Texas League: Smaller Rosters, Bigger Decisions

December 18, 2011

The Last Round Up of the Houston Buffs in 1995 Brought Back Memories of the 19-Man Roster Days.

Texas League: 19-Man Rosters Intensified Managerial Decisions

In the era of post World War II Texas League baseball, those 19-player rosters intensified critical decision-making on how the game would be played – and it all started with how a club met their needs by position. Most Texas League clubs carried 8 pitchers, but some rarer instances did occur when a club tried to get by with 7 pitchers for part of the season, Placing 2 catchers was standard, but he second guy, if not both receivers, often had the ability to also play one of the infield or outfield line spots. The other 7 starters also included several players who had the ability to play multiple positions and the 2 utility players usually stood as the personification of their title, with capacities at several infield spots, including catcher, and also outfield.

During the game, it was not unusual for TL pitchers to be used as both pinch hitters and pinch runners. Fortunately for the game, this was the era of the long innings starter. Starters began with the hope and expectation that they would finish the game too – and it’s just as well. With an 8-man pitching roster, there was little margin for error and no room for today’s specialty situation pitcher. Almost all relievers started at times. And when any man started, he was expected to last out there as long as possible.

The 1951 Texas League Champion Houston Buffs as a Model

The ’51 Buffs are about as successful a model of the 19-man roster as I can think of. Of course, I can also think of the 1947 and 1954 champion Buffs in that same light, but let’s stick with the ’51 roster for demonstration purposes:

8 pitchers

(1) Al Papa1 (23-9, 2.51 era, 272 ip); (2) Octavio Rubert (19-5, 2.28 era, 225 ip); (3) Vinegar Bend Mizell (16-14, 1.97 era, 238 ip); (4) Fred Martin (15-11, 2.54 era, 237 ip); (5) Dick Bokelmann (10-2, 0.74 era, 85 ip); (6) Jack Crimian (1-2, 0.90 era, 30 ip); (7) Mike Clark (10-7, 2.78 era, 139 ip); and (8) Elroy Joyce (1-2, 4.79 era 82 ip).

The five starters (Papai, Mizell, Martin, Rubert, and Clark) started 141 of the Buffs’ 154 games.

2 catchers

(9) Les Fusselman (.255 ba, 12 hr, 132 g) and (10) Dick Landis (.199, 0 hr, 54 g).

7 other starters

(11) Jerry Witte, IB (.249 ba, 38 hr, 159 g); (12) Ben Steiner, 2B (.262 ba, 1 hr, 130 g); (13) Eddie Kazak, 3B (.304 ba, 13 hr, 104 g); (14) Billy Costa, SS (.255 ba, 0 hr, 120 g); (15) Larry Miggins, LF (.260 ba, 27 hr, 157 g); (16) Pete Lewis, CF (.199 ba, 2 hr, 87 g); and (17) Vann Harrington (.257 ba, 0 hr, 149 g).

2 utility players

(18) Frank Shofner, 3B, 1B, OF  (.241 ba, 6 hr, 96); and (19) Elbie Flint SS, 2B (.178 ba, 1 hr, 67 g).

The 1951 Buffs, of course, were something of a revolving door that spun faster with the parent Cardinals’ needs. That, of course was a condition that existed every year. The club never got their center field situation solidified. Pete Lewis was fast enough, with good defensive skills, but he could not hit water if he fell from a boat, as Tommy Lasorda liked to say. Some other, younger promising guys came through as outfield temps and these included Russell Rac, Rip Repulski, Mel McGaha, and Roy Broome. Not known for his power, Broome was here long enough to hit the mightiest home run I ever saw in my life. It was a crushing deep moonshot to right field, one that turned the ball into a flying period across the summer sky. Future Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver also was here briefly as a second baseman, but he got sent down quick because he cold not hit Texas League pitching.

Baseball works with a 19-man roster, but you must have starters with confidence and ability to pitch deep into the game. It also helps if the pitchers can also hit and if most of your players can play more than one position.

Oh well. It’s a long way down the road until pitchers and catchers report for spring training, but it’s never too early to start thinking and talking baseball, even if it’s the reverie for the old days kind of thinking.

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Houston Mayors

December 17, 2011

Courtesy of Wikipedia, here’s the complete list of Houston’s mayors since the start of things in 1836. The first mayor was James F. Holman, but he didn’t take office until 1837, when the wheels of local government finally got started.

Term Mayor
2010— Annise Parker
2004–2010 Bill White
1998–2004 Lee Brown
1992–1998 Bob Lanier
1982–1991 Kathy Whitmire
1978–1981 Jim McConn
1974–1977 Fred Hofheinz
1964–1973 Louie Welch
1958–1963 Lewis Cutrer
1956–1957 Oscar F. Holcombe
1953–1955 Roy Hofheinz
1947–1952 Oscar F. Holcombe
1943–1946 Otis Massey
1941–1942 Neal Pickett
1939–1941 Oscar F. Holcombe
1937–1938 R. H. Fonville
1933–1936 Oscar F. Holcombe
1929–1933 Walter E. Monteith
1921–1929 Oscar F. Holcombe
1918–1921 A. Earl Amerman
1917–1918 Joseph Chappell Hutcheson, Jr.
1917 J. J. Pastoriza (died in office)
1913–1917 Ben Campbell
1905–1913 H. Baldwin Rice
1904–1905 Andrew L. Jackson
1902–1904 O. T. Holt
1901–1902 John D. Woolford
1898–1901 Samuel H. Brashear
1896–1898 H. Baldwin Rice
1892–1896 John T. Browne
1890–1892 Henry Scherffius
1886–1890 Daniel C. Smith
1880–1886 William R. Baker
1879–1880 Andrew J. Burke
1877–1878 James T. D. Wilson
1875–1876 I. C. Lord
1874 James T. D. Wilson
1870–1873 Thomas H. Scanlan
1868–1870 Joseph R. Morris
1867–1868 Alexander McGowan
1866 Horace D. Taylor
1863–1865 William Anders
1862 Thomas W. House
1861 William J. Hutchins
1860 Thomas W. Whitmarsh
1859 William King
1858 Alexander McGowan
1856–1857 Cornelius Ennis
1855–1856 James H. Stevens
1853–1854 Nathan Fuller
1849–1852 Francis W. Moore, Jr.
1847–1848 B. P. Buckner
1846 James Bailey
1845 W. W. Swain
1844 Horace Baldwin
1843 Francis W. Moore, Jr.
1841–1842 Colonel J.D. Andrews
1840 Charles Bigelow
1839 George W. Lively
1838–1839 Francis W. Moore, Jr.
1837 James S. Holman
 

On the morning of December 17, 2011, there five living former mayors:

Bob Lanier (86)

Lee Brown (74)

Fred Hofheinz (73)

Kathy Whitmire (65)

and Bill White (57)

As a kid, I remember thinking that Oscar Holcombe was “supposed” to be mayor because it seemed as though he had been there all my life. Holcombe served more years in office as a Houston mayor than any other person in history and we was there for most of the early post WWII years when my generation was starting school and new to paying attention to such things.

My personal memories of each mayor are hardly the stuff of a political debater or historian. We moved to Houston on my 5th birthday, which also happened to be the last day of office for Neal Pickett (1941-42) so I had no memory of him until I later started exploring different aspects of local history. I still couldn’t tell you this morning of anything he ever did. Otis Massey (1943-46) is a similar blind spot.

My first memory of Oscar  Holcombe (1947-52) was that I shared his “Oscar” first name as my middle name. The next thing I recall is that I had trouble reading or pronouncing his name. “His name is not ‘Homisquab’,” Mom would correct me, “it’s Holcombe!” Then there were my dad’s constant pronouncements of Oscar: “Every time the city does something, Mayor Holcombe just gets richer.” Sometimes we took Sunday drives from the East End to just look at the houses people owned in River Oaks. And Dad would say: “Well, we are now surrounded by the friends of Oscar Holcombe.”

In my memory. Oscar Holcombe (1947-52, 57-57) was money and power; Roy Hofheinz (1945-46)was ambition and explosive constant bickering with City Council; Lewis Cutrer (1958-63) was ribbon-cutting and finally getting major league baseball in Houston; Louie Welch (1964-73) was “good old boy” prejudicial toward anyone who didn’t look like or think like himself, the perfect foil for the kinds of social changes we experienced in the 1960s and 70s; Welch got into trouble for referring to gays as “queers.”

Fred Hofheinz (1974-77), the son of Roy, got here in time to deal with the new federal revenue sharing program. When he asked for suggestions on what we might call our local program to that identity end, I offered, “How about ‘Preparation H?’ ” and never heard back from him.

Jim McConn (1978-81) just blurred by as a temporary return to good ole boys, golf, and real estate deals. Aside from simply knowing that he was one of our elite St. Thomas HS alums (not in my class, any way you want to take that statement), I had nothing to do with the man and no regard for the guy. In fact, like most Houston mayors, I never met him.

Kathy Whitmire (1982-91) will always be Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie.” Kathy proved that Houston was capable of reaching out to a level of gender equality that sure never came to light in the long reign of the good ole boys. Kathy PO’d plenty of locals, but she cared about the broader image of Houston as an international city and not merely one as an overgrown cowboy town. To a large extent, Whitmire was mayor during the great infusion of new Asian citizens and the start of the even larger Hispanic migration to Houston.

Bob Lanier (1992-98) did all he could to put Houston on a business like basis. He was mayor when that business style cost the city the Oilers when Lanier did not bend to the will of Bud Adams, but then Lanier turned around and helped the Astros negotiate a new downtown ballpark for the Astros. I’m short on details here, but that’s how I remember it.

Lee Brown (1998-2004) was a revivalist for bureaucracy and poor control of local spending. Luxury travel for the mayor and others to exotic faraway places in the name of spreading Houston’s good will to the whole world ran into megabuck debts to the city treasury and spoon-fed those groups in the community who already feel entitled to support.

Bill White (2004-10) did a great job returning the city to a more stable business-like approach to government and he presided over Houston’s humanitarian efforts in the wake of hurricane damage to Louisiana and Texas in the middle to later part of his administrative decade.

Annise Parker (2010-11 and counting) became another landmark officeholder as the first openly homosexual Houston mayor and, from what I can see, she handles the job without her personal condition or preferences getting in the way of her responsibility to all the people as the city’s chief executive. Many people don’t like what they see as her “too liberal” social agenda, but these are people who were pretty much prepared to dislike whatever she did anyway because of who she is and what she stands for on the social agenda plane. I say give her a chance and let’s see what she actually does.

My thoughts about the mayor’s office today are pretty much a local version of how I see the presidency today. Why would any qualified person in their right mind want either of these jobs today? Aren’t there easier, far less accountable ways to achieve power and wealth in 2012?

 

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Remembering George Blanda

December 16, 2011

George Blanda, 1st Oiler QB, 1960

Longtime NFL fans remember George Frederick Blanda as “The Grand Old Man.” Born September 17, 1927 in Youngwood, Pennsylvania, He was the son of a Slovak-born Pittsburgh area coal miner. For one thing, that just meant that George came into his adult years totally unafraid of hard work or play. You worked hard, if there was work to be done; you played hard, if there was any time left on the clock. Everything about George’s total package (his genes, his culture, and his desire) prepared him for the major recorded accomplishment of his football career: George Blanda would play 26 seasons as a professional football player, the longest such career on record. It was a career that would take Blanda through Houston during one of the most periods in the city’s sports history.

When George Blanda. came of age athletically in the golden Post World War II Era. it was a time of recovery from war for professional baseball, but more silently, at first, it served also as a time for American discovery of professional football.

George Blanda first played as a quarterback and kicker at the University of Kentucky (1945-48). The legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant arrived in Blanda’s sophomore year as the new Kentucky head coach. The Bear got there in time to take over a Wildcat team that went only 1-9 in Blanda’s freshman year, but this was back in the day that first year students were withheld from varsity play in favor of freshmen team ball.

Change was measurably positive. Kentucky lost only three games per year over the course of Blanda’s three varsity seasons (1946-48) under Bryant. Years later, upon a return visit to Kentucky, George Blanda recalled the time he met Bryant: “I thought this must be what God looks like.”

Blanda was the starting quarterback for UK during his junior and senior seasons at Kentucky (1947–1948), compiling 120 pass completions in 242 attempts (49.6 percentage) for 1,451 yards gained and 12 touchdowns.

During his first year out of college, December 17, 1949, George Blanda married Betty Harris. The couple parented and raised two children together – and they remained married until George’s death in 2010.

Blanda signed with the Chicago Bears prior to the 1949 season. Bears owner/coach George Halas gave $600 to sign, but then demanded the money back once Blanda made the team. It was very different era.

After a brief sojourn to the 1950 Baltimore Colts, Blanda was back in Chicago that same season for a nine-year rocky run with the Bears as a QB/Kicker. Blanda mostly kicked until 1953, when he moved up to starting QB just around the time America started seeing these professional games televised out of Chicago each Sunday with Red Grange calling same for both the Bears and then local Cardinals.

 On TV, the name and form of George Blanda became a redundant visual memory and Red Grange sound of what we all thought of as a professional football quarterback. What we didn’t see was the ongoing cheapskate struggling that went on between player Blanda and coach Halas. Blanda was scoring points at a record pace as a straight-on style placekicker, but he still complained that Halas was too tight to even buy him a decent kicking shoe.

Blanda retired after the 1958 season, but came out of retirement to sign with the Houston Oilers of the new American Football League in 1960. Dismissed as n over-the-hill NFL reject, Blanda showed his metal big time as starting QB and kicker for the Oilers. In 1960-61, George Blanda led the Oilers to the first two AFL championships  and in 1961 he was named as both the AFL QB and Player of the Year.

In 1961, Blanda of the Oilers threw for 3,330 yards and 36 touchdowns, the most TD passes ever thrown in a single AFL/NFL season through that time. Y.A. Title of the New York Giants tied Blanda’s 36-season TD mark in 1963 and these two men remained as joint record-holders until 1984, when Dan Marino of the Miami Dolphins blew the record open as 48 TD pass completions for the season.

In 1962, Blanda also hit the ignominy scale by throwing a record 42 pass interceptions. It is a record that still stands and it was just the downside of Blanda’s all-out production drive that season. He also netted two 400 plus yard games in 1962 and almost led the Oilers to a third straight AFL title before the Boys in Columbia Blue fell in a double overtime title game loss at Jeppesen Stadium to the Dallas Texans.

The Oilers gave up on Blanda in March 1967, releasing him, they thought, into retirement, but in so doing, they simply became the second professional team to underestimate the talent and staying power of the coal miner’s son. George signed with the Oakland Raiders in the summer of 1967 as a kicker and played another nine seasons (1967-75). All he did was lead the AFL in scoring (116 points) in his first season (1967) as a kicker.

Blanda helped the Raiders reach the Super Bowl and he even took them to the brink of nearly derailing the 1975 version of Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain. The Raiders didn’t win, but their loss to the Steelers on January 4, 1976, the 48-year old Blanda kicked a 41-yard field goal and an extra point in the Raiders’ 16-10 loss. What a man, this guy George Blanda was.

 Crowning his many achievements. George Blanda was inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame in 1981.

George Blanda died on September 27, 2010 in Alameda, California at the age of 83.

During his lifetime, his major playing records include these:

Blanda holds the following professional football records:

  • Passing TDs in a game: 7 (Tied with 4 others) November 19, 1961 vs. New York Titans
  • Most seasons played: 26 (1949–58, 1960–75)
  • Most seasons scoring a point: 26
  • One of three players to play in 4 different decades: (40s, 50s, 60s, 70s)
  • Most PATs made (943) and attempted (959)
  • Most interceptions thrown, single season: 42 (1962)
  • Held record of most pass attempts in a single game: 68 (37 completions, vs. New York Titans on 11/1/1961) until 1994 when Drew Bledsoe had 70
  • Oldest person to play in an NFL game: 48 years, 109 days
  • First player ever to score over 2,000 points
  • Oldest quarterback to start a title game
  • Most total points accounted for (including TD passes) in a career: 3,418 (not an official stat)

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1960: The First Houston AFL Champs

December 15, 2011

January 1, 1961: The Houston Oilers Defeat The Los Angeles Chargers, 24-16, in First AFL Championship Game at Jeppesen (now Robertson) Stadium on the UH campus. I am there in the crowd behind this game action. You can't see me. I'm too high to be in the picture.

All the clamor this week over the Houston Texans winning their first AFC SOUTH division championship brings back a flood of memories from the first 1960 season of the American Football League and the local Houston Oilers. The boys of Bud Adams took that first new football league crown as winners of the East Division over the west division champion Los Angeles Chargers in the AFL’s first championship game at old Jeppesen Stadium (now old Robertson Stadium) on the UH campus on Cullen Boulevard. The date was News Years Day, 1961, before a full house of under 30,000 capacity in those days. Tickets were so available and affordable that even guys like me in my first year out of UH managed to score a pair in the low-level nosebleed section of that hallowed old Bayou City sports battleground.

The 1st AFL Championship Game Program

Lou Rymkus was the Head Coach of that first Houston “big league sport” club. Former Chicago Bears chunker George Blanda was both the Oiler QB and placement kicker. And RB Billy Cannon was the running-gunning offensive star that the fledgling league stole from under the noses of the established NFL with a contract signing under the goal posts at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge following his last college game. It was a deal sealed directly on the field by club owner Bud Adams – and it stood out as the major act of “we are here to stay” defiance by the AFL in the face of the established NFL.

The league was pretty simple back then. Eight teams divided into two divisions and everyone played a home and away round-robin schedule with each of its seven opponents. As noted, the Oilers took the East with a 10-4 record, followed by the Buffalo Bills (7-7), the New York Titans (5-8-1) and the Boston Patriots (5-9).

The West Division champs were the Los Angeles Chargers (10-4), followed by the Dallas Texans (8-6), the Oakland Raiders (6-8), and the Denver Broncos (4-9-1).

The two division winners were scheduled to meet in the championship game on New Years Day and that was it for the one-game playoff system in place that first year. Meanwhile, the separate, established NFL had their own championship game and there was no inter-commerce between the two mortal enemy leagues in those days. It was a time for roster raids and full commitment to one-upmanship, with nothing even close to a “Super Bowl” game between the two league champs on the horizon.

When the NFL and AFL finally made an uneasy peace in the late 1960s, it was all about self-preservation of both leagues and it was not until their third NFL-AFL inter-league championship game (1969, I believe, the year of their third encounter) that Lamar Hunt of Dallas gave it the name off the cuff as the “Super Bowl” of all post-season football contests.

The name stuck, but back in 1960-61, we had never heard of such an animal. We were just excited that the City of Houston had finally moved up to win something, even if they called it the East Division of the American Football League. And now we wanted it all. And “it all” added up and boi;ed down to beating Los Angeles on New Years Day in an afternoon game at “The Jepp.”

My girl friend of the time and I had done New Years Eve to the hilt the previous night, so, in spite of the fact that we were only 23 and 21 at the time, we were ready for a less strenuous afternoon in the stands. And, as fans did in those days, we arrived for the game dressed to the nines. My lady wore a beautiful sky blue afternoon dress and I wore a herring bone sport coat and sky blue and white rep tie.

We were young. In love. And full of hope for the future. Those are the conditions I remember most. As we all get to discover over time in some way, sometimes things don’t work out as we plan, but the memory of the way we were stays fresh as time goes by. (There has to be a song title in there somewhere. Forgive me if history sometimes takes me sideways into my personal past. Things worked our more than OK for me in the long run.)

The Oilers won that first AFL championship game in an exciting squeaker, 24-16. The Oilers led 10-9 at the half and 17-16 at the end of the 3rd quarter, but the LA Chargers kept coming on like the big bad wolf. It felt as though they were going to blow our house in as we hit into the 4th quarter.

Then came the magic.

George Blanda's Helmet

Mired on their own 12 South end zone yard line, Blanda flicked a little pass to the right and it was caught full-stride by Billy Cannon as he headed toward the right sideline.

But Cannon didn’t go out-of-bounds. He turned the corner and headed north, running hard and big and agile – like a runaway freight train. Before we could even get to full roar in the stands, Billy Cannon had taken the little dump pass all of 88 yards for a breathing room Oiler TD. Houston led Los Angeles by 24-16 with just a few minutes left to play.

The Chargers didn’t stop. Charger QB Jack Kemp passed, huffed, and puffed LA all the way to the Oilers’ 22-yard line before the California boys ran out of fiery breath and time. The Oilers had won. And Houstonians then partied like it was 1980!

A lot of things changed in pro football as a result of the new AFL. For one thing, the money bags hooked up to the sport as the networks began to televise weekend games on an expanded organized basis. The great Jack Buck was the play-by-play man for that first AFL title game. We also started seeing more black athletes as the AFL aggressively pursued and out-hustled the NFL for the best available talent. And we also saw the first soccer-style kickers that are now the norm.

The one thing those pioneer clubs failed to grasp at first was ancillary revenue streams. Unlike the massive run on Texans apparel on sale this week, Oiler fans of 1960 had nowhere to go to buy anything like that – and maybe it wouldn’t have worked anyway, back then, when people got dressed as though they were going to church to go to football games. We didn’t do it for baseball, but we did for football and I can’t explain why.

It’s been a lifetime ago since 1960-61. A lot has changed, but not winning. It still feels great when it happens.

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UH Enigma: What is Loyalty in 2011?

December 14, 2011

What does “loyalty” mean in the year 2011?

I loyalty something eternal and unchangeable in its true meaning? Or is it something that shrinks or expands, based upon the values of a given culture at a particular moment in time? Let’s consider our American cultural commitment to marriage as a good place to explore the issue of loyalty. Were Americans who married in the church in 1946 more committed to marital fidelity as a special form of loyalty than couples in 2011 who are getting married in civil ceremonies? Does one size fit all? Does church vs. civil ceremony bear any importance? Does it simply depend on the character and values of the people getting married – at any point in time. Or were people who grew up under the influence of our post World War II social climate more likely to practice loyalty in marriage than their 2011 contemporaries?

Take it on out from the marriage and family sphere to everyday business and our relationships with others? How many examples of late can you think of in which someone took a better paying or more prestigious job elsewhere to the detriment of the shared cause they left behind for the perceived opportunity of their own faster personal gain elsewhere?  SInce I’m really on that subject anyway today, let’s take a brief look at loyalty in organized athletics. In sports, the many examples run like a never-ending bottom of the screen “streamer screamer:” … Kevin Sumlin leaves Houston for Texas A&M … Albert Pujols leaves St. Louis for LA Angels. …”

Each time it happens, that some sports figure cashes in loyalty to a particular school or organization for more money or “better terms,” it’s almost always written about as an “opportunity” he or she could not pass up, and as  “nothing personal” toward the people and entities left behind.

My apologies. I’m still recovering from the Kevin Sumlin abandonment of UH. It happened so fast. Did he run out and buy that maroon rep tie he wore to his first Aggie press conference? Or did he have it in his wardrobe all along? If its the latter, he probably needs to burn the bright red and burnt orange ones.

I just can’t get over how easily some people accept what Sumlin did. Maybe its their disinterest – or their world-wiser ways with money and the way things are. I was never too smart (or driven) by the big money angle. I was always more concerned with what I was doing – and why I was doing it. If it was right for me, the money just seemed to follow. And if it wasn’t, it didn’t.

What are we saying here?

Are we saying by our rather cool acceptance of this pattern as “business as usual” that loyalty doesn’t matter if something “better” comes up for one cog in the wheel along the way? And does that also mean that contracts are only binding to those who want to keep them in effect? And that it’s OK to just bolt from  a deal, or pay the penalty fee, when “opportunity knocks” and a “better deal screams out “forget them and follow me.”

I’m serious. If you own a smaller company, do you want people running things for you who are going to get picked off like ripe cherries by larger competitors if they succeed while you get to keep only the dull or incompetent ones? I didn’t think so.

Call it loyalty, or maybe even just chalk it up to the fact there are people in this world who prefer the challenge of the underdog battle or the uphill climb to equal footing with others. These people understand that their job is about the larger program goals they are being employed to fulfill – and not – how can I make myself good so that someone bigger, with more political muscle, will hire me away.

UH Athletic Director Mack Rhoades knows what I’m talking about. He described in this morning’s Chronicle when he spoke of page C(4) about what he’s looking for in a new Cougar football coach:

“(I’m looking for) a person who understands that it’s about the program,” Rhoades said. “Somebody with great integrity. I want someone that is a great mentor and role model for our student athletes. I think a head football coach has to be a CEO. It’s huge operation.”

Rhoades’ words say that he understands exactly the importance of loyalty. It isn’t available from everyone, but it is in some. And these are the rare persons whose talents come wrapped in integrity, a capacity for bonding, and a willing ability to commit to a cause that is larger than their needs for person gain through the first external opportunity that comes along as a result of their base efforts in the place they now abandon..

That person was not Kevin Sumlin and that’s OK. Better to find him out now than later.

The next guy, however …. the next guy needs to be the man – the kind of man who, at least, bears within him a capacity for choosing loyalty to the cause over betrayal to personal opportunity. Meanwhile, as UH rebuilds and goes beyond anything else its ever done, it should continue to sweeten the coaching salary and benefits pot in a way that makes it even easier for its coaches to choose internal loyalty over external opportunity.

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Twelve Days to Christmas

December 13, 2011

Christmas Time is also Parody Time. With just twelve days now separating us from Christmas Day, here’s a brand new and  most humble offering based upon recent and not so recent events, but also ethereal, theoretical developments in the world of sports, and largely of the Houston and State of Texas type of thing:

"Just Twelve Days To Christmas!"

(1) With just twelve days to Christmas,  the sports world gave us free,

Kevin Sumlin as an Ag-gie!

 

(2) With just twelve days to Christmas, the Cowboys took a knee,

Losing for the scowling Jer-ry!

 

(3) With just twelve days to Christmas, the Texans checked their fates,

And left them up to T.J. (Yes!) Yates!

 

(4) With just twelve days to Christmas, the Astros checked their gates,

And lowered prices on their new slates!

 

(5) With just twelve days to Christmas, the Dynamo checked the score,

It came back soccer “0” – what  a bore!

 

(6) With just twelve days to Christmas, the Rice Owls hit the floor,

And started playing catch until sore!

 

(7) With just twelve days to Christmas, old Baylor set us free,

By saying bye to lightning, “RG3!”

 

(8) With just twelve days to Christmas, UH announced, sadly,

He could’ve been our lightning, “RG3!”

 

(9) With just twelve days to Christmas, The Rockets shot, that’s all,

Still searching for a big man named “Gasol!”

 

(10) With just twelve days to Christmas, the past is still a ball,

Oilers, Gamblers, Aeros stand tall!

 

(11) With just twelve days to Christmas, UT chose DeLoss Dodds,

To speak of love and peace before God!

 

(12) With just twelve days to Christmas, the Aggies said, “That’s odd,”

“Who knew that Dodds knew much of our God!”

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Toy Cannon Homers Again at Barnes and Noble

December 12, 2011

Barnes & Noble Authors, 12/10/11: (L-R) Daniel Flores, Darla Marx, Mimi Jefferson, & Jimmy Wynn at the Sugar Land Store in the Greater Houston area.

Last Saturday proved to be another successful book signing day for Astros icon and baseball author Jimmy Wynn at the Sugar Land store in the Barnes & Noble chain. This time appearing with three other writers on vastly different subjects, Jimmy lived out again his beautiful and natural kindness toward all the fans and kids that came anywhere within voice or eye contact of him, bringing smiles to the faces of grumpy Christmas shoppers, even to those who had never heard of Jimmy Wynn or the game of baseball. Jimmy is especially magnetic to the smiles of the kids and their moms. If there is a gleaming smile in there behind the mask, Jimmy just has a knack for pulling it out.

It’s an amazing thing to watch. After Jimmy pumped up the confidence of one young aspiring baseball player out shopping with his mom, a pep talk and hug concluded in a photo that mom took of her ten-year old with Jimmy. The kid went away with his fist-pumping smile in full gear. He no sooner had left when an unrelated grandfather-type stepped forward to shake Jimmy’s hand and say, “I saw what you just did for that young man, Mr. Wynn. It was a beautiful thing to watch and I just wanted you to know that there are those of us out here who appreciate both who you are and what you do.”

 Jimmy Wynn acknowledged the compliment with his usual modest dismissal, but the man hit it right on the button. Jimmy Wynn is just one of those souls who is going to make 98% of the people who encounter him at any given moment happier in a way they would otherwise have never known. It’s the same spirit that makes his story so good and such a great Christmas season read. The people who purchased “Toy Cannon: The Autobiography of Baseball’s Jimmy Wynn” – signed by Jimmy himself – for their loved ones, took home – home runs – for Christmas Eve and Morning.

The book is available through Barnes & Noble and Amazon by direct in-time-for-Christmas order and a few hard copies also remain in stock at the Sugar Land store. I just don’t know about the inventory of other B&N locations. Copies will also be available through me at the SABR meeting tomorrow night at the Ragin’ Cajun restaurant on Richmond Avenue, Dec. 13th, before and after the 7-9 PM meeting. Jimmy Wynn is supposed to be there too and will be happy to sign that evening or the next time you see him. Our special holiday price through New Years Eve is $25.00, plus $5.00 for packing, postage, and handling on mail orders. ($30.00 total on mail orders.)

Endorse checks on mail orders to “Bill McCurdy” and send your order to:

Bill McCurdy, Publisher

Pecan Park Eagle Press

PO BOX 940871

Houston, TX 77094-7871

No services exist for credit charges or handling cash by mail. Payment needs to be by check or money order.

The other authors at Saturday’s Barnes & Noble signing came with their own unique tales. Jimmy Wynn was paired at a table with US Customs chopper pilot Daniel Flores who has written “South of Heaven: My Year in Afghanistan” as an exciting true story of his Ranger service in the middle of that heated Middle East war.

Mimi Jefferson is a love story novelist. Her latest work is entitled “The Bride Experiment” and Darla Marx apparently is one of those non-fiction life coach writers whose latest work is called “I’ve Got my Big Girl Panties On One Foot at a Time.” Don’t ask me what it’s about. I wouldn’t touch that title with a ten foot pole.

Have a great week, everybody. Hope your holiday preparations are going well.

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Thank You … UT!

December 11, 2011

Late night TV comedian Jimmy Fallon has a weekly routine in which he writes “thank you notes” to various people and things in his life that have been  important to him over the previous week. As he writes out each “thank you” very carefully, a sentimental piano melody always plays in the background as he completes each thoughtful expression and carefully places it in its own separate envelope for mailing. With gratitude to Fallon for the idea, today I’d like to write out my own “thank you notes” for the sixteen candle days that flickered and burned away from November 24th through December 10th. You will have to imagine the same repetitive piano melody tinkering away in the background of each expressed “thank you” note. I couldn’t afford the musician.

Thank You ... UT!

Thank You … UT … for beating the snot and the crap out of the Aggies on Thanksgiving Evening. It gave Texas A&M a proper send off to the Southeast Conference … and it set in motion a chain of events that would help my university, UH, fully discover the true identity of someone we all had come to trust and admire for his contributions to our own Cougar football program over the past four seasons.

Thank You … Texas A&M … for firing Aggie football coach the very next Thursday, December 1st, and thank you for doing it in such a cold and sloppy way that this old world got to see how cruel and uncaring you guys could be toward those who inevitably fail to deliver on your great expectations.

Thank You … Aggie Regent Running Buddy of UH Coach Kevin Sumlin …. whatever your name is. Thank you for suggesting that it would be good to just dump Coach Mike Sherman and hire Kevin Sumlin so that you could feel good about running with a fellow Aggie.

Thank you again … Texas A&M … for timing this whole mess to hit the fan right before UH played their Conference USA Championship and first BCS qualifying game against Southern Miss. … The Saturday morning Dec. 3rd headlines of the Houston Chronicle were so impressed by your timing in this matter that they almost forgot to include their pre-game story on game day, settling for headlines that screamed something like NOW THAT A&M DUMPS SHERMAN,  AGGIES SET SIGHTS ON SUMLIN.

Thank you, … Coach Sumlin and Cougar footballers … thank you for all your expressions of denial about the Aggie Mess not mattering and then going out there and playing the stinko game of the year in the 49-28 championship/BCS/national credibility/and Case Keenum Heisman Trophy loss to Southern Miss on December 3rd.

Thank you … Coach Sumlin … for immediately going into the most disingenuous pattern of smiling evasion on all questions that immediately fell upon you at game’s end about your possible future as the next Aggie coach.  We UH folk had not been privileged to have seen that part of you previously, but we took little consolation from “friends” who told us: “Don’t be so hard on Sumlin. If any of you other UH guys had a chance for a lot more money at a better place to work, wouldn’t you stop to think about it too?”

Thank you … Well-Intentioned and Other Vicariously Ill Willed friends ... for your question. Our answer is simple: Anyone has a right to look elsewhere for a better situation, but some of us at UH are not of that ilk. We ARE Cougars. Our blood does not change from Cougar Red if you try to scratch it with Federal Reserve Note Green. Like true Longhorns and Aggies, we Cougars support our university simply because that’s who we are. We are not interested in being any individual employee’s stepping stone to a better job elsewhere – and we are working as hard as possible with every new evidence of its presence to make corrections to both the substance and image of UH and also in close focus upon the kind of people we employ. Until the AM stink bomb landed in the middle of our 2011 football parade, we had not seen evidence in Kevin Sumlin of the ordinariness of personal selfishness in his character that began to unfold at the very moment we needed him to right the ship from disaster and rally to avoid the loss of recruits. Nothing happened. Silence ruled. The slate became an easy target for those who rapidly concluded the unofficial obvious: Sumlin’s gone.

Thank You … Bowl Game Assignment Team … for sending the fallen-from-grace Cougars to play Penn State in the “Ticket City Bowl” in Dallas on January 2nd. It’s another can’t win proposition. If we lose to the embattled Big Ten power, defeat simply reinforces the idea that the Cougars’ first twelve wins of the season were a fluke and …. if UH wins … it will be rationalized that it only happened because UH had taken advantage of the downtrodden Nittany Lions on the heels of their sad “Loss of JoePa, Sandusky Blues” season.

Thank You … Heisman Trophy People … for capping the glorious season of record-setting QB Case Keenum by not even inviting him to the banquet table in New York on December 10th. As someone who only broke just about every career record for passing in college football history, Keenum hardly deserved consideration for the magnificently prestigious Heisman Trophy Award.

Thank you again … Coach Sumlin ... for attending the December 9th celebration on the Cougars joining the Big Eight Conference and then going immediately into your cute “I don’t want to talk to you” routine when asked for a straight answer on where you would be coaching next season. It was a beautiful execution of the old low-class deflection play.

Thank you again, UT … for helping UH find out the true identity of Coach Kevin Sumlin. On December 10th, Sumlin finally admitted to his Cougar team that he was leaving immediately to become the new football coach at Texas A&M. Had you, UT, not whipped A&M on turkey day and set this whole chain of events in motion, we of UH might have had to wait until an even worse moment down the line to learn the whole spectrum on his me-first colors. Hope he understands that his next coaching change of jobs is going to happen to him, not for him. As Mike Sherman got to learn this time, at A&M, termination will come like a thief in the night and it will leave him job-hunting, not the Jeffersonian “movin’-on-up” experience he enjoys today.

Thank you …. Robert Griffin III of Baylor … Thank you for reminding us Cougars what happened the last time we lost a head coach to a better paying job with a more “prestigious school.” Before Coach Art Briles took the Baylor job, you had committed to play for him at UH. Today you picked up the Heisman Trophy for 2011 – and on the same day that Briles’ replacement coach, Kevin Sumlin, called up U Haul for help getting to College Station. – Congratulations too on bagging the Heisman. If Case couldn’t have it, I’m glad you took it.

Thanks finally to … UH Chancellor and President Renu Khator and UH Athletic Director Mark Rhoades … Thanks to both of you for your integrity, intelligence, loyalty and dedication to UH’s Tier One goals in both academics and athletics at the Division One collegiate level as we continue to work on improving coaching salary, benefits, and facilities worthy of a legacy school. – We of the UH family are trusting both of you to find a new great coach, but one who possesses the character to rise above his hunger for personal gift-horse opportunity and remain loyal to the larger institutional cause and the players who trusted him when they made their decisions to join the Cougar family after high school or junior college play. We thought we got it right this time. Maybe next time, we will.

GO COUGARS! – EAT ‘EM UP!

Thank You … Next Great UH Cougar Football Coach! … I already like you better than I did the last guy.

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Baseball Today: Follow The Money

December 10, 2011

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL SALARIES: 2011 MLB SALARIES BY TEAM *

TEAM TOTAL PAYROLL AVG SALARY MEDIAN STD DEV
New York Yankees $ 202,689,028 $ 6,756,300 $ 2,100,000 $ 8,468,058
Philadelphia Phils $ 172,976,379 $ 5,765,879 $ 2,625,000 $ 6,227,550
Boston Red Sox $ 161,762,475 $ 5,991,202 $ 5,500,000 $ 5,576,432
LA Angels $ 138,543,166 $ 4,469,134 $ 2,000,000 $ 6,048,494
Chicago White Sox $ 127,789,000 $ 4,732,925 $ 2,750,000 $ 4,810,687
Chicago Cubs $ 125,047,329 $ 5,001,893 $ 1,600,000 $ 6,194,469
New York Mets $ 118,847,309 $ 4,401,752 $ 900,000 $ 6,693,551
SF Giants $ 118,198,333 $ 4,377,716 $ 2,200,000 $ 4,877,657
Minnesota Twins $ 112,737,000 $ 4,509,480 $ 3,000,000 $ 5,536,653
Detroit Tigers $ 105,700,231 $ 3,914,823 $ 1,300,000 $ 5,259,443
St. Louis Cardinals $ 105,433,572 $ 3,904,947 $ 1,000,000 $ 5,027,807
LA Dodgers $ 104,188,999 $ 3,472,966 $ 2,142,838 $ 3,631,806
Texas Rangers $ 92,299,264 $ 3,182,733 $ 1,251,000 $ 4,027,146
Colorado Rockies $ 88,148,071 $ 3,390,310 $ 2,318,750 $ 4,398,021
Atlanta Braves $ 87,002,692 $ 3,346,257 $ 1,275,000 $ 4,279,462
Seattle Mariners $ 86,524,600 $ 2,884,153 $ 825,000 $ 4,414,418
Milwaukee Brewers $ 85,497,333 $ 2,849,911 $ 1,050,000 $ 3,869,134
Baltimore Orioles $ 85,304,038 $ 3,280,924 $ 1,425,000 $ 3,237,465
Cincinnati Reds $ 75,947,134 $ 2,531,571 $ 825,000 $ 3,357,823
Houston Astros $ 70,694,000 $ 2,437,724 $ 467,000 $ 3,960,818
Oakland Athletics $ 66,536,500 $ 2,376,303 $ 1,400,000 $ 2,073,296
Washington Nats $ 63,856,928 $ 2,201,963 $ 1,050,000 $ 2,783,056
Toronto Blue Jays $ 62,567,800 $ 2,018,316 $ 1,200,000 $ 1,906,416
Florida Marlins $ 56,944,000 $ 2,190,153 $ 545,000 $ 2,877,071
Arizona D Backs $ 53,639,833 $ 1,986,660 $ 1,000,000 $ 1,854,261
Cleveland Indians $ 49,190,566 $ 1,639,685 $ 484,200 $ 2,763,453
San Diego Padres $ 45,869,140 $ 1,479,649 $ 468,800 $ 1,858,830
Pittsburgh Pirates $ 45,047,000 $ 1,553,344 $ 450,000 $ 1,880,199
Tampa Bay Rays $ 41,053,571 $ 1,578,983 $ 907,750 $ 1,570,206
Kansas City Royals $ 36,126,000 $ 1,338,000 $ 850,000 $ 1,143,503

 * The above information is available through the USA Today Database oF comparative same industry salaries and does not reflect the recent new uber-dollar contracts for 2012 and beyond to free agents like Albert Pujols and Jose Reyes. 

The featured payroll graph for Major League Baseball needs no honest comment from me. If it did, what could I say? I didn’t grow up with those kind of dollars in my daily state of mind nor did I lead a life of gold chains, fast cars, and enough green paper to furnish my house with all the federal reserve note toilet paper I could possibly require.

As East End kids in Houston, we played sandlot ball with a curious combination of economy, loyalty, and wildly passionate love for the game. A taped together baseball thrown and batted around all day by nine guys who all played as Pecan Park Eagles was good enough for us. We didn’t play with the thought that a really good game might earn us a chance to move over to another sandlot team that owned a better baseball, a club that might even spring for a free coke for us late in the day.

We were who we were. Dedicated to winning. Playing for the place that was our home turf. Deflated by the very thought of defeat. Joyous as the image of Roy Hobbs in “The Natural” when we won, but without the exploding sparks of runaway electricity. We lived that image long before it ever hit the pages of a book or screamed at us older men (by then) from the movie theater screen.

Heck. We didn’t just precede Roy Hobbs. We invented him. In each of our minds, hearts, and souls, we were him.

At the end of the day, when the baseball quest was won without a betrayal of loyalty, Roy Hobbs went home to the heartland pastures of middle America to play catch with his newly discovered adolescent son in the most bucolic scene ever written into a movie. He didn’t sign a contract that would carry him on a geriatric track into the twilight under barrels of riches provided by the Los Angeles Angels. He went home to family. He went home to love because that was the discovered path of Roy Hobbs’s loyalty.

Had Roy Hobbs been Albert Pujols, he would still be playing first base for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012 and keeping alive the heating up debate on the identity of the greatest Cardinal of all time? Stan Musial or Albert Pujols?

The jury on that one is now in. It was never close anyway, but now its certain. As the greatest Cardinal of all time, 90-year old  Stan “The Man” Musial is richer in the stuff that determines true wealth than the great player Albert Pujols ever can hope to be. Longer live Stan Musial. He truly is the man.

Lately I’ve needed a few reminders in contemporary sports to remind me that winning at all financial cost is not the most important aim out there, not  if it involves investing all your resources in the “rent a bum” method of talent procurement. Even if the “bums” are HOF-talented hobos, if they are just doing it for the money, I could not care less about what they accomplish.

Now I’m bracing for Kevin Sumlin eminently to leave his post as head football coach at the University of Houston for the better paying, more prestigious job as head coach for Texas A&M. If if he does, I don’t really blame him for doing so anymore than I blame Lance Berkman for signing with the Cardinals and then coming back to Houston in 2011 to beat the Astros in the head with his bat. Lance, at least, tried to come home, but the Astros wouldn’t let him. He didn’t fit into their new “pare-the-salaries-down-as-much-as-possible” policy dedication – and that turned out to be the break of Berkman’s career. Today he has a World Series championship ring to show for that door-closing by the Astros.

Maybe I’m just a member of the aging, fading away minority that places too much emphasis on that early sandlot dedication to winning with a level of integrity and loyalty to a common cause that no longer seems to exist in large quantities anywhere in contemporary American culture.

Perhaps, you will be able to look at the graph and find something that should make us want to get more involved in baseball. I don’t see it myself. Too much of my enjoyment is just still too wrapped up in the joy of the Japonica @ Myrtle streets sandlot and the old minor league memories of the Houston Buffs at Buff Stadium.

No matter what happens next, they can’t take that away from me.

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The Ghost at Julia Ideson

December 9, 2011

Julia Ideson Library Building, Houston, Texas.

On Monday, December 5, 2011, the Julia Ideson Library reopened as the rich center of local sociocultural research as an adjacent extension of the downtown Houston Public Library. The Ideson building itself first opened in 1926 as the downtown Houston Public Library in replacement of an earlier structure funded at the 500 McKinney Street location by the Carnegie Foundation. Now the facility serves as the hub and materials center for the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, a program started in 1976 in dedication to the preservation of artifacts, maps, and writings of pertinence to the history of Houston and our general area.

Now the Ideson, with its vast Texas Room collection standing out like a shining star, is back – almost exactly as it appeared from floor to ceiling in 1926, but with  technology now available for processing photographs and microfilm that reaches far into 21st century levels of availability. No more is there a quarter charge for crude per page scan prints of a news page. Anything you want to take with you as a researcher is available for recording on a regular digital camera memory stick (at no extra charge) or forwarded electronically from the machine for recording directly onto your own home computer.

These are better days indeed for those of us who are regularly attracted to the library for historical research of one kind or another.

Seasons Greetings from the Ideson

Library policy prohibits photography of the interior without special permission, but I was really there Tuesday on business and wouldn’t have had much time to do anything anyway. Besides, the time I spent with photographic archivist Joel Draut proved a far better use of time. A masterful photographer on the professional level, Draut says he now has equipment that helps him work with the restoration and organization off the library’s thousands of images. He showed me quite a bit of the new technology and all I can report here in brief is that it was quite impressive. Advances in recovery technology are fast becoming the best friends of reality image preservation.

Named for Houston’s first professional librarian, Julia Ideson’s collections date back a their oldest item to the 16th century. If there is anything about your Houston area historical research project that needs to be ascertained and verified by the closest materials we still have to primary sources, Julia Ideson is likely to be your first and last stop. Hours of opening are limited these days because of city budgeting practices in hard times. The library’s Internet site notes the Ideson only being open from 9 AM to 6 PM, Monday, Thursday, and Saturday for now. You may want to call and confirm their open hours first before going down there. Their number is 832-393-1313.

Free tours of the Spanish Renaissance structure are also conducted from the first floor lobby too. You may want to ask about these. I’m not sure if this service is temporary or ongoing.

One more thing. Some people claim that the Ideson is haunted by a long ago deceased custodian (janitor/security guard/gardener) named Julius/Jacob Frank Cramer and his pet German Shepherd Petey.

Cramer played the violin. He lived in his own world. And his world was the Julia Ideson.

By one account, “sheet music is occasionally found scattered around the library,  Strauss waltzes on violin sometimes echo through the halls from nowhere, and, at times, there are sounds of the nails of Mr. Cramer’s faithful German Shepherd clicking around.”

The Houston Storytellers Guild is planning a lecture on the ongoing presence of Mr. Cramer at the Ideson for next Wednesday, December 14th, at 6 PM. If you would like to attend, please call the library for further details.

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