Baseball
Authors: George Vecsey
Praise for
B
ASEBALL
“[An] extraordinary book… Stories emerge like bright threads to establish the whole fabric of baseball.”
—
Boston Sunday Globe
“Vecsey possesses a journalist's eye for detail and a historian's feel for the sweep of action. His research is scrupulous and his writing crisp. This book is an instant classic—a lively, highly readable guide to America's great and enduring pastime.”
—Louisville
Courier-Journal
“In his literary tribute to baseball, [Vecsey] serves up unique insights and anecdotes gleaned from the past five decades. His narrative is witty, charming and informative and so enjoyable, it is the next best thing to actually being in a ballpark during a championship run.”
—
Tucson Citizen
“Many ‘history of baseball’ books are unwieldy and, at times, hard to swallow. Vecsey manages to parcel out bite-sized chunks, and the result is a breezy, delicious look at the game.”
—
The Tampa Tribune
“[Vecsey] quickly tackles the most intractable of baseball's myths.… This is a tale told in the voice of an old friend who, fortunately for us, has interviewed many of the game's greats.… [An] engaging tour.”
—
The Washington Times
“Vivid, affectionate and clear-eyed, Vecsey's account makes for an engaging sports history.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“[A] seamless and succinct popular history. [Vecsey's] account of the game's early days is especially strong.”
—
Booklist
“George Vecsey in
The New York Times
is like the counterman at a favorite sandwich shop, serving us lunch and a thousand words of sports wisdom every day.
Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game
is an invitation to his house for Sunday dinner. The pace is more relaxed, the meal much larger, the result as wonderful as you suspected it would be.”
—L
EIGH
M
ONTVILLE
“George Vecsey's book on baseball is history from the heart, an account of the game that manages to be both loving and factual, personal and sweeping.”
—S
ALLY
J
ENKINS
“This is a necessary book for those wives and girlfriends (and husbands and boyfriends) who don't understand why many grown-ups of seeming sensibility can remain transfixed by a game of balls and bats. American baseball is American history, as George Vecsey tells us again and again.”
—S
EYMOUR
M. H
ERSH
“Football is force and fanatics, basketball is beauty and bounce. Baseball is everything: action, grace, the seasons of our lives. George Vecsey's book proves it, without wasting a word.”
—L
EE
E
ISENBERG
ODERN
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Getting Off the Ground: The Pioneers of Aviation Speak
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Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter
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The Way It Was: Great Sports Events from the Past
(editor)
Joy in Mudville: Being a Complete Account of the
Unparalleled History of the New York Mets
Naked Came the Stranger
(1/25 authorship)
T
O THE ROOKIES
: G
EORGE
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ARGARET
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OCAHONTAS, AND
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OUBLEDAY
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HE
B
ABE
VIII
M
R.
R
ICKEY
XI
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AR
XIII
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ASEBALL
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ITS THE
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NTERSTATE
XVIII
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HO'
S
IN
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HARGE
?
XIX
F
OUR
S
CANDALS
ROLOGUE
It's all in the mind.
—G
EORGE
H
ARRISON
in
Yellow Submarine
When we were young, we played ball in the family backyard in a quiet corner of Queens, pretending we were Jackie Robinson or Stan Musial. There was a cinder-block wall behind our house, which made it easy to imagine we were taking potshots at the concave right field wall in Ebbets Field, a few miles to our west. Occasionally, we would break a window in our neighbor's house—a tinkling sound unlike the concussion of a Duke Snider drive off the wall in Brooklyn. It was not hard to imagine the bright blue scripted “Dodgers” across our chests.
Some nights when my father was not working at his newspaper job, we would sit on camp chairs on the lawn and listen to the Dodger game, the austere voice of Red Barber and the mellifluous tones of Connie Desmond. I remember three things about those nights: how nice it was to have my father home, the rude shock when I plugged the radio into the garage socket, and the fireflies floating around at dusk. There are no fireflies like that anymore. No Brooklyn Dodgers, either.
—
Baseball with your dad. The American verity.
Half a century later, I found myself on a front lawn somewhere out in America, pitching a Wiffle Ball to my grandson.
“Hands back,” I told the boy. “Turn your hip to me. Look over your shoulder at the ball.”
Over the years, I have discovered the best way to teach children to hit is turning them into the twisted stance of Stanley Frank Musial, the laughing cavalier of the St. Louis Cardinals, who played his last game back in 1963.
Children are always surprised when they uncoil from the Musial stance, hitting the ball harder than they had expected. Sooner or later, their bodies will find their natural stance, but turning them into a human corkscrew is a good way to start.
The boy had already been taught well by his father, but I could not resist adding a refinement.
“And smile. Always smile. Hitting is fun,” I said. Children love getting permission to whack away at something. Smiling erases anxiety, releases positive energy.
“Stan Musial always smiled,” I added.
This was an exaggeration, of course. Musial only smiled after he slid into second base, raising a puff of white dust and brown dirt. I can still see Musial, his full grin lighting up the old bandbox in Brooklyn, a place he terrorized.
My grandson had never heard of Stan Musial, had no idea he was one of the great hitters of the 1940s and 1950s. All the boy knew was that his grandfather was tossing a hollow plastic ball to him on the lawn, showing him a coiled stance that worked, somehow.
Someday, if I have time, I will tell him stories that old people know about baseball, how Musial's teammate Enos (Country) Slaughter dashed home with the winning run in that wonderful World Series of 1946, and how Musial used to play the harmonica for his Cardinal teammates during long train rides—yes, train rides—and how forty years after retirement Musial would still whip out his harmonica and entertain fans outside the steamy ballpark a few blocks from the roiling Mississippi. I have seen that.
“They loved him, even in Brooklyn,” I said, invoking the holy borough of my childhood team, the long-departed Dodgers. Someday I will drive my grandson past the block where we used to chase
Jackie Robinson for autographs, outside an old ballpark that is as real to me as an amputated limb might be.
“Dodger fans loved Musial even when he beat them,” I said. “You know what they used to call him?”
The boy shook his head.
“Stan the Man.”
My grandson smiled at the nickname, twisted into the new stance. There was still time for a few more swings before it got dark.