BATTER UP!

[2jakes]

"Diamonds Aren’t Forever!"

September 1957.
Dodgers Defeat Pirates in Ebbets Field Finale; Phillies Turn Back Giants.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Cornerstone, about as close to a holy relic as you'll find at the Baseball Hall Of Fame. It's also one of the only exhibits visitors are allowed, and encouraged, to touch.

The hole was created on April 24, 1960 as the climax of an auction of the park's remains conducted by famous Brooklyn auctioneer Saul Leisner.

A member of the demolition crew from the Harry Avriom Corporation cracked open the stone with a sledgehammer, allowing the removal of a sealed metal box. The official contents of the box were various documents, photos, newspapers, and coins placed inside to mark the dedication ceremonies in 1912, but what Leinser, who was visibly emotional during the auction, found most heartbreaking were the personal items inside -- religious medals, mezuzahs, and other tokens placed in the box by ordinary Brooklyn people who had attended the ceremony forty-eight years earlier. The only bidder for the stone, the box, and its contents, was National League president Warren Giles -- who had famously said "who needs New York?" when the teams announced their move. He paid $600 for the lot and donated it to the HOF.

The plaque shown above was taken by Marvin Kratter, the real estate mogul who bought the park from Walter F. O'Malley for redevelopment into a middle-income housing complex. Kratter later sold it to a mysterious "private collector" and it hasn't been seen since.

 

[Fading Fast]

I think it's time - and the opportunity is there - to bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn.

California has, what, four other teams and LA has one of them; meanwhile, Brooklyn is red hot right now especially for "authentic" fill in the blank with anything. Well, you can't get much more authentic than the Brooklyn Dodgers.

 

[LizzieMaine]

They didn't want to put one more nickel into Walter F. O'Malley's pocket.

The move wasn't officially announced for another week and a half, so O'Malley wanted there to be no indication whatever that September 24th was the last game in Brooklyn. The broadcasters were warned not to mention anything, and organist Gladys Goodding was warned repeatedly to keep the music upbeat. But Goodding, knowing that she was out of a job, defied the warning, barricaded herself in her booth with a quart of gin, and played one sad, heartbreaking song after another all thru the game. "Say It Isn't So," "How Can You Say That We're Through?," "After You've Gone," "My Buddy," and so forth.

The broadcasters kept quiet right to the end -- although there's no recording of the 9/24th broadcast, the final road game of the season, from Philadelphia, does survive -- and both Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett go out of their way to make it sound like just another end to just another season, but they're so obviously insincere about it that you can't help but know what's coming.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think it's time - and the opportunity is there - to bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn.

California has, what, four other teams and LA has one of them; meanwhile, Brooklyn is red hot right now especially for "authentic" fill in the blank with anything. Well, you can't get much more authentic than the Brooklyn Dodgers.

It has been seriously discussed a couple of times. There was a movement in the '90s when the O'Malleys were selling out which went so far as to appoint an exploratory committee toward putting together an ownership group and securing the territorial rights. And when Frank McCourt went bankrupt a few years back, there was more talk and speculation, some of it apparently serious, before the current LA group got involved.

When the Dodgers left, the National League defined Brooklyn as "open territory," indicating that any team could move there, or be expanded there, without needed territorial rights from the Yankees. The Mets, when they came along, were considered as including the Brooklyn territory for purposes of defining those rights, so they'd be the only team that would need to give permission -- and they currently control the minor league territorial rights for Brooklyn via the Cyclones. Whether Bro. Wilpon, who claims to worship at the shrine of Gil Hodges, would ever go so far as to allow a new team, or a relocated team, to take over that part of his territory, remains to be seen.

 

[Fading Fast]

They didn't want to put one more nickel into Walter F. O'Malley's pocket.

The move wasn't officially announced for another week and a half, so O'Malley wanted there to be no indication whatever that September 24th was the last game in Brooklyn. The broadcasters were warned not to mention anything, and organist Gladys Goodding was warned repeatedly to keep the music upbeat. But Goodding, knowing that she was out of a job, defied the warning, barricaded herself in her booth with a quart of gin, and played one sad, heartbreaking song after another all thru the game. "Say It Isn't So," "How Can You Say That We're Through?," "After You've Gone," "My Buddy," and so forth...

Good for her.

It has been seriously discussed a couple of times. There was a movement in the '90s when the O'Malleys were selling out which went so far as to appoint an exploratory committee toward putting together an ownership group and securing the territorial rights. And when Frank McCourt went bankrupt a few years back, there was more talk and speculation, some of it apparently serious, before the current LA group got involved.

When the Dodgers left, the National League defined Brooklyn as "open territory," indicating that any team could move there, or be expanded there, without needed territorial rights from the Yankees. The Mets, when they came along, were considered as including the Brooklyn territory for purposes of defining those rights, so they'd be the only team that would need to give permission -- and they currently control the minor league territorial rights for Brooklyn via the Cyclones. Whether Bro. Wilpon, who claims to worship at the shrine of Gil Hodges, would ever go so far as to allow a new team, or a relocated team, to take over that part of his territory, remains to be seen.

I bet the Mets would want some serious coin, but man, as much as I was three-quarters kidding, the time is really, really right - Brooklyn is the center of cool universe right now.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One thing that O'Malley's apologists always bring up was that baseball needed a bold visionary to bring the Major Leagues to the West Coast, and that O'Malley was that visionary. Well, he was only following in the footsteps of a man most of today's fans have never heard about -- a hustling St. Louis operator named Don Barnes.

Barnes was a St Louis small-loan finance company operator who had some connections, and when the estate of Browns owner Phil Ball was ready to sell off the team, he put together a local syndicate to take over the club and try to get it on a paying basis. The Browns were the most desperate operation in baseball in the 1930s, often playing to houses of a few hundred, and rarely having enough cash in the till to keep the ballpark painted and the uniforms washed, but Barnes managed, thru sleight of hand, to somehow keep them going -- but he knew that St Louis had become a Cardinal town, and that he was never going to be able get ahead operating in their shadow. So in 1941, he started looking westward.

There had been talk of major league ball on the West Coast for years, but the operators in the Pacific Coast League were satisfied with their fiefdom, and did everything they could to discourage the idea. But Barnes had a talk with Phil Wrigley, owner of the Los Angeles Angels, and made a secret deal to buy him out in exchange for Wrigley Field West, and the territorial rights to the city -- all this to be financed by the sale of Sportsman's Park to the Cardinals, and an additional cash payment from Cardinals owner Sam Breadon in exchange for the Browns leaving town. He sat down during the summer of 1941 with a pile of railroad timetables, a schedule book, and some paper, and worked out a system for bringing visiting teams westward on the Santa Fe Superchief to play his L. A. Browns. By the end of the 1941 season, he had it all worked out, and was ready to bring his proposal to the American League at its annual winter meeting. AL owners, who had long lost their patience with the scanty visiting-team gate shares from St. Louis, were ready to go along with Barnes' plan.

The meeting was scheduled for December 8th, 1941.

If fate had been kinder to Donald L. Barnes, the Los Angeles Browns would have set the west coast astir, and Walter F. O'Malley would have had to find another sweetheart land grab scam to pull off. Perhaps he never would have moved at all, and the Dodgers would be playing today in Flushing, or even still in Brooklyn. But fate will play its strange little tricks in the affiars of mice, men, Browns, and Dodgers.

 

[2jakes]

First Day of Fall

Team-issued shawl-collar cardigans were sported by many of baseball’s early heroes, including (clockwise from far left) Johnny Berger; Urban J. Shocker;Art Fletcher; Rube Erhardt, shown here with his wife, Helen.

Harry Hooper’s Boston Red Sox sweater (left) and Sam Rice’s Chicago White Sox sweater,
from his time on the team’s 1924 European Tour, are also part of the Baseball Hall of Fame’s collection.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Urban Shocker, aside from having one of the all-time great baseball names, was also one of its most unexpected tragedies.

He'd been a fine pitcher for the Browns, winning twenty games four years running for a team that hadn't yet become the ragamuffins of the league, and when he was traded to the Yankees for the 1925 season, he was supposed be the linchpin of the pitching staff. He had a mediocre year and no one could figure out why -- but he rebounded to win 19 games in 1926, and had a sparkling 18-6 record in 1927. He was expected to accomplish much in 1928.

But he didn't. In February, he abruptly announced his retirement. The Yankees convinced him to reconsider by sweetening his contract, but when he reported to spring training his weight had dropped to barely 115 pounds. He wouldn't explain what was wrong, and barely made it thru spring training. In early June, he collapsed on the field in Chicago, and rather than try to get to the bottom of what was happening, the Yankees gave him his unconditional release. Two months later he was dead.

Shocker had played his entire career, twelve years in the major leagues, with a defective heart -- a time bomb in his chest just waiting to go off. He had known this all along, but kept the information to himself for fear that too many questions might get him cut from the roster. It had flared up in 1927, and it cut him down for good in 1928. He was 38 years old.

 

[2jakes]

Sweater weather.

Born Urbain Jacques Shockcor but changed it to avoid confusion.
Major League pitcher for New York Yankees and St. Louis Browns.
Died of heart condition in 1928 at 38.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ Gotta love the throat latch on a cardigan. Kidding aside though, those look like serious sweaters which makes sense as they were "athletic wear" of their day and were, my guess, viewed as a way to prevent "tightness" in joints and colds, etc., from happening to very valuable ball players.

And referring to an earlier picture a few posts up, how cool, in his day, must have Babe Ruth looked in his. You know he felt like and, heck, was "the man."

Last thought: that one immediately above looks thick enough to stop a bullet.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I think it's time - and the opportunity is there - to bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn.

California has, what, four other teams and LA has one of them; meanwhile, Brooklyn is red hot right now especially for "authentic" fill in the blank with anything. Well, you can't get much more authentic than the Brooklyn Dodgers.

I recall reading this in the early 1980's: fun novel based upon the fantasy of not only bringing the Dodgers back but restoring Ebbets.

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Brought-...+man+who+brought+the+dodgers+back+to+brooklyn

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's a great book -- just the right balance of fantasy, plausibility, and comedy. Plus the day is saved in the end by "baseball's first female pitcher," who bears an odd resemblance to Sandy Koufax.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Meanwhile, let the leather jacket brigade salivate over this: the leather warmup coat worn at the turn of the 1920s by the New York Giants. Nothing but the best for the McGrawmen.

This specimen belonged to "Shufflin' Phil" Douglas, one of several crooked players caught up in the backwash of the Black Sox and put on Judge Landis's eternal ban list. Looks like he wore his team jacket while digging ditches.

 

[Fading Fast]

I recall reading this in the early 1980's: fun novel based upon the fantasy of not only bringing the Dodgers back but restoring Ebbets.

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Brought-...+man+who+brought+the+dodgers+back+to+brooklyn

Thank you for the recommendation. Encouraged by your and Lizzie's endorsement, I Just added a used copy to my Amazon cart.

View attachment 86853

Not something we haven't seen before, but the pay on installments is interesting in that you send them 50 cents, your name and address and "upon approval" they'll send you the sweater and expect to get three future payments of $2.15 monthly from you. Clearly, the company must do some sort of credit check from your name and address or they'd be exposing themselves to easily being cheated and we know companies don't do that (then or now). Any guess what year this ad is from?

 

[2jakes]

^^^^^
1920s ads.
Don’t know if the company did credit checks.
Perhaps companies were more trusting back then.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^^^
1920s ads.
View attachment 86937

Seriously, how are these companies not be defrauded? While the dollars seem small to us today, getting a $14 boot for a buck had to entice some people into chicanery. Or, as mentioned above, maybe the companies did some pretty good credit checking from the scanty information you had to provide them.

 

[2jakes]

Seriously, how are these companies not be defrauded? While the dollars seem small to us today, getting a $14 boot for a buck had to entice some people into chicanery. Or, as mentioned above, maybe the companies did some pretty good credit checking from the scanty information you had to provide them.

The 1920s Credit Bubble - Daily Kos

Not sure if the above link explains it or the
Depression of ’29.
LizzieMaine would surely know.
I’m just stumbling over my cardigans in the dark!

 

[Fading Fast]

The 1920s Credit Bubble - Daily Kos

Not sure if the above link explains it or the
Depression of ’29.
LizzieMaine would surely know.
I’m just stumbling over my cardigans in the dark!

Cool info - some I knew, a lot I didn't. That said, what surprises me about the above ads / offers is not that credit was being extended, but that it seemed to be all but setting the company up to be cheated. Even in the '20s, there was decent documentation around car and housing and even furniture loans based on what I've read (and active repossession when the buyers fell behind on their payments), but I can't image a company sending a pair of $14 boots out to somebody ten states away because they sent in a dollar, a name and an address. Considering the cost of travel, communication, etc., back then, if they were cheated, it would be prohibitively expensive to try to repossess a $14 pair of boots.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Of course it could also be that the boots were actually a $1 pair of boots marked up to $14 "easy credit terms." There was an awful lot of that going on in the 20s and 30s in the "factory direct to you" racket.

Sears and Monkey Wards sold a lot of merchandise thru similar credit deals, but you had to supply references from businesses you had dealt with before you qualified. Their merchandise was generally worth the price, but a lot of the "advertised in the back pages of Popular Mechanics" stuff was dodgy. For example, Midwest Radio Corporation was well known for selling gaudy, oversized "factory direct to you" radios on credit from mail order magazine ads, but the radio you actually got for your money was cheaply built, full of tubes that didn't actually do anything, and came in a thin, shoddy, highly-embellished plywood cabinet. It looked like the picture in the ad as long as you didn't get any water on it.