All posts filed under: Baseball

Observations from the old ball yard, especially focused on our hometown nine – the Washington Nationals

Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend

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We’ve been blessed with two recent books about the greatest baseball player of all time – Willie Mays.  I wrote about the first, Willie’s Boys, in a post in January.  I’ve just finished the second, Willie Mays:  The Life, The Legend, and found it is as satisfying as a well-played game on a warm summer evening.  (Although at 556 pages it takes a bit longer to complete.) Author James Hirsch, who never saw Mays play live, has nonetheless captured the essence of a deeply private, and in many ways unknowable, larger-than-life legend.   Mays is one of those people who touched so many people in so many ways.  As Hirsch notes, “If you write a book that allows you to talk to Bill Clinton, Woody Allen, Hank Aaron, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Sandy Koufax, and Tom Seaver, you’ve probably got a pretty good subject.”  Bill Clinton says that Willie Mays, “…lives his life with more than talent – he has the mind and heart of a champion.”  Woody Allen, in the movie Manhattan, said Willie Mays was one …

A View from Home Plate

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I’ve been to countless Major League Baseball games in my life, beginning with Wrigley Field in 1964 to see the Cubs vs. the Cardinals.  But I’ve never seen a game in the front row behind home plate. Until last night. Thanks to a local friend and colleague, who heard of my plan to visit all the MLB ballparks, a group of 12 – in town for today’s launch of Partners in Preservation and a National Trust Council meeting – headed out to Seattle’s  Safeco Field last evening to see the hometown Mariners take on the Oakland A’s.  Kevin told us the seats were great.  He wasn’t kidding. On a beautiful cool evening we saw the Mariners top the A’s 4-2.  And when I say we saw it, we took it all in from the first few rows behind home plate.  You know the seats…the ones you see every night on television when the pitcher glares in on the batter.  I started out four rows back on the first base side, only a few bat-lengths away …

With Willie at ATT Park

Willie Mays and America’s oldest professional baseball park

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Growing up, I was such a Willie Mays fan that my friends called me “Say Hey” in honor of the Say Hey Kid.  In those pre-Internet days it was tough to live in Tennessee and keep up with late-night baseball in San Francisco.  However, many was the summer morning I called the sports department of the Daily News Journal to ask for the previous evening’s scores off the wire.  This was serious business.  Many years and games later, I still believe Mays was the best, most complete ballplayer to play the game. So I was thrilled recently to see the new book Willie’s Boys:  The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, the Last Negro League World Series, and the Making of a Baseball Legend by John Klima.  The title tells what’s in store.  This is a book about the difficult period when major league baseball was undergoing integration and Birmingham – that hotbed of both baseball and racial segregation – was at the center of the story.  In 1948, Mays was a 16-year-old rookie on the Black …

When Passions Collide

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I love it when my passions collide. Like when the November/December issue of Preservation magazine has a story on the saving of one of the few remaining Negro League baseball stadiums.  Any preservation story that begins with the name Monte Irvin is guaranteed to warm the heart of this old NY baseball Giants fan.  My mother-in-law thought that because of my position with the National Trust for Historic Preservation I must have chosen the cover picture for the magazine.  I didn’t (although I gave writer Eric Wills lots of encouragement as he put the story together), but I do have a beautiful print of that great shot ready for framing for my office.  And from Preservation Online comes the encouraging news that Patterson, New Jersey’s  Hinchliffe Stadium… …may be restored. The city of Paterson and the school board entered into a shared services agreement in late October 2009, and in early November, voters passed a referendum asking for $15 million to fund the stadium’s renovation. If all goes according to plan, the city will receive permission to issue a …

What a Glorious Day…There’s More Baseball to be Played!

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Game Five of the World Series was what we’ve been waiting for and, as a result, there’s more baseball to be played. Hallelujah! As Dave Sheinin wrote in this morning’s Washington Post, “The Yankees still hold a 3-2 edge in the series, but it feels exponentially smaller than it did 24 hours ago.” In his Washington Post column, Tom Boswell has a wonderful piece on how this has turned into an “Old School Series.”  How right he is.  And he nails the landing: Once back in New York, Matsui and Posada will be back in the lineup. Pettitte will be set to pitch a game that might be Exhibit A on his Hall of Fame résumé someday. Utley will take aim at Reggie-Reggie-Reggie. A-Rod has a chance to be MVP and own New York for decades. Girardi won’t sleep for the next 48 hours. Martínez has a chance to reverse the “Daddy” chants for a day and bring baseball a Game 7 that would raise the hair on heads from coast to coast. This is …

It breaks your heart

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A. Bartlett Giamatti said it best. “It breaks your heart.  It is designed to break your heart.  The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.“ Giamatti – the former president of Yale and the great commissioner of baseball who banned Pete Rose for life and then died of a heart attack 8 days later – was writing about an earlier Red Sox loss on the last day of the season many years ago.  But the “breaking your heart” line applies in all sorts of baseball situations. Friday evening, on the last day of my summer vacation before heading back to work, the MLB-worst Washington Nationals played the division leading St. Louis Cardinals like they were equals.  Young Nationals “ace” John Lannan matched recently acquired and crafty veteran John Smoltz pitch-for-pitch through a well-played ball game that took only a little over two …

The Sun Shines and the Nats Sign Strasburg

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I went to bed last evening around 11:40 p.m. after checking to see if the Washington Nationals had signed #1 draft choice Stephen Strasburg.  They had not. I awoke this morning and checked the Nats icon on my blackberry to find…YES, they pulled it off!  And for ONLY a little over $15 million.  The sun is indeed shining over baseball in the District today. Writing in the Washington Post, Tom Boswell talked about Washington’s baseball redemption. Few teams have ever needed a watershed event more than the Nationals. And no town in baseball has needed a validation and a fresh start more than Washington. On Monday night, at 11:58:43 p.m., both the team and the town got their wish. Just 77 seconds before a witching midnight deadline, the franchise that so often gets kicked when it is down and the town that is constantly accused of baseball’s original sin (being Washington) proved that it could do something big and difficult and right. The Nats signed Stephen Strasburg, probably the most heralded young pitcher of the …

Great Week to Be a Nats Fan

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With the Washington Nationals heading into today’s game with a chance to sweep a home stand AND extend a winning streak to eight in a row,  I just couldn’t stay away from Nationals Park.  So when friends made plans to join me, it was a done deal – humidity and a hot sun notwithstanding. And am I glad I went.  Sixteen hits!  Adam Dunn’s 30th home run!  J.D. Martin’s first major league win!  Zimmerman gets 3 hits and scores 3 runs!  The offense continues to come through with timely hit after timely hit!  Happy friends and fans all around! A 9-2 romp. (How often do you get to use the words “Nats” and “romp” in the same column?) What a great week to be a Nats fan.  At the end of 25 straight games without a break, the Nats find their inner ballplayers and go on a tear.  As a vacationing bachelor this week (with Candice and the twins away), I’ve also had every opportunity to catch the games on TV and in person. You …

What’s Gotten Into Our Nats?

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On a beautiful night for baseball in the nation’s capital (81 low-humidity degrees at game time), the Washington Nationals continued their mystifying ways – by winning their 6th in a row! Our boys have been playing error-free baseball with sparkling defense since Rockville’s own Jim Riggleman took over as manager more than 20 games ago.  Combine that with a new-found timeliness with their hitting and a rebuilt and generally effective bullpen and – while we may see a bunch of bush-league politics in this town – all of a sudden we’re seeing major league baseball in the District of Columbia! With Candice and the twins in Florida visiting her family and tonight’s promise of beautiful weather, I made up my mind early to take in the Nats-Diamondbacks game.  I was worried that my presence at the ballpark would jinx them, as I’ve been to 4 or 5 games already this season…and all have been losses (if you throw out the 10-10 tie that was won about two months later).  When I barely missed a batting …