Mel Parnell, 89, Dies; Dominated Yanks



                                                                        Associated Press

Mel Parnell, flanked by Ted Williams, left,

and Johnny Pesky after a victory in 1949.

By Bruce Weber,

New York Times
March 21, 2012

Mel Parnell, who won more games for the Boston Red Sox than any other left-handed pitcher and who especially endeared himself to Sox fans as a Yankee killer, died on Tuesday in New Orleans. He was 89.

The cause was pneumonia, his son, Dr. Mel Parnell Jr., said, adding that his father had a history of lymphoma.

Parnell spent his entire 10-year career with the Red Sox, from 1947 to 1956, achieving remarkable success in Fenway Park, whose odd configuration — notably the massive left-field wall, known as the Green Monster, which is so close to home plate that it turns routine fly balls into doubles — makes it a troublesome place for lefties to pitch.

Parnell, however, employing a hard-breaking slider that kept the ball in on the hands of right-handed hitters, was 71-30 in his home ballpark, including a no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox in his final season.

Associated Press

Mel Parnell

"You have to keep the hitters' elbows close to their body and cut down on their power," he explained. His main complaint with Fenway was not the Green Monster, he often said; it was that because there was so little foul territory, foul flies rarely turned into outs.

Over all, his record was 123-75, with an earned run average of 3.50. Only Cy Young (192), Roger Clemens (192) and Tim Wakefield (186), all right-handers, won more games in a Red Sox uniform.

He had several outstanding seasons, winning at least 15 games five times and more than 20 twice. His best season, 1949, was extraordinary: he won 25 and lost only 7, with an E.R.A. of 2.77. The starter for the American League in the All-Star Game that year, he ended up leading the league in wins, complete games (27) and innings pitched (2951/3).

Parnell's Red Sox, especially in his first years, were a formidable team, winning more than 90 games a year from 1948 to 1950, with a lineup of hitters that included Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr and Vern Stephens. But they never won a pennant. Mostly their problem was the Yankees, who were then embarking on perhaps the most dominant stretch in their history.

The Yanks won five straight World Series from 1949-53, but they posed considerably less of a problem for Parnell than for almost any other pitcher. Parnell beat them 15 times during that five-year stretch (though in the two final games of the 1949 season that decided the pennant, he pitched poorly as the Sox lost). In 1953, Parnell was 5-0 against the Yankees, giving up just three earned runs in 42 innings. Remarkably, four of the wins were shutouts.

He was so good against them "that I was given the nickname Yank," his son, born in Boston in 1950, said in an interview on Wednesday. "I was also the first Yankee in the family."

Melvin Lloyd Parnell was born in New Orleans on June 13, 1922. His father, Patrick, was a mechanic on the Illinois Central Panama Limited, a passenger train that ran between New Orleans and Chicago.

Young Mel played first base for his high school team.

"He didn't want to pitch because he wanted to play every day," his son said. Nonetheless, his coach often asked him to pitch batting practice before the team was about to face a lefty, and he earned the nickname Dusty because he kept the ball low. A Red Sox scout was in the stands on the day young Mel was asked, to his surprise, to pitch a crucial game; he threw a shutout, striking out 17, and the scout signed him to a contract.

He pitched for two years in the minor leagues before serving stateside in the Army Air Forces during World War II, with a third season in the minors afterward. He pitched his first game for Boston on April 20, 1947.

After his playing career was cut short by an elbow injury, he managed in the minor leagues and was a Red Sox broadcaster. He was behind the microphone when the Sox defeated the Minnesota Twins and won the American League pennant in 1967. He was credited with popularizing the name "the Pesky pole," for Fenway's right-field foul pole, around which Pesky was said to have curled several home runs.

In addition to his son, an orthopedic surgeon, Parnell is survived by his wife of 64 years, the former Velma Buras; three daughters, Barbara Parnell, Sheryl Boraski and Patti Parnell; and three grandchildren.

"He liked pitching against the Yankees," his son said. "He always enjoyed beating the best."

Frank Litsky contributed reporting.

On 50-Year-Old Tape, Sounds of Mets’ Awkward First Steps

[John Lindsay/Associated Press]

Gil Hodges signed a contract to play for the
Mets prior to their inaugural season. He was
interviewed by Howard Cosell before the game.

By KEN BELSON
March 9, 2012; NY Times

It was 50 years ago Saturday that the Mets played their initial spring training game, an 8-0 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. There was nothing surprising in that result, considering the Mets went on to win only 40 games all season, a record for futility that still stands.

But what is somewhat intriguing is the identity of the first announcer to greet listeners of the game’s radio broadcast. It wasn’t Ralph Kiner or Bob Murphy or Lindsey Nelson, all of whom were on hand for the start of what would be their long collaboration chronicling the team’s fortunes.

Instead, the first voice coming out of the radio belonged to none other than Howard Cosell, still emerging at that point as a larger-than-life personality in American sports.

Audio: Excerpts From Mets Radio Broadcast, March 10, 1962

Cosell was the host of “Clubhouse Journal,” a pre- and postgame show, and now, as game time approached, he was interviewing pitcher Roger Craig some 20 feet behind the plate at Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. Craig had started his career with the Brooklyn Dodgers and was about to embark on a season in which he would finish with 10 wins for the Mets and an unthinkable 24 losses.



[Associated Press]
Mets Manager Casey Stengel, right, guided his team
during a spring training drill in February 1962.

Cosell wasted no time being unrealistic. “I get the feeling you think this Mets club could surprise a few people,” Cosell said to Craig, who at one point refers to Cosell as Howie.

“I’m sure we will, Howard,” Craig said. “We are going to surprise a few people, and I’m sure all the players feel like I do.”

But Cosell and Craig were not the only ones sounding overly optimistic that Saturday afternoon, with the sun shining, Richie Ashburn about to bat leadoff, and Stan Musial and Minnie Minoso in the outfield for the Cardinals.

On the WABC broadcast, Nelson sounded excited, too, as he welcomed fans aboard for the return of National League baseball to New York five years after the Dodgers and the Giants had bolted to California, breaking millions of hearts.

“Bob Murphy, Ralph Kiner and I are on hand to bring you every bit of the action,” said Nelson, while noting that the game was being sponsored by Rheingold Extra Dry and Brown & Williamson, a cigarette-maker. “Yes, the New York Mets are on the air in their first great season.”

From left, Ralph Kiner, Bob Murphy and Lindsay Nelson,
who broadcasted Mets games in 1962. [Bettmann/Corbis]

The rare audio time capsule of the game was preserved by Marc Gold, one of those abandoned Dodger fans who was instantly smitten with the Mets. Gold’s grandmother had bought him a Telectrosonic reel-to-reel tape recorder for his bar mitzvah about 18 months before the Mets began playing, and he was eager to put it to use. Gold’s father connected the radio to the tape deck to eliminate background noise.

“When they announced the Mets were going to come in, that was such exciting news,” said Gold, who grew up in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. “I had pictures of the Dodgers in my room and I put X’s on their pictures and immediately fell in love with the Mets.”

By his own admission, Gold, who works in the family’s horseradish business, is no historian. But he understood, even at 14, that the Mets’ first game was something worth commemorating. In addition to keeping score at home that season, he compiled a Mets-themed newsletter, which he periodically printed in his father’s office on McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn and sold for 45 cents.

Robert Lipsyte covered that first exhibition game for The New York Times and gracefully got to the point in the lead paragraph of his article. “Seven white yawls rocked idly and ineffectually at anchor in Tampa Bay today, in perfect harmony with the New York Mets at bat, in the field and on the mound,” he wrote.


The front page of The New York Times sports section
on March 11, 1962, featured a story about the
Mets' first game by Robert Lipsyte

“By the end of the fifth inning, with the Cardinals ahead at 7-0, the crowd of 6,872 began to stir,” Lipsyte observed later in the article. “Some of them got up and left. ‘Same old Mets,’ a man said.”
That sort of humor would come to define the early image of the Mets. But for a 14-year-old like Gold, trying to recapture the joy of rooting for a hometown team (switching allegiance to the Yankees was out of the question), it was difficult to poke fun at the Mets, even if others were doing so.

“The writers said the Mets are funny, but they weren’t funny, they were terrible,” Gold said. “Those years between 10 and 16 made its mark and rooting for a losing team, it does a job on a kid.”

Still, on that Saturday 50 years ago, when the Mets were taking their first steps, there was hardly a cloud in the sky, the games did not yet count and the future looked — and sounded — bright. And it all started with a hello from Howard Cosell.

World Series Baseball Program

                                     National Baseball Hall of Fame Library
The Yankees team picture wrapped across the front and
back covers of the 1960 World Series program. More Photos »

By
Ken Belson
NY Times: October 18, 2011

The World Series program has been a chronicler of the ages, a mirror not only of baseball's biggest stage, but also of the game's link to the world wars, the Great Depression and the optimism of the space age.

Starting Wednesday, fans in St. Louis can get their hands on the latest in a line of programs that date to the first modern World Series, in 1903. They will spend $15 for a glossy volume of about 300 pages that is stuffed with articles about their team's favorite players and their opponent's. It will include seven blank scorecards — one for each game — for those who track each inning by hand.

The programs will also be faint reminders of the versions printed a century ago, when they were little more than a thin scorecard with basic information on the teams and cost 10 cents. Back then, the programs were local productions, designed as each team saw fit. Now, they are a lot more corporate, designed by Major League Baseball rather than the teams involved. In fact, there are now three programs for each World Series: one modeled for each team's fans and a third, more generic, version for the public at large.

Major League Baseball also produces the programs for the two league championship series, while the eight teams in the first round of the playoffs make the programs themselves.

Baseball took control of the process in 1974 to standardize what had been an ad hoc approach and to generate additional revenue for all of its teams, not just those in the postseason. It was also an acknowledgment that the program was the most popular World Series souvenir and an increasingly coveted item by serious collectors, and therefore deserving of a more organized approach.

"The World Series is the big megillah for us, and programs are probably one of the most important licensed products we make," said Howard Smith, the senior vice president for licensing at Major League Baseball. "When a Phillies fan's team makes the playoffs, he wants to be part of it. We customized clinching shirts and hats, so customizing the programs was a natural."

Digital publishing technology makes customized programs possible. The league designs programs for each potential World Series matchup weeks before the postseason begins. Within minutes of the final out in the league championship series, the final three versions are sent to Quad/Graphics in Sussex, Wis. Within two hours, the first programs are on trucks headed for the city serving as host for Games 1 and 2.

This helps ensure that fans in St. Louis will have programs to buy when they show up Wednesday night at Busch Stadium for Game 1 of the World Series between the Cardinals and the Texas Rangers. It is so important to Major League Baseball that programs be on hand before Game 1 that drivers are told to check in every few hours on their way to the drop-off point.

Smith declined to disclose precisely how many programs are sold each year, but he noted that more programs were sold at the first game of the 2005 White Sox-Astros World Series, at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, than there were people in the stadium, which has a capacity of about 41,000.

Last year, program sales were strong because the Rangers were in the World Series for the first time. Even after the San Francisco Giants captured the Series in Game 5 at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, dejected fans stuck around to buy multiple copies of the programs, Smith said.

These days, World Series programs have a longer shelf life, at least in the winning team's city, because retailers like Modell's and Dick's Sporting Goods will sell them after the Series is over. They often stay on the shelf through opening day the next year, with a bump in sales around Christmas.

"Baseball fans have a sense of history, and not everyone does these days," said Ira Mayer, the editor of The Licensing Letter, which tracks the sale of licensed sporting goods. Of the World Series programs, he said, "It's physical and tangible, and everything else is here and gone."

The first programs were physical and tangible, too, but relatively few exist because fans in those early days rarely thought of them as collectibles. The World Series was new and the programs were primarily scorecards that fans used to keep track of the games in the days before scoreboards started to make them redundant.

Slide Show

The World Series Cover Story

In the earliest years, the programs included little more than team photographs, brief player profiles and, of course, advertisements, said Tom Shieber, senior curator at the Baseball Hall of Fame. The covers of the programs in the Hall of Fame collection from 1903, 1909 and 1925, which all involved the Pittsburgh Pirates, included no references to the World Series. The programs were printed by the home teams (or their concessionaires, like Harry M. Stevens) and, with a few exceptions, everyone charged a dime.

The price held until 1913, when the New York Giants charged 25 cents for the first time. The cover that year showed John McGraw, the manager, shaking hands with a Revolutionary War patriot, an allusion to the Philadelphia Athletics, the American League opponent. "Congratulations, John!" it reads, "Five Championships in Ten Years!"

Gradually, the program covers became more elaborate. In 1917, months after the United States entered World War I, the Giants chose an illustration of President Woodrow Wilson throwing out the first pitch. It includes the inscription, "A big enough boy to enjoy the national game — and — a man big enough to guide our country through its greatest crisis."

A photograph was included on the cover for the first time in 1924. When teams played each other in consecutive years, as the Yankees and the Giants did between 1921 and 1923, the covers looked very similar. The covers during the Depression sometimes show steely-faced players in an Art Deco design.

In 1938, the Chicago Cubs experimented with a type of laminated program that, Shieber said, has withstood the years well. The next year, the Yankees chose a likeness of Lou Gehrig, the first time a recognizable player was included. In 1942, the program cover urged fans to buy war bonds. Few programs from this and earlier eras exist, partly because fans contributed many of them to the paper-collection drives for the war effort, according to Chris Ivy, the director of sports auctions at Heritage Auctions in Dallas.

That, of course, has driven up the value of those programs that remain. Last year, a program from the 1903 World Series sold for $96,000, Ivy said.

Prosperity returned after the war, and teams started charging 50 cents for World Series programs in 1947. In 1960, the Yankees used a wraparound photograph of the team on the program's cover. In 1966, the Baltimore Orioles became the first team to charge $1.

In 1974, the league started producing a single program for both teams. The content inside was expanded to include material on all four teams in the postseason. The price was doubled to $2, and steadily escalated until 2003, when $15 was charged for the first time.

So many World Series programs are printed these days that there is a good chance that someone who buys one never attended any of the games. But it was that connection that made the older programs, which could be bought only at the stadium, so appealing and meaningful.

"This is the most obvious keepsake, especially because you kept score in it," said Shieber of the Hall of Fame. "In a sense, it was autographed by you and it had a tie to a moment."