BATTER UP!

[LizzieMaine]

Every baseball fan in the 1930s knew when the name of Stanley "Frenchy" Bordagaray came up, there was bound to be a punchline somewhere along the way. Frenchy was one of the game's great noncomoformists, but he was also a solid infielder and outfielder for the White Sox, Senators, Dodgers, Cardinals and Reds who had a good bat with power and wouldn't lose you too many games with his glove. That is, if he could stop with the clowning long enough to get down to business. The jinks were at their highest when Frenchy played under manager Casey Stengel at Brooklyn in 1935 and 1936 -- Stengel was determined not to be out-clowned by some upstart, and their animosity reached a peak when Frenchy showed up for spring training wearing the above-shown facial adornments. Moustaches were de trop among ballplayers in the 1930s, but Bordagaray grew his in the off season for a bit role in a Western movie, and decided to show it off to the boys at the traning camp. Stengel sneered at the moustache, and its wearer, causing Frenchy to pose for every photographer in sight while preening like a dandy. Stengel was still unimpressed, so Frenchy decided to go for the gusto and showed up the next day wearing a monocle to go with the moustache. After two months of such antics, Casey finally blew his top and Bordagaray was induced to shave. There wouldn't be another major leaguer with a moustache until 1972.

After the season, old Judge McKeever decided that Brooklyn had had enough of both of them, firing Stengel and sending Bordagaray to St. Louis, where next to Dizzy Dean and his buddies, he seemed positively sedate.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[2jakes]

EBBETS FIELD by PF Flyers.
"My bike ridin’ shoes"

 

[LizzieMaine]

View attachment 84367 View attachment 84368
Rob

Hilltop Park on upper Broadway, home of the New York Highlanders, before anyone ever heard of Colonel Ruppert, Babe Ruth, or a Yankee. This was the venue where Mr. Cobb went into the stands to discuss the finer points of etiquette with the unfortunate Mr. Lucker.

 

[2jakes]

“Play Ball” !

New York City Police Commissioner William P. O’Brien smashes illegal pinball machines in a warehouse in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia topples a pinball machine confiscated by the NYPD

 

[LizzieMaine]

Brother LaGuardia really really really hated pinball machines. It was his administration that pushed thru a ban on pinball in the city that lasted into the 1970s (And was almost as strictly observed as the ban on tattoo parlors.)

 

[2jakes]

With Joltin’ Joe . August 1940.

Yankees pitcher Vernon "Lefty" Gomez (left) and catcher Bill Dickey huddle with New York City
Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia after winning Game 1 of the 1938 World Series
against the Chicago Cubs, 3-1. (AP Photo)

 

[LizzieMaine]

The best baseball song ever written. Jazz pianist Dave Frishberg sets the players of his 1930s-40s childhood to music.

 

[2jakes]

 

[Fading Fast]

Brother LaGuardia really really really hated pinball machines. It was his administration that pushed thru a ban on pinball in the city that lasted into the 1970s (And was almost as strictly observed as the ban on tattoo parlors.)

He hated them because of the mob control and / or because he saw them a "corrupting" influence on the youth - is that right or was it something else?

 

[2jakes]

He hated them because of the mob control and / or because he saw them a "corrupting" influence on the youth - is that right or was it something else?

"LaGuardia's mission gave voice to sentiments which hearkened back to the moral outrage of the Prohibition era, too, most of which had nothing to do with organized crime. Pinball, a "pointless game," was attractive to children, and this worried parents and "concerned citizens." Seth Porges, a writer and expert in the history of pinball, says there were "off the books" justifications for the banning of pinball in addition to those that were actually used to make it illegal.

On the one hand, he says, "they successfully made the case that pinball was a type of gambling," but under the surface was a much more temperance-fueled, nearly religious belief that pinball was a tool "from the devil," which corrupted youths. Newspapers across the country nodded their heads in agreement as games of all sorts - billiards, and even "old ladies' bridge clubs" -- were held up to scrutiny. At the time, it was easy to make the case that pinball was morally corrupting, at least insofar as it was a gateway to gambling, as well as a complete waste of time. Many large cities followed in New York's footsteps, including Los Angeles and Chicago (San Francisco is one of the only major cities to have never banned the game), and pinball bans became fairly commonplace across the United States.”
How long did this absurd moral panic endure? Well, pinball was banned in New York until 1976! And the paternalism surrounding the industry apparently even struck "Nanny Bloomberg" as overwrought: "Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed into law an amended bill that raises the number of coin-op games that can be placed in New York City's public locations without an arcade license. Officials from the Amusement and Music Owners Association of New York joined the mayor as he put his signature on legislation that increases the threshold of game placements from four to nine. An arcade license is required for locating 10 or more games at a single site."
(The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf)
01/18/2013

 

[Fading Fast]

"LaGuardia's mission gave voice to sentiments which hearkened back to the moral outrage of the Prohibition era, too, most of which had nothing to do with organized crime. Pinball, a "pointless game," was attractive to children, and this worried parents and "concerned citizens." Seth Porges, a writer and expert in the history of pinball, says there were "off the books" justifications for the banning of pinball in addition to those that were actually used to make it illegal.

On the one hand, he says, "they successfully made the case that pinball was a type of gambling," but under the surface was a much more temperance-fueled, nearly religious belief that pinball was a tool "from the devil," which corrupted youths. Newspapers across the country nodded their heads in agreement as games of all sorts - billiards, and even "old ladies' bridge clubs" -- were held up to scrutiny. At the time, it was easy to make the case that pinball was morally corrupting, at least insofar as it was a gateway to gambling, as well as a complete waste of time. Many large cities followed in New York's footsteps, including Los Angeles and Chicago (San Francisco is one of the only major cities to have never banned the game), and pinball bans became fairly commonplace across the United States.”
How long did this absurd moral panic endure? Well, pinball was banned in New York until 1976! And the paternalism surrounding the industry apparently even struck "Nanny Bloomberg" as overwrought: "Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed into law an amended bill that raises the number of coin-op games that can be placed in New York City's public locations without an arcade license. Officials from the Amusement and Music Owners Association of New York joined the mayor as he put his signature on legislation that increases the threshold of game placements from four to nine. An arcade license is required for locating 10 or more games at a single site."
(The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf)
01/18/2013

Never underestimate the desire of someone to tell someone else how to live his or her own life. And really never underestimate the willingness of a politician to gain popularity by telling many how to live their lives according to many others (these "others" being the said politician's supporters).

 

[LizzieMaine]

A lot of what LaGuardia did was a reaction to the rampant corruption in New York during the administrations of his recent predecssors, especially Jimmie Walker, who was seen by many as a tool of gangland, and anything he could do to crush the idea that the Mayor's office could be bought he did. He also had a very personal antipathy to the Mafia, which he believed dragged down the reputation of Italian-Americans, and he made it his personal crusade to fight them at every turn. Smashing the "pinball racket" was just one way in which he set out to accomplish those goals. It's a fact that the vending-machine business in New York, not just pinball but also jukeboxes and other coin-operated devices, was under the control of Organized Crime thruout the years of his administration.

LaGuardia was far from being the killjoy puritan some paint him as, but he was, without question, a moral crusader.

As for baseball, LaGuardia was a regular face at Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds, but he seldom turned up at Ebbets Field. Brooklyn fans tended to take this personally, as one more example of how they were looked down upon by those from "The City."

 

[HudsonHawk]

The Cubs competed with the scalpers last year, hawking "standing room only" tickets but the biggest scam
arose when the city ethics committee chastised council aldermen and legally prohibited acceptance of team-supplied discount tickets.
The Wrigley neighborhood bars dipped their bread in the gravy pan too, and soaked fans with exorbitant cover charge.
Squeezing blood from a turnip comes quite naturally here in Chicago.

The Cubs got busted a few years ago for scalping their own tickets. They set up a dummy ticket broker and transferred their tickets to the broker (wholly owned by the Cubs) so they could claim games were sold out and charge three times the face value.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Cubs got busted a few years ago for scalping their own tickets. They set up a dummy ticket broker and transferred their tickets to the broker (wholly owned by the Cubs) so they could claim games were sold out and charge three times the face value.

Never underestimate the willingness of some people to cheat.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm surprised Larry Lucchino never thought of that during our long, fake "sellout streak."

 

[Fading Fast]

...LaGuardia was far from being the killjoy puritan some paint him as, but he was, without question, a moral crusader....

Those people always worry me.

...As for baseball, LaGuardia was a regular face at Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds, but he seldom turned up at Ebbets Field. Brooklyn fans tended to take this personally, as one more example of how they were looked down upon by those from "The City."

For a smart politician, I'm surprised he wouldn't take in some games in Brooklyn. That would be a seemingly harmless thing to do for votes.

Funny, today, parts of Brooklyn now have a "superior" attitude toward Manhattan as Brooklyn is "cool," "hip," "authentic*" blah, blah, blah versus "boring" "sellout," "money grubbing" Manhattan. Whatever, it's all nonsense both ways as all that stuff always is.

* I had to excuse myself to go throw up.

 

[2jakes]

Never underestimate the willingness of some people to cheat.

"Indeed!"
(Arnold Rothstein)

 

[Fading Fast]

"Indeed!"
(Arnold Rothstein)
View attachment 84419
View attachment 84420

Has it been proven or at least reasonably proven that Rothstein did fix it? I know that's the "story," but is it true?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The definitve book on the scandal remains Nelson Algren's "Eight Men Out," which, even though it was written nearly sixty years ago, has not really been surpassed by any recent scholarship. Pretty much everyone still sees it as a badly-run operation with Rothstein furnishing the bankroll, but implemented on a practical level by a group of bumbling small-timers named "Sport" Sullivan, "Sleepy Bill" Burns, Abe Attell, and Billy Maharg. Sullivan was a friend of White Sox first baseman Chick Gandil, who in turn brought the other players into the scheme.

What's important to know is that the Black Sox affair was by no means something that suddenly sprang up to sully the honest and noble game. Baseball in the 1910s was riddled with gambling at every level, and there's a convincing argument that the 1917 and 1918 series were also fixed.

What's really interesting to me is how hard Charles Comiskey worked to cover up what happened in 1919. In the early 1960s, when Bill Veeck owned the White Sox, a work crew cleaning out an old office at Comiskey Park found a diary that had belonged to Comiskey's right-hand-man Harry Grabiner -- and that diary contained detailed information confirming that not only did Comiskey know about the game-throwing scheme by the end of the 1919 Series, he sent his own agents out to tail the eight players and determine exactly what happened. And when he knew, rather than go to the National Commision, he spent the entire 1920 season trying to obstruct any official investigation into the facts, in order not to lose his investment in the players involved, and possibly to win the 1920 pennant. But what Comiskey did *not* know is that the gamblers were *still in contact* with the remaining seven Black Sox (Gandil had retired rather than sign a new contract with Comiskey and went home to Arizova), and that games were being thrown almost to the very end of that season.

The corruption of The Game in those years was very very deep, and the Black Sox weren't the only ones involved. They were just the ones that got caught.