Good Enough to Dream

by Roger Kahn

Even the finest coaching, overdone, becomes nagging after a while.

what happens when your glove is low and the baseball finds a pebble and hops high? Pain. Pain is what happens. The baseball strikes you.

Readers my age may remember the seventh game of the 1960 World Series that turned the home team's way when a double play grounder to Yankees' shortstop Tony Kubek hit a pebble, took a bad hop, and hit him in the throat. Kubek was removed from the game, and the Pirates rallied to take the lead. The game ended on a walkoff home run by Bill Mazeroski, still one of the most famous home runs in baseball history.

“If you’re afraid, you shouldn’t play the game,” Stan Musial told me with great assurance in 1957.

About sixty years ago I read a wonderful book by Leonard Koppett entitled A THINKING MAN'S GUIDE TO BASEBALL. The first word in the first chapter is Fear. Koppett wrote that you can't hit well until you overcome your fear of being hit by the ball. Jackson Holliday is, as of August 2024, a twenty year old rookie second baseman for the Baltimore Orioles. In his initial stint with the O's he was 2-34. He was sent back down to Triple A where he justified a second chance with the big club. Recently he became the youngest player in American League history to hit home runs in three consecutive games. Fear does not rear its ugly head only in the batter's box. Holliday showed it in a moment I never saw before in almost seventy years of watching baseball. Holliday hit a little dribbler in front of the plate. He hustled down the line but as he approached the bag, in fear of being hit by the catcher's throw, he tightened up his body, shortening his stride. He was out by a whisker. Had he maintained his normal stride, he would have been safe.

Branch Rickey had the best technical baseball mind in history and phrased ideas and exhortations with enough eloquence to qualify as the game’s Winston Churchill.

At about the same time I read A THINKING MAN'S GUIDE TO BASEBALL, I also read a book by Rickey entitled THE AMERICAN DIAMOND. Ballplayers would do well to read it, particularly the section on the Rundown play which I have never seen correctly executed.

“The good ball players,” he said, “the great ones, are never afraid of the baseball, at bat or in the field. You might as well ask if an oak is afraid of the rain.”

Loss of dignity. That bothers all of us who are worthwhile.

That's why players don't rub the area hit by the ball.

“A pitcher can make a hitter look ridiculous by throwing a fast ball behind the hitter’s neck. He can also make a hitter look ridiculous, before the crowd, by striking him out with a change of pace thrown at the knees. Then all the grandstand gasps, and grandfathers tell their grandchildren, ‘I could have hit that pitch myself. It was a slow ball.’ Am I being clear on the distinction between physical fear and the greater baseball fear of looking inept?”

For the definitive example of Rickey's discourse, search YouTube ---- randy johnson john kruk.

it is dangerous to spring to obvious conclusions about baseball or, for that matter, ball players. Baseball is not an obvious game.”

Branch Rickey III, employed as farm director of the Pittsburgh Pirates, would appear in Utica twenty-three years later, a bland Rotarian of a baseball man, who confessed without shame that he had not read Murray Polner’s fine and detailed biography of his grandfather.

He is not alone. Only twenty-six persons who participate in Goodreads, a social network with hundreds of thousands of "members", have read it.

You cope with failure better today because of what baseball and that coach, dumb as he was, forced you to cope with when you were nine.”

The best hitters FAIL about seventy percent of their at bats.

speed is the one element in baseball that is equally important offensively and defensively.

The key is making the ball park a pleasant place, a place where a fellow would want to take a girl. Almost everything falls under the category: a pleasant place. Good parking, landscaping, planting flowers around the entrances. Clean rest rooms.”

My sister and I saw almost every Dodgers home game in July and August 1966. Almost sixty years later we still talk of the beauty and cleanliness of Dodger Stadium.

as long as you keep learning you never get old.”

on opening day, even the worst team has not yet lost a game.

Such a sentiment reminds me of a verse from one of Isaac Watts' great hymns, Our God, Our Help in Ages Past: TIME, LIKE AN EVERROLLING STREAM BEARS ALL ITS SONS AWAY; THEY FLY FORGOTTEN, AS A DREAM DIES AT THE OPENING DAY.

A book is best written by sitting alone in a room with the door closed, the world shut out and your joys and cares focused on a blank piece of paper, preferably numbered. That is how most writers function, not because they are necessarily antisocial but because practically there is no other way to do the job.

remember these lines from the Bard: The quality of mercy is not strained/It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.’

We had been both good and lucky in playing .800 baseball and now the team lost some of its competitive edge and some of its good luck all at once.

I'm sure the author knew what Branch Rickey said about luck. He called it "the residue of design."

one blamed such change of circumstance on angered gods.

The last time this reader heard any reference to baseball gods was on the final day of the 2011 regular season. It had been arguably the most.exciting and bewildering final day in baseball history . Jim Palmer, Hall of Fame pitcher fokr the Baltimore Orioles, during the telecast of the Red Sox-Orioles game remarked, "Can you hear the baseball gods laughing?" The Red Sox had started September with a nine game lead for a playoff berth. One pitch and about three minutes after Palmer's statement, the Sox' season was over.

a good ball player has to be able to think, reason and react and do all those things both wisely and quickly.

A quote from Yogi Berra in A THINKING MAN'S GUIDE TO BASEBALL , HOW CAN YOU HIT AND THINK AT THE SAME TIME?

Even though eight-year-olds can play a primitive version of the sport, baseball is a damn hard game to master.

It has been said repeatedly that major leaguers are men playing a child's game. I have disagreed with this. Kahn affirms my opinion here.

In the field, you have to position yourself correctly and constantly remain aware of the game situation. Who is on what base? How many out? What’s the score? You want to decide what you’re going to do with the ball before it is hit to you.

George Will, in his book MEN AT WORK, gives his readers more than a casual look at the intellectual aspect of the game in each of its disciplines. Concerning fielding, Will focuses on Cal Ripken, Jr.

The team was in fifth place (and would finish a distant third).

1955 was "next year" for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

tomato pie, which is pizza without cheese served cold.

That may be Utica tomato pie but in Central Pennsylvania it is pielike, not akin to.pizza, although it does have cheese. It is also served hot. I highly recommend it, especially from The Tomato Pie Cafe in Lititz, PA.