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#136 One Woman Out

April 13, 2007 by · Leave a Comment 

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

#136                                        June 17, 1996
 ONE WOMAN OUT
 Maybe the reference to Asinof’s book on the Black Sox is not too far-fetched. The Margian Chronicles might be a movie someday (Roseanne as Marge?  Jerry Lewis as Bud?)  And wasn’t Landis’ eviction from baseball of Shoeless Joe and the others a somewhat unjust act, undertaken to restore to baseball the image of integrity and purity?  (I do not believe the Chicago Eight were all innocent, but at least one of them might have been. Landis’ iron ruling denied Buck Weaver his living. Justice is easier to dispense by the gallon, avoiding a messy fair trial which might clear an individual.)  But enough on Marge later.
 

     I can fill this and several more issues with the thoughts and papers I brought back from the Cooperstown Symposium. Three days in the village whose Shadows stretch 41 miles, to my home! I started feeling guilty, the second day — the Hall, filled with the first pilgrims of summer, reading bronze plaques with their glazed eyes — the Hall, which baseball fans dream of visiting once upon a time, — this same Hall had become simply a Hallway between me and the next session.
 

     The conference was not really affordable, but something happens when you turn fifty, and this was a birthday present to myself. (Disneyworld would not be much fun, if you kept thinking of the cost. You simply must save so many pennies that the cost never pops into mind while you’re there. I can do this.) 
 

     But the cost keeps attendance down — at ballparks, at symposiums (or symposia, if you prefer.)  So this horsehide treat was enjoyed by far too few, less than fifty by my count, with the final day attendance far lower.)  A no-frills SABR Convention costs about a third as much, and offers more. I write this here as a way of urging the Symposium sponsors to lower the costs in order to attract more and diverse folks, in the future, because as much can be learned from participants as presenters. Next year, Jackie Robinson’s anniversary may provide the theme, practically demanding black participants (in eight years, there has been just one, and it wasn’t this year.)
 

     I commuted, and was reminded again that no one just drops by Cooperstown. Even if you fly, all the airports are a long drive through Leatherstocking country away. So pilgrims must literally take the scenic route. The setting has a way of displaying the jewel. We start seeing Abners in the pastures, or old ballplayers in the cornstalks, or kids with nothing but summer on their hands. Our imaginations are teased all along the way.
 

THE PENGUIN FACTOR REVISITED  
 

     I continue to collect “Accomplice Stories” — personal accounts from fans of how their particular rooting caused a happy outcome for their team or favorite player, or how their temporary lapse (“left the TV to answer the phone” … “was at the concession stand, when suddenly….”) caused, surely, an avoidable defeat or disaster. I collect first-hand accounts, clippings from total strangers, and rumors of accomplicing. I don’t keep a count, but I’d guess we have between one and two dozen documented cases in Notes. So far.
 

     What we have not sufficiently explored, I think, is the “Collective Accomplice Factor” — when not just individual fans, but hundreds or thousands of souls pool their psychic energy and tilt the scale.
 

     I once alluded to this phenomenon by noting that I have observed, several times, “the Penguin factor” at work, in the seasons of the team I follow (for the 40th summer now), the Pittsburgh Pirates. Briefly, the Penguin factor notes that as long as the city’s hockey team is in the chase for the Stanley Cup, the Pirates seem to struggle. Once the cup is won (or the Penguins eliminated), the city’s rooting is no longer divided, and the Pirates respond with a winning streak.
 

     This season, the Penguin factor was clearly operating. The Pirates had a terrible spring, and as the Penguins played on (into the semi-finals), the Pirates plummeted to 12 games under .500, not winning a series in May until the very end. However, with the Pens ousted, the Pirates followed the 3 of 4 from Colorado with a 7-1 road trip in California.
 

     Obviously, had Mario and Jagomir gone down sooner, the Pirates would be well ahead in their division by now. As it is, they must continue to streak a while longer just to breathe the fresh air of .500.
 

     I suspect a Bulls factor may be hampering the Cubs right now, although the White Sox are not affected. I need a Chicagoan to sort this out. Can anyone provide similar cases, either of basketball/hockey weighing on spring performances, or football causing collapses down the stretch?  What percentage of fans do you suppose the Phils lose to the Eagles, for instance?  Will Texas ever get into the Series, with the Cowboy Factor at work?
 

     Too often, I think, baseball fans are myopic, and look for explanations within their own sport, when a step back provides the answers.
 

     Keep the Accomplice Stories coming, too, please!  Notes readers are very understanding, no one will laugh, we all have them, and no explanations necessary for true believers.
 

THE MARGIAN CHRONICLES  
 

    “The media has taken its best shot at Marge, and I think she’ll be out of the news for a while”             — NOTES #134
 

June 5.  Just a few days after I wrote the above, Marge Schott was back in the news — but this time, it was the doing of the very people who want Marge out of the news. On this Wednesday, she was summoned to a meeting in The City of Brotherly Love (translate: Be careful, Sister!), where she and her lawyers “made a presentation” before the Executive Council of MLB. The first reports had her facing charges of first-degree penny-pinching. Ironically, the same day, Mr Steinbrenner (a member of the Council, I believe) fired around 20 Stadium employees, including an elderly gent who was re-hired after the Yankee players took up a collection.
 

     Suddenly, maybe penny-pinching wasn’t so bad. Marge hadn’t conducted a San Diego-style fire sale, and her player payroll is right up there (6th highest?)  Five hours after the meeting, Bud Selig emerges to announce that the Council “condemns” Marge’s recent comments, but fails to specify which ones — her complaint about the old-boy network controlling baseball?  Her threat to hire a woman to pitch for the Reds?  Probably, but Selig & Co. chose to let us use our imaginations. One thing we cannot imagine is that Marge is the only owner who has made a bigoted remark.
 

     Back home, and talking on WCPO in Cincinnati, Marge said it was “a good meeting…. We have some very serious problems going on which is no news …. They’ll come out with an answer on June 12th. I explain to them what all this meant, and how I felt being put in front of a bus by the press.” 
 

June 6.  Marge’s lawyers talk with their lawyers. These are characterized as “preliminary discussions.”  The word now circulating is that Marge has been asked to give up “the day-to-day operation of the team” by June 12, or face suspension “for more than one year.”  While all but the most Enquiring-minded fans want Marge to be quiet, it looks like she is being rail-roaded, and by now we are used to rooting against Selig anyway, so Marge is becoming sympathetic, of all things. Somehow, we wish it was the Reds’ organization easing Marge out, and not MLB.  If Marge caves in, the theory goes, what franchise is safe?  This is a precedent — tomorrow, maybe Selig will be waving a photograph of Kevin McClatchey in a compromising position on Gary Hart’s yacht, and the owners will bump him off, too, as first step in their plot to move the Pirates into Angelos’ back yard.
 

June 12.  In Cooperstown, I have my car radio on for the news at six, but there is none, at least not on the channels that come in. But driving home, a talk show on KDKA-Pgh is all about Marge, with the female hostess sounding a bit depressed and a bit angry that Marge has been ousted. Most callers agree, but some do not. One somehow links defending Marge and denying the Holocaust.
 

June 13.  It’s on TV, it’s in the papers. But at the Cooperstown Symposium, few are talking about Marge’s “sacking.” (The word takes me back to the night in 1974, when Nixon fired the special prosecutor Archibald Cox — a stunning, desperate action that inspired the bumper sticker, “Impeach the Cox-Sacker.”)
 

     I find myself feeling disappointed. I was rooting for Marge to fight, and expected her to win, but maybe I’d go quietly, too, if winning would still cost me a million bucks. (Fear of litigation should not impede justice, in a perfect world. W.P. Kinsella noted that the producers of Field of Dreams decided to change J.D. Salinger’s name (which he used in his story Shoeless Joe), because a threatened libel suit, which they would have won, would have delayed the film’s opening, costing them a huge amount of money already spent on publicity. Kinsella wished they would have “had the balls” to go ahead with Salinger.)
 

June 14.  I am also disappointed in MLB, but this is nothing new. In the act of silencing Marge (for 22 years), the Executive Committee has sent out a terrible message. Ironically, Hitler was intolerant and repressive of dissenting viewpoints. Can we say that the Exec-Comm “was good at the beginning” — when they clearly distanced MLB from Marge’s dimwitted offensive looniness — but “went too far” by denying her free speech?  I think so.
 

     The politically correct celebrate Marge’s passing. I do not. I feel like asking every baseball fan who protests, to somehow let MLB know that this act is not “in the best interests of baseball” or democracy, even though it seems to be. I want to see armbands supporting Marge’s Mouth worn at the All Star Game. I want to see the independent media rise up and stay up until Selig and Company admit their mistake.
 

     Even if this was best for everyone, including Marge and the Reds’ organization, couldn’t it have been handled better?  If stepping down was the right thing to do, wouldn’t it be right 22 years from now, or does “the right thing” vary as time goes by?  Because in 22 years, Marge will be back, and there is no reason at all to think that her ideas will be any different then. And we all know that she will be quizzed on World War II again.
 

     I am discouraged, reading AP writer Jim Litke on the Marge-Sacking. He gloats over the silence that Marge has become, and pokes at “anyone who would make her a martyr” to political correctness, because she “is not actually suffering” and “will face no hardships.”  Excuse me?  Being forever linked with Adolph Hitler is pleasurable fun?  How much is Selig paying Litke for this spin-doctoring job?
 

     Litke applauds the owners for showing “spine, resolve and a deft touch.”  Pardon me for not clapping along. I thought one of the lessons of WW II was that tolerance of repression, refusing to rescue the defenseless, is very costly, in the long run. I make a mental note to look up the poem The Hangman.
 

NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS SYMPOSIUM OF COOPERSTOWN
 

W.P. Kinsella & Me  
 

     I hate it when a keynote speaker opens with “I’m not a speaker.”  Often they go on to prove just that. Mr Kinsella opened that way, then gave proving it his best shot.
 

     Now I’m not a speaker, either, so I have some sympathy for any writer put on that spot. Kinsella wound up mostly reading excerpts from the small library that his works now comprise, and while all these tidbits were interesting, they were not exactly new. After all, we could have read them, and while it is often enjoyable to hear an author read his own stuff (esp. poetry), Kinsella is not an actor, either. (I was invited just once in my life to be a keynote speaker, at a convention of Pennsylvania’s Catholic school teachers. I declined, having no small library from which to read — at the time, I had published exactly one article, the one which rated the invitation, but I had nothing else to say on that topic. I recommended a friend, who had much more to say, and he did fine. He was a speaker.)
 

     Of course I’m jealous of W.P. Kinsella, because he can write full time, and I can’t. He has about forty projects going all the time, all fiction, but not all baseball (nobody’s perfect.)  He prefers to make up his facts, and dislikes research. If he’s not careful, he could wind up being MLB’s Commish.
 

     THe first, and, for a long time, the only Kinsella fiction that I read was in Spitball — or more precisely, in a little paperback, The Best of Spitball, which also contained a fine interview with W.P. conducted by Mike Shannon, which shed much more light on the path of his story Shoeless Joe to the film Field of Dreams, than Kinsella did in his talk.
 

     I still haven’t read Shoeless Joe, but it’s now in my mental On Deck circle, so someday I’ll get to it. I once waded (no pun intended) through The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, rooting for it to end. When I finally got to the ending, 2,614 innings later, I didn’t like it. I’ve had Box Socials next to my bed for about two years, and I think I’m maybe 30 pages into it. I keep trying to get hooked. So far, it has eluded me, or maybe vice-versa.
 

     W.P. Kinsella’s best field of dreams is his marvelous imagination. The excerpts he read came across fine, despite his delivery and his stiff, repetitious gestures. In the Q & A that followed, W.P. was at ease, polite, humorous, ironic, droll, and thoughtful. He very much likes the screenplay and film that were carved from his book, even though he had no input himself.
 

     I had a copy of my own short fiction Field of Crackerjack (Notes #56) along, and offered it to W.P. Kinsella. Apparently I am the first to suggest to him a sequel, or at least a version of what might happen when it comes time to sell the fabled farm.
 

     My two pages were politely accepted, scanned, then tucked away. W.P. Kinsella is not exactly a warm, engaging personality. He describes his own family (he’s an only child, and grew up without having other kids in his neighborhood), as extremely uninteresting. He could be right.
 

     My impression is that W.P. Kinsella lives, most of the time, in an intellectual cornfield, a space from which he pokes out from time to time to mix with real people, only to disappear in there again — to work on those forty projects. His publisher does only one book a year, and W.P. is presently covered through the year 2003. Calling W.P. Kinsella prolific is like calling Cobb a decent hitter.
 

     Kinsella has given baseball many wonderful images, and I hope that he continues to do so. This is no small contribution, because baseball can easily love its traditions to excess, and the game at its top has treated its innovators, its imaginative people, roughly.  I wish Kinsella well.
 

If You Imagine It, Someone Will Try to Build It  
      Kinsella’s throwing out the first bull ball was followed almost immediately by a second general session, “Architecture 507: A Ballfield for Big Inning, Iowa.”  No one polled the group on how many had read The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, but those who hadn’t should have skipped this one. There was a lively discussion of the new ballparks: Camden Yards now has shrine-status, even though you can’t get in, and one Oriole fan thought that the team has played a more laid-back game since they left old Memorial. Maybe our Milestones and Memories friend Jim Fredlund could comment on that. On the other hand, a Cleveland fan was certain that the Indians’ resurgence was due, more than anything else, to the move to Jacobs.
 

     I am fond of saying that living here in the Shadows of Cooperstown is great — if you have a job. I think praise for the new stadiums ought to be similarly qualified — they are terrific — if you have a ticket. The only way to get into Jacobs this summer is to catch an Albert Belle HR, then strike a bargain. There is something less than attractive about parks where fans must deal with scalpers, isn’t there?
 

     Anyway, apart from the discussion of real ballparks, this session was harder wading than Kinsella’s novel. The nine students who took this U. of Miami class (three were present) obviously had a lot of fun, sketching out Big Inning and then creating blueprints and models. I asked if they estimated the costs of their parks. None of them had a budget. This ought to worry the taxpayers of Big Inning, and of Iowa. (Maybe some of the profits from that field in Dyersville (Notes #33) could be diverted their way.)  Anyway, this session would have been better as an option for a small group. Architecture lacks the damn near universal appeal of baseball.
 

An Evening With Mr Rickey  
 

     The first day of this Eighth Annual Symposium, Baseball and American Culture concluded after dinner with the second-ever performance of an original one-man play by Jerry G. Holt of Shawnee State U., Rickey.  The first performance was in Branch’s Ohio hometown.  I regret that the actor’s name did not make the program; I will track it down and credit him later, because he certainly deserves it. He was excellent.
 

     Branch Rickey contained nothing new to me, and the portrayal (for about 90 minutes, in two acts) was a bit kinder to the old skinflint than would be a version by, for instance, Ralph Kiner. But Rickey’s story is too little known by Americans today, and it is worth telling over to future generations. It would have been nice if we had been able to ask questions of Mr Rickey, or his author. I still recommend this performance for next year’s SABR Convention.
 

A Boy and His Dog Camera  
 

     George Brace was 16 when he started taking pictures at Wrigley Field. That was in 1929. He didn’t stop taking pictures until a few years ago, when he lost the vision in one eye. As a photographer for the Cubs and White Sox and Bears (oh, my!), George parked his camera on the field (roughly where the coach’s box is), until the leagues stopped that practice, about 1938.
 

     So George was in perfect position when Babe Ruth came to bat at Wrigley in the 1932 Series, jawing at the Cub bench, wagging his fingers, and reminding them he had just two strikes on him. George Brace’s memory is still sharp. No called shot. I later found a fellow who was pretty sure that Ruth was saying something else that day. This fan happens to be the director at Baltimore’s Babe Ruth Museum, where a recent poll indicated 98% of the fans think Ruth called it.
 

     George took thousands of photos every summer, on his way to the parks, hours before the game (the best ones are those of players relaxing, unposed), and in the heat of battle. He also carefully catalogued his collection, and always made copies for the players and coaches he shot. George took pictures of the Wrigley Bleachers being built, and tested (with piles of sandbags.) He took pictures of the ivy being planted. And he took pictures of almost everyone who ever played ball in Chicago!
 

     George Brace traveled to Cooperstown with a modest slide show, the tiny tip of his celluloid iceberg, with Richard Cahan and Mark Jacobs of the Chicago Sun-Times, who recently edited a book with George. They noted that George did not get paid to take many of his photographs, he did it out of love for his hobby and of sports. George Brace received a long ovation in Cooperstown on the morning of June 13, and I hope he is forced to receive another one there, and soon, when the Hall recognizes better the men who literally filled the pages of baseball’s family album.
 

Jackie Robinson: Who’s On Deck?  
 

     Doug Battema’s master’s thesis is still fresh from the U. of Wisconsin-Madison. In it, young Doug suggests that Jackie Robinson has been “mythologized” for Americans in at least three distinct and different ways, over the years since he accepted Rickey’s challenge to break baseball’s color line. With a flood of Jackie Robinson images due in 1997, for the 50th anniversary, this study seemed especially timely. Which Jackie Robinson will we see emerge from the on deck circle?
 

     Will it be the idealized, All-American Jackie of the 1940’s and 1950’s: family man, veteran, middle-class, Christian, (anti-Communist), hard-working, clean-playing Jackie, who succeeds on merit, peacefully integrating capitalist America?
 

     Or will Jackie be eclipsed in his golden year, as he was in the 1960’s and 70’s by the Civil Rights movement (his 25th anniversary went fairly unnoticed, apart from his throwing out a World Series first ball)?  Will an angrier America dismiss his Horatio Alger experience?
 

     Or will Jackie emerge and be embraced by Americans longing for a return to the fifties’ family values and peaceful progress. Will his court-martial trial be re-enacted in 1997 to prove that the system works if we just stand up for our rights, assert ourselves, refuse to go to the back of the bus, and reject the harassment?  Will we be asked to remember Jackie as an achiever of the American Dream, who yet pointed out flaws in the system, who in the end distanced himself from the flag?
 

     The O.J. Simpson and Rodney King events showed how shaky race relations in the nineties are. We want to believe America is kinder and gentler than the America that verbally abused Jackie, and scarred his legs.
 

     Spike Lee’s film on Jackie has been abandoned, I understand. Maybe because Spike’s recent films failed, maybe because funding for Spike’s viewpoint is drying up. I read that Spike is now pursuing Albert Belle as a subject. Interesting choice. The media has stirred up some fans so much that they are now treating Albert — like Jackie was treated in 1947.
 

     Jackie Robinson is dead. Jackie Robinson has become a word, a symbol, for what we want race relations to become. Something to keep in mind, as we read, hear and speak the word ourselves.
 

I Can Go On, But …  
 

     I’ll save the rest for next time. The other sessions I participated in: Social, Racial & Gender Bias in Baseball Fiction (1860-1920); Yellow Journalism & Fandom; The Church of Baseball; Baseball Stories & Culture; Baseball & the Cinema (a panel); and two on The Strike of ’94-95 and Labor Relations. (For a list of the sessions I passed up, see Notes #130.) 
 

     Long ago I concluded that workshops and conferences often succeed not because of the strength of the programs, but because of the quality of the conversation (before and after the sessions, and at the meals) — and, of course, the food. The food was excellent, and it is nice to have another restaurant to recommend to Cooperstown pilgrims (besides T.J.’s Place) — The 1819 House, three miles south on Rt 28, did the catering.
 

     They also permitted use of their spacious, but gopher-hole ridden back field, for a rousing game of Town Ball, for which we adapted the 1858 Massachusetts rules. I went one for three (a frozen rope into left), scored a run, and was flawless in right field, handling my only chance: I fielded an overthrow and promptly “soaked” the runner heading for second stake, ending the game with our side up by about 15 tallies. There is nothing quite like learning by doing, and I think I could get to like this Town Ball, which is both genteel (men & women of any ages can play), and brisk — any out ends the inning. The ball is soft, so you don’t feel too bad plugging the runners. Town Ball is played regularly in Cooperstown (Wednesdays & Sundays, I think.)
 

EXTRA INNINGS  
 

     June is some month. Weddings, the College World Series (I caught a few games, but missed the mazeroskian climax), graduations, Little League playoffs (probably more next time from The Road to Williamsport), and another Opening Day on deck, June 18, for the Utica Blue Sox. The Pirates’ climb out of the depths is also pleasantly distracting these days.
 

     Unmentioned in my earlier notes from Cooperstown: I spent some time roaming the Hall, mostly before the first session began. I estimated that about fifty of the bronze faces in the gallery were familiar to me, from “my era” of rooting. How brief are baseball careers, even the best ones. The constant really does seem to be, more and more, the fan.
 

     I finally got to the “Baseball Enlists” exhibit, a temporary display of baseball memorabilia and clippings relating to World War II. It was fun reading the actual “green light letter” Roosevelt send to Landis.
 

     Uh, oh. One of the display cases held items brought back by players from their duty Over There. I suggest Murry Dickson’s family reclaim, and quickly, before Selig sees them on HOF Weekend, the armband and dagger he brought back — both decorated with swastikas. Marge kept hers hidden in a bedroom drawer; Murry’s go on display at the Hall. Go figure.

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