Notes #325

NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN

Observations from Outside the Lines

By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@borg.com)

#325 MARCH 21, 2004

SPRING

Never mind the snow on the ground and in the air. It’s spring. Never mind the winter jackets and boots by the door. It’s spring. Never mind the heavy quilt on the bed, the storm windows still down, the sweaters worn to work. It’s spring. That’s all a baseball fan needs to know.

Spring means it ain’t long now till Opening Day, when time stops (Boswell had it wrong — see Notes #211). This time around, I don’t have a lot of new rumninations on spring training, but I dusted off some that I found in the archives, which are just four years old, and I thought they were fun to re-read. They are last in this issue.

For those of you who are new to Notes, having joined, say, in the last four years, I’ve re-posted in the Archive two early issues from the Spring of 1999 (#184-185), which were accidentally deleted a little while back. There’s another ST issue in the Archives worth a look, too — #230.

The main piece here is a review of A Woman’s Work by Dorothy Jane Mills, and some afterthoughts. I know some fans warm up for the new season by reading, so a book review fits right in.

I also want to recommend, without really reviewing it, a book I’ve had for a while now that fits the definition “coffee table book” because of its size, and the way it is put together: you can pick it up most any time — while drinking a cup of coffee, perhaps — and browse through it, then let it go a while and return later. This book is Kyle McNary’s BLACK BASEBALL: A History of African Americans & the National Game (Sterling Publishing Company, 2004.)

I confess a certain skepticism about a single-author book on such a sweeping subject, even though I enjoyed McNary’s biography on Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe. And the gloosy cover featuring Barry Bonds (and not Satchel or Josh or Turkey or Mule) made me apprehensive, too. But the book is really a nice primer on the subject it claims to treat. The bibliography (sources) is thin, but I think the book can whet appetites, and that’s something.

Just because there is no mention of the Fix of 1919 in this ussue does not mean my research is over and my book ready to go. Not at all. It does signal, however — a spring break.

 

 

IT AIN’T BRAGGIN’ IF YOU CAN DO IT

That old Dizzy Dean saying came to mind as I finished reading A Woman’s Work: Writing Baseball History with Harold Seymour, by Dorothy Jane Mills (McFarland, 2004). It’s a brisk and remarkable read; usually when I enjoy a book I recommend it, but after this one, I find myself wanting to recommend the small library that Dorothy Mills has brought into the world herself, along with those volumes that bear the name of her late husband.

Another saying came to mind, too: Give credit where credit is due. That seems like an easy maxim to follow, but in my experience, it can be harder than hell to pull off. Many of the pages of A Woman’s Work are tinged with mixed emotions, as Dorothy describes her role in the researching, editing and writing of what went down in history (almost) as the Harold Seymour Baseball History Trilogy. Dorothy makes it clear that she deserved more credit all along the way, and her claiming it decisively in recent years seems only fitting.

I should state up front that I received a review copy, which happily was not a factor in my evaluation of the book. That I met Dorothy Mills nearly six years ago, and have kept in touch, was.

Back in May 1999, I attended the Seymour Conference in Cleveland, Ohio (you can look it up, in Notes #189). I knew Bruce Markusen, that year’s Seymour Medalist, but I did not attend only to celebrate with Bruce. I had not been to Cleveland for 22 years, having lived and taught high school in that city between 1968-1974. I remember the weekend as much for reunions with old friends as for the conference. I wound up on a panel with Mike Shannon and perhaps others, at the tail end of the event, and just as it was over, I ran into Dorothy Mills.

In A Woman’s Work, Dorothy states her unequivocal preference for writing historical fiction, versus history.

More than that, I like to write in other forms: essays, recipes, news releases, humorous articles, poetry, scholarly writing, travel pieces, letters, children’s stories, editorial reports … whatever seems required in order to express the idea or purpose I have in mind.

I had been writing baseball just ten years (Dorothy had a four-decade head start on me), but she seemed, in our brief encounter, a kind of kindred spirit. She convinced me in a few minutes to take a serious look at publishing via the internet.

I must have mentioned that I had written a play that was historically based. I was delighted when she expressed an interest in reading it — I was anxious to find any “problems” that a baseball historian would spot. Mornings After, which revolves around an obscure Hall of Fame pitcher, Addie Joss, plainly did not grab Dorothy, although at least the history stood up to her scrutiny. But when I mentioned that I had written lyrics, she immediately brightened up and put me in touch with Lowell Kammer (of Niagara Falls), with whom I collaborated to turn Mornings into a musical.

A theme in A Woman’s Work is Dorothy’s amazing memory, and her gift for networking. If Harold Seymour seemed unable to give credit where it was due, Dorothy seems to never have had that problem, and her book is filled with the names of countless people who assisted her over five decades and counting, in ways large, small, or strange. Clearly, she knows the joys, and the advantages, of keeping in touch.

Last June, I spent a day at Cornell University with the Harold and Dorothy Seymour Collection. The full story is in Notes #297, but here is an excerpt:

I think the greatest discovery I made had nothing at all to do with the thousands of note cards and folders I sifted through. That was fun, but what was really exciting was realizing I was getting inside the minds (Harold did not work alone) of true historians. There were no copiers back then, people took notes by hand, pencil or pen on paper, the way Medieval scribes copied manuscripts, the way we all learned to write. It was primitive and inexact, and it added another layer to be deciphered — what is that word? But handwriting reveals, too, and notes jotted in blue or green might be accompanied by notes in red that asked questions, or made comments, or evaluated the text copied. Exclamation points and stars were scattered about — these texts deserved special attention. Why?

If I thought I was inside the Seymours’ minds then, it was nothing like the guided tour Dorothy provides in A Woman’s Work. In a sense, the book is like one of those The Making Of programs that often follow films. Done well, these can be more educational and entertaining than the movie itself. In the case of A Woman’s Work, learning how the Seymour histories came to be written is fascinating, but it also whets the appetite. I’m extremely familiar with the several chapters on the 1919 World Series fix in Baseball: The Golden Age; but now I have a sense of what I’ve missed by not reading the whole trilogy. Mea culpa.

For all A Woman’s Work reveals, it also conceals much, and that’s not such a bad thing. We see Dorothy and Harold as co-researchers, editors and authors, but rarely as husband and wife. And that’s OK, although I suspect some readers will be disappointed at that. Harold apparently wrestled with depression much of their time together, and later Alzheimer’s, at the end. The first line of my poem Boxscore is “Chadwick’s love child” — and by the end of Dorothy’s book, I was viewing the books they produced together as their “children” — an image Dorothy does not use herself, perhaps because the contributions of the parents were never equal, especially for The People’s Game.

A Woman’s Work is more than its subtitle suggests, although writing baseball history — as pioneers, no less — is the center of the book. Happily, it also is very autobiographical, as Dorothy tells of her many and varied other interests. These are almost too many to list, but they are so impressive that readers cannot wonder what this woman might have done had she not latched onto baseball, Harold’s focus. As a baseball fan, I’m delighted that she did, but I still have to wonder. But we all wonder about choices we made at different points in our life.

Marriage is much in the news these days. For better and for worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Marriages are all different. Dorothy and Harold’s is surely more unique than most. What if I had married a baseball nut? But I didn’t; Dorothy did. And her story is worth the telling, and worth the reading.

[To order Dorothy’s book, call 1-800-253-2187 … or visit McF’s web site www.mcfarlandpub.com ]

 

DOROTHY’S REPLY

When I showed Dorothy an early draft of the review above, she replied promptly. Here is an excerpt: “I’m very grateful for your positive review … More than that, I’m pleased that you really grasped the purpose of the book. You got more out of it than I had a right to expect.”

 

POSTSCRIPT ON THE SEYMOURS

I couldn’t squeeze everything I wanted into my review above. For example, in Notes 297 I commented on how my visit to the Cornell related to the problems I had when I was deciding just how to organize what I had been finding out about the B-Sox into a book:

Another item here, up top, is the story of my visit to The Seymour Collection. The word anatomy surely applies to this accumulation of mostly handwritten notes, which eventually found their way into the three volume history of baseball written by Harold Seymour with his wife Dorothy. My generation reserves the word “awesome” for special occasions, methinx; this was one of them where the adjective fits perfectly.

Noticing how others struggled to assemble their material into good reading, has made me rethink the structure of my own book, Never on Friday. I have an abundance of information, with more on the way (I was in Cooperstown again since last issue, and Milwaukee is kneeling on deck). I just need to find the best way to present it, so it is not confusing.

Another anecdote I left out was how I first heard about Harold Seymour. The first paragraph is also from 297, and the second from Notes 189:

It wasn’t until I attended a symposium at Albright College in Reading, PA, in the spring of 1999, that I learned about [the first baseball histories]. David Voigt — one of those pioneer historians — was honored at that event, and I enjoyed meeting him. It was also there that I first heard about the other pioneer, Harold Seymour. If I recall correctly, they reviewed each other’s books.

There were two Saturday morning panels [at a symposium at Albright College, in Reading, PA], the first a pure tribute to Albright’s native son [David Voigt]. This was in effect a primer on the emergence of baseball as a serious object of study in the halls of “higher education” — it may seem that baseball history is obviously history, yet sports has not always been respected by academics. And vice-versa, I might add. David Voigt’s rivalry with Harold Seymour, as pioneers in the movement, was news to me, but methinx that some researcher will strike gold by looking at their methods, mutual criticism, and divergent styles.

Voigt and Seymour did review each other’s books, for the Journal of American History, and their reviews were published in tandem — with neither Seymour nor Voigt knowing that this was going to happen. Seymour thought it was trickery — that’s the word I’d have used, too — and his Oxford editor launched a complaint with the editor of JAH. Dorothy gives the impression that she was at least equally responsible for the review of Voigt’s book, but I wish she’d have given more detail about the review Voigt gave Golden Age, and what the reaction of others was when the dueling reviews appeared together. Someday, I must look them up.

To digress for just a moment, when I looked up David Voigt’s take on the B-Sox, I found numerous errors, and if Seymour’s account is major league (and it is), Voigt’s ranked somewhere around the low minors. On the other hand, Voigt wrote a super article, “The Myth of Baseball’s Single Sin,” which shows good insight into the cover-up. Whether Voigt has a wife who wrote much of his stuff, I do not know.

Finally, I wanted to mention that I thought that I found one “error” in Dorothy’s book, but after re-reading the relevant pages in The Golden Age, it seems less an error than perhaps a case of the facts getting in the way of Ban Johnson’s spin. Let me explain.

Dorothy wrote about how their research showed that it was “not true … that the government forced the owners to shut down during wartime [1918].” I recalled reading in Ban Johnson’s memoirs that he wanted to close the ballparks, but the owners ignored him, fighting to stay open as long as possible, until finally, when baseball was declared “non-essential” — which meant the players were subject to the “work or fight” regulation — they were forced to shut down. Johnson: “In the end the War Department closed our parks with the work or fight order. What we should have done voluntarily was forced on us.”

Johnson was pleased when the owners finally closed the parks, but that may not have been forced on baseball by the War Department so much as by the economics of the day. The Golden Age gives a detailed account, which I’ll just summarize here in a few sentences.

World War I didn’t affect baseball until 1918. The games had gone on through the Spanish-American War, so there was a precedent for playing on — “business as usual.” The season was shortened to 140 games and spring training was cut short, and railway travel was reduced. Entertainment was taxed 10%, which caused the magnates to raise ticket prices, lest profits drop. In May 1918 the “work or fight” order was announced and a July 1 deadline was set. If baseball was deemed “essential,” the games could go on. It was not so deemed, and the owners’ attempts to gain for baseball an exemption, cost its image some.

What happened next was an exodus of players into shipyards, steel mills, airplane manufacturing, chemical or electrical plants, farming and other exempt occupations, as well as into the military. Over 220 players (of 300-some) vanished from the rosters. Attendance tanked. Technically, the owners could have hired replacement players, and did hire some (out of retirement, or from the minors), but gate receipts were ‘way off. It was time to quit. And so the parks closed, right after the Labor Day receipts were banked.

The World Series was in doubt — Johnson wanted to call it off. Secretary of War Newton Baker ruled informally on August 23 that the Series could go on — “the army abroad is interested in the results of the World Series” — and he made the ruling official a few days later. Phil Ball (a friend of Johnson) later complained that the owners should have shut down when Johnson first suggested, because the teams lost so much money. They decided to stay closed until the war was over.

It was not baseball’s finest hour, and I think that’s what Ban Johnson recalled — if the owners had listened to him and shut down sooner, their image would have escaped some tarnishing. Johnson’s memoirs reflect a certain pride and regret about his

opposition to the owners over the “work or fight” thing — that is, he was proud of his stand, and regretted that the government finally made the owners comply; he thought that embarrassed baseball, and it probably did for a minute, but the country was so distracted by the war and the flu pandemic that it became just a footnote in history.

I supplemented the above with information gleaned from reading the newspaper accounts of the day, via ProQuest. The newspapers provide lots of detail, but they lack perspective. Johnson’s account — appearing in newspapers — has a perspective all right, but his. Fortunately, today we can read the papers, and the histories.

Just for the heck of it, I looked up Voigt’s treatment of this subject in his American Baseball, Vol. 2. It’s OK, maybe Double A, compared to Seymour’s.

The question about playing baseball, “business as usual,” during wartime came up again in WW II, and the game did go on, using replacement players. I don’t think the question ever came up again, but I could be wrong. We have come a long way from the days when the owners could try to convince the government that baseball is a sport, not a business. Or have we?

From the NOTES Archive: #210 — March 24, 2000

RUMINATIONS ON SPRING TRAINING

“The seasons do not change because we want them to.”

– Joseph Heller in Something Happened

“To everything there is a season.” – Ecclesiastes

One of the easiest things to forget for those of us who live in a world of air-conditioning, easy travel, and the internet, is that we are creatures of seasons.

Throughout history (and before, we suppose), much of human existence has been spent dealing with nature. Planting in the spring, harvesting in the fall, seeking shade from summer’s hot smile and warm shelter from winter’s cruel and frosty frown.

Nature may have been challenged by the explorers of the poles, the oceans and the frontiers du jour, but the inevitability of the seasons remained a central fact of life. Hurricanes, blizzards, earthquakes and droughts continue to remind us who is not in charge.

Baseball was originally a game played and watched as a welcome break from the world of work-to-eat. That the setting within which the jewel of baseball was grounded came to be called a “season” seems in retrospect a high compliment indeed.

Baseball is the summer game, a warm-weather sport. When professionals took over the diamonds, baseball seasons cheated into spring and fall, or migrated to the south and the sunny spaces of the continent. Baseball under domes may be better than none at all, but it is never quite satisfying.

The grapefruit and cactus leagues have a remarkably long history, stretching back to 1870 (Seymour), and in Florida to 1888. Spring training (ST) was mostly a player thing back then, and not so much a fan thing.

In my first rooting seasons, in Pittsburgh, in the fifties, ST was something that took place on another planet. Pictures of players working out near palm trees (with nothing wintry in sight) were surreal. A trip south to watch ST games was unthinkable — and besides, who would keep the driveway free of snow?

Fast forward to the Y2K, and I found myself in Florida, in March, within reach of half a dozen or more ST camps. It’s my fourth visit to Florida, but my first chance to view ST.

Methinx snowbird ST fans must pass through stages. The first is “it’s a break from winter.” The heat is on, the snow is gone. ST would be OK if it was seventy degrees back home, but when the thermometer swings forty or fifty degrees between takeoff and landing, it is simply wonderful. Add the wind-chill factor, and the swing was a full 180 degrees, psychological.

Even the native ST fans, who are not fleeing forecasts of “freezing drizzle” and “keep those shovels handy” must enjoy this first stage. Having games to attend “beats a day in the office.”

My own appetite for ST was whet by the recent completion of Alexander’s bio of Rogers Hornsby. To learn the life of a ballplayer is not a matter of adding up boxscores, everybody winters somewhere, just as every player must rehearse before they take the stage, wooden or diamond.

Then I started the latest SABR book, Uncle Robbie, by Jack Kavanagh and Norman Macht, for more tales from STs past, and perhaps the most famous one of all. I’ve written here before of Wilbert Robinson’s “catch” of a grapefruit (he thought it was a baseball) dropped from a plane flying over the Dodgers’ Daytona camp. When it splattered in his mitt, he cried out for help, thinking the warm juice was his own blood! (For the record, the sphere was dropped by the pilot, Ruth Law, and not Casey Stengel. It was not a preconceived prank, she just forget the baseball and improvised.)

My visit to Florida was not for ST, by the way, I went to visit with family and friends. But it was magical March, so while the national media was revving up for its annual binge of madness bracketed about college hoops, I found myself ruminating on a quiet beach. ST camps bobbing around me, like toys in a toddler’s pool … baseball and box scores galore in my morning newspaper and on the local TV stations. Pass the sunblock, toss Charlie (the heron who visits daily) another sardine, and go fishing for a game or two of ST in the week that lies ahead.

Wednesday, March 15

In this morning’s paper, a report on John Rocker’s first outing (can we use that word with John?) The Englewood Sun-Herald says that he got “a standing ovation … as he sprinted in from the right field bullpen.”

A record crowd, over ten thousand fans, were on hand for the non-event. (Nothing thrown, in either direction, no real work for the “two amusement park security guards, dressed in back and while striped referee’s shirts” — ready to call a technical foul, I guess, on any aggressive fan.)

They were lined up two hours early for this chance to see Rocker toss. Or to see him shot, maybe. Where are surveys when they would really be useful (like how many go to watch NASCAR events hoping to see a really good wreck?)

Baseball — who can predict anything? Will Rocker continue to draw crowds and ovations all summer? [Not if he plays in front of Venezuelans, we learn within a few days.] And if he does, what will that mean? Are fans forgiving him, or agreeing with his intolerant remarks, or are they cheering free speech?

But the cheering is good for baseball, and is certainly more welcome than ugly jeering or worse. At best, the fans are rejecting the media vultures who feed off the dark side of things. If Rocker gets cheered in New York — that will be news.

Thursday, March 16

It’s about two weeks till Opening Day, and the sports pages carry casualty lists of the battles going on in each ST camp for roster spots. Players assigned to the minors, traded, or released. As a kid, I never understood how an unknown pheenom hitting .600 could be cut, and a veteran hitting .160 kept. I still have a little trouble with that. So it goes.

ST is also a daily struggle for fans. We cannot give in to the illusion that ST wins, ST standings, matter. We cannot let a fifteen-run, twenty-hit outburst (like the Pirates pulled off yesterday) hijack our imaginations all the way to October. Nor can we let a crushing defeat drag our emotions to the basement. We just can’t.

ST box scores seem real, but they are mirages, teasing and tempting us. After our crawl through the desert that the sports pages became after the Series, the boxes look terrific — and we may give in to the urge to sip from the apparent oasis. But ST boxes will not quench our thirst. Two more weeks, dammit.

* * * * *

The space occupied yesterday by John Rocker today is filled by Ty Cobb. A fellow name of Jack Brown, 63, recently found hidden away in his central Florida garage, his father’s old Silvertone wire recorder. The device is now sixty or seventy years old, but it still held a spool with a recording of a Cubs-Giants game from 1949. After the game, Grantland Rice conducted an interview with Cobb, and that was preserved, too.

Brown’s daughter sent the spool to Cooperstown, and I am thinking that it might be fun to see if I can listen to that interview, next time I visit my favorite baseball library.

The story contained an error: Grantland Rice is not “enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame,” although in 1966 he received the J.G. Taylor Spink Award. But the article did have Ty Cobb’s lifetime BA at .366, indicating that somebody looked it up, instead of accepting the usual .367.

* * * * *

When I commented last summer (in #196) on Wade Boggs’ 3,000th hit, I imagined loud applause rising out of New England. My friend David Nevard, who follows all things BoSoxian much more closer than I do, tells me that Boggsy was not that popular with Boston fans. So maybe the loudest applause rose somewhere else. Isn’t the sight of any expansion team, retiring the number of a player who starred elsewhere, a bit ludicrous? Sort of like the Boston Braves claiming Babe Ruth for themselves….

Friday, March 17

(Time to re-read “St Patrick Invented Baseball” in the NOTES Archive, #125. Best when consumed with a green beverage.)

My first visit to Florida was to see Disneyworld with my family. Even now, just being in Florida has a magical feel. (It is a grand trick: Voila! Exit the snow, enter the sun.) ST camps must also, for their ever-shrinking number of players, have a Disney flavor: it’s Frontierland for rookies to ST camp, it’s Adventureland for hanging-on vets and those coming back from injuries, it’s Fantasyland for the “I think I can make the roster” bunch, and Tomorrowland for those who find out they made it.

Rain is in the weekend forecast, threatening my debut as an ST ballpark fan. Rainouts are always disappointing, but losing the next few days would throw a wet tarp over this vacation. I would be forced to “wait’ll next year” without any idea of when or if I’ll ever be in Florida again.

Today’s box scores compete with March Madness, but the most interesting item concerned a fellow named John Gilman, who has found a way to convert old tires and sneakers and sand into an artificial turf (FieldTurf) that may someday replace Astroturf. But never, grass.

Saturday, March 18

The weather cooperated (sort of), enabling me to see my first-ever ST game.

ST games are in a category all their own. Exhibitions, they are not really played to win, as much as to test, and avoid injury. They are less serious than any major or minor league game played inside a season, with a championship at stake. But they are more serious than the annual Hall of Fame exhibitions back north in Cooperstown. Lots of player switching (kind of like the All Star Game.) Ticket prices, concessions, parking, all somewhere between the majors and low minors.

Most significant is that it was baseball, played in March with the temperature in the high eighties. The rest is details.

* * * * *

Charlotte County Stadium, ST home for the Texas Rangers, drew about three thousand today to see the visiting Pirates. ST day games start at 1:05. I finished my Italian sausage dog during the anthem, which was sung by a girl who seemed to be six, with a voice like twenty-six.

ST and spring hurlers are on pitch counts, and today, so was I — at four I’d have to leave to catch my ride. May miss the end, may have a long wait if the game finished quickly. So when Kenny Rogers and Jimmy Anderson traded 1-2-3’s in an eleven minute first inning, I said, uh-oh.

But not to worry, no more 1-2-3’s till the home eighth, and in between, lots of time-consuming offense. Rogers scattered the Pirates’ hits, the Rangers bunched theirs, and Texas was up 7-1 after three. The Bucs came back, but the game was called before their last-ditch rally could happen in the ninth. 7-5 Texas.

I had mixed feelings about the rain thing. The water was sorely needed. But this was my ST debut. Before the game started, the PA announcer warned the fans about the dangers of de-hydrating. This is apparently enough of a problem in ST, that the extra advice to drink lots of cool beverages, is warranted. But the sun gave way to clouds early on, and the fans who stayed on till the end were definitely not de-hydrated. We were soaked.

Sunday, March 19

A postscript on yesterday’s game. There were plenty of major leaguers in both lineups (that has been an issue this spring, and MLB has warned teams in response to fans’ complaints.) Many of them were gone after the first five innings or so, and with them went many fans, who I suspect came to see the first-stringers.

Florida is a gray-haired state, and the number of senior citizens in the park was high, but there were kids, too. Because there are so many older folks in Florida, I feel young at 53, but at the ballpark, we are all kids. Fountain of youth, y’know?

My game had a fourth-inning stretch (infield dragged and watered down, but no singing “Take Me Out” till mid-seventh. At that point, a late Syracuse-Kentucky NCAA score was announced.) We also had pitchers running sprints on the warning track, during the game, which was mildly distracting.

Rafael Palmiero showed off his Gold Glove skills at first base (a rare display for the Rangers’ dandy DH), and some nice fielding plays on both sides drew deserved applause. But the biggest ovations followed home runs: Ruben Mateo whaled one 345′ to right, then pulled one much deeper to left.

This game was the first time I bought my ticket asking for “anything in the shade.” I scouted the park, then settled in behind home, retreating higher when the first raindrops fell, and finishing up in the top rows. Some fans brought slickers and umbrellas, and had the box seats and lower stadium to themselves until the tarp was finally rolled out.

* * * * *

Today’s ST headline went to Pete Rose, who tossed out the first ball (but did not play in) the old-timers’ game up in Tampa. The crowd at Legends Field gave Pete the best cheer, and it seems to me that Pete has won another primary. If he keeps it up, MLB will eventually have to put him on the ballot, where his election to Cooperstown seems secure. Hey Pete, what odds are you giving for making it on the first-ballot?

* * * * *

March Madness re-defined: it is a condition acquired by ST fans who spend too much time in the sun … or by any fans who believe that ST predicts much about the six months that will follow. I enjoy the NCAA tournament and its steady flow of “sudden death” games (like baseball’s post-season) … and I wonder if college hoops will ever feature a best-of-seven finale. What ratings! Well, give the sport another century or two….

It turned out that my appetite for ST baseball was satisfied by a single game. I would definitely take in more if I were a native, or if I was visiting longer. But this time, one was enough.

The Rangers’ contract with Port Charlotte is fast expiring, and so I have been reading about how the politicians need to rally or the team will be lost. The competition among the sun cities to keep or lure teams is all-too-familiar, and not what fans like to read about at all, but it happens. Everywhere.

I read today that Donald Fehr, the Players’ Association chief, spoke to the Rangers before the game I attended yesterday. Or maybe just to the player reps. Rick Helling had an ominous quote, “Next year’s meeting might be more interesting.” The first whiffs of the Strike of ’94-95 were detectable long before the catastrophe happened. Uh, oh.

* * * * *

This vacation was never just about ST, it was mostly about family (we stayed with Barb’s parents, but I got together with an aunt, cousins, a nephew, and some relatives I’d never met before), and reunions with friends that take me back to high school. In this journal of sorts, ST has had center stage, but my week really had a different focus.

Monday, March 20

If I had attended a second ST game this trip, it would have been yesterday’s Tiger-Pirate match in Bradenton. I had been wondering if I’d see C.J. Nitowski pitch, or if I might even meet him. This Detroit pitcher who throws a cyber-pitch (see NOTES #209) not only pitched, but started and beat the Pirates. Better I did not go and meet him, I’d have been ambivalent all day.

* * * * *

”If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the state” — this could be Florida’s state motto. The heat draws insects and birds, as today it draws sunscreen salesmen and ST fans. Florida is heat, a hot kitchen where good things are cooking up for the baseball season ahead.

Tuesday, March 21

On the plane that will take me back to the Shadows of Cooperstown, the week behind me blurs, as all trips eventually blur. I am taking back a handful of sharks’ teeth and stones from the beach, a scorebook one game heavier, gifts for friends, and this collection of ST ruminations. Memories that taste like key lime pie, or stink like Charlie the Heron’s dead fish, or sound like the crack of the bats in Port Charlotte. My ST has vanished, dried up like a tropical cloudburst. Bring on Opening Day!