It's Time

Ok, you got me. I've been derelict in my duties as an editor and haven't sent an update in a long while. Forgive me, but the latest news in recent weeks with PEDs has soured my outlook. I will be leaving on a sabbatical from this blog, hoping things turn around in the near future. TTFN

Baseball's Most Mediocre Managers

Eric Wedge, decidedly mid-level manager.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Forbes
Sportsmoney
Brian Goff, Contributor, 5/30/2013

Last week I listed the best managers over the past 40 years in MLB.  These estimates flow out of  each manager’s impact on winning percentage after taking into account the GM, owner, performance prior to the manager, and population.  Here, I’m looking at the flip side of the same coin – the ten worst managers over 1970-2011.  That’s not exactly right – it’s the worst ten who managed at least 7 years.

An oddity in sports management, and, for that matter, any management setting is the mediocre or bad manager who keeps landing good jobs.  I’ve labeled it the “Kevin Loughery Syndrome” after the former NBA coach who parlayed 3 successful ABA seasons into a 5-team NBA career with an overall winning percentage of 0.417 – a number well below his closest coaching peer.  Somehow, employing a coach with experience, even bad experiences, seem to carry the day for various general managers and owners.

The MLB manager’s on my list don’t come close to approaching that kind of futility.  In fact, while all of the “worst” of these long tenured managers on my list had a net negative contribution to winning, the size of the negative impact is very small.  In this respect, a better title is most mediocre long-tenured MLB managers. The number of seasons includes partial seasons.

1. Darrell Johnson (3 teams, 8 seasons)
2. Phil Garner (3 teams, 15 seasons)
3. Buddy Bell (3 teams, 9 seasons)
4. Jim Riggleman (4 teams, 12 seasons)
5. Jim Fregosi (4 teams; 15 seasons)
6. Tom Kelly (1 teams, 16 seasons)
7. Rene Lacheman (4 teams, 10 seasons)
8. Ralph Houk (3 teams, 21 seasons)
9. Eric Wedge (2 teams, 10 seasons)
10. Pat Corrales (3 teams, 10 seasons)

In some cases, such as Ralph Houk or Eric Wedge, the individual managed part of their tenure prior to or after to my period of analysis.  In the case of Houk, the exclusion may influence his inclusion in the list since he won two World Series with the Yankees in his first two seasons.  The case of a manager such as Tom Kelly is a unique and interesting case.  While most of the others on the list experienced consistent mediocrity, Kelly’s Minnesota twins won two World Series over his 16 seasons, which helps explain his long tenure with the team in spite of an overall uninspiring record.

MLB's Best Managers And GMs

ATLANTA - OCTOBER 11,2010: Manager Bobby Cox #6 of

the Atlanta Braves against the San Francisco Giants during

Game Four of the NLDS of the 2010 MLB Playoffs at

Turner Field on October 11, 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia.

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Forbes
Sportsmoney
Brian Goff, Contributor, 5/22/2013

Over the past 40 years, who are the best MLB managers and general managers?   I recently explored this question in an academic piece published in Managerial and Decision Economics.  Of course, one could just take winning percentage or championships won, but where managers have taken over successful teams, continuing that success is not as impressive as turning a team around.  In addition,  some franchises, such as the Yankees, are located in large metropolitan areas and given league revenue sharing practices, can turn this population base into a big financial advantage.  Finally, managerial relationships are hierarchical — the owner answers for everybody, the general managers, typically, makes roster decisions with managers making on-the-field decisions.  The methods that I employed took account of all of these issues using data from 1970-2011.

Interestingly, in comparing managers with GMs, the latter didn’t matter much prior to the 1990s.  Or, at least, very little difference existed between GMs so that one was just as valuable as another.  In the 1990s onward in the “Moneyball” era with much more attention paid to predictive characteristics of performance by some GMs rather than simply how players look in their uniform or the most obvious physical attributes, the general manager role exceeded that of managers in terms of explaining winning and losing.
      Top 10 Managers:

1. Bobby Cox (Toronto, Atlanta)
2. Danny Murtaugh (Pittsburgh)
3. Walter Alston (Los Angeles)
4. Earl Weaver (Baltimore)
5. Danny Ozark (Philadelphia, San Francisco)
6. Tony LaRussa (Chicago AL, Oakland, St. Louis)
7. Davey Johnson (Cincinnati, Baltimore, New York NL, Los Angeles, Nationals)
8. Sparky Anderson (Cincinnati, Detroit)
9. Joe Torre (Atlanta, New York AL, Los Angeles)
10. Jerry Manual (Chicago AL, New York NL)

Honorable Mention: Ron Gardenhire, Dick Williams, Terry Francona, Dusty Baker
With the recent retirement of Tony LaRussa, none of the Top 10 are still active.  Among the active managers, Gardenhire, Fancona, and Baker head the list.        

      Top 10 General Managers 

1. Brian Cashman (New York AL)
2. Bob Howsam (Cincinnati)
3. John Schuerholz (Atlanta)
4. Theo Epstein (Boston)
5. Joe Burke (Kansas City)
6. Joe Brown (Pittsburgh)
7. Paul Owens (Philadelphia)
8. Walt Jocketty (St. Louis)
9. Al Campanis (Los Angeles)
10. Haywood Sullivan (Boston)

Honorable Mention: Dan Duquette, Ron Schueler, Joe Gariagiola, Pat Gillick
A natural reaction to this list might be “Cashman has all the money to spend — no wonder he’s on top.  However, his individual contribution and ranking already takes account of the size of the Yankees’ market as well as taking over a team already enjoying a degree of success.  On the other hand, given that Theo Epstein is still active and his new team, the Cubs, are not faring so well, at least so far, his ranking would likely fall with expanded data.

Here is a link to a draft version of the article on which these results are based.

20 best baseball quotes of all time

Photo: Early poster for baseball: "Cheer up - show your colors"

by Vance Garnett
Washington Times
May 1, 2013

Baseball is the most talked and written about of all sports. Below are 20 of my favorite quotes of all time. Some might be from before your time, but they are all gems.

1. "Hit 'em where they ain't." That was "Wee Willie" Keeler explaining the secret of his hitting prowess after setting a record in 1896, for his 45 game hitting streak, which stood until 1941, when the record was broken by "Joltin' Joe" DiMaggio.

2. "I should of stood in bed," complained boxing manager Joe Jacobs about the bitter cold weather for the opening game of the 1934 World Series between the Saint Louis Cardinals "Gashouse Gang" and the Detroit Tigers.

3. "I'd rather be lucky than good," said Yankees pitcher Lefty Gomez about the "breaks of the game" on any given day.

4. "A ballplayer should quit when it starts to feel like all the baselines run uphill," said Babe Ruth as he neared the end of his career.

5. "Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League," wrote sports editor Charlie Dryden in the San Francisco Examiner, in 1909.

6. "You can't make chicken salad out of chicken feathers," lamented Joe Kuhel upon being fired as manager of the bottom-dwelling Washington Senators, in 1949.

7. "Young man, if that bat comes down, you're out of the game," yelled umpire Bill Klem when an angry batter tossed his bat 20 feet in the air upon being called out on strikes.

8. "I ought to break this trophy into 32 pieces," graciously said number 42, Jackie Robinson, upon receiving the award for outstanding play in 1947.

9. "The Hell with Babe Ruth!" shouted Japanese soldiers on Guadalcanal during WWII, in retort to the American G.Is insulting their Emperor.

10. "I had a better year," Babe Ruth told a reporter who asked why his salary was higher than that of the president of the United States.

11. "He would be the league's best pitcher if the plate was high and wide," wrote Bob Cooke, sportswriter for the Herald Tribune, about the wildness of a Dodgers pitcher.

12. Asked how he enjoyed rooming with Babe Ruth, "I room with his suitcase" answered Ping Bodie, whose real name was Franceto Sanguenitta Pizzola.

13. "A hotdog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz," said legendary film star Humphrey Bogart.

14. An anonymous taxi driver in Manhattan gets credit for this one. Being told by a passenger who hopped into his cab that the Dodgers had three men on base, he asked, "Which one?" This was because the
previous day (Aug. 15, 1926), two "Bums" had been called out when three players tried to occupy third base at the same time.

15. "The doctors x-rayed my head and found nothing." So said Dizzy Dean the day after being hit in the head by a pitched ball in the1934 World Series.

16. Asked to make a comment upon the death of his long-time teammate Joe DiMaggio, baseball's premier philosopher, Yogi Berra, said: "He was the best living player I ever saw."

17. "I always had to be right in any argument I was in," Ty Cobb said, "and I wanted to be first in everything."

18. "A bad call in baseball is one that goes against you," read a TV Guide article.

19. "I've never left a game before it ended," said Richard Nixon. "You never know when there could be a big turnaround in the game."

20. "Some day I'm going to have to stand before God," said Dodgers owner Branch Rickey, "and if He asks me why I didn't let that Robinson fellow play ball, I don't think saying 'because of the color of his skin' would be a good enough answer."

These, then, are some of my favorite baseball quotes. Watch for an upcoming column called, "20 More Favorite Baseball Quotes." Meanwhile, feel free to let me know some of yours favorites. Until then see you in the bleachers.

How Sam Lacy helped integrate Major League Baseball

The movie "42" omits the story of the Baltimore sportswriter, but Robinson himself understood the influence of the black press

Sam Lacy, The First Black Sports Writer

By Charlie Vascellaro
Baltimore Sun
April 22, 2013

Like most films depicting historic accounts of real-life events, the bio-epic "42" carries the immediate disclaimer that it is based on a true story, leaving room for interpretive analysis and creative license. Consequently, dramatic interpretations are by their nature subject to scrutiny and debate.

While the film sticks close to the well-chronicled historic record regarding Jackie Robinson's unique place in time as the first African American to play in the major leagues, its sins are mostly of omission. Focusing tightly on the milestone season of 1947, the movie hurries through the arduous process by which Robinson and other African American players who followed him got to the big leagues. No recognition for Robinson's breakthrough given to anyone other than Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey.

Of great influence in lobbying for the integration of major league baseball was the battle waged by members of the black press, among them Sam Lacy, who began his professional career as a sports writer for the Washington Tribune in 1926, moving on to become assistant national editor for the Chicago Defender and later the long-time sports editor and columnist for the Baltimore Afro-American.

Born on Oct. 23, 1903, in Mystic, Conn., Lacy was on the cutting edge of the development of black athletes in professional sports. His career as a professional journalist spanned over eight decades. He died in 2003 at the age of 99. In his 1998 memoir, Lacy recalled his and other writers' efforts to push for integration of professional sports.

"In the mid-1930s, black sportswriters kept tabs on what was going on in their own communities and in national sports involving blacks; at the same time, we tried to keep the heat on that period's racial segregation in sports," recalled Lacy, who made repeated unsuccessful attempts to meet with baseball commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis.

Despite Lacy's ongoing efforts through the 1930s and early 1940s, it remained evident that there was no movement toward integration coming from baseball's policy makers. This became even more apparent during the early years of World War II when blacks fought side-by-side with their white countrymen overseas but couldn't break through, even though major league rosters were depleted by the military draft.

Some of the game's best and most celebrated players were beginning or continuing tours of military duty that would keep them off the ball fields for as many as four years. By 1944 the major league terrain was so dramatically altered that the previously unimaginable occurred: a World Series pairing of the perennially lowly St. Louis Browns, pennant winner for the first time in the team's 43-year existence, with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Sam Lacy continued his attempts at meeting with Landis throughout and after the 1944 season, offering his availability at any time and place, but Landis died that November. While Landis' death certainly came as good news to integrationists at first, the appointment of Landis' replacement, Senator A.B. "Happy" Chandler of Kentucky, appeared to be a serious setback to the movement. Upon hearing the news, Lacy filed his column from out of town, writing: "It appears that his choice was the most logical one to suit the bigoted major league operators, of which there is a heavy majority on hand."

However, it was under Chandler's stewardship that the breakthrough would eventually come. Surprisingly enough, in a statement issued from the commissioner's office shortly after his being named to the post, the new commissioner said, "I don't believe in barring Negroes from baseball just because they are Negroes."

After writing a letter to each of the 16 major league team owners urging that a committee to examine the desegregation issue be formed, Lacy was invited to speak to the group in Detroit on April 24, 1945.

Lacy presented his proposal, which resulted in the formation of an integration committee consisting of Brooklyn Dodgers president and general manager Branch Rickey, Yankees general manager Larry MacPhail, Lacy himself, and Philadelphia magistrate Joseph H. Rainey.

For perhaps the first time, major league baseball was responding to outside pressure, including incidents such as a picket by African-Americans on Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, where protesters carried placards with war time references reading: "If we are able to stop bullets, why not balls?"

Branch Rickey used the occasion to make the first public disclosure that he was planning to sign an African-American player.

"No matter the thinking of baseball owners at that 1945 meeting, the tide was turning against them. Rickey's decision was the beginning of what would become both a social revolution and a boon to the big business of professional sports," Lacy later recalled.

Lacy met on at least two separate occasions with Rickey at the Dodgers' offices in Brooklyn.

"In my meetings with Rickey, I observed him going through some difficult times because of the historic change he set in motion; one had to admire him. We spoke of many things, including Rickey's thoughts about a Brown Dodgers team. Writer Wendell Smith [who does appear in the film 42] had brought Jackie Robinson to the attention of Rickey, and he was one of the numerous black players whose names came up," Lacy said.

Smith was a friend and contemporary of Lacy's, and they would later become the first two African-American members of the writer's wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

On Smith's recommendation, Rickey continued to pursue Robinson while Lacy and Smith banged away at their typewriters, hammering their message home in the form of newspaper columns and letters to the powers that be.

Meanwhile, the most effective campaign for Major League integration was staged by Robinson himself, who hit an astounding .387 during his one and only Negro league season with the Kansas City Monarchs. Late in the season Dodgers scout Clyde Sukeforth was in Chicago to visit Robinson, where the Monarchs were playing the American Giants at Comiskey Park. He asked if Robinson would be able to meet with Rickey in Brooklyn. The meeting that took place between Robinson, Rickey and Sukeforth on August 29, 1945 has become permanently engraved in baseball annals. During this conference, Rickey tested Robinson's mettle with a barrage of racial epithets that he would be subject to as a pioneering African-American player on the all-white teams in the all-white leagues he would be working in. After hours of this type of badgering, Robinson delivered his historic inquiry, "Mr. Rickey, do you want a ballplayer who's afraid to fight back?"

To which Rickey responded, "I want a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back."

Two months later, on October 23, Rickey signed Robinson to a minor league contract with the Dodgers AAA affiliate, Montreal Royals of the International League.

Lacy covered Robinson's spring training games with the Royals in Daytona Beach, Fla., and became emotionally invested in the story he was covering.

"I felt a lump in my throat each time a ball was hit in his direction. I experienced a sort of emptiness in the bottom of my stomach whenever he took a swing in batting practice. I was constantly in fear of his muffing an easy roller. … And I uttered a silent prayer of thanks, as with closed eyes, I heard the whack of Robinson's bat against the ball," Lacy wrote for the Baltimore Afro-American.

Both Lacy and Robinson were subject to segregationist policies and nasty bouts of overt racism throughout the 1946 International League season. Lacy was with Robinson in segregated living quarters, away from the rest of the Dodgers during spring training, when members of the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in front of their rooming house.

Here in Baltimore, Robinson was hazed and heckled mercilessly by race-baiting fans at old Municipal Stadium every time the Royals came to town during the 1946 season. Robinson's wife Rachel said Baltimore fans unleashed the worst kind of name calling attacks on Jackie that she'd ever had to sit through.

In Louisville, Ky., Lacy wrote that his press pass entitled him "to a spot, smack dab against the right field wall … located at the extreme end of the covered stands … which are reserved for colored."

By the time Robinson made his big league debut with the Dodgers on April 15, 1947, Lacy was traveling with the team and the two were occasionally roommates when the team was on the road. That period is commemorated in a permanent exhibit on Lacy's role in the integration of baseball at the Sports Legends Museum in Baltimore.

The pair shared the collective experience of integrating baseball together, and at the time of his signing with the Dodgers, Robinson acknowledged the influence of the writers like Lacy. Speaking with Lacy's Afro-American newspaper, Robinson said, "I know that my position was obtained only through the constant pressure of my people and their press. I owe this to the colored people who helped make it possible, and I hope I shall always have their goodwill.

"I realize the responsibility — not so much to myself as to my people, and I won't let them down. I'll start swinging as soon as I get to bat."

While Lacy's exclusion from the film 42 may have been an oversight, his role in baseball's integration process had a tremendous and lasting influence on the Major League institution and the African American community.

Charlie Vascellaro is a freelance baseball and travel writer from Baltimore and author of a biography of Hank Aaron published by Greenwood Press in 2005. His email is vascellaro@aol.com.

Long gone, Ebbets Field continues to live on in lore

Ebbets Field is set to spring back to life in the upcoming

Jackie Robinson biopic "42." (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Iconic home of the Brooklyn Dodgers hosted its first regular-season game 100 years ago

By Evan Drellich

Special to MLB.com

NEW YORK -- Ron Schweiger, the official historian of Brooklyn with a rabbinical demeanor, had never met Bob McGee when a reporter called to invite them both to lunch.

Schweiger and McGee are both Brooklynites. Schweiger never left, but McGee, an urbane spokesman for a local utility company who recites poetry at the table then apologizes for doing so, lives in suburban Westchester County and works in Manhattan.

They were already kindred spirits, through a mutual childhood love and their time at Brooklyn College. Once a newspaper man, McGee moonlights as an author. He wrote a canonical history of Ebbets Field, the ballpark of his childhood, and the work cites Schweiger. Still, they remained strangers until March. In near caricature, Schweiger chose a diner along Flatbush Avenue for gab.

"April 12, it comes out," said Schweiger, who has pristine replicas of the original blueprints of Ebbets Field in his memorabilia-filled home. "The coming attractions, I can't believe -- did you see?"

"They make Ebbets Field look like Ebbets Field," McGee said. "I don't know how they did it. It must have been computer-generated. It had to be, how did they do it?"

"I mean, when I saw this, when the actor who's playing Jackie," Schweiger went on, "he's walking up the ramp, and he gets to the top -- there's Ebbets Field. There's the inside of the ballpark.'"

"That's the way Ebbets field looked," McGee said. "Exactly the same."

They're talking about "42," the Jackie Robinson biopic that opens in theaters on Friday. Most anyone for whom Ebbets Field was a cathedral will have similar feelings -- deity of talk Larry King, for one. The stadium in the movie was indeed computer-generated, using a stadium in Chattanooga, Tenn., as the backdrop.

"I was at [Jackie] Robinson's first game," King said. "So when they showed that scene of that Opening Day, I was up in the bleachers for 50 cents. And I lived at Ebbets Field in my childhood."

Hosting a show on Ora TV now after leaving CNN, King sat in Sandy Koufax's suite at Dodger Stadium on Opening Day last week. Famously, King and Koufax went to the same high school in Brooklyn, as did Mets owner Fred Wilpon. Fifty-one years after the opening of Dodger Stadium, King and Koufax engaged in a similar diner prattle of nostalgia. Their conversations, without fail, always settle on home.

"Always," King said. "Back toward Brooklyn, back toward growing up. Back toward what was."

One hundred years ago Tuesday, Ebbets Field hosted its first regular-season baseball game. Philadelphia downed the Brooklyn team, then better known as the "Superbas," 1-0, in front of a crowd of about 10,000.

The glory of the 1940s and '50s was still a long ways away. Cartoonist Willard Mullin didn't create the famous Brooklyn Bum cartoon character, the unofficial avatar of a self-contained city, until 1937.

Had Ebbets Field somehow stood, its centennial would have been sandwiched between Fenway Park's in 2012 and Wrigley Field's in 2014.

It's not without irony that Dodger Stadium, a magnificent park in its own right, received a $100 million facelift this winter.

"This is the second chance that Ebbets Field never had," said Mark Langill, the Dodgers' official historian. "Normally, you would not have a facility this old undergo a renovation."

More than most years, reminders of Ebbets can be found all around of late: The movie, for one. In addition, Citi Field, Wilpon's jewel and the home of the Mets, was created in Ebbets' likeness. It's a fine coincidence that the All-Star Game will be hosted there in the year of the centennial.

And just a few months ago, in December, a flagpole from Ebbets was positioned in front of the Nets' new arena, Barclays Center. Barclays Center was built exactly on the site that Walter O'Malley, the Dodgers owner who moved the team to Los Angeles in 1958, sought for a new ballpark in Brooklyn.

* * * * *
"My first memory of Ebbets Field was in high school," said Koufax, who debuted in 1955, giving him three years at Ebbets. "They used to take us to one game a year, it would start at 11 in the morning. You'd see the game, then get on the subway and go home. Of course, I grew up in Brooklyn, so it was special for me to play in the stadium where I watched [Gil] Hodges and [Duke] Snider and Jackie and Pee Wee [Reese] and Newk [Don Newcombe]. Those were guys I saw playing when I was a kid."

Ebbets cost $750,000 to construct, and the lots it was built on were bought up in secret by Charles Ebbets, the team's owner, to keep prices down. Architect Clarence Van Buskirk designed the park, the blueprints of which are now stored in New York City's municipal archives in Manhattan.

There was quite a to-do regarding those blueprints just last year. A Brooklyn man took it upon himself to find them in 1992. The blueprints went on display with Schweiger's help in 2012, and city lawyers immediately came calling for them. Those same blueprints helped in the re-creation of Ebbets in "42."

In its later years, the ballpark's capacity sat in the low-30,000 range. The Italian-marble-adorned rotunda at the home-plate entrance was its hallmark. A 56-foot-wide entrance led to more than a dozen ticket windows.

The 20-foot-high wall in right field was bent, creating oddities in play. At first pitcher friendly, Ebbets became a bandbox with time and changing dimensions. The right-field line was always about 300 feet from home plate, and foul territory was long a pipe dream.

"I had my best days at Ebbets Field, even though it was not a pitcher's park, but in a sense it was for the Dodgers' pitchers," said Carl Erskine, who threw two no-hitters at Ebbets Field, one in 1952, the other in '56. "It was a nightmare for a visiting pitcher sometimes."

The stadium was built without a press box. Television has enriched everything about sports, it all began in Flatbush. There was a Dodgers football team, too, and it played the Eagles in the first televised pro football game in 1939. That was a couple of months after the Dodgers and Reds played the first televised baseball game, also at Ebbets.

Fenway and Wrigley aren't Ebbets' only contemporaries. There was Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Crosley Field in Cincinnati and Tiger Stadium, originally called Navin Field, in Detroit.

But it seems that Ebbets Field has taken on an afterlife that no other park has, and few teams embrace a team's history from a prior city the way the Dodgers of Los Angeles do.

"It's because of the brand of the Dodgers," Dodgers president Stan Kasten said. "It's Jackie Robinson, it's Branch Rickey, it's Vin Scully, it's Sandy Koufax, it's [Tommy] Lasorda, all of whom who go back to Brooklyn and Ebbets Field. You can't name people like that for any place else other than Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park. And Yankee Stadium has been rebuilt, but they took pains to make it feel like the old Yankee Stadium."

The transforming Brooklyn neighborhood, the players, Robinson's role in breaking the color barrier, the rivalries with the Giants and Yankees -- all are inexorably linked to the stadium's lore. All, too, have been chronicled in great length.

The Polo Grounds, the home of the Giants before they moved to San Francisco, could be funereal, although the franchise was quite successful. Yankee Stadium was stuffy.

"At Ebbets Field, you were aware," said Scully, the legendary broadcaster who has been calling Dodgers games since 1950. "Because every day you'd see the same people in the box seats. They'd wave up, they'd say hello. Hilda Chester, who once hollered at me that she loved me, which embarrassed me and I lowered my head, and she said, 'Look at me when I'm talking to you.' So that's as intimate as Ebbets Field was. You'd never get anything like that [elsewhere]."'

"When you played the Giants at Ebbets Field, this was your manhood on the line," Erskine said. "Against the Giants? I mean, come on. We faced them 22 times a year in those days; it was all in New York, so the rivalry was tremendous."
  * * * * *
Then, just like that, the rivalries and two of New York's three teams were transplanted. Blame O'Malley for not selling the team, blame New York urban planner Robert Moses for not permitting O'Malley to develop the Brooklyn site he wanted. To this day, there is no universal consensus that Moses deserves most of the blame for the Dodgers' departure, but that seems to be the most popular opinion.

"Everything had to go just so," said Langill. "And this is in like a 12-to-15-month span, when suddenly they go from being in the World Series against the Yankees, taking it to Game 7, to suddenly 51 weeks later announcing that they're moving. For somebody that since 1946 wanted to make it work on the East Coast, I think [O'Malley] did make a good-faith effort for 10 years."

McGee acknowledges that it may be difficult for him to view the move through the prism of any perspective but that of a New Yorker, but he's also done extensive research on the move. He disagrees.

"The revisionists who would seek to blame Robert Moses and ignore O'Malley's opportunism gloss over the fact that [Phillies owner Bob] Carpenter in Philadelphia began advancing the argument for a new stadium in Philadelphia in 1953, around the same time O'Malley ramped up his efforts in earnest for one in Brooklyn, and Mr. Carpenter waited until 1970 for a civic solution to evolve in Philadelphia called Veterans Stadium," McGee said. "O'Malley was playing New York off against a best offer. Those who say O'Malley did all he could to keep the team in Brooklyn conveniently overlook one fact, one thing that he never did: He never offered the team for sale."

In the context of today, two questions concerning Ebbets Field stand out. Why were Fenway and Wrigley able to survive while Ebbets did not? And could Ebbets Field have still been serviceable? The Red Sox and Cubs, after all, have dealt with the same issues regarding parking and public transportation that became the crux of the Dodgers' departure.

More than once, Fenway almost fell. Before the current ownership took over not much more than a decade ago, there was talk of a new park. But even before that, in the 1960s, Tom Yawkey was unhappy with the Fens.

"Going back to the '60s when the Red Sox were really doing poorly and all these new ballparks were being built around baseball, Tom Yawkey was very discouraged for a couple of reasons," Red Sox team historian Dick Bresciani said. "He was trying to rebuild a team, but he thought that he wasn't getting proper support from the state, because they had put in the Massachusetts Turnpike about 10 years previously, and he wanted an exit [directly to Fenway]. He was quoted a couple of times in the paper, maybe he might have to leave Boston, because he couldn't keep competing with teams that were increasing their seating up into the 60,000s and we were only 33,000-something total at that time.

"What changed all of his thinking was the miracle pennant of '67. And the fact that the attendance jumped tremendously."

The Red Sox were helped, too, by the fact that the Braves had left Boston in 1953, five years before the Dodgers went to Los Angeles. Leaving Boston without a Major League franchise would not have been viable.

"That really was sort of the test balloon for those owners to say, 'Hey, they went from struggling in Boston to successful in Milwaukee,'" Langill said. "The St. Louis Browns go to Baltimore, and pretty soon the Athletics are looking to leave Philadelphia, but that's all because of the Braves."

Winning wasn't a problem for the Dodgers at the time of their move. One of the reasons they live on in myth is because they were torn out of the borough at the height of their success.

But naturally, a winning team -- a team that should draw immediately -- is most appealing to cities with Major League aspirations. Winning crystallized the memory of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and it helped hurry them away.

"The key difference is that the Dodgers were a successful club on the field and at the box office, while the Red Sox and Cubs were not," MLB's official historian John Thorn said. "The limited capacity and access of both Fenway and Wrigley cannot be said to have had much of a bottom-line impact, for decades at a time. Once the woeful Boston Braves franchise saw their attendance multiply six, seven times in Milwaukee, all club owners paid attention."

As for the issues of traffic and public transportation -- that might be where the tragedy of Ebbets is most clear.

Ebbets' spirit and essence can be seen everywhere today, in all the recently-built city-center stadiums tucked into cozy harbors or neighborhoods, from Baltimore to San Diego. Ebbets, like Fenway and Wrigley, is a model that teams have returned to. If the park could have held on until, say, 1990 ...

"These older ballparks [were] not forced by a multitude of code and marketing initiatives that spread us all out and put in cross aisles for vendors and separated every seat category," said Janet Marie Smith, a lead figure in the construction of Camden Yards in Baltimore, as well as the revitalization of Fenway Park and Dodger Stadium. "And inches which turn into feet which turn into complete other levels, [and] reduces the intimacy. And at the end of the day, it is the intimacy that really adds energy to the parks in a way that you almost never find in the new parks, because they're simply more spread out."

In terms of its own construction and the infrastructure, Ebbets physically should have been able to make it as well, given the types of renovations going on at Fenway and Wrigley -- wranglings of ownership aside.

"I can only speculate based on what I know from photographs and ratings, but it seems to me that it didn't have any challenges that were any more severe than Wrigley or Fenway," Smith said. "And I think in many respects, one of the most frustrating things about Ebbets for the Dodgers was their belief that the forms of transportation in America were changing so rapidly. The inability to come to Ebbets Field via car was as much as what drove their decision to move as anything else."

* * * * *
Schweiger and McGee took a trip to the site of Ebbets after lunch, where apartment towers now stand. Schweiger pantomimed catching a fly ball beyond the right-field fence, where a small parking lot currently sits. The ironic placards of "No Ball Playing" in the courtyard are well known, and a large sign that says "Ebbets Field Apartments" hints at what used to be -- but that's all.

The neighborhood has radically changed. A shift was under way even when the Dodgers were leaving, courtesy of World War II's conclusion and the Moses-supported growth of the suburbs. Maybe if the team had stayed, the neighborhood could have been built around it. Maybe. But who would have played there? The Mets?

Keeping the Dodgers in Brooklyn, after all, would have meant a new ballpark either way, barring O'Malley selling.

"I don't picture it today, it belongs to the era it was in," Erskine said. "It would be out of place today."

Scully, whose word on the Dodgers should always be final, harkened back to another palace of his childhood.

"Nothing is forever," Scully said. "I was pretty much raised in Washington Heights [in Manhattan]. And I lived on about 180th Street and Cabrini Boulevard. Well, about five or six blocks from where I lived, believe it or not, there was a magnificent castle. It was a castle made of pure white Carrara marble. And it was built and owned by a gentleman who was a doctor. His name was Paterno. Now this castle today would look like something out of Disneyland. And there was a big, iron, grated fence around the property, and as little kids, we'd go up there to just look at it from afar. And they had some Doberman Pinschers, I think they were patrolling the grounds. So you'd have one kid go far up the line and rattle the fence, and the dog would go up there, and then we could kind of look in and see. Among other things, I remember vividly seeing a suit of armor in the entry and I could see a polar bear rug on the floor.

"And this is in New York, in Washington Heights, the most unbelievable thing you ever saw! Dr. Paterno passed on. I believe he had one or two sisters, and they did not want the castle, so they sold it to some big real estate company. And if you went up to that neighborhood, up past 181st Street, on Cabrini Boulevard, you'd see -- and I'm trying to count in my memory -- but there's probably five or six multistory apartment houses looking out. But the name of that whole complex is Castle Village.

"I'm not sure how many people who live there know that there was actually the most magnificent castle you ever saw. But my point was there wasn't any time or any reason for the castle to remain in this modern day. And there really wasn't any time for Ebbets Field to remain once everybody left."

Evan Drellich is a contributor to MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

---

With release of Jackie Robinson movie, don't forget baseball's other black pioneers



From left, Brooklyn Dodgers baseball players John Jorgensen,

Pee Wee Reese, Ed Stanky and Jackie Robinson pose at

Ebbets Field in New York on April 15, 1947. (AP)

By Fay Vincent

March 29, 2013

FoxNews.com

In a few days, the new baseball season and a new baseball-centered film arrive. The film, “42,” takes its title from the uniform number of Jackie Robinson and documents his travails and celebrates his achievements as he left the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues in 1947 to become a Brooklyn Dodger and the first black major leaguer.

I have long held the old Negro League ballplayers in special regard for keeping our game alive during the long years when players of color were denied the opportunity to play in the major leagues. Some superb players played only in the Negro Leagues, including Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Oscar Charleston and others.

But some were young enough when the gates fell to have been able to play in the majors. To my good fortune, three former major league stars who had begun as Negro League players -- Larry Doby, Joe Black and Ernie Banks -- became good friends of mine, as did “Slick” Surratt, who played only in the Negro Leagues, and they had much to tell of their experiences in segregated America.

I wanted to share their stories, so some 20 years ago these four – only the ebullient Banks survives -- accompanied me as we visited several colleges to talk to kids about their baseball lives and especially about the significance of the Negro Leagues.

The number of surviving alumni of the Negro Leagues is now tiny. But many of their stories have been preserved. I did extended interviews of many former Negro League players, and the tapes of those interviews are available at the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y.

In those interviews and in the talks that my traveling companions gave at the colleges we visited, it became clear to me these men took their baseball seriously and played with pride at the highest level permitted to them.

Surratt told me the players were paid at essentially the level of high school teachers in the black community, yet a symbol of pride they wore coats and ties when the travelled. Their busses may have been fully depreciated but their dress signaled their self- respect.

The baseball played in those leagues was of a high caliber, and the players were skilled professionals. Yet there were other dimensions to their lives.

I once asked Slick why the players played so hard and to win. He smiled wryly at me and then asked if I wanted the baseball answer or the real reason. I asked for both.

“Well,” he said, “we played hard because we never knew whether there was some young kid named Willie Mays who might be there to try out for the team after the game, and we were afraid of losing our jobs. And then there is the real reason.”

He paused for effect.

“You see the winning team got the best girls.”

Remember, his name was “Slick.”

At one college we visited, after Larry Doby had explained the problems of not being able to eat at the best -- but white only -- restaurants in Southern towns, a young black student challenged him: “Why did you accept that? Why didn’t you just insist on being served? Why were you so laid back?”

Larry was patient and gentle: “Young man, let me explain something to you. If we had been difficult or ornery, one of two things would have happened and maybe both. We surely would have been arrested, and we might have been killed. You understand?”

The student had little familiarity with the Jim Crow era, and as a result, the impact on students of the dignified and elegant black ball players was dramatic.

Wherever we went the kids thronged around the players to hear directly of experiences none of them would ever share and few of them could imagine. The simple eloquence, however, of the players made our visits to the colleges some of the most memorable times of my life. The players explained and the kids recognized how much Rosa Parks had endured and helped to change on that bus in Birmingham.

I will look for the new film on Jackie with interest. I hope the filmmakers have avoided the temptation to add gloss to his story. The simple but piercing facts ought to be sufficient.

As I listened to Larry Doby during those college visits, I recall being so moved as he spoke of the loneliness, fear and doubt he experienced in his first days in the major leagues. Softly, he emphasized the loving support of his wife and of the vital strength he drew from Bill Veeck, the owner of the Cleveland Indians who had brought him to the team as the first black in the American League.

That was the experience Jackie shared. One hopes this film captures what these young players had to accept as this nation suffered through our own form of Apartheid. Think of what black baseball players have meant to our game since 1947, when Jackie first played as a Brooklyn Dodger. Think then of what we would have missed had the color line survived another 10 or 20 years.

I trust this new film will serve as the reminder of the magnificent gift Jackie and Larry and all the other black pioneers gave us.

Fay Vincent is a former CEO of Columbia Pictures Industries and from 1989-92 served as the Commissioner of Baseball.

From rookies to legends, Koufax leaves mark on camp

Special advisor to chairman provides

knowledge of game, link to Dodgers' past

Dodgers play-by-play legend Vin Scully sits
down with Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax to
discuss lefties, pitching and the Dodgers

See the video here

2/28/13:
By Ken Gurnick / MLB.com

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Sandy has left the building.

In Elvis fashion, Sandy Koufax finished his initial 10-day Spring Training assignment as special advisor to the Dodgers chairman Thursday having left an unforgettable impression, even on fellow legends.

"The owners have done so many things correctly that have lifted the spirits of fans and everybody in the organization and by bringing Sandy back have added to the optimism," said another iconic Hall of Famer, Vin Scully.

"They've been able to bring back someone whose name has always been linked to the Dodgers, and I'm sure the fans think the owners have done another smart thing. That's the way I look at it. It's just great."

Zack Greinke might win 20 games this year, but the early leader for best acquisition is the 77-year-old Koufax, who won't throw a pitch. Koufax said he will attend an Old Timers Game at Dodger Stadium on June 8 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1963 World Series team and perhaps drop in on the club at a series or two on the East Coast.

"Beyond that, I really don't know," he said.

The hiring of Koufax has been universally praised as a coup by the new Guggenheim Partners ownership. In the past, Koufax has been a Spring Training visitor to see staff friends, but always as a private citizen. He hasn't worked for a club since a stint as a Dodgers Minor League instructor from 1979-89.

In addition to the obvious public relations bonanza of the hiring, management wanted to tap into Koufax's teaching strengths, as well as fortify an ongoing mission of reconnecting with players from the Dodgers' glory years.

"I grew up like that with the Yankees," said manager Don Mattingly. "[Mickey] Mantle, Catfish [Hunter], Whitey [Ford]. The Yankees would bring all of them back. Mickey just kind of hung around being Mickey. He was great. Catfish, he and I would go to a back field and he would pitch seven innings to me. He could still throw all right, and he'd try to get me out.

"If you have resources like that, it's just foolish not to use them. And having them around helps your players understand the history of the game. I want guys like that and Tommy Lasorda around, I want them asking why I did this and why I did that. I want the best information. I want Sandy challenging our way of doing things if he thinks there's a better way."

The Dodgers quickly slid Koufax into their daily program, and he worked one on one with many pitchers in camp, especially three of the starters he has counseled in the past -- Clayton Kershaw, Josh Beckett and Chris Capuano.

But Koufax also worked with relievers like Kenley Jansen and Javy Guerra, and young Major Leaguers like Josh Wall. Midway through his stay, the role expanded to one-on-one morning sessions with the top pitching prospects in Minor League camp -- Zack Lee, Chris Reed, Angel Sanchez, Jose Dominguez and converted third baseman Pedro Baez, who Koufax said shocked him by displaying "four Major League pitches" even though he's thrown only one inning in his life, in instructional league.

"When I came back to the organization in 2001, one of the major goals was to get the Dodgers back to the way they taught pitching for so many years," said pitching coach Rick Honeycutt. "They had gotten away from it, from the way it was taught by the great pitching coaches like Red Adams, Ron Perranoski, Dave Wallace and Sandy.

"The great thing about having Sandy around is to listen to the stories of success, not just his great talent pitching, but his ability to say in simple terms what we're trying to accomplish. I've always felt that I'm an extension of him in that way. And it was especially great for him to work with our Minor League coaches so we're all on the same page. Who better to learn from than the best?"

Koufax's presence lured autograph seekers in such numbers that management had to deploy metal crowd barriers after he was nearly overwhelmed the second day walking from one field to another.

If shy in public, Koufax was anything but when in his baseball element.

"All the great moments in my life that I cherish came back to the surface, being able to relive them with Sandy," said former teammate Maury Wills, still a bunting instructor at age 80. "Since he's been here, it's like reliving all those great moments.

"Surprisingly, he seems to be enjoying participating. He's so quiet and humble. But just to see him get involved is such a pleasure. I feel that two days from now, he'll realize how much he enjoyed it. It might get to the point where he's missing being here."

Koufax had a different but undeniable impact on players like catcher A.J. Ellis.

"What his presence says from the standpoint of the players and the people in the organization is that, through the ownership change, they are bringing back a Dodger legend and royalty that has earned and deserves to be part of the organization," said Ellis.

"The time between innings and bullpens, I'll never forget the insight he's given me to the mental side of pitching and game-calling, and it's something I'll carry into the season."

Ken Gurnick is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

---

Disabled Navy veteran Jacobs is part of Dodgers' tryout thanks to Lasorda

Daniel "Doc" Jacobs at Dodger Tryout
[San Gabriel Valley Tribune]



By J.P. Hoornstra, Staff Writer

L.A. Daily News

2/28/2013

GLENDALE, Ariz. – Like a mouse creeping up an elephant, the thought of playing baseball with Dodgers officials watching made Daniel "Doc" Jacobs nervous.

"I still am nervous," Jacobs said Thursday, minutes after his audition was over.

On a back field at Camelback Ranch with the other participants in an open tryout with the Dodgers, Jacobs was a world away from Ramadi, Iraq. Seven years and three days earlier, he was on a battlefield in Ramadi when an IED exploded beneath him, killing the Marine with him and shattering his body.

Jacobs underwent more than 50 surgeries, including an amputation of his left leg below the knee. Within years, he became the first amputee to return to active duty in the Navy.

On Thursday, the 27-year-old was number 627 – nothing more than the number on his back, nothing less than a hero.

"Once we kicked off the war in Iraq, I decided that I wanted to go in and serve and carry on my family heritage," he said. "Everybody in every generation in my family has served. I didn't know if we were ever going to fight a war again so I wanted to definitely go fight in a war, really fight for our freedom."

Jacobs said his great-grandfather fought in World War II, and an ancestor on his mother's side fought in the Civil War.

His other dream was to play Major League Baseball.

The opportunity arose a year ago when Jacobs met former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda at a California Disabled Veterans Business Alliance meeting and shared his dream. Lasorda invited Jacobs to try out on the spot; Jacobs obliged and decided not to wear the hat of his childhood team, the Cleveland Indians.

"I didn't want to disrespect him by that," Jacobs said.

Unless you were looking closely at his left leg, Jacobs' tryout was indistinguishable from most. He fielded a pair of ground balls cleanly but long-hopped both throws. A backhand was hit to his right side, but it went under his glove and rolled onto the outfield grass. Another backhand met Jacobs' glove cleanly, but he short-hopped that throw.

For Jacobs, there was more to the tryout than what could fit in a scouting report.

"It's all about the experience, and letting America and these guys know that not all disabled veterans are going to be a statistic in the news," he said. "I'm here to combat the suicide rate, homicide rate, divorce rate statistics. I just want to get out there and prove to America there are awesome disabled veterans out there and we are making a stand against that."

Koufax Dons Dodgers Uniform for First Time Since 1980s

                                                  [Paul Sancya/Associated Press]

Sandy Koufax signing autographs in Phoenix on Thursday.

February 22, 2013

By Karen Crouse

New York Times

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Ed Farmer, the voice of the Chicago White Sox, will tell you that as a teenager he heard the voice of God and that it belonged to Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers' Hall of Fame left-handed pitcher.

When Farmer heard Friday that Koufax was working with pitchers on a field at the Dodgers' spring-training site at Camelback Ranch, which it shares with the White Sox, he made his way over to pay homage to the man he credits for his 11-year major league career.

At 18, Farmer said, he was introduced to Koufax by Alvin Dark, who was managing Farmer in Cleveland, the team that drafted him in the fifth round of the 1967 draft. According to Farmer, Koufax commented on the size of Farmer's hands and said, "You're going to have a big curve
ball."

"He showed me how to throw the curve," Farmer said. "He made me a lot of money."

For the first time since the late 1980s, Koufax is back in a Dodgers uniform. He is spending 10 days at training camp as a pitching instructor, lured back to the franchise that made him famous by the
team's head of marketing, Lon Rosen, and president, Stan Kasten.

During a morning throwing session, he gave pointers to Zach Lee, Chris Capuano, Chad Billingsley and Ryu Hyun-Jin, a left-hander from South Korea who said Koufax is a celebrity in his country too.

"That's because of Chan Ho Park," Koufax said with a shrug, referring to the first South Korean-born player in the majors, who broke in with the Dodgers in 1994.

Koufax, who spent 11 years beginning in 1970 as a Dodgers minor league instructor, said he was approached by Rosen about returning to the franchise in some capacity at a Dodgers game last summer, proof, he said that he is not the J.D. Salinger of baseball as has been written. "I'm at the Final Four, I go to ball games, I go to golf outings, I go to dinner," he said. "I live my life."

Koufax is 77 and wiry, 35 pounds lighter than his pitching weight but nimble enough to toss a baseball and shag balls after bunting practice. Asked about his arthritic left elbow, which hastened his
retirement in 1966, Koufax joked, "You haven't seen me throw anything, have you?"

The art of pitching is summed up in his book in one sentence: "Get people out."

"There are so many ways to pitch," he said. "There's the best way to throw and then there's pitching."

Koufax said he is impressed with what he has seen so far from the Dodgers pitchers, a star-studded group that includes Clayton Kershaw, Josh Beckett and Zack Greinke.

One of his favorite aspects of baseball, in his day and now, Koufax said, is the camaraderie of the clubhouse. The players, he said, "have kind of included me in some stuff." He added, "It's kind of fun."

He noted that camps are far smaller than in his day. "We had 600 players in camp," he said. "Players were wearing A,B,C,D on their uniforms beside their numbers."

He described baseball as if it were some precursor to today's reality television shows, where a small cast is assembled from mass tryouts. "This was before free agency," Koufax said. "So you'd have 600 players in camp and if 100 players were injured, they went out and signed 100 more."

Now, he added, "It's about protecting your assets because you don't have too many."

In Koufax, the Dodgers have a golden resource. He is able to connect with players young enough to be his grandchildren. Among fans of all ages, he remains a beloved figure. A man approached Koufax to tell him his Southern California-reared Jewish mother grew up with a massive crush on him.

Then there was Farmer, who shook Koufax's hand vigorously. After Farmer told his big hands story, he and Koufax put their palms together to see whose hand was bigger (Koufax appeared to have the

edge, by a fingertip). Farmer produced a black-and-white photo in which he is throwing a curve and showed it to Koufax so he could see that that 18-year-old absorbed his lesson well.

Michael Jordan at 50: Remembering his forgettable baseball career

Michael Jordan turns 50 on Sunday, and few will
spend much time looking back on his baseball career.
                                                           AP Photo

By Steve Politi
The Star-Ledger, February 16, 2013
nj.com

The P.R. guy for the visiting minor-league team was clear: His right fielder would only do interviews if he made an impact on the game.

So as the fly ball headed toward the left-field wall in Zebulon, N.C., on that sticky night in July 1994, you can forget the rule about no cheering in the press box. It came up a few yards short, as too many of them did for the 31-year-old rookie with the Birmingham Barons that summer, but it was good enough for a sac fly.

And good enough for us.

“I’d like to put in that request for Michael Jordan!” I said.

Maybe the first thing you remember about Jordan is the shot that propelled North Carolina to the national title over Georgetown in 1982, or the mesmerizing layup when he changed hands in midair against the Lakers, or the iconic shot that gave him his sixth and final NBA title.

Jordan turns 50 Sunday. He authored far more than 50 transcendent moments in his career, all of them still as fresh now as when they happened – and plenty of them filling the ESPN airwaves and Sports Illustrated pages this week because he is still among the most popular athletes in the world.

That sac fly in tiny Zebulon, home of the Carolina Mudcats, will not make any of these lists. Still: This is how I often remember Jordan now, standing outside the squat cinderblock building where the visiting team dressed with about 200 fans pushing so hard against a nearby fence I worried for their safety.

It couldn’t have been more surreal. Here was a team of so-so prospects and washed-up former big leaguers, all riding a bus – a specially outfitted bus, thanks to him – with a multi-millionaire superstar from another sport who was as famous as anyone on the planet.

Here was Michael Jordan, less than an hour from where his basketball career first exploded, giving interviews about a meaningless sac fly in a Double-A baseball game on the edge of nowhere.

“My teammates – I told them I was going to come out here and play a practical joke that I was going back to basketball and retiring from baseball,” Jordan said, cracking a smile. “But for me to do that, you guys would take it an extra step. And I don’t want to do that.”

That was all that mattered, of course: Getting back to basketball. Jordan leaving the sport was especially hard to comprehend in North Carolina, where he led Dean Smith to his first national title as a freshman in 1982.

His retirement and baseball dalliance wasn’t just a curiosity in his home state. For many, it was a betrayal. I was an intern at The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., that summer, assigned to the minors because they were the lowest rung on the ladder. Fans weren’t waiting for him to stop chasing a curveball, but to stop chasing this weird baseball dream, period.

He was 31 and in the prime of his career, and the reasons he stepped away from basketball were real. He was burned out after winning three straight championships with the Bulls. He was emotionally drained after his father was murdered on the side of a highway the summer before.

Still, regardless of the motivation, piling on became fashionable. “Michael Jordan has no more business patrolling right field in Comiskey Park,” Sports Illustrated wrote, “than Minnie Minoso has bringing the ball upcourt for the Chicago Bulls.” Wasn’t he wasting a chance to add to his legacy?

Looking back now, though, that summer only added to it. A lot of athletes have dominated a sport the way Jordan did. A lot were as hungry to win or as feared in the clutch or even successfully returned from retirement.

None was brave enough to try to master another sport entirely – and this excludes two-sport stars such as Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders, because Jordan hadn’t played baseball since he was a teenager. He might have been a failure in a baseball uniform, with a Mendoza-line .202 batting average in 127 games that summer. But returning to basketball after a year-and-a-half absence and winning three more titles confirmed his greatness.

The time away, in hindsight, made the legacy stronger. Even if it felt like a bad sports movie at the time.

“There was a lot of speculation made about my announcement of retirement and going back to basketball, and it wasn't started by me,” Jordan said that night in Zebulon. “I think that’s some of the media pressures trying to get me back in the game. That's totally not going to work.

“No, I’m not going back to basketball, as I heard you guys say on the television and the radio,” he said. “I’m here, I’m happy to be here, and I will remain here.”

He played three games that weekend, going 1 for 9 with three strikeouts and two RBI that nobody remembers. Then, as his teammates filed out of that cinderblock clubhouse, he hopped into a Lexus and drove away.

Reversing Course on Reports About a Classic

 

 

                                                                        RKO/Phtofest

Gary Cooper portrayed the left-handed slugger

Lou Gehrig in “The Pride of the Yankees."

February 8, 2013

By Richard Sandomir

New York Times

Before the release of "The Pride of the Yankees," the 1942 biographical film about Lou Gehrig, there were reports that movie magic had been needed to solve a critical problem: making Gary Cooper, a right-handed movie star who was definitely not a ballplayer, into a credible version of the left-handed Gehrig, a Hall of Fame slugger with a .340 career batting average.

Lefty O'Doul, a former major leaguer, had been hired to convert Cooper into someone who could at least pretend he was a left-handed hitter and first baseman. But just days before the film opened, Shirley Povich, a Washington Post columnist, called reports that O'Doul had succeeded in his work "a heap of hokum." Instead, he wrote, "everything you see Cooper doing left-handed in the picture, he's actually doing right-handed."

The effect was achieved, he said, through trickery. Cooper would hit, catch and throw right-handed, but the film would be reversed to make it look as if he were a left-hander. To perpetuate the illusion, Cooper would run to third base on a hit, not first, and would station himself at third instead of first. The letters across the chest of his Yankees uniform would be sewn backward.

Everything, Povich said, "worked out beautifully."

Now, more than 70 years later, one researcher believes that reports by Povich and others about the cinematic sleight of hand were largely untrue but that a small amount of flipping probably took place. The researcher said that O'Doul's tutelage probably enabled Cooper, who was 40 when the film was made, to bat and catch left-handed with passable skill, although throwing was another matter.

"O'Doul knew a lot about teaching baseball," said the researcher, Tom Shieber, a senior curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. "You can't sell Cooper short. I heard he wasn't much of an athlete, but if you look at his swing, it had a funny loop to it, but it wasn't bad."

Shieber began analyzing the film last month and ended up spelling out his conclusions in a lengthy article early this week on his personal blog,BaseballResearcher.blogspot.com.

As he pored over the film's frames, Shieber began to see how difficult it would have been for the director Sam Wood and the film's technicians to execute all the changes needed on the field for the film to be successfully reversed.

All the players in the shot with Cooper would have had to have the letters on their jerseys sewn backward to be read correctly when the film was flipped.

If Cooper wore a glove on the opposite hand, the other infielders would have had to do so, too. And if the first-base running lane was erased, an exact replica would have had to be drawn down third base.

Too many dominoes had to fall for the trickery to be worth the filmmakers' trouble, Shieber said. "Like a complicated conspiracy theory, every aspect of the plan would have to have been carefully planned out and perfectly executed," he wrote.

With an expertise in assessing the authenticity of historic uniforms, Shieber concluded that Cooper's Columbia University jersey in the movie "buttons together such that the left portion of the shirt placket is on top of the right," which is common for men's shirts. The same holds true of the way Cooper's Yankee jersey buttoned.

Shieber even compared the fly of Cooper and Gehrig's road uniform pants: they lay the same way, left side over right. If Cooper's fly followed the correct pattern, Shieber said, the film was not flipped.

Another clue in Shieber's research was the bat in Gehrig's hands: the "Powerized" logo above the Louisville Slugger brand name was angled correctly. Does anyone believe, he asked, that the filmmakers ordered backward-branded bats for the film?

"Why go to all that trouble?" he said.

Unlike Kevin Costner, who played well in "Bull Durham," Cooper was a novice. But "Pride of the Yankees" relied far less, relatively, on his athleticism than on the love story between Cooper and Teresa Wright, who portrayed Gehrig's wife, Eleanor.

O'Doul built Cooper's swing by having him chop trees, but he told Cooper, "You throw a ball like an old woman tossing a hot biscuit." Years later, Cooper wrote that after "some painful weeks, he got my arm to work in a reasonable duplicate of Gehrig's throwing."

As for the flipping that probably did occur, Shieber said he noticed that the bandage that was seen on Cooper's left hand while throwing looked quite similar to a bandage on his right hand as he adjusted his cap, apparent evidence that that part of the film was flipped. In another sequence, Shieber saw that Cooper's jersey buttoned the wrong way — right placket over left — an indication of more flipping.

Shieber acknowledged that more flipping may have been left on the cutting room floor or that the filmmakers may have taken a shot at reversing all of Cooper's playing sequences before it "got too unruly."

Cooper's own words, in a 1956 Saturday Evening Post article, dispute Shieber's findings. He wrote that he knew the difficulties of playing the left-handed Gehrig but that a solution had been found.

"To remedy this in close-ups," he wrote, "the letters on my uniform were reversed as in mirror writing, and the film was processed with the back side to the front. My right hand thus appeared to be my left."

Was Cooper exaggerating?

Maria Cooper Janis, Cooper's daughter, backs her father. "My mother told me that he tried like the dickens to do it as a lefty," she said by phone. "But he couldn't."

Shieber's conclusion, though, may create some renewed, and welcome, curiosity about a movie now 71 years old.

The oldest baseball you have ever seen

By Rob Neyer on Feb 5, 12:09p

Via Slate, the story (and image) of a really old baseball. I mean, really, really old ...

"During the War Between the States, the game was played on the battlefields and even in wartime prison camps. Baseball was, after all, portable, and even amid the horrors of war, soldiers sometimes found opportunities to play on the vast open fields where they needed only a bat, a ball, and a few willing participants.

This ball was found and retrieved in 1862 in Shiloh, in southwestern Tennessee, on the grounds of one of the Civil War's bloodiest battles. The ball is inscribed: "Picked Up on the Battle Field at Shiloh by G.F. Hellum." Giles Hellum was an African-American who worked as an orderly for the Union Army at Shiloh. He later enlisted as a soldier in the 69th Colored Infantry."

Above is the actual baseball in question; this spring, this and many other artifacts will be featured in a new online museum, The National Pastime.*

Former Mets pitcher Darling's love for baseball fulfilled in many ways

Former Mets pitcher and current SNY sportscaster Ron Darling
spoke at the Rider University baseball team's First Pitch Dinner.
                                              [Donte Carty/Rider University]

By Paul Franklin, NJ.com
January 27, 2013

LAWRENCE – He figured he would go to law school, business school or maybe work on Wall Street.

"I was going to do what everyone at Yale does,'' Ron Darling said Saturday night, prior to speaking at the fifth annual Rider Baseball First Pitch Dinner. "I thought I'd do four years and then got on to my life.''

Instead he went on to play professional baseball, being drafted by the Texas Rangers his junior year of college.

But even then, in the spring of 1981, he still thought he would spend most of his days in a suit and tie.

"When I got a signing bonus I was like, "Ah, hah-hah, I got you now!' Once they figure out I can't play I'll use that money to go to law school.' Sixteen years later I was still playing.''

Most of his years were spent pitching for the New York Mets, including the 1986 World Series championship season.

After completing his pitching career in 1995, Darling eventually returned to the game as an announcer, and for a while now has been a TV analyst for Mets games and nationally for TBS.

Darling, 51, was introduced as the keynote speaker by Allentown resident Tom McCarthy, TV play-by-play broadcaster for the Phillies.

The event, which included a silent auction of impressive memorabilia, acknowledged this year's Rider baseball team and coach Barry Davis.

"Quite honestly, the last time I was able to have fun playing baseball was in college,'' Darling said. "After that it becomes a real occupation. Not everyone moves on to the major leagues, not everyone moves on to the minor leagues.

"But you remember these college days forever. I still have friends from those days.''
He still loves the game, though he wasn't really reminded of that fact until beginning his broadcasting career in 2000.

"When I started watching games and talking about them, and getting paid to do so, it was just about the neatest job in the world. I'm as lucky as can be,'' Darling said. "I'd like to say I prepared for this my entire life, but I didn't. I'm just blessed, and made the most of my opportunity.

"A lot of these kids will be going into different fields in life,'' he added, transitioning to the evening, "and when you get those opportunities they will be very much like in baseball. You have to get that hit, you have to get that strikeout, and you will be presented with those challenges probably thousands of times.

"How many times you're successful will probably determine how successful you'll be in life.''

Baseball has certainly been that for him, a game, he said, that offers a rhythm rarely felt in other sports.

"Baseball is like watching a play, or a great movie,'' Darling said. "If you're a lover of baseball, time doesn't mean anything to you.

"I've never seen him play, but when baseball's great it's gotta be like Miles Davis; like free-form jazz. That's what gets me going. The Mets had a difficult year last year but on June 1 Santana threw a no-hitter. You never know when baseball is going to sneak up on you and give you a gem.''

Just like in life. Sometimes even in college.

Former Major Leaguer Don Buford Keeps the Dreams Alive

Don Buford is the new director of MLB's
Urban Youth Academy. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)

Bill Dwyre, L.A. Times
January 22, 2013

The 75-year-old Buford, who played football and baseball at Dorsey and was part of the famed Orioles of the late 1960s, comes out of retirement to be the director of MLB's Urban Youth Academy in Compton.

It is early Monday morning, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But Don Buford is not standing on a stage and talking about having a dream.

That's not his style. Besides, he has already lived one himself, the kind Dr. King preached about.

Buford has a new job, which is to enhance dreams for others. Few could be better suited.

The former major league baseball star will turn 76 on Feb. 2. He lives in Sherman Oaks and was happily retired to a life of four rounds of golf a week. The family was raised, he had done his work, his stature as a major league player for the White Sox and the Orioles over 10 seasons was established. Life was summertime, and the living was easy.

His was a story of success and good fortune, at a time when minority athletes swam upstream a lot.

He played high school football at Dorsey, a running back weighing 150 pounds, "soaking wet," he says.

He also played infield on Dorsey's baseball team, although the term "infield" was questionable.

"Just dirt," Buford says.

He wrote lots of letters to big schools, even visited UCLA and a few others, but was turned down. This was 1957, 10 years after Jackie Robinson had broken the major leagues' color barrier. Walls remained up.

Asked whether the college turndowns were because he was 150 pounds or because he was black, his eyes flash and he says, "Both."

He went to L.A. City College for a year, was recruited off the campus to play quarterback two weeks before the first game with Pierce College, knew little about the position and ended up making a long touchdown run for a 6-0 win.

"Quarterback," he says, laughing. "I didn't throw for 600 yards. I didn't even throw for six."

The next year, he walked on to the USC baseball team. He asked legendary coach Rod Dedeaux whether he could, Dedeaux said OK, and Buford became the first black baseball player at USC. That was 1958, the year USC and Dedeaux won one of its many national titles. Buford even played running back and defensive back, still 150 pounds, on the Trojans football team. He needed financial aid, Dedeaux had none, and they worked out a deal in which he would play both sports and be funded by football.

"I remember starting spring football practice No. 7 running back on the depth chart," Buford says, "and by the end of the camp, I was No. 1."

For Buford, this was all a prelude to a major league baseball career that got him to the Orioles, from the White Sox, in 1968, and made him part of the famed Baltimore team that produced legends such as Boog Powell, Jim Palmer and Frank and Brooks Robinson. Buford was the left fielder and leadoff hitter with that bunch.

They were managed by Earl Weaver, a legend himself, who died last week.

"Earl gave me my shot," Buford says. "I had known him in the minor leagues. He once ordered Dean Chance to hit me with a pitch. When I got traded to Baltimore, Earl was the third base coach and Hank Bauer was the manager."

Buford came to the Orioles as a utility player. Second and third base, where he played with the White Sox, were taken. So he asked Weaver to tell Bauer he could also play the outfield. Weaver suggested Buford tell Bauer himself. Buford did, but Bauer said he was sticking with the lineup he had. Then Bauer was fired at the All-Star break, Weaver took over, and the switch-hitting Buford was on Weaver's first lineup card in the outfield, where he remained for five years.

He ended with a career .246 batting average in 1,286 games. That included an incredible statistic that marks his career: In 4,553 at-bats, he hit into only 34 double plays, a major league record.

He remained with the Orioles, eventually serving five years as the team's farm director. That was under Frank Robinson, his Hall of Fame teammate and Orioles manager.

Recently, Robinson, now an MLB vice president, came knocking on Buford's door again. The result has been a decline in Buford's golf game and a rise in his sense of commitment and achievement.

Buford is the new director of MLB's Urban Youth Academy. It is off Artesia Boulevard on the grounds of El Camino College Compton Center. Its facilities include two full-sized baseball fields, one softball field and one Little League field. No dirt infields here. The grass is well-manicured, there are batting cages and soon more lights will be added so the facility can stay open later.

"I call this our community field of dreams," Buford says.

This is part of MLB's program for reviving baseball in low-income communities. It started in 1989 and the Compton youth academy is the first of what will soon be five across the country.

The once-retired Buford now fights the traffic out of the Valley and into Compton every day, and returns home about 7.

"I've found I still have some juices left," he says.

The academy serves thousands. It is in a heavily minority area; all youngsters of both genders and any talent level are welcome. They average 60 new signups every Saturday, Buford says. They have programs that help with school. They even have a poster boy for that, Dominic Smith of Serra High School in Gardena, a MLB draft prospect this year. He came to the academy with a barely 2.0 grade-point average and now has it up to 3.1.

One Academy mission statement: "Promote greater Inclusion of minorities into the mainstream of the game."

That is being done. Martin Luther King would nod.

He'd also give Don Buford a pat on the back.