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e
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On fire! |
Location: currently So Cal
Registered: May 2002
Messages: 1179
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Spring training has started and my favorite sports season is just around the corner. Opening Day is March 31. I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't wait.
My favorite player (who sadly no longer plays for my favorite team) hit a monster sized home run yesterday, which was the first full day of practice. It went out of the training facility and landed on the highway more than 500 feet away. Fortunately there wasn't much traffic.
Think good thoughts,
e
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warren c. e. austin
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Likes it here |
Location: Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 247
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[author's note: "e", forgive me for *posting* the contents of this e-Mail which I sent to you privately some days ago, but upon reflection, I thought others, here at "A Place of Saftey" might find my comments interesting, and perhaps, if they too are Baseball fans, they might wish to contribute a memory or two of their own, for all of us to read, share and enjoy. Warren]
Some of my fondest memories of my father were the lazy summer weekday afternoons I spent with him at the old "Maple Leaf's Stadium" on Toronto's waterfront overlooking the Island Airport.
This was in the period between marriage and divorce number three, and the future marriage number four to my mother.
I was not quite age-10 at the time, maybe not even age-9.
"Sparky Anderson", later of Cincinnati "Reds" fame played Short-stop and managed the team.
My father had, at that time, only just recently returned to Toronto, after a lengthily illness, where he had been bed-ridden for nearly two-years recovering from a severed spinal-cord in a Stiker-frame at the Shaunessey War Veteran's Hospital (then amongst the world's finest for treatment of spinal-related injuries and diseases) in North Vancouver.
His injuries were a direct result of his negligence (due to his alcoholism) and occurred whilst attempting to negotiate the movement of a clogged log-boom downstream on the English River on northern Vancouver Island, where he was foreman overseeing one of the family enterprises.
He had been told that he would never walk again. He did. This same strength of will, allowed that when faced with the loss of his wife, my mother, for the third time, that he "cold-turkey" quit-drinking; and why he was taking me to the ball-games. My mother had refused him for the fourth time, averring that she might reconsider, but only if he had remained sober for three-years before they again walked down the aisle. I had just turned age-12 when they eventually did.
I would be delivered downtown, in a company limousine, to meet him for "lunch" at either the then "Steak'n'Burger" (Family-styled Steak-house Chain and a Toronto Institution located at Beford and Bloor Streets) or the "Swiss Chalet" (a newly emerging local B-B-Q Rib and Chicken-house Chain, which later went international, located on Yonge Street just above Edward) - both owned by the Phelan Family of Montreal, and better known to you perhaps as the owners in the U.S. of the "Your Host" Restaurant Chain, and Cara Operations, the Airline Food people - with us always attending the game soon after.
Whilst I never really was a fan, my interest really being only a desire to share one of my father's recreations, I do recall my experiencing a tremendous sadness when the Team was moved to Cincinnati, and the Stadium later allowed to lie vacant for nearly 20-years before being torn down to make way for glass-towered Condominiums.
She was a grand old girl; in the manner of the Ebbet's (sic., sp. ?) and Wrigley Fields. Graceful sweeping granite-block and cantilevered steel-girder galleries, miles of ramps (no stairs or elevators) all open to the elements, with unobstructed views of the entire playing field. The few "night" games I attended were memorable for the near day-light quality of the illumination, and glorious vista of the Toronto Harbour as seen down the third-base line, not at all unlike a diamond tiara.
Somehow, I never again captured the sense of majesty and mystique of, and for, the game; not-with-standing both Montréal, and later Toronto acquiring Major League franchises. I couldn't quite shake off the feeling that we had had a "Major League" team, and though indifference let it slip through our fingers. CNE Stadium, and later SkyDome simply was not "Maple Leaf Stadium". The irony here of course is that whilst they were expanding CNE Stadium to meet the needs of the new franchise here in Toronto, the old girl still remained standing, and could well have been utilized once more; had it been, I just might have garnered a little more enthusiasm, as surely my blood would have quickened, and my emotions stirred.
See, I am capable of "thinking good thoughts".
Warren
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After that blizzard here in the northeast United States this past week, thoughts of baseball (and summer in general) are most welcome, indeed!
I’m afraid though, e, we should apologize to all those outside the United States for taking space on the message board to wax poetic over this game (the rudiments of which were “borrowed” from such games as cricket and rounders) they may find to be extremely silly. I would beg their indulgence, however, to appreciate that for those of us here in the United States who fervently love baseball, it is indeed (as we call it) our National Pastime.
One of my favorite baseball-related stories really has nothing to do with baseball itself, but it does point out this culturally inspired misunderstanding of the game (not to mention how impossible it is to explain the game to somebody unfamiliar with it). During the 1950's, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's music director was a French conductor named Charles Munch. Since he was an orchestral violinist before he became a conductor, he was one of the rare conductors who liked being "one of the guys". Since 1938, the Boston Symphony Orchestra has played summer concerts at an estate in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts called Tanglewood (though I can hardly believe it, this will be my 35th consecutive summer of attending these concerts). One night at Tanglewood during Munch’s tenure, there was a party for the orchestra after the concert. Naturally, it being summer, the main topic of conversation among the musicians was baseball (the Red Sox in particular). Munch felt sort of left out, and asked if somebody could explain baseball to him. There were three volunteers (Leonard Bernstein was one of them), who tried their best to explain baseball to him (in French, no less!). At one point, one of them said, "Le pitcher jete le bal, et vous le frappe et run like hell à first base." Of course, it quickly became more and more confusing to Munch; and the three tutors finally admitted defeat and gave up because neither of them had sufficient French vocabulary to properly explain a squeeze-play.
I was raised as a fan of the New York Yankees (and still am). Naturally this influence came from my father; although there have been many times when it seemed he was actually rooting against them (no, he is not a betting man). He also has this uncanny (and at times scary) ability to predict what was going to happen in a game. Perhaps the best example of this is something that happened when I was a kid (about 7, I think it was). One late afternoon at supper-time, we were listening to a New York Yankees/Boston Red Sox game on the radio (this particular game wasn't on TV). The Yankees and the Red Sox have a fierce rivalry dating back over 80 years to the time the Red Sox sold their contract with Babe Ruth (“The Great Bambino”, as he was popularly known) to the Yankees (since then, the Red Sox have yet to win a world championship, and many attribute this to “The Curse of the Bambino”, believing Babe Ruth cursed the Red Sox for getting rid of him like that). Anyway, the game was being played in Boston (significant, because the “home team” is always guaranteed a last chance to be on offense if they are trailing). The Yankees were leading by a run going into the bottom of the 9th. I was all smiles because it seemed obvious to me the Yankees had the game won. "You think so?" my father said. "This first batter coming up for the Red Sox now? He's going to cream one [that is, hit a home run]." "No way!" I said. Just then, we heard Mel Allen (one of the most beloved baseball broadcast announcers of all time) say, "Swung on and hit high and deep to left field...that ball is going, going, gone! Tied score!" I was momentarily nonplussed, but then said, "That's OK, the Yankees will come back and win it in extra innings." My father said, "There's not going to be any extra innings. This next batter is going to cream one, too." "No way! Impossible!" I said with growing exasperation. Sure enough: "That ball is going, going, gone! The Red Sox win!" I was speechless.
In the immortal words of John Fogerty, “Put me in, coach; I’m ready to play.”
We do not remember days...we remember moments.
Cesare Pavese
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e
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On fire! |
Location: currently So Cal
Registered: May 2002
Messages: 1179
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It's funny, isn't it how a game as simple as baseball can be so complex and difficult to understand? I think that is the beauty of it.
I've heard that story about Munch before. It is one of the more reknowned baseball stories and one that I think is the perfect example of why baseball should never be explained in French (no one has sufficient French vocabulary for that task).
Since you told a story about the Yankees losing to Boston, I can forgive you for being a Yankee fan. It is not often that I get to hear a Yankee fan talk about his team losing.
But I do have to admit that "The Curse of the Bambino" is one of the great baseball legends. My favorite team, Cleveland, suffers from a similar and lesser known curse of the same variety. In the early 60s (1960 or 61, I forget which) the greatest and most popular hitter in Cleveland history (up to that point in time), Rocky Colavito, was traded to the Detroit Tigers for Harvey Kuenn(sp?). It remains the only time in history that a league's home run champion (Colavito) was traded for the league's batting champion (Kuenn). Colavito continued to be one of the league's best hitters while Keunn never again came close to the same kind of season in which he'd been the league's best hitter. Some say that the Indians were cursed by the trade which signified the beginning of nearly forty years of futility for the Indians who became one of the worst teams in baseball and the subject of a movie starring Charlie Sheen called Major League. Even in the glory years of the mid to late 90s the Indians failed to win a World Series. Now, they've let Jim Thome go to Philadelphia. Thome is the one player who could say he was more popular in Clevelnad than Colavito and just like Rocky, Jim is the team's all time career home run leader. I hope we're not in for another forty years of losing.
Think good thoughts,
e
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