Baseball Under The Sphinx

The Fast Rise and Sad Fall Of Tony Conigliaro

A Long Summer Day At Shibe

That time Babe Ruth Threw A No-Hitter

SUSPENSION How will history remember this first

suspension under a new League policy? Dave Hill and Matt Mirro look at both sides

Spring is in the air! The players are in Florida and Arizona preparing for the season. No doubt, many of you have either been down to one of the sites or are preparing to head down there soon. If you’re like me, and unable to head down, you’re watching as much Spring Training coverage you can get your hands on.

Much like the promise of a new season, we too at Baseball Magazine are preparing for our season. We have hired several new writers in the recent month and are working on even more great new things for the coming months. My name is Dan Hughes and I am the Associate Editor at Baseball Magazine. I’d like to take the time to personally thank each of you for reading this digital magazine. Whether this is the first time you’ve checked us out, or you jumped on sometime between our first issue in October to now, we couldn’t do this without your support.

So, what’s new this month?

First, we have a new home on the web. We can now be found at www.thebaseballmag-azine.com. If you missed out on any of our Web issue articles, please be sure to check out the great stories that were brought to life by our staff this past month. In this is-sue, Managing Editor Billy Brost continues his series looking at the history of baseball in Portland, Oregon. Christine Sisto brings us the next installment in her ongoing se-ries looking at the Brooklyn Dodgers and their impact on the city of Brooklyn and vice versa. Clinton Riddle brings us the conclusion of his story he started in our Web issue, about Fleet Walker, the first black ballplayer in professional baseball.

Guest contributor Jeff Polman takes you back in time and tries to help you get through the winter a little quicker. Eric Gray looks at the sad tale of Tony Conigliaro and Richard Kagan takes a look at his favorite Radio/TV calls of baseball games. Resi-dent statistician JJ Keller looks at the effect of strikeouts on today’s game. Matt Mirro takes us back to a time where baseball was played Under the Sphinx and Wayne Cavadi looks at the time Babe Ruth threw a no-hitter......sort of.

Finally, our cover feature story this month is actually a two-sided story. First, Dave Hill makes his debut with Baseball Magazine by aruging that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred was correct in his suspension of Yankees reliever Aroldis Chapman under MLB’s new domestic violence policy. Meanwhile, Matt Mirro argues that Manfred was wrong in his suspension, though he understands the impact of domestic violence.

Once again, I want to thank you for taking the time to read our publication. We are working to make it easier to read and more accessible in the coming months. So please, tell your friends about us. And if you have a suggestion for a story or have a suggestion on a way we could improve the magazine, please, email me your thoughts: degan4baseball@gmail.com

Thanks for reading!

Letter From The Editor

March 2016

Table of Contents

Questions? Comments?

Email us at:editorbaseballmagazine

@gmail.com

PAGE 4- The Effect of Strikeouts on Today’s GamePAGE 5- A Long Summer Day at ShibePAGE 7- That Time Babe Ruth Threw a No-NoPAGE 8- Brooklyn’s Secular Cathedral (Part 5)PAGE 10- Baseball Under the SphinxPAGE 11- Fleet Walker and the Color Line (Part 2)PAGE 12- A History of Baseball in The Rose City (Part 2)PAGE 14- My Favorite Radio/TV Calls of Baseball PlaysPAGE 15- The Fast Rise and Sad Fall of Tony ConigliaroPAGE 16- Cover: Rob Manfred Was Right to Suspend Aroldis ChapmanPAGE 17- Cover: Why Commissioner Manfred Was Wrong

The Effect of Strikeouts on Today’s Game

4

Strikeouts are up in the game of baseball. That’s no secret, the data is there, and it makes sense considering offense as a whole is down. That part is simple. But there are various threads connected to that fact that aren’t quite as simple.

We know instinctively that strikeouts are bad. That’s ingrained in us from Little League; all outs are bad, but strikeouts feel even worse. You didn’t even make contact, right? And while no one would argue that strikeouts are good, there has been an idea in the sabermetric world that strikeouts aren’t necessarily as bad as we assume they are.

The argument goes that while strikeouts are not ideal in any way, they aren’t all that much worse than any other kind of out, par-ticularly if the player is still getting on base and being productive otherwise. Mike Trout has struck out over 20 percent of the time for his career, but he is still one of, if not the best player in the league because he still limits the number of outs he makes overall. He was fifth-best at limiting outs in all of baseball last season, so why do we care that the few outs he does make are strikeouts?

That argument makes sense, and probably still holds true, overall. All things consid-ered, getting on base and creating runs is more important than the number of strike-outs. It’s not that strikeouts aren’t bad, but limiting them also isn’t necessarily a focal point. But what if we get more granular? Is it still better to limit strikeouts, or does it re-ally not matter at all where your outs come from?

It’s interesting that new Mariners Gen-eral Manager Jerry Dipoto, a known for-ward-thinker who values the metrics, has stressed the idea of Controlling the Zone, an important part of which seems to be putting the ball in play rather than striking out.

In a piece by Tom Verducci at Sports Il-lustrated, Dipoto is quoted as saying, “The one thing we do know you can affect as a hitter is reducing the number of strikeouts. As long as you are able to control the zone in that way with two strikes and put the ball in play good things can happen.” He has praised his new left fielder Nori Aoki’s ability to strikeout less than he walks (7.8 percent to 7.7 percent career, 7.7 percent to 6.4 percent last year).

That sounds to me like he sees value in simply putting the ball in play rather than striking out, which again, makes intuitive sense but doesn’t necessarily fit with what the analytical mindset has become. So let’s take a look.

Above is a graph showing team wins versus team strikeouts for every team from 2013 through 2015 -- 30 teams a year, three years, 90 data points total. As you can see, there is a slight relationship there, as more strikeouts generally mean fewer wins, but there are exceptions, especially for those in the middle.

The team with the highest strikeout rate also has the fewest wins. That’s the 51-win 2013 Astros, who struck out 25.5 percent of the time as a team. The team with the lowest strikeout rate was last year’s World Series Champion Royals, who won 95 games. However, they were are just the 11th best team on the list. The 100-win 2015 Cardi-nals, the best team on the list, struck out 20.6 percent of the time, which is a touch worse than the 20.2 percent group average, and essentially equal to the 62-win 2013 Marlins (20.5 per-cent).

From what I can tell, strikeouts are kind of a crap-shoot in terms of what your K-rate will mean for your team. Sometimes it cor-relates to a better team, other times it won’t. Limiting outs in general is more important than trying to limit strikeouts.

There is more to the Control the Zone idea than just strikeouts. Drawing walks matters too, so some combination of K’s and BB’s may be a better indication of the ideology.

Above is a chart showing the relationship between team BB/K rate and team wins, and while the cor-relation still isn’t extremely strong, it is stronger than just Ks by itself, with an R-squared of .22 versus .08. In other words, the better your walk total, in relation to your strikeout total, the more games your team should win.

The 51-win 2013 Astros are again at the bottom with .28 walks per strikeout, while the best BB/K ratio of .53 belonged to the 2014 A’s, who won 88 games. Again, though, we have an example of a team that struggled in terms of BB/K, and still man-aged to win a lot of games, that team being the 2014 Orioles who won 96 games despite a measly .31 BB/K ratio. That ratio is equal to the 66-win 2014 Rockies.

Of course, we can’t expect a perfect cor-relation when the game of baseball is as complex as it is. Way too many things go into a single at-bat, let alone an entire game, or an entire season. Personally, a 22 percent correlation is enough for me to buy in, and accept that limiting strikeouts and max-imizing walks is a solid ideology to build your team around.

By JJ Keller

JJ Keller is currently in college on his way to earning a degree in History

Education with the hopes of becoming a high school teacher, but writing

of all sorts has become a passion over the years.

Follow JJ on Twitter:@KJ_Jeller

It’s important to note that it isn’t the only way, though I don’t think the Mariners or anyone else would suggest as much. That’s something I think some stat-heads such as myself can miss, in our quest for a team that gets on base and plays elite defense. That is certainly a great strategy, maybe the best strategy, but it isn’t the only one.

Look no further than last year’s World Se-ries for evidence of that. The Royals held the lowest team strikeout rate in all of baseball. The Mets were 18th. The Royals were tied for last in walk rate; the Mets were 11th. The Mets were ninth-best in ISO (Isolated pow-er, SlG minus BA); the Royals were ninth-worst. The teams were extremely different offensively, and yet they met each other in the championship.

I’m not ready to give up on the idea that strikeouts aren’t exceptionally important when you are able to get on base and limit total outs anyway. There is certainly some-thing to trying to maintain a solid BB/K ratio. It isn’t a guarantee -- no single thing is -- but it seems to be a solid foundation to build upon.

5

Growing up in Western Massachu-setts in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the base-ball off-season truly was one. The moment the final pitch of the World Series was delievered, usually by the third week of October, a cold, mo-rose spell seemed to cast itself over everything, like a vast, toxic shadow from some baseball-hating Sauron. The game would be completely

gone from our lives until Febru-ary, when new bubble gum cards appeared at the drug store, and the first half-glimpses of Red Sox play-ers working out in Florida sunshine

might leak onto a local TV sports report. The frigid winter days weren’t any

more numerous than they are today, but deprived of any baseball I often felt like a ragged orphan slogging through Siberian drifts in a personal version of Doctor Zhivago.Today, fans have never had it any

better during the colder months; in fact, I now call this baseball’s “on-season.” Want to re-watch high-lights on MLB.com from the past year? Okay, here’s about 40,000 of those. Game Three of the 1957 Yan-

kees vs. Milwaukee Braves World Series or your pick of old All-Star Games from YouTube? Coming right up on your iPad! Maybe you recorded a few random games from the last World Series and they’re still on your DVR. Whatever your plea-sure, it’s very possible to spend every winter evening watching a different ballgame.Naturally, I do that religiously

(though not every night; I wouldn’t still be married), and in addition to great tabletop games like Strat-O-Matic and APBA, there are endless

places on the Internet to feed your wintry baseball fix. Baseball Refer-ence is indispensible if poring over stats is your thing, but I actually find taking a quick time machine trip to a random day in baseball’s past far more appealing, and nothing gets me there quicker than retrosheet.org. Care to come along?I’d be willing to bet that no base-

ball season has gotten less attention than 1943. Coming smack in the middle of World War II when most of the best players were away in the military, it was a showcase for

A Long Summer Day At Shibe: How the Internet has Shortened Winter

By Jeff Polman

baseball vagabonds, untested rook-ies, and coffee cup drinkers. The Yankees and Cardinals repeated as league champions, and the league MVPs were Spud Chandler and Stan Musial, but as far as how the de-tails of the season went, I’ve always drawn a blank. Using Retrosheet’s amazing database of game logs and box scores, then, let’s call up July 17th, 1943 and take ourselves to a sticky Saturday afternoon double-header at Shibe Park against the New York Giants. It might be a long day, the Phillies are struggling again

and the Giants are dead last, but heck, where else do we have to be? Last one to the home plate entrance is a rotten egg!...The streetcar we’re on is usual-

ly more crowded than this, but it’s still plenty sweltering. Drops us off in north Philly and now it’s just a short walk to the corner of Lehigh and 21st. Phils will be lucky to draw 10,000 today, but what do you ex-pect when you’re tied with the Bos-ton Braves for fifth place, 14 games behind St. Louis? Actually, they played the first night

Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

All-Star Game in history here just four days ago, the American League winning 5-3, largely on the strength of an early Bobby Doerr homer, before a throng of over 31,900. How about some nice grandstand seats on the third base side, in the shade? My treat…Philly creamed the Giants here on

Thursday, 9-1, which wasn’t a shock-er because New York can’t seem to do anything right and the have the worst record in the bigs going into today at 30-46. They’re throwing Johnnie Wittig at us in the open-er and we got Dick Conger, this 22-year-old kid from L.A. who will be out of baseball after this year,

trust me. The Giants don’t have much in

their lineup except an old Mel Ott and an almost-as-old Ducky Med-wick, who came over from Brooklyn recently. But can you believe this? Here’s their shortstop Billy Jurges, barely over .200, smashing a home run into the seats in left with two outs in the 2nd. That’s just bad.The Phillies are sure putting men

on against Wittig, but scoring one or two of them would help. Two outs in the third, Danny Murtaugh walks and Ron Northey singles, but Coaker Triplett strands them with a grounder. Don’t even start me on the 5th inning, when Mickey Living-ston hits a leadoff double, then runs himself into an out at third on a

ball Conger hits back to the mound. Then Northey doubles with two outs and Coaker chokes again by striking out. A leadoff walk and single in the 6th and two more singles in the 8th get us nowhere, and Wittig is still in there as we go to the last of the 9th.Well, look who’s going to bat for

Conger, pitcher Schoolboy Rowe, who’s a darn fine hitter actually. And he singles! After Buster Adams runs for him, Murtaugh lays down a great sac bunt. They’ve announced the crowd at 11,076, including us, and everyone’s on their feet. Except Northey grounds out, sending Ad-ams to third. Up to Coaker again, but this time he singles in the tying

run! Ace Adams, a 33-year-old from

Georgia who will be out of baseball in less than three years, replaces Wittig on the mound. Jimmy Was-dell singles to get Triplett to second, and Babe Dahlgren walks to load the bases! Pinky May steps to the plate, and Adams unleashes a wild pitch for the Phillies win! Yahoo! An amazing ending!Help yourself to a Kosher Red Hot

between games if you want, but I’m going for a Hires Root Beer and El Producto cigar …Cliff Melton vs the Schoolboy in

Game Two here. Lot of folks sticking around, especially kids. Checking the out-of-town scoreboard, looks like the Cards dropped Game 1 at

Forbes Field 7-3 and they’re down 2-0 early in the nightcap. That’s sure good news.This time we get out to a 3-0 lead in

the 2nd on triples by Dahlgren and May, and by the time Melton departs after the 6th the Phils are up 4-1 with a sweep in the offing. Too bad the Schoolboy runs out of gas in the 7th. Two singles, a walk and a sac fly give the Giants two runs back. Ace Adams tries his luck one more time against us in the 8th, but Ace folds big time, and we score three insurance runs on an error and three hits, including a Northey triple. On to the 9th with Dutch Dietz,

who will be out of baseball twelve days from now, on the Phillie hill. Johnny Rucker leads with a slap single, and after one out, Ducky Medwick singles. Ott walks to load the bases and Buster May-nard singles to make it 7-4. Matthewson comes in to pitch for us, but it’s Dale, not Christy, and Dale will be out of baseball in a year. Jurges walks to force in a run and a sac fly by Bartell cuts it to 7-6. Joe Oren-go, a .246 lifetime hitter who—you guessed it—will retire in two years, then launches a double to deep center to score the seventh and eighth Giant runs and put them ahead! Arrggh.Bill Lohrman comes in

for the save, gets May, Glen Stewart, and Livingston with ease, and the exciting, annoying split is complete. Few of the Shibe fans seem thrilled as we file out, but they may as well relax, because they won’t have a pennant winner here for seven more years.Well, that was sure fun. Let’s hit

that streetcar back to the present, and take in another winter game soon!

6

Jeff Polman writes about baseball and culture for The Huffington Post and

other Web sites, and has published four “baseball replay novels”, Mystery Ball ’58 and Twinbill being his most recent

creations.http://jeffpolman.com/

Photo Courtesy: baseballcarddb.com

Remember that time Babe Ruth threw a no-hitter? How about the day that Ernie Shore threw a “perfect game”? What if I told you they both happened in the same game?

June 23, 1917. The 22-year old Boston Red Sox lefty ace George Herman Ruth was 16 starts into what would end up as quite possibly his best season on the mound. Ruth would finish 24-13 that season with an MLB-best 35 complete games. None was as strange as the no-hitter in which he was about to become part.

He had gone the distance in his previous seven starts, so skipper Jack Barry must have been completely surprised when he had to go to the bullpen after one batter.

Ruth would throw a whopping total of four pitches that day, walking the leadoff hitter, the Washington Senators’ second baseman Ray Morgan. According to um-pire Brick Owens, all four of those pitches were balls. Babe saw it differently, feeling that two of his pitches were in fact strikes.

And The Bambino, notorious in his early years for his temper, was sure to let Owens know.

According to the June 24th edition of The Boston Globe, it went down like this.

“Get in there and pitch,” ordered Owens.“Open your eyes and keep them open,”

chirped Babe.“Get in and pitch or I will run you out of there,” was the comeback of the arbiter.“You run me out and I will come in and bust you on the nose,” Ruth threatened.“Get out of there right now,” said Brick.

True to his word, Ruth charged at Owens. Despite efforts to calm Ruth and defuse the situation, he came swinging, missing first but then connecting with a right that landed behind Owens’ ear (this would be disputed years later on whether or not he actually connected). Police actually had to drag — not escort, but drag mind you — Ruth from the playing field. The moniker Sultan of Swat certainly took on a different meaning that summer’s day.

Enter Ernie Shore. Shore himself was ac-tually one of the more unheralded pitchers of the Red Sox run. The Sox were the reign-ing two-time World Series champions, and Shore was a big part of that. He would go 3-1 over the consecutive World Series vic-tories behind a combined 1.82 ERA, going the distance in three of the four starts.

With Morgan on first, and the dust set-tled, Shore would toe the rubber to try and clean up the mess that Ruth left behind. Morgan would be thrown out and Shore would sit down the next 26 consecutive batters. 26 up, 26 down.

The Red Sox rose victorious 4-0 that day. The final combined pitching line showed nine innings pitched, one walk and two

strikeouts. Shore — never known as a strikeout pitcher with only 309 over 979.1 innings — struck out a mere two Senators that day, but made quite a few defensive stops as the Senators would attempt a few bunt singles.

Senators’ left field-er Mike Menosky, Washington’s last chance at being blanked, laid down an attempted bunt single that manager/ second baseman Bar-ry fielded cleanly and ended the “threat”. Could you imagine the backlash in to-day’s game if a batter laid down a bunt to break up a no-hitter? Twitter would ex-plode.

People would refer to the game as Er-nie Shore’s “perfect game” for decades. After all, nary a bas-erunner made it to first and the one he inherited was imme-diately thrown out. Technically, he was on the mound for all 27 outs.

While it would officially change to a combined no-hitter in 1991— the first in modern Major League history — most will always remember the feat as Shore’s. It would take 50 years for the next combined no-hitter to take place and that one had its own touch of the weird as well.

Steve Barber would toss 8 2/3 innings of no-hit ball for the Baltimore Orioles on April 30th, 1967. Stu Miller would relieve him and a wild pitch and an error later, the Orioles would lose the game, despite no hits appearing in the box score. There’s just something about combined no-hitters that seem to be harbingers for strange occur-rences.

Ruth and Shore would always seemingly share a bond. Their contracts were pur-chased by the Red Sox from Baltimore’s team in the International League on the same day in 1914. A year after Shore was traded to the New York Yankees, the Red Sox would make one of the worst deals in the history of the game, selling Ruth to the pinstripes and changing the course of history. And in 1920, Shore would bail Ruth out yet again.

As the story goes, it was a spring training exhibition. Ruth had a heckler that called

7

That Time Babe Ruth Threw a No-No By

Wayne Cavadi

Wayne Cavadi is an avid baseball junkie, whose love for the Yankees is

only surpassed by his love of the game. A proud graduate and forever loyal fan

of the mighty Delaware Blue Hens Follow Wayne on Twitter:

@UofDWayne

him a “piece of cheese,” which must have been a pretty lofty insult back in the Roar-ing Twenties. Ruth charged into the stands after the heckler who was said to draw a knife. There to save the day was Ernie Shore, who broke up the incident before anything serious occurred.

Ruth — of course — would go on to become the game’s single most import-ant player. He held nearly every record for what seemed to be an eternity. And in 1991, thanks to the “Committee of Statistical Accuracy” as it has been called, he was able to add a no-hitter to his list of achievements when they named the game the first official combined no-no in the history of the game.

Shore’s baseball career seemed to fizzle out when he came to New York and by the end of the 1920 season, he was done. He would go on to become a sheriff for 34 years of his life.

A sheriff that threw the most peculiar “perfect game” ever thrown.

Photo Courtesy: fenwaypark100.org

8

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth part of a six-part series exclusive to Baseball Magazine by guest contributor Christine Sisto.

The unity of the Brooklyn Dodgers not only benefited the civil rights move-ment, it benefited Brooklyn as a whole. As previously mentioned, Brooklyn was separated into many different ethnic com-munities. The baseball team served as the community’s foremost unifying factor. Much of this effect was the result of the placement of Ebbets Field.

Built in 1913, in the residential commu-nity of Flatbush, Ebbets Field was literally at the center of average, working-class, Brooklynites’ lives. Marty Markowitz’s childhood living near Ebbets Field is typical of many residents of Brooklyn: “We lived two blocks away from Ebbets Field and we walked there. During bat-ting practice my friends and I would hang out on Bedford Avenue, hoping Cam-panella or Snider would hit one over and we’d catch a ball… My friend and I would sneak into Ebbets Field.”

Brooklynites could hear and smell the games from the streets as they walked by it everyday. People in their homes could hear the roar of the stadium. If fans did not live in the Flatbush area, they listened to the same voice, the southern drawl of Red Barber, on the radio. A former Brooklyn Dodgers fan testified that during the final game of the 1955 World Series, “...you couldn’t walk a block without hearing the game over someone’s radio.” In the same way that President Roosevelt’s fireside chats over the radio became a part of the everyday American’s household, Ebbets Field’s placement in

the middle of a residential area made the Dodgers an everyday part of Brooklyn life.

When St. Louis’ Ed Stanky imitated an ape in order to antagonize Jackie Robin-son, half of the stadium could see Stanky’s cruelty clearly. This was the result of the smallness of the stadium. Although this fact would eventually lead to the downfall of Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Dodg-ers, it was also part of the reason the sta-dium was so popular. Former Brooklyn Dodgers fans have testified to the fact that people in the stands could hear the play-ers talking to each other in the dugout. They could see their facial expressions when they stepped into the batter’s box. They could hear the bat make contact with the ball.

Red Barber described the experience in the following way: “There was never another ballpark like Ebbets Field. A little small, outmoded, old-fashioned… it was a dirty, stinking, old ballpark. But when you went in there as a fan, it was your ballpark. You were practically playing second base, the stands were so close to the field.”

Everybody was in touch with everybody else at Ebbets Field. Since the stadium was so small, the fan experience was un-matched. For example, one dedicated fan named Ann Chapin Brown had a crush on first baseman Gil Hodges. Due to the closeness in proximety to the field, Hodg-es was aware of her unrequited love, but, being married to a girl from Flatbush, he was unable to reciprocate. However, he managed to send her a birthday card ev-ery year until the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.

Pistol Pete Reiser shared a similar event. In the middle of the seventh inning of a

game in 1942, ultimate Dodgers fan Hil-da Chester dropped a note onto the field and told him to give it to manager Leo Durocher. Reiser did as instructed with-out telling Durocher who had written the note, which advised a pitching change. After changing the pitcher, Durocher yelled at Reiser, “Don’t you ever give me another note from [Larry] MacPhail as long as you play for me.” When Reiser informed him that the note was from Hil-da Chester and not the team’s owner, he “thought Durocher was going to turn pur-ple.” Reiser concluded the story by saying, “So what you had was somebody named Hilda Chester sitting in the center-field bleachers changing pitchers for you. You talk about oddball things happening at Ebbets Field, you’re not exaggerating… There really was no place like Brooklyn.” Events like these proved to Dodgers’ fans that the team was their team and an ex-tension of Brooklyn.

Not only was the stadium small, it was fun. Ebbets Field was well-known for its antics, during a time when on-field entertainment was nearly unheard of. Hilda Chester, who has been mentioned frequently, made a career out of being a loud, obnoxious, cowbell-ringing Dodgers fan. The Brooklyn “Bum,” who has also been discussed, made frequent appear-ances on the field. Another attraction of Ebbets Field was the Sym-phony Band, which was an amateur marching band from Greenpoint. They would keep the mood lively by taunting opposing players when they struck out and playing “Three Blind Mice” when the umpires took the field. The idea that a group of amateurs from Greenpoint could publicly humiliate a professional baseball player was very much a part of the Brooklyn identity.

Another form of enter-tainment at Ebbets Field was the Abe Stark sign in center-field. If a Dodger player hit the sign, he would win a suit from the haberdashery; no one ever did. Even an attrac-tion as simple as this tied into the Brooklyn dia-logue. “The implication was also important: Yan-kee sluggers got tailored on Fifth Avenue, jour-neymen Dodgers slugged for Abe Stark’s sign.”

The situation with the Abe Stark sign was repre-sentative of probably the most important aspect of the unifying factor: “They weren’t above us.”

Brooklyn’s Secular Cathedral: Brooklyn’s Effect on the

Mythology of the Dodgers (Part 5) By Christine Sisto

Photo Courtesy: ballparksofbaseball.com

9

Any Brooklyn Dodgers fan will testify to the fact that the Dodgers were just “reg-ular guys.” The Yankees arrived to their home games in limousines; the Dodgers took the subway. The baseball players were part of the neighborhood. Many of them lived in Brooklyn. Jackie Robinson, for example, lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant and later East Flatbush. Baseball players did not get paid the exorbitant salaries that they earn now, during the off-season, many Dodgers players worked regular jobs; fans saw them around the neighbor-hood. Roy Campanella owned a liquor store in Harlem; meanwhile, Joe DiMag-gio was out cavorting with Marilyn Mon-roe. As one fan has said, “You felt you knew these guys. They were part of the fabric of your life.”

All of these factors served a single pur-pose: to unify the borough. Even though the Brooklyn residents were separated into their own cultural niches, every-one was passionate about their Dodgers. Everyone could identify with the action on the field. All fans loved the Brook-lyn Bum, but became enraged in anyone outside of Brooklyn used that term. Ev-eryone knew who Hilda Chester and Red Barber were. All Brooklynites knew why they cheered when a Dodger’s fly ball came close to the Abe Stark sign.

A Funeral in Flatbush

Brooklyn Dodgers fan Charles Plotz has said, “The Dodgers were the glue that held the borough together, so when they left, it’s like when your parents die.” Indeed, the Dodgers’ metaphoric parents did die when owner Walter O’Malley made the fateful decision to move the team to Los Angeles. However, Brooklynites would be shocked to discover that O’Malley was not the originator of the idea to create a base-ball team in California. Branch Rickey had been on a committee to create a third league in major league baseball, called the Continental League. Rickey planned for the Continental League to be based in California, mainly because the city of Los Angeles petitioned Rickey to do so. Wal-ter O’Malley opposed the idea. The two did agree, though, that Ebbets Field had outlived its usefulness.

With the 1950s exodus to the suburbs, Americans, especially Brooklynites were moving out of cities, mainly to Long Island. In addition to being in disrepair, Ebbets Field did not have enough parking spaces— only 200— to accommodate the 35,000 fans that the stadium could hold. The Dodgers’ ownership agreed that the team needed a new, state-of-the-art, $15 million stadium, but O’Malley struggled to find a place to build it. O’Malley im-mediately set his sights on the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, which was large enough to house the stadium in question and plenty of parking spaces and, most importantly, it was the termi-nus for the Long Island Railroad.

The building commissioner for New York City, Robert Moses, how-ever, refused because in order to build a stadium at Atlantic Yards, the Dodgers would have to clear the slums that were there. Instead, Moses insisted that the Dodgers move to the World’s Fair site in Flush-ing, Queens, but O’Malley wanted to keep the team in Brooklyn. (This spot in Flushing would soon be the home of the New York Mets.) O’Mal-ley explored every option; he attempted to build a stadium in Bay Ridge, Staten Island, and Coney Island, among other places.

Wealthy Brooklynites were even writing to O’Malley offering their private land for the site of the new Dodgers stadium. All the while, O’Malley continued to press Robert Moses on the issue of Atlantic Yards, going so far as to call a meeting with him and Mayor Robert Wagner, but Moses was more powerful than even the mayor and could not be persuaded.

Eventually, the west coast heard of O’Malley’s struggle to find an area to build the new Dodgers stadium. The city of Los Angeles, desperate to bring professional baseball to California, offered O’Malley a substantial area of land in Chavez Ra-vine, free of charge. As a businessman, O’Malley could not turn down such an offer and he moved Brooklyn’s Dodgers to Los Angeles. On his way out, O’Malley also convinced the Giants’ management to move their team to San Francisco, so that the Los Angeles Dodgers would have a team to play against.

New York lost two baseball teams, one stadium, and its collective soul. A Brook-lyn fan described the event as “the single most important event in the history of American sports” and to Brooklynites, it was probably the single most important event in history.

On September 24, 1957, the Dodgers played their final game in Brooklyn. On February 23, 1960, demolition of Ebbets Field began, with thousands of on-look-ers, including Duke Snider and Carl Er-skine. The wrecking ball used was paint-

ed to look like a baseball and the same wrecking ball was used later to demolish the Polo Grounds.

In 1958, after the Dodgers had moved to Los Angeles, but Ebbets Field had not yet been torn down, Gay Talese wrote an article for the New York Times about how Brooklynites were dealing with the loss of their beloved Dodgers. Talese described Brooklynites as “The Bitter Baseball Fan—an individual dedicated to blaming the Dodgers for every stolen wallet, ev-ery head cold and every parking ticket in Flatbush.”

He also reported that former Dodgers fans seemed to be trying hard to forget baseball. In popular bars where backseat managing had been an art form, Brook-lynites refused to watch baseball games on the television sets. One bar’s management had the idea to invite Yankee players to the bar to talk to Brooklynites but even-tually decided against it, because “every-body’s so bitter about baseball that we de-cided that we had enough of ballplayers.”

The Sym-Phony band even traveled to Philadelphia when the Los Angeles Dodg-ers were playing there to boo and play a funeral march. Bar and restaurant owners testified to the fact that when walking into a bar, one would think that someone had died, it was so solemn. Talese also report-ed that Brooklynites feared that “some day people will forget the Dodgers ever played in Brooklyn, and then O’Malley will no longer be a bad word in Brooklyn.” How-ever, if the Dodgers had not left Brooklyn, they would not have reached their myth-like status; they would have been just another baseball team.

Photo Courtesy: baseballinteractions.com

10

Baseball Under The Sphinx

Matt Mirro is currently the Lead American League Writer at Call to the Bullpen, an MLB.com affiliate. He is a certified member of the Internet Base-ball Writers Association of America.

Follow Matt on Twitter:@Mirro_The_Ronin

By Matt Mirro

Baseball has been played anywhere and everywhere. From sandlots in New York City to the suburbs of Los Angeles. From open fields in the Dominican Republic to lavish domes in Japan. The outback of Australia to the city of Amsterdam. Over the last decade or so, the great American pastime has become more and more a global sport. I’m sure that would make Albert Goodwill Spalding smile more than a wolf in an unguarded sheep pen. Well, as long as he could make a profit off of it. That was his mission long ago. First, spread the game. Second, make a profit. Between 1888 and 1889, Spalding sent

a battalion of talented ball players on a world-wide barnstorming tour.

In the end, Spalding’s campaign was a failure. The game, which he unquestion-ably ruled over, didn’t catch on anywhere the players traveled and the great mogul lost money on the endeavor. He celebrat-ed nonetheless, proclaimed his grand crusade a success and was convinced that baseball would soon be a world sport. He would end up being right, but the fruits of baseball’s global mission would not be plucked until our time, although I’m certain Spalding would have been hap-pier had the money poured in during his lifetime. It wasn’t meant to be, but Spald-ing did just fine and the tour has become famous despite the lack of intended suc-cess.

What players brought back with them were pieces of the sport’s history that are both unbelievable and impossible to replicate, today. Among the players on

the fabulous tour were Cap Anson, the first player to collect 3,000 hits, the Ca-nadian George Wood, John Tener, born in Tyrone, Ireland, Hall of Fame manager George Wright and even Spalding himself who revisited his former profession as the team’s pitcher.

The team spent a sizable chunk of time in Australia and New Zealand, spending the Christmas and New Years of 1888 on the baseball field. Melbourne and Sydney, two popular baseball cities today, re-ceived their first taste of the baseball sac-rament during that time. The merry men traveled to Egypt and played a historic

game in Cairo in the shadow of the Great Sphinx and the titanic Pyramid of Giza. Now, at the time ballplayers were known less as gentlemen and more as scoundrels and the day spent under the Sphinx did nothing to help that reputation. The men took turns tossing baseballs at the iconic monument’s eyes, pelting it repeatedly, something that would certainly send you to jail today. Image if Mike Trout and Bryce Harper did that today? There would be no place they could hide.

Then came a moment entirely unimag-inable today. Upon the conclusion of the game, the players hoisted themselves up to the Sphinx’s shoulders, sat all together like a merry and (probably) drunk chorus line and posed for a historic photo which has become a mind-blowing piece of baseball history.

Egypt may have been the most memora-ble stop of the tour, but it wasn’t the last. Spalding’s circus troup headed to Europe

where they exhibited both baseball and feats of daredevil excitement - or stupid-ity, that’s for you to decide - in cities like Naples, Paris, Glasgow, Dublin, Rome and London where the Americans at-tempted to display the superiority of their game to its ancestor, England’s grand game of cricket. Spalding, according to legend, petitioned to play a game in the Roman Coliseum but was repeatedly de-nied. Who can blame Italian officials after what they did to the Sphinx?

The group returned home and, after a grand celebration and banquet, re-sumed their everyday lives. The players

returned to their respective teams and Spalding assumed control of his empire from the Chicago White Stockings to his ever-growing sporting goods enterprise. Baseball didn’t catch on anywhere, al-though in Australia, professionally, the sport has grown massively in the last few decades.

Spalding lost money, although he re-fused to admit defeat. We know that the baseball of today is a worldwide affair and Major League Baseball tries hard to make it so. But, once upon a time, a man called Spalding beat them to the punch.

Photo Courtesy: i09.com

11

Fleet Walker and the Color Line (Part 2) By

Clinton Riddle

Editor’s Note: This is a continua-tion of a story exclusive to Baseball

Magazine. To read the first part, click this link.

“The International League offi-cials have taken action against the

employment of negroes by white clubs, and Anson, of the Chicagos, on Thursday, notified the Newarks

that they must not play Stovey and Walker in the exhibition game against the Chicagos.” -- The Hart-

ford Post, July 1887

With the start of the 1887 season, Fleet Walker found himself in new, yet familiar, territory. The age-old issue of race had permeated every strand of the fabric of society, and now was finding its way into sports.

This was nothing new to Walker; while with Toledo in 1884, pitcher Tony Mul-lane would continually cross him up, throwing pitches that Walker wasn’t expecting and generally making things as difficult as possible for his own catcher. Mullane made no real secret of this, as he was quoted in The New York Age:

“He was the best catcher I ever worked with, but I disliked a Negro and whenever I had to pitch to him I used to pitch any-thing I wanted without looking at his sig-nals. One day he signaled me for a curve and I shot a fast ball at him. He caught it and walked down to me. “Mr. Mullane,” he said, “I’ll catch you without signals, but I won’t catch you if you are going to cross me when I give you a signal.”

And all the rest of that season he caught me and caught anything I pitched without knowing what was coming.”

Walker was not only penalized with 37 errors and an unbelievably high 72 passed balls in 41 games behind the plate that year, he also suffered a myriad of injuries so significant that he sometimes had to remove himself to the outfield simply to preserve his health. It is simultaneous-ly amazing and disturbing that Mullane would call Walker the best catcher he’d ever worked with, while in the same state-ment voice how much he despised work-ing with Walker because of his race.

Walker found himself playing with the Newark Little Giants in 1887, which was a team in the Eastern League the year before but had merged with two other leagues to form the International League for the ’87 season. The star left-hander George Stovey was one of their newer acquisitions, having played for the Cu-ban Giants in 1886 before being enticed to join the Newark nine. The interesting thing about this particular time for Stovey is that yet a third Giants team had made at least a cursory effort to obtain his services in ’86, that being the New York Giants.

Cap Anson was among the group who put an end to that.

Throughout the season, the battery of Stovey and Walker was a sight to behold; Stovey was, as he would continue to be, one of the best pitchers in the game, and Walker played an excellent defensive game behind the plate. These two would form the first all-black battery in profes-sional organized baseball.

However, their mere presence on a roster in the International League was enough to set Anson about the busi-ness of joining with other like-minded separatists to ban colored players from

organized ball. Anson’s White Stockings were scheduled once again to play an exhibition game against a minor-league team, this time against Newark, a team on which not only Walker played, but the pitcher Stovey as well.

According to the Newark Evening News:“Before the game with the Chicago club

yesterday, Manager Hackett (of Newark) received a telegram from Captain Anson saying that the Chicago club would not play if Stovey and Walker, the colored men, were put at the points.”

It was at this same time that the Interna-tional League’s representatives were meet-ing in Buffalo, NY, during which was ap-proved a new mandate concerning their stance on the issue of integrated teams, summed up in The Times of Philadelphia:

“The color line has been drawn by the International League and no more con-tracts are to be approved with colored players.”

Just like that, the bigotry of Anson and those who shared his opinions on race was validated.

It was bad enough that the so-called “color line” was being drawn all over the country, in literally all facets of society; in restaurants, at the theatres, on trains, in hotels, anywhere one could imagine, the matter of race was being pressed one direction or another. Among the more deplorable examples of racism, black soldiers who had so recently fought in the Civil War were finding themselves unwel-come in places where veterans regularly congregated.

Stovey would continue to play in low-er-level minor-league baseball and with

Continued on Page 18Photo Courtesy: chronicle.northcoastnow.com

12

A History of Baseball in the Rose City (Part 2) By

Billy Brost

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a multi-part series on the devel-opment and evolution of baseball in the city of Portland, Oregon. After this month’s piece, we will be taking a break from the series, but rest assured, we will complete it and hope you’ve enjoyed the first part. ~BB

A First of Firsts:

Towards the latter part of the nineteenth century, baseball in the city of Portland had gone from a “player’s league”,

created strictly for recreation and competitive development among the local workers, mer-chants, etc., to becoming the charter member of one of the first professional leagues in Pacific Northwest history. The credit can be given primarily to Joe Butchel, who had played for the Portland Pioneers during baseball’s birth in the Rose City. He had a larger vi-sion for baseball in Portland, took the risk, and is credited by most baseball historians, as the “Godfather of Professional Base Ball in Portland.”After leaving the Pioneers,

Butchel formed the first profes-sional team in Portland. It was on this team, originally called the East Portland Willamettes, and later the Portland Webfeet, and was the charter member of the Pacific Northwest’s first-ev-er professional baseball league, the Pacific Northwest League. Butchel helped to bring in oth-er professional squads from regional cities such as Seat-tle, Spokane, and Tacoma. It was also during this time that Butchel, rather than relying solely on regional talent, began recruiting players from all over the country.After a few years of operation,

the Webfeet finally brought home their first Pacific North-west League championship in 1891. By this time, the Webfeet and other teams from the Pa-cific Northwest League were hosting and travelling to Cal-ifornia to take on teams from the newly-formed California League. Members of this league included teams primarily from the Northern California/Bay Area in San Jose, Sacramento, and San Francisco. Unfortunately, as the country

began entering an economic downturn, the Pacific North-west League failed to complete

the 1892 season. Butchel wasn’t going anywhere however, and without baseball during the Panic of 1893 and beyond, he regrouped and and relaunched the Pacific Northwest League during the 1896 season.This time around however,

the region had failed to sup-port professional baseball the way it had previously, and the newly relaunched league, bet-ter known as the New Pacif-ic League, could only muster enough funding to last one lone season. The Webfeet were nowhere to

be found, and in their place, stood the Portland Gladiators.

The 1896 New Pacific League season ran through the end of June, with the Portland squad bringing home the league’s only championship pennant, posting a win-loss record of 19-9.

Entering the “Big Time”

With the failure of the origi-nal Pacific Northwest League, along with the short-lived at-tempt at bringing about its sec-ond incarnation with the New Pacific League, Portland was ready to take the next step in competitive professional base-

Photo Courtesy: walkingmyfamilyline.blogspot.com

Billy Brost resides in Riverton, Wyo-ming with his wife and two children. In his spare time, he coaches youth

baseball at the Little League and American Legion levels, and serves

on his county’s historical preservation commission.

You can follow Billy on Twitter: @Billy_Brost

ball at the dawn of the twen-tieth century. With Major League Baseball still officially only a one-horse town, and the junior circuit of the Amer-ican League still a couple of years away from being includ-ed with the National League, big league baseball was still almost sixty years away from seeing the west coast. It wouldn’t be until the end

of the 1950s that the Brook-lyn Dodgers would relocate from Ebbetts Field in Flat-bush, to Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles. Their NL rival New York Giants would also shortly follow suit, and move to San Francisco in the Bay Area. Until then, the only “Major League” on the west coast came about in the form of the Pacific Coast League, in which Portland would have a team.Before we get ahead of our-

selves howev-er, the Pacific North-west League made one more attempt at hav-ing an impact on

professional baseball in Port-land. It came about when the Portland Webfooters, had a new ballpark erected at NW Vaughn and NW 24th Ave-nue. This ballpark would hold a special place in the hearts of Portlanders for generations to come, and would be known as Vaughn Street Park. William H. Lucas, owner

of the Webfooters, entered his club back into the Pacif-ic Northwest League, with a brand new home to play in. For those of you that know the name Joe Tinker, he helped lead Lucas’ team to a championship season that first season of existence.It would be the lone high-

light of Portland’s existence back in the league, as the club was reassigned as a Class B league for the 1902 season, in what was now known as mi-

nor league baseball, the rise of the Pacific Coast League would take center stage. The founder of the PCL, Henry Harris, who also owned the San Francisco franchise in the California League, helped the merger of the Portland and Seattle franchises from the Pacific Northwest League, and would be one of the flagship franchises of this new league.The Portland franchise in

their first season of the Pacific Coast League would under-go yet another name change, this time fielding a team as the Browns. It was a rocky start for a city that had grown accustomed to competitive professional baseball teams, and championship-caliber squads early in their history. During their inaugural season of 1903, the Browns finished with a dismal record of 95-108, good for fifth place. The team went through a

pair of managerial changes as well, first being led by Sam Vigneaux, who was then re-lieved by Bones Ely. The fol-lowing season wasn’t much better, posting a record of 79-136, and going through THREE MORE managers: Fred Ely, Dan Dugdale, and Ike Butler.We’ll stop there for now.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the second part of “A History of Baseball in the Rose City”, and we’ll come back soon to pick up where we’ve left off!

13

Photo Courtesy: oregonstadiumcampaign.com

Photo By: Dan Hughes

14

My Favorite Radio/TV Calls of Baseball Plays By

Richard Kagan

Richard Kagan grew up on the North Shore of Chicago. He attended George

Washington University during the turbulent 70’s, and covered student demonstrations for his college radio

station. With little prompting, he can do a good Howard Cosell impression.

I fell in love with baseball and have been following it for 50+ years. Living near Chi-cago and following the local teams, I didn’t have a lot to cheer about, except when the Chicago White Sox clinched the pennant in Cleveland.

The White Sox went to the World Se-ries but lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1959. I listened and learned about the game, and the great moments in the game. There were, too many to mention here. Yet some baseball moments stood out as called by the top radio and TV announcers of the day. I have my favorites, and I mention them here.

Some include New York City teams. That might be a fact that NY is a major city, and their teams got the national spotlight. These are my top three favorite calls. I was thrilled by the emotion communicated by the play-by-play announcers. Some with the greatest joy, others with pure awe, and excitement.

There were great moments I have never

heard. Bill Mazerowski’s walk-off home-run that beat the Yanks in Forbes Field. I recently saw the TV re-play of Toronto’s Joe Carter walk-off homer that beat the Phillies in Game 6 in 1993. Who can for-get Jack Buck’s call of “I don’t believe what I just saw” –when describing hobbled Dodger Kirk Gibson winning Game One of the 1988 World Series with a two-out full count blast off of Oakland’s relief ace Den-nis Eckersley? Here are my top 3 baseball moments:

1. The Shot Heard ‘Round the World, 10/3/51:

Bobby Thomson’s three-run homer in the last of the 9th in the band box called the Polo Grounds. Thomson’s blast off Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca is arguably one of the great moments in sports history, not just baseball. Baseball was king in New York, and the Big Apple was the mecca of base-ball. The Brooklyn Dodgers and their rivals, the Giants were deadlocked at the end of the regular season. Each team won a game

in a best-of-three playoff series.The Giants trailed 4-1 going into the bot-

tom of the ninth. They notched a run when Whitey Lockman hit a double for an RBI, Alvin Dark scoring. Don Mueller slid into third base and broke his ankle. Clint Har-tung replaced him as the pinch-hitter. Don Newcombe, the Dodgers starting pitcher was exhausted and Ralph Branca was called in to relieve him. Thomson had tagged Branca for a long ball during the season. He had hit a blast in Game One of the playoffs. Thomson was up and before he went to the plate, Giants manager Leo Durocher sup-posedly said to him, “If you ever hit one, hit it now.” Thompson did, and here is the call from Russ Hodges as broadcast on WMCA radio in NY: “There’s a long drive, it’s gonna be it I believe…The Giants win the pen-nant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! Bobby Thomson hits a line drive in the lower deck of the left field stands and the place is going crazy!”

Hodges, incredulous, at this moment, then said, “I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, I do not believe it. The Giants win by a score of 5-4 and they’re picking up Bobby Thomson up and they’re carrying him off the field!” All of this said in state of eu-phoria, shock, and the excitement of the moment, make this one of the great calls in baseball history.

2. NY Giants’ Willie Mays Catch in ’54 World Series vs. Cleveland:

I picked this call for several reasons. At first, I thought it was a radio call, as I heard it on an album of great moments in base-ball history. I later discovered this was a television broadcast call on NBC who was broadcasting the World Series. Secondly, this call was made by Jack Brickhouse, the Chicago Cubs announcer and my favorite team as a boy. The reason Brickhouse was announcing the game was NBC wanted a “guest” announcer, not from one of the teams in the game, to give the fans a more objective perspective.

This catch is considered one of the great-est in baseball history. It happened in Game One of the Series played in the Polo Grounds, home of the Giants. The score was tied at 2 in the top of the 8th inning, with runners on first and second base. Gi-ants skipper Leo Durocher made a pitching change and took out starter Sal Maglie and put in left-handed reliever Don Liddle to face Vic Wertz, batting from the left side.

Liddle threw a pitch that Wertz crushed to deep center field. Mays, playing shal-low, took off and raced to catch the ball in an over the shoulder basket catch with his back facing home plate. He hauled in the ball, and whirled to fire a throw back in the infield to hold the runner. Larry Doby, the runner on second, got to third but did not score. The Giants did in the 10th and went on the sweep the Series, 4-0.

Here is the call: “There is a long drive to center field, way back, way back, back…oh, it’s caught by Willie Mays! Mays just brought this crowd to its feet that must have been an optical illusion to a lot of peo-ple.” You could hear the roar of the crowd in the background, a cool baseball moment.

3. Stan Musial’s 3000th base hit:

Musial hit a double to score a run as the Cards went on to beat Chicago, 5-3 at Wrigley Field on May 13, 1958. This mo-ment is significant because Stan Musial was one of the greatest players in the National League, and he played 22 years for the St. Louis Cardinals. Musial amassed 3,630 hits before he retired in 1963. He was eventually was passed by Hank Aaron and Pete Rose. Musial compiled a lifetime .331 batting average and won three MVP awards and played on three World Series title teams. This call is notable because it involves Har-ry Caray, who was a long-time Cardinals announcer before his tenure with the Chi-cago Cubs.

Caray’s call: “Here the pitch, there it is! A line drive into left field, hit number three-thousand...a run has scored, Musial around first, one his way to second…the first man since Paul Waner, in 1942, Stan Musial has just gotten his three-thousandth base hit.” Caray conveyed the importance of this baseball milestone. Afterwards, Musial said, “I just want to keep playing now.” He did for another five seasons.

Photo Courtesy: nytimes.com

15

The Fast Rise and Sad Fall of Tony Conigliaro

By Eric Gray

Tony Conigliaro, Tony C, a name that just rolled off the tongue. He was a wonder, a force from the very begin-ning, and it was no short run of great-ness he crafted. He was drafted as an amateur free agent at 17 years old by his hometown team, the Boston Red Sox. He broke into the major leagues in 1964 at the tender age of 19, and had a terrific rookie season, hitting .290, with 24 home runs and 52 RBI. He followed that up the next season, with his batting average dropping to .269 but his power numbers continuing to grow to 32 and 82. His third season produced comparable statistics.

By his fourth sea-son, 1967, the Red Sox were built to win. A powerful outfield was comprised of Yaz, Reggie Smith and Tony C, left to right on your radio dial. George Scott was the first baseman and Rico Petrocelli played short. This was a young team, filled with promise. The rotation, except for Jim Lonborg, was nothing to go wild about, but it was good enough to think they had a shot of wining the American League pennant and going to the World Series. And get there they did, for the first time since 1946. Conigliaro’s contributions were absolutely key to the team’s suc-cess. During this season, he became the youngest American League player to reach the 100-home run milestone, just a couple of months older than fastest in the game’s history: Mel Ott.

Before reaching the World Series, there was this day, August 18, 1967. The Red Sox were playing the Angels, and Co-nigliaro was hit by a pitch, just above his left cheekbone, by Jack Hamilton. His cheekbone and eye socket were fractured, and his retina was damaged. This kept him out of baseball for the rest of the year, and the next as well. The Red Sox lost the World Series to the Cardinals in seven games. Ironically, their previous World Series appearance had also resulted in a loss to the Cards.

Would a healthy Conigliaro have made a difference in the series? That of course is a question that can’t be answered. Many teams in all sports overcome the loss of a great player, even their leader, to achieve greatness in the face of adver-sity. Many teams playing at full strength, all the stars in the line-up, just don’t accomplish what is expected of them, either by the fans, the insiders, the sta-tistics, the odds or, most importantly, themselves. I imagine many Sox fans will point to that horrific accident as a major factor in their not winning the

series. Some Sox players were on record as having that belief.

Like most accidents of this nature, it must have been absolutely gruesome to watch (I recall seeing Giants pitcher Joe Martinez hit in the head with a line drive off the bat of Mike Cameron. I heard the sound all the way down the first base line.). Conigliaro lay still on the ground and was then carried off the field on a stretcher by his teammates. Photos released afterwards showed a left eye completely discolored. Initial reports speculated that he would miss three weeks of the season. However, not only did he not play in the World Se-ries, he missed the entire 1968 season as well. My friend Paul Leary suggested I write an article about this. He was there, his first ever major league game. He still vividly remembers the “at-bat”, the

rising cheers of the crowd before every pitch followed by the mass groan and stunned silence. He told me about the cheers as the stretcher came and carried Tony, and essentially, his career, away.

Tony C returned to the Red Sox in 1969. By this time, his brother Billy had joined him in the Red Sox outfield. Tony won the Comeback Player of the Year award hitting 20 home runs and driving in 82 runners. The following season was monstrous, with 36 hom-ers and 116 RBI, but his eyesight had started to deteriorate. Perhaps for this

reason, the Red Sox traded him to the California Angels for the 1971 season. That team, and Coniglia-ro individually, fared poorly, and he retired at mid-season. He attempted a comeback as a designated hitter for the Sox in 1975, but this was an ill-fat-ed attempt.

After his retirement, he became a televi-sion sports anchor in Rhode Island and then San Francisco. In 1982 he suffered a stroke and never re-covered, passing away in 1990.

There is, of course, more to the story, but this is not a biography of Tony C. The reac-

tions of his teammates, his relationship with his manager, why the Red Sox traded him after 1970, these points have all been covered in books and articles. This is just a look back on a meteoric rise of a Boston native son, a promise of a generation, and the untimely crash and burn of a career and life that re-minds us all how tentative life can be.

Eric Gray is from Plainview, New York, and got his BA from SUNY New Paltz. He

moved to San Francisco and spent his career with the Department of Labor overseeing job training programs for disadvantaged youth. He has been

married for 36 years to Lynn, and their two children, Rachel and David.

They are huge Giants fans.He can be followed on Twitter, if he ever

decides to post something,@ericcgray1

Photo Courtesy: siphotos.com

16

Rob Manfred Was Right To Suspend Aroldis Chapman By

Dave Hill

Dave Hill is a long time Royals fan who is obsessed with 1880’s baseball

and quite the dashing rogue.Dave has written for the Fall River Her-

ald News as well as on FanSided.comYou can follow Dave on Twitter:

@M1sterDave

Over the past few years, the National Football League and Roger Goodell have received a figurative black eye from their handling of domestic vio-lence. Look at how Ray Rice was han-dled, getting suspended for two games after knocking his then-fiancé out in an elevator. Had the video of that incident never surfaced, then Rice would likely still be in the NFL.

Speaking of players in the NFL, we can take a look at Greg Hardy. Hardy, who threw his girlfriend on what was de-scribed as a “bed filled with guns” was initially found guilty in a court of law, only to have the case thrown out when his accuser did not show up to the ap-peal. Hardy, who was still productive, was suspended for ten games, but only served four, as Goodell lowered his punishment.

Given the general criticism that the NFL and Goodell have both received, it was important for MLB Commission-er Rob Manfred to make a statement when it came time to hand down pun-ishment for the three domestic violence incidents that occurred this offseason. With Jose Reyes still facing charges, Manfred had an easy way out with plac-ing him on administrative leave until the legal process ran its course.

That, however, left Aroldis Chap-man and Yasiel Puig as the first tests of Manfred’s domestic violence policy. He needed to show that Major League Baseball took these allegations serious-ly, whether or not charges were filed. Manfred needed to get out in front of these actions, and show that Major League Baseball is not the NFL, and that their players would be held ac-countable.

In giving Chapman a thirty-game suspension, Manfred did just that. He served notice that, just because charges were not filed, domestic violence has no place in baseball. He showed that his strong words over the past few months were more than politically charged rhetoric, an attempt to make himself appear tough on the subject when, in reality, nothing would happen.

This decision, and the harsh punish-ment from Manfred, also show that baseball has learned from its past mis-takes. We can all remember the Con-gressional hearings, where Bud Selig and players like Rafael Palmeiro, were hauled before Congress to testify about PED use in the sport. Now, should such

a hearing be convened for the four ma-jor sports, Manfred and Major League Baseball can point to this suspension as proof that they are indeed taking the matter seriously.

For his part, Chapman himself is tak-ing responsibility for his actions and is not appealing the punishment. While being certain to state that he did not harm his girlfriend, he did state that he needed to take responsibility for his actions, and to exer-cise better judgement.

“Today, I accepted a 30-game suspension from Ma-jor League Baseball resulting from my actions on Oct. 30, 2015,” Chapman said in a prepared statement. “I want to be clear, I did not in any way harm my girlfriend that evening. However, I should have exercised better judg-ment with respect to my actions, and for that I am sorry. The decision to accept a suspension, as opposed to appealing one, was made after careful consideration. I made this decision in an ef-fort to minimize the distrac-tions that an appeal would cause the Yankees, my new teammates and most im-portantly, my family. I have learned from this matter, and I look forward to being part of the Yankees’ quest for a 28th World Series title. Out of respect for my teammates and my family, I will have no further comment.”

There will be those who feel that Man-fred was too harsh. Those who feel that, since Chapman was ultimately not charged with a crime, that he either should not have been suspended in the first place, or received less of a pun-ishment. However, to give Chapman a lighter sentence would set a precedent that such behavior would be dealt with by a slap on the wrist. Giving Chapman less than the thirty games would limit the suspensions that Manfred would be able to hand out in the future.

In a way, the decision to suspend Chapman for thirty games was not about Chapman at all, but rather the future of the sport and its domestic violence policy. Manfred had to drop the hammer immediately in this case; otherwise, his ability to punish those

who violate the policy would have been neutered from the beginning.

This suspension was a win/win for Manfred as well. Had Chapman decid-ed to appeal, regardless of the outcome, Manfred could point to the initial term as proof that he, as the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, was serious about doing his part to end domestic

violence. If the suspension had been overturned, that was on the arbiter, not him. Likewise, had it not been over-turned, Manfred would have the policy that he desires in place.

Major League Baseball needed to distance itself from other sports, like the NFL, in regards to how they handle those accused of domestic violence. Major League Baseball sent the message that domestic violence is not accept-able, and did so with authority. Rob Manfred was right to suspend Aroldis Chapman for those thirty games.

Photo Courtesy: draysbay.com

17

Why Commissioner Manfred Was Wrong

Matt Mirro is currently the Lead American League Writer at Call to the Bullpen, an MLB.com affiliate. He is a certified member of the Internet Base-ball Writers Association of America.

Follow Matt on Twitter:@Mirro_The_Ronin

By Matt Mirro

Let’s get this out of the way. First off, there is no doubt in my mind that Yan-kees’ closer Aroldis Chapman should have received some sort of suspension. There is no civilized, warm-blooded humanoid on the face of the third rock from the sun that believes domestic violence is acceptable and I am no exception.

This is in no way a defense of something I personally find heinous and indefensi-

ble. That being said, this piece is a direct criticism of the process and methods used by Commissioner Rob Manfred and Ma-jor League Baseball’s investigative wing as well as some of the defenses used to justify those methods.

I have had my fair share of issues with MLB’s investigative body ever since the Biogenesis scandal revealed some unorth-odox methods such as harassment and purchasing of notebooks portrayed as “evidence”. We don’t know much about the folks who do the actual snooping although my suspicion is that its run by the prodigy of F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover. They’re diligent, I’ll give them that, but they are not the police.

Florida Police did investigate the report-ed incident at Mr. Chapman’s home. They found gunshot evidence in the wall of his garage (probably bigger than my house) but no evidence of him having choked his girlfriend, as the report first released by Yahoo.com indicated. Based on the evi-dence they uncovered, the police chose

not to charge Chapman and the case was effectively closed. All that being said, were I Commissioner, Chapman still would’ve received a suspension. Just not 30 games.

My problem with this process is three-fold. First off, Manfred having the first and final say on such a hefty decision is maddening. Even military court-martials are decided using a tribunal. That could’ve been done. Why not a three-member

committee using Manfred, Players’ Union Leader Tony Clark and an outside arbitra-tor? That would have been more democratic than put-ting the entire decision in the hands of Manfred who, were he in the mood that day, could have said “Eh, you know what? 90 games!”. One man should not be able to hold such weight in an entire industry. When that happens, personal morals get in the way of hard facts. Look at the original Ray Rice domestic violence decision versus. Josh Gor-don’s marijuana banishment via NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

That brings me to my second problem. A major defense of Manfred’s actions, and in many cases a praise, has been how he sent a message and an example by suspending a star like Aroldis Chapman in the wake of the NFL’s major pub-lic relations blunder. “Setting an example” is a foolish and

unimpressive defense. That is not how you run an industry as titanic as Major League Baseball and it is certainly not how you lead one. That is the equivalent of saying “This decision was made because I need people to know that no matter what, I’m in charge.” This Romanic Caesar style consolidation of power makes me see the Chapman suspension as a power play, Manfred asserting himself over his prede-cessor, Bud Selig, as well as his contempo-rary Roger Goodell.

There’s a difference, however, between the incidents in the NFL and Chapman’s case. There was a video showing Rice assaulting his wife. We all saw it and we all knew he was guilty. There was an official arrest of superstar running back Adrian Peterson for child abuse and there were horrific and disgusting photographs show-ing the world exactly what Greg Hardy had done to his wife. Goodell handled each matter poorly and paid the price for it. But there was no such evidence in Chapman’s case. If Manfred wanted

to “send a message” he could have done so with a case more similar to the NFL situations, Colorado Rockies’ shortstop Jose Reyes. Reyes was arrested in Hawaii for domestic abuse, posed smiling for a mugshot and will, in fact, appear in court on the matter. He’ll likely get a significant suspension, of course, but, if this truly was about sending a message, Reyes, not Chapman, would have been the better poster child for the league’s new domestic violence policy.

On that note, I touch on my final issue. That being the new domestic violence policy itself (it refers to more than just DV by the way). The new policy basically gives Commissioner Manfred carte blanche when it comes to matters of domestic vi-olence. Anything that they consider to be detrimental to the league, whether proof is evident of guilt or innocence, can be punishable by suspension under Manfred’s word. So if I run to the National Inquirer and claim a random ballplayer stole my car and all the sudden that news circulates and baseball goes under criticism for my accusation it wouldn’t matter whether my claim was true or false. The ballplay-er’s name has all the sudden looked bad for the league and the very accusation, if Manfred feels necessary, could be punish-able by suspension. That’s a rough and raw interpretation but as hyperbolic it may be, that is basically the gist of the new rule

Will someone explain to me how that was ever approved by the Players’ Associ-ation? How could the league approve such a radical rule, granting unchecked power to impact a season and a career, whether there is evidence or not, to the commis-sioner? Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner said Chapman was “innocent until proven otherwise.”

Well, he should have been right by that statement except for the fact that Chap-man didn’t have to be proven guilty. If he was, the authorized and trained officers of the law would have handled it. The fact of the matter, is that Chapman was guilty the minute his name and the words “domes-tic violence” appeared next to each other and no amount of evidence to the con-trary could prove otherwise. THAT is the problem. Sure, I would’ve suspended him. That’s only right. But the process utilized was completely and utterly detestable.

Photo Courtesy: thescore.com

Clinton Riddle has been writing for numerous websites and newspapers since 2009. He has also worked as a

freelance photographer for the past 5 years, and is credentialed with several

minor-league baseball teams. Clinton lives in Lexington, Kentucky

and is a long-suffering Cubs fan.You can follow him on Twitter at

@TheGrandOldGame

all-black teams after 1887 through 1891 and then worked as an umpire through the early 20th century. Walker, mean-while, would play with the Syracuse Stars in 1888 and ’89, while working in the offseason as a postal clerk since 1884. This time, when Anson and his White Stockings came north to play Syracuse in exhibition games, the so-called “gentle-men’s agreement” was firmly entrenched, and Walker was forced to watch the game from the dugout.

After the 1889 season, Walker moved on from baseball, likely somewhat em-bittered by his experiences and almost definitely holding negative views toward the future of integration in America. He would become a hotel owner in his na-tive Ohio, purchasing the Union Hotel in Steubenville. He applied for several patents, receiving one in 1891 for a type of artillery shell. He would also publish a newspaper with his brother Weldy called The Equator, devoted to African-Amer-ican issues and taking a view on their future in the United States that became gradually more and more pessimistic. Contributing to his anti-integration stance were such events as his being as-saulted by a small group of white men in April 1891, during which he stabbed and killed one assailant. He was ultimately ac-quitted of second-degree murder charges, ironically by an all-white jury.

Walker’s work with the post office came to an abrupt end in 1898. In September of that year, Walker was arrested in Steu-benville by Deputy US Marshall W.T. Harness under a charge of mail theft and embezzlement. One of the inspectors on this case would testify that they planted a decoy registered letter at a hotel in Pitts-burgh with marked money inside of it. The letter was allegedly then taken to the Cleveland and Pittsburgh train line, on which Walker was working as a postman. When the mail bag containing this letter was retrieved, it was found to have been opened and the aforementioned letter removed. Walker was tried and convicted in a Columbus court, serving nearly 10 months of a one-year sentence.

As the twentieth century dawned, little had changed socially for the black man in America. Years before, Marcus Garvey and his African Redemption Movement, Walker would in 1908 publish his own stance on Black Nationalism. Called Our Home Colony, Walker would explain his views on why integration was doomed to fail, not only in the United States, but wherever whites and blacks were living together under forced conditions (White Colonialism). Indeed, his brother Weldy held similarly strong convictions: in March 1888, as the Three-I League in Ohio had only a short time earlier ap-proved banning African-Americans from

its rosters, Weldy Walker wrote an open letter in response to Sporting Life:

“The law is a disgrace to the present age, and reflects very much upon the intelli-gence of your last meeting, and casts deri-sion at the laws of Ohio –the voice of the people—that say that all men are equal. I would suggest that your honorable body, in case that black law is not repealed, pass one making it criminal for a colored man or woman to be found in a ball ground.”

Despite the significance of Fleet Walk-er’s position in the history of professional baseball as we understand it in the pres-

ent day, the most telling and reflective statement concerning his views on the re-alities faced by the black man in America during his time is found within the words of his manifesto:

“There is yet time for (the American people) to stand up bravely and say to the Negro: “We have wronged your race by forcing it from the Home where God placed it into an alien land, and there imposed the yoke of slavery. We have liberated your race, and wish to see you develop to the fullest the powers which your Creator has bestowed upon you.”

“Nothing but failure and disappoint-ment awaits your efforts towards better-ment while in contact with Anglo-Saxon

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Fleet Walker:Continued From Page 11

civilization; hence, we as a Nation, with the desire to make partial atonement for the wrong done, and the wish to be of service to your race and to mankind everywhere, will undertake to aid you to return to your native land, where we hope to see you build a civilization which shall be the glory and admiration of the world for all time!”

Fleet Walker died on May 11th, 1924, in Cleveland, Ohio, after a long bout with pneumonia. He was 67 years old. His grave remained unmarked until Oct 1990, when a delegate from his alma mater

placed upon it a simple granite headstone with the statement “The gentleman is the first black Major League Baseball player in the United States.”

He was so much more than that.

Photo Courtesy: toledoblade.com

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