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Top 10 Worst Autograph Scenarios

June 3, 2012

Bob Hulsey of Astros Daily. This guy takes on baseball the way all living creatures take on oxygen.

Our friend and great and spirited Editor in Chief at Astros Daily, Bob Hulsey, wrote me the following note yesterday as a comment upon my Forrest Gump at the Pearly Gates column on Saturday: “Mickey Mantle said once he dreamed he had died and was at the pearly gates. St. Peter said to him, ‘Mickey, we know who you are and with the things you’ve done in your life, I’m afraid I can’t let you in. But since you’re here, would you mind signing a few dozen balls for us?’”

Bob’s history reminder gave me further pause to think that Mantle may have signed a gazillion autographs for Dallas angel cops who escorted him safely home and away from DUI charges while he was still in a state of alcohol amnesia (blackout) and out on the town during his flaming out retirement years.

This morning I wake up to the light-hearted thought: What are the worst circumstances for a famous athlete when it comes to the timing and other circumstances of an autograph request? Here are few that occur to me. And I’d love to hear what any of you may care to add to the list:

(10) Going into surgery for an emergency medical procedure, your doctor asks for your autograph and adds this comment: “You never know how valuable this particular signature may be tomorrow morning.”

(9) As you are signing off on the mediated property distribution agreement with the wife who is divorcing you, her attorney asks, “Since you already have that pen in your hand, would you please sign this ball for my kid? He’s your biggest fan.”

(8) “Hi there! Remember me? My name’s Roxie. We met in the hotel bar last night after the game and the hotel photographer took this picture of you, sort of lunging for me as you fell into my lap with your tongue hanging out. – Would you please sign it for me? – And make it personal to Roxie please.”

(7) “Yeah, it’s a legal summons I’m bringing you, but it’s nothing personal. That’s my job as a server. Just sign the ball for my kid too while were at it. It’s not going to kill you.”

(6) “C’mon, mister! This is the men’s room – and I’m taking  a leak here! I can’t sign an autograph for you now and, even if I could, I wouldn’t. I saw what you did as you finished your own business. You didn’t even wash your hands before your reached into that bag for that ball and pen.”

(5) “Yeah, I’m the plumber from the company you called about this flood in your house, Mr. Very Big, but I’ve got an even better deal for you. Sign ten balls for me first off and I will not only waive the $75 diagnostic fee – I’ll also give you 1% off the final bill for each ball, starting with the ten I’ve requested and going on up from there.”

(4) “Sorry, Mr. Very Big,” the night club waiter apologizes to the big league star where he sits with his girl friend at his quiet corner table, ” but I have been asked to request your autograph on this ball. Your wife is sitting over there and she has personally asked for it. She says to tell you also that it is the last painless communication you may expect to see from her in the foreseeable future.”

(3) “Daddy, I know you don’t have time to play catch with me, but could you, at least, sign this ball for me? That way I can have an easier time telling the other kids that you have all kinds of time for me.”

(2) “Sorry, Mom. If you want my autograph, go online and Google Tri-Star.”

(1) “Mr. Fan, you’re asking me to sign a ball that’s very old, one that’s only been signed by Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Duke Snider. I do get that you’re wanting to start your own collection of center fielder autographs, but do you really want to add the name of  ’Jordan Schafer’ to this special ball?”

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Forrest Gump at the Pearly Gate

June 2, 2012

What Happened When St. Peter Met Forrest Gump at the Pearly Gate.

The day finally arrives. Forrest Gump dies and is met at the Pearly Gate on his way to Heaven by St. Peter himself. As is routine, the Gates are closed as Forrest approaches, signs the check-in sheet, and takes a seat on the bench to await his admissions interview with St. Peter.

When St. Peter finally approaches Forrest Gump, he is kindly and clear in his communication with the simple man who once amazed the world in so many varied ways. “Hello, Forrest,” St. Peter smilingly says in a soft voice. “We’ve heard so much about you up here. I welcome you, but I have t advise you also. Because this place is filling up fast, the Lord has now put me in charge of administering a new three question test to all Heaven-eligible candidates. If you have led a good life, and if you can correctly answer the three questions I have for you, the Pearly gates will unlock, swing open, and bid you welcome to Heaven for all eternity.”

“Fair enough, Forrest?” Peter asks.

“Sounds about right to me,” Forrest answers. “I wasn’t expecting nothing like this, but that’s OK. You see, life, and now death, are both like a box of chocolates…”

“Yes, Forrest, we even know that one up here,” St. Peter interrupts. “You never know what you’re going to get. – Please. Just answer the questions I have for you. I’m sure things will be fine.”

“All right,” Forrest bellows.

“Let’s get started,” Peter urges. “Shall we?”

“All right,” Forrest again answers.

“All righty then,” Peter continues, “here’s the soup of things. I’m going to tell you your three questions, but I don’t want you to answer any of them right away. I want you to first think about them on the waiting area bench for about ten minutes before I again ask for your answers, one single question at a time. – Is that OK with you?”

“All right,” Forrest again says, in drone overdrive.

“Forrest Gump,” Peter says supportively, “here are your three questions for contemplation: First: What two days of the week begin with the letter ‘T’? – Second: How many seconds are there in a year? – And third: What is God’s first name?”

After revealing the questions, St. Peter walked quietly away as Forrest Gump sat expressionless on the bench alone for about ten minutes. Then St. Peter returned with a calm, clear advisory: “OK, Forrest, now I’m going to ask for your answers to each question. Get them all right and the Pearly Gates to Heaven shall swing wide open to you. – Miss one, and you don’t get in.”

“All right,” Forrest monotoned.

“First,” Peter stressed, “what are the two days of each week that begin with ‘T’?”

“That was the easiest one,” Forrest answered. “The two days of the week that begin with ‘T’ are Today and Tomorrow.”

Taken back, at first, St. Peter had to concede that his lack of clearer specificity had left the door open for Forrest’s answer. “Because you are correct in the strictest sense, I’m going to have to give you credit for your answers to the first question. Now let’s move along. Your next question was about the number of seconds in a single year. Were you able to do the math on that one in your head?”

“Didn’t need to do no math,” Forrest said. “I already knowed that there there’s 12 months in each year – and that each of them 12 months only has one 2nd to it – as in January 2nd, February 2nd, and so non, and so forth. Thy only count up to 23 and then you have to stop because you just run out of months. – The answer to the second question is the only one that cane be – there’s 12 seconds in every year,”

St. Peter’s head is now swimming over ho easy it is to follow the logic of Forrest Gump to a second answer that was both unexpected, but in easy bounds technically as another unexpected, but correct answer. “OK, Forrest, I won’t argue the point. I’ll give you credit for that one too, but you will have to answer the third question about God’s first name. I’m sure you’ve heard it somewhere.”

“That was the toughest one, Mr. St. Peter, Your Honor, Sir!” Forrest Gump gushed at the thought of how the light dawned on him, just as he had come close to giving up. “What helped me most was earlier when you told me to listen for the answers in the voice of the Lord and, being’s how I always heard God’s voice in his music, it suddenly occurred  to me what it is. – God’s first name is Andy!”

“Andy?” Peter asked aghast. Andy?”

“Why sure,” Forest smiled. “Don’t you remember the mention of God’s name in the church song:”

Forrest breaks into song: “Andy walks – with me; Andy talks – with me; Andy tells me – that I am – his own.”

Somewhere in the second chorus, St. Peter had heard enough. His arms flung wide as the Pearly Gates also creaked open for Forrest Gump.

“Run, Forrest, run,” St. Peter shouted. “Get thine self through those Pearly Gates before some celestial bureaucrat comes around and changes the rules of the game for both of us.”

 

__________________________________________________________________________

Editorial Note: I can’t take credit for the origin of this story. A dear friend, Miriam Edelman, sent it to me the other day as one of those anonymous pieces that find their way into the FWD reincarnation life stream and bounce around forever from there. All I did was rewrite the composition and ending of the piece, retaining only the two character scenario and the three question set up for what I feel is a better ending.

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J.R. Richard Reaches Astros Walk of Fame Today

June 1, 2012

Bill McCurdy, John Storenski, & J.R. Richard, Josephine’s Ristorante, 2002.

No former Astros player is more deserving of the honor. When the name of J.R. Richard is plaqued into the new Astros Walk of Fame on the sidewalk around Minute Maid Park today, it will be a recognition of the man who is collectively over-due, most deserving, and still a tad shy of full payment on honors and acknowledgements due from the club he once elevated to new heights until the 1980 date he literally collapsed in the dirt of the Astrodome from at July 1980 stroke.

What was the big result for Houston baseball? Former Astros player and manager Art Howe called  it out in a Chronicle story on J.R. Richard just the other day. Howe expressed his very clear opinion that, had the the Astros not lost Richard in the summer of 1980 to a stroke, that the 1980 Astros of Manager Bill Virdon  would have taken the National League pennant and then  been favored to have won the World Series.

Didn’t happen. That’s not how life works.

The stroke ended Richard’s career, almost took his life, and also started J.R. on a downward spiral through his now infamous period as a homeless street person. It also started the legend of how J.R. Richard got there by genetic misfortune, a self-abusive life style, and the neglectful overworking misuse of his giant talent by the Houston Astros.

The stories and legal tension between the Astros and J.R. Richard over the question of stroke-causation opened up a giant hole in J.R. Richard’s life following the stroke. It was a human sinkhole that was big enough to swallow a man who stood 6’8″ and weighed well over 300 pounds.

Back in 2002, I nominated J.R. Richard for induction into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame. It was around this time that he and I also met and got to be friends around our mutual interest in baseball. In 2002, he man was still struggling to right the shipwreck  of his personal life from 22 years earlier, but he does seem to have made some progress since that time through his 2010 marriage and his newly chosen profession or “calling” as a preacher.

Ten years ago, J.R. Richard was still a great big kid that just wanted to play – as long as he didn’t have to pay. That trait alone did not make him unusual in the sense that many former famous athletes get into – or even remained mired – in a condition we have now come to call and know as “entitlement.”

In 2002, nobody ever felt more entitled to a free ride than J.R. Richard. It wasn’t an intentionally malicious position he took either. It was just how he felt as one result of the stroke and what seemed to J.R., at least, like his abandonment by the Astros and baseball following his 1980 stroke.

I think entitlement was a concept that J.R. Richard had mixed up with love. (i.e., “If you love me, you will do for me. Feed me. Pick up the tab.”)

We never felt personally stung by any of J.R.’s entitlement hungers, but I do know that some others did. One time, J.R. learned that my wife Norma knew how to cook ox tail soup – and he just loved the taste of ox tails as one of his favorite soul food treats.

J.R. Richard, Texas Baseball Hall of Fame, 2002.

“Norma,” J.R. asked one day on a drop-in visit, “would you please cook me some ox tails some time soon? – And when I say ox tails – I don’t mean no short order plate. – I mean a whole great big old boiling pot-load stomach-filling several plate-loads of them?”

Sweet Norma smiled. And Sweet Norma did. And J.R. Richard came over and consumed everything that was in the pot before he almost passed out. He felt full. And he felt loved. Meanwhile, I passed on ox tails in favor of steak, but I felt loved too.

J.R. Richard was also still a pretty good basketball shot back in 2002. On another visit, we shot some horse on our driveway hoop until J.R. tired of all the easy shots and took the ball down the right side of the house to take a shot from about 50 feet away from the imaginary far right corner. It was a shot that had to partially disappear over an exterior house gable before again finding view in the driveway at the basket.

J.R. took the shot. It was nothing but net on the first and only try.

Game over.

Here’s hoping that the game is only warming up on the peaceful valley, gets-his-full-recognitiom side of recovery for J.R. Richard.

After this year, the Astros have only two more numbers of former players that also need to be retired and those are J.R. Richard’s # 50 and Joe Niekro’s # 36.

Let’s get ‘er done. Mr. Postolous. The sooner the better. These great franchise stars of the past are way over-due.

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Criger Was a Catcher, Not a Crook

May 31, 2012

 Lou Criger had a 16-year big league career as a catcher for the Cleveland Spiders (1896-98), St. Louis Cardinals (1899-1900), Boston Red Sox (1901-08), St. louis Browns (1909, 1912), and New York Yankees (1910). He batted only .221 for his career, never getting more than 22 extra base hits is a single season.

Criger was not a hitter, but he more than made up for it as one of the finest defensive catchers of his era and for his reputation as the preferred receiver of the winningest pitcher of all time, Cy Young. Lou Criger was the man behind the plate for most of the big games in Cy Young’s career, including his 1904 perfect game and his 1908 no-hitter.

There was one other notable mark in Lou Criger’s history. As the result of a courageous act of honesty, Lou Criger was granted a lifetime pension at a time when major league baseball was handing out benefit programs to no former players. On page 287 of John Thorn’s “Baseball in the Garden of Eden,” the author writes that the American League’s reward to Criger came as the result of his refusal and prompt report of a gambler’s $12,000 offer to throw the first 1903 World Series for the Red Sox against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The offer represented an amount that as three times as large as Criger’s $4,000 salary from Boston.

“In gratitude,” writes Thorn, “the American League awarded Criger a lifetime pension at a time when no player received postcareer benefits.”

What Thorn’s account fails to show is that none of this action took place immediately. Coverage of Criger’s career in the Baseball Reference Bio Project leaves what happened next to unclarity, One of two things happened: (1) Lou Criger apparently was asked to sit on the bribe attempt as his personal secret while the American League dealt with the issue quietly. Twenty years later, he returns to American League President Ban Johnson and uses his early career honesty as bargaining chip for gaining help with a serious help condition; or (2) Criger simply holds the matter secret from everyone for twenty years and, in 1923, he then goes to AL President Ban Johnson seeking help with the treatment expenses he is going through for tuberculosis.

Either way, Johnson is impressed by Criger’s character and need – and quickly arranges for a life pension. Johnson probably assumes that Lou Criger does not have long to live, but that turns out to be wrong when the old catcher survives another eleven years, finally passing away on May 14, 1934.

The underside of this story is that the gambler who made the 1903 pre-World Series bribe offer to Criger for $12,000 in exchange for “soft pitch” calls was a fellow named Anderson, who had been personally introduced to Lou Criger prior to the first Series by no one less than the biggest sleaze ball character of the era, Muggsey John McGraw, the New York Giants manager – and the same guy who would kill the idea of a second consecutive and voluntary World Series in 1904 between his club and the reigning champions, the Boston Red Sox.

The gambling fix flies swarmed all around some of the game’s biggest stars through the first three decades of the 20th century, but none attracted more attention than John McGraw. It’s too bad old Muggsey never got what he really had coming to him.

 

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Predicting Wireless Telephony

May 30, 2012

Wireless Telephony? – What will they think of next?

 

Predicting the future has always been as easy as placing your bets on trends that are already in place and moving and then not having these items knocked away by true future events that we can’t even see coming at the time we open our mouthes. When this thing called radio came along at the turn of the 20th century, it came on the heels of the telegraph and telephone, the first two media of electronic communication that changed the world. Therefore, it was the easiest projected footfall of logic that radio’s next contribution would be to the idea of interpersonal communication between points A and B without the cumbersome attachment of messaging to wires.

With the production of the radio, people could see, even in the early 1900s, the coming of the day in which we would be in touch with each other through wireless electronics. We simply did not have the whole expanding picture that television, the microchip, space satellites, and a little item to be called the World Wide Web in view back then.

What’s interesting to me is that the invention of radio did not come along with an understanding of the media’s value as a broadcast item from the very start. That outreach to massive one-way communication of news was still the purview of newspapers back in those earlier times. It would not be until the 1920s that radio began to come into its own as a broadcast medium for reaching the masses – leaving wireless two-way communication between individuals on a mass level to Dick Tracy and his “two-way wrist radio” in the funny pages.

We’ve certainly unshackled ourselves from landline telephony in the past five years, have we not?

The Houston Post came close to seeing the city’s 1980s future when they published this view of their vision back in the 1920s. They just missed on the allowability of downtown oil drilling, unless those are really buildings designed to resemble derricks.

 

Earlier Houston projections of the city’s future face have been better than some of those that most of us have seen of New York City. Theirs always include that legion of flying mass transit balloons going in and out of the projected Manhattan skyline – a little item that was never to be for a number of intertwined technological and cultural reasons. Although New York’s predictors got the perpendicular “up” part of their expected growth right too.

If there was any easy trend in place to predict “more to come” about in the 1920s America it was “up, up, and away” for downtown growth in major city areas.

I started my wandering and sometimes wayward professional life of studies in 1956 as a radio and television major at the University of Houston, a school that early on established itself as a leader in the collegiate field by establishing the first public educational TV channel in the USA at KUHF-TV.

Our problem back then was that no one really saw the potential for television. Staff and students alike were all pretty much treating TV in 1956 as though it were “radio with pictures” – and, boy, were we all so very, very wrong!

Oh well, by the year 2050, we should have pretty much cured, or masked over, the presence of ambulatory schizophrenia in the general population by implanting the microchip for two-way wireless telepathy in everyone’s brain. If you then see someone sitting alone on a park bench, and you also witness his or lips move, you won’t know if he’s talking to himself – or else, simply calling home to ask “what’s for dinner?”

Happy futuring, dear friends!

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Who Do the Astros Pick as #1 in the MLB Draft?

May 29, 2012
          How long has it been since the Astros have had a player capable of inspiring the kind of bovine adulation that our cow friend in the cartoon is getting? Will having the first choice in the upcoming  draft really become the medium that brings the best player prospect in the world? Or will it simply be the opportunity to pick the most signable player that the team can afford who also comes the Astros way without a pain-in-the-rear agent who just can’t wait to turn all success in Houston for a few years into a bidding war down the road? – Well, maybe all agents are that way to a a lesser or greater extent, but they aren’t all named Scott Boras.
          The first part of the question, the name of the player, we’ll soon enough learn when the draft takes place. And I feel confident that Jeff Luhnow and Company are about to cover this ground from every data and variable angle level available before they make that precious choice. More and more, this guys impresses as an analyst that leaves no stone unturned on goals, ways, and means – and especially when it comes to building a talent base.
          Jeff Luhnow is not a guy who is out there, simply looking to get lucky when it comes to player acquisition. He’s out to make the best choice he has among all options from a system aiming to becoming more reliable and more replicable as time goes by. This is the mindset that now dominates the rebuilding process of the Houston Astros.
          SABR friend Mark Wernick wrote some of us the following note this Memorial Day weekend. I’d like to reprint it here as a broader invitation to all of you to express your own thoughts here on your own favorite needs, players, and warnings for the Astros in the coming draft. Just write your heart out in the comment section, if you so desire. It’s not every year that the Astros have the number one pick period – and a chance to turn or burn the road to future success.
          First, read Mark Wernick’s remarks and check out the talent rankings on available top players through the link he has provided:. – Bill McCurdy
          Take her from here, Mark Wernick. – What should the Astros do?
          So there’s one perk that comes out of our  106  loss debacle last year.  And now the big moment is at hand:  what will we do with our # 1 pick?  I’ll give us this much,  we have top-notch fielding.  I like what I’ve seen of our defense.
 
          We need pitching.  Our pitching is so thin.  Seasoned Stanford pitcher Mark Appel is a highly touted choice.  
 
          We need hitting.  Our hitting is woeful,  as the just-completed series with the Dodgers makes so clear.  We were very competitive with the Dodgers,  surprisingly so,  considering they have great pitching,  and great hitting  (sans Kemp this series.)  The folks at My MLB Draft.com have us picking Byron Buxton with our  # 1 pick in their mock draft.
 
          He’s fresh out of high school and apparently declaring for the draft.  For those curious about him,  here’s an article that seems to imply we’re likely to be regarded as the Village Idiots of MLB if we don’t select him.  
 
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/albert_chen/05/22/byron.buxton/index.html 
 
          Do we risk a Mark Newfield or a Brian Taylor or another early-career Phil Nevin if we choose him?  I do really like the way his character is described,  and character is  80%  of the hurdle.   He’s raw,  unproven,  plays against questionable competition in rural Georgia,  and is likely two or three,  maybe even four or five years away.  Not sure I’ll live that long.  But he threw a football  82  yards.  (Yes,  he was his team’s quarterback.)  He’s also his school’s best pitcher and clocks  99  on the gun.
 
          I’d like to see us take this guy,  if not for me,  then for the next generation.  If he has a Stan Musial-type career,  and I can stay alive for all of it,  I’ll be a bit shy of  90 when he retires.
          I’ll go with a smile on my face if he ties on the whole 2.5 decades with the Astros,  and certainly so if he helps us to a few World Series titles along the way.  I see him as the type of player around which a team could be built.  Tough to build a team around a pitcher,  and we have some building to do.
 
          I invite follow-up discussion about this.  Who should we take with our  # 1 pick?
 
          Mark Wernick, Larry Dierker Chapter, SABR
 

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Remembering Uncle Carroll on Memorial Day

May 26, 2012

Major Carroll Houston Teas, United States Army AIr Corps

I already wrote the most personal Memorial Day story of my life a couple of years ago. Here’s the link, if you haven’t seen it, or, if you care to see it again.

https://thepecanparkeagle.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/remembering-uncle-carroll/

And please, please, please – feel free to post your own memoirs of the special people in your life whom we should not either forget on this latest Memorial Day observance of 2012. The Pecan Park Eagle would be most honored to have their names mention here.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day with family and the other special people in your lives this weekend. I’m still not up to speed health-wise, but I’m hanging in there.

God Bless America.

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My Catch of the Season

May 25, 2012

“I’d rather catch a baseball than a dad gum cold.”

Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s just the bad luck of being somewhere someone else sneezed at just the wrong time for me. Or maybe it’s just life as we know it on Planet Pollution. Whatever it was, I came down with an upper respiratory infection Monday night that has taken me through an initial loss of voice, sore throat, coma-like sleep, and now the purgation of phlegm that feels like gravel that’s been first run through a trough of molasses. I think I’m on the upside of things now, but I’m still having trouble staying awake for long periods of time. And don’t worry, I’m not likely to show up anyplace you might be going until the middle of next week.

Good old Vick’s Vaporub. It may not really help you get well, but it still makes you think it’s helping. Just open the bottle and rub a little under your nose. And hey – I’m on the road again.

Just a note on the obnoxious visiting fans. Bill Hickman is a SABR friend of mine and a devoted Chicago Cubs fan – and nothing like the clowns who show up at Minute Maid Park wearing Cubs gear. Here’s what Bill had to say and how I answered, in case you missed it:

“Just a reminder that stereotyping is always dangerous. This Cubs fan is hardly a Yuppy. I know plenty of other Cub fans who are older and have been through the Cubs’ travails for a number of years as well. We don’t go to the ballpark to get soused or throw beer on anyone. We simply root for the team which represents our hometown, just as the Houston fans so passionately do.” … Bill Hickman, Chicago Cubs fan.

“Thanks, Bill, for stepping up to the plate for Chicago and all its Cub fans on the North Side. (I never met any Cub fans on the South Side.) I was remiss in my utter failure to point out that all Cub fans making the road trip to Houston are not rude or falling down drunk – and that includes the fan that brought the “cursed” sign with him to a game here three years ago. He was just carrying out his private act of hope in the mire of historic despair.

“Any Houston fan who could meet you or a number of other people I know from Chicago would have to back off the totality of their issue with Cub fans as loose cannons. Unfortunately, that would not stop the harm to Chicago’s image that is caused by too large a number of the drunken idiots who throw on Cub Jerseys and come to the games in Houston. Those are the folks causing the stereotyping.

“John Q. Public isn’t going to spend this much time sorting out the good from the bad, the acceptable from the unacceptable.” – Bill McCurdy, Houston Astros fan and blogger-in-charge at The Pecan Park Eagle Press.

It helps me to get well to know that baseball has fans like Bill Hickman in Chicago, Bud Kane in St. Louis, Mike Moran in Los Angeles, and Bob Dorrill in Houston. I could name many others in pretty close to all the MLB cities, but we would be here all day.

Bill’s right. We need to be more careful not to stereotype any city for the rude behavior of some fans. It’s the downside to all the easy access that we fans have to MLB jerseys and caps today. If you’ve got the money, they will sell the gear and the image of any city to any jackass who steps up and plunks down the cash.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend, everybody. I’ll see you back here tomorrow unless I slip back into a coma

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Obnoxious Visiting Team Fans

May 24, 2012

Cub fans bring their lamentation over 1908 to Minute Maid Park in Houston, Is that act, in itself, obnoxious – or is it the falling-down, drunken, discourteous way they try to make their case the total behavior that seals our negative opinion of them?

Friend and Astro usher Bill Hale says the Chicago Cubs fans are the most obnoxious fans that visit Minute Maid Park and he should know, better than most. Dealing with fans, after all, is what ushers are hired to do. Bill says more Cub fans are asked to leave the ballpark than any other.

Up til next season, we’ve mainly been dealing with fans of other National League cities, although we’ve just gotten a preview this past weekend that Texas Ranger fans may be on our list of undesirable home game companions in the future. I personally don’t have any problem with true fans of other cities coming here, wearing their own club’s gear, and cheering like crazy for the visitors. It’s our fault if we cannot answer in kind as Astro fans.

My problem is with the “bandwagon Houston area residents” who line up with the Rangers, or any other team, just because they are winning, and then come to our ballpark dressed as the visitors to cheer against their own home team.

Transplants from Dallas, Chicago, Boston, and Atlanta, for example, are forgiven their support for “the other.” The “pick-a-winner” Houston area people are not. Not in my book, Of course, I may be speaking through the voice of a dead or dying culture that says that loyalty seeds and grows from your earliest experiences. Maybe today loyalty is simply another thing we place as a choice, like picking Apple over PC, or Sprint over AT&T, or Canon over Sony.

After years of watching the Cubs, Braves, and Cardinals bring their fans either to Houston to see the games, or from Houston to see the games in the other team’s gear, we are about to start finding out what awaits us in the American League that may be comparable – or worse. So far, the Red Sox look to be worse than anything we’ve ever seen from any NL club team and its fans. That bunch that came here for a weekend series in 2011 even brought their own songs, Minute Maid Park was turned into “Fenway Park Southwest.”

We’ll see soon enough. 2013 will be here before you know it.

Minute Maid Park, May 19, 2012. – All I care to say is: I hope these two fans didn’t grow up in Spring Branch or Meyerland.

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Baseball Language Issue in the 1890s

May 23, 2012

John T. Brush

Sometimes we romanticize baseball in the olden days to a point of ignoring the ugly reality of how players often behaved and spoke to  each other and umpires during the games. Can you imagine the reaction that clubs were starting to receive from the Victorian element that was starting to support the sport to the extent of bringing ladies to the games – and then hearing some umpire-baiting angry player shout at an umpire these exact words?

“KISS MY A**, YOU SON OF A B****!”

Guess what, folks? That exact epithet was just one of the more printable expressions recorded on a list ordered into preparation in March 1898 by New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds owner John T. Brush. This was during the brief period in which men of power and money could own more than one club in the same league. Brush wanted to “suppress obscene, indecent, and vulgar language on the ball field by players.”

As a result of Brush’s initiative, a document entitled “Special Instructions to Players” was delivered to all twelve National League clubs of those words and expressions that were forbidden from further use at the risk of serious consequence if established by conclusive proof. The unclear penalty ranged from removal of the offending player from the field “for a day or all time.”

Not so surprisingly, only one known copy of this blue language filled document survives to this day. I’m not really sure where it is, but historian John Thorn gives it a pretty good treatment on page 246-248 of his “Baseball in the Garden of Eden.”

As we understand better today, banning bad words doesn’t make them go away. The language only changes with the culture of the people playing and watching the games. Throw in a few thousand people getting beered-up without eating and the formula for unfit family hearing goes through the roof.

What do you think of player and fan behavior at the ballpark in 2012? Are these problems or not?

And please comment. I’d really like to hear what you think.

 

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