This Bud’s for You

Posted on April 23, 2011 by rightoffthebatbook

The Los Angeles Dodgers's Ashes (Photo by David Shankbone)

Bud Selig and Major League Baseball are taking over operation of the Los Angeles Dodgers. It’s a story told by ESPN in about as much detail as one could want. Frank McCourt and his wife Jamie, partners in life (until now) and the team, are going slightly crazy. He even fired her! (Talk about Angela’s Ashes! OK, so her name isn’t “Angela.” But we are talking Los Angeles.) Of course, the Texas Rangers were taken over in 2010 by MLB, and perhaps it catapulted them to their first World Series. (They were once upon a time part-owned by the previous U.S. President.) Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing for the Dodgers, literally for decades the premier franchise, top to bottom, in MLB. The best minor-league system. The highest attendance. The cleanest, most beautiful stadium. None of these takeovers bodes well for baseball. Are the Mets next? How peachy: one Pennant-winner and the two biggest-market franchises all run by Bud Selig.

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I Sit in One of the Dives on 52nd Street Rooting for My Team

Posted on April 19, 2011 by rightoffthebatbook

Mister Met Mister Optimism

Even at this joyous time of year, I (Evander) cannot help remembering the terrible-Yankees years: the tsunami of 1965 (25 games out of first place); 1966 (26.5 games out and in the cellar! just below the Red Sox); 1967 (20 games out, at least in ninth place rather than last: but the Red Sox would see themselves catapulted to the World Series); 1968 (a return to respectability. a mere 20 games out again, but leading what used to be called The Second Division with a .512 “winning” percentage); 1969 (don’t even want to think about the 28-and-a-half games out of the newly carved Eastern Division lead, Bobby Cox at third base, Mickey Mantle gone, and, oh yes, New York anointed its Miracle Mets).

A fun and informative book on the subject, by Philip Bashe, is Dog Days: The New York Yankees’ Fall from Grace and Return to Glory, 1964–1976 (copyright 1994, 2017).

So much for the Yankees during the height of The Counterculture. (Anybody heard of Woodstock? That was a nation even before there was a Red Sox Nation.)

Of course, all of you born after the Mets’s Last Hurrah in 1986 only know The Successful New York Team. I remember the earlier times. Mike Burke. Horace Clarke. The aforementioned Bobby Cox. I had come to the conclusion 2011 would be my 1965 all over again, and the Mets might begin to be fun again. Then, the Mets started losing something like seven in a row. Their Wagnerian-sized hurler, Chris Young, is on the shelf. Who knows when we see Jason Bay? though “they” say “soon.” So, to all the New York fans in fear we are returning to those other, older, the-glass-is-always-half-empty times, keep in mind these words, at this most optimistic time of year, from W. H. Auden:

May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

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Baseball Historian Weighs in on Barry Bonds

Posted on April 18, 2011 by rightoffthebatbook

What might be next for The Home Run King?

“We live in a time when we think everything can be cured by a medication. If you want to talk about a performance-enhancing culture, let’s look at Viagra, let’s look at Levitro…all of these things that are advertised on daytime TV.

“This is the time that we live in. We believe that modern medicine can make us Superman.

“If our favorite ballplayers have succumbed to societal pressures to improve themselves, they are no worse than we are.”

John Thorn, Historian, in The Tenth Inning, a PBS production by Ken Burns

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The Bryan Stow Incident in Los Angeles

Posted on April 16, 2011 by rightoffthebatbook

The story of fan Bryan Stow, badly beaten at a Los Angeles Dodgers game for displaying his preference for “the wrong team,” gives all so-called fans a bloody eye. We at Right Off the Bat condemn violence, in any form, at all baseball stadiums.

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The “I Can’t Believe It” Department

Posted on April 16, 2011 by rightoffthebatbook

They do not make them like this anymore

A writer friend points out that Carl Crawford has made more in salary with the Boston Red Sox, thro a mere 12 games in 2011, than Ted Williams pulled down over an entire career. Cricket followers: Ted Williams may be the greatest batsman among the 17,000 who have ever played in Major League Baseball. He appeared in 2,292 regular-season games. Certainly not to question Crawford, in any way, against this: Williams was a patriot. His career was disrupted twice, by service in World War II and Korea. I wonder how much Carl Crawford will make in the unlikely event his Red Sox career spans another 2,280 games.

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A Word about Jim Thorpe

Posted on April 16, 2011 by rightoffthebatbook

Remembering Jim Thorpe

One of the greatest Americans played Major League Baseball for the New York Giants, the Cincinnati Reds, and (ironically) for the Boston Braves. I’m speaking of Jim Thorpe. Of mixed race (as are today’s Jacoby Ellsbury of the Boston Red Sox and Joba Chamberlain of the New York Yankees), he was stripped of his Olympics medals for the crime of playing semi-pro ball. Thorpe’s life was harsh. He excelled in all sports. As we think of Jackie Robinson, let us also reflect on what the life struggles of Jacobus Franciscus (James Francis) Thorpe say about our common humanity.

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Honoring Jackie Robinson

Posted on April 15, 2011 by rightoffthebatbook

Today is Jackie Robinson Day. Every player in Major League Baseball wears his number, 42, which has been retired from all of baseball. (Only one ballplayer still puts on the number every day: Mariano Rivera.) It’s a day to reflect on Robinson’s legacy. His importance cannot be overstated. From the sports world to “the real world,” everyone knows this. President Obama knows this. Hank Aaron knows this. It is unfortunate that the Mets new Citi Field had to be saddled with its corporate moniker. Jackie Robinson Field sounds so much better. Almost exactly 150 years after the first shots of The War Between the States, which changed everything for this country, and 64 years from the time you put on the uniform of the Brooklyn Dodgers to grace major-league ball fields, making them into real fields of dreams for everyone, you did us proud: the best America has to offer. We honor you, Jack Roosevelt Robinson.

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William DeKova White

Posted on April 14, 2011 by rightoffthebatbook

I (Evander) can hardly wait to read Uppity by Bill White. Easy prediction: Baseball fans will love it.

White played for three teams, all National League: the Giants (both in New York and San Francisco, which undoubtedly has something to do with Willie Mays’s contribution of the foreword), the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Phillies.

White always spoke out: as a player against “separate but equal” conditions during Florida spring training and, before that, through the Deep South as well as portions of the Midwest in the minor leagues (I especially can’t wait to find out what it was like playing in race-conflicted St. Louis, where one of my best and oldest friends, Rafia Zafar, heads the black-studies department at Washington University); as a Yankees broadcaster reporting on field and behind-the-scenes activities; as a League President.

The New York Yankees had their own version of White in Joe Pepitone, who squandered his talent. Two more different personalities one could not imagine. White has my vote for Cooperstown.

One possibly apocryphal story (we’ll see what the book says about it) has White taking over his inaugural broadcast from Whitey Ford, with these first on-air words during racially charged times: Thank you, Whitey!

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How Stimulating!

Posted on April 14, 2011 by rightoffthebatbook

Are you an aging bat-and-ball player, who wants to prolong his career but doesn’t want to get caught up in potential problems with performance-enhancing drugs (see below)? Then, the Indian Premier League (IPL) is for you. It only occurs once a year; each game lasts only three hours; you have about 15 games to push your old and broken body through; and you make pots of dough. For Australians Shane Warne (aged 41) and Adam Gilchrist (39), among others, the IPL has become a highly lucrative coda to stellar international careers—and they actually look as though they’re having fun. For Shaun Tait, who’s only 28 and thus hardly ready for the glue factory, but whose career as a fast bowler for Australia has been checkered by injury, the IPL offers a chance to make money without putting his body through any more mauling than absolutely necessary. As a result, the IPL is a curious mixture of up-and-coming Indian cricketers wishing to make a splash and perhaps go on to greater glories with the national team and old-timers wanting to keep their oar in (and make some cash) before they finally go out to pasture. Perhaps baseball could follow suit?

By the way, you can now watch all IPL games on India Times’ YouTube site. Check it out bat-and-ball fans.

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Barry Bonds You Must Be Kidding (Yourself)

Posted on April 14, 2011 by rightoffthebatbook

Bonds on Bonds

Barry Bonds has had his day in court. He and his Dream Team (and I don’t mean the San Francisco Giants) will no doubt appeal the single verdict, obstruction of justice, which did not go their way. I had a neighbor who babysat Bonds when his father, the late Bobby, a somewhat under-appreciated-fish-out-of-water ballplayer when he was with the New York Yankees, lived nearby. My neighbor said Barry was a spoiled brat from the beginning. Such is not unusual among world-class athletes, particularly ballplayers with Bonds’s pedigree, and the pressures they face are as enormous as their egos. It isn’t easy. But the abuse of steroids and HGH within the Major League Baseball community is insidious. Somehow, does it all seem a little ironic for l’affaire Bonds to be coming to a head 150 years, pretty much to the hour, after the outbreak of the Civil War? Could anything be more damaging to the House Divided that is Major League Baseball? Where are you exactly, Commissioner Bud Selig?

 

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