Ducks On The Pond ~ A baseball phrase referring to runners on base; used primarily when the bases are loaded.
Gypsy Hill is an old Victorian park in Staunton, Virginia. It’s been a park, in some form or another, since the 1890s.
Inside its 200-odd acres today are picnic areas, baseball diamonds, basketball courts, and a football field. But, the most popular spot in the park is the duck pond. The pond attracts both people and ducks.
But, mainly ducks. A whole lot of them. So many that the pond becomes covered with a blanket of ducks, like a real-life down comforter.
Photo: City of Staunton Parks & Recreation
And, when all those ducks get to quacking and elbowing to get the best spots in the water, some unlucky ducks are going to get run over, bullied, or pecked on.
I know, you thought ducks were sweet feathery things that just paddle around all day enjoying the scenery, didn’t you? Yeh, me, too.
But, the pond is like high school, and there are always a few bad seeds and bullies making things miserable for everybody else.
A few nasty ducks are bad enough. But, add in overcrowding and too many people feeding too much bready junk food that sickens ducks, and now you’ve gone from high school to something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Somebody’s going to get hurt.
Not all ducks are bullies.
Although this one definitely was …
Ducky Medwick ~ A member of the famed 1930s-era Gashouse Gang on the St. Louis Cardinals. He waddled when he walked, hence “Ducky.” A powerful .362 career hitter, he also was powerfully mean and would brawl with other players and his own teammates – during and after games. He won the Triple Crown in 1937 (leading the league in hits, RBIs, and home runs), the last National Leaguer to do so.
These are often smaller ducks who fell in with the bad crowd and paid the price. The Center’s vets and rehabbers clean up their wounds, stitch them back up, and give them a little bit of healing time.
Editor/Husband works at the Wildlife Center of Virginia. And, that’s how two Wildlife Center Mallard Ducks, Patient #14-1373, a male, and Patient #14-1378, a female, ended up at our house on Thursday.
All healed up, they certainly couldn’t go back to Gypsy Hill Park. Our job? Find a comfortable and safe duck-friendly pond for them.
Hey, ducks, welcome to Paradise …
Our friends Michelle and Chris have a lovely pair of ponds at their home. They’ve helped Wildlife Center patients before, allowing a “soft” release for ducks who need a bit of a watchful eye as they ease back into life in the wild, or who might not be able to fly too well anymore due to injuries.
Their ponds are home to 10 assorted ducks and a gaggle of Canada geese. (I just wanted to say gaggle.)
We headed down to one of the ponds and slipped the Gypsy Hill ducks out of their crates.
Hey! No traffic jams!
Yoga stretch …
Just a couple ducks on the pond and plenty of room.
And, no bread, which is terrible for ducks and leads to severe malnourishment. I’m serious. Enough with the bread, people.
UPDATE:
Michelle reports that the ducks are still hanging around on the pond. Although the ducks can fly off whenever they like, really, why would they leave?
Paddle your feet and take a spin around the pond. It’s Paradise, baby.
One of the greatest games in baseball history happened on the Fourth of July.
It really did.
On July 4, 1905, the Philadelphia Athletics and the Boston Americans played a doubleheader at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Grounds.
Doubleheaders, in those days before stadium lights, began bright and early in the morning.
(1910) Public Domain image.
Huntington Avenue Grounds
The A’s took the morning game 5-2. At some point late in the game, the A’s quirky lefty Rube Waddell came in, pitched in relief, and got a couple outs.
This would be of only passing note, except that Waddell then started the afternoon game. And, pitched a 20-inning complete game. And, won. Beating Cy Young (who also pitched all 20).
Every game your team wins is a great game. But, this really might have been the greatest.
Twenty innings pitched by two of the greatest pitchers ever.
This conversation really happened:
The Baseball Bloggess: “How about that ‘the greatest baseball game on record’ happened on the Fourth of July?”
Editor/Husband: “How about that ‘the greatest baseball game on record’ was 20 innings and was over in three hours and 31 minutes?”
(The average nine-inning game these days – what with all the commercials and instant replay and batting gloves and infield shifting – hovers around the three-hour mark.)
Waddell later estimated that he threw 250 pitches in that single game. Cy Young thought he pitched slightly fewer.
(No one counted in those days.)
“That 20-inning game was the best game I ever pitched,” Waddell said. “But it didn’t take a feather out of me. I felt just as good after the game was over as I did during the contest.”
(1909) Permission: SDN-055366, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum.
Rube Waddell
“I can’t claim that I did better work than Young,” Waddell said. “I had the luck. … The fact that it was the Fourth of July kept me going, and I guess the shooting of revolvers and the fireworks and the yelling made me pitch better.”
Wait, what? Revolvers?
Fireworks, in the daytime?
Holy crap.
Our great-grandparents were crazy (and dangerous)!
Waddell was nicknamed “Rube” because he was thought to be a little slow, a goofy, country bumpkin. Young was nicknamed “Cy” – for Cyclone – because it was said he threw fastballs so hard they would destroy the wooden grandstand walls.
Waddell loved a good drink and would skip starts to go fishing or wrestle alligators or play street games with neighborhood kids. He could become so distracted on the mound that he would just up and leave. (Fans of other teams suggested that holding a puppy up at a game would distract Waddell from his work.)
But, his pitching itself, including a powerful fastball and deceptive curve, reflected a focus and control that he lacked in other aspects of his life. On at least one occasion, he was so “on” that he shooed his outfielders out of the game and proceeded to strike out the side.
(1908) Permission: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division #LC-USZ62-77897 DLC
Cy Young
Cy Young was far less colorful, except when he pitched. He threw the first perfect game of the modern era (against, wouldn’t you know it, the A’s and Waddell in 1904) and won 511 career games, the most by any pitcher ever, which is why pitchers today vie for the Cy Young award and not the Rube Waddell award.
Here’s your 20-second 20-inning recap of that Fourth of July game.
The Americans went up 2-0 in the first. The A’s tied it up with a two-run home run in the sixth. Then, for the next 13 innings, nothing.
Finally, sometime before dark, in the 20th inning, Boston – and Young – faltered. A couple Boston errors, and a batter hit by pitch, allowed the A’s to cobble together two runs, and a victory.
Despite the loss, it was, Young said, “the greatest game of ball I ever took part in.”
The glove Waddell used that day is in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Their combined 20-inning complete game was a pitching record that stood – for one season. In 1906, the A’s and Americans met again at Huntington Grounds. This time the A’s Jack Coombs and the Americans’ Joe Harris combined for a 24-inning complete game. (The A’s won that one, too.)
The Philadelphia A’s moved to Kansas City in 1955 and Oakland in 1968. They are currently 52-33, the best record in baseball.
The Boston Americans are now called the Red Sox. They are currently 38-47. Their Fourth of July game today with the Baltimore Orioles has been rained out. Doubleheader tomorrow!
Oh, hey … one more thing!
Waddell went 0-for-8 at the plate in that 1905 game. Only one other player has gone 0-for-8 in a game AND gotten the win. And, it was against Boston, too.
The Orioles’ Chris Davis, the designated hitter, was moved to pitcher at the end of a 17-inning game against the Red Sox in May 2012 when the team ran out of available pitchers. He hadn’t ever pitched in the big leagues before. He pitched two scoreless innings. He got the win. He hasn’t pitched since.
(Editor/Husband would want me to tell you this: That 2012 O’s – Red Sox game? It took six hours.)
“I hate all spectator sports, but I especially hate baseball.”
I’m pretty sure she doesn’t read this blog.
I think her baseball-hate thing comes from a long-ago doofus boyfriend who would watch the Mets on television with his father and not include her.
Baseball, as in many things, has its share of doofuses.
But, you shouldn’t hate baseball, just because you dated a dolt. (And, really, if your boyfriend is bringing his dad to your date night, you’ve got relationship problems well beyond baseball.)
The thing that really bothers me, though, is that she called baseball a spectator sport – some boring, passive, sit-around-and-watch sort of thing.
Even at our laziest, we always get up and stretch in the 7th inning.
To be a real baseball fan, however, requires a bit more than just a stretch. It takes commitment and, occasionally, Gatorade.
There are those slightly weird, old-fashioned purists who bring their scorecards to games and carefully pencil in every play.
Yeh, it’s mine. So?
(I met a nice old fella at an Orioles game this season who chuckled because I did my scorecard in pencil. He and his wife keep separate cards. In pen. Show offs!)
There are fans who will happily wear whatever in order to break a Guinness World Record in the middle of a game.
His plays in the field are seldom flashy, simply because he positions himself so well, that he rarely has to overcorrect. (It’s often those over-correctors who make the highlight reels with their crazy chin-first swan dives into the ground.)
His uniform stays pretty clean in the field.
He made NO errors in 2013. He played right field in 155 games – all nine innings in 152 of them – and made NO errors. NO errors in his 74 games this season either.
I bet YOU made an error at work last year. Nick Markakis did not.
Trust me, it’s not for lack of work. It’s not like the Orioles crack team of starting pitchers is striking everybody out.
His glove stays plenty busy.
He is stellar in the outfield. But, unheralded, because he goes about his business without grandstanding.
Just one Gold Glove. (2011)
He is steady and reliableas the Orioles leadoff hitter, batting .298 this season. (Geek Alert: .358 OPB/.410 Slugging).
But, no showing off, no fancy home run handshakes, no bat flipping, no jawing at umpires.
And, in nine big league seasons NO All-Star Game appearance.
And, that just stinks.
So, Vote for Nick.
Because he does this …
And, this …
(Yes, they won.)
And, this …
And, that was just in June.
Or, as Orioles’ Manager Buck Showalter says, “He makes our highlight reel every night.”
Last week, the University of Virginia came within two runs of winning the College World Series.
(This is my gentle way of saying that UVa lost 3-2, without actually saying “UVa lost,” which is still just a little too painful to say, unless I mumble “they lost” quietly inside these parentheses.)
Congratulations to Vanderbilt who took two of three against UVa last week. In Game 3 on Wednesday night, Vanderbilt was just the better team. They played as if they had nothing to lose. UVa played as if they had everything to lose.
Thanks for breaking my heart, Vanderbilt.
(Don’t you find it sketchy when colleges and universities refuse to tell you their location in their names? I mean, I don’t want to start a rumor, but maybe Vanderbilt is hiding something.)
On Thursday night, UVa hosted a “Welcome Home” celebration for the Hoos as they returned to Charlottesville. They may have lost that one last game, but they still had an outstanding 53-16 winning season.
Did I go?
Of course I did. (Thank you to the clients who kindly let me juggle their appointments Thursday evening so I could be there.)
My very handsome and wonderful Editor/Husband got me this sweet College World Series cup!
It was a great opportunity to cheer the team one more time.
Did The Baseball Bloggess geek out when she got to meet some players and coaches? She’s not saying.
(Yes. Yes, she did.)
Here’s the 2014 UVa highlights video they showed that night. (Look for me and Editor/Husband in the crowd shots!)
A few weeks ago, I met Jeff Curry at a game. He attends plenty of UVa baseball games and he draws them as they unfold.
He draws basketball and football games, too, but his favorite art comes from the diamond.
~ Jeff Curry, Artist
Curry used to play baseball, now he draws it. This is his 2014 UVa season wrap-up piece, as he was working on it Thursday night.
“I have been drawing collegiate and professional baseball games most of my life,” he says. “I really enjoy the silent tension that comes with the game as the drawing allows me to fully absorb it. The crack of the bat amidst the calm really opens the creative angle and the pen or paintbrush really flows.”
~ Jeff Curry, Artist
UVa defeats Maryland 11-2 in Game 3 of the Super Regionals, June 9, 2014. The players often autograph Curry’s artwork.
“Witnessing any hit for a go-ahead run is simply the best,” Curry said, “but that walk-off in the 15th inning against TCU [at the College World Series on June 17], please!”
So, that’s a wrap for the 2014 University of Virginia baseball season.
The other night at dinner, a friend asked Editor/Husband what I was going to do now that UVa baseball is over.
Hey, the major league season is just at the halfway point. There’s a whole lot of baseball left.
But, after the Orioles’ miserable series against Tampa this weekend, it might be one ugly summer.
Davenport Field is quiet tonight. But, UVa’s informal Fall Ball Season is back in September. That means we’ll be back in our seats at “The Dav” in no time.
_________
(You noticed! Yes, I have changed the name of my blog. You can now find me at www.thebaseballbloggess.com … because, well, because someone had to be THE Baseball Bloggess, and it might as well be me. More on the new “me” soon.)
Tennis, World Cup, Baseball, Poetry. And, I buried the lead. Again.
Poetry is said to be emotion set to words.
Which, if the poetry is good, is deep and satisfying and stays with you like the memory of those crazy-good chocolate-chipotle and salted caramel gelatos from Splendora’s that I just started thinking about … and now I can’t shake.
Gelato Poetry.
Not all poetry is good.
But, good poetry doesn’t need to be long or deep or hard to cut through.
This is good poetry. It’s one of my favorite poems that I recite to myself nearly every day.
Righty-tighty.
Lefty-loosey.
See, poetry can be beautiful and useful, too.
(I might argue that “Suckity, suck, suck” which sometimes slips out of me when the Orioles go bad at about the sixth inning is poetry, too. Not beautiful, but there’s a certain rhythmic honesty to it, don’t you think?)
Most important, poetry must be just-so. Just the right amount of words and rhythm and voice to convey an emotion or a thought. And, nothing more.
One of my clients was at the French Open and when I asked him how it was he said simply, “Roger Federer is poetry.”
Federer is nearing the end of his career and was defeated early on in the Open, but, I knew what he meant.
Poetry in writing and in athletics and in Yoga … is when you don’t do too much, but you do just enough.
It appears effortless, even when you know that it isn’t.
You can see here, that my client is right about Federer.
And, here’s World Cup poetry. Guillermo Ochoa is the goalkeeper for Mexico. During this week’s game against heavily favored Brazil, they played to a tie, and Ochoa did this.
But, a tie, strangely enough, leaves the story untied, untidy, and unfinished.
A good poem, like a good baseball game, will always end. On Tuesday, it took the University of Virginia Cavaliers 15 innings, and nearly five hours, to defeat Texas Christian University in the College World Series.
UVa Shortstop Daniel Pinero had two errors in the game, including one that led to an unearned run for TCU.
But, poetry has a habit sometimes of wrapping things up neatly, forgiving the sins of the past, and making things just-so. Like this.
A good poem will hold you. It’s too beautiful to turn away.
Watching LA Dodger Clayton Kershaw pitch is always poetry. Seemingly effortless and beautiful to watch.
Listening to longtime broadcaster Vin Scully call a Dodger’s game, something he’s been doing for 65 years, is poetry, too. The rhythm, the words, and the beautiful silence that stretches between. Just right.
To see Kershaw pitch a no-hitter this week, with Scully sitting beside you … forget the rest of this post. THIS is poetry.
“And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to sit back and watch it with you.”
I’ve lived in Virginia for decades now. (If you add up the decades I’ve lived in Virginia you will discover that I am somehow much older than I think I am.)
My dad came to visit once. (Which, to be fair, is one time more than my mom, but she had her reasons.)
They lived in North Dakota and I was very excited when my dad decided to fly out.
I had just bought my first place – a condo on the Virginia side of Washington, DC. He came to paint the walls and do the fix-ity things that dads do with their amazing certainty and rightness of purpose that is unique to dads everywhere. Every dad project was a teachable moment, but, really, all I wanted was to make sure the pink walls in the bedroom were painted over.
And, I wanted to show him around and show off my world.
Which didn’t really turn out all that well.
He wasn’t impressed by Washington, its Capitol or White House. He was annoyed by the traffic and all the people. He wasn’t impressed by any of the historic buildings all along our day drives. Blue Ridge Mountains? Sure, OK. He was moderately impressed that the Cuban restaurant offered Philippine beer.
He was truly impressed by only one thing. The trees.
“Damn, kid, I’ve never seen so many trees,” he said as I drove him around.
He said it as if I was somehow responsible for covering up a lot of otherwise good farmland with all these unproductive trees. He wasn’t disappointed. He simply thought it was funny, in the same way he thought a lot of my life choices were “funny”, as in “Well, I would never do that, kid, but it’s your life.”
When he got back to North Dakota, the only thing he told my mom and his friends was that we sure had a lot of trees in Virginia.
He never saw the farm where we ended up.
And, damn, he’s right. We do have a lot of trees.
We have so many trees that I wonder how the sun even reaches the ground some days.
We have three pecan trees. (Yes, they DO grow in Virginia, people, so stop telling me they don’t.)
This Japanese Maple that came as a sapling from Montpelier, James Madison’s home.
And, a Rose of Sharon. (More bush than tree, I guess. I thought it was only a girl’s name in Grapes of Wrath until I moved here.)
The winter did this to one of our magnolias …
I know, I know, they’re not supposed to grow here either.
Is it dead? I don’t know, but look what I found on one of its branches this morning …
Editor/Husband plants trees like many people plant marigolds. This is his “Tree Garden”:
I think I’m much more like my mom than my dad. But, there are a couple things about my dad that carried into me.
My dad loved basketball and football with the same passion that I love baseball. (“You didn’t get baseball from me, kid.”)
He gave me a love of politics and beer. Bad puns, bawdy jokes, and Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons above all others.
And, he loved taking pictures.
He had a couple cameras that were good enough. He would take and develop so many photos that he was probably the reason the little camera store in Devils Lake, North Dakota lasted as long as it did. When my father died a few years ago, I went by the store to tell the owner and he seemed truly sorry. The shop closed not long after and I think the loss of my dad’s business was part of the reason why.
My dad wasn’t a very good photographer, but it made him happy.
He liked to take pictures of tractors …
farmyards …
squirrels …
and, his kid …
Now, come to find out, I carry that gene, too. I’m not a very good photographer, but it makes me happy.
Before today, I knew just three things about Nebraska:
1) They have the only unicameral legislature in the country.
2)Carhenge is there(and I once forced Editor/Husband to go there and he got me a tee-shirt).
3) The College World Series is played every year in Omaha.
I’m sure Nebraska’s a very nice place, and despite a strong argument that inventing Kool Aid is pretty awesome, I think my Top Three list hits the high points.
(Editor/Husband would like me to point out that Bob Gibson, Rex Barney, Gregg Olson, and Sloppy Thurston are all from Nebraska, and I shouldn’t be so fast to close the door on interesting facts.)
But, this post isn’t about Carhenge (which means many of you will just stop reading now).
It’s about this: the University of Virginia Cavaliers will be playing in this year’s College World Series which kicks off this weekend.
To join the seven other teams in Omaha, UVa first had to emerge from a weekend regional tournament (where they beat Bucknell once and Arkansas twice) and last weekend’s Super Regional best of three against the University of Maryland Terrapins.
Editor/Husband and I went to every game.
Look, it’s us!
It came down to Game 3 on Monday night against Maryland. And, at the risk of burying the lead, which I’m afraid I’ve already done, this happened at 10:17 p.m.
Followed by this …
Followed closely by this …
You can see the dogpile ballet in slow motion here.
You can see the team climbing into the bleachers with us here.
You can almost see me.
A recap of the Virginia/Maryland weekend:
UVa lost Game 1 on Saturday.
It was during that especially hot and humid day game that I nearly succumbed to heat exhaustion. I’m not kidding. I almost passed out. It took two bottles of Gatorade before the field stopped spinning. My face was covered in a thin layer of grit which I later discovered to be salt that my body had leached completely out.
Editor/Husband was impressed that despite my weakened state, I was still scoring the game on my scorecard.
This conversation really happened:
ME: If I die you’ll need to write something on my blog to let people know I’m dead.
E/H: OK. Amanda* can help me with that.
ME: Tell them I died at a baseball game, it will make a better post.
E/H: OK.
* Amanda knows raptors and, apparently, Word Press.
Rehydrated, I rallied for Game 2. So did UVa.
And, it came down to Monday night’s Game 3.
Happy Hoo. Unhappy Terps.
FUN FACT: The University of Virginia Cavaliers are known informally as the Hoos, which is short for Wahoos. Back in the 1890s, baseball fans at Washington & Lee University called UVa’s baseball fans a “rowdy bunch of Wahoos.” The name stuck. (UVa didn’t become the Cavaliers until the 1920s.)
You can see University of Virginia take on Ole Miss in the first round of the College World Series this Sunday, June 15, on ESPN2 at 8 p.m. EDT.
If you do, you’ll likely see this guy …
All-American Pitcher Nathan Kirby
And, these guys …
Shortstop Daniel Pinero and First Baseman Mike Papi
Pitcher Nick Howard
Third Baseman Kenny Towns
Third Baseman/Designated Hitter John LaPrise
Right Fielder Joe McCarthy
Left Fielder Derek Fisher
“Fish” threw a lot of foul balls into the stands this weekend. I nearly caught one.
She caught it instead.
And, this is Wyatt.
He goes to almost all the UVa home games and sits just a few rows down from us.
Wyatt’s either happy the Hoo’s are winning or happy that his mom just bought him some ice cream.
Probably both.
Go Hoos!
Photos: University of Maryland vs. University of Virginia, June 7, 8, and 9, 2014, Davenport Field, Charlottesville, Virginia
When the game is tied after nine, baseball goes to extra innings. Free baseball!
Here are some extras that I have lying around …
10th INNING ~ Go Hoos!
If you’re shopping for baseball players, the first round of the Major League Draft was last night. Three members of the University of Virginia Cavaliers were chosen in the first round: Nick Howard, RHP (Cincinnati Reds), Derek Fisher, OF (Houston Astros), and Mike Papi, IF/OF (Cleveland Indians).
But, before heading off to their new paying jobs, there’s still this business with the College World Series to attend to. Good luck this weekend in your games against Maryland. Go Hoos!
Would the #1 ranked college team please put your glove in the air?
Thank you, UVa Freshman SS Daniel Pinero. (Hey Susie, he’s Canadian!)
(Watch the University of Virginia Cavaliers vs. the University of Maryland Terrapins Saturday and Sunday at noon, EDT on ESPN2. Game 3, if necessary, is Monday at 4 p.m.)
11th INNING ~ Ostriches
I thought it couldn’t be real. They call it an Ostrich Pillow, a napping, pillow-y, cave-like thing that makes you look kind of dead. It creeps me out and mesmerizes me all at the same time. It’s real … sweet apple cider, it’s real!
Orioles Fans, Is your starting pitching falling apart again and it’s only the second inning? Tuck into Ostrich Pillow!
NFL, Still refuse to acknowledge your ugly concussion crisis? Here, stick your head in!
Editor/Husband, Wondering how much longer this game can go on? Answer: MUCH longer. How about a half-inning snooze?
Endless meetings. Dinner party guests that just won’t leave. Mind-numbing political rants from the drunk uncle who gets all his news from Fox.
Ostrich Pillow.
I’m so glad it’s real!
12th INNING ~ Keep Calm & Carrion
Buttercup is a black vulture that lives at the Wildlife Center of Virginia.
Buttercup
Vultures – or buzzards as some people call them – are one of the world’s greatest recyclers. They eat the rotting meat of dead animal carcasses lying on roadsides and in fields that would otherwise spread disease and kill us all. Vultures are our great protectors.
Vultures are also misunderstood.
It is ok to dislike the New York Yankees because they upset the economics of baseball with their pocket-change millions. It is NOT ok to dislike vultures because they’re a bit wrinkley on the outside and like to fly around around in circles overhead looking for a snack.
(And, yes, they do pee on their legs sometimes, but really, who doesn’t?)
They are sociable creatures with amazing stomach enzymes. (I’m talking about the vultures here, not the Yankees.) Thousands of humans might go down, but a vulture would never succumb to food poisoning on a cruise ship.
Celebrate vultures and Buttercup with the Wildlife Center’s new “Spring Carrion” line of tee-shirts and tote bags. You’ll be helping a great organization and helping spread one of the best worst puns ever.
(P.S. If you’re planning on using your Ostrich Pillow outdoors, please watch out for vultures.)
13th INNING ~ Yay!
Oh, how I love the hidden ball trick. And, this is one of the best!
“I simply wanted to play the game that I loved.” ~ Kay “Tubby” Johnston Massar, the first girl to play Little League baseball, 1950.
Watch this stupid scene from an otherwise pretty good movie.
“There’s no crying in baseball.”
It’s a big lie and, if you have ever loved baseball … and loved a team … you’ve cried. If nothing else, you’ve sniffled a little (swallowed hard and wiped your nose on your shirt), which you might say is not crying, but, trust me, it is.
If you’ve never cried at least once when your team has let you down (see: Orioles, Cubs), or cried with joy when your team wins a World Series (see: Red Sox, Yankees, etc etc), or with despair when your team ruined your evening by squandering a perfectly adequate – and rare – five-hit, two-run performance by your struggling starter and then losing to one of the worst teams in baseball (see: Orioles, again), you really don’t love baseball, so stop saying you do.
So, when Kay Johnston Massar told me that when she was a young girl growing up in Corning, New York she cried as she watched her brother go off to play Little League, I understood.
If you love a game as much as she did – and still does – you would cry, too, if you were left behind.
But, this is not a story about crying.
courtesy of Kay Johnston Massar
Massar’s mother saw a notice in the paper that there was another Little League tryout coming up.
It was 1950, though, and girls did not play Little League baseball. Leastways, no one had ever done it before.
So, Massar had her mom cut off her braids, pushed what was left of her hair up under a ball cap, took her sister’s bike, and pedaled off to tryouts.
Her father had taught her to play and love the game. She played sandlot games with her brother Tom and his friends. She was good.
“I’m going to make the team,” she promised her mom. “I bet you will,” her mom replied.
Before she left, her mom suggested she change her name so no one would know she was a girl. Kay became “Tubby”, after the loyal best friend in the Little Lulu comics.
Tubby’s story might have faded away, except for one important thing.
She made the team.
courtesy of Kay Johnston Massar
“Tubby” Johnston was the first girl to play Little League baseball.
Some of you and your googling will try to tell me I’m wrong. You’ll say Maria Pepe was the first. No. Although her lawsuit in the early 1970s opened the door for all girls to play. Some of you will argue for Janine Cinseruli. No. Although she was the first girl to play a full season post-lawsuit in 1974.
Some of you will say, “Girls don’t play baseball.” Now, you’re just being disruptive. (Here. Read this. Then you can come back and read the rest of this post.)
Back to Tubby Johnston.
“When I tried out for Little League baseball I was not trying to be a beacon for women’s rights,” Massar says. “I simply wanted to play the game that I loved.”
Corning, New York wasn’t just any Little League town in 1950 either. Corning had made it to the semifinals of the Little League World Series in 1949 and the quarter-finals in 1948.
Not every kid who tried out got to play in Corning. Corning was tough. You had to earn your way in.
Tubby Johnston was tough too. And, she earned her way in.
Soon after being assigned to play first base for the King’s Dairy team, she told her coach the truth – he had a 14-year-old girl on his Little League squad.
The coach decided that there were no written rules at the time that specifically prohibited a girl from playing. And, if Tubby was good enough to make the team, she was good enough to play.
She played first base all season – she could hit, she could field. (When she finally got a proper first baseman’s glove of her own she slept with it. “I loved the smell of the leather,” she told me.)
When her teammates were told that Tubby, their first baseman, was actually a girl named Kay, they accepted her, she says. “They said, ‘Well, she plays as well as we do.’” And, then she adds, “Actually, I was better.”
But, they never did call her Kay. She was always “Tubby.”
Adults, on the other hand, could be cruel.
When the news broke that a girl was playing Little League in Corning, the fans turned out to watch. Many cheered, but many adults would jeer at her from the stands, call her names, or come right up to her and tell her she was a “freak” for playing baseball with boys.
“I didn’t let it bother me, I didn’t want to raise a commotion or squeal about it,” Massar says. “I didn’t want to get kicked off the team.”
(I told you she was tough.)
King’s Dairy was a prestigious team, highly prized by Little Leaguers, not only because they won a lot, but because after games the coach would take the kids to the dairy store and treat them to banana splits and milkshakes.
That 1950 season was Tubby’s first and last in Little League. After the season, Little League passed the “Tubby Rule” which stated in full:
“Girls Are Not Eligible Under Any Conditions.”
The rule stood until it was overturned in the courts in 1974.
By then, however, most girls were playing softball. That trend pretty much continues. Last year, just one girl played at the Little League Baseball World Series – Eliska Stejskalova, from the Czech Republic, who played for the Europe-Africa Team.
(In 2005, Katie Brownell, the only girl playing Little League baseball in Oakfield, NY, pitched a perfect six-inning Little League game – 18 up, 18 down. All strike outs.)
After Little League, Massar played a few years of softball herself, before getting on with things, becoming a nurse, getting married, having a family.
She was a tough softball player, too. Once, while sliding into second, she dislocated her shoulder. While coaches were trying to hustle her off to the hospital she was busy arguing with the umpire that she should have been called safe.
And, she almost got herself into a football game. Not long after her Little League season, she dressed in her brother’s football uniform one day when he was sick, put on his helmet, and tried to take his spot on the field. A fellow player ratted her out to the coach, however. “The coach ran out on the field shouting ‘Stop, Kay! Stop, Kay!’ or I would have been the first girl to play football, too.”
She still loves baseball. Her father was a lifelong Yankees fan, and she carries on the pinstripe tradition. (Derek Jeter is her #1. And, yes, she’s heartbroken that Robinson Cano, “the best second baseman in the game,” has left the Yanks for the Mariners.)
Today, she lives in Yuba City, California and gets to local college games and to an occasional Oakland A’s game each season.
“My dream as a child was to play first base for the Yankees, but I am still waiting to be called up,” Massar said and then asked, “Do you think that it is too late?”
Massar is 78 this year. She was joking.
I think.
She threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium in 2006. (“I one-hopped it to [Jorge] Posada,” she admits.)
And, at an Oakland A’s game in 2010.
Come on, San Francisco Giants! Massar is near you. Why not let her throw one out at AT&T Park this season?
She is featured in a new film commemorating the 75th anniversary of Little League which will air on PBS in June.
Oh, and hey, just one more thing.
Sports Illustrated has written about Massar a couple times, most recently in 2011. In that article, the writer suggested that Massar would trip runners as they rounded first base.
Massar would like to clear that up.
She was tough, but she didn’t routinely trip players. She wasn’t a cheater.
But, she did trip one.
“He pushed me down because I was a girl. So, the next time around I tripped him.”
That “kid” is now in his 70s, and he saw the Sports Illustrated story. He tracked down a mutual schoolfriend. “He said, ‘Tell her I’m sorry,’” Massar said, “So I finally got an apology.”
courtesy of Kay Johnston Massar
“I got to do a great thing. I got to play the game I loved.”
(Thank you to Kay Johnston Massar, who still loves baseball.)
The Baseball Bloggess 