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BAT DAY In 1951 Bill Veeck ("as in
wreck") owned the St. Louis Browns, a team that was not the greatest
gate attraction in the world. (It's rumored that one day a fan called up
Veeck and asked, "What time does the game start?" Veeck's alleged
reply was, " What time can you get here?") Veeck was offered six
thousand bats at a nominal fee by a company that was going bankrupt. He
took the bats and announced that a free bat would be given to each
youngster attending a game accompanied by an adult. That was the beginning
of Bat Day. Veeck followed this promotion with Ball Day and Jacket Day and
other giveaways. Bat Day, Ball Day, and Jacket Day have all become
virtually standard major league baseball promotions.
"CAN'T ANYBODY HERE PLAY THIS
GAME?" In 1960 Casey Stengel managed the New York Yankees to a
first-place finish, on the strength of a .630 percentage compiled by
winning 97 games and losing 57. By 1962 he was the manager of the New
York Mets, a team that finished tenth in a ten-team league. They finished 601/:
games out of first place, losing more games ( 120) than any other team in
the 20th century. Richie Ashburn, who batted .306 for the Mets that season
and then retired, remembers those days: "It was the only time I went
to a ball park in the major leagues and nobody expected you to win."
A bumbling collection of castoffs, not-quite-ready for-prime-time major
league ball players, paycheck collectors, and callow youth, the Mets
underwhelmed the opposition. They had Jay Hook, who could talk for hours
about why a curve ball curved (he had a Masters degree in engineering) but
couldn't throw one consistently. They had" Choo-Choo" Coleman, an
excellent low-ball catcher, but the team had very few low-ball pitchers.
They had "Marvelous Marv" Throneberry, a Mickey Mantle
look-a-like in the batter's box-and that's where the resemblance ended.
Stengel had been spoiled with the likes of Mantle, Maris, Ford, Berra, etc.
Day after day he would watch the Mets and be amazed at how they could find
newer and more original ways to beat themselves. In desperation-some
declare it was on the day he witnessed pitcher A1 Jackson go 15 innings
yielding but three hits, only to lose the game on two errors committed by
Marvelous Marv-Casey bellowed out his plaintive query, "Can't anybody
here play this game?"
DUGOUT An area on each
side of home plate where players stay while their team is at bat. There is
a visitor's dugout and a home-team dugout. They were originally dug
out trenches at the first and third base lines allowing players and coaches
to be at field level and not blocking the view of the choice seats behind
them.
JUNK MAN Eddie Lopat was
the premier left-handed pitcher for the New York Yankees in the late 1940's
and through most of the 1950's. He recalls how he obtained his nickname:
"Ben Epstein was a writer for the now defunct New York Daily Mirror and a friend of mine from my Little Rock
minor league baseball days. He told me in 1948 that he wanted to give me a
name that would stay with me forever. 'I want to see what you think of
it-the junk man?' In those days the writers had more consideration. They
checked with players before they called them names. I told him I didn't
care what they called me just as long as I could get the batters out and
get paid for it." Epstein then wrote an article called "The
Junkman Cometh," and as Lopat says, "The rest was history."
The nickname derived from Lopat's ability to be a successful pitcher by
tantalizing the hitters with an assortment of offspeed pitches. This writer
and thousands of other baseball fans who saw Lopat pitch bragged more than
once that if given a chance, they could hit the "junk" he threw.
ONE-ARMED PETE GRAY Born Peter
J. Wyshner (a.k.a. Pete Gray) on March 6, 1917, Gray was a longtime New
York City semipro star who played in 77 games for the St. Louis Browns in
1945. He actually had only one arm and played center field with an unpadded
glove. He had an intricate and well developed routine for catching the
ball, removing the ball from his glove, and throwing the ball to the
infield.
POLO GROUNDS During the
1880's, the National League baseball team was known as the New Yorkers.
There was another team in town, the New York Metropolitans of the fledgling
American Association. Both teams played their season-opening games on a
field across from Central Park's northeastern corner at 110th Street and
Fifth Avenue. The land on which they played was owned by New York Herald
Tribune publisher James Gordon Bennett. Bennett and his society friends had
played polo on that field and that's how the baseball field came to be
known as the Polo Grounds. In 1889 the New York National League team moved
its games to a new location at 157th Street and Eighth Avenue. The site was
dubbed the new Polo Grounds and eventually was simply called the Polo
Grounds. Polo was never played there.
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Harvey
Frommer is now in his 38th year of writing books. A noted oral
historian and sports journalist, the author of 41 sports books including
the classics: "New York City Baseball 1947-1957," "Shoeless
Joe and Ragtime Baseball," “Remembering Yankee Stadium” and
Remembering Fenway Park,” his book on the first Super
Bowl will be published fall 2014.
The prolific Frommer’s work has appeared in such outlets as the New
York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Daily News,
Newsday, USA Today, Men's Heath, The Sporting News,Bleacher Report.
FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a
readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for
extended periods of time.
*Autographed copies of Frommer
books are available direct from the author.
This
Article is Copyright © 1995 - 2013 by Harvey Frommer. All rights
reserved worldwide.
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