What if?

For those of you who enjoy reading alternative fiction (and baseball!) The End of Baseball (Ivan R. Dee: 2008) is a rare treat. Author Peter Schilling imagines what might have happened had a long-rumored attempt by Veeck to integrate baseball did, in fact, occur. As the rumor goes, during the 1940s, Veeck planned to purchase the Phillies and stock it with Negro League stars but then-commissioner Kennisaw Mountain Landis vetoed the purchase. In the alternate-reality created by Schilling, Veeck purchases the flailing Philadelphia A's from Connie Mack and replaces the roster of white players with African-American ballplayers such as Satchel Paige, Buck Leonard, and Josh Gibson. Landis is thwarted through the intervention of politicians and the press. But Veeck and his team must overcome racism and both overt and furtive attempts by the Commissioner to force the A's to fail.

There is an obvious similarity between The End of Baseball and the earlier novel, New York Yanquis, by Bill Granger. In each case, an owner sets out to create a "dream team" to shake up the Game. And there are similar reactions by fans and rivals, alike. But while Yanquis is light and humorous, The End of Baseball is a more serious and realistic portrayal of both the game and players facing bias.

The novel takes place in 1944 when most of America was still, for the most part, segregated. Despite fighting a war on two fronts, the military still kept the races apart; many hotels and restaurants - even those in the seemingly more-open North restricted access to Blacks; and, of course, baseball was still a white-man's game. It is with this backdrop that Schilling sets out to "re-write" history.

For the most part, Mr. Schilling does a credible job of establishing the atmosphere of bigotry. There are those things that you expect - the antipathy by white players and fans of other teams, as well as from the Commissioner. But where Schilling fails is with the third party on the diamond: the umpires. While the black players put up with beanballs, being spiked, even intentionally walked to keep from breaking records set by whites, nowhere are the umpires illustrated as having any prejudice. I would imagine that in reality, umpires in that society would have openly called balls strikes or vice versa, as well as call close plays outs, or home runs foul if they strayed too close to the pole. Umpires in Schilling's story are actually more benign, and even invisible, factors.

Schilling's  overriding premise is that if Veeck's team was successful, all racism would melt away. And that a team stocked with all-star talent would win over all types of fans - even those in rival stadiums. I'm not so sure this would be the case. You are left wondering: would Philadelphia fans really pack the stands if the team was racing for a pennant, albeit one during a year where each of the teams had had their best talent stripped away by the war effort?

The story also includes a plot line where J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI determine to prove that the black players are actually associated with the communist party, but this story is never fully developed and eventually fades away to be more or less a non-issue, as if Schilling somehow forgot about it.

These shortcomings aside, the book is still entertaining. The setting is well-established and Schilling goes to great length to describe train rides as well as the sights, sounds, and smells of those old ball parks. He also does a very credible job of creating believable characters - albeit based on real people; he's done his homework in getting the characters of, not only Bill Veeck, but Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Campanella, to act and "sound" believable. You end up rooting for them to succeed and hoping that the great experiment will somehow change baseball, and American society.

Last on the bench, and last in the American League, but first as a summer read

Baseball fiction typically involves the protagonist actually playing the game or doing something to advance his, or her, team on the field. In Sut McCaslin, A Baseball Romance (Writers Club Press, 2000), author Steve Spoerl's focus is not so much on the action on the field as on what goes on in the dugout, or in a bar after a game. The title character is a career pinch hitter and occasional late inning spot player. Sut McCaslin rides the pine for the 1950s Washington Senators. Sitting in on a post-game poker game, or at a bar stool, or on the bench between innings, McCaslin and his teammates' attention is primarily focused on the latest happenings of the McCarthy Hearings on Un-American Activities.

Second baseman Seth Macy holds court during poker games or late night bar hops. Macy is an admirer of Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy - enough so, that he gets the team invited to a party in McCarthy's honor while the team is in St. Louis. It is in St. Louis that McCaslin's life takes a dramatic swing when he enters into an affair with an African-American woman.

Sut's career mirrors those of a great many baseball players - both past and present. Once star players on their respective high school or college teams, they sign with major league clubs only to languish in obscurity. It is only the rare few that make it to the majors, let alone become star players. In Sut's case, his regular playing days are long over and he is only playing out his last season, or two, hoping for the rare opportunity to still prove his worth.

With the backdrop of the hearings before the McCarthy Hearings providing an almost surreal atmostphere - one that produces a level of anticipation that something related to the team, or one its players, will suddently be revealed - the Senators wallow at the bottom of the standings and an aging Detroit pitcher is trying to eke out just enough wins to surpass Cy Young's record for career wins.

A relatively short novel, it is a rather melancholy and dark (perhaps due to scenes set in smoky bars or shaded dugouts), but it's also rather humorous and light at times. The daily grind of a team habitually in last place and hoping that perhaps they will string together a few wins, to make things interesting, is portrayed admirably by Spoerl.

Sut McCaslin is an interesting book and hard to put down. Reading it is like sitting in the stands during the heat during a Washington, DC or St. Louis summer: too hot to really stay and watch the game on the field, but strangely too hot to move somewhere cooler. In the end, despite the haze and humidity, all of a sudden the game is over, and you're suddenly ready to head home; later you find you actually miss being in the stands. That's Sut McCaslin: one of those books you'd gladly go back and re-read a few more times just to try and figure out what really happened.

Who's on first?

John Baal, Rupert Mundys (The Great American Novel)
Aki, Bear Creek Grade school Ridgers (Bat 6)
Hal Bennett, Lions (Chance)
John Bunyan, Washington Senators (Sut McCaslin, A Baseball Romance)
Ray Burris, Cincinnati Reds (Home, Away)
Jumbo Hank Clerval, Highbridge Hellbenders (Brittle Innings)
Pat Corelli, New York Lions (The Last Great Season)
Donald "Hog" Durham, Arkansas Reds (The Dixie Association)
Jody Faust, St. Louis Browns (Fielder's Choice)
Luis "Gumbo" Garcia, Splendid Dominican Tourists (Brittle Innings)
Pete Jenkins, Krebs Miners (Miko Kings)
George Lloyd, Wichita Wraith (Babe Ruth Caught in a Snowstorm)
High McDowell, Centerville Owls (Season of the Owls)
Lucius Mummy, Miko Kings (Miko Kings)
Herb Score, Santa Rosa Stompers (Home, Away)
Norm Sudikoff, Highbridge Hellbenders (Brittle Innings)
Vitamin Vitarello, Washington Memorials (The Spring Habit)
E.T.A. Whitiker, (team unamed) (The Greatest Slump of All Time)
Wink, Barlow Road Grade School Pioneers (Bat 6)
Donus Youngs, All Stars, (The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars & Motor Kings)

Miko Kings play games of bases

At times, reading Miko Kings (Aunt Lute Books: 2007) is like standing amidst the wind-blown, dried grass that rises out the red dirt, while looking through an old leather-covered picture album. An album populated with sepia-toned pictures of people in cowboy hats, checkered shirts, or calico. LeAnne Howe's novel of baseball and inequity rolls out of the Oklahoma praire like a tumbleweed on a hot wind. The story bounces along, back and forth between past and future. But that's exactly what makes Miko Kings a great story; if it was written conventionally, it would not be nearly so good.

Told primarily from the point of view of Lena Coulter, a reporter who has returned to Oklahoma from assignment in Jordan, the novel primarily tells the story of a team of Choctaw playing in the Oklahoma Indian Territory just prior to statehood. While the core story is about the team and a momentous game to be played against a rival team made up of U.S. cavalrymen, Howe's novel is also about the lives of three people: Hope Little Leader, the team's pitcher, Justina Maurepas, a civil activist, and Ezol Day, the young girl who witnessed the events of that turn-of-the-century game and who brings the story to Lena's pen.

Lena learns about the baseball game and the various characters through Ezol's journal, and through "visits" by Ezol's spirit to her present-day home in Ada. (It wouldn't be a story about Native Americans without a spirit guide). We learn of Hope Little Leader's youth spent in a boarding school for blacks and Indians in Virginia. It is there he met Justina, who was a young teacher. The rebellious duo go their seperate ways. Hope returns to Oklahoma, where he finds direction (baseball) and a cause (the threat of his people losing their land) and a method to fight it - baseball. Justina ends up in New Orleans where she discovers her fight in unjustice in the brothels of that city.

Underlying all unjustice, of course, is wealth, whether it's money gathered from using other people, or the value of land. And into the mix of Miko Kings is racial bias, between blacks and whites and red and whites. Fortunately, for the novel, Howe nests the racial aspect inside differences in social class - between the haves and the have-nots of rural Oklahoma, and the streets of New Orleans. Something stronger would definitely taken away from the story. Instead, we are given a rich tale of societal differences that develop very nicely, with rather sympathetic characters.

The story abounds with subplots - Hope Little Leader's plan to help his people retain their integrity, if not their land; Justina's brushes with violent protests; and Ezol's maturation process through orphanages and step-homes. But the subplots - like the dust that blows around the characters on the Oklahoma prairie - come together at the end in surprise fashion and tie everything together for Lena, who is trying to recover from her own traumas.

The story of the Miko Kings' game with the soldiers has its roots in historical fact. During the winter of 1869, the 7th Cavalry - based at Fort Sill and under the command of General George Armstrong Custer - played baseball against a team of Kansas volunteers comprised of Native Americans. And during the late 1880s, Apache tribesmen, interned at Fort Sill, played baseball while soldiers watched.

While the story is centered around a particular baseball game, baseball is not the focus of the story and there is no need to weigh down the novel with countless scenes of baseball action. There is just enough to liven the story and move it forward. There is, however, plenty of discussion about the players, brief vignettes of different games, and insights into how Native Americans developed a stick and ball game (althought the discription shades more toward lacrosse than baseball).

Howe's novel is enjoyable, as well as educational and eye-opening at times. It is well crafted and a satisfying read.

In remembrance

Best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Killer Angels (David McKay:1974), Michael Shaara also wrote For the Love of the Game (Carroll & Graf:1991), that was published postumously by his son. The story was eventually made into a movie starring Kevin Costner.

For the Love of the Game tells the story of aging pitcher Billy Chapel, who sets out onto the mound for one last time after learning that his team is to be sold and he is unlikely to be retained. In a series of flashbacks told while Chapel is pitching against the Yankees, we learn about Chapel's life and loves and pains. The game - which he loves - turns out to be his greatest, though it changes him and his future life.

Shaara taught literature at Florida State and was the auther of five novels and a number of short stories, primarily science fiction. Shaara had a knack for developing his characters at the emotional and empathetic level. While The Killer Angels was awarded the top prize for fiction, it did not gain widespread commercial success until after the film "Gettysburg" (Ron Maxwell: 1993) was released, five years after the author's death.

Shaara's baseball novel, though never reached the level of success of his story about the battle of Gettysburg. It does, however, match up well with similar heartstring-pullers, such as How This All Started (Pete Fromm) and Prospect (Bill Littlefield). It's too bad we didn't get to find out if Shaara had any other tales of the diamond in him.

Michael Shaara (b. 6/26/1928, d. 5/5/1988)

The Boss and the Yanquis

Once upon a time there was a baseball owner who took hands-on leadership to the extreme. He was known for over-reacting, removing managers at a whim and expressing his ire over perceived player recalicitrance. I'm, of course, referring to George Steinbrenner. The legendary Yankees owner took over the Yankees shortly after the demise of the Reserve Clause. The Boss used millions made in the shipping industry and permanently shaped the future of baseball free-agency. He dedicated his ownership to building the Yankees into a permanent championship team, centered around star players paid exorbitant salaries.

In New York Yanquis (Arcade Publishing: 1995), author Bill Granger gives us Yankee owner George Bremenhaven, a thinly-veiled recreation of the late Yankee owner. Sharing the stage with Bremenhaven, and the book's protagonist, is veteran relief pitcher Ryan Patrick Shawn, turned manager. The premise for Granger's comedic novel is the Yankee owners desire to reduce his payroll by getting rid of all of his high-priced players and replacing them with a roster of Cuban all-stars who will play the game simply because of their love of the game. The only player he retains is Shawn, who happens to speak Spanish, and is desperate for one last go-around before retiring.

The novel is full of jabs at Stienbrenner, from his all-consuming drive for a pennant to his penny-pinching methods. He houses the Cuban players in one of his run-down hotels and feeding them pizza. To keep Shawn in line, Bremenhaven contrives various schemes that has Shawn fending off accusations of infedelity to his girlfriend and fearing that the IRS is going to lock him up for tax fraud. Shawn is initially a gullible hero, but one that can, and will, stand up to Bremenhaven - often in amusing verbal jabs. Shawn finds himself playing cat-and-mouse games with his boss, which in the end tends to put him on an equal footing with the eccentric owner.

Bremenhaven hates to lose, whether it's against other teams, their owners, or even his own players. Shawn just wants to survive one more season and then see where things take him. The Cubans just want to play ball, but find themselves frustrated and depressed at being so far from home and being treated as second-hand citizens. The story is a comedy that makes light of the Stienbrenner-esk character and his antics, but we are also treated to a host of stereotypical characters, from Shawn's Los Angeles-based agent to his girlfriend, and a host of mysterious government agents. And then, there's the cameo appearances by Fidel Castro, himself, with his long-winded, rambling tirades

Actual baseball action is rare in this novel, but done well when it appears. But the story is actually less about baseball than about hopes and dreams, and the compromises that must be made along the way toward happiness. Yes, we are entertained by the Bremenhaven character (who I would not be surprised if Granger didn't model him after the Steinbrenner of "Jerry Seinfeld" fame), but in the end it is the Ryan Shawn and his Cuban players overcoming all types of obstacles thrown in front of them that is the real story.

New York Yanquis is not a morality play. It's a farse about greed in the American Game. An over-simplication of complex issues like baseball ownership, free agency, and U.S. politics. But I'd recommend it as an entertaining fun read; one that brings back memories of the craziness that surrounded the Yankees and The Boss.


Steinbrenner: You know George, it struck me today me that a Communist pipeline into the vast reservoir of Cuban baseball talent could be the greatest thing ever to happen to this organization.
George: Sir?
Steinbrenner: You could be invaluable to this franchise. George,there's a southpaw down there nobody's been able to get a look at; something Rodriguez, I don't really know his name. You get yourself down to Havana right away.
George: Yes, sir. Yes sir, do my best.
Steinbrenner: Good, Merry Christmas George. And bring me back some of those cigars in the cedar boxes, you know the ones with the fancy rings? I love those fancy rings. They kind of distract you while you're smoking. The red and yellow are nice. It looks good against the brown of the cigar. The Maduro, I like the Maduro wrapper. The darker the better, that's what I say. Of course, the Claro's good too. That's more of a pale brown, almost like a milky coffee. (George exits) I find the ring size very confusing. They have it in centimeters which I don't really understand that well...

(Seinfeld, Season 6, Episode 10, December 15, 1994)

Love in the time of Red Sox

I watched Fever Pitch (Farrelly Brothers: 2005) the other night. The film is based on the autobiographical collection of short stories written by Nick Hornby (Gollancz: 1992) with the same title. Actually, the movie is a remake of the 1997 film starring Colin Firth that featured a man obsessed with the Arsenal Foot Ball club, to the point that it effected his romantic relationship.

The Farrelly brothers, converting the storyline to the U.S., cast Jimmy Fallon as a math teacher who falls in love with a financial executive. In the Farrelly's version, the character of Ben Wrightman is a rabid Boston Red Sox fan; he inherited season tickets behind the Sox dugout, holds an annual draft to determine which of his friends will attend games with him, his apartment is a shrine to Red Sox history, and he hasn't missed a game in ten years. The love interest, Lindsey Meeks, played by Drew Barrymore, is a work-aholic and baseball novice. But she's attracted by Ben's youthfulness and humor and decides to overlook his obsession, because she, herself, is obsessed with her work.

The conflict revolves around baseball and its affect on Ben and Lindsey's burgeoning relationship during the course of the 2004 season. The storyline has the relationship flowing along with the ups and downs of the Sox quest for the post-season. In the early months, the relationship rises with the hopes of a new year; Ben takes Lindsey to games and she learns about the game and the undying loyalty of Sox fans. Ben is a hit with Lindsey's friends (and particularly their husbands who envy his season tickets) and gains points with her parents by getting them a tee time at the local country club. As the summer wears on, however, the relationship cools as Ben's obsession increases and Lindsey's job beckons as she tries to gain a partnership in her firm.

As with the Red Sox quest for their first World Series pennant since 1918, Ben and Lindsey's relationship ultimately hinges on overcoming a large obstacle. For the Sox, it's the 0-3 hole they find themselves in the ALCS. For Ben and Lindsey, it is breaking the baseball bond that Ben has held on to since he was a child.

Overall, I think the movie is fun to watch: a good date flick. But, in the end, you have to wonder if the two protagonists actually have a long-term future where it's not clear whether each has compromised enough to make it last. I've never read Hornby's book. I'd be interested in seeing if the original story matches better with English football, or whether the Farrelly brothers managed to best the story with their re-telling.