1940's Baseball

[LizzieMaine]

Rizzuto grew on me as a broadcaster. When I first heard him, tuning around the dial at night, I thought I'd picked up a space alien, he was so different from anything I was used to hearing -- much the same way I felt about Bob Prince out of Pittsburgh. But as I listened, I got to enjoy him -- he was like listening to your screwy old uncle rambling on at the Thanksgiving table.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^ Rizzuto was definitely an acquired taste. Since I grew up with him, he always seemed "normal" to me, until - as I got older and started hearing other announcers and thinking about the variations in style and skills of announcers - I realized he was sui generis.

 

[Harp]

Reading through here for the first time, I must share the memory of a Cubs game in 2000 at Wrigley Field where my brother and his then-new bride took my mother to her first pro ball game in MANY years.

How many years? Think about THIS... Mom's comment, (early in the event) was that "the last time she had attended a Pro game, there were no "Negro" players!"
She then said, "it's a better game now."

THAT was quite a reminder of 1940's Baseball...

Lester Rodney and his The Daily Worker sports column contributed mightily to the fight for baseball's integration.
Sports writers are often treated like ba***rd cousins by the mainstream press but this 'communist newspaper' stood up for principle when it counted.

 

[2jakes]

^^^
What has been mentioned already & for my part ;

Opening a 1¢ waxed paper with a card inside, including
a stick of bubble-gum (or what passed for gum ) and
collecting my favorite baseball heroes back in the summers
when Mickey & Yogi were rookies and listening to the “snap, crackle & pop”
sounds from a tall wood radio that transported me to far away places.

It’s difficult sometimes to realize that as times goes by,
there are less folks around that can relate on things
that now exist only in my memories,

my beautiful Elysian Fields.

 

[Harp]

It’s difficult sometimes to realize that as times goes on, there are less people
that can relate with me on these things that now exist only in my memories.

Yogi's passing was a reminder of youth and time's all too brief moment.

 

[2jakes]

I really miss the years that started with 19.

Beginning with the year 2000,
It just doesn’t have the same “feeling” when I say it.

This probably doesn’t make much sense !

 

[Harp]

This probably doesn’t make much sense !

Makes all the more sense.

 

[LizzieMaine]

This year's Christmas presents included a real pip -- my mother gave me my grandmother's scrapbook documenting the 1946 Red Sox pennant run, filled with neatly-pasted clippings from the Boston Post from August and September. I remember poring over it with her when I was little, but I haven't seen it at all for about thirty years, and assumed it was lost in one of my mother's periodic cleanouts/cellar floods. But here it is, in all its glory.

The articles include day-to-day game stories, starting with coverage of the All Star Game, played that year at Fenway Park, and a showcase for Ted Williams, who homered twice to power the AL to a 12-0 win. "WILLIAMS THE CONQUEROR IS RIGHT!" screams the headline on a Bob Coyne cartoon alongside the game story. There are also impressive full-color Sunday supplement photos of several key players from the team, including pitchers "Boo" Ferriss and "Tex" Hughson, both of whom went down in history as might-have-beens.

Game strategy is analyzed in depth as the race moves into the stretch. Half a page is taken up by a photo of the "UNORTHODOX INDIANS DEFENSE AGAINST WILLIAMS" -- the famous "Boudreau Shift," which left the entire left side of the field unguarded. And another photo shows Williams grinning like a five-year-old after hitting an inside the park home run to beat Cleveland 1-0 in the pennant clinching game.

While there's a lot of pre-World Series coverage, the scrapbook strangely stops there -- there is no coverage of the actual games. These may have been kept in a separate scrapbook, now lost -- or, knowing my grandmother, she might have torn them out in frustration and thrown them away after the Sox lost to St. Louis. She went to her grave refusing to forgive Johnny Pesky for holding the ball, and we often argued about this.

There's one exception, though -- two hand-written scoresheets, filled in from listening to the radio broadcast, of Series Game Six, on old employee timesheets from the Belfast And Moosehead Lake Railroad. Her scorecards were always much neater and more legible than mine, and I'm still envious of that.

Tucked into the very end of the book, there's another oddity -- a full sports section from the Bangor Daily News of October 9, 1956, featuring a full page of coverage of Don Larsen's perfect game. She could never stand the Yankees, but she knew history when she saw it.

 

[scottyrocks]

I really miss the years that started with 19.

Beginning with the year 2000,
It just doesn’t have the same “feeling” when I say it.

This probably doesn’t make much sense !

It makes sense.

 

[Fading Fast]

Re Lizzie's post: Lizzie, IMHO, knowing you as I do from this forum, your Mom could not have given you a better Christmas gift - kudos to her / I'm happy for you - sound like great fun to look through. And it seems that your "passion" might have come down from your grandmother based on her potential personal expunging of her record of the Sox' loss to St. Louis.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My grandmother was the most passionate baseball fan I ever knew -- my grandfather had it pretty bad, he'd yell at the radio or the TV when something stupid happened, and he'd sulk if they lost, but my grandmother was analytical about it all. She always knew exactly when a pitcher was losing it and needed to come out, she always understood how to play the percentages, and she never underestimated the other team. In another life, she'd have made a great manager.

We'd sit in the living room together listening to or watching the games, and she'd quiz me like a school teacher -- "Stange and Lyle are up in the bullpen -- which one comes in? Why's LaHoud pinch hitting here instead of Billy C.? Why'd they walk Yaz here, and why is Weaver pulling McNally?" To this day my mother calls me up after nearly every game and I have to explain the strategy to her.

 

[HudsonHawk]

...my grandmother was analytical about it all. She always knew exactly when a pitcher was losing it and needed to come out, she always understood how to play the percentages, and she never underestimated the other team. In another life, she'd have made a great manager.

Sounds like she's be up on most people today, including many so called "baseball people". It seems all they can do these days is recite stats and count pitches to make decisions. Few seem to be actually watching what's happening on the field.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Sounds like she's be up on most people today, including many so called "baseball people". It seems all they can do these days is recite stats and count pitches to make decisions. Few seem to be actually watching what's happening on the field.

The whole Sabermetrics thing irritates me -- it's like baseball suddenly turned into Dungeons and Dragons when I wasn't paying attention. And they don't need to act so smug about understanding the importance of OBP. I knew that a walk was as good as a hit in 1969, and I figured everyone else did, too.

 

[HudsonHawk]

The whole Sabermetrics thing irritates me -- it's like baseball suddenly turned into Dungeons and Dragons when I wasn't paying attention. And they don't need to act so smug about understanding the importance of OBP. I knew that a walk was as good as a hit in 1969, and I figured everyone else did, too.

I like that baseball is the most historically documented sport in the world. Every pitch and cup adjustment is recorded in a book somewhere, and that means a tremendous amount of data for comparison and analysis. But as Yogi said, you can observe a lot by watching.

 

[2jakes]

I like that baseball is the most historically documented sport in the world. Every pitch and cup adjustment is recorded in a book somewhere, and that means a tremendous amount of data for comparison and analysis. But as Yogi said, you can observe a lot by watching.

I like baseball.
Specifically the past & everything that went with it.
This may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
But I also enjoy Ken Burn’s baseball.
First saw it on PBS.
I have favorite innings that I recorded & watch all the time .
The narration/voice/music is great.
I usually wear my vintage style baseball jersey on a cool evening
that acts as a sweater when I’m in a baseball mode.
It makes for a nice evening of relaxation.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The thing with that 1946 pennant race that's hard for modern folk to understand is that going into it. Boston fans had absolutely no reason to think they'd lose the World Series. Up to that point, no Boston team had *ever* lost a World Series, and even though there hadn't been a pennant in Boston for twenty-eight years at that point, there was still the universal expectation that the Sox would wipe the floor with the Cardinals.

But Ted Williams got plunked on the elbow in a meaningless exhibition game before the Series began and was completely useless during the Series itself, which was a circumstance no one could have forseen. And it was at that moment that the "How will we lose it THIS time?" mentality took root among New England fans. Even the championships of recent years have done nothing to dispel that among the old-timers.

 

[Harp]

I like baseball.
Specifically the past & everything that went with it.
This may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
But I also enjoy Ken Burn’s baseball.
First saw it on PBS.
I have favorite innings that I recorded & watch all the time .
The narration/voice/music is great.

Sandy Koufax's profile in Burn's film is my favorite part of the series.
More recently, CDs of several Lester and Arietta pitching clinics; and to be honest, Harvey striking out Lester.

 

[PrivateEye]

This year's Christmas presents included a real pip -- my mother gave me my grandmother's scrapbook documenting the 1946 Red Sox pennant run, filled with neatly-pasted clippings from the Boston Post from August and September. I remember poring over it with her when I was little, but I haven't seen it at all for about thirty years, and assumed it was lost in one of my mother's periodic cleanouts/cellar floods. But here it is, in all its glory.

The articles include day-to-day game stories, starting with coverage of the All Star Game, played that year at Fenway Park, and a showcase for Ted Williams, who homered twice to power the AL to a 12-0 win. "WILLIAMS THE CONQUEROR IS RIGHT!" screams the headline on a Bob Coyne cartoon alongside the game story. There are also impressive full-color Sunday supplement photos of several key players from the team, including pitchers "Boo" Ferriss and "Tex" Hughson, both of whom went down in history as might-have-beens.

Game strategy is analyzed in depth as the race moves into the stretch. Half a page is taken up by a photo of the "UNORTHODOX INDIANS DEFENSE AGAINST WILLIAMS" -- the famous "Boudreau Shift," which left the entire left side of the field unguarded. And another photo shows Williams grinning like a five-year-old after hitting an inside the park home run to beat Cleveland 1-0 in the pennant clinching game.

While there's a lot of pre-World Series coverage, the scrapbook strangely stops there -- there is no coverage of the actual games. These may have been kept in a separate scrapbook, now lost -- or, knowing my grandmother, she might have torn them out in frustration and thrown them away after the Sox lost to St. Louis. She went to her grave refusing to forgive Johnny Pesky for holding the ball, and we often argued about this.

There's one exception, though -- two hand-written scoresheets, filled in from listening to the radio broadcast, of Series Game Six, on old employee timesheets from the Belfast And Moosehead Lake Railroad. Her scorecards were always much neater and more legible than mine, and I'm still envious of that.

Tucked into the very end of the book, there's another oddity -- a full sports section from the Bangor Daily News of October 9, 1956, featuring a full page of coverage of Don Larsen's perfect game. She could never stand the Yankees, but she knew history when she saw it.

Sounds like an incredible find Lizzie.

While it doesn't compare to your find, we found a ticket stub from game 3 of the 1946 World Series in my grandfathers desk when he passed away, and my father still has his ticket stubs from game 2 of the 1967 World Series.

World Series tickets weren't so hard to get in those days - I couldn't afford to take my kids to the Sox World Series games in my lifetime.

 

[Fading Fast]

Sounds like an incredible find Lizzie.

While it doesn't compare to your find, we found a ticket stub from game 3 of the 1946 World Series in my grandfathers desk when he passed away, and my father still has his ticket stubs from game 2 of the 1967 World Series.

World Series tickets weren't so hard to get in those days - I couldn't afford to take my kids to the Sox World Series games in my lifetime.

Something happened in the end of the '90s into the 2000's that caused all tickets to games, concerts, etc. to spike into the stratosphere - maybe the aging and enriching of the Baby Boomers willing to pay big dollars to see these events. Up until the mid-'90s, my girlfriend and I used to go to baseball games and the occasional rock concert for not crazy money - good seats about $50 a piece for baseball and $100 a piece for concerts. Then everything seemed to double and double again in the following years. Now, to go to a Yankees game and sit in good, not great seats, is over $150 a ticket, and rock concerts are so silly we don't even look anymore.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I suspect a lot of that is the expansion of the "secondary market." When I was going to games in the 70s there was no such thing as Stub Hub or anything like that -- you either bought your tickets for face value at the window or by mail, or you got them from the "who needs em whos got em" guy standing in the stairway at the Kenmore subway station. But now, it seems like speculators buy up huge blocks of face-value tickets right when they go on sale and then jack them up for resale online.

I used to love to go to Montreal Expos games, which were the biggest bargain in sports. Weeknight games were $5 for any seat in the place, and you could walk up to the window ten minutes before the first pitch and end up sitting right behind home plate. There would usually only be 5000 people in a 50,000 seat stadium in those years, but they were all hard-core fans, and when something happened they could easily sound like 50,000.