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 "Babe Ruth, Stan Musial and Joe DiMaggio just called to say they can't make it to dinner with you tonight, Mr Allen, but somebody named 'Jack Kennedy.' who's not on your list, says his date stood him up and wondered if he might sit at your table, right next to your wife..." |
Just sittin' around with
some baseball immortals
of TheColumnists.com
I sat on the back
porch of the Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown, New York some 45 years
ago talking with Rube Marquard, Dazzy Vance, Lefty Grove and
Edd Roush.
Through the years I chatted there with Bob Feller and Ted Williams,
Joe DiMaggio and Stan Musial, Bob Gibson and Warren Spahn, Hank
Aaron and Duke Snider.
In this, the final weekend of July in 2006, I’ll talk with
Bruce Sutter and family members of 17 Negro League players who
never had a chance for big league honors because of the color
of their skin rather than their quality of their play.
It is the only place where legends live.
To walk among them, to listen to them tell tales of games long
forgotten, to watch them soak up the glory before thousands of
adoring fans as they are introduced on induction day is the gem
of a summer’s event.
Each sport has a Hall of Fame now, from college and pro football
heroes to college and pro basketball stars, to hockey, golf,
tennis and even lacrosse.
None can match the drama, the emotion, the history, the aura
of the Baseball Hall of Fame weekend at the end of July.
The event began as a commercial gimmick to sell the game in 1939
after the first class was elected in 1936--Babe Ruth, Walter
Johnson, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner.
The first induction in the sleepy upstate
New York village, considered home to baseball’s alleged
inventor, Abner Doubleday, took place with much press attention
in 1939. Cobb missed the first team picture of the inductees
from 1936, 1937, 1938 and 1939. He said he was late getting into
town. Others said he was late because he refused to pose for
a picture obviously dominated by the charismatic Babe.
The early crowds in the village of some 2,000 year round residents
swelled to well over 10,000 in the 1950s and 1960s. Now, every
July, hotels and motels along Lake Otsego are sold out a year
in advance of the late July weekend inductions.
About 20 years ago the Hall of Famers began collecting on their
fame with the outburst of card signing shows along the main street
of the picturesque little village where time seems to stand still.
Tables are set up in sports stores, local pubs, groceries, book
stores and hotel lobbies where the Hall of Famers can capitalize
on their name and fame with $20 signings of old pictures, new
baseballs and torn gloves.
It is kind of distasteful to see Bob Feller, Gaylord Perry, Harmon
Killebrew, Lou Brock and Reggie Jackson sitting in the July heat,
scribbling their names as kids and parents line up for hours
to collect these collectibles. Then again, none of the players
of the past ever made the million dollar salaries of today, so
this is their foremost form of free enterprise.
It is back at the hotel center, after the signing days are done,
that the drama of the weekend really shows.
A credentialed reporter can sit in that hotel lobby with Monte
Irvin and talk about the well remembered Bobby Thomson homer
of 1951 off Ralph Branca or gab with Yogi Berra about the home
runs he hit to win Series games against the long, lost, loved
Brooklyn Dodgers.
Then we all stroll out to the veranda of this classic hotel and
fill a rocking chair in the shade. The tales come fast as Tommy
Lasorda tells of his unhappiness at losing his pitching job to
a kid named Koufax in 1955 (Sandy Koufax never sits around in
public), Brooks Robinson talks of the magic glove he carried
out to every Baltimore game and Ernie Banks entertains listeners
with tales of Negro League games and the climb to the Cubs.
There are pictures to be posed for and autographs to be signed
by these Hall of Famers but mostly it is the memory banks of
their past deeds they enjoy most exploring. Playing the game
is the most fun they ever had and talking about it now is the
link they continue enjoying as they add the years and struggle
with the future.
There are only 278 names now enshrined with golden plaques inside
the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum with the 2006 class led by Sutter,
the incomparable relief pitcher, leading the current crop.
Next year another three or four Hall of Famers will be named
with Iron Man Cal Ripken Jr., Tony Gwynn and possibly Mark McGwire
leading the 2007 class. McGwire is a questionable first time
Hall of Famer because he had some bodily help when he hit his
70 homers.
As I prepare again for my Cooperstown journey, I think back to
my first visit there more than 45 years ago and my conversations
with the living legends off the bubble gum cards. I often wonder
if people felt this way when they walked into Abraham Lincoln’s
office or chatted with Franklin Roosevelt or sat in on meetings
with Dwight Eisenhower.
I had dinner with Ted Williams and Bob Feller and Stan Musial.
Boy, it would have been fun to have dinner with John F. Kennedy.
©2006 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The
illustration, slightly doctored, is from IMSI'S Master Clips
Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San
Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
This column first posted July 31, 2006.
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can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Maury Allen. To send an
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