I was fortunate enough to meet Ernie Harwell on his first farewell tour of major league baseball parks. Interleague play had created one of those harmonic convergences in the schedule where the Tigers got to come to Atlanta and play the Braves.
Of course, being in local television at the time I absolutely, positively, without remorse or hesitation had to have him for a feature interview. So how do you pull that off…? Simple, you call the Tigers. The Tigers tell me, however, that he has his own set of individuals that you go through. Their suggestion is to write a letter to the powers-that-are that are with him in Phoenix ((since they’re playing the Diamondbacks)), and see if it’ll happen that way.
I pen a page-long letter on stationery and fax it to the team hotel. Easy enough…
Fast forward a bit. I’m leaving a party at 1AM local time on a Saturday night. My cell phone rings. Since I didn’t have a holster for it I had slipped it down my golf shirt and let it rest on my belt in front of the t-shirt underneath. Somewhere in the fishing expedition, I key it. Whoever is on the other end of the line gets, about, ten seconds of rustling fabric before I get to pull it out from between.
“Mister Nelson?” the voice on the other end asks. I recognize the voice instantly.
“Mister Nelson is my father, Mister Harwell, but thank you for calling to talk to me.”
And that was how I got my interview with Ernie Harwell. After his time reminiscing with Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Furman Bisher- whom I still refer to as “Mister Bisher”- I barely touched the surface in an 18-minute history lesson. To this day, it is one of the defining moments in my career.
Do I still have the tape…?
You bet your ass I do. The feature story won Brother Phil and me a regional award.
That’s Baseball…
Harwell gave a homily to the sport that he has felt blessed enough to be a part of when he was inducted in to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981- when he was a sprightly 63 years young. Harwell had initially written it in 1955. Brother Wilkie’s ode to Tiger Stadium sent me on this path to see if what Harwell’s heart had said to him at the time still holds water.
My apologies ahead of time as I shake my head over what the sport has become through my own pessimistic ((or is it realistic…?) prism for viewing.
“Baseball is the President tossing out the first ball of the season and a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm. A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout. That's baseball. And so is the big, fat guy with a bulbous nose running home one of his 714 home runs.”
((Just so you know President Dave Kovic still has my vote for best “first pitch,” The “thin, old man” for those of you who don’t get the reference is Connie Mack… look it up. The big fat guy is Ruth, not Bonds.))
“There's a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh forty-six years ago. That's baseball. So is the scout reporting that a sixteen year old pitcher in Cheyenne is a coming Walter Johnson. Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic. In baseball democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rulebook. Color merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another.”
((Walter Johnson was one of the best pitchers in the early 20th-century. Honus Wagner was one of the better hitters. Look them up, too.))
Democracy still shines its clearest except when the player’s union gets in the way, the owners want to collude, and the leagues want to have two sets of rules for offensive output. The only color that seems to matter these days is the color of money. Baseball is a game of wins and losses, of profit and loss, of arbitration and not-so-free free agency. Baseball is a game not of what-have-you-done-for-me, but of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. It’s a game of bid and overbid. It’s a game of doctored birth certificates and being prematurely aged or being prematurely ageless. It’s a game of marketing, personae, and personal service contracts. It’s about endorsements and being endorsed. It’s about the good-ole-boy network and not necessarily giving new blood a chance to succeed. I take it back. Color also seems to be getting in the way of breaking the glass ceiling. But that is happening less and less.
“Baseball is a rookie. His experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream. It's a veteran too, a tired old man of thirty-five hoping that those aching muscles can pull him through another sweltering August and September. Nicknames are baseball, names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.”
Baseball is a home-town hero being sent down for not learning to spray the ball the other way. That is until his agent squawks about how his player’s attitude has “soured” about playing at home. Then, those remarks are tempered through the press when he’s recalled. That veteran has now figured out how he can purchase the next-best-thing over the counter to keep him youthful until his mid-40’s so he can break every offensive or defensive record in the book- without failing a drug test. Baseball is about rights fees and usage fees. It’s about merchandising, charging for autographs and alternate jerseys.
“Baseball is the cool, clear eyes of Rogers Hornsby. The flashing spikes of Ty Cobb, an over aged pixie named Rabbit Maranville. Baseball is just a game as simple as a ball and bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. A sport, a business and sometimes almost even a religion”.
To that last sentence… Amen.
((Look all three of those three players up- Hornsby, Cobb, and Maranville. They were good.))
“Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World's Series catch. And then dashing off to play stick ball in the street with his teenage pals. That's baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying., "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”
Any player dashing off after a game to play street ball or go back to their old neighborhood for a surprise visit without a PR representative and a security detail…? An anomaly… That’s baseball.
“Baseball is cigar smoke, hot roasted peanuts, The Sporting News, ladies day, "Down in Front", Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and the Star Spangled Banner.”
Baseball is about reserved parking lots and parking passes. It’s about luxury suites and alternate sources of revenue. It’s about not being able to bring in a cooler to the ballpark. It’s about $9 domestic beer and $5 slices of pizza. Baseball is a name game tied to corporate sponsors and their pockets until they file Chapter 11 and allow the same space to open for the next guy. It’s about bond referendums to fund stadiums and hold tax payers hostage. It’s about millage rates and the wanton disregard of history. It’s about the Internet and the guy who owns 37 different fantasy teams in leagues with no financial reward.
It’s about “Bean The Ump.” That’s baseball.
dot…dot…dot…
Here’s how Harwell wrapped up his speech…
“Baseball is a tongue tied kid from Georgia growing up to be an announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown. This is a game for America. Still a game for America, this baseball! Thank you.”
Here’s how I wrap up mine…
Baseball is a twenty-year veteran of sports media who wishes his baseball was more like Harwell’s.
But, that’s baseball…
Play it safe, everyone… I’ll talk to you soon…
--Jon Nelson
No comments:
Post a Comment