Notebook

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2005-07-25T21:43:00.000-07:00

San Jose Nisei Baseball

Ralph Pearce has a new book out on Nisei baseball in San Jose. Click on the cover below to order it directly from the Japanese American Museum of San Jose.

Click here to see photos from the Japanese American Museum of San Jose exhibit

IN THE CAL

2005-02-01T23:55:00.000-08:00

On April Fools Day, 1997, I received an e-mail titled "Butcher Replaces World's Greatest Shortstop" from a friend. It wasn't some prank, it was a reminder of a comment I had made many Summers prior. The two of us were watching a game in A-ball, and the Giants highly-touted prospect Royce Clayton had just booted another easy grounder. "This butcher will never make the bigs," I claimed. Of course, not only did Clayton rise up to the

Shit to do

2004-06-08T13:58:00.000-07:00

More AAGPBL
Casey Candele

Find St. Louis baseball Book

Sac photos
Visalia Photos
Chox Photos
San Jose Photos

Hudson Cartoon

Nisei photos
Contact Florin AC

Jules Interview

2004-05-16T04:06:00.000-07:00

TYGIEL@SFSU.EDU

1 - Academic Reaction at time of research/writing

2 - Why do you think that some modern players (college educated Frank Thomas for example) are so ignorant of Robinson's place in history?

3 - Pasttime question

4 - Your newest book concerns Ronald Reagan and the American Conservative movement. How did you go from Robinson and baseball to this topic?

Last - What do you think Jackie Robinson would say if he was alive today?

Simpsons

2004-05-14T19:31:00.000-07:00

The only problem here is that Mattingly had his hair run-in with Steinbrenner the previous year; he was benched against the Royals on August 15, 1991 for the length of his hair. Homer at the Bat first aired on February 20, 1992.

Note that this is repeated as fact in Wired Magazine.

Minnie Minoso

2004-05-12T16:21:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I was at a Chicago White Sox Fanfest. It was during a down time for the White Sox, and not many people were there. Even still, the autograph line for Minnie Minoso was disturbingly short, just a few people. When I reached the front of the line Minnie took my item and stopped just before his pen hit the paper. I didn't bring a photo or baseball card, I was asking him to sign a photocopy of an old newspaper article. He was the topic of the piece, it talked of the minor leaguer in the Cleveland organization who was the first to play organized ball with white players in a mid-sized Southern city. Minoso held up the paper and leaned back in his chair, reading and trying to remember. Were the police helpful and protective, or did they grudgingly go about their jobs? Certainly there were racists in the crowd. How vocal were they? How ugly did it get? After a few seconds Minnie shrugged, signed the page, and claimed in a weary voice "I did that a lot back in those days." Minnie Minoso was a member of generation that straddled integration. Players before, like Ray Dandridge or Piper Davis, spent most their careers in the Negro Leagues, and were only offered time in the minors when the Color Barrier fell. Players after, like Willie Mays or Hank Aaron, were seasoned for a year or two in the Negro Leagues and were then mainstreamed into the integrated minors with a fast ticket to the Major Leagues. Minoso, on the other hand, was 24 when Jackie Robinson brought the walls down. The next year he was in the Indians organization, and got a cup of coffee in 1949. Minoso didn't hit the big time until 1951, when he was traded to the Chicago White Sox, emphasis on white - Minnie was the first black player on the Sox.

Saturnino Orestes Arrieta Armas, otherwise known as Minnie Minoso, was born in Perico, Cuba in 1922. When he came of age, he followed the normal baseball pipeline for a black player from his country and in 1946 joined the New York Cubans of the Negro National League. He played third in those days, and following his rookie year he made the East-West All Star Game the following two years. Late in 1948 he left the Negro Leagues for the Cleveland organization. He came up to the Indians the next season, but played in only nine games before being sent to San Diego of the Pacific Coast League for more minor league experience. Here was a man who was an All Star in the Negro Leagues, and had enough raw potential to get a look in 1949. Given his performance when he rejoined the majors, the unwritten rules concerning the number of African-Americans on a major league roster probably had more to do with his time in the minors than his actual talent. There was a shadow era after Jackie Robinson, when teams could play black players, but not too many of them. Old prejudices died hard.

In 1951 Minnie was back. He spent a handful of games with the Indians, and was then sent to the White Sox as part of a three-team trade. In his first game with the Sox he hit a homerun, this is often overlooked as a kid named Mickey Mantle his his first homer in the same game. Minoso hit the ground running, literally - he lead the American League in steals. While his 31 swipes might not seem like many by modern-day standards, it more than doubled Dom DiMaggio's league-leading total from the previous season. As the Muslims sheltered the learnings of the ancient Greeks during the Dark Ages, the art of littleball survived in the Negro Leagues after it died out in the Majors. Minnie was one of several Negro League veterans who brought the stolen base back to organized baseball. He lead the league in steals for his first three seasons (and was #2 for three of the next four years). In 1951 he also finished first in HBP (he would hold the career HBP mark for the AL through the mid-80s) and triples, second in batting average and runs, third in OPS, and fifth in on-base and slugging. For this he finished second to Gil McDonald in Rookie of the Year voting. He was in the top 5 in MVP voting in 1951, 1953 and 1954. Needless to say, the extra time spent in the minors were a waste.

Being a Cuban in the United States was a cultural adjustment. But being the first black player in the city of Chicago was something else. While the horrible race riots of 1919 were in the past, it was still an extremely racist environment in Minnie's era. Later in the decade Bill Berry of the Urban League named Chicago as the nation's most segregated city. The play "A Raisen in the Sun" was set on Chicago's South Side. When Martin Luther King was struck by a brick on a housing march in a suburb of Chicago, he would claim "I think it is one of the most tragic pictures of man's inhumanity to man that I've ever seen and I've been in Mississippi and Alabama. But I can assure you that the hatred and the hostility here are really deeper than what I've seen in Alabama and Mississippi." While Chicago had a long way to go with regards to race, so did baseball. People don't realize how early in the integration picture this was. When Minoso went over to the White Sox only the Dodgers, Indians, Browns, Giants and Braves had used black players. A full two seasons after Minoso started for the Sox, the Athletics and Cubs would become the seventh and eighth teams to integrate.

(career)

(trade away from Sox)

Minnie's major league career was running out of gas in 1964. After XXX games with the White Sox, he was released. The Indianapolis Indians gave him a roster spot for the balance of the season. The next year found Minoso playing in Mexico. He was no stranger to the Latin version of the game. Due to some broken promises by Ivan Rodriguez in the 1990s, Latin American superstars are no longer allowed to play winterball. This was not true in Minoso's time, he played nearly a decade's worth of seasons in Cuba at the start of his career. On the other end, he spent nine seasons playing in Mexico's summer league. He eventually hung up his spikes after the 1973 season, at the tender age of 50.

In 1976 Minnie was signed by the White Sox near the end of the season. He appeared in three games as a designated hitter and went 1-8, In 1980 he played in two games for the White Sox, going hitless in two at-bats. However, he was able to claim with Nick Altrock to be the one of two men to play in the majors in five decades (we won't quibble about the definition of decade). Minnie decided to put on the uniform once more when the 1990s rolled around. He was to play in a single game with the Miami Miracle in the Florida State League. However, Commissioner Fay Vincent laid down the law and proclaimed that Minnie would not be able to play as it would make a mockery of the game. Later in the decade, under a different commissioner, Garth Brooks was allowed to make Spring Training into his own personal fantasy camp. Of course, there's a big difference between single-A ball in April and a few weeks of B-squad games in March, but one of these men was a baseball star who lost time to segregation, and the other plays guitar and sings. A few years later independent baseball took the country by storm and Minnie played a game for the St. Paul Saints. In 2003, in his 80s, Minnie made a return engagement with St. Paul to become the only man to play professional baseball in seven decades.

Decades after Minoso integrated the White Sox, Chicago had not shed all its legacies. When I'd ride the El to New Comiskey, I'd often notice that only African-American faces would remain on the train after the baseball fans had departed. [TRANSITION] In a parking lot just to the north of the stadium there's a plate embedded into the asphalt, commemerating the old diamond where

Once or twice a homestand a buzz would pass through the small cluster of fans watching batting practice - "Minnie's here tonight!" And sure enough, if you wandered into the bleachers you could find Minnie quietly watching BP from afar. More knowlegeable fans would recognize him and approach him for an autograph. He seemed to always be friendly, and happy to be at the ballpark.

Military

2004-05-11T01:38:00.000-07:00

I recently came across Playing for Their Nation, a new book by Steven R. Bullock and the winner of the 2002 Jerry Malloy Book Prize. [Scope] I suspect that the reason this book had such a narrow scope was that it was a Ph.D. thesis (Bullock thanks his committee in his acknowledgements). I remember that one of the difficulties in writing my own thesis was maintaining a proper focus and not including material, that while interesting, might distract from the central questions being posed. I know how hard that was in physics, I'm guessing that it's an order of magnitude worse for historians.

In the end, sometimes it is hard to write a review of a book as it actually is, rather than what you feel it should be. As previously mentioned, this work won the 2002 Jerry Malloy Book Award. The problem with this high praise is that it immediately made me think "How would Jerry write this book?" Conversations with Jerry were a joy, they would zip from one topic to another, there didn't seem to be a nook or cranny of baseball that Jerry didn't know. A mention of a John McGraw visit to Hawaii might send Jerry off to a memory of a trip to Cooperstown to investigate some aspect of the Negro Leagues. It's hardly fair to judge this book against how I imagine Jerry would spin his tale. It's a thesis, and as such doesn't have much foul territory. It's an exchange often made in the academic world, trade some interesting action on the playing field in order to bring the audience closer to the heart of the game. Jerry would have chapters not only on baseball's role in the military, but how World War II changed baseball's role in society. How about integration? Jackie Robinson's military role would have been discussed in greater depth. Happy Chandlers' quote about XXX and its resonance in the greater society would open another chapter. What about the internment of the Japanese Americans? They spent their time playing baseball (as in this example) What this activity meant in terms of their views of loyalty and America would be covered. World War II brought many women into the workplace. Rosie the Riviter didn't make it into Bullock's book, nor did the AAGPBL. Jerry's tome would have covered Wrigley's new league, and the decision that kept lights out of his ballpak for nearly fifty years. Again, it isn't fair to damn a book by comparing it to what you think a master like Malloy might have produced on the same topic. Still, there are some interesting stones left unturned, perhaps Bullock can produce a companion book to look at these. If he can do it at the same level as this book, they will make quite a powerful pair.

Chuck Brodsky

2004-05-11T01:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when you have a website, people will send you things. This past Fall, Chuck Brodsky dropped his CD "The Baseball Ballads" to my mailbox. To be honest, I'm not really a music lover. I've bought fewer than five CDs in the past decade, and outside of one of Aretha Franklin's visits to Chicago, I haven't paid for live music in about the same amount of time. But inspection of the CD case made me interested. Eddie Klepp, Doc Ellis, Bonehead Merkle, Moe Berg and Eddie Waitkus were all featured in song titles. Most of those names aren't known to the average baseball follower. This was obviously a creation by a well-versed (no pun intended) baseball fan.

The album is entitled "The Baseball Ballads". Ballad is a danger signal to a person raised on rock-and-roll. Ballad typically means "cheesy love song put on an album to widen appeal towards female listeners". Putting that word in the album title is like putting a sticker on the album that says "WARNING: WUSS ROCK ENCLOSED." I'm happy to report that my fears about the record were unfounded. The music on the album is folksy, which works well for the slower-paced game of baseball. The style is outstanding in songs like "Dock Ellis' No-No" (which skirts around the hook, but never directly mentions that Ellis pitched his famous game on LSD). Since the album covers a lot of history, the story-telling aspect of folk chimes in just right. Brodsky is able to tie in history

In his song about Max Patkin, you get the feeling that there might be some kind of self-referencing going on - "The times changed on Max Patkin / along came Rock & Roll / They blare it from the speakers now/ if ever there's a lull". On the other hand, "Letters in the Dirt", which deals with Dick Allen and his relationship with Philadelphia fans, just doesn't seem to click with the genre.

The instrumental versions of the songs would be worth listening to in their own rights, but the lyrics are excellent. Chuck Brodsky really did his homework. Accounts of the Negro League's "reverse integration", a no-hitter on acid, the Merkle incident, Moe Berg's life and times and the true-to-life shooting that inspired the episode in the Natural are all retold in great detail. Small errors here and there don't detract from the overall work (eg. Eddie Klepp certainly wasn't the first white man in the Negro Leagues, not given the Cuban involvement in earlier times - there was a small handful of Latin players who jumped from the Negro Leagues to the Majors prior to Jackie Robinson).

1914 World Tour

2004-05-11T01:34:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I received an e-mail from a man named James Elfers. He had come across my work on the American segment of the 1914 Baseball World Tour on the internet. My article interested him because he was in the process of writing a book on the World Tour. Needless to say, I was interested. We exchanged more e-mail, and James wrote a few articles for the website in support of his book. Time passed, and I later received a copy of XXX for review. I devoured the book, but didn't sit down to write a review. I was getting married, and weddings are no small affair. Since that time, there always seemed to be something else on the front burner. Today I looked at a desk full of baseball books. That spurred me to put my thoughts to paper.

In doing so, I realized why the book had sat dusty on my desk for so long. When a reviewer closes a book and thinks "I wish I had written that," the review itself is often very easy. But when the reviewer puts down the book, recalls hours spent enjoying the original source material, and envies the author for in fact writing the book, the process of criticism is much harder. Of course the reviewer finds the topic of the book interesting, but would the general public? Is the reviewer too harsh with the author's mistakes? Is there too much joy when the author follows twists and turns the reviewer would have taken (detouring into the career of Negro League great Oscar Charleston when the teams meet in the Phillipines), or when the author has an insight that the reviewer blundered past (John McGraw's articles were in fact ghost-written by H.P. Burchell)? These factors make it hard to write a balanced, unbiased review. So I decide instead to simply warn the reader with the background, and move on.