[rollei_list] OT: Baseball

We are an international list and so perhaps a discussion of Cricket or Soccer would be more in line.
I would like to bring attention, though, to the three books by Peter Morris on the evolution of Baseball in the US and Canada. A GAME OF INCHES (two volumes, volume I: THE GAME IN THE FIELD, volume II: THE GAME BEHIND THE SCENES) and BUT DIDN'T WE HAVE FUN?
I was only eight when Baseball was destroyed forever by the improper move of the Dodgers and the Giants to the Left Coast. But, then, I was four when "the wrong team left Boston" as the white-collar Braves went to Milwaukee.
Traditional baseball had two leagues, the Senior Circuit and that most pompous of the Minor Leagues, the American League, with each league having eight teams. Each league played 154 games with each team playing every other team 22 times. Major League teams ran from Boston to St Louis and from Cleveland to Washington: New York had two teams and Brooklyn a third in that market. Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St Louis had two teams, one in each league. (The St Louis Browns, who later morphed into the Baltimore Orioles, were renowned for that lousy record: "St Louis: First in Beer, First in Shoes, Last in the American League".)
Due to railroad schedules, the American League teams played six days and were off on Mondays as a travel day, the National League doing the same on Thursdays. Mondays and Thursdays are still light days in Major League ball.
Baseball is full of oddiities but my personal favorite is Connie Macki, the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1900 to 1902 and for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1902 to 1950. By the end, he owned the team and the stadium. His grandson served as a Senator from Florida for a term or two. Mack ended up holding almost all managerial records through sheer longevity: most wins, most losses, most this, most that.
I have a Connie Mack baseball on my desk, the only fee I received from a divorce case I handled twenty yeas or more ago. It is from either the '32 or '33 Athletics. And I knew a guy once who knew Honus Wagner well and who had met Ty Cobb and the Babe.
And, yes, I do remember Forbes Field. And Memorial Stadium. And Candlestick Park. <sigh>
Peter Morris' books are worthy reads though he loses focus when the discussions run much past 1900. 

Marc


msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!

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