New York Times
May 11, 2005
By ROBERT ANDREW POWELL
ALAMEDA, Calif., May 4 - If Joyce Harris were to ever watch her son pitch, she would notice the same things everyone else does. His corkscrew windup. His enthusiasm. The boyish way he slaps his mitt after a strikeout, bounding toward the dugout without touching his cleats to the first-base line, his jaw working a wad of gum the size of a fish filet.
She would probably also notice the way her son, Dontrelle Willis, is maturing as a pitcher. Only 23 years old and in his second full season with the Florida Marlins, Willis has lowered his famously high leg kick, giving him a more consistent delivery. He no longer presses as much, either, which helps him work out of jams. Such growth has earned him a 6-0 record, including three complete games, a streak of 23 scoreless innings and a league-low earned run average of 1.07. He was named the National League pitcher of the month for April.
All of which might please Harris, 45, if she watched him pitch, which she does not. When Willis takes the mound for the Marlins, Harris lies in her bed here in an Oakland exurb, staring at the ceiling. Maybe she will turn on "Law & Order" or "Forensic Files." If she watches baseball at all, it will be a different game, no closer to her son than the scores crawling across the bottom of the screen. Friends call every inning with updates, knowing she is interested, knowing she is suffering.
"I can't watch him," she said. "I even can't listen to the announcers on TV say he's struggling or he's sweating or he's in trouble. When I look at him, I don't see a major league baseball player or an All-Star or a pitcher who won a World Series ring. When I look at him out there, I still see my 12-year-old boy, Dontrelle. And then all I want to do is protect him."
Willis and his mother have always been close. After the Marlins won the World Series in 2003, Harris weaved her son's initials into a rose tattoo blooming above her left breast. Willis refers to his mother as his hero. He keeps a framed picture of her on a shelf of his locker. In her honor he has inked her name onto the bill of his Marlins cap.
"We're almost too tight, almost like brother and sister instead of mother and son," Willis said. "Those things a mother might normally shield from her son she didn't keep from me, so we went through the struggles together."
But as he grows up professionally, he is growing into his own life.
In Willis's first year with the Marlins, Harris called him every day. Now they can go three days without speaking. Willis used to spend his off-seasons here, crashing at his mother's apartment. Now he lives at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Fla.
"I go back when I can, but my life is here now," he said. "My profession and my friends and all that."
Harris chooses to stay in Alameda. She likes walking to the Central Cinema, a funeral home turned into a first-run movie theater, stopping first at Forster's for a cone dipped in chocolate. She meets her gang at Peet's coffee, which they prefer over the Starbucks across the street. At least four times a week - usually more - she grazes the buffet at La Piñata Mexican restaurant. When the Marlins play the Giants, Harris rides the ferry across San Francisco Bay, pacing in the stands when her son pitches.
"She has her own life," said Sharon Peskett, her sister. "Even if Dontrelle doesn't play another day, she's still going to have her job. She takes classes. She has her speaking engagements. She's still his mother, no matter what, but she's letting him go."
Harris is known primarily as Dontrelle's mom, or Momma Willis or Mrs. Willis, even though she carries a different last name. Her identity is defined through her son much the way a military wife's is linked to her husband. When Willis made it to the majors in 2003 as a rookie sensation, Harris enjoyed the attention. At televised playoff games, she was shown wearing an engineer's cap in honor of her son's nickname, D-Train. On visits to Miami during baseball season, she would bounce from tailgate to tailgate in the stadium parking lot, posing for pictures.
"She enjoyed being on stage initially," said Frank Guy, her brother. "But people will put you on that stage because you're his mom. Like at the World Series, you could see that the cameras were about to focus on her, and then they did. She's not asking for that, and in time she learned that it's his stage and not hers."
She has her own stage, anyway. She is a journeyman ironworker, a welder of the Bay Bridge, the Kong roller coaster at Marine World and two of the gantry cranes that tower over Oakland Harbor. For the past year and a half, she has worked for the California Building Trades Council, acting as a sort of recruiter. She drives to schools and community centers across the Bay Area, talking up the benefits of union membership. Apprentice ironworkers earn as they learn, she said, making as much as $12 an hour to start, which is considerably more than they would be making at a fast-food restaurant. At meetings, she is often introduced as Dontrelle's mom.
"Which means I'll have to spend 10 minutes talking about my son, which isn't what I'm there to do," she said. "Now if they want to pull me over in the hall afterward to talk about him, that's fine, but I'm there to do a job."
Yet Harris still gives the D-Train tour of Alameda to anyone who asks. There is the mothballed aircraft carriers at the naval base. A plaque sticks to a concession stand in Rittler Park, behind Wood Middle School, where Willis got his start in Little League. On the mound of Willie Stargell Field at Encinal High, Willis evolved from a gangly freshman into the California player of the year; the No. 15 he wore is retired and hanging on the left-field tarp. There is the apartment they shared, where Harris still lives. Look closely at the red square painted on a wall in the parking lot. It is there that Willis debuted his leg kick while throwing tennis balls with neighborhood youngsters. When producers from HBO came out to film a segment on her son, Harris set out a plate of cranberry muffins.
"I do this because it's a part of my story, too, I guess," she said.
Willis's father left the scene soon after he was born, in Oakland, in 1982. For the first decade of her son's life, Harris struggled to keep steady work. The best job she held was as a part-time supervisor for United Parcel, working four days a week, taking home about $1,200 a month. Willis lived for seven years with his grandmother. Willis moved with Harris to Alameda when he was about 12, and Harris joined Ironworkers Local 378.
"She'd come to games here right off the Bay Bridge," Jim Saunders, Willis's high school baseball coach, said. "She'd be covered in so much dirt she looked like she'd been playing mud football or something."
Ironwork can leave people spent at the end of the work day. Harris still managed to attend almost all of her son's games. Working as a volunteer, Harris bent rebar to help build a skateboard park on the naval base. She molded a dance team from a handful of Encinal High girls. If her son stepped out of line in even a minor way, say by skipping class to get a haircut, she would be at the school at 3:30 p.m., in the baseball team dugout, asking why she got a call from the principal.
"She generally knew what he was doing at all times," Saunders said. "Honest to God, you never would have thought Dontrelle came from a one-parent family."
Willis made it to the majors in 2003, with the flat brim of his Marlins cap askew. His energy, along with a dazzling fastball, helped him win the rookie of the year award with a 14-6 record and helped the Marlins win a championship. Yet last season, the riddle of his windup appeared solved. Once opposing batters began hitting him, Willis tended to overthrow the ball, leading to more damage. His record fell to 10-11.
There are several reasons for his return to form this season. He stuck to a rigorous off-season conditioning program. A new pitching coach fine-tuned his delivery. To learn how to pace himself through a marathon season, he follows the examples set by the veteran Marlins, like pitcher Al Leiter and outfielder Jeff Conine.
"Some of this stuff you can only learn by experience," Willis said. "When to show up at the park, how to handle the fans, how to travel cross country, I'm doing everything a bit better."
He is better at acclimating to the life of a successful athlete. The day after he last pitched, against the Colorado Rockies, a clubhouse attendant pressed Willis's clothes for a party after the game. Jeffrey Loria, the Marlins' owner, ducked his head into Willis's locker to congratulate him on another victory, and to let him know there were Miami Heat playoff tickets waiting for him at the will-call window. Willis recently bought his mother a Ford Expedition, which she sent down to her sister, Sharon, who lives outside Los Angeles.
She has passed on gifts before. After Willis won the World Series two years ago, he gave Harris a bejeweled Marlins logo, to be worn around her neck. The back of the pendant was inscribed, "To Mom: I love you, Dontrelle."
Harris rarely wore the pendant, to her son's consternation. She felt it was too ostentatious. In the last year, though, as she has tried to build her life apart from Willis, she has started wearing it regularly.
"Even though I knew the day would come when he would move on with his life, I don't think as a mother you're ever prepared for it," she said. "It's taken some getting used to. He was my whole life."
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
A Diamond in the Rough: Iraqis Taking Up Baseball
Sunday, October 24, 2004
By Ashraf Khali, Times Staff Writer
www.iraq.net
BAGHDAD — Yasser Abdel Hussein tugs his cap and unwinds with the smooth sidearm delivery that's made him the ace of the pitching staff. He looks like a prospect. At home plate, however, Mohammed Khaled seems like he's still on chilly terms with his bat as he crouches, resplendent in a red (yes, red) New York Yankees hat, FUBU muscle shirt and tight bicycle shorts. "It's a game of speed and concentration," Khaled says after widely missing most of Abdel Hussein's pitches. He connected just twice, and then only by abandoning all technique and swinging one-handed. The 20 young men gathered on a patchy grass field behind Baghdad University's College of Sports Education may not look like much now. But organizers of Iraq's fledgling national baseball team have high hopes.
As they work to introduce the sport to Iraqis who've never heard the phrase "home run," they're struggling with financial hardship, bare-bones equipment and a mortal fear that their fondness for this most American game will draw the wrath of the country's insurgency. Ismail Khalil Ismail, the founder of the 10-team league from which the national squad players are drawn, treads carefully to avoid the perception that his creation is a seed of cultural imperialism.
He dreads the thought of local newspapers "writing that we're playing an American game. But what game isn't American or British — basketball, soccer, boxing?" Ismail started his league last year with a few bags of donated equipment. He's desperate for material and financial support, but doesn't dare approach the U.S. Embassy or military. A U.S. Army unit recently invited the team to play against soldiers inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. "But we refused," said Bashar Salah, a muscular 24-year-old in a pinstriped jersey. "Not because of extremism, but to protect our lives."
Ismail first proposed the idea of bringing baseball to Iraq in 1996. The burly former national judo champion floated the idea to friends on the Iraqi Olympic Committee — then run by Saddam Hussein's son Uday. They quietly advised him to drop it, "because it was an American game and the Americans are our enemies." He revived the concept after the fall of the Hussein regime in April 2003. A friend from what Ismail would only describe as "an international charitable organization in Baghdad" arranged for a donation of a few balls, bats and gloves.
From there, Ismail started organizing on college campuses and at sports clubs. He held his first practice last October, and secured the support of the new Iraqi Olympic Committee this year. By summer, he had enough interest to organize a 10-team Baghdad championship tournament. Coaches then picked the best players to form the national squad. All receive a symbolic stipend of as much as $20 a month. For the players, the game is an intriguing novelty whose appeal transcends politics. "I was attracted by its newness — not because it's American, but because it's a new idea," Salah said. For now they practice regularly, and dream of traveling abroad to hone their skills.
Alaa Awad, a member of the baseball league's board of directors, said they didn't have the funding to consider trips to play against other national squads. "The only way we could accept an invitation was if the host country paid for us," he said. And "we can't really invite anyone to come here." There's also a shortage of regional competition.
In the Middle East, only Turkey, Iran, Morocco and Tunisia have national baseball teams. Officials from the Iraqi team wrote to counterpart organizations in Morocco and Tunis but haven't heard back. On a recent afternoon, the group — most of whom were abstaining from food and water during daylight hours for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan — gathered to run through hitting and pitching drills. Players took turns on the mound and at the plate, while assistant coach Ali Abdel Wahid stood behind the catcher and called out balls and strikes. The rest gathered haphazardly in the outfield, struggling to snare pop-ups and ground balls. Several players wore their batting helmets in the field. One wore his glove on his head.
Most of the players were obviously natural athletes, and the roster boasted several youth soccer stars and two members of the national team handball squad. But it was clear that picking up baseball skills would take time. When quizzed on their knowledge of the major league baseball playoffs, players could name only one team: the Yankees. Nobody could recall the name of a single player. "The hardest thing is teaching them while I'm learning myself," said Abdel Wahid, the assistant coach. He spends three hours a night researching rules and techniques online, and is translating the rule book, downloaded from the Major League Baseball website.
Once his players have the basics down, he looks forward to teaching them "to work together on the doubles play." Ismail acknowledges that he understood little about the game before launching his initiative. Mostly he just wanted to introduce a new sport to Iraq. "It was either [baseball] or rugby — I thought that would be good because Iraqis like violent sports like boxing or wrestling." But rugby would have required building goal posts, he said, whereas baseball can be played with a few bags of donated equipment.
Fearful of causing a backlash by advertising a Western connection, Ismail claims not to remember who sent the bats, balls and gloves. Some of the balls bear the name of the donor, but they're all too worn and smudged to make out much. On two balls, however, "Ogden, Utah" is legible. (Dano Jauregui, the baseball coach at Ogden-based Weber State University, said he had no idea about any kind of equipment donation to Iraq. Dave Baggott, the co-owner of the Ogden Raptors minor league baseball team, said he vaguely recalled some sort of equipment drive organized last year by a local civic group.)
From these humble beginnings, Ismail claims the sport's appeal is spreading. Teams have sprung up in the northern cities of Kirkuk, Irbil and Mosul. In Ramadi — in the fiercely anti-U.S. province of Al Anbar west of Baghdad — players practice with homemade bats and modified tennis balls, Ismail said. Inspired by the Iraqi soccer team's improbable fourth-place showing at the Athens Olympics, Ismail has high hopes. "We want to make this a success," he said. "We want to shock the world."
By Ashraf Khali, Times Staff Writer
www.iraq.net
BAGHDAD — Yasser Abdel Hussein tugs his cap and unwinds with the smooth sidearm delivery that's made him the ace of the pitching staff. He looks like a prospect. At home plate, however, Mohammed Khaled seems like he's still on chilly terms with his bat as he crouches, resplendent in a red (yes, red) New York Yankees hat, FUBU muscle shirt and tight bicycle shorts. "It's a game of speed and concentration," Khaled says after widely missing most of Abdel Hussein's pitches. He connected just twice, and then only by abandoning all technique and swinging one-handed. The 20 young men gathered on a patchy grass field behind Baghdad University's College of Sports Education may not look like much now. But organizers of Iraq's fledgling national baseball team have high hopes.
As they work to introduce the sport to Iraqis who've never heard the phrase "home run," they're struggling with financial hardship, bare-bones equipment and a mortal fear that their fondness for this most American game will draw the wrath of the country's insurgency. Ismail Khalil Ismail, the founder of the 10-team league from which the national squad players are drawn, treads carefully to avoid the perception that his creation is a seed of cultural imperialism.
He dreads the thought of local newspapers "writing that we're playing an American game. But what game isn't American or British — basketball, soccer, boxing?" Ismail started his league last year with a few bags of donated equipment. He's desperate for material and financial support, but doesn't dare approach the U.S. Embassy or military. A U.S. Army unit recently invited the team to play against soldiers inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. "But we refused," said Bashar Salah, a muscular 24-year-old in a pinstriped jersey. "Not because of extremism, but to protect our lives."
Ismail first proposed the idea of bringing baseball to Iraq in 1996. The burly former national judo champion floated the idea to friends on the Iraqi Olympic Committee — then run by Saddam Hussein's son Uday. They quietly advised him to drop it, "because it was an American game and the Americans are our enemies." He revived the concept after the fall of the Hussein regime in April 2003. A friend from what Ismail would only describe as "an international charitable organization in Baghdad" arranged for a donation of a few balls, bats and gloves.
From there, Ismail started organizing on college campuses and at sports clubs. He held his first practice last October, and secured the support of the new Iraqi Olympic Committee this year. By summer, he had enough interest to organize a 10-team Baghdad championship tournament. Coaches then picked the best players to form the national squad. All receive a symbolic stipend of as much as $20 a month. For the players, the game is an intriguing novelty whose appeal transcends politics. "I was attracted by its newness — not because it's American, but because it's a new idea," Salah said. For now they practice regularly, and dream of traveling abroad to hone their skills.
Alaa Awad, a member of the baseball league's board of directors, said they didn't have the funding to consider trips to play against other national squads. "The only way we could accept an invitation was if the host country paid for us," he said. And "we can't really invite anyone to come here." There's also a shortage of regional competition.
In the Middle East, only Turkey, Iran, Morocco and Tunisia have national baseball teams. Officials from the Iraqi team wrote to counterpart organizations in Morocco and Tunis but haven't heard back. On a recent afternoon, the group — most of whom were abstaining from food and water during daylight hours for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan — gathered to run through hitting and pitching drills. Players took turns on the mound and at the plate, while assistant coach Ali Abdel Wahid stood behind the catcher and called out balls and strikes. The rest gathered haphazardly in the outfield, struggling to snare pop-ups and ground balls. Several players wore their batting helmets in the field. One wore his glove on his head.
Most of the players were obviously natural athletes, and the roster boasted several youth soccer stars and two members of the national team handball squad. But it was clear that picking up baseball skills would take time. When quizzed on their knowledge of the major league baseball playoffs, players could name only one team: the Yankees. Nobody could recall the name of a single player. "The hardest thing is teaching them while I'm learning myself," said Abdel Wahid, the assistant coach. He spends three hours a night researching rules and techniques online, and is translating the rule book, downloaded from the Major League Baseball website.
Once his players have the basics down, he looks forward to teaching them "to work together on the doubles play." Ismail acknowledges that he understood little about the game before launching his initiative. Mostly he just wanted to introduce a new sport to Iraq. "It was either [baseball] or rugby — I thought that would be good because Iraqis like violent sports like boxing or wrestling." But rugby would have required building goal posts, he said, whereas baseball can be played with a few bags of donated equipment.
Fearful of causing a backlash by advertising a Western connection, Ismail claims not to remember who sent the bats, balls and gloves. Some of the balls bear the name of the donor, but they're all too worn and smudged to make out much. On two balls, however, "Ogden, Utah" is legible. (Dano Jauregui, the baseball coach at Ogden-based Weber State University, said he had no idea about any kind of equipment donation to Iraq. Dave Baggott, the co-owner of the Ogden Raptors minor league baseball team, said he vaguely recalled some sort of equipment drive organized last year by a local civic group.)
From these humble beginnings, Ismail claims the sport's appeal is spreading. Teams have sprung up in the northern cities of Kirkuk, Irbil and Mosul. In Ramadi — in the fiercely anti-U.S. province of Al Anbar west of Baghdad — players practice with homemade bats and modified tennis balls, Ismail said. Inspired by the Iraqi soccer team's improbable fourth-place showing at the Athens Olympics, Ismail has high hopes. "We want to make this a success," he said. "We want to shock the world."
Monday, May 09, 2005
"I'll Be Back in Baseball After the War"
Stars Saved from Ultimate Pitched Battle
By Simon Kuper
Published: May 6 2005
Financial Times - ft.com
On April 20 1944, an American bomber flying over France was hit by German flak. Five of the six men aboard were killed, including the pilot, Elmer Gedeon.
Nobody would remember this except that Gedeon had played major league baseball for the Washington Senators. "I'll be back in baseball after the war," he had said on his last leave before going overseas.
The many histories of baseball at war invariably mention him and Harry O'Neill of the Philadelphia Athletics, killed at Iwo Jima. These men have become symbols of "baseball's sacrifice", the story of the national pastime rallying round when the US went to war - a story being retold for Sunday's 60th anniversary of VE Day. As baseball's hall of fame proclaims: "Ballplayers, like every other American citizen, understand the importance of giving one's self for their country."
In fact, ballplayers in the second world war didn't give themselves nearly as much as did other Americans. Nor did football players in Europe. Even then, celebrity athletes were protected. The less popular sports made the biggest sacrifices.
The reason Gedeon and O'Neill are always cited is that they were the only sometime major leaguers to die in the war. The statistics show that big-league baseball players had a relatively easy ride. In 1941 about 400 men were playing in the major leagues. Perhaps the same number of men of fighting age had recently done so. Let's say that there were therefore 800 current or recent major league players eligible to serve. If two of this group were killed, that makes 0.25 per cent.
In total about 405,000 Americans died in the war, the vast majority of them men aged 18 to 35. That means that about 1.8 per cent of the 22m American males in that age range were killed in the war. In short, a major league player had much less chance of "giving himself" than did "every other American citizen".
This is not because baseball players were cowards, or dodged service. More than 90 per cent of professional players in 1941 entered the army. Some asked for combat duty, but were denied it. In general, they survived because the army gave them protected posts. Baseball-mad officers recruited star players for their base teams, and weren't about to risk them being shot. For some time during the war the Great Lakes naval training centre outside Chicago had the world's best baseball team, regularly "whupping" major league teams.
The army was right to use ballplayers to play ball. A survey by the War Department had found that 75 per cent of servicemen enjoyed baseball or softball. Watching it surely helped soldiers' morale, and meeting ballplayers even more so: Thomas Barthel, a baseball historian, describes trips by baseball icons to places such as New Guinea or India, where their job was essentially to sit around talking to GIs all day.
The reason Gedeon and O'Neill were killed is that they were barely major leaguers at all. Gedeon's big-league career had spanned one week in 1939, while O'Neill's lasted just a game, in which he didn't bat. These men ended up in combat because nobody wanted to watch them play army ball. Only after their deaths did baseball claim them.
Footballers in Britain and Germany were favoured too, although more of them did die. Many English players became army PE instructors, spending the war playing football for various military teams. The great Tom Finney, shipped out to North Africa, told me he played so much that he left the army a much better footballer than he had entered it. In exhibition games late in the war, some of these stars were jeered by watching soldiers as "D-Day dodgers".
It was similar in Germany, where mothers of fallen soldiers began asking why the national football team was still playing. In late 1942 the team was disbanded - partly because it lost so often - and the players sent to the front. Two were killed almost immediately.
But mostly it was lesser athletes, or practitioners of obscure sports, who died in the war: for instance, about 50 minor league baseball players, dozens of rugby internationals, and an estimated 19 players from the US's then-obscure National Football League. Because these players were little known, they were sent into combat.
The greatest carnage of athletes, though, occurred in Hitler's camps. Dozens of Olympic and other athletes were gassed and then mostly forgotten. There is a heart-rending photograph of the Dutch female gymnasts who won a team gold at the 1928 Olympics. Of the 12 women pictured, four would die in Sobibor or Auschwitz.
In wartime, sports realise that they are frivolous and put out more flags. To this day they have managed to obscure which athletes died, and why.
Reproduced from ft.com
By Simon Kuper
Published: May 6 2005
Financial Times - ft.com
On April 20 1944, an American bomber flying over France was hit by German flak. Five of the six men aboard were killed, including the pilot, Elmer Gedeon.
Nobody would remember this except that Gedeon had played major league baseball for the Washington Senators. "I'll be back in baseball after the war," he had said on his last leave before going overseas.
The many histories of baseball at war invariably mention him and Harry O'Neill of the Philadelphia Athletics, killed at Iwo Jima. These men have become symbols of "baseball's sacrifice", the story of the national pastime rallying round when the US went to war - a story being retold for Sunday's 60th anniversary of VE Day. As baseball's hall of fame proclaims: "Ballplayers, like every other American citizen, understand the importance of giving one's self for their country."
In fact, ballplayers in the second world war didn't give themselves nearly as much as did other Americans. Nor did football players in Europe. Even then, celebrity athletes were protected. The less popular sports made the biggest sacrifices.
The reason Gedeon and O'Neill are always cited is that they were the only sometime major leaguers to die in the war. The statistics show that big-league baseball players had a relatively easy ride. In 1941 about 400 men were playing in the major leagues. Perhaps the same number of men of fighting age had recently done so. Let's say that there were therefore 800 current or recent major league players eligible to serve. If two of this group were killed, that makes 0.25 per cent.
In total about 405,000 Americans died in the war, the vast majority of them men aged 18 to 35. That means that about 1.8 per cent of the 22m American males in that age range were killed in the war. In short, a major league player had much less chance of "giving himself" than did "every other American citizen".
This is not because baseball players were cowards, or dodged service. More than 90 per cent of professional players in 1941 entered the army. Some asked for combat duty, but were denied it. In general, they survived because the army gave them protected posts. Baseball-mad officers recruited star players for their base teams, and weren't about to risk them being shot. For some time during the war the Great Lakes naval training centre outside Chicago had the world's best baseball team, regularly "whupping" major league teams.
The army was right to use ballplayers to play ball. A survey by the War Department had found that 75 per cent of servicemen enjoyed baseball or softball. Watching it surely helped soldiers' morale, and meeting ballplayers even more so: Thomas Barthel, a baseball historian, describes trips by baseball icons to places such as New Guinea or India, where their job was essentially to sit around talking to GIs all day.
The reason Gedeon and O'Neill were killed is that they were barely major leaguers at all. Gedeon's big-league career had spanned one week in 1939, while O'Neill's lasted just a game, in which he didn't bat. These men ended up in combat because nobody wanted to watch them play army ball. Only after their deaths did baseball claim them.
Footballers in Britain and Germany were favoured too, although more of them did die. Many English players became army PE instructors, spending the war playing football for various military teams. The great Tom Finney, shipped out to North Africa, told me he played so much that he left the army a much better footballer than he had entered it. In exhibition games late in the war, some of these stars were jeered by watching soldiers as "D-Day dodgers".
It was similar in Germany, where mothers of fallen soldiers began asking why the national football team was still playing. In late 1942 the team was disbanded - partly because it lost so often - and the players sent to the front. Two were killed almost immediately.
But mostly it was lesser athletes, or practitioners of obscure sports, who died in the war: for instance, about 50 minor league baseball players, dozens of rugby internationals, and an estimated 19 players from the US's then-obscure National Football League. Because these players were little known, they were sent into combat.
The greatest carnage of athletes, though, occurred in Hitler's camps. Dozens of Olympic and other athletes were gassed and then mostly forgotten. There is a heart-rending photograph of the Dutch female gymnasts who won a team gold at the 1928 Olympics. Of the 12 women pictured, four would die in Sobibor or Auschwitz.
In wartime, sports realise that they are frivolous and put out more flags. To this day they have managed to obscure which athletes died, and why.
Reproduced from ft.com
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Play ball: British Columbia Teacher Helps Cuban Relive Glory
Canadian tries to get recognition for former major-league pitcher, 94, forgotten by the baseball establishment
By TOM HAWTHORN
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
Special to The Globe and Mail
Ernest (Kit) Krieger, a Vancouver teacher, speaks un poco espagnol. Conrado (Connie) Marrero, a Havana retiree, speaks a leetle inglese. The language they share is baseball.
They both were once pitchers, although Mr. Krieger's professional career was so short as to be a sporting oddity. Mr. Marrero enjoyed great longevity on the mound, as in life. The oldest-living member of the old Washington Senators baseball team turned 94 last week, an event uncelebrated in the city where he once bamboozled opposing batters.
Major-league baseball returned to the United States capital this spring after a long hiatus. A parade of former players has been cheered by grateful fans. Mr. Marrero has not been among them.
Retired baseball players are a close-knit group who play games for charity, sign autographs for profit, and retell old stories for the sheer joy of it. Mr. Marrero lives in isolation from his baseball comrades, a hero in Cuba who is all but forgotten in a nearby land where many once marvelled at his pitching mastery. "He lives outside the fraternity, totally cut off from the world in which he once lived," Mr. Krieger said.
For seven years, Mr. Krieger has tried without success to integrate Mr. Marrero into the baseball community. His initiatives have been thwarted by a baseball establishment unable or unwilling to circumvent the U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions on trade with Cuba.
The old pitcher lives in a Spartan room in his grandson's walk-up apartment in Havana's Cerro neighbourhood. The walls are bare, betraying no hint of the celebrated past of one of Cuba's best pitchers in history. He does not receive a baseball pension.
The apartment is a long fly ball from the Estadio Latinoamerica, where he once earned the admiration -- and animosity, depending on club allegiance -- of his countrymen. Beneath the grandstand, his image has been painted on a wall, part of a mural that includes an image of Fidel Castro swinging a bat while dressed in green fatigues.
The Cuban leader is often wrongly described as having been scouted by the major leagues. He was more weekend warrior than serious prospect. After the revolution, he did pitch in exhibition games for a team called Los Barbudos (the Bearded Ones).
Mr. Castro shows little interest in the history of Cuban baseball before 1959, an era of low-paying contracts he dismisses as "slave baseball." So, it is left to Mr. Krieger and a handful of die-hard baseball fans to remind the world of the achievements of Mr. Marrero.
Conrado Eugenio Marrero Ramos was born to a poor sugarcane farmer in Sagua La Grande on April 25, 1911. His country roots earned him the nickname El Guajiro -- the Hillbilly. As an amateur, he was Cuba's greatest pitcher, a national hero in the 1940s known for a vast repertoire of pitches.
Listed wishfully as 5-foot-7, a measurement certainly taken while wearing spikes, he was a pudgy 158-pounder, looking little like an athlete, not the less for the ubiquitous presence of a fat cigar. However, he was blessed with a farmer's large hands, with long fingers the better to grip a baseball.
Mr. Marrero did not turn professional until age 35, then became a major-league rookie with Washington in 1950 at age 38. He celebrated his 39th birthday four days after his debut. He was called the "slow-ball senor," while his pitching motion was said to resemble "an orangutan heaving a 16-pound shot."
"Marrero's legs are so short that to batters he sometimes appears to be buried up to his waist on the mound," Life Magazine told readers in 1951. "He is so old that he creaks like an un-oiled windmill if he has to work more than once a week. He can throw a baseball just hard enough to reach the catcher. "Hitters who have been around the league a while have a contemptuous word for what he throws -- junk."
Mr. Marrero had the enviable ability to make batters look foolish. The great Ted Williams once said: "He throws you everything but the ball." The Cuban recorded 39 wins and 40 losses in five seasons with Washington, throwing at an age better suited to pitching horseshoes than baseballs.
He retired in 1954, returning to his homeland, where Mr. Krieger discovered him some 44 years later. The teacher found the player's name in the telephone directory. Mr. Marrero regaled the visitor with tales of meeting Connie Mack, of striking out Joe DiMaggio, of giving up a home run to Mr. Williams. "He is a shrewd, sharp, intelligent man," Mr. Krieger said. "If he lived anywhere else, he would be feted for his storytelling."
One baseball acquaintance the unlikely friends shared was Mickey Vernon, a team mate of Mr. Marrero's at Washington and the man who gave Mr. Krieger his big break in baseball.
In 1968, Mr. Krieger was a clubhouse attendant for Vancouver's minor-league team. The Mounties suffered from poor attendance. Mr. Krieger pitched a proposal to management -- let him pitch and he would fill the stands with his fellow university students.
Mounties manager Mickey Vernon agreed, and Mr. Krieger took to the mound to face the Hawaii Islanders on the final day of the season. The stands were empty as usual, but the clubhouse attendant fared better than feared. He surrendered just one run in three innings of work before being pulled from the game.
For the past four years, Mr. Krieger has included a visit with Mr. Marrero as part of his annual Cuba-ball Tours. The old player signs Topps cards and Senators caps in exchange for a few U.S. dollars. He has been presented with letters solicited by Mr. Krieger from Washington team mates, including third baseman Ed Yost, who wrote: "I caught many pop-ups that the batters hit from that great high slider of yours." Pitcher Sid Hudson sent $50.
Last year, Monte Irvin, a former Negro League player and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, made a pilgrimage to visit Mr. Marrero. The two had played together on Havana's legendary Almendares team in the late 1940s.
An embrace renewed a friendship in limbo for 55 years.
Connie Marrero
By TOM HAWTHORN
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
Special to The Globe and Mail
Ernest (Kit) Krieger, a Vancouver teacher, speaks un poco espagnol. Conrado (Connie) Marrero, a Havana retiree, speaks a leetle inglese. The language they share is baseball.
They both were once pitchers, although Mr. Krieger's professional career was so short as to be a sporting oddity. Mr. Marrero enjoyed great longevity on the mound, as in life. The oldest-living member of the old Washington Senators baseball team turned 94 last week, an event uncelebrated in the city where he once bamboozled opposing batters.
Major-league baseball returned to the United States capital this spring after a long hiatus. A parade of former players has been cheered by grateful fans. Mr. Marrero has not been among them.
Retired baseball players are a close-knit group who play games for charity, sign autographs for profit, and retell old stories for the sheer joy of it. Mr. Marrero lives in isolation from his baseball comrades, a hero in Cuba who is all but forgotten in a nearby land where many once marvelled at his pitching mastery. "He lives outside the fraternity, totally cut off from the world in which he once lived," Mr. Krieger said.
For seven years, Mr. Krieger has tried without success to integrate Mr. Marrero into the baseball community. His initiatives have been thwarted by a baseball establishment unable or unwilling to circumvent the U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions on trade with Cuba.
The old pitcher lives in a Spartan room in his grandson's walk-up apartment in Havana's Cerro neighbourhood. The walls are bare, betraying no hint of the celebrated past of one of Cuba's best pitchers in history. He does not receive a baseball pension.
The apartment is a long fly ball from the Estadio Latinoamerica, where he once earned the admiration -- and animosity, depending on club allegiance -- of his countrymen. Beneath the grandstand, his image has been painted on a wall, part of a mural that includes an image of Fidel Castro swinging a bat while dressed in green fatigues.
The Cuban leader is often wrongly described as having been scouted by the major leagues. He was more weekend warrior than serious prospect. After the revolution, he did pitch in exhibition games for a team called Los Barbudos (the Bearded Ones).
Mr. Castro shows little interest in the history of Cuban baseball before 1959, an era of low-paying contracts he dismisses as "slave baseball." So, it is left to Mr. Krieger and a handful of die-hard baseball fans to remind the world of the achievements of Mr. Marrero.
Conrado Eugenio Marrero Ramos was born to a poor sugarcane farmer in Sagua La Grande on April 25, 1911. His country roots earned him the nickname El Guajiro -- the Hillbilly. As an amateur, he was Cuba's greatest pitcher, a national hero in the 1940s known for a vast repertoire of pitches.
Listed wishfully as 5-foot-7, a measurement certainly taken while wearing spikes, he was a pudgy 158-pounder, looking little like an athlete, not the less for the ubiquitous presence of a fat cigar. However, he was blessed with a farmer's large hands, with long fingers the better to grip a baseball.
Mr. Marrero did not turn professional until age 35, then became a major-league rookie with Washington in 1950 at age 38. He celebrated his 39th birthday four days after his debut. He was called the "slow-ball senor," while his pitching motion was said to resemble "an orangutan heaving a 16-pound shot."
"Marrero's legs are so short that to batters he sometimes appears to be buried up to his waist on the mound," Life Magazine told readers in 1951. "He is so old that he creaks like an un-oiled windmill if he has to work more than once a week. He can throw a baseball just hard enough to reach the catcher. "Hitters who have been around the league a while have a contemptuous word for what he throws -- junk."
Mr. Marrero had the enviable ability to make batters look foolish. The great Ted Williams once said: "He throws you everything but the ball." The Cuban recorded 39 wins and 40 losses in five seasons with Washington, throwing at an age better suited to pitching horseshoes than baseballs.
He retired in 1954, returning to his homeland, where Mr. Krieger discovered him some 44 years later. The teacher found the player's name in the telephone directory. Mr. Marrero regaled the visitor with tales of meeting Connie Mack, of striking out Joe DiMaggio, of giving up a home run to Mr. Williams. "He is a shrewd, sharp, intelligent man," Mr. Krieger said. "If he lived anywhere else, he would be feted for his storytelling."
One baseball acquaintance the unlikely friends shared was Mickey Vernon, a team mate of Mr. Marrero's at Washington and the man who gave Mr. Krieger his big break in baseball.
In 1968, Mr. Krieger was a clubhouse attendant for Vancouver's minor-league team. The Mounties suffered from poor attendance. Mr. Krieger pitched a proposal to management -- let him pitch and he would fill the stands with his fellow university students.
Mounties manager Mickey Vernon agreed, and Mr. Krieger took to the mound to face the Hawaii Islanders on the final day of the season. The stands were empty as usual, but the clubhouse attendant fared better than feared. He surrendered just one run in three innings of work before being pulled from the game.
For the past four years, Mr. Krieger has included a visit with Mr. Marrero as part of his annual Cuba-ball Tours. The old player signs Topps cards and Senators caps in exchange for a few U.S. dollars. He has been presented with letters solicited by Mr. Krieger from Washington team mates, including third baseman Ed Yost, who wrote: "I caught many pop-ups that the batters hit from that great high slider of yours." Pitcher Sid Hudson sent $50.
Last year, Monte Irvin, a former Negro League player and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, made a pilgrimage to visit Mr. Marrero. The two had played together on Havana's legendary Almendares team in the late 1940s.
An embrace renewed a friendship in limbo for 55 years.
Connie Marrero
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Dave Dravecky - Cancer Survivor
Dave Dravecky 
Dave Dravecky has left two indelible images in the minds of baseball fans worldwide. The first was August 10, 1989, when Dave triumphantly pitched a 4-3 win for the San Francisco Giants in his first major-league game following cancer surgery.
The second was five days later in Montreal, Canada when a loud crack was heard in the stadium and Dave was suddenly lying on the mound writhing in pain from a broken arm. As Chuck Swindoll writes, “…he had delivered the pitch heard around the world.”
Dave’s victorious return to baseball is chronicled in his award-winning book, Comeback, which has sold more than 300,000 copies. Two months after he broke his arm in Montreal, Dave’s arm was broken again while celebrating the Giants’ National League Championship Series victory over the Chicago Cubs. The cancer had returned, and Dave retired from professional baseball in November 1989.
Additional surgeries and the recurring cancer finally led to the drastic amputation of Dave’s left arm, shoulder blade and left side of his collarbone. In the book, When You Can’t Come Back, Dave describes his loss. With the amputation of his arm, Dave Dravecky was stripped of his sense of identity and the worth he derived from it. He was propelled on a grueling journey to search for answers to questions every man must face: What gives a man identity and value? Is a man’s merit deeper than what he has and does?
Dave Dravecky is in great demand as a speaker, addressing a wide variety of audiences across the country. His messages range from motivational to inspirational to evangelical. Through his experience, he addresses loss and suffering, faith, encouragement and hope, reaching out to others and saying goodbye to the past. Hear the inspirational words of Dave Dravecky on overcoming adversity.
The second was five days later in Montreal, Canada when a loud crack was heard in the stadium and Dave was suddenly lying on the mound writhing in pain from a broken arm. As Chuck Swindoll writes, “…he had delivered the pitch heard around the world.”
Dave’s victorious return to baseball is chronicled in his award-winning book, Comeback, which has sold more than 300,000 copies. Two months after he broke his arm in Montreal, Dave’s arm was broken again while celebrating the Giants’ National League Championship Series victory over the Chicago Cubs. The cancer had returned, and Dave retired from professional baseball in November 1989.
Additional surgeries and the recurring cancer finally led to the drastic amputation of Dave’s left arm, shoulder blade and left side of his collarbone. In the book, When You Can’t Come Back, Dave describes his loss. With the amputation of his arm, Dave Dravecky was stripped of his sense of identity and the worth he derived from it. He was propelled on a grueling journey to search for answers to questions every man must face: What gives a man identity and value? Is a man’s merit deeper than what he has and does?
Dave Dravecky is in great demand as a speaker, addressing a wide variety of audiences across the country. His messages range from motivational to inspirational to evangelical. Through his experience, he addresses loss and suffering, faith, encouragement and hope, reaching out to others and saying goodbye to the past. Hear the inspirational words of Dave Dravecky on overcoming adversity.
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