MISSING BASEBALL # 8: Say Hey

Baseball players have resumed training but the planned shortened season is less than certain.

Some have weighed the risks and said: “No, thanks! Hope to see you next year!”

Others are not with their respective teams because they’ve tested positive for the corona virus. They are quarantined or, if ill, receiving medical treatment.

It was odd to hit Independence Day with still no baseball in 2020. Yet there is a lot of oddity on tap for this year.

Recently, however, a good dose of baseball nostalgia was offered when the 1968 All-Star Game was televised. These players were my first baseball heroes.

The fuzzy black-and-white images made the players' faces nearly indistinguishable. The team uniforms and numbers were needed to tell the players apart.

Yet some were identifiable, at least to me, simply by the way they moved: Aaron, Clemente, Rose, Koufax and, of course, Mays.

I was 12 when the game was televised originally. Around that time, while other kids were gluing together and painting ’57 Chevy model cars, I assembled and painted a model of Willie Mays making “the catch.”

The image came from the 1954 World Series (before I was born) when the Giants were still in New York. But I knew of him playing in the swirling winds of Candlestick Park in San Francisco. So I applied brown and orange tones to his Giants uniform.

Those blessed to watch “the Say Hey Kid” play centerfield, as well as hit and run, know the personification of an all-around player. The Alabama native, now 89,  was as complete of a player as anyone who ever played the game.

Play ball! As soon as it's safe to do so.

MISSING BASEBALL #7

 I cheated a little. My last "Missing Baseball" entry was the seventh. But I titled it simply "Missing (Minor League) Baseball."

Why? Because there is only one #7.

In high school, my younger daughter had a class with a teacher/coach. The emphasis was on the latter.

It was test day and he was winging it with an oral exam.

"Question number six," he called out. "Number six, ...like Mickey Mantle," he added in passing.

The hand of a tall blonde girl shot into the air.

"Yes, Abigail?"

"Coach _____, Mickey Mantle was number seven."

"Uh, um, that's right. But how did you know?

"My daddy raised me right."

I don't care what she scored on the exam. Parental pride was at a peak.

Mantle played in the first and defining chapter of my baseball fan life. I never saw him play in person.

His grainy image appeared on TV — thanks to the popularity of the Yankees on NBC Game of the Week (the only televised game during each week). I strained at the flickering black and white images to get a better view of his strength and grace.

I read about him in newspapers and magazines — and on the backs of baseball cards — more than I saw him on TV. I stood with my brothers and rare patience in a long line to meet him and get an autograph when he opened the short-lived Mickey Mantle Men's Store in Chattanooga.

And, as a teen, I stared in wonder when he made a pregame appearance near the pitcher's mound in old Atlanta Stadium with Mays and Aaron on each side.

It's an image I later found signed and framed. And placed it on the wall of my baseball-laden home study.

Eulogizing Mantle in 1995, Bob Costas noted the Oklahoma Kid had come to grips with the distinction between a role model and hero. "The first he often was not," said Costas. "The second he always will be."

It was Mantle's boyish quality that added to his appeal. Biographer Jane Leavy picked up on that by titling her 2010 book: The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood.

Although the baseball spotlight was inescapable for Mantle, he understood and appreciated that baseball is a team sport.

"Mantle didn't want to stick out, but he did; he didn't want to be treated as special, but he was," Leavy writes. "He didn't want to be the center of attention, but he was the center fielder for the most visible sports franchise in the world."

I miss Mick. And I sure miss baseball in 2020.

MISSING (MINOR LEAGUE) BASEBALL

My favorite of many minor league experiences happened on Memorial Day weekend some years ago when the stars and schedules aligned for my longtime baseball cohort Marshall Kerlin and me. We took in four games — one each at A, AA, AAA and MLB.

It started with the big Braves at Turner Field on Saturday night. We returned to my home at the time in Macon, Ga., for a Sunday morning obligation. Then to Chattanooga for a Sunday evening game.

Memorial Day was spent at a day game in Rome, Ga., and then an evening game at AAA Gwinnett.

One friend commented, "You'd have to really love baseball to do that." To which I profoundly responded, "Duh!"

Chattanooga is not only where I spent my childhood and youth but a favorite baseball destination. When living in Marietta, Ga., years ago, friends and I would drive up for games at historic Engel Stadium.

The downtown stadium on Hawk Hill has been a great place to visit whenever I'm in the Scenic City.

The team has a long and illustrious history. In this photo you can see some of it in Jackie Mitchell (the 17-year old lefty who mowed down Gehrig and Ruth) and HOF slugger Harmon Killebrew.

The 1910 card (right) of Sammy Strang is a nod to a Chattanooga native who helped the SF Giants win the 1905 World Series. Later he was baseball coach at West Point and Georgia Tech.

Sammy came from a wealthy family — his dad serving as mayor of Chattanooga in the late 19th century — that valued education over sports. So he took his athleticism to UNC and University of Tennessee.

There's a lot more to his story: an Army veteran and a newspaper humor columnist. Among the players he coached at the military academy were Omar Bradley and Robert Neyland.

One of my favorite memories from watching Lookouts baseball came on a rain-delayed night in 2007 when my brother-in-law Scott Folsom and I were among the few witnesses to Phillip Wellman's world-class meltdown.

Wellman (seen here as a Lookout bobblehead along with Adam Dunn) managed the Mississippi Braves at the time. Here's a link if you've not seen it.

Moving into June without baseball at any level is trying. Someday it will return. Someday...

MISSING BASEBALL #1
 
In the 1990s I found this copy of the 1926 AL Constitution in a Cape Cod bookstore. It had belonged to Joe Cronin who was league president for 14 years. 

In 1934, Cronin, a Hall of Fame shortstop, was sold by his uncle-in-law Clark Griffith, owner of the Senators, to Red Sox for $225k, a huge sum at the time. 

I like how the book has glued-in updates. Interesting info includes policies for teams catching trains and the minimum of 50¢ for a championship ticket. Cronin died in 1984.

MISSING BASEBALL #2

In baseball, order is important. So I placed these cards in proper order — left to right.

Reads like poetry. Because it is!

MISSING BASEBALL #3

 

For a long time, to say “wooden baseball bat” was redundant. These real bats, the older the better, feel great in gloveless hands. 

 

So almost daily I pick up one in my home study and give it a gentle swing. Most are Hillerich and Bradsby’s famous Louisville Sluggers — embossed with names like Mantle, Aaron, Clemente, Yastrzemski and Jackie Robinson.

 

There’s a Spalding softball bat with a few nicks but a rich, aged wood tone and a Hanna Batrite from a former Athens, Ga. company. 

 

Long-time owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts, Joe Engel, made bats for a while. Of course, there wasn’t much one could do in baseball marketing and merchandising that he didn’t try. 

 

Baseball nostalgia is all we've got now. It’s May already, and I sure do miss hearing the crack of the bat.

MISSING BASEBALL #4

Braves fans have long been known for checking the forecast.

MISSING BASEBALL #5

For a dime, baseball cards came five to a pack with a stick of pink gum that left a sweet smell and a dusting of sugar on the top card. (Although I saw in the back of Boy's Life magazine where rich kids could order the whole set for a staggering $13.) 

Occasionally, though, the dime packs had inserts — including a smaller card to be used in a simple game called "Batter Up!" in 1968. 

I framed some of those a few years ago because they reminded me of my youth and showed some of my favorite players. 

Whoever developed this project was obviously a Mays fan; he got to be the home run card while drawing an Aaron or Mantle card resulted in a single. Poor Matty Alou was an error and Tim McCarver a foul out.

MISSING BASEBALL #6

Being such a colorful personality, Yogi's exceptional playing ability could be underappreciated. 

Both his skills and malapropisms contributed greatly to the game now in hiatus.

(Note: While baseball is waiting for the coronavirus pandemic to lessen, I'm looking more closely at the memorabilia in my home study and reflecting on the game so many of us are missing now.)