The Hell With Mark Twain: I Want My Baseball Digest!

January, 1961, BD

The baseball winter meetings are coming up, and we're sure to be snowballed, backlogged, and downloaded with hotstove innuendo, gossip and hearsay from the blogosphere, Twitter, and the ubiquitous ESPN feeds.

But it wasn't always so. Hard for a younger generation to conceptualize, but it was a rather spartan existance for us New frontier era creatures. Getting current news from anywhere but the mouth of Walter Kronkite or ye old towne crier was rare.

First edition to ever reach my Dad's mailbox!

Along with walking uphill in snowstorms and having to use rotary dial telephones, we had to get our sports fix from the daily newspaper. For more detailed, national features from the baseball world, we waited breathlessly for the monthly publications of that little treasure, Baseball Digest.

It's arrival on the school library magazine rack and home mailboxes was cause for my male classmates and I to stampede to said rack during our weekly visit. Sister Olma would show her contempt from her librarian's perch, looking askance at us.  Her dismay over our not perusing the classics, not checking out "Tom Sawyer" or "Black Beauty" ruffled her feathers.  That and the general air of chaos we exported from the home classroom...but Huckleberry and [African American] Jim just didn't give us the same rush as discovering who would be in the new rookie class, or finding out how fat Mickey Lolich would be this year. We just didn't care. We needed that month's virgin nuggets to sustain - they were the waters for our baseball famished souls, especially during the off-season.

Billed as "The longest running baseball magazine" in existence, it was created by Herbert F. Simons, a sportswriter for the Chicago Daily Times, in Aug., 1942. Simons served as its editor-in-chief until 1963. Century, it's publisher, also put out football, basketball, hockey, and auto racing editions. They specialized in player features, with titles like "Nearing The End of The Road For Mickey Mantle" ("What? That can't be! He was just a rookie not THAT long ago...), "Here Comes Richie Zisk!" (Really? Didn't know he was gone...), and "Willie Horton: Thinking Man's Hitter" (all the rest are just a-whompin' away, huh?).

It had some excellent, regular features. And it truly gave young kids a sampling of some of the best, syndicated baseball writers around! That list included Joe Falls (Detroit), Tracy Ringolsby (Denver), and, of course, the old lion, Red Smith (New York Times). I really enjoyed the "Fans Speak Out" letters section. It has included some famous future television commentators (see below), among others.  The editors responded in fairly diplomatic tones, but the resulting message to young readers was the same: kid, you're a whippersnapper, you always will be, so sit up and listen." This, while still allowing the kid to have his moment in the sun...

To wit (from Feb., 1973):

Yes, Keith was a-know-it-all

then too.

 Latin rhythms indeed.

It was also enjoyable how the editors would take letters from kids inquiring with some fascinating non sequiturs. This from Football Digest, also from Feb., 1973 (see "New Prague, Minn. letter):

Childhood, in all its illogical innocence.
A good example of "What's wrong with this picture?





Another feature worth it's weight in gold was this regular feature, from Hall of Fame second baseman, Lou Boudreau:

Top / below - from the July, 1970 edition, from pg. 83.

It's OK kid.  

We're all afraid in some way.

If there was a way for an advice columnist to be both grandfatherly and lucid without veering off into overblown verbosity, Lou was the shit. But after a certain time, the magazine stopped publishing his advice bits.  Without any explanation, as I recall.  Did Lou die? Move and not leave a forwarding address? Tell BD to jolly well piss off? We never found out. Perhaps sticking his pieces at the ass end of the mag (after the crossword puzzle), had started to wear on him.  Arrivederci, baby.

Just for you, Lou, we're righting the wrong, 30 some years on.

 Just this once, the puzzle's coming AFTER you!

The optimist in me believes the magazine has stayed relevant to young baseball fans, who still like to be in possession of the hard copy, instead of the palm pilot, downloadable version. Whatever, they'll have to pry the lovely, little pulp pages from my cold, dead hands whenever I leave this vale of tears!

Keep on Keepin' On!

TT

Stan Musial - Baseball's Perfect Knight

Stan saying "goodbye" at old Busch Stadium.

After spanning 3 decades, it was finally over for the great Cardinal, Stan "The Man" Musial.  He played his last game in St. Louis, on September 29, 1963 against the Cincinnati Reds, and their standout rookie second baseman Pete Rose.

 After beginning his professional career in 1938, he knew his time had come.  His career had spanned an era in which the U.S. became involved in three wars, elected four presidents, emerged from economic Depression to discover post-War prosperity,  and saw Jazz displaced by Rock & Roll in popularity.

I think it's perfectly OK, as a man, if I stare

 and say: "Damn, he was beautiful."

He banged out 2 more hits that day.  That gave him 1,815 at home, and 1,815 on the road.  Not many players have as pretty a statistic line as that.  When he retired, he was the all-time National League hits leader.


Musial in early 1960's snapshot








It was wonderful to hear that he celebrated his 90th birthday a few days ago.  He was, after all, born 15 days (Nov. 18, 1920) after my father, with whom he shares special memory! You'll forgive the honored place given him here. The Greatest Generation indeed!

President Kennedy chose Stan to lead the Physical Fitness Council!





Newspaper recap of April 14, 1959 game vs. L.A. Dodgers.
To read type better, just click on image 20x or so
to improve resolution! (clip courtesy, Jim Busch)

 Musial was easily the best-liked, most admired man of his time in the world of sports.  He has come down to us in our time as the finest representative of a time when things were less complicated.  He was unaffected, seemingly without ego, and soft-spoken.  Then, as now, he would whip out his harmonica and play a ditty for his Cardinal teammates, or get off a train (yes, people did travel that way in those days!) to play for people assembled on a train platform.  As if he'd just walked out of a Norman Rockwell painting.



May 1, 1954 - SEP

The video clip below from a 1960's show gives some hint as to what he was like, what a humble, Middle-west type of guy he was:

Dell Comics, 1953

Albert Pujols: Fascinating show of deference to

the Cardinals All-Time Star at link, doesn't want

to be called "El Hombre."

Keep On Keepin' On, Brother!

TT

Our Leadoff Man: Bob "Hoot" Gibson, Icon

Look at this guy. As they say, he was a specimen, figuratively and literally.

Young Bob Gibson, early 1960's:
"You lookin' at me?"


Bob Gibson had previously pitched in the 1964 World Series, splitting two games with the New York Yankees.  This was, of course, before he became Bob Gibson. The no-nonsense, "I'll-stick-this-baseball-past-your-uvula" Bob Gibson.  Check out the signature game of his career, from this clip from the 1968 World Series. Love the play-by-play and commentary by Harry Carey ("He's going with the Mustard") and Curt Gowdy. Vintage stuff, kids.  Watch Gibson as his eyes burn a hole through the NBC television camera back of homeplate... just like he melted the Detroit Tigers on that warm afternoon of October 2, 1968 in St. Louis, MO.



It may have been the most memorable sports moment involving an African American in the entire decade of the 1960's.

Other contenders?

*The 1965 World Series introduced America to the first black American, Jim "Mudcat" Grant to pitch and win a World Series Game. In whiter-than-Wonderbread Minnesota! 

*Wilt Chamberlin scored 100, and then repeated the same number in one NBA game in 1962.

*Juan Carlos and Tommie Smith shocked the sporting public with their fists raised high on the medal stand at the '68 Summer Olympics to announce Black power & pride - thus earning a hellacious ass- whipping from their mothers

*Cassius Clay knocked out a thug and sometime boxer Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight champ, never once shutting his piehole in doing so

         *Bill Cosby violently slam dunked an orange into a wastepaper basket during an episode of "I-Spy"

Juan and Tommy letting
us all know they knew
the correct answer!

 But this was different. With temerity, fearlessness, and the white-hot flame of black pride, Bob "Hoot" Gibson struckout 17 Detroit Tigers in Game One of the 1968 World Series, October 2, 1968. And he's our lead off post at "New Frontier Baseball.  I hope you will come back to enjoy it!

Keep On Keepin' On!

TT

Gibby!