Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

We are having a cold winter here in Northern California and it got me to thinking about summer, baseball, and the good old days. Now I know that low temperatures in the mid twenties at night and daytime highs in the high forties is not cold for you guys in the Midwest and northeast, but it is cold for us. But anyway it makes think about summer and baseball. I have a few specific memories but I was thinking more in generalities like the wind at Candlestick Park before they enclosed it or after they enclosed it for that matter. Or Willie McCovey and Willie Stargell hitting tape measure homers over the right field bleachers (before enclosure) and watching the baseballs bounce and hit cars and the parking lot. Or watching that other Willie chasing down fly balls in center field and of course his home run hitting in a tough home run park. Or the perfect summer day other than being at the ballpark was to listen to Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons on the radio and their home run calls of "bye bye baby" and "you can tell it good bye" I have many others as I am sure you all have and I would love to here other people's stories during this Hot Stove season.

My most vivid memories are still of Harry Carry broadcasting for the Cardinals back in the '60s. Along with Jack Buck as the sidekick, those two were quite a tandem.

Harry's trademark call was something like this:

"There's a long fly ball to left field, it might be, it could be, it is....a home run. HOLY COW!!!"

Alas, Harry was exiled to Chicago by Gussie Busch. Then Mike ("moon man", "marble-mouth") Shannon joined Jack in the radio booth around 1970 or so, and is still there. They could write a book on some of the Shannonisms he's uttered over the radio waves. Kind of a re-incarnation of ol' Diz in the booth.

I read a funny story about Dizzy Dean just recently. When being chided about some of his grammar and English he used in the broadcast booth by being asked: "Dizzy, do you know the King's English?" Diz replied: "Sure I do. And I'm pretty sure the Queen is too!"

Growing up in L.A. and going to Dodger Stadium as a kid in the mid 70's and 80's, I enjoyed my summer nights listening to Vinny!

Scully is so well-regarded for his mastery of the English language and his enviable demeanor that the “voice of the Dodgers” has become the “voice of the World Series” year after year for the CBS Radio Network. In 1976, Dodger fans voted Scully the “most memorable personality” in Los Angeles Dodger history.

"All year long they looked to him (Kirk Gibson) to light the fire and all year long he answered the demands. High fly ball into right field. She is gone! [pause] In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened."

Suppose my favorite memories are Lou Brock on first. Will this be the pitch he goes on?

Second I suppose would be more recent. Taking my mom to Ranger games. She loved it when Ichiro came to town. She had her own system of giving the players nicknames. They had one CFer who did not last long who was really fast. But what caught her attention was he was always smiling. So naturally she called him Smiley. She would love watching Profar and has probably given him a similar name if she can watch games from where her seat in heaven.

As a young boy (many, many years ago) I would listen to Balt. Oriole games on a transistor radio in my back yard. Being from a suburb of Boston, (the R Sox stunk then) the games wouldn't come in well til around 8:00 to 8:30 pm. Always remember Steve Barber, Milt Pappas pitching great, but then they traded Milt to Cinn for my fav player F Robinson in 1965.
I was overjoyed by that move, turned out well too. Great summers with a winning team, listening 'live' with Chuck Thompson and John Miller calling the games. Great memories.

I think of the old Fenway Park pee troughs and actually miss them...

Every winter, usually sometime in January or early February, I pull out some Roger Angell book that I've read a hundred times and read it again. "The Summer Game" was my first, my parents gave me a used beat up old copy that they got from the town book fair, knowing that I loved baseball and that reading was good. I'm not sure they ever realized what a treasure it was. I still have it, and others, and still read those wonderful essays over and over. Roger is 92 now.




From Wikipedia:

One of the most striking items from Angell's essays is one ultimately published in "Season Ticket," involving a spring training trip to see the Baltimore Orioles. While there, Angell interviews Earl Weaver, then the former Orioles manager, about Cal Ripken, Jr., who was about to start his rookie season. Angell quotes Weaver as saying about Ripken that, at whichever position the team decides (between shortstop and third base), "his manager can just write his name into the lineup every day for the next fifteen years; that's how good he is." Starting that year, Ripken in fact was written into lineups every day for more than fifteen years, setting the all-time consecutive games-played streak of 2,632 games. Angell's quote of Weaver stands as one of the most incredibly prescient (and well-documented) "first-guesses" in recorded literature.

PJ ALEXSON wrote:

Every winter, usually sometime in January or early February, I pull out some Roger Angell book that I've read a hundred times and read it again. "The Summer Game" was my first, my parents gave me a used beat up old copy that they got from the town book fair, knowing that I loved baseball and that reading was good. I'm not sure they ever realized what a treasure it was. I still have it, and others, and still read those wonderful essays over and over. Roger is 92 now.

This brings back a lot of memories too. Roger Angel is my favorite baseball writer and the Summer Game is my favorite baseball book. It's to baseball as the Endless Summer is to surfing. It came out when I was a sophomore in high school and I read it then and read it again 35 years later and it was just as fresh. I don't know if I'll read it every year like you PJ but I am already overdue because it's been over five years since I last read it. I wish I still had my original copy with the illustration of the Baseball player on the front.

That book opened up a whole new world of baseball to me. This is the copy I have (without the note):

I got a small radio for Christmas in 1978. From '79 to '83 I listened to almost every Expo game. Listening to Duke Snider made me go to the library and get my hands on 'The Boys of Summer', still my favorite baseball book.

Growing up on Maryland's Eastern Shore I remember watching the Orioles on television the first time they went to Royals Stadium after it opened in 1973. I still remember how beautiful the stadium looked as Chuck Thompson gave a tour. The fountains, the artificial turf (yes it looked cool back in the day), the crown scoreboard. Everything. My mom remembers me telling her that I wanted to visit that stadium someday and see the Orioles play there.

Well, almost forty years later, and I'm an usher at Kauffman Stadium. This past spring my parents came to town and went to their first major league game in thirty five years. Yep, Orioles and Royals. Granted, our Royals haven't been very good for quite awhile, but I never grow tired of getting paid to watch baseball and visit with baseball fans.