Nate Briggs's Blog - Posts Tagged "baseball"
Baseball Has Begun
This is the preface to the stage play "Giants". A play originally written in 2006.
***
It may be a mandate of human nature that the kind of wistfulness associated with the phrase “a slower, gentler time” applies strictly to years that we just barely remember — or eras that need to be reported to us, because we have no memory of them at all.
Perhaps that phrase will always summarize the essential difference between the Living — who have all kinds of urgencies forced upon them — and the Dead, who are much more relaxed, and are not in a position to argue about any attributes we might give them.
When it comes to baseball, Nostalgia is central to the Game, and Nostalgia has its very own temple on a leafy street in upstate New York: in Cooperstown.
But, in the case of the “dead ball” era, Nostalgia can only take us so far. As anyone who takes the time to read the old newspaper reports will quickly discover, and — as this play takes some time to point out — the game back then was a much leaner, much meaner, much faster, much nastier version of what happens on the baseball diamond now.
It was a game, intended to be played by children, played by men. They were not exactly the dregs of society. But they were, obviously, men with nothing better to do with themselves. It was a serious, industrial, ambitious culture in America — and to give up serious life and a serious career to be a ball player....
Well, it could drive a mother to tears to know that one of her boys had thoughts like that.
And these men — many of them raised on farms, many of them functionally illiterate, and most of them seeing baseball as the best job that they would ever have — brought their hardscrabble, hard-nosed attitudes to the ball park with them every day that they played.
For me, a simple thing like the time of play summarizes the difference between old and new most effectively. Interestingly, the differential between old and new works out to be almost even.
There were two games played between the Phillies and the Giants on September 2, 1915. Both games were played in natural sunlight: late enough in the day so that working men could slip away from their employment and catch the games on the way home. The doubleheader began at three o’clock in the afternoon, and ended a little after six in the evening. The game described in this script, itself — a full regulation game, with 27 outs counted for each side — lasted one hour, thirty-five minutes.
A typical televised game from our modern era comes in at around three hours. So the ratio is very close to two-to-one.
Depending on how you look at it, the “old” was played at twice the speed of the “new”.
Or the “new” is being played at half the speed of the “old”. (This is the way I tend to look at it.)
I think many modern fans would be disconcerted by the daring and recklessness of the old game.
Players had jobs to protect, and there were no “million dollar” arms or legs to be factored in. Even though the baseball used in 1915 was the first in the long series of “rabbit” balls, with tighter winding, the game of that time was a display of speed and opportunism.
A home run was an unusual event and the majority of the hitters were still using heavy bats and a kind of short, chopping motion: just trying to get the ball through the infield. Once on base, they couldn’t wait there for a “dinger”. The first thought was how to advance: by stealing, hit-and-run, or some other device.
The pitcher, the focus of the defense, was king of the game — and many of the astonishing records for pitching were set during that era. Students of the sport can argue, justifiably, that the two pitchers featured here — Alexander and Mathewson — were not even the best of the breed.
Walter Johnson and Cy Young won many more games than either of these two.
But, in taking these men, and looking at the game they played in the early au-tumn of 1915, I hoped to look at differences in character.
Distinctions between two people: where they came from, what they were like, how they arrived at the place they did, and what finally happened to each one.
They met, they talked, they pitched, and then they moved on. Mathewson to his tragic early death. Alexander to a lonely boarding house in the heartland. The game mixed young and old, smart and dull, large and small, rich and poor.
That it did not mix black and white is known to everyone, and the opportunity that was missed — to see the best players, of whatever shade of skin, on the field together, matching their skills — is something that we all have to regret.
On the other hand, it’s a relief to have a corner of the old game where Nostalgia does not prevail.
It would be wonderful to say that this play was written in close communication with the spirits of Ancient Baseball, amid the graceful streets of Cooperstown: the modern Valhalla where so many heroes of the Old Game rest in a state of grace.
It would be nice to say that.
But, having been on the receiving end of so many of these tales of vacations disguised as work, I’ll be brutally honest and confess that this play was, mostly, the fruit of about an hour and half bumping around on the Internet.
That was to research the team rosters, which contain several players — Bobby Schang comes to mind — who played the game for a brief period, and then left it, or were left behind.
Even had I been physically present in Cooperstown, not everyone who played September 2, 1915 has a place in the Hall, and — without the Internet to assist me — it would probably have taken months to track down the information about these little-known players that I was able to gather in one night sitting in front of the computer.
In researching the game, I will also be permanently in the debt of the Philadelphia Phillies organization: who responded to my initial e-mail request with a list of the four documented games where the two Hall-of-Famers, Mathewson and Alexander, appeared opposite one another.
And appreciation is due to the staff of the Philadelphia Free Library, who — for the modest sum of one dollar — dived into their microfilm archives and pulled up the line scores, printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer of September 3, 1915, for the double-header against the Giants played at the Polo Grounds the previous day.
The box score for the game was recreated from the line score, and — although the game might not have gone exactly as the pitchers describe it — I’ll be content with the play-by-play until someone who was actually there tells me where I went wrong.
For anyone interested in learning more about the “dead ball” era, my reading list is mercifully short. There are a lot of general baseball histories: where the bunt-and-steal game seems to simply be awaiting the Coming of the Babe. But, for the true flavor of baseball before World War I, a book called The Glory of Their Times (Lawrence Ritter) can’t be beat.
These are the men of the “dead ball” era in their own words, and I think Mr. Ritter has done baseball fans everywhere a tremendous service in gathering their recollections before they were lost.
***
It may be a mandate of human nature that the kind of wistfulness associated with the phrase “a slower, gentler time” applies strictly to years that we just barely remember — or eras that need to be reported to us, because we have no memory of them at all.
Perhaps that phrase will always summarize the essential difference between the Living — who have all kinds of urgencies forced upon them — and the Dead, who are much more relaxed, and are not in a position to argue about any attributes we might give them.
When it comes to baseball, Nostalgia is central to the Game, and Nostalgia has its very own temple on a leafy street in upstate New York: in Cooperstown.
But, in the case of the “dead ball” era, Nostalgia can only take us so far. As anyone who takes the time to read the old newspaper reports will quickly discover, and — as this play takes some time to point out — the game back then was a much leaner, much meaner, much faster, much nastier version of what happens on the baseball diamond now.
It was a game, intended to be played by children, played by men. They were not exactly the dregs of society. But they were, obviously, men with nothing better to do with themselves. It was a serious, industrial, ambitious culture in America — and to give up serious life and a serious career to be a ball player....
Well, it could drive a mother to tears to know that one of her boys had thoughts like that.
And these men — many of them raised on farms, many of them functionally illiterate, and most of them seeing baseball as the best job that they would ever have — brought their hardscrabble, hard-nosed attitudes to the ball park with them every day that they played.
For me, a simple thing like the time of play summarizes the difference between old and new most effectively. Interestingly, the differential between old and new works out to be almost even.
There were two games played between the Phillies and the Giants on September 2, 1915. Both games were played in natural sunlight: late enough in the day so that working men could slip away from their employment and catch the games on the way home. The doubleheader began at three o’clock in the afternoon, and ended a little after six in the evening. The game described in this script, itself — a full regulation game, with 27 outs counted for each side — lasted one hour, thirty-five minutes.
A typical televised game from our modern era comes in at around three hours. So the ratio is very close to two-to-one.
Depending on how you look at it, the “old” was played at twice the speed of the “new”.
Or the “new” is being played at half the speed of the “old”. (This is the way I tend to look at it.)
I think many modern fans would be disconcerted by the daring and recklessness of the old game.
Players had jobs to protect, and there were no “million dollar” arms or legs to be factored in. Even though the baseball used in 1915 was the first in the long series of “rabbit” balls, with tighter winding, the game of that time was a display of speed and opportunism.
A home run was an unusual event and the majority of the hitters were still using heavy bats and a kind of short, chopping motion: just trying to get the ball through the infield. Once on base, they couldn’t wait there for a “dinger”. The first thought was how to advance: by stealing, hit-and-run, or some other device.
The pitcher, the focus of the defense, was king of the game — and many of the astonishing records for pitching were set during that era. Students of the sport can argue, justifiably, that the two pitchers featured here — Alexander and Mathewson — were not even the best of the breed.
Walter Johnson and Cy Young won many more games than either of these two.
But, in taking these men, and looking at the game they played in the early au-tumn of 1915, I hoped to look at differences in character.
Distinctions between two people: where they came from, what they were like, how they arrived at the place they did, and what finally happened to each one.
They met, they talked, they pitched, and then they moved on. Mathewson to his tragic early death. Alexander to a lonely boarding house in the heartland. The game mixed young and old, smart and dull, large and small, rich and poor.
That it did not mix black and white is known to everyone, and the opportunity that was missed — to see the best players, of whatever shade of skin, on the field together, matching their skills — is something that we all have to regret.
On the other hand, it’s a relief to have a corner of the old game where Nostalgia does not prevail.
It would be wonderful to say that this play was written in close communication with the spirits of Ancient Baseball, amid the graceful streets of Cooperstown: the modern Valhalla where so many heroes of the Old Game rest in a state of grace.
It would be nice to say that.
But, having been on the receiving end of so many of these tales of vacations disguised as work, I’ll be brutally honest and confess that this play was, mostly, the fruit of about an hour and half bumping around on the Internet.
That was to research the team rosters, which contain several players — Bobby Schang comes to mind — who played the game for a brief period, and then left it, or were left behind.
Even had I been physically present in Cooperstown, not everyone who played September 2, 1915 has a place in the Hall, and — without the Internet to assist me — it would probably have taken months to track down the information about these little-known players that I was able to gather in one night sitting in front of the computer.
In researching the game, I will also be permanently in the debt of the Philadelphia Phillies organization: who responded to my initial e-mail request with a list of the four documented games where the two Hall-of-Famers, Mathewson and Alexander, appeared opposite one another.
And appreciation is due to the staff of the Philadelphia Free Library, who — for the modest sum of one dollar — dived into their microfilm archives and pulled up the line scores, printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer of September 3, 1915, for the double-header against the Giants played at the Polo Grounds the previous day.
The box score for the game was recreated from the line score, and — although the game might not have gone exactly as the pitchers describe it — I’ll be content with the play-by-play until someone who was actually there tells me where I went wrong.
For anyone interested in learning more about the “dead ball” era, my reading list is mercifully short. There are a lot of general baseball histories: where the bunt-and-steal game seems to simply be awaiting the Coming of the Babe. But, for the true flavor of baseball before World War I, a book called The Glory of Their Times (Lawrence Ritter) can’t be beat.
These are the men of the “dead ball” era in their own words, and I think Mr. Ritter has done baseball fans everywhere a tremendous service in gathering their recollections before they were lost.
