The Infield Dirt with T.S. O'Connell - Monday, October 26, 2009

   Working on Saturdays is rarely a treat, but this past one wasn’t too shabby at all, given that right around the middle of the day, I got a phone call from one of the true Flushing Meadows giants (Mets, really) of my youth. Ron Swoboda (shown at right in a photo from atop the Empire State Building – Ron Berg photo) , one of the darlings of the franchise from the mid-1960s at Shea Stadium, was on the line, calling from his car as he headed home to New Orleans where he’s lived for the past 15 years.

   The occasion for this was fairly straightforward: Swoboda’s stunning catch of a Brooks Robinson line drive from the 1969 World Series is being commemorated in a 40th anniversary limited-edition photo that has been signed by both players.

www.nydailynews.com/catch <http://www.nydailynews.com/catch

I’ll have more on that in a later blog after I’ve written up the notes from the interview, but I wanted to take note of the special nature of Ron Swoboda’s relationship with Mets fans in the 1960s. A lifetime .242 hitter with 73 home runs in a nine-year career with the Mets, Expos and Yankees (mostly Mets), his place in Flushing folklore (try saying that quickly three times) is wildly disproportionate to his numbers. And that’s why it was a thrill to get the phone call.

   As a teenager who would take in 15-20 Mets games a year from 1965-68, I was as taken with the young slugger just as much as the rest of the faithful. Swoboda arrived in 1965, with the Mets legendary mediocrity already established, duly exploited and on the verge of become tiresome.

   Trust me, you had to be at Shea in those days to feel the excitement as the denizens of an almost brand-new stadium embraced a 21-year-old rookie who captured their hearts virtually from the first day. He socked 19 home runs and led the team, which obviously helped his popularity, but the affection from the fans really stemmed from something much less tangible than his stats (he hit .228).

   Nope, we loved him because he was young, he played hard and seemed like one of the guys from the neighborhood who just happened to have the right stuff to get up to the majors. After three years of watching various old geezers that the Mets had tried to recycle from other National League teams (most prominently the Dodgers and Giants), it was cool – and hopeful – to have some of our own young guys coming up. Even in 1965, with a 10th-place finish by virtue of 112 losses, there were still plenty of NL retreads left on the roster, but there also were some young guys, too, like Ed Kranepool and a scrappy infielder named Ron Hunt. And Swoboda.

   The very attributes that we so saluted in Rocky – blue-collar roots, hustle, determination and maybe even an ability to get a bit more out our talent than might be expected – were the same things we might have hoped for ourselves. There was hope for the future, it seemed.

   After enduring 343 losses in three years, that was welcome, indeed.

Monday, October 26, 2009 2:55:24 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Thursday, October 22, 2009

My bad. I ignored our own edict about commentary ...
Posted by T.S.

   As readers may recall, after a hiatus of several months we opened up the blog for commentary from the readers, but we added an additional requirement for submissions.

   So I pointed out that we would allow comments, but we would insist that a real name and city of residence be included with each entry.

   And then I fumbled and allowed comments that didn’t comply with that request. The failure to do so was nothing more than the exigencies of the day-to-day workload, which often meant I simply got stuck in other areas.

   But it was a sound idea then and it remains so today. Parts of what follows are verbatim from that earlier blog.

   Including a name and address is essentially how letters to the editor have been handled for 100 years or more and I see no reason why the new rules of cyber mayhem should scuttle that basic requirement.

   It should be relatively simple: no name and city address, no inclusion in the commentary section. Obviously, someone could simply utilize a pseudonym, but that strikes us as particularly damning because it suggests a near-total absence of willingness to take responsibility for what you write. Commentary received without name and city address will be deleted at our discretion.

   So to the best of our ability, we’ll monitor the commentary with that in mind, and also simply to ensure that the observations are appropriate and suitable for inclusion under the umbrella of our website.

   That doesn’t mean that the only thing a reader can do is comment in some fashion in reaction to something I’ve blogged about; indeed, we welcome the new ideas and suggestions that this kind of venue can provide. It does mean that we’ll maintain the site in a fair and professional manner with an eye toward open communication that doesn’t meander all the way into the kinds of excesses that define so many pockets of cyberspace.

   It truly is – just as letters to the editor are in print publications – an important and well-read addition and complement to conventional online media offerings.

– T.S. O’Connell
Iola, Wis.

Thursday, October 22, 2009 2:03:11 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [1]

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Check your drivers license to see who you are ...
Posted by T.S.

   I ended up on a cool website the other day for Hourglass Antiques & Collectibles (www.tias.com), which along with zillions of antiques, had about a dozen original pen-and-ink and charcoal drawings of legendary sports figures, all of them autographed.

   Now, just by my nature I tend to be more impressed with nice art than I am with autographs, but this had both, plus one other bit of whimsy that I kind of liked. More on that later.

   Several baseball Hall of Famers are included in the mix, including Jimmie Foxx, Pie Traynor (both shown here) and Honus Wagner, among others. There’s much to like about the drawings, not the least of which is the style that was so identifiable to the 1930s when they were produced (and signed).

   The catalog description notes that the drawings were done by Arthur Haas, a commercial artist and sports fan living in New York City, who took his drawings to the various games to get them signed in person. And now we get to the part that caught my fancy.

   According to the catalog description, “The autograph has not and will not be ‘certified.’ This would require my sending it away so it can be looked over with a loupe, only to be told what I already know – that it is authentic.” The artist is the father of Evelyn Mancino of Hourglass Antigues, who wrote the item description.

   Bravo! I am not against third-party authentication and can easily see all that it has brought to the modern marketplace, but I am a really big fan of common sense and can’t help but applaud every time it manages to push its humble little noggin’ up and out of the muck that is 21st century America.

   Insisting that something like that be “certified” would be no sillier than my dragging myself out of bed tomorrow morning and requiring two forms of identification – one being preferably a driver’s license – to be certain that I am in fact whom I claim to be.

   And in fairness to Hourglass Antiques & Collectibles, the catalog description does note that the buyer will have two weeks to have the autograph certified, if they so desire.

   And don’t spank me about this tiny bit of whimsy. I understand that third-party authentication might still be useful here as the artwork moves away from its original ownership.

   I just got a kick out of somebody saying the autograph has not and will not be certified. It’s my mavericky side.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 3:30:03 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [1]

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Ruth and Cobb overshadowed by Kim Novak ...
Posted by T.S.

   When I was a kid growing up, nobody I knew had any more interest in baseball history than I did, but if you had offered me an opportunity to meet an aging Ty Cobb or a most thoroughly in her prime Kim Novak, I would have opted for the latter and never looked back (at Ty, that is).

   Murray Garrett, the subject of my column this week in Sports Collectors Digest, got to meet both of them and a whole lot more folks in an almost mythical career as a celebrity photographer in Hollywood. Quite properly disdainful of the modern uber-aggressive paparazzi, Garrett traveled in Hollywood’s elite circles that included the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope, to name a few of his subjects in a career that spanned from 1946-73.

   I had a ball interviewing the 84-year-old Garrett a couple of weeks ago, initially tipped off about three fascinating photos of Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb that Garrett took when he was a teenager. But when you talk to the genial California resident, it’s hard not to focus (pardon the lame pun) on his Hollywood photography, which is understandable enough, since it was that work that gave life to a pair of elegant coffee-table books and spectacular prints that he offers on his website (www.murraygarrett.com).

   I enjoyed the interview as much as any I’ve done in more than 30 years in the newspaper and magazine business, and I was particularly tickled when he talked about Hall of Famer Bob Lemon, whom he talked about as one of his closest friends. Garrett reminisced about being Lemon’s designated driver, though of course he didn’t use that term.

   I had understood his affection for the great pitcher and manager, who died nearly 10 years ago, since I had done a lengthy interview with Lemon several years before his passing. For the life of me, I can’t remember where it took place – what city, that is – though I do recall it was at a card show on the East Coast, maybe in New York somewhere.

   Lemon had the same easy mannerisms – and bulbous red nose – that I had known from a lifetime of talking with guys who loved to tell a good story and did so often ... and virtually always under the influence. Lemon was one of the nicest guys I ever interviewed. And it didn't hurt that he reminded me of my dad, bulbous red nose and all.

   Still, I would have traded that interview for a chance to meet Kim Novak.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 4:20:03 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Card companies begin jousting with giveaways ...
Posted by T.S.

   I’ve got a feeling that a year from now when we look back at the year 2010 in the world of modern baseball card collecting, things are going to look a lot different than they do right now. If I had much of a clue of what the landscape would look like, I guess I’d probably be in a different line of work. Like handicapping the ponies maybe.

   The paradigm (I’ve always wanted to use that word) is going to be something far different than what we’ve been used to. The jockeying between Topps and Upper Deck for 2010 has begun in earnest already, with a couple of neat contests planned that figure to raise the collecting profile beyond the traditional outlets.

   Upper Deck and MLBPA have teamed up for a revival of the National Packtime promotion that was popular several years ago, with a broad sampling promotion for March 6, 2010, being done through Upper Deck’s network of baseball card specialty shops.

   Details are a bit sketchier from archrival Topps about plans to give away 1 million cards from 1952 to present, with a top prize of a complete 1952 Topps set. In this one collectors will find a code card in packs of Series 1 and Series 2 Topps Baseball next year and will be directed to a Topps website that will reveal what card they have won.

   That kind of arrangement handily addresses the problem of inserting oversized 1952-56 Topps cards into standard-size modern packs, but more importantly provides Topps with an imposing way of rounding up a vast armada of e-mail addresses.

   This latter promotion is reminiscent of the famous sweepstakes Topps did nearly 20 years ago to celebrate its 40th anniversary by inserting all of their cards into packs and then offering a sweepstakes where one collector – Jack Glenn of New York City – one the top prize of every Topps set produced up to that point.

   With the jury still out on precisely how Upper Deck is going to respond to the new ground rules of Topps’ exclusive with MLB, it’s pretty clear that there’s going to be a lot of activity from both coasts in adjusting to our brave new world.

   With apologies to Bette Davis, “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Thursday, October 15, 2009 5:14:41 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [2]

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Hoping the Olympics do not get politicized ...
Posted by T.S.

   I’ve tried for many years to resist the siren call to nationalistic hysteria when it comes to the Olympics, preferring instead to focus on the achievements of the athletes as opposed to whichever flag hey might be toting, but my parochial leanings do bubble up sometimes when the International Olympic Committee gets into the act.

   With that backdrop, I found it more than a little disheartening a couple of weeks ago when Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Games received such a decidedly unenthusiastic response from that august body – go ahead and read a bit of sarcasm into that – and later from people in this country who roundly cheered at the news of the early demise of the Chicago bid.

   I can promise you that the people (even political commentators, who are technically people, too) who so gleefully applauded the IOC’s officious dismissal of Chicago probably don’t know too much about the inner workings of that group. If you think the denizens inside the Beltway have the inside track on hypocrisy, deceit, pomposity and back biting, meet their European mentors who have refined all of that to an art form. You couldn’t even fantasize about making Hypocrisy an actual Olympic event, since the very best practitioners wouldn’t be able to compete because of a conflict of interest.

   But what really frosted my grommet about all of this was the simple idea of Americans cheering at something so starkly disappointing to many of their fellow citizens. I fully understand that America is not the center of the universe and that from a global view it’s presumably exciting that the amateur athletics spectacle will be going to South America for the first time. That’s fine.

   But I can’t ever recall another IOC vote in my lifetime where people cheered about an American city coming up short in a bid vote. Even if you are opposed the idea of a Windy City Olympics on more defensible grounds – like the possibility of staggering cost overruns being saddled on the local populace – that didn’t seem to be what we were witnessing in this case.

   Gee, I’d hate to see the Olympics become politicized (Hint: more sarcasm).

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 5:25:50 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Monday, October 12, 2009

Tiger misses cut in Sunday New York Times ...
Posted by T.S.

   Let’s stipulate that I’m a big New York Times fan. The Sunday Times is a treat of the first order, so the disappointment I felt yesterday was all the more acute because it happened in the Times.

   I’m tempted to suggest that the absence of any real Presidents Cup coverage in an 11-page Sunday Times Sports Section is a reflection of the arduous times faced by print publications, but, come on, we’re talking about a nifty international golf competition involving the top players in the world.

   I can't get over the notion that countless newspapers, magazines and any number of businesses at large seem to be doing everything they can to send their print customers online rather than enhance the print product they just shelled out $6 for. See, I am so mad I purposely ended a sentence with a preposition.

   Anyway, how could you figure that in the Sunday New York Times there would be 21/2 inches of agate type listing the results from Friday. Might as well have skipped the whole enterprise altogether. And this with Tiger Woods himself prominently leading the charge.

   Don’t get me wrong; this is not some heightened jingoism where I am appalled because my hybrid golf/patriotic impulses have been stifled. Even leaving the flag waving aside, it was a major event with all the best players and most certainly worthy of more coverage than it got.

   And while I am on the subject of my favorite newspaper, I might as well throw in how aggravated I am that the Times continues to cling to the pretentious nonsense of initial caps (or "title caps" if you prefer) in headlines. Grrrrrrrr.

   For an institution that prides itself on conveying information, this particular foible is particularly galling precisely because it confuses and misinforms instead of what it is supposed to be doing. When you capitalize everything, there’s no ability for the reader to tell which words are proper nouns. That’s disinformation. And it ain’t fit to print.

   I know it’s something that separates the New York Times from other newspapers, but there’s a reason the others don’t do it. It’s asinine, and thus unworthy of a great newspaper.

Monday, October 12, 2009 3:47:48 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [3]

Thursday, October 08, 2009

The Twins appear to be chronic overachievers ...
Posted by T.S.

It’s only the remarkable immediacy of the Internet that allows me to go out on a limb and say nutty things like this: The wretched imbalance in Major League Baseball payrolls means that – over the long term – smaller-market teams like the Minnesota Twins will perhaps be able to compete adequately over the course of a season and win a division title or wild card berth here and there, but ultimately are doomed against the likes of the Yankees in the postseason.

   I’m gonna look pretty silly if the Twins somehow pull something out against New York, but even then it wouldn’t mean I was wrong. Part of the wonderful charm of baseball is that the unexpected – sometimes even the unimaginable – can happen, but in a game that prides itself on anointing greatness only over an extended, even arduous schedule, the percentages favor the club with the greater manpower.

   Now one of the important things that mitigate this factor is pressure. I’m convinced that a team like the Yankees is quite properly handicapped by the almost unrealistic expectations that come with having all that high-priced talent. Everybody from the various Steinbrenners on down anticipates and expects that they will win in these payroll mismatches, so the underdog typically faces a relatively relaxed situation.

   But trying to identify those instances when the pressure cooker prompts professional athletes to choke is extraordinarily difficult if not impossible, unless your name is Johnny Miller. But I seemingly digress.

   My basic point is that while the Twins appear to debunk the idea that teams with lower payrolls can’t effectively compete against mucho-dinero behemoths like the Yankees, the reality may be that they can in fact compete only to a degree.

   It’s perfectly understandable that baseball would have moved to the tiered playoff system and then ultimately add the wild-card element, given the huge population growth that the country has undergone in the 40 years since the “new” system was established. But back in 1968, coming out on top after a 162-game ordeal put a club immediately into the World Series: nowadays it puts a team into a truncated playoff dance for a chance at getting into the World Series.

   If I were a fan of a small-market team, I would find it deeply unsatisfying to find my guys in the playoffs against a ball club that was paying its guys twice as much dough as my guys were getting. Especially if my guys were typically getting rudely bounced out most of the time.

   Thank God I root for a big-market juggernaut like the Mets.

Thursday, October 08, 2009 4:38:30 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [1]

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Phillies ruefully return Ryan HR ball to 12-year-old ...
Posted by T.S.

   Since I used to live near Philadelphia but never remotely embraced the Phillies because of my Shea Stadium heritage, it is with some stifled glee that I read about a public relations snafu the Eastern Division Champions have wrestled with for the last three months.

   Apparently, it took a threatened lawsuit from a Flordia attorney to get the Phillies to return the ball that Ryan Howard socked for HR No. 200, which would have been notable enough, but it also marked the fastest trek to that milestone in major league history.

   According to the story in the Miami Herald, Phillies officials approached the 12-year-old girl who caught the ball, brought her into the clubhouse and offered her a trade of another baseball (signed by Howard) in exchange for the historic homer. There was no suggestion of any hot lights being applied and certainly no allegations of waterboarding, despite the inherently suspicious proximity to Guantanamo Bay, but the youngster ended up surrendering her treasure.

   After the little girl got home, her parents realized what had happened and consulted an attorney, who ultimately started contacting the Phillies to get the ball back.

   Here’s where I think it gets fascinating. After more than two months, the lawyer quite astutely sent one of those threatening letters right at the end of the regular season, and by Tuesday the little girl had her ball back.

   According to the Herald, the Phillies did not return a phone call Tuesday, with the reporter noting that the club officials have other things on their minds with the start of the Playoffs today.

   What I find so intriguing is that the Phillies presumably caved because they didn’t want TV announcers jabbering during Game One against the Rockies about how the club got into an unseemly tussle with a 12-year-old girl. I guess I would be surprised if the story doesn’t still manage to pop up in some fashion.

   But just to show you that I am hardly holier than thou or even the Phillies, I have an admission to make after 50 years. In 1959 in Muskegon, Mich., I hosed my best friend by engineering a grotesquely lopsided trade with his younger brother that left me with Rodney’s entire first series of 1959 Topps, this coming at a time when 9-year-old Rodney was at the dentist.

   I feel great shame.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009 3:13:15 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [2]

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Favre and Namath know about self-inflicted pressure ...
Posted by T.S.

   I’ll say one thing for Brett Favre: I can’t recall another professional athlete in my lifetime putting himself into a bigger pressure cooker situation and then still managing to deliver the goods in a fashion that makes it difficult even for his most aggrieved detractors to find something to complain about.

   I gotta admit, I hadn’t figured he’d be able to adapt so quickly to a new team, though it naturally helped that he is so familiar with the Vikings’ offensive scheme.

   I was also surprised that the game itself managed to virtually live up to all of its hype, which was about as pronounced and protracted as I can recall for a regular-season NFL game. It crossed my mind that it might end up like a Super Bowl where the expectations often prove impossibly grandiose, but this was a really exciting football game from start to finish.

   I suppose one of the few people who might understand the kind of self-inflicted pressure that Favre faced would be Broadway Joe Namath, he of brash prediction of a New York Jets victory in Super Bowl III over the heavily favored Colts.

   Of course, all of this means that a certain Nov. 1 rematch at Lambeau Field. I took a flyer and offered a prediction on last nights game, but I think I’ll wait a few weeks before offering an prognostications about that one.

   Heck, we may even be thoroughly fed up with the hype by the time that contest actually rolls around.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009 5:54:25 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

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