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ANNUAL HALL OF FAME EVENT
Rubbing elbows with Mays, Musial and other immortals
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
The Otesaga is an
old hotel in Cooperstown, New York, the site of the annual baseball
Hall of Fame inductions each July. It has a balcony overlooking
a pristine Lake Otsego, the name the Indians called the area
a couple of hundred years ago.
I first sat there as a kid reporter in 1959, listening reverently
to tales of early 20th century baseball told by Rube Marquard,
Edd Roush, Lefty Grove, Zach Wheat and Ty Cobb.
Through the years since I have shared soft breezes on that balcony
and moved my rocking chair alongside Casey Stengel, Ted Williams,
Hank Greenberg, Bob Feller and Stan Musial.
This past final July weekend of 2005 I sat with Willie Mays,
Monte Irvin, Duke Snider, Tom Seaver, Brooks Robinson, Al Kaline
and Tommy Lasorda exchanging tales of the game.
It is always the same each Hall of Fame induction weekend in
the lobby and on the balcony of that famed old upstate New York
hotel. The immortals of the game are suddenly flesh and blood
people, telling some tales about aging, of course, but mostly
reminiscing about their past pals, triumphs and tragedies.
Willie Mays, recovering from hip surgery at 74, was in a chatty
mood while he shared the break time from the hectic weekend of
parties and appearances, some paid by fans and others by sponsors,
in this bucolic setting.
The name of Satchel Paige came up and Willie smiled broadly as
he talked about the legendary Negro League pitcher who finally
got to the big leagues after integration in 1948 as a grizzled
warrior.
“I was 16 years old when I first faced him in the Negro
Leagues,” Mays said. “I knew who he was but he certainly
didn’t know me. He threw me a big old curve ball and I smacked
it against the wall in left center for a triple. As I stood on
third he motioned to his catcher, Josh Gibson, and said, ‘Let
me know when that boy comes up again.’ When I came up the
second time he walked in to the plate and said, ‘Let me
see if you can hit this.’ Then he threw me three of the
hardest fast balls I ever saw in my life and I missed each one
about a foot.”
By then there was a crowd gathering around Mays as he continued
talking of Paige. He spoke in the present as ball players mostly
do of their experiences of the past.
“He comes up to the big leagues again in 1965 and he’s
pitching for Kansas City now. He’s about 60 years old and
he just wants to get that extra season in for his pension. We
played his team an exhibition and he tells me to remind our players
not to bunt against him. He’s an old man and he can’t
run. So I yell that to everyone in the dugout and nobody does
for two or three innings. Then Bobby Bonds, Barry’s dad,
comes up and he lays down a beautiful bunt towards the mound
for a hit and Satch is growling. I was so embarrassed for him
I ran out to first and started screaming at Bobby. He just turned
to me and said, ‘I didn’t hear you say anything like
that. I’ve been in the bath room with a bad stomach.’
I couldn’t blame him.”
Monte Irvin faced Satch in the old Negro Leagues. He also faced
about everybody in his years as a player in the old Negro Leagues,
the big leagues and in barnstorming tours in Mexico and Cuba.
“I get to Havana with a team I’m playing with and there’s
a guy out there, real intense like, and he wants to ask all of
us how to hit. He thinks he is good enough to play in the big
leagues but he needs a little smoothing out with his swing before
he goes to the tryout camp. I gave him a few pointers but I could
see he really didn’t have the goods. You just know when
a guy has it and when he doesn’t. This guy just didn’t
have it. He had to go on to another field. By the way, he did.
His name was Castro, Fidel Castro.”
They lined up all these old baseball heroes on a stage on a beautiful
Sunday afternoon and introduced them to the cheers of some 20,000
people who sit and stand on the huge lawn field for their chance
at a glance.
The one that always gets the loudest roar is Stan Musial, a sprightly
84-year-old, who may have been the game’s greatest hitter
despite what Ted Williams always insisted. Musial walks out on
stage to loud cheers, bends over in that classic corkscrew batting
stance of his and takes a few swings at the air. Doubles off
the wall, of course.
Then Stan (the Man), as they called him in Brooklyn for knocking
down so many walls, pulls a harmonica out of his pocket, blows
a few practice notes and then goes into his classic version of
“Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” as the crowd joins
in the chorus.
Gary Carter, the burly catcher called the Kid, started his career
in Montreal. He offers the crowd a French language singing version
of “Oh Canada,” the national anthem of our northern
neighbor. It drew some cheers, lots of laughs and solid evidence
that Carter was smart not to give up his day job, baseball.
It’s my favorite once-a-year event. This is the real dream
field. There is no thrill like watching the legends of the game
rock on the back porch of the Otesaga or share their heroics
with a crowd.
©2005 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The Willie Mays photo is courtesy of the Hall
of Fame official website. This column first posted Aug. 8, 2005.
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