#3: From Daytona Beach to Dodgertown

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

If you think about it, 67 years is not such long a time.

Sometimes it takes the post office 67 years to deliver a letter.

Sometimes it takes 67 years to become an Eagle Scout.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were both born in 1946 – 67 years ago.

So were pitchers Bill (Spaceman) Lee and Catfish Hunter. (And, why aren’t player nicknames as good as those anymore?) So were Bobby Bonds and Rollie Fingers.

And, Reggie Jackson.

It was 67 not-so-long years ago that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier by playing a racially integrated, professional game.

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Reproduction number #LC-L9-54-3566-O

But, no, not as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. (You knew there had to be a twist, didn’t you?)

He did it during Spring Training, on Sunday, March 17, 1946, at City Island Park in Daytona Beach, Florida as a member of the Class AAA Montreal Royals, a Dodgers farm-team.

I don’t think a lot of my friends understand my passion for baseball (hi there, friends!)

One of the reasons is that baseball so perfectly seems to mirror the tenor of the times. It’s an opening to history and reflects us as a society and as a culture.

( I also love three-run homers, double steals, and spectacular defensive plays. But, I digress …)

Many historians believe that the modern era of civil rights began with the integration of major league baseball.

And, so we come to Jackie Robinson and Daytona Beach, the only place in 1946 Florida that would allow a colored man to play in a white man’s game on a white man’s field.

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#4: Isle Be Seeing You ~ The Cubs in Catalina

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

I’ve never been to Wrigley Field. It must be pretty nice, what with the ivy and all. Built in 1914, it has been the home of the Chicago Cubs for 99 years. Only Boston’s Fenway (1912) is older.

I’d like to visit Wrigley some day, but not in March.

Because it’s cold. And, it snows. And, there are no Cubs there in March.

(Did you know that the Cubs are one of the only major league teams that doesn’t have an oversized, furry mascot roaming around during games? The Cubs are ready-made for a mascot – they’re Cubs, for heaven’s sake. The team believes a mascot would cheapen the majesty of Wrigley. They are wrong. Mascots are amazing.)

But, back to Spring Training … and #4 on my list of most amazing Spring Training locations (mascot, optional).

There are very few cases of a team actually buying their own Spring Training facility. (Multi-multi-multi-millions of dollars, the majority from taxpayers, fund most of the Spring Training parks you can visit today. Thank you, Americans!)

In the early years, most teams were virtual nomads, wandering from whatever college or minor league park in the south might accommodate them for a few weeks each spring. They bunked en masse in fraternity houses or cheap hotels, and dined at boarding houses overseen, I gather, by plump, elderly widows dishing out the morning grits.

Now, imagine if your owner bought an island – an entire island! – and then plopped you and your teammates right down in the middle of it.

Who cares if the nearest other team is THOUSANDS of miles away? This is Paradise, Baby!

And, so, when Chicago Cubs owner William Wrigley shelled out about $3 million for Santa Catalina Island, 25 miles off the coast of California, in 1919, he packed up his Cubbies and shipped them off to Xanadu.

Dodgertown? It’s a TOWN. The Cubs had an island!

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#5: The Yankees Go To Shreveport

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

The game is full of subtlety,

Of science and of art,

Where mind and brain

Beneath the strain

Must carry out their part.

But when it comes to climax stuff

Beyond the final scoff,

Give me the bloke

With mighty poke

Who tears the cover off.

~ Grantland Rice, New York Tribune, March 15, 1921

In today’s installment of “Spring Training Is Way Better Than Sitting In A House Without Power During A Freak Snowstorm In March” … let’s head to Shreveport, Louisiana.

March 1921.

Spring Training with the New York Yankees. (And, you know this better be good if I’m going to spend a post talking about the Yankees.)

See, Spring Training wasn’t always Grapefruits and Cactus. Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, and Alabama were all popular destinations in the early years of baseball. Teams just seemed to wander around.

Spring Training over the years has evolved into a structured program to polish up one’s skills with weight training, fielding drills, batting practice, and conditioning programs. (Even, most happily, Yoga. Big shout out to the Oakland A’s and Baltimore Orioles who have mentioned their Yoga programs in recent weeks.)

Back in early 20th century however, Spring Training was really just a time to get everyone back together, detox from the excesses of the off-season (mineral hot springs were especially popular), burn off winter weight, toss around a medicine ball, and try to get back into some sort of playing shape.

After a few rowdy Spring Trainings in Jacksonville, Florida (highlighted by more than a few “drunken orgies”), the Yankees moved their spring headquarters to Shreveport in 1921 because of its isolation (and because it was, ostensibly, a dry town). Safely away, they hoped, from the devilish temptations of booze, broads, and brawling.

Shreveport – in the midst of its own crazy oil boom (and not very “dry” at all) – would be a place where Babe Ruth and the rest of the team could focus on baseball.

Oh, did I not mention Babe?

George Herman Ruth. Baltimore native. The man who bestowed one of the most successful and enduring curses on the Boston Red Sox. He did some other stuff too, hit some homers, changed the face of baseball, you know, that sort of thing, but I think I hit the high points.

New York Yankees, Spring Training 1921. Babe Ruth is there in the center.

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Remembering Earl Weaver … & Thinking About My Dad

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

Many years ago, long before I came along, my dad ran a string of gas stations in Los Angeles. He was very good at his job. He ran a tight ship.

That laser-like attention to detail and exacting perfection didn’t change over the years. He demanded a lot of himself, and, by turn, everyone else.

One day during those gas station years, late ’50s or so, Mickey Rooney – yes, that Mickey Rooney – came to my dad’s station. And, apparently, Mickey Rooney didn’t adhere to the “good customer” rules that my dad expected.

A “Do you know who I am?” led to a “I don’t care who you are.” Rooney, the story goes, expected free service on his car, simply because he was famous.

A scrap of some kind ensued. (I’m biased, but I’m gonna go with my dad on this one. Because really … a Hollywood star kicks up a stink with a gas station guy? I’m just going to assume the Average Joe was the good guy.)

From then on, Mickey Rooney was not spoken of in our home.

So, it was with a bit of sadness – no, sadness isn’t right; let’s call it You MUST be kidding eye-rolling – when I read a tribute to the legendary Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver, who passed away on January 19 at age 82, that described him as “Mickey Rooney in a uniform.”

You’re comparing a baseball legend to this guy who picked a fight with my dad because he was expected to pay for service like everyone else?

The Earl of Baltimore was a baseball genius.

But, he was also a scrappy, crabby, cranky, irascible, chain-smoking, argumentative firecracker, who might be best known for all the times he tangled with umpires, kicking dirt and getting ejected from 98 games.

He was a tough-as-nails perfectionist who demanded a lot of himself, and, by turn, everyone else. Kinda like my dad.