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OUT OF LEFT FIELD |
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with the return of baseball
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
The baseball season opens this week in Japan (where else?). It inspires some thoughts.
I don’t love baseball. I don’t love most of today’s players--millionaires. I don’t love the owners--billionaires. I do love, however, the baseball that is in the heads of baseball fans. I love the dreams of glory of 10-year-olds, the reminiscences of 70-year-olds.
I grew up a New York Giants fan in the 1930s and 1940s, came to root for the Brooklyn Dodgers as well after they signed Jackie Robinson because I knew that so many bigots in the country hated the team that fielded the first black player.
The greatest baseball arena is in our heads, what we bring to the games, to the telecasts, to reading newspaper reports. I have my own rich memories of baseball. I started covering the Giants and Dodgers in the late 1940s, then the Yankees when the others left New York, and the Mets. Most of these baseball visions that dance in my head are of days at the Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium:
Jackie Robinson jiggling off first base rattling an opposing pitcher.
Mel Ott pumping his right leg as a trigger to swinging his bat.
Joe DiMaggio loping, effortlessly settling under a fly ball.
Willie Mays dashing into left-center and
right-center field to run down line drives.
The Mets’ catcher, Jerry Grote, throwing the ball back to
the pitcher harder than the pitcher threw it to home plate.
Vic Power with Cleveland sneaking behind first base to pick off in succession Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra.
Keith Hernandez coming down from first base almost to home plate to challenge a would-be bunter.
Mel Allen hanging around Yankee Stadium long after the game ended, signing autographs and gabbing with kids.
Ted Williams bull-headedly trying to hit a ball through the Lou Boudreau-devised shift on the right side of the infield.
Tommy Henrich hitting Bob Feller as if he owned him.
Ernie Lombardi, whom I had admired as a world class line-drive hitter, working as a press-box attendant in Candlestick Park, serving soft drinks to reporters.
Eddie Stanky fouling off pitches with the Giants.
The Mets’ catcher, Choo Choo Coleman, sprawling in the dirt to block a pitch.
Richie Ashburn’s animated, futile attempts to change umpires’ minds.
Dour Yankee coach Frankie Crostti guarding the ball bag in front of the dugout.
Joe Page hopping over the low bullpen fence in Yankee Stadium to come into the game on a relief assignment.
Leo Durocher rasping, creatively inserting obscenities between syllables of words.
Sal Maglie scowling down at the hitter from the pitching mound.
Casey Stengel sitting for hours in the lobby of the Muelbach Hotel in Kansas City, outlasting and charming waves of Yankee haters.
A sad Carl Hubbell, his crooked left arm hanging at his side, making the long, slow walk from the mound to the Giants clubhouse in center field at the Polo Grounds after being knocked out of the game.
Stan Musial successively rattling the fence at Ebbets Field and tattooing the right field seats at the Polo Grounds.
Elmer Valo and Al Kaline playing goalie to swat down drives headed toward the right field seats at Yankee Stadium.
A Yankee batboy in the clubhouse autographing balls for various players.
The Mets’ Rod Kanehl slobbering tobacco juice on his uniform.
The Dodgers’ Dixie Walker slapping hits to the opposite field inside third base.
The Giants’ Buddy Kerr going into the shortstop hole to bare-hand a ground ball.
Pee Wee Reese wanly looking back at an
umpire after taking a third strike.
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The Mets’ Mookie Wilson and Jose Reyes sprinting around
second base en route to a triple.
Original Met Roger Craig throwing over to first base more than a dozen times.
Looking out at San Francsico Bay from the Giants’ ever-name-changing park and seeing downtown Philadelphia from the Phillies’ new ball park.
Tony Kubek and Bobby Richardson walking away from home plate shaking their heads after being struck out by Sandy Koufax in the first game of the 1963 World Series.
©2008 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs
caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustration is from
IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San
Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted March 24,
2008.
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