allotted to the top teams (Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies, and Zimbabwe), two berths are reserved in the finals for the second-tier squads. These countries are competing for those slots at the moment in Dubai. The sound money is on Ireland—the popular favorites from the 2010 finals and unlucky not to take Zimbabwe’s place when the International Cricket Council decided who’d automatically be in the competition—and those dark horses Afghanistan, who qualified last time to general astonishment and delight.
But spare a thought, you baseball lovers, for the U.S. cricket team, which was in a tough group with Ireland, Kenya, Namibia, and the underestimated Scotland. The U.S. just conquered the Scots, but couldn’t get past the Irish, and ended up with two wins and five losses. This means they’ll have to wait another couple of years for a taste of glory. Nonetheless, given the apparent drama that the U.S. team had to deal with off the field, it’s a miracle they even showed up at all.
Heavens above! He's finally done it.
It wasn’t exactly a crunch game; nor was the opposition (Bangladesh) the fiercest; nor was the location (Mirpur) a locus classicus for cricket lovers. But no one will remember the place or opposition—or even the fact that India still managed to lose the match. The records will show that on March 16, 2012, Sachin Tendulkar scored his 49th one-day international century to add to the 51 tons he’d notched up in Test cricket to become the only man ever to score one hundred international hundreds. It’s a feat unlikely ever to be repeated, simply because of the years and dedication it would require.
Consider: Tendulkar played his first international game on November 15, 1989. East Germany still existed, something was brewing in Czechoslovakia, and Bad English’s When I See You Smile was number one on the U.S. pop charts. These configurations all broke up with different degrees of acrimony, but Sachin went on and on and on. Twenty-two years and change—and more specifically 462 one-day internationals, 188 Test matches, and an overwhelming 33,896 runs—later, he’s finally made it.
Now that he’s reached the milestone, what remains? He’s scored 2,000 more Test runs than his nearest playing competitor (Ricky Ponting, surely nearing the end of his career); he’s an unassailable 7000 runs ahead of his closest one-day international competitor (Jacques Kallis, also getting long in the tooth). More appositely, Ponting and Kallis have only 71 and 59 international centuries respectively. No one else comes close. Even his long-cherished goal of helping India win the World Cup came to pass last year.
What possible hunger could keep him coming to the crease again and again? Ah, answering that question is to get to the heart of the Tendulkar mystery: how someone could continue putting his body through all that pain and effort after nigh on twenty-three years. It’s unbelievable; like the man himself.
Right Off the Bat 