Pete from the Cleveland Frowns wrote a passionate defense of Browns coach Eric Mangini in the comments section, and I thought it was worth posting here. I don’t agree with everything Pete says — I think the awful way this team has played, the quarterback lunacy and the goofy things that have surrounded the Browns this year point to Mangini as a man in over his head.
However — that point of view has been repeated again and again in a thousand places. Pete puts together what seems to me a cogent response and an argument that Mangini is not being given a fair shot. I admire that argument a lot. Here you go — see what you think:
Funny thing about sports and sportswriting … the stories after a while do begin to blend together. They begin to fall into categories the way those giant Plinko chips fall into slots on The Price Is Right. Here’s the story of the player who came out of a rough childhood. Here’s the story of the angry coach with the heart of gold. Here’s the story of the player who was driven to stardom by his cold-as-steel father. Here’s the story of the charismatic coach with the heart of lead. Here’s the scrapper who had overcome a lack of talent. Here’s the prodigy who had to learn the value of hard work. Here’s the could-have-been who wonders what might have happened.
I was 20 years old in 1987. That was a banner year. I had this huge crush on a girl who just wanted to be friends. I had a broken down Pontiac T-1000 that would occasionally just die on the highway, not because of mechanical failure but because of exhaustion. I worked at a department store photo studio; my job was to harass people into coming in for their free 5×7 photograph. Four days after my 20th birthday, John Elway drove the Denver Broncos 98-yards through something that vaguely resembled the Cleveland Browns defense. The Cleveland Cavaliers, guided by a roundish point guard named John Bagley*, finished with a losing record for the ninth straight season.
But I have to get this out there. I have written at great length here about what it has been like for me growing up a Cleveland sports fan. There was my childhood — 1967 to 1980 — when every single team I rooted for sucked with the notable exception of the Miracle at Richfield Cleveland Cavaliers. As I have written before, all you need to know about my sports fan childhood is that we called it a “miracle” when the Cavaliers won the NBA Championship in 1976 …
Oh, wait, the Cavaliers didn’t win that championship.
A couple of people emailed in to point out that I oversimplified the stats-on-baseball-cards story in my last post and that the Topps Baseball card company has, through the years, constantly adjusted and readjusted their baseball card backs. Fine, so for fun, I thought I would go through thirty years of baseball cards I have (1954-83). We’ll stick with offensive numbers to keep this thing reasonably streamlined … maybe we’ll do a pitching history later if this one works.
1954: All kinds of numbers on the back … Offensively there are games, at bats, runs, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, RBIs and batting average. But there are also defensive numbers: Put-outs, assists, errors and fielding percentage. It’s like a numbers bonanza.
1955: Same as ‘54. There was also a fun cartoon — on the back of the Al Rosen card the cartoon is called “Daffy-nitions,†— I love how they used to use the word “Daffy.†I wish we could bring that word back. Anyway, I guess the “daffy-nition†is supposed to give you an obscure baseball definition. Questio: What is a goat in baseball? Answer: A player whose errors lose the game. Awesome — that’s fun stuff for the kids. Let’s teach them how to boo players early.
1956: Same stats again only now there is a series of cartoons on the back that tell you a little bit about the player. The Al Rosen card has this caption: “A top slugger, Al twice led the league in H.R.’s and R.B.I.†And there is a drawing of a batter getting ready to hit a baseball, and the baseball looks very frightened and holds his hands up in that “Please don’t hit me†pose that Marvis Frazier later perfected.
1957: The cards got smaller and were framed vertically instead of horizontally. With some of the space gone, the fielding stats were thrown out. But to make up for that, year-by-year statistics were put on the back. In the three previous years, there was only one season of stats on the back and then the career stats. It’s still the same nine offensive stats.
1958: Apparently people did not like 1957 year-by-year stats because Topps went back to the old way — just the previous year of statistics. They did include fielding statistics again. The cartoons returned too, including a classic cartoon on the back of the Herb Score card. The caption read: “The Indians won the race for Herb with a $60,000 bonus.†And the cartoon is of lots of brutish-looking men in comical hats charging the door with bags of cartoon money while a policeman (apparently there to protect the interests of the Cleveland Indians) holds them off.
1959: The defensive statistics are gone. The year-by-year statistics are back. It’s the same nine offensive statistics as every other year — games, at-bats, runs, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, RBIs, average — and there are some fun cartoons. Over time, you would find, that the cartoons changed — sometimes they were curious and fanciful, other times they took on a dark tone, other times they were minimalist. I should find an art critic to help me sort through the years.
This was a fun year, though, and on the back of the Hal Naragon card is the caption: “Hal is a good defensive backstop.†And to prove this, there is a very, very strange cartoon where a catcher stands on home plate and is in the boxing stance while a bewildered runner comes to a screeching halt and has the Marvis Frazier “Please don’t hit me†look on his face. The reason it’s very strange, though (as if having a catcher want to hit a runner is not strange enough), is that Hal Naragon appears to have three arms in the drawing. I’m not sure if he was known as Hal “The Three Armed Man†Naragon or what, but it’s very odd.
1960: The cards are horizontal again. The stats are the same. The back of the Carroll Hardy card points out that he attended the University of Colorado, and the cartoon shows him in full uniform, wearing tennis rackets on his feet, and apparently trudging to class through a snowstorm (I’m guessing he’s going to class because he appears to be carrying a book).
1961: Same stats, series of cartoons on the bottom. Rocky Colavito’s card had two cartoons — one pointing out that he hit four homers in one game in ‘59, the other pointing out that he pitched three scoreless innings in ‘58. Unfortunately, the cartoons are transposed and above the wrong caption — the home run caption features a happy Rock pitching a baseball, and the scoreless innings caption features four baseballs bouncing off a bat.*
*In other news, I still cannot believe the Indians traded Rocky Colavito after ‘59.
1962: Same stats, and each back featured a more stylized cartoon that really played up the players skills. These cartoons look more like something out of a Batman comic book. Even players with somewhat limited skills have bold cartoons — Mike De La Hoz had one titled “Minor League Batting Menace.â€
1963: Same stats and the return of the more fun and whimsical and politically insensitive cartoons. On the back of the Joe Adcock card it mentions that he was traded from the Braves to the Indians and there’s a little Joe Adcock with an Native American headdress on saying “I’ve changed Tribes!†Ron Nischwitz, who was traded from Detroit, has a cartoon of him parachuting into an happy Native American village with one shouting “Welcome to the Tribe, young Chief!†In another theme, Jerry Kindall is caricatured as a baby signing a contract because he was, of course, a, yeah, bonus baby.
1964: Same stats, and now the Topps gurus decided to put a little scratcher game on the bottom of each card — you know, to prepare the kids for their future lottery compulsions. Who led the 1963 Angels in home runs? They ask the back of the Vic Davalillo card … “Rub a nickel or dime over black box for magic answer.†You know what? I’m not gonna. I don’t really care that much who led the 1963 Angels in homers. And why not use a quarter? Would a quarter not work?
1965: Same stats — it wasn’t until my childhood, apparently, that the Topps people decided to top giving us runs. There’s a simple and multi-use cartoon on top of each one. For instance, a prominent 1965 baseball card cartoon is of someone putting a star on a player. This could be used for ANY player who was an All-Star, who won any sort of award at any point in his life, who accomplished anything good ever. Then there’s a plain cartoon of a guy hitting a giant baseball — again, could be used for more or less anything. Topps kind of mailed it in in 1965.
1966: Same nine stats — and there’s little cartoon in upper right hand corner. These are a little more specific, but it’s still pretty stripped down . The Sam McDowell cartoon is captioned: “Sam hurled an 8-0 no-hitter in the PCL in 1964.†And the cartoon is of a man in a baseball uniform standing behind a machine gun of some sort firing baseball after baseball.
1967: OK, here we go, this is the year I was born. And runs are gone. Just gone. So are games. I’m not sure if there was some big meeting at Topps where they decided to go with a larger font or if they said, “Runs, meh, who cares?†I’m very curious about the decision process involved here. I mean this had to be involve the very top people in the Topps company, right?
There are two cartoons about each player … this time the caption on Sam McDowell’s card reads: “In May 1964, Sam pitched a no-hitter against Salt Lake City.“ Only the cartoon is much more involved. It features a slightly embarrassed Sam McDowell standing there while a pretty young woman sidles up to him and (I am guessing) bats her eyes. I guess no-hitters against Salt Lake really impressed the ladies. The goofiest part of the comic is not even the powerful love spark that Pacific Coast League no-hitters ignite. No, it’s that in the same drawing, there is a baseball player in the background pointing at Sam and LAUGHING. He’s laughing like: â€Check out the silly pitcher pitcher who threw the no-hitter and is now being approached by hot women. Ha ha. Joke’s on him! What a maroon. What a nincowpoop. What a gullabull.“ Well, hey, that was the summer of love I guess.
1968: Runs and games are still gone. The cartoon on the bottom is more of a riddle — What does Lee Maye do in the offseason? The answer (written upside down so to throw off the reader, I guess) is â€He’s a pop singer.“ Useful information. Sometimes the riddle is about the player on the front of the card, but sometimes not. On the back of Kenny Suarez’s card, the riddle was â€Who topped the Indians in RBIs in 1967?“ The answer: Max Alvis. Apparently the could not come up with a usable Ken Suarez riddle.
1969: Hey! Runs and games are back, baby! I would like to believe that one Topps statistician broke into the meeting, and shouted, â€I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I WILL BE HEARD. We must put runs back on the back of the cards. Runs are every bit as valuable as RBIs. Don’t you see? Can’t you see?“
The Lee Maye cartoon this time pointed out that he led the National League in doubles in 1964 — and it illustrated this by showing Lee Maye (I guess — it doesn’t really look like him being that it’s a plain looking white guy) putting a â€2“ in his closet. But here’s where it gets fun: The close is ALREADY overflowing with lots of 2s! From all the doubles!
Luis Tiant’s cartoon points out that he topped the A.L in shutouts in ‘68, and there’s a drawing of a pitcher with a paintbrush and he’s holding a paint can that says â€White wash“ on it. And a hitter, not wanting to be white washed, is running away. I’m telling you, the MOMA needs to have an exhibit of these cartoon.
1970: We had all nine Topps stats on the back — games, at-bats, runs, hits, doubles, triples, homers, RBI, average. And, after a year off, they started to put minor league stats on the back too. Topps had a weird and, as far as I can tell, inscrutable policy about minor league stats. Most of the time they included minor league stats, you know, except for the times they didn’t.
There are cartoons on the back of many 1970 cards — it seemed to depend on if there was enough room. The Vada Pinson card, for instance, did not have enough room. There is room for a cartoon on the back of the Richie Scheinblum card, and it points out that Richie’s first career homer was a 13th inning grand slam. There is a drawing of an umpire on the bottom and, oddly, he is saying â€If that stays fair, we all go home!“ It’s the explanation point that gets me. Is the umpire ROOTING for the ball to stay fair? It does seem that way, yes.
1971: We are back to the one-year statistic, and there are no cartoons now. There is, instead, a second photo of the player on the back, a listing of each players first year in pro ball and first year in the majors, and a few little tidbits. Definitely a subdued year for the Topps company.
1972: But they made up for it in ‘72, when the front of the cards had this sort of hippy-dippy psychedelic look, and the back has fun trivia questions, cartoons, tidbits, the nine Topps stats, all sorts of zany things. I learned this trivia question from the back of the 1972 Ray Fosse card — who was the only player to serve in both World Wars? It was Hank Gowdy, a pretty decent hitting catcher for the Boston Braves and New York Baseball Giants. The cartoon is of Gowdy swinging a rifle at a baseball.
1973: This is the first year I remember collecting baseball cards — I was 6 — and Topps once again decided to take runs and games off the back of the card. Topps was clearly a house divided against itself. In my last post, I had clearly underestimated the raging war between the â€Yeah, put runs on the back“ camp and the â€No, make ‘em look it up in Who’s Who“ camp.
Either way, the individual comics are back — apparently Chris Chambliss collected phonograph records, and he did so by standing at first base and catching flying phonograph records that were being thrown at him. Jack Brohamer, improbably, builds engines for oil well pumps.
1974: Still no games or runs on the back. The individual cartoons are on the side now — Buddy Bell sits behind a â€Help Wanted“ desk with the caption â€Buddy works for an employment agency.“ Frank Duffy likes to play guitar — so there’s the guy in full uniform playing guitar. Walt Williams hobby is drawing, so they show him drawing … a baseball.
And I’m sorry to do this … but you know Walt Williams nickname, I’m sure. If you don’t, look at this card. You should be able to guess:
1975: This was my first full year as a baseball fan — did I mention I’m writing a book about a team from that year? — and there were no runs or games on the back of my baseball cards. The trivia questions are back though. â€Who once hit five homers in a minor-league game?“ is on the back of the Gaylord Perry card. There’s a drawing of an outfielder watch five baseballs fly over his head at once. The answer, incidentally, is Al Rosen.
1976: Runs and games are back on the back! The good guys win. The individual cartoons are gone, though, and now they have rather sparse looking drawings that represent great and fascinating tidbits from baseball history such as the tidbit that Ty Cobb stole home 32 times (back of the Jim Bibby card) and the tidbit that Mike Vail had the longest hitting streak of 1975 (back of the Tom Buskey card). I used to love reading these tidbits for some reason. I don’t think it had any long-term effect on me, though.
1977: You have the original nine offensive stats, and now there were rather stately cartoons drawn on the side to depict some more important moments in baseball history. On the back of Charlie Spikes we learn that in 1893, a game between Oakland and San Francisco was played in 47 minutes. On the back of Buddy Bell we learn that Kurt Bevacqua won the 1975 bubble-gum blowing championship.*
*More on this in an upcoming book … now officially due in bookstores on Sept. 9, 2009. Yes, we have a pub date.
1978: Same nine stats, but now instead of the cartoons the Topps people rashly decided to put some sort of â€Play Ball“ game on the back. I never played this game, but I guess you were supposed to make your lineup and then flip cards to see what your player did. For instance, on the back of the John Lowenstein card it says â€Single.“ So I guess that would represent a single. I don’t think you can get more descriptive than that. Where is the single hit? Does the runner score from second? Does the runner go first to third? I think the best way to answer that is to say â€Single.“
Here’s a surprise: On the back of the Duane Kuiper card, the action is: â€Strikeout.“ That’s just not nice.
1979: Same stats, no game, no cartoon, now we have the worst Topps idea ever — something called â€Baseball Dates.“ In this, the Topps folks ask what happened on a certain date, and we are, I suspect, supposed to guess.
For instance — on the back of Kuiper they ask: â€What happened on June 17, 1876?“ Now, I have to stop here and say … really? Is that supposed to be a trivia question? Did they really think there are kids out there, collecting cards, who will know what the heck happened on June 17, 1876? Is this supposed to foster some sort of camaraderie and maybe create a fun little trivia baseball game for 9-year-olds? Really?
Do you want the answer? Naw, I mean, who doesn’t know what happened on June 17, 1876 — it would be an insult to your baseball intelligence to even tell you.*
*I will tell you this: On the back of Wayne Cage’s card, they ask, â€What happened on July 13, 1973?“ I’m sure you already know — I mean who DOESN’T remember July 13, 1973, that crazy day — but the answer is: â€Three Montreal Expos pinch-hitters hit home runs … in a doubleheader.†No, really, that’s it. I mean ONE OF THOSE PINCH HITTERS would not be able to get that answer. I have to think that Baseball Dates was some kind of inside joke, or that each of these dates actually sent a serious and important message to the mafia.
1980: Same stats and the individual cartoons are back too. On the back of Duane Kuiper’s card we find that Duane’s second cousin is Dick Bosman, a former big league pitcher. And there’s a drawing of Bosman in street clothes throwing the ball to Duane. I don’t know, do you often go out and play catch with your second cousin?
On the back of David Clyde’s card there’s a caption that says “David posted an 18-0 record as a high school senior.†And the drawing is of David Clyde (in full uniform — these guys ALWAYS wore their uniforms) looking at a newspaper with the headline: “High School Senior Posts 18-0 Record.†Seems to me someone got pretty lazy there.
1981: Yes … it’s a new age of baseball card statistics. Not only do we have the original nine, but now we also get slugging percentage, stolen bases, walks and strikeouts. I’m not sure if the Topps people came up with some kind of new technology that allowed them to put more stats on the back — sort of the way the Oreo people were able to double stuff their cookies — but this was huge, it was almost like too much information, like the villain Icy Harris who tried to siphon all of Superman’s powers but found that no mere mortal can handle all that strength. I was really just looking for a way to link to “The Pernicious Parasite†cartoon.
And there are cartoons on the back of the 1981 cards too — here you can learn that Kuiper was the recipient of the Indians “Good Guy†award in 1978, and in the drawing he’s obviously very proud of it as he holds it up and blushes.*
*I don’t want to go all political here, but I’m somewhat peeved that Duane only won the Good Guy Award once. I mean in 1981, the Indians gave it to the traveling secretary. Come on. This is a travesty, and I believe someone should retroactively go back and give Duane Kuiper the Cleveland Indians good guy award every year from 1976-1981, when the Indians traded him for Ed Whitson. And they should give it to him AGAIN in 1982 for taking the trade so well.
1982: The new stats are here to stay, but there no individual cartoon. This time around they have rather odd tidbits — on the back of the Kuiper card it says, “Ben Oglivie hit at a .353 pace on the road in 1980.†Good to know. On the back of the Mike Hargrove card, the news is that Bruce Bochte was credited with 20 go-ahead RBIs for the Mariners in 1980.
1983: This was my last full year of really collecting cards — well, that’s not true, I collected them for a while longer but it SHOULD have been my last year since I was 16 years old and, really, it was time to move on.
Anyway, we’ll stop in ‘83 … that year we had the new-and-improved Topps stats which are, one more time, games, at-bats, runs, hits, doubles, triples, homers, RBI, stolen bases, slugging percentage, walks, strikeouts and batting average. But there are no more cartoons. Sigh. There were no cartoons in ‘84 or ‘85 either. In ‘86, they came back with something called “Talkin’ Baseball,†and there was, you know, a talkin’ baseball giving us pointless tidbits. It was a nice effort. But it wasn’t the same at all.
*No, I’m not going to leave you hanging. OK, on June 17, 1876 — according to the card — Philadelphia’s George Hall became the first player to hit two homers in a nine-inning game. It is not a national holiday. Yet.
Like most everyone, I used to love Casey Kasem’s Weekly Top 40. I loved everything about it. I loved that we were listening to Shaggy from Scooby Doo. I loved that before some songs he would tell these bizarre stories (“And when Gabriele was 3 years old, she got her nickname, Nena, which means little girl in Spanish …”) and say absolutely nothing at all before others (“At No. 23 in our countdown this week, here’s Robert Palmer with ”Addicted to Love“). Most of all — and I realize this has become cliche by now — I loved the long distance dedications and, more specifically, how the song never had ANYTHING to do with the actual dedication.
And he writes … Dear Casey.
My name is Tom and I am paralyzed from the waist down. Casey, I was driving alone one evening after putting in several hours of good work at a homeless shelter, when a drunk driver swerved into my lane and sent my car into a ditch. The paramedics arrived quickly on the scene, Casey, but there wasn’t much they could do. When I regained consciousness, I had no feeling at all in my legs. I don’t need to tell you Casey, that I lacked the strength to go on. I didn’t care if I lived or died. And then, Casey, I met … Laura. She was a doctor at the hospital, and she refused to let me give on myself. Casey, in short, she believed in me and through her I believed in me too. Casey, because of Laura and with a lot of hard work, I am, against all odds, beginning to walk again, and now doctors believe I will make a full recovery. And one more thing: Laura and I are very much in love. Casey, it’s a dream come true for me. Casey can you play Quiet Riot’s ”Cum On Feel The Noize“ for my Laura who gave me the courage to continue on.
This Casey Kasem preamble has absolutely nothing to do with this post, where I’m asking you the readers for your help as I play some kind of historical fantasy baseball game. I usually tend to avoid fantasy sports of all kinds, not because I’m opposed to them on any sort of theological grounds but squarely because of Daunte Culpepper. I had avoided fantasy sports for a long time when one year, I got talked into joining a football league with my buddy Chardon Jimmy. We took Daunte Culpepper with a very high pick (second overall, maybe?) and he threw like 29 interceptions in his first game, and I pretty much promised then to never be in a fantasy football league, just like I promised after our last move that we would never move again.
But, the human mind is remarkably resilient, and so we DO move again even though we know it will be a living hell, we do have children even after the exhausting no-sleep experience of having the first, we can move on from Duante Culpepper. Yes we can! In this case, someone named Mike Lynch from Seamheads asked me to be in this historic baseball league. He mentioned that some famous people — Bill James! Mike Vaccaro! Jonah Keri! Curt Schilling! Tom Hanks! Julia Roberts! Barack Obama! Sarah Palin! Dave Eggers! Sam Mellinger! Tom Brady! Some of these people! — would be in the league. At this point I had two conflicting opinions.
1. No way.
2. Absolutely no way.
So, of course I said I would do it, but only if I could get the Cleveland Indians. He said the Indians were already taken. So I was free! Then he came back and said the Indians were not taken, actually, and that I was in the league. So I was not free. That appears to be where we are currently standing.
I have noticed over the last few days that that severalotherpeople* in the league have gone to the public to help them choose their 40-man roster … I guess we’re allowed to pick anybody we want in the history of the team (and I guess they are judged SPECIFICALLY what they did for the team) and I thought that was pretty smart, have the readers do some of this work for me. So looking for some help here. Here are some names I have thrown down for the team — you will note a few personal favorites, perhaps.**
*I take this one back … I guess in here Curt is telling people not to ask him to respond or comment upon comments his doctor made. But I’m sure he’s THINKING hard about his 40 man Pittsburgh Pirates roster. You can email him if you would like too.
*I tended to make it so that every day players had to play 400 games in an Indians uniform. I could go with guys like Roberto Alomar, who had three great years, but I’m not sure I want to do that. I suspect I want real Indians. With pitchers, I went with a minimum 750 innings pitched.
First base: Jim Thome, Hal Trosky, Luke Easter, Vic Wertz, Grover the Human Rain Delay, Andre Thornton
Second base: Nap Lajoie, Joe Gordon, Bobby Avila, Robbie Alomar (heck, throw him in), Carlos Baerga, Duane Kuiper
Shortstop: Lou Boudreau, Omar Vizquel, Joe Sewell*, Woodie Held, Julio Generalissimo Franco, Frank Duffy, Jerry Dybzinski, Tommy Veryzer.
Third base: Al Rosen, Ken Keltner, Buddy Bell, Toby Harrah, Graig Nettles (barely an Indian), Brook Jacoby**, Casey Blake.
Corner outffield: Rocky Colavito, Albert Belle, MannyBManny, Joe Carter, Charlie Spikes, Cory Snyder.
Center field (could play corner): Tris Speaker, Larry Doby, Earl Averill, Grady Sizemore, Kenny Lofton, Rick Manning,
Catcher: Jim Hegan, Victor Martinez, Johnny Romano, Sandy Alomar (forgot about him earlier), Duke Sims, Ray Fosse, Joe Azcue (great guy!), Andy Allanson
Starting pitchers (some could work out of pen)
Johnny Allen
Bert Blyleven (kind of an Indian)
Stan Coveleski
Tom Candiotti
Bartolo Colon
Bob Feller
Wes Ferrell
Mike Garcia
Mel Harder
Addie Joss
Cliff Lee
Bob Lemon
Sam McDowell
Gaylord Perry
C.C. Sabathia
Sonny Siebert
Luis Tiant
Early Wynn
Greg Swindell
Late inning guys
Doug Jones
Jim Kern
Sid Monge
Bob Wickman
*I pozterisked this just to mention that, this week, I have my first column in Sports Illustrated the magazine. I originally had Joe Sewell mentioned in that column, but he didn’t make it in and really this was just a cheap way to say: Yay me!
**Brook Jacoby was one of my favorite players … so much so that I would find myself often thinking of how well his name fit in the ”We’re Talking Baseball“ song — ”We’re talkin’ baseball — Brook Jacoby-oby — we’re talkin’ baeball — strands runners in Nairobi.“ Really, sing it! You’ll never get it out of your head.
These are more or less the Indians I am thinking about off the top of my head … I kind of crossed this against a Baseball Reference list so I hope I didn’t miss anybody really obvious.
In any case, now I have to break it down to a Cleveland Top 40, which is how we got to Casey Kasem in the first place. I’m not sure how I should ask for advice … I suppose if you want to simply offer up some thoughts in the comments that would be great or, if you would like to send a more involved thought here, that would be great too. Basically, I’m just looking for you to do the work. And also, that way, I will have someone to blame, long distance. Casey, would you please play Iron Maiden’s ”The Evil That Men Do“ for my loyal readers? Thanks.
I missed Banned Books Week, but I spoke on behalf of the Olathe Library that week, and I told this library story from my childhood. I figured I’d put it up here for safekeeping in case I ever need it again:
* * *
There was a library just a couple blocks from my house in Cleveland. It was a small library — I think it’s still there, corner of Cedar Center, same side of the street as Davis’ Bakery and the old Stop ‘N Shop* and the Cedar Center Bowling Lanes.
*I think it was a Stop ‘N Shop … it might have been an A&P. Which leads to one of my father’s favorite jokes when I was a kid: Did you hear that the Stop ‘N Stop merged with A&P. Yeah, now it’s called Stop ‘N P. … Understand, I said that was just ONE of his favorite jokes. His favorite joke, as I recall, was a Polish Army joke, which he was cleared to tell having grown up in Poland. Seems like the a Polish Army battalion was out on a long march, days and days, through rain and sleet, no relief in sight. And finally one day the Lietenant-Colonel stood in front and said, “Men, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that finally, after all this time, we will have an underwear change.” Everyone cheered wildly. “The bad news is … Kotlowski change with Witkowski. Somovits change with Zabrzeski.”
I still remember how I felt when I was officially old enough to walk to the library by myself. I was 8 or 9 years old, I guess. It seemed like my first moment of freedom. I would go to the library, I don’t know, once a week or so. Maybe not quite that often. Maybe two or three times a month. I loved going to the library. I still love libraries … I wrote much of my first book in a library and most of what I’ve written in my second book* I wrote in the library. I just like the vibe in libraries, the musty smell, the out-of-date books, the ultra-helpful librarians, the way people will generally respect the “quiet in the library” theme, the charming fact that they are still clinging to the Dewey Decimal System. I find that inspiring, really.
*Did I mention? I’m writing a book about the 1975 Reds. The Machine is the tentative title. William Morrow publisher. Tentatively scheduled for Marcy 2009. I may have mentioned it.
So, I was able to go to the little library by my house and look for the latest Alfred Slote books. Man, I loved Alfred Slote books. I have often said that Frank Deford was my ultimate influence, and after him Jim Murray and Leigh Montville and Mitch Albom and Rick Reilly and Bill Nack and Scott Price and Mike Lupica and all those terrific sportswriters of my time. But before any of them, I read “Hang Tough, Paul Mather” — an amazing young-teen book about a talented little league pitcher who had leukemia. I wasn’t much into reading then, and I would not be until much later. But I was into Alfred Slote books. I remember Hang Tough, Paul Mather got inside me and changed me in that remarkable way where you do not even know that you’re being changed. Not long after that, I read a Slote book I loved even more — Tony and Me — about a brilliant shortstop and troubled kid. I probably read that book 25 or 30 years ago, but I still remember the scene of Tony reaching out like he was going to bunt and then slashing a vicious liner at the third baseman. There were other Slotes I loved. Matt Gargan’s Boy. My Father, The Coach. I was always looking for another Alfred Slote book.*
*Not too long ago, I mentioned Alfred Slote in a newspaper column, and he wrote me a thank you, which remains one of the most awesome things that has ever happened to me.
Which gets to the story: When I went to the library, my mother would always send me with a list. See, my mother, back then, read Harlequin Romances. Those, I’m sure you know, are the romance paperbacks that always have a photo on to the cover of some woman in a bed or on a ski lift or on a desert island and some man without a shirt. My mother realized that these books did not exactly challenge her intellect nor teach her too many new things about astrophysics, but she liked them as vocabulary candy, and really, it was her business. Who am I to judge? Heck, I play “Brick Breaker” which is even more mindless.
Trouble is, my mother has never been able to do anything half-heartedly. I mean anything. I remember she decided to start saving coupons and collecting refunds in a more serious way. And one day, when they had a triple coupon special at the Stop ‘N Shop (or A&P) she bought like $138 in groceries for 12 bucks. Something like that. She had a filing system that would baffle the Pentagon with labels and boxtops and the like for refunds. And when she went back to school to study computer programming, she didn’t just make A’s across the board, she scored perfect scores time after time. My mother can be, in the best possible way, a tad bit obsessive.
And so, she decided it was not good enough to just read Harlequin Romances for some mindless joy. No, she was going to read EVERY SINGLE Harlequin Romance. She kept a notebook where she would keep track of which ones she had read and which ones she still needed to read. Only, here’s the thing: Every single Harlequin Romance* has more or less the same title — Last Minute Proposal, The Single Mom and the Tycoon, Bride at Briar’s Ridge — there’s no way to keep them all straight. No possible way. So my mother kept track of which ones she read and which ones she did not by the numbers on the side. Seriously. She would say to me, “OK, see if you can find me No. 111, No. 148, and No. 174.” And that’s what I would do.
*OK, I have to point THIS out. If you don’t want to click on that link, I don’t blame you … it takes you to the Harlequin Romance page (“Books for Women Who Love To Read”) for, you won’t believe this. No, really. You won’t.
It takes you to the page for Harlequin NASCAR.
Yeah. Harlequin NASCAR. “Stories set i the world of NASCAR.” Risky Moves. Running on Empty. Tailspin. Hot Pursuit. And, my favorite title, Overheated. I swear, I want to do a 15-part series on the remarkable concept of Harlequin NASCAR.
So I would go to the library and, first thing, I would look for various Harlequin numbers for my mother to read. It was fun in a weird way, sort of like trying to get the last few baseball cards I needed for a set. Plus the number system helped me separate what I was doing from the guys without shirts. I wasn’t looking for “Elizabeth’s Way” or “Sleeping With The Enemy.” No, I was looking for No. 138 and No. 219. I’m sure the librarian got a real kick out of a 10-year-old boy coming to the front with a pile of these Harlequin Romances.
But, now we get to the heart of the story. My mother read these books so fast that after a while she had read just about all of them. Except, I recall, No. 3. For some reason, we had never found No. 3. The series was up in the 300s, and she had read just about every one, and the ones she had not read were all like in the mid-200s or higher. All except the mystical No. 3.
And No. 3 really did take on this mystical quality after a while. It started to grow in our minds, it became like the great lost Harlequin Romance, the one that Sylvia Plath or Maya Angelou or Dostoevsky wrote under a pen name. Every time I would go to the library and look for No. 3. But it was never there. You had No. 1 and 2 and 4 and 5, all the way on up. But no 3. I would ask the librarian if she could order number 3. She claimed that she had tried but 3 was out of print. That only made the book seem more mysterious and luminous. If there were secrets to be learned about the world, surely, the would be found in Harlequin Romance No. 3.
The search went on for months, probably years. And at some point, I think, we began to lose hope. Maybe there never was a Harlequin Romance 3. Maybe, like the respectful political campaign, the open lane of traffic in Boston and the rare and precious snipe, it did not really exist. I can remember looking at my mother’s Harlequin notebook, seeing all those numbers crossed out, all of them except the 3, and I felt sad, like it was a job incomplete, a lost masterpiece, an unfinished Beethoven opera.
Then, you know what happened. One day, I went to the library, made my cursory check of the the Harlequin Romances. And there it was. Number 3. I did one of those movie double-takes. I blinked to make sure it was real. It was there, Harlequin 3, and I grabbed it off the shelf, quickly, with authority, like Moses Malone yanking down a rebound. I raced to the front desk, to the librarian, to check it out. I didn’t even look for Alfred Slote books that day. I went outside — it was a gray and cold Cleveland day in my memory. I put the book under my coat and I ran home, fast as I could, I was so excited. By the time I got to our house, I was breathing smoke, my side hurt, and I shoved open the door, and I shouted, “I found it! I found it.”
And my mother said, “You found it?” And she smiled. And I handed her the library book, what I considered the greatest gift a young boy can give to his mother. And she looked at it. And I will never, ever forget what she said to me that day.
She said: “Oh, I already read this one.”
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Bonus: A few commenters have already mentioned the wonderful children’s sports author Matt Christopher. Well, if you go to Matt Christopher’s Site, you will find a story about him written 20 years ago by a green and yet clueless 21-year-old sportswriter who had no idea what he was doing but adored the man. It ain’t much of a story, truthfully, but it was written from the heart. Matt Christopher was every bit as nice and kind a man as you might hope and expect of the author who wrote “The Boy Who Only Hit Homers.”
Here’s my theory: Most sports fans are formed by the most cataclysmic or euphoric sporting event of their childhood. I am the sports fan that I am today because four days before my 14th birthday, with the Cleveland Browns in field goal range, Sam Rutigliano called a play called Red Right 88, and Brian Sipe threw an interception against the Oakland Raiders. Then Brian put his hand in his face, and he stumbled off the field, and Rutigliano said, “I love you Brian,” and I was wrecked forever.
I bring this up because today’s topic is possibly the most famous collapse in baseball history, the fall of 1964 Phillies, and also my good friend Bob Dutton. Bob is now the excellent Royals beat writer for the Kansas City Star and the president of the Baseball Writers Association of America … more to today’s point, though, he was a 9-year-old Philadelphia Phillies fan in 1964. He lived that collapse. It shaped him. As I watch the Mets try to fall apart in the final weeks for the second straight year (and also the Brewers) I think of those 9-year-old Mets fans (and also Brewers fans), who will take this with them forever.
We can start our sad tale on Sept. 20, 1964, when the Phillies beat the Dodgers 3-2. JIm Bunning threw a five-hitter that day — both the runs he gave up were unearned and due to a Vic Power error — and the victory gave the Phillies a 6 1/2 game lead with 12 games to play. Bob remembers that the Wilmington Morning News ran a magic number on the front page — not the front of sports but the front page of the entire paper, which impressed him — and he remembers so clearly seeing that the Magic Number was 7. He remembers seeing that, of course, because it would stay at 7 for a very, very long time.
Funny thing is, even at age 9 Bob knew what most clear-thinking Philadelphia fans knew — the Phillies were winning with smoke, mirrors, trap doors, wires, sleight of hand, David Copperfield arrogance, planted audience members and all sorts of other magician tricks.
Bob says: “Yes, Richie Allen was a wonderful rookie talent. Johnny Callison was having a deal-with-the-devil year. Jim Bunning and Chris Short, especially Bunning, were terrific and capable of beating anyone. Gene Mauch was then, as he always would be, at his best in milking the maximum from an underdog club. … Even so, as the summer unfolded, the Phillies hung in there. You kept waiting for the collapse. We all did, really. I mean, we knew the Phillies weren’t as good as the Dodgers or the Giants or the Reds or the Cardinals. But they kept defying the odds.”
I remember this feeling in Kansas City in 2003. You KNEW the Royals weren’t good enough, and yet the summer went along and they stayed in first place, and after a while you just shrugged and decided that maybe they had the blessings of the gods. They didn’t, of course. But the Royals had the good sense to fall out of things early enough to make the year still seem cheerful. By September 20th, even the most cynical of Phillies fans had to move all his chips in with this team. Nobody blows a 6 1/2 game lead with 12 games to go.
I asked Bob for his cold memories — I didn’t want him to go back and look up the details — and the way he remembers it, the first couple of losses didn’t bother anyone too much. He does remember vague details of that first loss, he was sitting in his father’s car while his parents shopped at the farmer’s market. Tthe Phillies lost 1-0 to Cincinnati. “That was the night that Chico Ruiz or somebody on the Reds scored the only run on a wild pitch or passed ball or something,” he says. In fact, Ruiz stole home with Frank Robinson at the plate. That’s a bad sign, losing 1-0 when someone steals home. The Phillies’ Wes Covington did double to lead off the ninth, but he died at second as John Herrnstein, Clay Dalrymple, Tony Taylor and Ruben Amaro could not drive him home. Cincinnati’s John Tsitouris threw the shutout, his only one of 1964.
The next night, the Phillies lost more directly, 9-2, starter Chris Short pitching on short rest* got rocked pretty good. Frank Robinson homered for the Reds. The lead was 4 1/2 games. Bob doesn’t remember panic creeping in just yet.
*The short rest thing will come up again.
The next night, the Phillies lost to the Reds again, 6-4, this time blowing the lead when Cincinnati’s Vada Pinson crushed a three-run homer off of veteran Ed Roebuck. The Phillies had purchased Roebuck from the Senators back in April and he had pitched brilliantly. That’s one of those glorious things about fluke seasons — Ed Roebucks pitch better than they have their whole lives. Until they don’t.
They lost to Milwaukee 5-3 to make it four losses in a row. Milwaukee’s Joe Torre smacked two doubles, and Jim Bunning took the loss. The next night Philadelphia went 12 hard innings with the Braves. The Phillies were actually down 5-3 in the 10th, but Richie Allen hit a two-run inside-the-park homer off Bob Sadowski to tie the game again, giving everyone in Philadelphia hope. An inside-the-park homer by Dick Allen. If anything should stop the pain, that should do it. “All they needed was one victory,” Bob says. “That would stop it. We all felt that.” Bob was listening to the transistor radio under his pillow, just like the Norman Rockwell cliche, when Milwaukee’s Eddie Mathews single scored Gary Kolb in the 12th. The Braves won 7-5. That made five in a row. The lead was 1 1/2 games.
The next day, the Phillies led the Braves 4-2 going into the eighth inning. The Braves made it 4-3 when Rico Carty scored on a passed ball. Funny thing, the Rico Carty I grew up with in Cleveland would not have scored on a passed ball if that ball passed through customs on its way to Istanbul. My Rico Carty kept his wallet in his back pocket because he didn’t trust his teammates enough to keep it in the dugout. But Rico, like everyone, was a lot younger in 1964.
Anyway, 4-3 going into the ninth, Bobby Shantz on the mound, he had been awfully good since he had been purchased from the Cubs about a month earlier. He gave up a single to Hank Aaron, a single to Eddie Mathews and, after an out, a game-losing triple to Rico Carty. Yeah. A triple to Rico Carty. When the fates turn, they turn hard. That made six losses in a row. The Phillies lead was a half game.
Now it was pure hysteria, nothing else. A panicked Gene Mauch decided to send Jim Bunning out there on two days rest. Could you imagine a manager doing that now? Two days rest? Bunning got absolutely destroyed — seven runs in three innings. Joe Torre homered, Lee Maye had five hits, Hank Aaron drove in two, the Braves drilled the Phillies 14-8. And the unthinkable was real: The Phillies were in second place behind Cincinnati, a team that had won nine games in a row. Bob and those Phillies fans were staring hard at the abyss.
The next night, Mauch sent Chris Short out there on two days rest. Why not? He pitched admirably under the circumstances, I guess, but Ken Boyer hit two doubles off Short, Mike Shannon had three RBIs, and the Phillies lost their eighth in a row, this time to the Cardinals 5-1. There was no escaping justice now. The Phillies dropped to third place.
And the story was really over. Of course, even after Greg Norman blew the lead at the 1996 Masters, he still had to finish off the round. The Phillies lost their ninth in a row, this time to St. Louis 4-2 — the Cardinals’ Ray Sadecki and Barney Schultz combined on the seven-hitter. The Phillies lost their 10th in a row the night after that, 8-5, it was poor Jim Bunning getting ripped again as his freaked out manager sent him out there one more time on two-days rest. Pitching on normal rest, Bunning was 14-4 with a 2.17 ERA on Sept. 1. The last month, he went 4-4 with a 4.68 ERA as Mauch lost his mind.*
*Now, to be fair to Mauch — he did not have anything but Bunning and Short in ‘64. Rookie Dennis Bennett was his next best starter, and in the 10 games leading up to September he had gone 0-5 with a 5.22 ERA. Art Mahaffey, meanwhile, had been getting ripped all year.
That was that. Here’s what Bob says: “It was beyond depressing. I became a cynic at that moment. I already knew there was no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy. But facing this reality was so much worse. I knew in my heart the Phillies had overachieved and yet, here they were, now replacing the 1951 Dodgers as baseball’s ultimate chokers in historical context. I never looked at sports the same way again. I still loved sports. Still do, in fact. But for me, my perspective changed forever after 1964.“
For posterity’s sake it’s worth noting that the Phillies did beat the Reds in their final two games of 1964, which did not do them much good but did take the pennant away from Cincinnati and give it to the St. Louis Cardinals. Bunning threw the shutout on the final day as the Phillies unloaded 10-0 with Richie Allen capping off his marvelous rookie season with two home runs.
And it’s funny: Bob is enough of a baseball historian and lover of the game to know that, as you look back at the ‘64 Phils, it’s probably almost as amazing that the Phillies were in first place by 6 1/2 games to BEGIN WITH as it was that they ended up blowing the lead. The next year, Bob played a whole season of APBA baseball, and he undoubtedly gave his Phillies every break imaginable. They finished 82-80, 12-games behind the Reds.
Still, it doesn’t matter, the pain lingers on, and always will. You know, when you are a Cleveland fan, you have a wide choice of worst moments. You can choose the Drive or the Fumble, Michael Jordan’s jumper over Craig Ehlo or Tony Fernandez’s error, Joel Skinner holding up Kenny Lofton at third or Art Modell yanking the heart out of the city and showing it to us like he was the evil Bruce Lee. For me, though, the worst will always be Red Right 88, because it was the moment made me. My brain knows better, but I will never quite believe that any of that other bad Cleveland stuff even would have happened if Brian Sipe had just thrown the damn ball into Lake Erie, like he was supposed to, and the injured Don Cockroft had kicked the game-winning field goal (he had missed two that cold day and had an extra point blocked), and the Browns had gone on to win the Super Bowl.
Of course it’s illogical, but being a sports fan is illogical, right? Why do we stick with our teams through pain? Why do we endure the agony of Cleveland sports — or Philadelphia sports, or Chicago, Milwaukee. Seattle, Atlanta, Baltimore, wherever? Is it simply because of an accident of geography? I don’t think so. I think we do it because of something deep in our souls, something to do with loyalty or pride and the hope we all have as children. I feel certain I’d be a different man if Red Right 88 had never happened. I’m not sure if I’d be better or worse. But I’d be different.
I also would be a different man if Rutigliano had started choking Sipe as he came off the field.
Here is the Woody Hayes post I have been working on for a couple of days, our final entry on Michael Rosenberg Week. I do remain as insistent as ever that you pick up his wonderful book War As They Knew It about the rivalry between Woody and Bo. It’s just a terrific book about a time and place and two football giants. But I probably won’t mention it again unless Michael starts paying me.
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There was some harsh justice in the ending, in the final punch being thrown at a player who could not even feel it, at a meaningless game named after alligators, in a Southern wasteland that at the time was larger in area than any place in America but had fewer people than Columbus, Ohio. Yes, in that harsh way, it had to end for Woody Hayes in Jacksonville. There were no bowl games in Calcutta then. Read the rest of this entry »
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