Anthropology Again

     This Christmas my wife bought for me a set of DVD's of great games from the history of my beloved Saint Louis Cardinals.  Watching Game 1 of the 1968 World Series (Gibson strikes out 17, Cards beat con-man, organist, and 31-game winner Denny McLain, 4-0) was fascinating in many ways.  It was a Wednesday afternoon game, October 1.  The stands were full of men in white shirts and ties, and women in dresses, though the temperature was above 80 and the humidity very high.  The field wasn't groomed, and there was litter all over the place.  No folderol before the game, no bells and whistles.  The man in the stands, Tony Kubek, called people Mr. or Mrs., not "Billy" or "Frankie."  NBC didn't have the technology to load the game with noise, visual and auditory, so all you had was baseball, and a couple of articulate and intelligent commentators (Curt Gowdy and Harry Caray).

     On the field for the Cardinals were three proud African American men, all of them exceptionally talented: Gibson on the mound, Lou Brock in left, and Curt Flood in center.  All three had had to deal with a stiff dose of racism, and all three had their careers delayed because of it.  They came up with different ways to thrive.  Brock was a hard worker, quiet but cheerful, determined to break every stolen base record in the books.  He was not a good glove, and his arm was weak, but he ran like the wind and in the outfield made up for some of his deficiencies with speed and will.  That, and he was the best leadoff man of his day.  Gibson smoldered; he used to say that any man on another team was his enemy, was out to take food from his table, and he didn't fraternize with the enemy.  Harry Caray said that Gibson was the fiercest competitor he had ever seen.  But you never got any fist-pumping from Gibson, never any displays of great joy, or of any joy at all, not until a win was in the books.  He kept his anger and his joy to himself.  In this game you'd see him strike out the side on his way to setting a World Series record, and then walk slowly back to the dugout, head down, unapproachable.  Anything less would have been a slight on his sense of dignity.  When catcher Tim McCarver started for the mound after the first out in the ninth to congratulate him on tying the record, Gibson at first told him to get &^%$^ back behind the plate; he only became aware of what was going on when he turned to the scoreboard.

     Of the three men, Flood made the most permanent mark upon baseball.  He came up a bit earlier than Gibson and had to endure the belittling of a racist manager, Solly Hemus -- who by 1968 had apologized to Flood in writing for not having seen his talent when he should have.  Flood played a poor Series, and probably more than anyone deserves to be tagged as the goat.  He was one of the greatest glove-men of all time in center field, but his drop of a line drive (charitably scored a hit) was costly in Game 5, and his misjudging of an easy fly ball late in Game 7 cost Gibson and the Cardinals the Series.  When he followed up that performance with a subpar year in 1969, the ornery beer magnate, August Busch III, determined to unload him, trading him and a couple of other players to Philadelphia in one of the stupidest moves the franchise ever made, for the perennially embittered Richie Allen.  Flood refused to go, and sued baseball's right to deal with men as you would deal with "a consignment of goods."

     He lost that case, but the loss was close, and exposed the weaknesses in the owners' position.  What's interesting to me, though, is how Flood talks about it, in his book The Way It Is.  He wanted to be treated as a man, he said.  He was insisting on his rights as a man to determine where he and his wife and children would live, and whom he would work for in his chosen profession, as long as he could perform in it.  It's free of cant.  It's also unashamedly the plea of a black man to be recognized as a man.  It explains the brooding self-possession and pride of his teammate Gibson, and the independence, almost chilly, of Jackie Robinson, and the quiet defiance of Henry Aaron....

     Why can such a plea not be made now, in such words?  Martin Luther King Day has come and gone, and so has the young black man, about whom the right dare not say a thing, and the left will not say a thing, lest they each admit that they have failed him. Not always by racism; more often now by our adherence to a sexual antinomianism and an androgyny (weirdly compatible with the cartoonish machismo of the cities, a phony manhood that is either chaotic and destructive or childish and useless) that crush the black man every bit as effectively as outright racism ever did.  Those things will keep the black family, and therefore the black man, in bondage.  They are at the heart of the collapse of small and struggling communities in our country, and of the slow demographic heat-death in Europe; sure, there are other factors, but these are the ones too uncomfortable to discuss.  When white Christians joined their African American brothers in Martin Luther King's march on Washington, they rightly cried out for other people to change their unjust ways.  Nobody joins a march to cry out that he should change his own.

Comments

[coco]

It seems that abortion rates are at least twice as high among blacks as the US average.

Now I know this is grossly simplifying, but I'll ask anyway:

Why does the African-American community support a party that effectively seeks to wipe it out?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Why does the African-American community support a party that effectively seeks to wipe it out?<<<

I dunno. Why do American Jews?

[Ken Peirce]

For extensive documentation of the truth of the previous two comments go to wayneperryman.com or read his book, Unfounded Loyalty.

[GL]

Gibson smoldered; he used to say that any man on another team was his enemy, was out to take food from his table, and he didn't fraternize with the enemy.

One of my favorite Gibson stories (and I have a lot of favorite Gibson stories) is about the time Willie Crawford, a Dodger, stepped on an elevator with a group of Cardinal players. They shared some friendly banter . . . except for Gibson, who would have none of it. When Crawford came to bat the next day against Gibson, Gibson plugged him on the first pitch.

As to McCarver, he once became frustrated as Gibson kept shaking off the pitches he was calling. McCarver walked to the mound to talk to Gibson. Gibson stopped him and told him to get back behind the plate, telling him that the only thing he knew about pitching was that he couldn't hit it.

You got to love Gibby.

[Jack]

In defense of Blacks and the Democrats, the Republicans are hardly better. One of the many contradictions of modernity.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Tony,

On the sports side (as opposed to the serious side of this post), this Detroit native is on the other side of the fence. I haven't followed any sport for almost 30 years now (unless you count chess), but for my 10th birthday present I saw in person the reprobate Denny McLain win his 30th season game, and cheered as hero Al Kaline led the Tigers to their incredible come-from-behind chammpionship.

Kaline was a quintessential class act. A couple of years later the tight-fisted Tigers management, lagging behind most other professional teams, finally offered Kaline the first $100,000 contract in Tigers history. Kaline *turned it down* for his previous $90,000 contract because he didn't think *any* ballplayer ought to be paid that much money. He was finally prevailed upon to accept it in his next and last season. Can anyone imagine a Hall of Fame player with that much modesty today?

The one other nostalgic memory I have of sports from my youth was recently brought to mind by the death of the great football coach Bo Schembechler. Saturday afternoons by the radio, listening as U. of M. steamrolled over the regular season opposition and always came down to the wire against the ultimate nemesis, Ohio State and Woody Hayes. . . .

[David Gray]

>Kaline was a quintessential class act. A couple of years later the tight-fisted Tigers management, lagging behind most other professional teams, finally offered Kaline the first $100,000 contract in Tigers history. Kaline *turned it down* for his previous $90,000 contract because he didn't think *any* ballplayer ought to be paid that much money. He was finally prevailed upon to accept it in his next and last season. Can anyone imagine a Hall of Fame player with that much modesty today?

Kaline really was a great player. Reminds me a bit of Harmon Killebrew (personal qualities, Kaline had a better speed, glove and arm but didn't strike the level of fear into pitchers that Killebrew did).

[coco]

In defense of Blacks

Jack, my comments were an attempt to defend Blacks from the Democrats.

Stuart, I had to snigger at the appositeness of your comment. I've only recently become aware of the anti-Semitism growing among the Dummocrat left.

Let's have more Liebermans!

[Juli]

the Dummocrat left

Why do so many conservatives on the internet think names like that are clever? One right-wing blog site is just chockful of cutesy misspellings like Hitlery and Osama-Obama, not to mention cutesy misspellings of Democrat. Quite apart from the judgments they imply, I don't get the appeal of what seems like 6th-grade humor. (Maybe left-wing blog sites do the same; I don't know ...)

[Michael Martin]

James, you're from Detroit! My hometown! Are you still there? I am. I remember the day the Tigers won it all in '68. Car horns honking everywhere. You're right about Al Kaline: one of the finest players and finest men to ever play the game. (Though I praising Gibson's uncharitableness on this blog a bit puzzling) This past summer was great one for baseball and Detroit. Too bad October didn't work out as well as it could. But at least we knocked the Yankees out!

[coco]

Juli, what warrants you to say I'm a conservative?

And isn't it dumb to be targetting your own constituency for destruction?

If I was entitled to vote for Democrats, maybe I would. Except for their program of aborting the US out of existence, beginning with the minorities.

Ken P, Rev. Wayne Perryman is an interesting guy, I like his writing. Thanks for the link.

[tedschan]

He wanted to be treated as a man, he said. He was insisting on his rights as a man to determine where he and his wife and children would live, and whom he would work for in his chosen profession, as long as he could perform in it.

Baseball players aren't the only ones who demand this, although there are plenty who are content with being wage slaves.

[dpence]

Tony, You have the sharp eyes of a pure heart. The baseball segment of your post IS the serious part. Our national sports and military life forms the liturgical life of the nation. I do have one objection. I have never after two drinks heard a black man refer to himself or others as an African American. I think "black man" with "black" an adjective and "man" a noun that is shared by "the white man" is the best way to talk to and about each other when we are talking race and color. Besides that,there really are immigrant African Americans. They come from Ethiopia, Somalia and Nigeria and they know Africa as a continent not a dashiki. When Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis, the most common poster of the protesting garbage drivers was "I am A Man". I remember one of the more powerful lines in King's Letter from the Birmingham jail was about the disrespect that black children witnessed when their parents were not addressed as Mr and Mrs. While the religous roots of the civil rights movement are once again being understood and renewed, the role of returning military men from the most integrated institution in America--the military has not been fully appreciated by historians often living in their "demilitarized zones" of campus life. Sports and the Military--all male socialization groups were first to significantly break the color barrier. To teach this lesson to your sons-- watch Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans. It is the boys on the football team who develop a new collective idenity which allows them to supercede skin color and relate as individual young men inside their corporate identity as TITANS. To teach this lesson to the nation we have to tell the real history of large group loyalty-religious, military, national and male. Anthropos indeed.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Michael Martin,

I moved to Chicago in 1980 to attend graduate school (B.A. Wayne State), and from there to Philadelphia in 1993. My brother still lives in the northern Detroit suburbs, but we aren't close, and I haven't been to the Detroit area now in several years, though I hope to visit there this summer.

[Tony Esolen]

David,

Of course you're right about "black". Let's just say that the thought police of academe occasionally get to me; and in this one instance, talking about "race" (a perfectly useless category, broader than "ethnicity" and culturally imprecise, to say the least), I don't like to give them any excuse for carping.

You are right about the anthropological meaning of the team. I'm going to write about this, soon. I recall a very fine poem written by a fellow out in the rust belt of Ohio -- can't remember the words, but the idea behind it was that the only thing that united the grimy and desperate people of the dying town were those high school boys on the football field. They watched those games not mainly for enjoyment, certainly not as the expression of a cultural or political fad, but because the boys represented "US," in the deepest sense, fighting against "THEM," the provisionally hated people from that hole called Zanesville or Xenia or something. It occurs to me that something like that used to be the common attitude of Americans toward "our boys," the men in the armed services. That has not been the case since Vietnam, and I fear that it will never be the case again -- I mean that the United States will sooner fall or be transformed utterly before we will again have a general and natural affection for "our boys".

James,

On Al Kaline: He had a terrific series, and I almost can't regret that the Cards lost, if only that Al Kaline won one ring that he well deserved. That story about Kaline is impressive. Lyman Bostock, the speedy outfielder who came up with the Twins, went on the free agent market in the mid '70's and was signed by the Angels for what was then a lot of money. When Bostock got off to a terrible start, he tried to give back some of his salary. Then he got hot again, and was surging toward .300 -- he had nearly won the batting title the year before -- when he was shot to death by a man trying to kill his estranged wife, Bostock's sister-in-law or something like that (Bostock was riding in the car with his wife).

Those players were still close to the working stiffs. Stan the Man, who retired in 1963, escaped the coal mines of Donora to play ball. In fact, you could make a long list of great athletes from 1930-1980 who used their athletic talents to get free of the mines, the factories, the foundries, and the steel mills of the Rust Belt: Arnold Palmer, Joe Montana, Joe Namath, Jim Kelly, Ray Nitschke... Even so, they were never rich. A lot of guys spent the winter trying to make a few extra bucks for their families: Stan played winter ball; Whitey Herzog worked in construction crews; Richie Hebner dug graves....

[Matthias]

Thank you DPence for revealing to me one more reason why I dislike the term "African-American". Besides the obvious ones (not all Africans are black, not all immigrants from Africa to America are or were black, and not all black people are American so it doesn't even cover the right set of people) you point out the way it can so easily be used as an androgynous noun. It was possible to say "I am a black" but it wasn't much done because one sensed correctly that it was pejorative; however "African American man" gets so long and cumbersome that "man" is much too easily dropped.

I have no right to tell black people what to call themselves since I am not black myself; so in my public persona I will continue to do the awkward thing and use "African-American" and muddle through those awkward moments of not being sure whether the person being referred to is American or not. (Class, raise your hands if you've ever heard Nelson Mandela or Desmond Tutu called "African-American"....)

[Juli]

(Class, raise your hands if you've ever heard Nelson Mandela or Desmond Tutu called "African-American"....)

I'm wondering why anyone would do that, any more than they'd call the emperor of Japan Asian-American; the "American" part of the name makes it clear we're talking about Americans whose ancestors came from another part of the world, which most of ours did.

I did see a reference once to "African-American angels" in a description of Christmas ornaments - that did strike me as funny, when clearly the writer meant black-skinned angels (or, to be more theologically correct, angels appearing in black-skinned bodily form?).

[Michael Martin]

And don't even get me started on that most absurd category "European American." I teach at an urban college. One of my most well-renowned rants begins when a student tries to describe me as a "European" American. I would prefer to be called "cracker!"--if the alternative was using the ridiculous adjective "European." There ain't nothin' European about me.

[GL]

I moved to Chicago in 1980 to attend graduate school (B.A. Wayne State), and from there to Philadelphia in 1993. My brother still lives in the northern Detroit suburbs, but we aren't close, and I haven't been to the Detroit area now in several years, though I hope to visit there this summer.

James,

If you haven't been to the new ballpark, you should do so. I went to a game at the old Tiger Stadium during the last season there and one at the new ballpark the following year. My only problem with the new park is the children's play area. I just cannot stand the fact that ballparks have playgrounds for children and other amusements entirely unrelated to the game on the field. Despite its storied past, it was well past the time to replace the old ballpark. It was in horrible shape.

Though I praising Gibson's uncharitableness on this blog a bit puzzling)

Michael,

You have to understand Gibson's history. He grew up dirt poor in Omaha. He suffered racial discrimination. He was very intense. His intensity was what made him succeed. The Willie Crawford story, for instance, reflects Gibson's belief that part of his success on the mound was that he intimidated the hitters on the other team. He believed that the intimidation had to extend to his off-the-field relationship with opposing players. He believed that he could not intimidate a hitter with whom he had a cordial off-the-field relationship.

As to McCarver, the point was that he (Gibson) was the master of his pitching. While McCarver was a talented catcher -- Steve Carlton undoubtedly extended his career by demanding that the Phillies acquire McCarver as his catcher after Carlton was traded by the Cardinals to the Phillies -- but Gibson knew what he wanted to do in every situation and he was generally correct. He and McCarver had a very interesting relationship. McCarver seems to have a fondness for Gibson, in part for the way the Gibson challenged some youthful racists attitudes in McCarver and helped him grow out of them.

Having said this, Gibson had (and has) a mean streak that goes beyond his play on the field and, because of its extent, it is a personality flaw. A few years ago, for instance, he punched someone at a gas station in Omaha.

[Tony Esolen]

GL,

Not a comfortable place, inside Gibson's skin. I'm told he was the sixth child in his family, born a couple of months after his father died. He had asthma and the doctors told him he wasn't supposed to play ball. Omaha (and Creighton, where he went to school) may have treated him all right; I'm not sure of that. But in the early 60's St. Louis was a rotten place for a black man. The Cardinals were the slowest NL team to integrate -- they were the southernmost and westernmost team in MLB until expansion and team movements hit. They had a couple of bad racists on their team when Jackie Robinson broke the color line.

For all that Gibson was never a particularly happy man, he was respected by all his teammates and was in fact easy to get along with in the dugout. That separates him from the plain nasty bastards, and the primadonnas: Albert Belle, Richie Allen, Manny Ramirez, Barry Bonds, Reggie Jackson, Al Oliver, Maury Wills, Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Dixie Walker ...

[James A. Altena]

Dear Tony,

I suspect Al Kaline probably also knew hard scrabble. He joined the Tigers straight out of high school.

Dear GL,

I'm sure I won't see the new Tigers stadium, except perhaps in passing from the outside. As I said, I haven't followed sports in 30 years, and have no desire to do so.

Even as a youth, such interest as I had was primarily historical -- I loved reading about Connie Mack, Tug McGraw, the Gashouse Gang, characters such as Ossie Schreckengost and "Mad Rabbit" Marinville and Bill Veeck. Even though I was born in 1958, for me something essential in the charm of baseball seemed to have died about 1959, when the Giants and Dodgers left New York and Brooklyn, with the Athletics disappearing from Philadelphia and the Braves from Boston and the Browns from St. Louis and the old hapless Washington Senators fading away. . . .

[GL]

Tug McGraw

When I was a kid, I asked for Tug McGraw's autograph at a game the Mets were playing at the now old Busch Stadium. McGraw treated me rather rudely and did not sign my scorecard. Jerry Grote observed this and came over and signed my scorecard. Years later, Grote was convicted for selling some cattle that he did not own, though it was based on a business deal gone bad, I like to tell folks that I collect autographs of cattle rustlers. McGraw, it turns out, was not a very nice man. His son is country music singer Tim McGraw, who didn't even know that Tug McGraw was his dad until he was half grown. Despite his ill-treatment by his father, Tim cared for his dad during the time that Tug was dying of cancer. That speaks very highly of Tim McGraw.

Bill Veeck and the St. Louis Browns

Veeck was the last owner of the Browns before they moved to Baltimore. At the time, he owned Sportsman's Park, where both the Browns and the Cardinals played. (The 1944 World Series between those two teams was played entirely at Sportsman's Park, which I believe was the only case of every game of a World Series being played in the same park until 1989, when the earthquake damaged Candlestick Park, resulting in all the games in that series between the Giants and the A's being played in Oakland Colesium.) St. Louis could no longer support two teams. Despite their greater success, it looked like the Cardinals would be the team to leave (just as the A's were the more successful Philadelphia team, but were the ones to leave, first for K.C., then for Oakland). There was talk that the Cards would move to Houston. Then Gussie Busch (technically the brewery, but in those days Gussie was the brewery) bought the Cardinals. Veeck understood that he then had to sell the Browns as he could not possibly win the battle to be the sole St. Louis franchise against the resources of A-B. Veeck is another of those characters whom you had to love.

Tony,

I agree 100% with what you said about Gibson. I have known a number of folks who have overcome pretty severe childhood poverty to be very successful. To a person, they are very intense and focused, though they don't all have Gibson's mean streak. As you said, his teammates seemed to have loved him, which I think speaks well of him. There is a story of his ill-treatment of Joe Torre when they played with each other in an All-Star game. Apparently Gibson was concerned that Torre, then a catcher for the Braves, would learn too much about his pitching. Later, Torre and Gibson were teammates on the Cardinals. When Torre became manager of the Braves, he hired Gibson as his pitching coach. I think that says something about how those who knew him well felt about his treatment of opposing players. They understood his competitive instincts and admired him for it. They didn't take it personal.

[James Kabala]

Actually, Ted Williams, although not very nice to sportswriters, fans (except Jimmy Fund kids), and his several wives, was generally liked by his teammates and remained friends with Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky, and Dom DiMaggio until his death. This differentiates him from people like Cobb and Allen who were hated by everybody including their teammates. Williams is also fondly remembered by Pumpsie Green and Earl Wilson for going out of his way to make them feel included when the Red Sox (alas) became the final team to integrate in 1959.

[James Kabala]

Interestingly, Bill Veeck was a convert to Catholicism. This was mainly done because he had married a Catholic, but (unlike Rex Mottram) he refused to convert unless he was able to become actually convinced that Catholicism was true. The priest who received into the Church remembered that they spent days arguing over a footnote in a guide to Catholicism the priest had given him.

[Clark Coleman]

Juli wrote:

(Class, raise your hands if you've ever heard Nelson Mandela or Desmond Tutu called "African-American"....)

I'm wondering why anyone would do that, any more than they'd call the emperor of Japan Asian-American; ...

It is pretty simple. Political Correctness involves brainwashing people into all kinds of Pavlovian reactions to common words. When a neutered male in academia sees the normal words "man" or "he" or "his," he is supposed to have a negative Pavlovian reaction and immediately substitute "gender-neutral" language.

Similarly, when "black" became taboo and "African-American" became its acceptable substitute, Pavlovian reactions to the former word were ingrained. On the verge of writing something politically incorrect, such as "black leader Nelson Mandela," the modern PC castrati instinctively substitute "African-American" as they have been re-educated to do.

[Tony Esolen]

James,

Nice anecdote about Veeck. I wish I knew what the footnote was. You're right about Williams, too. Apparently his friendship with Doerr, Pesky, and Dominic DiMaggio was lifelong. He wasn't a rat in the clubhouse.

He also -- to give him a great deal of credit -- spoke out at his Hall of Fame induction, urging the Hall to start doing the right thing and induct the great players from the Negro Leagues. I think he mentioned Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson. That took some guts, but Williams never was afraid to speak his mind, and he never cared what anybody thought of it.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Similarly, when "black" became taboo and "African-American" became its acceptable substitute, Pavlovian reactions to the former word were ingrained. On the verge of writing something politically incorrect, such as "black leader Nelson Mandela," the modern PC castrati instinctively substitute "African-American" as they have been re-educated to do.<<<

And yet, it's still the "National Association for the Advancement of COLORED PEOPLE. Go figure.

[Juli]

On the verge of writing something politically incorrect, such as "black leader Nelson Mandela," the modern PC castrati instinctively substitute "African-American" as they have been re-educated to do.

I must have gotten a substandard re-education, then, since I was never taught such a thing - referring to non-Americans as Americans sounds pretty chauvinistic. Of course, I'd also have a hard time qualifying as one of the "castrati."

[Judy Warner]

In London, where political correctness is far advanced over anything we see here, one borough a number of years ago issued a ban on black trash bags, because it would be so hurtful for black people to see their color associated with trash.

[Ethan Cordray]

>>And yet, it's still the "National Association for the Advancement of COLORED PEOPLE. Go figure.<<

"N Quadruple-A P" just doesn't roll off the tongue as well, does it?

And I know it's only partially on-topic, but I try never to miss an opportunity to complain about Buck O'Neal not getting inducted into the Hall. What the heck kinda snafu was that?

[James A. Altena]

An old joke --

Q: What does NAACP really stand for?
A: Never Antagonize Adam Clayton Powell.

[Jendi]

Apropos of Judy's comment on the black trash bags, at Harvard Divinity School in the 1990s, the recycling bins were labeled "dyed paper" and "bleached paper" instead of "colored" and "white". Now I wonder if it was a joke, but at the time it seemed sincere - then again, we bleached-Americans aren't very hip :)