Opening Day for "42"

Today I took my boys Jonathan and Caleb on "Opening Day" for the new movie about Jackie Robinson, "42". His jersey number is the only one to be retired for all of baseball, but that doesn't keep my boys from wearing it. Caleb has worn it every year in all-stars, and it is his regular season number in Juniors this year. When Caleb was young, Robinson was the subject of one of the first book reports that he did, a small book I had in my collection. On April 15th, 2007, the 60th anniversary of his rookie year, we went to Dodger stadium for the game. He has always been one of my favorite baseball players. The movie was really good, though a bit 40's cheesy at points, but very accurate at least according to my knowledge of baseball history. I even teared up a few times over the great triumph that he had in his life. But I am also known to tear up in other baseball-related moments (World Series win in '88, visit to Cooperstown and getting a custom bat made, heck I even teared up on opening day this year as Sandy Koufax came out to throw the first pitch at Dodger stadium). The movie even referenced one of my favorite episodes of Jackie Robinson's life outside of baseball when he was in the army and nearly court-martialed that I posted HERE. It was great to share the movie with my boys, it made us proud to be Dodgers and baseball fans. 42 lives on.

CHAMPIONS!!!!!

For the first time in over a decade on any level for Fountain Valley Little League, Jonathan's Juniors team won the Tournament of Champions for 2012. They beat the Huntington Valley team in the championship game today 8-4. They jumped to an 8-0 lead in the first few innings and then held on through some tense moments as Huntington loaded the bases in the last two innings, escaping by doubling the runner off of third on a line drive in the 6th, and then striking out the last batter in the 7th who represented the tying run. Even more remarkable was that this FV team knocked out both Ocean View teams in the first two rounds, the same league that has represented in the Little League world series the past few years. Congratulations to Jonathan and Fountain Valley!

Dodger Dugout Seats

Thanks to my student and friend Mitchell, I got to sit behind home plate at the Dodger game tonight. I have only been in the dugut club seats once before, when my friend Rich bought them for me and I took my brother Randy. These were even better, just to the right of the catcher, 6 rows back. My family said I was on TV most of the broadcast, except for the graphic with the score was right over my face! Shell said I was like Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. Even though the Dodgers lost (they still have the best record in baseball this young season) to Arizona, it was a great time at the ballgame. As usual I kept a scorebook, which is always fun for me.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

20 days, 1 hour, 6 minutes until pitchers and catchers report. I can smell it. Aside from the hot stove reports and trade rumors, my boys enable me to get a jump on the baseball season through little league try outs. Last year was a dream as I got to manage, was able to draft both of my boys on the same team, and we were the DODGERS! It doesn't get better than that. This year with fewer teams I am not managing, but hope springs eternal to still coach. On Saturday was the first day of tryouts, and with both Jonathan and Caleb trying out at different times enabled me to watch for a couple of hours. They both looked pretty good, they love to play. Jonathan has played baseball every season since he was 5 years old, and now at age 11 my lefty is at the level where I first entered into little league baseball.

 

Both my brothers Randy and Jason played baseball for many years, until at least age 12/13. I have always had a love for baseball, I would go with dad on occasion to Dodger games, listen to Vin Scully on the radio on Saturdays in the back yard, I would collect cards, play Superstar Baseball card and dice game hours on end, and track statistics. But I didn't play baseball much as a kid except in the street. The main culprits were various injuries, the primary one being a chipped piece of bone in my leg that wrapped in the muscle that had a type of tumor on it, osteo-something or another. The surgery to take it out left me in a full leg cast for 4-6 months in the 5th grade with 50 or so stiches in a scar that ran up the outside of my entire upper thigh of the right leg. I learned how to shoot a basketball on crutches and pretended to shoot people with a crutch every day at school as I sat against a wall during recess.

My first shot at playing organized ball was age 11 in Huntington Valley LL for the Minor A A's. That was kind of late to be starting, as many kids retired from baseball at that age. I was a little squirt and in the lower half of the team in skill. It was a great team as I remember because we won the championship and went on to play in a tournament for a few rounds. One of the few moments I remember of that season was when I was playing left field with 2 outs in the bottom of the last inning, and the opposition's tying & winning runs on base. The batter hit a shallow fly to short left field and I came racing in. Even though I called for the ball, our shortstop came out (typical ball-hog skilled kid) to try for it. We collided, popped heads, and I was knocked cold. When I came to, lying on my back, I had the ball cradled in my glove and had preserved the victory!

                                            (I am # 3 in front)

I went to play on the Majors level the next season, where my lack of skill was evident as I failed to get a hit for the entire first half of the season. My coach Don Crosby had faith in me, and would give me opportunities to succeed. I remember the day the "hit" happened. I recall closing my eyes as I swung and somehow connected to rip a double to the right-center fence. Everyone knew how much this meant as there was literally a standing ovation, they stopped the game and the coach came out to shake my hand at second base. I remember seeing how proud my dad was as he clapped and had a HUGE grin (he had told me that he should stop coming to my games because he thought he was bad luck for me). I could hardly see as I stood there on second base and just cried. I got game ball of course.

My last year playing was age 13, called senior minors. It wasn't much fun as my lack of skill was more evident. I played 3rd base and could only make the throw to first on a bounce. My coach yelled at us, we had major team disharmony, and it wasn't fun. My mom supported the team by sitting in her parked car where she could see, and honked in proxy for applause. I did make the 13-year old all-star team, but only by virtue of the fact that I was one of only two 13-year olds on the team and you had to have two from each team on all-stars. My fever for playing returned (and skill level greatly increased) only as a young adult in my glory softball playing days. My boys are not superstars, but they can hold their own. Jonathan has sometimes worried about his skill and ability, but he is leaps and bounds ahead of me as he will play this year at the age when I first put on a uniform.

Tuesday Top Ten

Perhaps a good way for me to crystallize what I like and what I rank. I'll start with my top ten baseball books. Obviously this is limited to what I have on my shelf and what I have read, which may not be that extensive. But I must say that books about baseball hold a collective fascination for me. The top pick probably says more about me than anything else, as nothing comes close to it:

1. The Numbers Game by Alan Schwartz. Some may feel that this book doesn't qualify as it isn't about the game of baseball itself. But it IS about the history of baseball through numbers and statistics, and the fascinating, if not other-worldly, connection between the two. It combines for me two of my biggest areas of geekdom: baseball and numbers. When my wife got this for me (one of the most perfect gifts and gave me the confirmation Michelle was meant for me), I read it at the beach in two days. Written well with a delicate balance between layman's terms and esoteric sabermetric lingo, it completed me.
2. The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn. The book is in two parts, with the second half pretty good, but the first half is enthralling. I felt like I was there in Brooklyn following the Dodgers.
3. The Official Rules of Baseball, David Nemec. Goes through the whole rulebook and gives historical background along with anectodal insight as to how it has shaped the game. My years as an umpire helped me to eat this one up.
4. Total Baseball, Thorn & Palmer 3rd edition. The marvelous SABR articles on statistics enabled this tome to replace The Baseball Encyclopedia (Macmillan 8th edition) as my main source of statistical fodder. Like the Encyclopedia, the blackened edges of the pages from Total Baseball testified of its consistent use. For updated statistics, I now use the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, 4th edition.
5. The Teammates, David Halberstam. A marvelous weaving of past and present among 4 Boston Red Sox teammates that illuminates the bonds of friendship in baseball.
6. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, Jane Leavey. Great biography of an elusive figure. My copy was signed by Steve Garvey in the airport.
7. The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James. Densely packed collection of baseball notes of the game and its players in historical context. Awesome features includes Ugliest Players and Strangest Batting Stance in each decade.
8. The Ultimate Baseball Book, ed. Denial Okrent & Harris Lewine. Probably the best collection of baseball pictures that I have never seen before. Not just a picture book, but an engrossing text that delves deep into the stories that make baseball history.
9. The Perfect Game, ed. Mark Alvarez. A collection of essays from SABR (Society of American Baseball Research) that unveils many hidden aspects of the game and its players.
10. Where They Ain't, Burt Solomon. A fascinating story of the Baltimore Orioles of the 1890's, the first real dynasty in baseball that gave birth to the modern game. Some of my favorite players were on that team including Wee Willie Keeler, who coined the phrase "hit 'em where they aint."

Honorable Mention: The Jackie Robinson Reader, Men at Work and Baseball in the Afternoon. My brothers swears Crazy '08 is a classic, but I haven't read it yet.

When Jackie Stepped Up To The Plate

My 4th grader Caleb (alias Chay Danger - another story) had to finish a biography book report this holiday weekend for school tomorrow. The book he chose from school was Jackie Robinson: Baseball's Gallant Fighter by Sam & Beryl Epstein (1974). He knew dad would be stoked he chose a baseball player, especially a Dodger, but I admired the appropriateness of writing about Jackie on the Martin Luther King holiday. Of course everyone knows about Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball, his jersey number 42 being the only retired number for all major league teams, and him working with MLK after baseball to further civil rights. Some of my favorite books about Robinson on my shelf include The Jackie Robinson Reader (edited by Jules Tygiel), 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball (by Red Barber) and The Boys of Summer (by Roger Kahn, one of my all-time great reads). And as much as I loved Jackie as a ball player, he is on my RTCBL (the Road To Cooperstown Baseball League, a computer fantasy league that covers baseball history, see link under Other Fields) team, my favorite story about him comes from a period before he played in the Major Leagues.

Jackie Robinson left UCLA in 1941 having been a star in basketball, football, baseball and track. In April of 1942 he was drafted into the army as WWII raged, and was assigned to Fort Riley, Kansas. There he ran through the typical guantlet of racial discrimination: he was restricted to segregated facilities, blocked from playing on the camp baseball team, and barred from Officers' Candidate School. He partnered with boxing champion Joe Louis, also on the base, to voice their grievance and was soon enrolled in OCS. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in January 1943, he waged a campaign to improve conditions for black soldiers. He was soon transfered to a Tank Battalion at Fort Hood, Texas. Jackie stated, "Segregation there was so complete that I even saw outhouses marked White, Colored, and Mexican." On July 6, 1944, at the age of 25, he escorted the light-skinned wife of a fellow black officer back to the base hospital. To do so, they boarded a military bus. Civilian bus lines had their own segragation rules, and just months before in Durham, North Carolina a driver shot and killed a black soldier who had refused to move to the back of the bus. The driver was tried and found not guilty by a civilian jury. The Army began providing its own nonsegregated buses on Southern bases.

Robinson and the lady boarded and sat down at the mid-point of the bus. The driver, seeing a black officer seated in the middle of the bus next to a woman who appeared white, yelled,"Hey, you, sittin' beside that woman, get to the back of the bus." When Jackie ignored him, the driver stopped the bus, went back to Lieutenant Robinson, and demanded he "get to the back of the bus where the colored people belong." When Jackie refused and stood his ground, the driver backed down. But at the end of the line, waiting to transfer to another bus, the driver came back with the two other drivers and a dispatcher who said "Is this the nigger who has been causing you trouble?" An arguement ensued and the military police arrived and Jackie was taken to see the provost marshall. Referred to as the "nigger lieutenant" their statements were taken and another arguement arose regarding inaccuracies of the report. As a result of the event, the camp officials were determined to court-martial Robinson. When his commanding officer refused to endorse the orders, Robinson was transferred to another Tank Battalion whose commander promptly signed. Robinson was charged with insubordination, disturbing the peace, drunkenness, conduct unbecoming an officer, insulting a civilian woman, and refusing to obey the lawful orders of a superior officer.

A decade before Rosa Parks, and only 15 months before being tapped as the man to break baseball's color barrier, Robinson's court-martial was held on August 2, 1944. He was found "not guilty on all specifications and charges" by the nine judges and it stood as another sign of hope for black soldiers in the military. Jackie was honorably discharged in November 1944, signed with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues in the spring of 1945, where Branch Rickey secretly observed him and put him on the short list for "baseball's great experiment." Jackie Robinson's stance on the bus could have cost him his entire career, if he had been court-martialed it is unlikely that he would have been chosen. For the Dodgers Jackie hit .297 in '47, .296 in '48 and .342 in '49, winning the MVP award in the major leagues.