Far From The Madding Crowd

Posted on April 15, 2020 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

All this talk about sports returning — without fans — reminded me that we had a fan-free dress rehearsal back in 2015. At the time, I wrote this: “Little did we know that the game would set into motion the greatest sea-change in 21st-century baseball – the end of fans in the bleachers.” Ahead of my time, I guess. ~ The Baseball Bloggess

The Baseball Bloggess

An empty Camden Yards in 2014. ©The Baseball Bloggess

Dear Future Person,

Sure, I know why you’re here. You want to know what happened on April 29, 2015 – long before you were born – and how one game of baseball changed everything.

(But, before we get to that, let me tell you that I’m delighted that you still have, and enjoy, baseball in your world. We fans never believed the annoying naysayers who insisted the sport was dying. We knew they were idiots wrong. And, I’m also really proud of you for finally outlawing football at all levels because of the well-documented, long-term damage it does to players. Well done, Future World!)

We knew the game on April 29 would be historic before it even started. We just had no idea how historic it would be. And, how it would turn baseball on its head.

The Baltimore Orioles and…

View original post 950 more words

175 Miraloma Drive

Posted on April 9, 2020 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

Here I am, trapped in a house. You, too? My house is everything to me now – workplace, coffee shop, theater, restaurant, library, Yoga studio. Everything.

It’s not perfect. It needs a paint job. But, it’s doing its best to keep me and Editor/Husband in and coronavirus out.

I am grateful for this house. I love it. Really, I do. But, I can’t wait to get out of it.

Being in this house is the whole of my world right now.

So, maybe it’s not so odd to rediscover the story of another house and the effort to keep someone out of it.

It’s not an unknown story. You probably know it. But, this story of Willie Mays and his house is a reminder of how far we’ve come … and how not far we’ve come at all.

Toward the end of the 1957 season, the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers formally announced that both teams would move to California in 1958.

The Giants last game at the Polo Grounds.

As soon as the season wrapped, Giants players began packing themselves up, looking for new homes in San Francisco.

Embed from Getty Images

Willie Mays – by 1957, one of baseball’s biggest superstars – was one of them. Continue reading →

Life In The Time Of Pandemic

Posted on March 18, 2020 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

A historian at one of the nearby universities wrote an article this week suggesting that we all keep diaries of this unprecedented time.

Write it all down.

Life In The Time Of Pandemic, I guess.

Where has he been? Pandemic 2020 is going to be the most documented event in the history of mankind. (Peoplekind.)

Where were you when the wash-your-hands edict came? When the don’t-touch-your-face came? When the toilet-paper-hysteria came? When the ban on gatherings of 1,000 … 500 … 50 … 10 came? When today came? I know. Twitter and Facebook and Instagram told me.

There seems to be an ever-increasing number of cat photos on my feeds. Just to break up the latest round of bad news, I guess. So, doing my part, here’s Zuzu …

(I am not gloating because extroverts are freaking out about this stay-at-home thing. But, I admit, there is a smug-but-not-gloating satisfaction. Now you know how it is for an introvert like me when I’m feeling pressured to go to one of your big parties. Different thing. Same gnawing discomfort.) Continue reading →

This Is Not My “Happy Place”

Posted on March 15, 2020 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

I shut everything down.

When things shut down around me in the past few days, I knew that mitigating a fast-spreading virus like COVID-19 would mean more than just shuttering all sports, museums, concerts, and big things.

It meant even little businesses like mine should shut down, too.

So, I closed my Yoga studio, cancelled my massage clients. And, here I sit.

Because, isn’t this what it means to “do your part”?

But, if the bars and restaurants and movie theaters are still open and people are still going, am I just wasting my time?

As I said to some of my clients, “I don’t want to see you on Monday and then have to call you on Wednesday and say, ‘Hey! Guess what I just tested positive for?’”

If closing is the right thing to do, why do I feel so terrible about this?

OK, that helped to say all that.

Now that you’ve kindly read through my “stress dump,” we, of course, need to get to the nut of things …

This virus has taken away baseball. It has taken away sports. It has taken away my “Happy Place.” Maybe your “Happy Place,” too.

I have no back-up “Happy Place.”

On Tuesday afternoon – playing hooky – I sat in the stands at the University of Virginia’s Davenport Field in our luxurious new season seats that look straight through home plate and right down the third-base line.

©The Baseball Bloggess

Freshman Max Cotier, on third and thinking about maybe, just maybe, stealing home. He didn’t steal, but he did score. (See, I told you … great seats!)

Virginia beat UMass-Lowell on Tuesday afternoon 24-5.

When it seemed clear that the game would be a major blow-out … and, you know, blow-outs and batting around in multiple innings can take some time (ultimately, three hours and 32 minutes) … we thought about leaving. It was getting late. Continue reading →

Dickey Pearce Turns 45

Posted on February 29, 2020 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

I love February 29.

Because you can write incredibly wild, yet basically true, things like this:

Happy Birthday to baseball great Dickey Pearce who turns 45 today!

“I ain’t got any education, but nobody can teach me how to play ball.” ~ Dickey Pearce

Born in Brooklyn, he started his professional baseball career there when he was just 5 years old.

(If I tell you now that Dickey Pearce was a “leapling” born on February 29, 1836 and made his baseball debut in 1856 … well, you knew that was coming, but why spoil the fun?)

While I seem to be spending an inordinate part of this month writing about short and stocky players, it is, I think, important to note that Dickey Pearce was 5’3-1/2” (when you’re 5’3” that last half inch is pretty important) and weighed in at 161 pounds.

While 5’3-1/2″ and 161 pounds may sound chubby to you, clearly, those old-time baseball unis were downright slimming. (Pearce is the one in back.)

Pearce, who played in the earliest days of major league baseball – from the 1850s into the 1880s – is credited with turning the roving “short field” position into the more territorial shortstop position that we know today, and, in doing so, may have invented, or developed, or, at very least refined, the double play. Continue reading →

The Cupid Of Second Base

Posted on February 14, 2020 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

In early 1891, second baseman Clarence Childs signed a $2,300 contract with the Baltimore Orioles, about $65,000 in today’s dollars. Upon signing he was immediately paid a $200 advance. He then abandoned the team, saying that the Orioles had deceived him and he could find a better deal elsewhere. The Orioles sued. They lost. And, Childs joined the Cleveland Spiders.

(Months later, the Orioles were still in court trying to get their $200 back. It’s unclear if they ever did.)

Childs jilted the Orioles. Probably wasn’t the first to do it. Definitely not the last. (See: Mark Teixeira, 21st-century Orioles jilter.)

End of story?

But, wait.

What if I told you Clarence Childs wasn’t always called Clarence? What if someone along the way nicknamed him Cupid? Cupid Childs?

Courtesy of Peak99, via Creative Commons

Well, friends, this Valentine’s Day post is practically writing itself. Continue reading →

How To Talk To Your Cat About The Mookie Betts Trade

Posted on February 10, 2020 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

As I was writing this post … and by “writing” I really mean, “thinking about writing” … a stinkbug climbed onto the rim of my coffee cup and fell (or jumped, it’s hard to tell) into my morning coffee. I was able to fish him out – saving his life, but not my coffee. This has nothing to do with anything, except that drowning in a good cup of morning coffee is probably not the worst way to go.

And, now to our top story …

Last week, the Boston Red Sox traded their superstar outfielder Mookie Betts in a three-way deal sending Mookie to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Then the deal fell apart. Then it fell back together.

Embed from Getty Images

Now, a week later … the Boston Red Sox have finally traded Mookie Betts (along with pitcher David Price) to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Let’s say you, like me, have a cat named Mookie.

I’m sure that your Mookie Cat, like mine, has a lot of questions about this trade of Mookie Betts from the Red Sox to the Dodgers, specifically related to how it might affect them directly, especially when it comes to mealtime. Maybe you have a dog named Mookie. And, maybe your dog Mookie also has questions.

Sorry. This is just for cats. Continue reading →

If Pearce Chiles Could Talk …

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

Allentown PA Leader, 10/4/1900

Pearce Chiles, an infielder/third base coach for the Philadelphia Phillies, was born in 1867 in Deepwater, Missouri. I think it’s fair to say he was an all-around no-goodnik – although thieving miscreant is probably more accurate. Phillies’ backup catcher Morgan Murphy, fellow no-goodnik, devised a system where Murphy, using binoculars, would stand beyond centerfield and steal the signs from the other team’s catcher. Murphy would forward the signs via a telegraph wire buried under the field and connected to a buzzer in the third base coaching box where Chiles stood. The buzzer would vibrate under Chiles’ foot, and he would signal to the batter what pitch was coming. It was 1900.

Pearce Chiles

Chiles never spoke publically about the scheme … but if he had …

Those idiots think the DTs ‘smaking my leg twitch.

It ain’t booze.

I hold my likker better ‘n any of ‘em.

Buffoons.

I can stand out here all day in this goddam third base box. And, see, we paid a guy to lay down a wire and it’s buried right here where my right foot stands. I have to stand just so. But, if I do, Murph’ out there just beyond that centerfield point, puts his spyglasses on the other guys’ catcher, and from out there he pushes a button and presto – I get a jolt of pure electricity right through the wire, right to my damn foot.

Mansfield OH News-Journal, 9/19/1900

Curve ball? Fast ball? Murph’s a catcher, he knows all the signs. I know from the buzz he sends me exactly what that pitcher’s gonna throw next.

One buzz, fastball. Two buzzes, something else.

Can you beat that? Continue reading →

And, No One Ever Cheated

Posted on January 18, 2020 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

Photo: Kaboompics via Pexels.com

If you remember real hard, you’ll remember.

A moment when life took place above your head.

A summer picnic with mom and dad and all the people from dad’s work, I don’t really know how many.

A lot.

There were hamburgers and hot dogs and jello pops and grownups who got drunk.

And, cold sodas in metal coolers and we’d steal the ice and throw it at each other.

And, each year, a tug of war between the men that everybody waited for.

And after that, down in a mowed field, there was baseball and we children would sit on a hillside and watch our fathers play.

And, no one ever cheated.

And, it never rained on Saturdays.

And, everything was perfect.

Because, my memory say it’s so.

The Best Baseball Words of 2019

Posted on December 31, 2019 by Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

Dear Holiday Revelers & Readers,

Did you really expect me to thoughtfully paw through an entire decade in my New Year’s wrap-up?

I’m running on a cup of coffee here. We’ll be lucky if I can remember back to January.

But, that doesn’t mean I haven’t collected some special things – 2019 things – for you.

Reading is one of my favorite things. It’s like the easiest hobby in the world. It’s why I don’t have a fitbit – I’d rather be reading than marching around in circles trying to “get my steps in.”

And, I’d rather be writing. To you.

And, while I’m delighted … honored … and, to be honest, a little surprised … that you stop by to read my words from time to time … (Wait, do I owe you money? Is that why you’re here?) … I’m even more delighted to send you off with a pocketful of links to other writers who have written good stuff this year.

Even if baseball’s not your thing (insert bewildered, sorta sad, but mostly just bemused emoji face here), if you like words, sweetly strung together like the innings of a no hitter, you’ll like these words. I’m sure of it.

Sorry, increasingly feeble, laid-off-half-its-staff, soon-to-be-a-monthly Sports Illustrated, you don’t make my list this year.

But these did … Bitmoji Image Continue reading →