Musings on baseball: The 19th Century, the Negro Leagues, Cuba, Outsiders, Crusaders, Brooklyn and, yes, graves.

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Tribute to a Pioneer

Luis Castro

July 20, 2021–Today we dedicated the new headstone for baseball pioneer Luis Castro. It marked my final ceremony as the head of the 19th Century Baseball Grave Marker Project. I am stepping back to concentrate my efforts on a pair of books I am working on, and have handed over the reins to the prolific Sam Gazdziak, whose fine blog RIP Baseball should be a definite stop for anyone who shares our passion for ballplayers who have shuffled off this mortal coil. He also posts a helluva lot more often than I do, so you get a lot more bang for your buck than you do with my infrequent brain droppings. I’ll still be working with the committee in an advisory role, but it’s Sam’s baby now.

Below is the text of the speech I gave, which was attended by my friend John Thorn, as well as State Senator Jessica Ramos, one of the first Colombian-Americans to represent New York. It was a lovely ceremony celebrating a largely unheard of trailblazer. I hope you enjoy.

A little more than five years ago, I had the good fortune of being approached by the esteemed John Thorn to head a project that he had been interested in creating for some time. John and I share an affinity for the early game, the seminal events of the 19^th Century that laid the foundation for the multi-billion dollar industry that is now widely known as America’s Pastime. In particular, he longed to see one of the famed New York Knickerbockers, James Whyte Davis, finally get his due. You see, for many of those pioneers the game of baseball was just that, a pastime, with little to no financial compensation to support their love of the sport. Even those lucky few who were, once baseball became an actual occupation, paid for their efforts received nothing like the salaries we think of when we talk about professional sports today.

Which is why men like James Whyte Davis, when they came to the ends of their lives, found themselves lacking the funds to place a permanent marker at their graves. With the help of John, the members of the Society for American Baseball Research, and the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, we were able to place a stone for Davis in May 2016, at his previously unmarked grave in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Since then, I have headed a group that has placed stones for baseball’s early heroes in Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Philadelphia. Their names ranged from the obscure, like Hicks Hayhurst, who fought to integrate baseball in 1867, right at the dawn of the drawing of the infamous color line which largely barred Black ballplayers from organized baseball. And men like Pud Galvin who, while not one of the more often discussed heroes of yesteryear, nonetheless is enshrined at baseball’s ultimate pantheon, the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Today brings me back to my home town, and where the project all began- New York City. There is a symmetry to this as I am stepping down as the head of the 19^th Century Baseball Grave Marker Project to pursue my other interests in baseball research. The Committee will carry on its good work, under new leadership. Already plans are being laid to mark the grave of Ed Williamson in Chicago, who was the single-season home run king for 34 years until another New Yorker named Babe Ruth came along. I am happy that the humble project that John and I have built will carry on, doing the meaningful work of etching the important names from baseball history into stone.

I am particularly pleased that my final contribution as the head of the project is the man we are honoring today, Luis Castro. For many, the faces of baseball history have an all-too similar hue. Ruth, Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker and Rogers Hornsby, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio. Legends, each and every one of them, to be sure, but most of them played a game that was segregated. The racism that has played such a painful role in America’s past was institutionalized by America’s game. But, with the coming of the twentieth century, there were exceptions. These incredible groundbreakers included men like Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans of Cuba, Baldomero Almada of Mexico, and Alejandro Carrasquel of Venezuela. But before them all, was Colombia’s Luis Castro. When he first stepped on the field for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics on April 23, 1902, as a late-inning replacement for the legendary Nap Lajoie, the newspapers barely noticed. But what history has now shown us is that Castro was the very first Latino to appear in a game played for the entity we now call Major League Baseball.

Castro’s Major League career was brief, as he appeared in a total of only 42 games for the A’s that season and never returned to the big leagues. But the Majors were not the only place a man could make a living playing ball. After his release from Philadelphia, he appeared on clubs in Baltimore, Portland, Kansas City, Nashville, Atlanta and New Orleans. He even headed a barnstorming club known as Count Louis Castro’s Insurgents. Later in life he made a living as an umpire, a boxing promoter, the manager of a motorcycle race track and two hotels, and was the owner of the Diamond Saloon in Atlanta. With the aid of his familial wealth, he tried to buy the Jersey City ballclub of the International League in 1922, a venture that never came to pass.

Jovial and mischievous, Castro was a character who left an impression with all who worked and played with him. Even when he played a minor role on the field, he was a leader in the dugout. Alas, the Great Depression robbed him of that familial wealth and at the time of his death, on September 24, 1941, at Manhattan State Hospital, he was destitute. The bill for his burial went unpaid, until just last year.

Today, we celebrate not just the rich and full life and experience of a true pioneer, a name from baseball’s past that has largely remained in the shadows. Yes, with the recognition brought to him by Senator Ramos’s office, and the kindness of the people at Mount Saint Mary, we are finally able to give Luis Castro some small measure of his due. But, today we also recognize the contributions of the twenty-six Colombians who have played in Major League Baseball, nine of whom who have appeared in a game during the 2021 season, as well as the thousands of Latinos who have stamped their style of play deep into the fabric of the modern game. It may be known as America’s Pastime, but today baseball belongs to the world, and it is the great Latinos of yesterday and the present, who have helped make that so.

Mystery Solved

The Beatles at Play, Redux

April 18, 2021-A few months ago, I stumbled across some photographs of The Beatles playing in a manicured garden, tossing around a softball (scroll down the page a bit to the post on 12/10/20 for the original story). At the time, I was only able to narrow down the possible time and place of the photos by their haircuts and the presumption that, if they were playing softball, the chances were high that it was during one of their visits to America. I have now been able to determine the precise day and location of the pictures and the key that unlocked the mystery was, perhaps predictably, Anthology.

Anthology was the epic documentary that originally aired on ABC in three two-hour showings, November 19-23, 1995. It chronicled the story of The Beatles, from the births of the individual members until their ultimate dissolution in 1971. One of the earliest multimedia events, it also included a massive 367-page book and the release of three new double-CD albums, Anthology 1, 2 and 3. The first two of those albums included the first “new” Beatles songs in nearly a quarter-century, “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love.” Recorded using a combination of John Lennon demo tapes that had been given to the project by Yoko Ono, and new instrumentations and vocals by the three surviving members, “Free As a Bird” reached number 6 in the Billboard top 100. “Real Love” peaked at number 11, falling just shy of giving the Beatles their 35^th top-ten single.

I hadn’t seen Anthology since it originally aired, and recently decided to buy the DVDs and give it a second viewing. I was pleased to learn that the DVDs included over three and a half hours of material that was not a part of the original TV release, as well as an additional disc of bonus footage, and I have slowly been making my way through the opus. Last night I reached the stage in their careers where they filmed Help!, their goofball chase film centered around Ringo fleeing from a religious sect that was attempting to retrieve a ring needed for their human sacrifice. The band, and director Richard Lester, wanted to get as far away as they possibly could from the pseudo-documentary feel of their first film, the black-and-white A Hard Day’s Night. The absurd plot, as well as the far-flung locations of the sun-splashed beaches of the Bahamas and the icy ski slopes of the Austrian Alps, were the antithesis of their previous hit.

Of all of the Beatles film and TV appearances, Help! is one of the few that doesn’t seem to be accessible for streaming, whether by legitimate or not-so-legal means. As a result, I haven’t seen this one in years, either. My personal recollections of this ridiculous film, the first Beatles picture I ever saw, came rushing back as the members shared their memories of making the movie. It was during one scene, where they were ostensibly hiding out from the murderous cult at Buckingham Palace, that the mystery of the softball photos was revealed. While George and Ringo play cards, and John lurks in the background contemplating how to get the MacGuffin off of Ringo’s finger, Paul is in the corner, tossing a softball against the wall while wearing a right-handers baseball mitt on the wrong hand.

My suspicion was confirmed when Paul stood up to approach Ringo and passed an open window. The perfectly landscaped gardens of the photographs were obvious in the background. This was clearly the day the Beatles played their likely-chaotic version of the game, tossing around the softball like kids on a playground.

With the assistance of the brilliant Beatles Bible, I was able to learn that those gardens were on the grounds of the stand-in for Buckingham Palace, Cliveden House, an opulent 19^th-Century mansion in Maidenhead, Berkshire. The property is a frequent location for Hollywood, appearing in the films Death on the Nile (1978), Chaplin (1995) and Sherlock Holmes (2009), among many others. The house was originally constructed in 1851, but when it was purchased in 1895 by William Waldorf Astor, an American scion of the uber-rich Astor family, he did an extensive remodel of the interior. Astor moved to England in 1893 where, with the aid of his tremendous wealth, he became the 1^st Lord Astor. In a bizarre twist of my admittedly expansive family tree, Lord Astor was the nephew of William Backhouse Astor Jr., whose wife, Caroline Schermerhorn, was a distant great-grandaunt of my grandmother, Geraldine Schermerhorn. Beyond serving as the occasional film location, the modern day Cliveden House is also a posh spa where one can spend a weekend in the lap of luxury. A three-day stay will run you about $4,000.

As for the Beatles, the day they filmed this particular scene at Cliveden House was one in which the usually genial Lester became exasperated with his famous charges. The date was May 10, 1965, and just the day before they had attended a Bob Dylan concert in London. After the show they joined Dylan at his suite at the Savoy Hotel, where they were accompanied by singer Alma Cogan (the “girl with the giggle”), as well Allen Ginsberg, the famous Beat Poet. The party spilled from the Savoy and carried on to various nightclubs around London. George Harrison would later admit that the day they filmed this scene, all four of them had smoked so much marijuana that none of them could remember their lines. To the consternation of Lester, take after take was ruined by memory lapses and laughter. The photos which began this particular line of research most certainly feature the boys in high-spirits, indeed.

At Long Last

The Negro Leagues

December 30, 2020-Earlier this month Major League Baseball took the unprecedented and long-overdue step of announcing that they were going to officially start considering the seven different Negro Leagues that existed between 1920-1948 as “major.” This decision is destined to have profound implications, both social and statistical. Baseball has always been a game of numbers and the integration of Negro League stats, almost 75 years after Jackie Robinson integrated the Dodgers, will certainly further fuel the fires of “who was the greatest” conversations on barstools and podcasts for decades to come. But the implications are far greater than a bolstered stat line at Baseball Reference. Major League Baseball is reexamining history in a way that forces us to have difficult conversations about how the segregated, complicated world of the Negro Leagues challenges the traditional evaluation of statistics as an accurate measure of a player’s value.

The decision has also inspired some debate as to whether or not Major League Baseball has a legitimate authority to make such a claim. After all, if it weren’t for the systemic racism within what was known at the time as “Organized Baseball,” which barred Black ballplayers from joining the majors, a reckoning such as this would have never been necessary. To now bring them into the fold, when all but the smallest handful of those veterans are no longer with us, feels more like appropriation than appreciation to some.

MLB’s decision was certainly influenced by the events of this past summer, when the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer sparked worldwide protests and intensified the national conversation on race. But this day has been a long time coming, and for a select group of historians, it is the vindication of a body of work to which they have dedicated their lives. I was fortunate enough to speak separately with four of the historians whose work MLB cited in their press release. Each of these individuals played an integral role in this decision, and we talked about their research, the role historians play in baseball’s identity, the backlash the acknowledgment has received, and what comes next.

Gary Ashwill has been researching the Negro Leagues for twenty years. A son of Kansas City, he remembers the day from his childhood when Satchel Paige died, and how the City mourned the passing of a legend. It was Robert Peterson’s seminal work, Only the Ball Was White, (a gift from his mother) which first set Ashwill on his current path. He threw himself into the subject, as well as the statistical work of Bill James. He assiduously followed the early attempts to compile the stats of Negro League stars, but he longed for a more complete picture. A well-fated trip to the library resulted in him diving into the Black newspapers that covered the game. He started collecting photocopies of box scores, by the hundreds. Initially, he used his findings to start a blog where he posted spreadsheets of his research. With the help of his friend Kevin Johnson, he merged his efforts with Seamheads.com in 2011 to found the Negro Leagues Database. Ashwill is quick to point out that the Database is the result of not only his own research, but that of Larry Lester, Dick Clark, Wayne Stivers, Patrick Rock, Scott Simkus, and countless others. However, many of those same people are just as quick to make it clear that Gary is the driving force behind what has become the definitive location for statistics from the Negro Leagues.

Bob Kendrick is the President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Born in the small town of Crawfordville, Georgia (current population 530), he moved to Kansas City in 1980 when Park University offered him a basketball scholarship. Bob’s introduction to the Negro Leagues came in 1993, when he started volunteering with the museum. He shirks from calling himself a historian; to him, claiming that title is a disservice to those who have done more extensive research on the subject than himself. The transition from causal fan to passionate advocate began when he started to meet the still-living veterans of the Negro Leagues. Their positive attitudes, with nary a word of recrimination or regret for what might have been, inspired him. In 1998, he became the Museum’s first director of marketing, a position he held until he briefly left the organization in 2010. Thirteen months later, he returned to the NLBM as the President. He has, in the ensuing years, become one of the game’s greatest ambassadors. Sharply-dressed, continuously smiling, Bob is always ready to share his time and knowledge with those who want to learn more about the men whose own passions have shaped the trajectory of his career.

Larry Lester was a co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and has been researching the history of the Black game for half a century. Like Ashwill, he also grew up in Kansas City, five blocks from Municipal Stadium where he frequently attended Athletics games. Living in a segregated part of the city, it was his visits to Municipal that made him wonder “where all these white people came from.” His interest in the Negro Leagues was sparked when he asked his older neighbors about the absence of Black players from the histories, and they introduced him to the folklore and myths that have long defined the Black game. It was while in college in the 1960s that he read Only the Ball Was White, and its historical reckoning of those myths. That inspired him to “jump down a rabbit hole” from which he has never emerged. He joined SABR in the early 1980s and has been the head of their Negro Leagues research committee for over twenty-five years, taking over from its founders Dick Clark and John Holway. Noticing a dearth of research on the subject within SABR, Larry founded the Jerry Malloy Negro Leagues Conference which has grown from 30 attendees to 130 in recent years. He has written several books including his most recent, Black Baseball’s National Showcase, which you can buy here.

Scott Simkus is a frequent contributor to the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database. He comes from a long line of baseball fanatics, with a grandfather who played as a white semi-pro in Chicago, including a tilt against the barnstorming Cuban Stars. As a kid, Simkus drained the shelves of his local library of baseball books, including multiple readings of Only the Ball Was White (the importance of this book cannot be overstated). Even then, he noticed that despite the depth of information Peterson’s book brought to the conversation, it lacked the statistics to go with the stories. But it wasn’t until his early-30s that he turned his free-time attentions to researching the Negro Leagues and filling those gaps. What began as a quest to find the box score of his grandfather’s game against the Stars (he still hasn’t) has blossomed into a nearly twenty-year passion—one that even led to him playing a major creative role with Strat-O-Matic when the venerable fantasy game decided to include Negro League stars in their 2009 edition. It was around that time, via the website The Baseball Think Factory, that he met Gary Ashwill and the rest of the like-minded historians who would found the Negro Leagues Database in 2011. Scott has rebuilt the datasets for 1933, 1943 and a large portion of the 1922 campaigns. Scott is the author of the book Outsider Baseball, which you can get here.

RC: The long-held belief is that we could never look at the Negro Leagues through the same lens as major league baseball because we didn’t have reliable records. Do you think that statement is still accurate?

LL: Absolutely not. That theory is now a myth. Before the internet, I made trips to the local library to make copies of every box score I could find. I would order microfilm copies of the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, the New York Amsterdam News, the Philadelphia Tribune, the St. Louis Argus, whatever I could get through inter-library loan. At some point, I started compiling stats and now I can produce roughly 250 different reports to filter out any info I need. These stats are, in my opinion, solid and I can say that because when I compare them to major league stats, I can conclude that these numbers mirror the numbers in major league baseball, [both good and bad]. That’s important to me because we always read about the great ballplayers, but the Negro Leagues had just as many poor ballplayers as major league baseball. But the same percentage of Negro Leaguers batted over .300 as did in major league baseball. That’s what the stats showed me. I felt good that the stats are solid.

BK: Honestly, I never thought that was the case. But you’re right, there was that core group of folks who are data-driven who believe that you needed stats to quantify anything. I have never felt that way. Even when baseball made the announcement recently, the statistical aspect of what will transpire for me is still just contextual. It puts the Negro Leagues into some level or realm of context. It will never define the Negro Leagues. I don’t think you can ever reduce their story to just statistical data. But, our sport is a beautiful game of comparisons and statistics and the thing that people would always say about the Negro Leagues is that statistics weren’t readily available. Now, through the efforts of a lot of researchers, statistical data has been compiled.

SS: The trope is bullshit. But the problem is, and it’s not people’s fault, they just haven’t been educated. In their mind they are looking for 154-game seasons because that’s what the major leagues played. They didn’t play 154 games. They had to go and play barnstorming games to make money. They probably averaged about 75 [league] games. There were certain years where teams played over a hundred games against other major Black teams and there are years where they played 30 or 40. Another thing people just don’t understand is that the schedule was never balanced. That’s what the average baseball fan who is well meaning and has an interest in the history of the game is having a hard time processing. But, we’re there. We’ve got a credible database that’s worth it and we’re going to continue to chip away and add more games.

RC: How long ago was that true, in your opinion? Was it just this year, or have we had enough of a picture for years now?

SS: Even though the database has been live in some shape or form since 2011, it wasn’t until January of 2020, pre-pandemic, that we had the full set of seasons. We timed it that way. It was a lot of work to get there, but we thought, if we can get this up by 2020, it’s the 100^th anniversary, it’d be very cool to have this online. That was part of the goal. And John Thorn is friends with all of us. He’s been monitoring this and I think he’s been very instrumental behind the scenes in making Major League Baseball take a look at this. Part of it was, you had to have a credible database with the statistics that balance, and the wins and losses balance. Nobody else had done that yet, and we did it.

GA: [For me it was] almost from the moment that we put up our first version of the database. It was fairly limited, but you could see. I think we started with something like 1915-‘22 or ’23, and a bunch of Cuban League stuff. We didn’t have stuff after that, but it was pretty clear what you could get. Then if you clicked over to Baseball Reference, at least you could get the more basic workup that they had there. That was nine or ten years ago. [But] a big milestone for us was last year when we finally added the last season, which was the 1932 Negro Southern League. That was the last one we added that gave us full coverage of all of the canonical Southern, Black major leagues, from 1920-1948. We had at least something for every season back to 1886. So, I would say that was a milestone, although we had been gradually building toward that for some time. I don’t know if the fact that we completed full coverage, if that by itself was the tipping point [for MLB], but it’s probably not that much of a coincidence.

RC: For the period between 1920-1948, what percentage of games would you say we have at this point?

LL: In the 1920s, we probably have 98-99% of the games that are listed in the league schedule. When you go to the early ‘30s, the Great Depression, it’s a mixed bag. Either they didn’t have a reporter who could cover as many games, or the teams didn’t want to pay telegraphing services or wire transfers. If we move to the late 1930s, 1937, on through the 1940s, we got probably 90% of the games based on the printed schedule. The sample size is large enough to quantify the greatness, or lack of greatness, of every ballplayer. Gary Ashwill and I are very comfortable with the integrity of the data.

GA: We’ve counted 12,545 games during those years between major Black teams, so that doesn’t count barnstorming or any of that stuff, just games between major Black teams. We have box scores that are included in our database for 9,137, so that’s 73%. The stuff that’s missing is the early-‘30s, into the mid-‘30s. But obviously, early ‘30s, that’s the Depression and a lot of instability with respects to both teams and leagues, which were going out of business. The East West League in 1932 lasted for two or three months. The Negro Southern League lasted the year but teams were entering and leaving the league like crazy. There are a couple of teams, like the Alcoa Sluggers and the Lexington Hard Hitters, who were apparently in the league, but I haven’t been able to document games against league teams, yet, so I don’t have them in there. There’s actually a team we have in our database, the Columbus Turfs, we have records of games that they played but we don’t have a single box score. That’s the only case in the whole database where we actually have a team in the standings but there’s no stats. I would like to fix that at some point.

RC: Why do you think MLB went with this period? 1920 is obviously the founding of Rube Foster’s Negro National League and 1948 was the final World Series, but surely that alone couldn’t be the reason? There was a lot of professional Black baseball that happened before and after those dates.

LL: I do think it is because 1948 was the last year of the Negro League World Series. They had to have what I call a “Cinderella hour,” for a demarcation year. I’m not going to push back on 1948 right now, but after we move along maybe I can get 1949 and 1950 included. It’s hard, as you know, to say this is the cutoff point for the Negro Leagues as a major league. You got Willie Mays playing in ’48, ’49, and ’50. Okay, let’s cut off at 1950. Then you got Ernie Banks who played in 1950 and 1953. Then you got Hank Aaron in 1951. Was Hank Aron playing at a major league level with the Indianapolis Clowns? Probably not. But it’s a gradual diminishment of talent.

SS: I was lobbying for 1901-’48 and I was told that that’s going to be a bridge too far, and indeed it was. And maybe ’01 might have been too soon. But as you know, the Indianapolis ABCs and the Chicago American Giants and some of these clubs, they were playing each other a significant amount of games years prior to the formation of the Negro National League and they were every bit as good. And if the 1920 team is major league quality than certainly the 1919 team was. Now, I’ve studied 1949, ’50, ’51. It’s close, but geez, you’re losing a lot of talent from ’48 to ’49. The top-25 hitters (I’m talking OPS) in 1948, thirteen of them are gone. They are not playing the full season in ’49. They are either going to Mexico or they are going into Organized Baseball. Even though we had Willie Mays playing in ’49 and then you would later on have Aaron and Banks and Jim Baker and Gilliam. It was a very good triple-A, is what I would call it, and one of the best in the country. But you gotta draw the line somewhere, and maybe ultimately ’20-’48 is right, but gosh… Here’s why [the exclusion of pre-1920 players] bothers me. We’re not going to see the full careers of John Henry “Pop” Lloyd, we’re not going to see any of Rube Foster, Pete Hill. We’re losing a lot of the great players. Smokey Joe Williams! Had we taken it back to ’01 and just said folks, tough if you don’t like it, this is how they operated, as independents. They were major league quality and we’re going to include a certain amount of teams that meet a certain threshold. Then we would have had everybody’s careers.

GA: I think it is the fact that we are using the phrase “Negro Leagues” and we’re also using the phrase “major leagues.” It can sometimes be a bit hard for people to wrap their minds around the idea of professional baseball that’s not organized by league. It’s also the fact that this is the centennial of the founding of the NNL, so that’s part of the context. I do think that’s a large part of it. It is true that overall that era is much better represented in the kind of games that most people would think of as major league games. We have 12,500 games [from that era]. The number of games between major Black teams before 1920, I don’t have the exact figure, but I think it’s something like 3,000. And that’s in all the years, starting in 1887. There was actually an attempt at a Black league that year, the National Colored League. [But] in terms of the kind of games that people are going to want to think of as possibly official major league games, the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s, there is a lot more of that going on. (RC: And expanding that window?) In my conversations so far with the people at Elias (who have not committed to anything), they seem very receptive and open and excited about all of this, so it’s not impossible. I would argue for greater inclusivity. There’s no doubt that some of the best baseball players in the world were playing for Black teams from the 1880s on. Another issue is that they have officially recognized the leagues from the ’20-’48 era, but of course you have a lot of really important independent teams during that era. The 1931 Homestead Grays had six Hall of Famers, I think. Do you really want to say that the 1931 Homestead Grays were not major league but the 1926 Dayton Marcos were?

BK: I personally thought they could have easily gone into the early 1950s. If you think about it, in 1948, you only have 6 Black players in the major leagues. You have five that go up in 1947, and Satchel who goes up in 1948 [author’s note: Roy Campanella also made his debut in 1948, bringing the total over the first two seasons to 7]. And to say the World Series? There were many years they didn’t have a World Series. The World Series should not be a measuring stick on when this league became “less-than.” To me, by 1955 the Negro Leagues were starting to become less, not just because so much talent had now moved to the major leagues. What you saw was the fan base leave. The fans left almost instantly to go see Jackie and to go see Larry and so the teams out east took a big hit, because they were close enough where fans could go see them play. The midwestern teams were able to hang on. Look at how much star power came out of the Negro leagues after 1948. And there was an overwhelming amount of talent that didn’t get a fair shake. You have to understand, there was still a quota system in place. They weren’t just opening their doors and allowing Black folks to run on in. There was certainly greatness before 1920, [but] you strictly had barnstorming teams from that era, and it was taking on all-comers. So, I can understand, particularly with this being the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Negro Leagues, that they chose 1920 as their starting point. I don’t have any complaints against that as a starting point. I just thought the cutoff point could have extended into the early 1950s.

RC: There is going to be a lot of statistical reevaluation. What do you think one of the positives of that reevaluation will be, and what do you think some of the risks are?

LL: It depends on how you look at the stats. I don’t like to use the word “merge,” I like to use the word “add.” We’re adding stats to a player’s career. And we’re using qualifiers. We’re saying that Satchel Paige and Hilton Smith threw no-hitters. We can say now that Red Grier, in the 1926 World Series, threw a no-hitter just like Don Larsen. (RC: Leon Day had an opening day no-hitter, joining Bob Feller.) Exactly. And so we [need to] qualify our statements, instead of saying that only Bob Feller and Leon Day had opening day no-hitters in major league baseball. That’s not really a true statement. Because how do you define major league baseball? You have to put that qualifier in there. When you and I are writing the story it is important that when we are talking about major league baseball we are talking about white baseball, and when we are talking about Negro League baseball we are talking about Black baseball.

SS: We’re going to be introduced to 3,400 players that a lot of people have never heard of, and dozens of teams. A lot of people have heard of Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell and Oscar [Charleston]. There’s another 3,400 guys and some of them were really good and really interesting and it’s going to be fun to learn about them. You’re going to have history as it actually occurred. And so now in the future when people look at major league baseball in 1924, you are going to see the National League and the American League, and you’re going to see the Eastern Colored League and the Negro National League, and you are going to see, in black and white, you’re going to see how this country operated. (RC: And risks?) This is a big step. It’s going to be complex and there’s going to have to be some tough conversations. I think one of the most difficult things for people to wrap their heads around is the fact that there are independent Negro League teams, in many of the seasons, and I’m talking about 1920-1948. The Homestead Grays played as an independent for a number of those years. Do we include those stats or not? I say yes we do because they were often better than most of the Negro League teams. Same with the Kansas City Monarchs. [Another risk] is that people aren’t going to understand partial, shorter seasons and unbalanced schedules. “Well, where’s the 84 home runs? I guess Josh Gibson wasn’t that good.” Thank god we have SABRmetrics which teaches us how to adjust things in our mind and say, “well he played 54 games and he hit 19 home runs so that translates into 57 in a full season.” Baseball-Reference has a per-162 at the bottom of their ledger, as does Seamheads, and that’s a tool you can use to kind of navigate this stuff.

GA: Risks would be that people who might be hostile to this whole effort could seize on things that they perceive as weaknesses in the statistical record, or the fact that it might change a little bit, here and there, or even just aspects of the nature of the Negro Leagues, themselves. The fact that the league seasons were shorter and that in a lot of ways the leagues were somewhat more unstable. They’ll seize on that to try and discredit the whole enterprise and also discredit Black professional baseball before integration. The positives are the possibility that it would help the baseball public get a better handle on how numbers and statistics help us understand the game. Instead of just focusing on counting stats and worrying about who the batting titlist was in a particular year. It will help people understand that the best use for baseball statistics is to try and understand what happened in the past. How good players were and how good teams were, how they competed against each other and the kinds of strategies they used. It’s not a matter of life or death whether Ty Cobb got 4,191 hits or whether he got two more or two fewer. We look at Mule Suttles and whether he hit 32 home runs [in a season] or whether we find another one and he hit 33, we’re still going to be evaluating him by looking at his home park, looking at the strength of his schedule, looking at his overall performance, looking at how that relates to his performance in 1925 or 1927 when he was injured. Does it really matter that much whether Willie Mays gets his 661^st home run? It probably doesn’t. You already know he did what he did. This decision doesn’t really change what you think about Willie Mays. To me, MLB’s recognition doesn’t suddenly change the historical evidence. It doesn’t change the fact that all of these players and teams did what they did. What it does change, is that it makes people more aware of them. It extends the possibility for people to grasp that these were important leagues where really good professional players played.

BK: Stats won’t tell the complete story, but it will put the Negro Leagues into context. And the reason I say that is, stats will not tell you that J.L. Wilkinson, who owned the Kansas City Monarchs, bought a plane in 1943 to fly Satchel all over the country so that he could hire Satchel out to pitch for other teams, and then Satchel could make his way back and rejoin for the Monarchs. Statistical data will never be able to quantify that. And those are the games that will not be included in Satchel’s statistics, even though he was pitching against other Black teams. He might have been pitching against major league barnstorming teams. It will not tell you that. It won’t tell you truly how great Satchel Paige really was. But for a player who I admire so greatly, the legendary Monte Irvin, who had a great career in the Negro Leagues and then transitioned into major league baseball and had [only] a very good career, because he’s 30 years old when he gets to the major leagues. His batting average will likely go up now, because he was a .293 lifetime hitter in the major leagues, but when you combine his Negro League numbers, he will now likely be somewhere around .310-.315. It’s amazing what .300 does in how people look at you. You move into a select class when you are lifetime .300. That’s what it will likely do for a player like him.

RC: How active a role is the Negro League Database playing with Elias and the official evaluation of the stats?

SS: Those direct conversations are happening now. As far as what our role is going to be, I don’t know yet. We are historians. Getting this designation for the Negro Leagues was really not our chief goal. Our chief goal was recording what these players and these teams actually did, doing it in a uniformed fashion, making sure the data balanced and trying to get the most complete and accurate database that was ever constructed. We have a huge responsibility and we know that we hold something that’s extremely valuable on a couple different levels. We are going to proceed cautiously.

GA: We’ll be working pretty closely with them. We’ve already had one video meeting with them the other day. I’m pretty optimistic about it. It seemed like they are into it and they are also aware of the various challenges with respect to the data and the history. They are aware that it is also a case where we might establish certain numbers and then further research will change the numbers at some point. They are totally ready for that.

RC: There has been some backlash from respected voices like Howard Bryant and Clinton Yates, who both wrote powerful pieces about how MLB is, at the very least, approaching this from a troubling angle, as though legitimacy was a concept that was theirs alone to bestow. Do you have any thoughts about that?

LL: I felt Clinton’s article was off-base. I felt it was disrespectful. Howard Bryant, him and Lonnie Wheeler are two of my favorite writers. Howard did an excellent job writing the piece, however, he was off-base. If Major League Baseball doesn’t do anything, then they will be criticized. That was always the problem I had with Judge Landis. He had the power to do something. He had the power to say, “baseball will not discriminate,” and he never did. Unless Major League Baseball steps up and says something, then the Negro Leagues are still second-tier. I applaud Commissioner Manfred for taking this step. Howard Bryant made some very strong and valid racial arguments that I agree with, but they don’t have anything to do with the stats. He doesn’t know the stats.

SS: I saw Howard Bryant’s piece. In one respect I understand his cynicism with Major League Baseball. I get it and it’s probably deserved. On the other hand, it felt like he started to attack the Negro Leagues themselves. So that part of Howard’s argument just didn’t make sense to me.  He started to denigrate the Negro Leagues and then at the end he tries to bring them back and say, “we miss the poetry of Josh Gibson’s 800 home runs.” I’m a historian. I want to know what the facts are. My question is, had they announced in the summer during Negro Leagues weekend in the major leagues, had they announced that “we are going to take a look at the Negro Leagues and we are seriously going to consider designating it as major-league caliber,” and had they come back this fall and said, “you know we looked at it hard, we talked to historians and we decided to not do it,” would Howard Bryant have written an article commending them for their wisdom? A lot of people have been very cynical about Major League Baseball’s decision. I get it. I think it’s totally justified. But on the other hand, if you step back and say, you know what, this takes a lot of guts, because for forever people are going to look at the record book and go, “Oh my god, this country was crazy. Black guys had to play in these leagues and white guys had to go play over here. This is nuts.” You could run the risk of the Negro Leagues being forgotten a hundred years from now, if we’re still here. Now, they won’t. You’re going to go and you’re going to look at the historical record and see how segregated this country was. That takes a lot of guts.

GA: I don’t speak for Major League Baseball, it’s just my opinion, but I think it would be better to approach it from the point of view of acknowledging and respecting, as opposed to elevating or promoting or bestowing status on the Negro Leagues. I think it’s totally possible for that to be the path that they take. I tend to think that’s a better way of looking at it. Somebody asked me in an interview, how do you feel making all of these thousands of players into major leaguers? I didn’t make them anything, they made themselves major leaguers. If you’re kind of a casual baseball fan, or even a serious baseball fan, but you don’t think too much about history, you can kind of look at this and be like, “Yeah, they made them into major leaguers! Cool!” I understand the immediate reaction somebody might have, but I think that if you think about it, I think that pieces like what Howard Bryant wrote, and other critical takes on it, they have a point. I think that’s something everybody should think about as we move forward with this. And I hope by the time we do get Negro League records established as part of an overall major league record, the process of doing that will encourage that kind of discussion. Sometimes it will be really difficult things that are brought up and I think that is to be encouraged. I hope it helps us confront some of the history of racism that so often in the U.S. that nobody wants to talk about, at least no white people want to talk about it.

BK: Both Howard and Clinton are friends of mine. Howard called me the day of the announcement to share his thoughts and perspective so I wouldn’t be caught off guard. I fully respect where he’s coming from. For me, I put it more into historical context and relevancy. I knew so many of these players. They were self-assured, they knew they could play, they knew how good their league was, they were never seeking validation. They didn’t need to be validated. That was my stance, initially, when I first caught wind of this several months ago. But then, I started to rethink my convictions and to look at what this meant in the annals of history, it was quite significant. The word “elevate” was probably not the best choice of words and honestly, I don’t think MLB meant it that way, but I fully understood Clinton and Howard’s position. What I believe now is that it makes the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum even more important and I hope it only enhances the already solid relationship we have with Major League Baseball because it is important that we don’t water down this history. I don’t want, twenty years or thirty years from now, someone looking at the statistical history of major league baseball and when they see these Negro League players amongst those who were formally once separated from them, to think this is the way it’s always been. It’s still important that we understand that the Negro Leagues were born out of segregation. These players had no choice but to create a league of their own. To me, what this was more about was a reckoning, atonement, acknowledgement and recognition for what these leagues represented both on and off the field. From that standpoint, it is historically significant. As I’ve mentioned on a couple of occasions, when we started the museum 30 years ago, we not only had a mission of preserving and celebrating and educating and illuminating this history, our long-term goal was to hopefully influence enough that we could rewrite the pages of American history books to include the history that is not there. Major League Baseball did in one day what we’ve been trying to do for 30 years. They have started to rewrite the pages of American history books now to include this story. The fact that so many of the players’ families were so excited that their loved ones were being remembered. It’s hard not to ally yourself with that.

RC: The one part of this that I think MLB did well in their press statement was to give space to the historians whose research made this day possible. Can you speak to the role that historians, the ones mentioned in the release and the more anonymous ones, played in causing this sea change in MLB’s thought process?

LL: The American public needs to know that we didn’t do this heavy lifting without a lot of other people, like Dick Clark, Wayne Stivers, Jerry Malloy, and John Holway. He started the first statistical movement. Bill Plott was a major contributor of Southern League statistics. It’s always problematic when you start naming names. You’re going to leave out somebody.

SS: Gary Ashwill is the Michael Jordan of this stuff. Gary has been the driving force in taking the data to a new level and he deserves all of the praise and thanks. He’s been amazing and he’s taught me some things and I’m just proud to have contributed. [When I found out about the announcement] I just got choked up… I thought about my grandfather and I still get a little bit… I thought about my dad who passed away in 2016, a couple months before the Cubs won the World Series so he didn’t get to see it. I just wish they were here to see this. We are changing history and it’s overwhelming.

GA: Historians have a unique role, those of us who are going back and trying to dig up or preserve or analyze baseball’s past. This action by MLB is unique. I can’t think of a parallel. There’s nothing like that has happened anywhere else. I think it is fitting that historians, with the unique role we play in baseball culture, that we are also there helping to create the conditions for this thing to happen. I don’t think that it’s something that could have happened without a vibrant, independent community of researchers. I think that’s true of the whole history of baseball statistics and baseball history, period. It’s always been independent researchers who have really driven the recovery and preservation of baseball history.

BK: It’s a yeoman’s duty, what they’ve done. Trying to go back and find this information, it may not be quite of the magnitude of a needle in a haystack, but it’s pretty doggone close. Because you are going back and trying to identify and unearth information that has by and large been lost to time. For them to put in the dedication and the diligence to do this, you cannot help but be impressed by them. Knowing Pete Gordon over at the Donaldson Network and how they’ve been going about this for so long to unearth [info] about one player, one single player with John Donaldson. Now you are talking about an entire league of players, and in this case seven leagues of players. You know how challenging that is? So, there is great respect for what they have done.

RC: Where do we go from here? What do you think the next steps are for MLB, in terms of their responsibility to these leagues that they now consider to be one of their own? Is there talk of things like pensions for the families of the former players?

LL: I would like a seat at the table to discuss any retroactive pensions for someone like a Ron Teasley, who played in 1948 for the New York Cubans and Clyde Golden, if he’s still around. I’m not sure about Reverend Greason. He did play in the major leagues; I don’t know if he gets a major league pension or not. And the fourth guy is Willie Mays, who of course does get a major league pension. So, we’re looking at probably three ballplayers who may get pensions. We probably have another one-hundred fifteen Negro Leaguers who played after 1948, who would not qualify for a pension. MLB has a responsibility to continue to push the needle forward for full recognition. I would like to see them reach out to families. I don’t know if an apology would be… or just to reach out to the families of Max Manning and Leon Day and Ron Teasley, Newt Allen, Frank Duncan, Cristóbal Torriente. [What lies ahead] definitely is a process. The Negro Leagues are a product of a racist institution called major league baseball. We cannot change history but we can learn from it and learn how not to repeat it. That’s the takeaway.

SS: My opinion, as a baseball dork that just loves this with a passion, is that if there is any revenue to be generated by this that I would love for a portion of it to go to African American scholars and historians, as an honor to the group of us that have actually rebuilt this thing. I think that would be a positive gesture. Maybe they can help some of the foundations out a little bit, too. But, help young African American scholars, historians that are going to college. That might be an idea that would be on my wish list. One of the coolest things that has emerged from this is that I got to meet a lot of grandchildren and children of Negro Leaguers over the past ten years, and to see the sense of wonder as they learn something new about their relative, about their family, and their pride. As you know as a writer and historian yourself, you can only go so far back with African American history before these people are considered property and you can’t go back any further. Well, we are doing our best to take these folks that played in the 19^th and 20^th century in these segregated leagues and we are giving them a name and a picture and the dates and where they are from and what they did and that is a cool thing, and I know the families appreciate it. So, if there’s a way for this to benefit people that are interested in their own family histories and legacy, that’s something we can all be proud of.

GA: They should look at issues like pensions. At this point we only know of four living players that this decision effects, one of whom is Willie Mays. I’m not an expert on the issue of reparations, but it is something to think about. I know that MLB already has various efforts to try and recover and bolster their connection to the Black community in the United States but I think it would be a very good idea to revisit these efforts and redouble them. Even if you say, “we are just recognizing the Negro Leagues as equals, as fellow major leagues,” there’s still a perception that they are laying claim to them. If you’re going to do that, I think it does entail some responsibility. They should look beyond the pure baseball history-related aspects of this to think about their own role in American culture and that includes American racial politics.

BK: It’s going to be interesting to see and I have not had that discussion with them, yet. We’re certainly, I hope, going to have that discussion. I would hope that it would lead to an even greater embracing of the work we are doing here in Kansas City as the primary caretaker of this history. I think it’s even more important now for MLB that this doesn’t appear to be self-serving, and I certainly do not think that is their intent. I think their intent is really to atone for that blatant dismissal that occurred in 1969 when these leagues were not formally recognized. Some would say it was an oversight. It was no oversight. It was blatant dismissal, if we call it exactly what it was. That is my job now. To try and make sure that we align ourselves so that this history lives on. At some point in time there are not going to be Negro League players left. And this museum is here to make sure their legacies play on. That historic announcement really kind of fortifies that. Anything MLB does people are going to think that there’s an ulterior motive. That’s the nature of the beast. But I do think that their intent was just that, great intent, and they want to see this story live on. That’s why I tip my cap to the Commissioner, because he didn’t have to do this. He did what others could have done but didn’t do. This commissioner stood up and did the right thing. As we know, and it’s been said many times. “It’s always the right time to do the right thing.” And he did. He did it fully knowing that he was going to catch heat for doing it. And yet he still did it. I applaud what MLB has done. It took me a minute to get there, but I’m glad that in my old age I am still flexible enough to see the error of my ways.

Crossover

The Beatles

December 10, 2020-If you’ve read the book you know that the three things I spend most of my free time thinking about are baseball, the Beatles and the works of William Shakespeare. There’s not a lot of crossover between them, though I was excited to recently learn from David Block’s groundbreaking book, “Baseball Before We Knew It,” that Shakespeare mentioned the predecessor game stool-ball in Two Noble Kinsmen, which the Bard co-wrote with John Fletcher. Bill, ever the lascivious sort, has the scorned, mad, jailer’s daughter tell her wooer that they will play the game when they run away to the end of the world together. To the Elizabethans, there was a well-known sexual connotation to “playing stool-ball,” likely because of the game’s connection to fertility rites, and the fact that this bat and ball contest was frequently played by both men and women.

However, it’s not Shakespeare, but the Beatles who inspired the rabbit hole I dove into a few weeks ago (and where I currently remain). Happily, there’s a little more intersection between baseball and the Fab Four than a solitary reference. I recently discovered a wonderful set of photos of John, Paul, and Ringo playing a game of softball that were taken, judging by the haircuts, some time in 1965 or 1966, likely in America. I have been unable to identify the specifics of this playful photo op (still digging), but they feature a smiling John wearing a mitt, Ringo pitching, and Paul swinging a bat (right-handed!). There’s another where John has thrown the ball, which is still rising, while he awaits its return with one foot in the air. A child at play. George appears to either not have been in attendance, or he managed to elude the photographer.

There’s also some crossover in the memorabilia world. If baseball contains sport’s most valuable artifacts, the same can be said for the Beatles and Rock & Roll. And baseballs signed by the Beatles? Examples of those have sold in recent years for anywhere from $12,000 for one with very faded signatures, to $100,000 for another that was signed by the boys on the night of their final official concert in 1966. Why was there a baseball laying around at the Beatles final concert? Because it was at Candlestick Park.

The Beatles invented the stadium concert, long before the equipment necessary to perform in such cavernous arenas even existed, leading to some famously horrible sounding shows. It’s a shame because during their Hamburg days, they were a hell of a live band–funny, dynamic, and they could play. Below is a 1962 version of the band playing “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby,” at the Star Club in Germany. The track is fun because while they were clearly still figuring out how to end a song, you can hear how even then, they could flat out rock. Today, when people think of the Beatles as live performers, it is the off-key, out-of-synch noise of Beatlemania, when they could not hear themselves over the screams of tens of thousands of pubescent girls.

Over the course of their four visits to America they played a total of twelve concerts at baseball stadiums (and several more at football and track fields). They played their first, Municipal Stadium in Kansas City, on September 17, 1964, a concert that wasn’t supposed to happen. It was not originally part of their tour, and was scheduled to be an off day in New Orleans. But after twice being rebuffed, A’s owner Charley Finley upped the ante and offered them $150,000, the equivalent of $1.25 million today. Manager Brian Epstein was able to convince the gang to sacrifice the rare free time for the unprecedented payout. Sullen over losing his “vacation,” Lennon famously told Finley that they would only perform eleven songs, instead of their more standard twelve.

The KC show was a last-minute affair, scheduled just a few days before it took place, but was seen by a still-impressive 20,280 people, the second highest audience on the tour. Despite this, it is often lost in the conversation about their stadium shows, perhaps because of the next gig they played on a baseball field. The Great Show at Shea Stadium was eleven months after the concert at Municipal, and the first show of their 1965 American tour. It has become the most famous of all of the Beatles live performances, with the possible exception of the rooftop concert in 1969. Its longevity in pop culture is in no small part due to the fact that it was recorded by fourteen cameras and later aired on the BBC in England in 1966, and on ABC in America in 1967.

The Great Show was so-named by promoter Sid Bernstein, who presented the Beatles along with several other acts who took the stage before the boys, including Motown star Brenda Holloway and Sounds Incorporated. King Curtis played a bluesy saxophone version of the Star-Spangled Banner to kick things off, a fitting start for a show on a baseball diamond. His rendition featured an audience singalong and wild applause by the 55,600 fans in attendance at the sold-out event.

While Shea Stadium may not have been the first official stadium show by the Beatles, it is regarded as being a catalytic moment in the future of rock and roll. It is the first major stadium event in their incredible history, and in rock history, and the footage of tens of thousands of girls screaming themselves into unconsciousness is a perfect reminder of just how unprecedented Beatlemania was.

The show itself suffered from sound problems that would become all too-familiar to their mix engineers that late-summer. Some versions of the songs were so unsalvageable that they were later overdubbed or outright replaced before they went in the finished film. Ringo’s off-key rendition of Act Naturally may be the most terrible thing I have ever heard the Beatles perform. John frequently stumbles with his interstitial chatter and seems almost nervous. But there are moments when those kids who tore the roof off the Cavern Club still shine through. George, perhaps fittingly, seemed the most unfazed by it all as the lead guitars throughout the show are as solid as ever.

In addition to Shea, during the 1965 tour the Beatles played Atlanta Stadium, Comiskey Park, and Metropolitan Stadium. In 1966, they visited Shea again, to a smaller, slightly more subdued crowd, as well as Cleveland Stadium, and DC Stadium. That tour also had a two-city double-header caused by rain. A postponed show at Crosley Field on August 20 was staged during the afternoon of August 21 before they jumped on a plane to appear at their engagement at Busch Stadium in St. Louis later that night. They played Dodger Stadium on August 28 and the next evening they played what was to be their final show (a fact that was unbeknownst to the world at the time) at Candlestick. At that ultimate public appearance, a clubhouse worker grabbed one of the balls that was in the locker room and asked John, Paul, George, and Ringo to sign it. Half a century later it netted his family six figures.

That happened frequently on their stadium tours, clubhouse or security attendants asking the Beatles to sign a baseball, which is why there are quite of few of them floating around amongst collectors. The Beatles were never huge fans of the game, or sports in general, although a recent interview with Paul reveals that he took a liking to it after Lorne Michaels brought him to a contest during the Yankees most recent dynasty.

Personal feelings about baseball aside, there is an indelible tie between some of the most memorable moments in Beatles history, and the green spaces of the game. For many, the mental image of the Beatles performing live is preceded by an aerial shot of the Fab Four on an isolated island, atop a stage anchored into the dirt of the second base area that was, that year, patrolled by Chuck Hiller and Roy McMillan during another dismal Mets season.

When Shea was demolished, I felt the loss more keenly as a Beatles fan than a baseball fan, despite never having seen them play live. The Mets would make new memories in their new home, but the Beatles were gone, both John and George quite literally. Paul made a final appearance at Shea as one of the many guest stars brought out by Billy Joel during his “Last Play at Shea” concert in 2008. But when the blue walls of the Mets long-time home came down, another historic landmark in the unique story of the Beatles ceased to be.

You can listen to the whole Great Show at Shea Stadium. In 2007 a board feed of the show hit the bootleg circuit, including all of the other acts that preceded the Beatles that night. An out-of-order recording can be found here. There are some imperfections, including a whole verse of Help! that drops out for some reason, but it is mostly a damn good recording of that historic night.

Getting on Board

The Sale of the New York Mets, and the 2020 U. S. Presidential Election

November 8, 2020-Within a span of 24 hours, the deal for Steve Cohen to buy the Mets from the Wilpon family for $2.5 billion was finalized and Donald Trump officially lost the 2020 race for President of the United States. One of these events will have profound, existential effects on the citizens of the U.S. and the world. The other only matters to a couple million fans largely clustered around Queens. But for many of those who follow the Mets, including myself, the day marked an interesting convergence.

There’s a very obvious connection, of course. Steve Cohen donated a million dollars to the Trump inauguration festivities in 2017. He gave another three million to Republican super PACs in 2018 to boost their failed efforts to hold the House during the midterms. Both men also have a history of financial criminality. Cohen was fined over $1.5 billion dollars by the Securities & Exchange Commission for insider trading in 2016, the largest Wall Street fine in history. He avoided jail, though several of his employees weren’t quite so lucky. As for Trump, well, with the recent release of his taxes we all have a pretty good idea what his grift was. I’m sure the Southern District of New York is going to lay it all out for us in the coming days.

Most Mets fans don’t care that Cohen became one of the richest men in the world through insider trading. They are just happy that the team is finally owned by someone other than the cash-strapped, incompetent Wilpons. The great irony of the prevailing apathy about Cohen’s crimes is that Mets fans have been kvetching for years about how the Wilpon family’s money troubles were directly linked to the most famous Wall St. criminal of the last two decades, Bernie Madoff. Writer Eric Nusbaum summed it up best in his tweet.*

As far as his link to the soon-to-be-deposed President, it’s important to point out that Cohen did not make any donations to the Trump campaign in 2020, nor to seemingly any other candidate. It should also be said that his earlier giving history does include donations to Democratic candidates, though none were close to the amounts he gave Republicans. He has also approached his new gig with the kind of sympathetic, personal touch that the publicly soulless Wilpons could never muster. He’s engaged with fans on twitter, asking them what improvements they would most like to see. He made headlines when he announced that Mets employees would see their salaries restored to what they were before the Wilpons made COVID-related cuts back in March, a financial commitment worth approximately $7 million. He has also earmarked $17.5 million to small businesses in the City, and has pledged to ramp up the Mets charitable giving in general.

All of this leaves a fan like me, who has been vocal about my discontent that the team was being purchased by a Wall Street villain, the very sort of person who is responsible for so much of the inequity and poverty in the U.S., feeling vaguely uncertain. Is it possible that Cohen will actually turn out to be the savior the Mets have long desired, not just by spending big on the Francisco Lindors of the world, but by bringing some financial and moral responsibility to a club that has long lacked it? Maybe. Experience says that powerful people like Cohen rarely learn moral lessons, especially when they manage to escape their crimes with little more than a slap on the wrist. But I can’t deny that he is at least coming out of the gate strong.

By this point you may be wondering why I started this whole thing by mentioning the 2020 election (other than the ability to write the delicious words “Donald Trump officially lost the 2020 race for President of the United States”). Well, because despite the earlier parallels I have drawn, at this moment, to me, Cohen appears less like Donald Trump and more like Joe Biden. Neither Cohen nor Biden were my first choices. While I believe Biden is a (mostly) good man, I do not think he is prepared for some of the very real threats that are facing our world, most especially the climate crisis. His continued support of fracking and his hesitance to move away from oil and coal are stances we cannot survive. But, the national body was bleeding out and we needed a tourniquet. It is difficult to deny that there are few people who could serve that role, all while maintaining the comfort-food feeling of Joe Biden.

So here we lefty Mets fans are, in a whole new world. Forty years of organizational incompetence and moral turpitude, along with four years of venality, criminality and megalomaniacism in the Oval Office, have come to an end in one rotation of the earth. What we face, the morning after, is uncertainty, one that is laced with a pretty thick layer of skepticism. However, what I cannot deny is that for the first time in a long, long time I really do feel like we are allowed the gratuitous luxury of hope. We will need to stay vigilant, for both Cohen and Biden could easily take us off course. But, it has been so long since I’ve felt like we could see light at the end of the tunnel. For this moment, I am happy to jump in the car and go along for the ride.

*Eric wrote the best baseball book of 2020 (in my opinion), Stealing Home, about the land grab perpetrated by Los Angeles to bring the Dodgers to California in 1957. Buy it if you haven’t already.

A New, Old Friend

Dory Timberlake

October 17, 2020-There has been an unprecedented amount of sorrow in Cooperstown of late. The loss of Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Whitey Ford and Joe Morgan, in a span of six weeks, is almost unfathomable; an unreal statistic in a year that already feels like a dystopian nightmare. After writing about how Seaver helped motivate my completion of The Hall Ball, I decided not to follow up with the rapid-fire series of deaths that followed. I don’t know what form I want The Hall Ball blog to take now that the Project is complete, but I don’t think I want it to just be a series of obituaries. Except…

It’s just that there seems to be so much loss, that I can’t help but use this weird little corner of the internet that I have created to express my own sorrow. So, I decided to pause the book I’m working on for a few moments to say goodbye to a name that will likely never be trending on twitter, but who in a brief time taught me a valuable lesson. His name was Dory Timberlake.

Right before the world as we knew it ended and I (largely) locked myself in my home, I was curating the exhibition Home Base, my look at the history of the game in New York City, at Queens College. I had to cancel viewing hours with late notice one afternoon because something had come up, but I received a text from one of the artists. The family of one of his former students, Talece Hunter, was en route and he really needed me to open the door. I postponed the meeting with my boss (shhhh) and quickly ran over to the gallery.

It was a particularly busy time at work. We were just a few weeks from beginning dress rehearsals AND we were putting in overtime determining what to do if CUNY decided to shut down because of the approaching pandemic. Panting, sweating, irritated, I opened the gallery and waited for them to arrive.

When the elevator opened, I was introduced to Dory and his family, including his wife Consuello, his daughter Sandra and her husband. Within seconds, all of that tension melted away. They were effusively grateful that I had gone out of my way to open the space, and they were genuinely excited by the exhibition. Dory, confined to a wheelchair, was the real fan in the family, although his love of the game was so powerful that his children and (I later learned) grandchildren, could not help but have a little bit of fandom in them.

They asked questions and were engaged, especially about the items related to the Mets and Jackie Robinson, Dory’s personal favorites. Born in Brooklyn, he got to see Jackie play in the flesh, at Ebbets Field. At the end of the tour they took one of the giveaway bookmarks I had left near the guestbook, a publicity freebie for The Hall Ball, the book, due to be published in just a few months. They told me they’d buy a copy and we said our farewells. It was the most pleasant encounter of the entire exhibition. Besides my immediate family, they are the last people I have had an extended, unmasked, interaction with.

Sure enough, when the book hit shelves, Dory’s granddaughter, Talece reached out. They had bought a copy and they were hoping I could sign it. With New York City just beginning to see daylight, I wasn’t willing to interact with other humans, yet. But, we stayed in touch and when work ultimately brought me out to Flushing, I connected with them to arrange a signing. They asked me to bring a few extra copies.

Talece and I stayed outside and I signed four books for them. Her mother joined us and we talked for a little bit. Dory was not able to come out due to the ravages of, what they would soon learn was, Lewy Body Dementia. Lewy was the same disease that, along with COVID, felled Seaver and, two years ago, my father-in-law. Getting Dory’s wheelchair outside wasn’t easy. But in the course of the conversation, Talece and her mom realized they wanted at least four more copies. Knowing work would bring me back to the area, we arranged for a second drop off and signing, this time with Dory.

On this second visit, I went inside. I signed the additional copies and had a chance to talk with Dory. I gave him a couple Jackie Robinson baseball cards I had brought as gifts. He wanted a picture of he and I together, opened to the page of the book that had Jackie’s grave. We took the photos and then Dory had to go in the other room for physical therapy. As I was leaving, Talece’s father, Sam, introduced me to a neighbor, who had a son who liked baseball. Sam bought another copy of the book (I had extras this time) and gave it to his neighbor for the kid. Over the next few weeks I got repeated texts from Talece letting me know that there was another member of the family who wanted a signed copy. They have, at this point, sold more copies than my mom, which is no mean feat.

Talece has kept me updated on Dory’s prognosis. Sadly, I was meeting him at the end of his struggle. He died on Thursday, October 15. He was born on September 21, 1932. When he was a boy, he frequently skipped school to help out at home. Later, he served as a surgical technician for the U.S. Army in Korea. He lost two fingers on his left hand protecting his comrades from a grenade blast. His service earned him the Purple Heart, the Korean Service Medal, a Bronze Star, the National Defense Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal and the Combat Medical Badge. After two years of surgeries, he was honorably discharged in 1953.

When he returned home, he worked for the New York Sanitation Department, and as an investigator for the Environmental Protection Agency in the City. He campaigned for Shirley Chisolm and took his civic responsibilities seriously. He raised a large family; he and his wife, Consie, were married for 62 years. He also shared his love of baseball with many a Little Leaguer, as a coach and mentor. He had played on the Army team, and was scouted by the majors. He was a security guard at Shea Stadium the night the Mets won the World Series in 1969. He was a link to a different time in the game, one remembered by fewer and fewer.

And, for me, Dory and his family have been a life lesson. I was annoyed when I had to go open the gallery, because I was (typically) trying to do too much. I was forced, by circumstances of my own making, to stop, and breathe, and look at this special little project I had put together through the eyes of someone who was eager to learn what I had to offer. Not a lot of people saw the exhibition at the Arts Center, and book sales have been underwhelming. But I got to meet Dory, a disappearing link to a history I find so dear. Because of Dory’s family, there are at least a dozen other people who have my book in their homes.

Thank you so much for loving the game with the passion that you did, Dory, and for introducing me to your wonderful family. I will miss a fellow brother in blue and orange, and a link to Jackie, the hero that you saw play, back when you were both young and immortal.

The One that Got Away

Tom Seaver

September 3, 2020– This was the very moment I needed to avoid.

If you’ve read the book, you know that when I called the project complete, there were actually still six more living members of the Hall of Fame that I had not photographed. I had given due diligence to connecting with the six, in various official and unofficial ways, and had no luck. By that point, I had photographed all of the deceased members, so I was stuck in a limbo that was going to reset annually with the election of each new class. I was no longer interested in waiting in long lines for a thirty-second interaction. I had a book I wanted to finish. I did not want to keep adding to the ball.

Worst of all, I started to feel like I was waiting for five of the six to die. I’m roughly the same age as Ken Griffey Jr., but all of the other remaining members had at least a quarter-century on me. My attempts to connect with these players had failed, so the only way I was going to be able to make them a part of the project (barring an incredible stroke of luck) was by visiting their graves. To me, that was the point when the project went from respectful to macabre.

Within days of making the decision to call it quits one of the six, Willie McCovey, died. I remember the chill I felt that day, at the closeness of the timing, and how it represented some kind of sign to me. That I had made the right choice. I have no regrets.

That certainty is reaffirmed today. I know that I did the right thing because, of all of the remaining members I still needed to photograph, I did not want the death of Tom Seaver to represent progress.

I consider myself a baseball fan first, but because human instinct forces most of us to align ourselves (I truly admire Hannah Keyser’s bandwagon mentality—how liberating that must be), I am also a Mets fan. My path from being a bright-eyed, child Yankees fan to a moody and angsty teen Mets rooter is a story for another day. It is enough to say that I have aligned myself with the blue and orange since this kid named Doc came to town.

There has not been another player, before or since, who meant as much to the New York Mets as Tom Seaver. His nickname, “The Franchise,” may be the most appropriate moniker ever. He was the first and, for almost thirty years, only Mets player to have his number retired by the team. While Mike Piazza has come along to shoulder a little of the burden of our idolatry, even he cannot replace Tom in the hearts of Mets fans, especially those who call themselves old-timers.

I had a chance to photograph Tom, once, in a split-second exchange. In June 2012, he was appearing at the 92^nd Street Y as part of the festivities for the Mets All Time Team. As it so happened, my wife worked at the Y at the time. There was a fête before the show and she made sure the security guard working the room knew who I was. The only problem was that there was another guard working the door, one who didn’t know my wife. It took some time for me to convince him to check on the veracity of my story with his compatriot.

By the time my connection pulled me in the room, he was nearly dragging me to Seaver. The party had been going on for some time and the players who had been named to the All Time roster had been told to go to places by the show stage manager. The party guests were being directed to head to their seats in the theatre. I got to Seaver as he was walking through the door.

The security guard, not understanding precisely what I was trying to do, had pulled the phone out of my hand and was urging me to get next to Tom, who was signing one final autograph. I quickly tried to explain that I didn’t want a picture of me with Tom, but I had to hurry. There wasn’t time. Instead, I quickly turned to Tom and put the ball in his hand.

Before I even had a chance to give my elevator pitch, he pulled the ball up to sign it. I quickly said, “No, Mr. Seaver, I’m not looking for an autograph today.”

He looked at me for quick moment and said, “Okay, then,” before tossing the ball back to me and walking through the door. I had missed my chance. The photo below, taken by the guard, is the only evidence that even though Seaver was never photographed with the Hall Ball, for the briefest second he held it in his hand.

In the spring of 2016, I wrote to Seaver to let him know that I would be driving through California and if he was willing to give me a minute of his time, I would love to include him in the project. A few months later I received a letter back from his wife, Nancy. She was cordial and wished me all the best with my project. However, she let me know that Tom would no longer be making baseball-related appearances and that it was not going to be possible for me to connect with him. A few years later, the family announced the same to the public. His dementia had become too pronounced.

Although I didn’t make the final decision to end the project without shooting my white whales for another two years, I think I knew when I got Nancy’s letter that it was going to end that way. It wasn’t a hard choice for me to make in the end because I had known for some time that I wasn’t going to get Tom.

Making the choice I did means that I get to spend today commiserating with the rest of my fellow Mets fans. I get to feel the sadness at his loss. I get to share the rage at how poorly Tom was treated by multiple regimes of Mets executives and owners. I get to lament the lives lost to not only COVID, but to Lewy Body Dementia, the same disease that killed the man to whom I dedicated my book. I get to do all of that, unsullied by an underlying, near-instinctual understanding that this tragedy would have meant progress for me. It doesn’t. There is no silver lining. And that’s exactly what I wanted.

A Cruel Synchrony

Chadwick Boseman and Jackie Robinson

August 29, 2020– SABR is publishing an exhaustive look at the life of Jackie Robinson next year, and I have signed on to write two chapters. As the responsibilities were being divvied up between the various authors, I was shocked that two of the still-available subjects were a biography of Rachel Robinson, and a look at Jackie on the silver screen. Both topics are so rich in material and depth that they would seem to be choice pickings.

I snagged them, and eagerly dove into my research. That’s when I realized that the reason these subjects had likely been left behind was the very thing that drew me to them. There’s just so much to say. I remain daunted by the task of shrinking the life of the First Lady of baseball into 5000 words, so the Rachel chapter remains a mountain of research and little else. I chose to begin with my exploration of Jackie in film.

In a nod to my background (and naiveté), I exacerbated my issue by encouraging my editor to let me also add portrayals of Jackie on stage, of which there are many. Live realizations of Robinson range from made-for-kid fare to a Broadway musical that hit the boards in 1981, starring a recent Yale graduate named David Alan Grier, who had never performed in a professional play in his life.

Last night, Grier joined the chorus of people who were shocked to learn that another “Jackie” had died of colon cancer at the young age of 43.

Chadwick Boseman may have catapulted to superstardom with his performance in the groundbreaking film, Black Panther, but he first came to the American consciousness with his authentic portrayal of Robinson in 42: The True Story of an American Legend. A movie that was a long-time coming, 42 followed unsuccessful attempts by the likes of Spike Lee and Robert Redford to give the story of Jackie the full Hollywood treatment for the first time.

There had been a big-screen representation before, in the still-moving The Jackie Robinson Story. Made in the winter of 1950, Robinson played himself in the picture, with a portrayal that was heralded at the time and still largely holds up, seventy years later. Produced on a shoestring budget, with nearly bankrupt, British-based, Eagle-Lion Films’ own employees pooling their personal funds to make the picture, it could hardly be considered a work of Hollywood.

The sad reality is that the reason attempts by heavy hitters like Lee and Redford failed to come to fruition was the very same struggle that Eagle-Lion had faced decades earlier. Convincing the money in Tinsel Town that a picture with a Black leading man could be a success continues to be a frustrating battle. This is doubly true for a biopic that was largely absent of violent action and steamy sex scenes.

Finally, in 2013, Legendary Pictures took a gamble, and they were richly rewarded. 42 opened to immediate acclaim, becoming the baseball film with the highest opening weekend box office in movie history, a title it still holds. Much was made of Harrison Ford’s performance of Branch Rickey, all irascibility and eyebrows. But it was Boseman, rightly, who was the emotional heart of the picture.

He gave us a Jackie that was smart, tough and believable. Boseman threw himself into the role, obsessively watching footage of Robinson so that he could swing, field and slide with verisimilitude. At first, he struggled to embody such a legendary role, intimidated by Robinson’s legacy. It wasn’t until after he talked to Rachel, and witnessed the way “his spirit is still present within her,” that he blossomed into the character.

Interestingly, Robinson himself, a first-time actor, also struggled on the set of The Jackie Robinson Story, humbled by his inexperience. It wasn’t until Rachel and their newly born daughter Sharon flew to Los Angeles for the final days of filming that Jackie relaxed into his scenes with co-star Ruby Dee. Rachel’s influence on both her husband and Boseman are now preserved for eternity by the magic of film. And we in the audience have been the lucky recipients.

One of the things Rachel appreciated the most about 42 was the film’s willingness to examine the intimacy shared between the Robinsons. She told director Brian Helgeland that her favorite parts of the movie were the kissing. For Rachel, 42 was one final chance to see her husband come to life, young, strong and conquering the world. We witnessed the same, as well as the ascension of a young actor who, in a very short period of time, altered the way Hollywood perceives the bankability of Black leading men.

It is poignant to think that Rachel has now outlived two Jackies, and that both were taken from the world far too young. Both also leave incredible legacies. After 42, Boseman tackled biopics of other prominent American icons, including James Brown and Thurgood Marshall. The Marshall role, as well as his thrilling performance in Black Panther, were undertaken with the specter of cancer a constant companion for him. Undeterred, perhaps inspired by the understanding of his accelerated clock, he has left an oeuvre that will not be forgotten.

As has been pointed out by many, Boseman died on Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball. Typically celebrated on April 15, the day Robinson first played for the Dodgers, because of the COVID-delayed season this year it was moved to August 28, the day he first met with Rickey. Boseman’s performance in 42 already assured his eternal connection to Robinson, but this cruel synchrony guarantees that the historical bond between the two men will forever be joined.

Today we mourn the loss of a talent that was both promising and accomplished– a man who taught an entire generation of Black children that they too could be heroes, just as Jackie did 70 years ago. Robinson’s gravestone bears an inscription of the now famous quote from his autobiography, I Never Had it Made. “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” In a very short time, Boseman made an impact on all of us.

Ally to the Underdog

Terry Cannon

August 1, 2020– When telling the history of The Hall Ball, I try to make it clear that there were really many hands involved in my story. There are 109 unique names in the acknowledgments of my book, and each of them, in a way, contributed to the project. I may have done most of the legwork, but I really do think of it as something we made together.

There is another person I need to recognize who does not appear in the acknowledgements, although he is a character in the book. Terry Cannon made a late entry into the story, appearing in the final chapter. It was him that I contacted after the ball was rejected by the Hall of Fame. It was he that, with a simple text message, gave me a noble ending to my tale. He was my deus ex machina.

I had the good fortune to meet Terry last summer (was it really only a year ago?). After accepting the ball to be a part of the collection of the Baseball Reliquary, he further honored me by bestowing upon me the 2019 Hilda Award. The Hilda, so-named for Hilda Chester, perhaps baseball’s most iconic fan, was presented to me at a ceremony at the Pasadena Library, where there was also a display of select photographs from the project.

That same day, they Inducted their 2019 Shrine of Eternals: Billy Beane (in absentia), gold-medalist Lisa Fernandez, and former Astros fireballer J.R. Richard. We were all fêted together, along with photographer Bob Busser, who received the Tony Salin Award for the preservation of baseball history, at the California Pizza Kitchen a half a mile from the library. The setting was as relaxed as Terry, our host, who exuded warmth and good humor throughout.

The next day I met with Terry, along with his partner at the Institute for Baseball Studies, Joe Price, at the Institute’s reading room. There, I gave him The Hall Ball. Photos were taken of me placing the ball in Terry’s hands. In some we’re smiling. In others, we appear to be deep in conversation. In all of them, I look comfortable and confident. The ball had taken on such tremendous meaning to me. I had spent nearly a decade creating my unique endeavor. Yet, any lingering doubts I may have had about handing it over to the Reliquary disappeared under the light in Terry’s eyes, and the cadence of his voice.

We have been robbed of that voice far too soon. Terry was felled by liver cancer, today. Before we parted last July, Terry offered to bring me back to California once the book was published, to possibly do a program sponsored by the Institute. We texted a few times, since. I was looking forward to returning to California and spending more time with my new friend, though it became clear enough earlier this year that COVID-19 was going to prevent that from happening this summer. Then I learned that he was again battling cancer, and that this time it looked like it was going to win. I was never going to get another chance to shake his hand, the hand in which I had placed my most treasured possession.

There are many who knew Terry much better than I, and there will likely be a multitude of words spoken about what an original soul he was. In my acceptance speech for The Hilda I mentioned that I believe the reason the Hall of Fame rejected the ball, and why it was such a good fit for the Reliquary, was because it was weird. So was Terry. His affinity for the underdogs, for the outsiders, for the neglected and marginalized names from the history of the game, is considered quirky by the serious folks. To me, however, his passions were simpatico with my own. I wish we could have shared more of them.

Thanks, Terry, for the Reliquary, for your unique vision of the game, and for giving my baseball a home. Safe travels.