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Bye, Bye, Bobby!

August 12, 2010

Do you suppose it was something Bobby Cox said?

Bye, Bye, Bobby! – Wednesday’s wrap-up game between the Atlanta Braves and the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park brought an end to an era. After 29 years at the helm as manager of a major league club, and with 25 of those years cemented into the history of the Atlanta Braves, Bobby Cox has said goodbye to Houston following his last trip here as the field general of a big league team.

Bobby leaves Houston on a winning note; his Braves took two out of three games from the Astros on this last trip to town in 2010 – and they also leave here in first place in the NL East. In spite of all who hate him, as many or more Braves and Bobby fans out there are alive and pulling for Cox to win one last NL flag and bag another elusive World Series title before he departs the Braves helm.

Tuesday Night at MMP: How many times over the years have we seen "Ole #6" out there, pulling one more string on a pitcher he hopes can get somebody out?

Bobby Cox doesn’t need another division title, league pennant, or World Series victory to assure his near certain future induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. His 2,479 managerial wins through and including that 8-2 extra inning slammer the Braves put on the Astros Wednesday, August 11th, already places him in fourth place in managerial wins for all time, trailing only the uncatchable (1) Connie Mack (3,731), followed by (2) John McGraw (2.763), and (3) the also still active Tony LaRussa (2,6i6 through all games of 8/11/2010).

It’s conceivable, if not highly probable, that the other Hall of fame for sure guy, La Russa, will hang around long enough to surpass McGraw, but that also unnecessary extra validation of Tony does nothing to either make him more worthy – or Bobby Cox any lesser so. Both LaRussa and Cox have reached points in their careers in which numbers are little more than forgettable add-on features. Greatness already has been established by each of them in far many other ways.

How many times did Bobby Cox make this trip in 29 years? I don't know, but he did it afew more times on the night of Tuesday, August 10th.

Success is stamped all over Bobby Cox’s managerial career. At Atlanta alone, his Braves established themselves as the perennial division champion in the NL East throughout most of 1990s. In 15 seasons (1991-2005), Atlanta finished in first place in the NL East on 14 of those occasions, also taking 5 NL pennants (1991-2, 1995-96, 1999) and one World Series title (1995) over that extended halcyon period. The Braves also took some criticism for not winning it all more often because of their constant presence at the top of the heap during the regular season, but that critique in itself became a compliment to Cox over time. Not many other wildly successful managers and teams have been criticized so hard and so often for not being more perfect than Cox and the Braves.

Bobby Cox managed the National League All Star Team on five separate occasions (1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, and 2000). While managing the Toronto Blue Jays, he also was named Manager of the Year in the American League for the 1985 season and then another three times with the Atlanta Braves, the writers picked Cox as Manager of the year in the National League (2001, 2003, 2005).

The Astros honored Bobby Cox prior to Tuesday night’s game and well they should have. Good for the Astros! And good for Bobby Cox! What a worthy and often frustrating opponent he was to our Houston aspirations over the years. Will we ever forget the eighteen inning marathon victory over the Braves in the 2005 playoff game at Minute Maid Park? More painfully, will we ever be allowed to dis-remember that play at the plate in the Dome in 1999 that allowed the Braves to knock us out of the playoffs because Cox’s drawn in infield with the bases loaded did what they had to do, via a 6-2 Walt Weiss miraculous force out stop and throw, to kill our playoff chances?

Like him or hate him, Houston fans simply have to respect Bobby Cox for the worthy opponent he has always been. Now the guy walks away from baseball action on the field at age 68 with nothing more to prove.

Bobby Cox also leaves as the most ejected manager in baseball history. His 143 career ejections is a total far beyond anyone else, and these totals do not even include the two additional ejections he received in World Series play.

Why did Bobby Cox get tossed so much? Who knows?. Maybe it was just something he said that the umpires didn’t like. Maybe it was the way he said things. Maybe it was for just showing up in the face of the umpire on the heels of a tough call and being Bobby Cox. All I know is – baseball is losing a good man on the field after 2010 and I, as one fan, will miss him – even if he always was the guy on the other side in the wrong dugout,

Bye, Bye, Bobbie! We're going to miss you in Houston too!

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Eddie Dyer: A Man for All Seasons

August 10, 2010

Eddie Dyer: The Man Who Could Do It All

Eddie Dyer. He could pitch, hit, manage, balance the books, make out payroll checks, and then go into business after baseball and became wildly successful in oil, real estate, and insurance. Oh yeah. One more thing. He knew how to win a World Series too, as he and his 1946 St. Louis Cardinals proved to all against Ted Williams and the Boston Red Sox in the seven-game thriller that was the 1946 title contest that will always be remembered for Enos Slaughter’s “mad dash” from first to home.

Born in the heart of Cajun Country in Morgan City, Louisiana on October 11, 1899, the Irishman Dyer made his way to Rice Institute (now University) as both a bright student and highly touted ballplayer. He signed with the St. louis Cardinals in 1922 as a (BL/TL) pitcher-outfielder. The future looked as bright as dawn upon the dark swamps of his birthplace.

Over parts of six seasons, 1922-27, Dyer then appeared in 129 games for the Cardinals. As a big league pitcher, he split 30 decisions and posted an ERA of 4.78. Dyer also marked a 3 win-5 loss record in a  partial season with the 1923 Houston Buffs during this same period. It was his only season as an actual player for the Buffs, but his impact as a manager was coming down the line. In 157 times at bat as a major league outfielder in the 1920s, Eddie batted only .223 and seemed well on his way to mediocrity or total oblivion.

1927 proved to be Eddie Dyer’s pivotal year. Optioned by the parent Cardinals to the Syracuse Stars of the then AA International League as a pitcher, Dyer won his first six games before an arm injury ended his pitching career for all time. His now proven intellect and leadership qualities next led the Cardinals to shift Dyer into gear as a playing manager-outfielder in their minor league system.

From 1928 through 1933, Dyer continued as a playing manager, also establishing himself along the way as a superb minor league hitter. Upon retirement from active play, Dyer hung up a career minor league BA of .311 for ten seasons. He also began to compile a list of great players who came up through the Cardinal system under his tutelage. The first of these was future Hall of Famer Joe Medwick, who played for Eddie as an outfielder for the Scottdale Scotties of the Class C Western Association in 1930. All Joe  Medwick did that year was hit .419 to lead the league.

Dyer was a triple duty money-saver for the Cardinals while he still played and then fell only to a double duty bargain after his active playing retirement in the lower minors. In each of those early stops, the Cardinals also installed Dyer as either the general manager or club president too. He may have even driven the team road-trip bus under this Branch Rickey-inspired, money-saving  mindset. I’m not sure about that bus driving extra job, but it wouldn’t surprise.

If we look closely here at the order of these next few facts, we may be able to see one of the big reasons that Eddie Dyer was headed toward dynastic minor league success in the later 1930s and early 1940s. In 1938, the Cardinals placed Dyer in charge of supervising all of their minor league operations in the southern and southwestern parts of the United States. The following season, the Cardinals made Eddie Dyer their choice for service as manager of the Houston Buffs.

Uh Oh! Going into the 1939 season, guess who has a major say and the most performance information at his fingertips and under his control for assigning players to the Houston Buffs roster?  I’m not saying we can know it worked out this way, but so what, if it did? Eddie Dyer would have been foolish not to load up at Houston, if he had the inside chance.

The results speak pretty loudly for the talent, leadership, and performance of the Buffs during Eddie Dyer’s three seasons at the helm from 1939 through 1941. The Buffs finished in first place all three of those seasons, averaging 102 wins per year and winning the playoffs for the league championship in 1940. Sadly, the 1940 Buffs then lost the Dixie Series title to the Nashville Vols in five games.

The Texas League then shut down from 1942 through 1945 due to World War II, but Eddie Dyer stayed connected to the Cardinals as he also pursued his business interests in Houston. He became manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1946 and then quickly led the club that contained many of his former Houston players, pitchers like Howie Pollet, Red Munger, and Ted Wilks, to a playoff pennant victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers and a seven-game World series title over the Boston Red Sox.

The Cardinals remained fiercely competitive for the last four years of Eddie Dyer’s managerial service to the Cardinals (1947-50), but the Dodgers, Braves, Dodgers again, and Phillies got in the way of any further Dyer-Cardinal pennants.

After a fall to fifth place in 1950, Eddie Dyer resigned as manager of the Cardinals and returned to his business interests in Houston. He left a major league managerial record on the books that spoke well for his accomplishments. 446 wins. 325 losses, and a .578 winning percentage is plenty to write home about.

Eddie Dyer passed away in Houston at age 64 on April 11, 1964. His death was both a big loss to baseball and to our community because he was one of those people with the ability to infect others with his plans for success and happiness. You never want to run out of the Eddie Dyer types in this world. The loss is always felt hard and sharp.

I’ve written about Eddie Dyer in the past. I’ll no doubt write about him again in the future. I only wish his players were still around to write his whole story. I’ll bet you that most of them would also say they were helped to becoming better performers because of Eddie Dyer. All I know is – the more you read about the guy and study his record – and the more you examine the names of the players he managed – the more you may find yourself pulled to the same conclusion I also reached.

Eddie Dyer was a builder of better worlds – in baseball, in business, in life.

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Hello, Detroit! Is Anybody Home?

August 9, 2010

Pleas take a look at these two car body styles. The first is the popular 2010 Honda Accord, all decked out in the coveted colorless blend-in silver tone shading that, along with the often chosen gray-colored version, is the quiet rage among folks who are looking for the most aerodynamically efficient and anonymous-looking carrier forms they can climb into for their five-day weekly trip into the land of 9 to 5.

2010 Honda Accord

Now take a long look at our second body style offering, an American-made, all-steel and chrome  1936 Studebaker Roadster, resplendent in pay-attention-to-me red and just aching for a moving violation ticket on the joy-breeze drive you make on your own terms to a job or career you really want to do, on those days you truly feel like doing anything at all. This car is also available in Emerald City Green or Sunrise Orange, but we will go with Looka-Here Red today as your other choice.

1936 Studebaker Roadster

All things being equal on the inside, let’s next assume that either of these body models is available to you with all of the modern engineering we now possess in 2010 for computerized power, cooling, steering, fueling, transmission,  suspension, braking, wheels, and tires.

Which body type would you choose for your personal car? Remember: One of them is basically made of plastic, making it lighter on fuel, but more fragile on impact, and the other is made of steel and chrome, American-made steel and chrome.

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m pulling your leg a little bit. I do realize that some people, perhaps, more than I think, are more concerned with aerodynamic performance over looks, and many others today associate the face of classic cars with out-of-fashion looks and the outdated technology that once drove them.

Yet, I still think that Detroit is missing a bet by not reviving the classic look as the wrapper on modern technology for all those car buyers who do prefer the differential character face of classic cars over the one-look-fits-all design that goes into most cars today, American or foreign.

Wouldn’t some of you today like to go out and buy a car that ran like a new one, but looked like a 1950 Ford, a 1951 Oldsmobile, or a 1957 Chevrolet?  We could have it, but we don’t because of fears among the automakers that we will see it as “old-fashioned” or less efficient on the fuel usage side.

Neither of those factors would hold me back, but then, maybe I’m all alone in that view – or maybe, I’m just too old to realize that style and class no longer matter for much of anything, even in cars.

Chrysler tried to wake up to this idea, but then stumbled over their own lack of fortitude for going all the way. Their PT Cruiser sort of started out as a classic echo design, but then they got caught up in making sure it retained the anonymous oval shape. When they ran totally out of imagination, Chrysler designers simply chopped it off in the back and made it too small to be noticed for long by the buying public.

C’mon, Detroit, wake up! You have the chance now to rock ‘n roll your new car sales way, way past the Asian companies who didn’t grow up here, but you have to first wake up the American echoes to see the technicolor sunrise of a brand new day in classic car design.

Rise and shine, Detroit! It’s back to the future time!

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The San Jacinto Inn

August 8, 2010

The San Jacinto Inn, 1918-1987.

For seventy years, the San Jacinto Inn reigned as the place to eat at the battlegrounds twenty miles east of downtown Houston where Texas won (or, at least, thought it had won) its independence from the Republic of Mexico. In an eighteen minute crushing battle on April 21, 1836, General Sam Houston and his Army of Texas volunteers totally overwhelmed General Santa Anna and his Mexican Army, forcing their surrender and their withdrawal from Texas. Back then, and even in 1936, when the San Jacinto Monument was started, no one had counted on the Mexican “army” pouring back into Texas one-by-one and in twos and threes from the latter 20th century forward, but that’s a whole other story altogether.

Today I’m writing about a Houston dining institution that was very special – even in an era when dining out was special. For my own mom ad dad, it was a place they liked to go, once in a very blue moon, when they really wanted to get away from us kids. I don’t recall going with them very often on any of those SJI trips. We were much more likely to get in on trips to Prince’s Drive Inn or Weldon’s Cafeteria on South Main, or to Felix’s Mexican Restaurant on Westheimer.

The San Jacinto Inn was just a place that Mom and Dad made into their own getaway destination. I was there just often enough to discover the culinary reasons that influenced their choice of it. The Inn offered all-you-can-eat shrimp, crab, or whatever other seafood was in season and on-board, plus delicious fried chicken and the most deliciously sweet and moist biscuits that ever melted in your mouth. Located on the monument grounds road that feeds directly into the Lynchburg Ferry, the San Jacinto Inn thrived as an ongoing celebration of the Texas Spirit. People just loved it – and they loved the tight connection to Texas history that came with the restaurant’s proximity to both the San Jacinto Monument and the Battleship Texas.

The all-you-can-eat feature was an almost trademark presentation of the Inn’s operations from the start, but the place’s beginnings were even simpler. Started on the north side of the Houston Ship Channel in 1918,  Jack and Bertha Sanders teamed up as a married couple by opening the place with room for only five tables. Jack supplied the fish and cooking wood from his own fishing and foraging – and Bertha did the cooking. It was said to be so good even then that people just couldn’t get enough of it.

Fire wiped out the first little place, but the Sanders couple just moved and built a bigger place, and on a site that would one day put it next door to the retired Battleship Texas. The deal grew in sweetness during the 1920s, when the all-you-can-eat price steadied at one dollar a person. The price doubled to two bucks a head (or mouth) in the 1930s, but that 100% price jump during the Great Depression didn’t stop people from swarming the place on weekends.

A major restaurant review of the Inn in 1925 elevated the local eatery into one that then and thereafter thrived upon rave national approval, transforming the audience somewhat to the regular inclusion of out-of-state diners during the vacation travel seasons. The service was southern and loyal. Many of the wait staff worked at the Inn for thirty to forty years.

A fire took the place down again in 1927, but the rebuilding resulted in the iconic two-story building you see featured as a picture with this story. Things continued beautifully until they finally came to an end in 1987.

The San Jacinto Inn remains a prime example of a larger truth: You, or Father Time, may kill something beautiful in it’s physical form, eventually, but the memory of anything lovely or happy or delicious lives on forever in those who lived it – whatever it may have been.

Long live the memory of the San Jacinto Inn!

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The City Auditorium: Home of Houston Wrestling

August 6, 2010

I first wrote this basic article over on the Houston ChronCom site back on July 11, 2008. Due to renewed interest that fired from the spark of yesterday’s Jim Menutis article, here it is again. The City Auditorium was the site of some memorable concerts and appearances by some iconic people. Certainly the famous stand of Fats Domino there against segregation was major – as was the early 1930s appearance by Babe Ruth for a role model talk to the youth of Houston, but even these major events failed to leave the old place with its major venue identity.

You see, the City Auditorium will always be first remembered as the home of Friday Night Wrestling. Let’s have a nice familiar-face look this morning at that little file in Houston History:

City Auditorium ~ Houston, Texas

The City Auditorium in Houston, located at 615 Louisiana, thrived from 1910 until 1962 as the downtown site of some top of the line historical speakers and entertainers. As mentioned earlier, Babe Ruth spoke there during the early 1930s. Elvis Presley performed there in 1955. Countless religious figures, including Billy Graham, conducted revivals there over the years.

The above photo is facing north. The tall building at the top is where most guests stayed, if they played the City Auditorium. It’s the Lancaster Hotel now. It was called the City Auditorium Hotel back then.

 

The Lancaster – in its days as The City Auditorium Hotel

The Lancaster Hotel is now the commodious and convenient place to be for those happy out-of-towners attending symphony concerts at the City Auditorium’s successor, Jones Hall, the venue that replaced the old auditorium in 1966.

For as long as we are honestly trying to maintain the true history of what has gone on in Houston over the years, we shall never be able to dismiss the most popular act that ever played this site as the very heart of the old City Auditorium’s dance card. The post World II popularity of professional wrestling married with the advent of television to make “Friday Night TV Wrestling” the most popular show in Houston for years.

Wrestling was not new to Houston after World War II. It had been around since the 1920s under the promotional drive of the late Morris Siegel. Wrestling just took to the “Big Eye” like fried eggs to a hot skillet. The combination instantly and simply cooked up the answer to every Houstonian’s hunger for easy answers to the many questions of Good versus Evil.

You didn’t have to think. All you had to do was watch.

We all knew it was fake. (OK, maybe 80% of us knew it was fake.) But it still didn’t matter. We tuned in to see the Good Guys and Good Gals win. (Yep!. We had “lady wrestlers” in those days too.) It would be impossible to recount them all here, but I will try to cover my favorites with a few words of special remembrance.

First of all, everything about Houston wrestling begins and ends with the name of one man, a man named Paul Boesch.

Paul Boesch followed Morris Sigel as Houston’s iconic wrestling promoter.

Paul Boesch (shown above) was a mostly retired wrestler with caulifower ears and a sharp, articulate intelligence. Boeach had an incredible intuitive feel for the dramatic moment and how to use the grudge element as everyday fodder for TV melodrama. As the announcer, and later as the promoter who replaced Morris Siegel, Paul Boesch was a master genius at knowing how to give the public what they wanted.

Once, in 1951, a bad guy wrestler named Danny Savich came on Boesch’s show to explain his atrocious behavior in a match he had just “won.” Instead of explaining, he punched out Paul Boesch too, daring him to do anything about it. By show’s end, Boesch had recovered enough to tell us over the air that he had spoken with Mr Siegel by phone – and that he would be making a one-match comeback next Friday to answer Danny Savich’s challenge.

There was just one catch. Because Paul Boesch was wrestling on the next card, he could not also broadcast that next Friday too. Anyone wanting to see the Boesch-Savich main event would have to buy tickets and see it live. I didn’t get to go, but I couldn’t wait to see the Saturday morning Houston Post sports page report. To my smiling great pleasure, the headline read: “BOESCH KOs SAVICH!”

 

 

Irish Danny McShane drew love and hate.

I hated Danny Savich, but I loved Irish Danny McShane! “Irish Danny” was sort of a gray-colored anti-heroic fellow in this black and white world, one who could be a good guy or a bad guy, depending upon the character of the other wrestler and the circumstances of how right and wrong was tilting in the wind on a particular Friday. In other words, McShane was sort of a politician who wrestled. He could stand up for justice, if that’s what the fans seemed to want. Or, if need be, he could remove a bar of soap he had hidden in his wrestling trunks and rub it in a opponent’s eyes, if that would help him win. On those times he battered a foe down or unconscious, McShane had this little bold chesty rooster strut he did around the ring. It angered the fans who didn’t like him, and it frequently had a way of reviving the fallen opponent, who then would suddenly get up and whip Danny’s donkey until he begged for mercy! I hated it when I saw Danny beg. “Get up and fight, you big galoot,” I would yell at the tiny TV screen, but, if it wasn’t in the script that night, poor Danny would just get whipped. Then I got to hate him too for giving up – at least, for a while.

 

Duke Keomuka – He karate chopped his foes before they even called those open hand blows to the neck by that term.

In the Post World War II era, Hawaiian-born Duke Keomuka was cast in the role of a guy who was still fighting the Battle of Iwo Jima – on the side of the Japanese! Buried deep in that politically incorrect era were all kinds of racial hatreds that I couldn’t stand, even then. “How can you take sides with that dirty Jap?” some of the other kids would ask me. “That’s easy,” I answered. “The guy is really an American too. He’s just a great performer and he does things that nobody else can do! Besides, the war is over. My uncle fought there. And even he doesn’t hate all the Japanese people as you seem to hate them!” (I wasn’t the most articulate opponent of blind racial hatred in those days, but I tried.)

What could Keomuka do? He was the only wrestler back then who took his foes down with karate chops, and he was also the guy who taught all the others how to win a match with the “Asian sleep hold,” a move that fell only inches and seconds short of outright strangulation.

Boston’s Wild Bull Curry was a non-stop, two-fisted fury. The former boxer turned grappler never saw a chin he didn’t like to smack until its owner fell unconscious.

Wild Bull Curry had no redeeming or likable social qualities. He was just mean, mean, mean – and totally inarticulate on the verbal level. All he seemed to want was to separate every competitive head he saw from the shoulders of its owner, bashing his way mindlessly as a mad dog, I guess, to the top of the wrestling world. As far as I know, he never made it, but he sure left a large number of other wrestlers with smashed faces and heavy headaches along the way.

Miguel “Black” Guzman

Miguel “Black” Guzman was a highly popular Good Guy and a very big star with Hispanic wrestling fans. Guzman later became one of my favorite customers when I was selling mens clothes at Merchants Wholesale Exchange as a working UH college student. Blackie always came into the store with this beautiful woman. I never asked about their relationship. I was afraid to ask. Besides, it was none of my business. – Whatever happened in Merchants Wholesale – stayed in Merchants Wholesale!

Rito Romero. You always knew that Rito was a Good Guy. It took the PA announcer twenty seconds to say his name prior to bouts.

Rito Romero was another popular Hispanic Good Guy wrestler. When he and Black Guzman fought as a tag team against Duke Keomuka and Dirty Don Evans, some of the TV viewers trucked downtown and spilled into the live attendance crowd.

Dirty Don Evans Went to Our Church (I think).

Dirty Don Evans held nothing back. He specialized in rubbing soap into the eyes of his opponents to make sure that they could see cleanly, if not clearly, I suppose. As dirty as he did it at work, Evans also attended our church on Sundays during his stays in Houston. At least, I always thought this one guy was Evans. He sure looked like him, but maybe I was wrong. Not once did I ever see the guy in church rub soap in the eyes of the person sitting in the pew ahead of him. So, maybe it wasn’t Dirty Don after all.

Ray Gunkel, Getting Advice from Jack Dempsey

Ray Gunkel was the ultimate pretty boy Good Guy when he started his career in his 20s. When he returned to Houston in his 40s, he had transformed into one of the most mean-spirited Bad Guys in town. Must’ve been something he ate, maybe something like …  alimony payments? I can’t think of anything else that may have turned a good man into somebody that mean over a fairly short passage of time.

Gorgeous George dropped out of Milby High School in Houston.

Gorgeous George Wagner was a drop out from Milby High School in the Houston East End who went on to become the most famous wrestler of the early TV era. He sprayed the ring with perfume, dispensed golden bobby pins, and strutted around the ring like a haughty woman on his way to committing some dirty mayhem of his own upon “unsuspecting” opponents.

Those were the days, my friend. If you could suspend your recognition of the bogus reality that was pro wrestling back in the day, it was a great Friday night escape for Houstonians of a half century ago. And it was too, without a doubt, the main reason that most people remember the old City Auditorium today.

The place lived for years as the home of professional wrestling in Houston.

Try not to grunt and groan too much today, folks. It’s Friday and the weekend is upon us. Unfortunately for all of us, including those of you who are too young to remember: There is no more City Auditorium. No Jimmy Menutis. No Tin Hall. And, maybe worst of all, no Valian’s.

Have a nice weekend, anyway.

 

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Jimmy Menutis: Houston Heart of Rock ‘n Roll

August 5, 2010

Jimmy Menutis: Houston’s Home for Rock ‘n Roll

Sometime in the late 1950s, a swarthy-looking, cigar-chomping, ever-smiling Greek fellow named Jimmy Menutis bought The Wayside, an east end suburban movie theatre on Telephone Road, near Wayside Drive, and turned it into a club for contemporary music and dancing. For about five years, the place flourished as the biggest big-name rock ‘n roll music venue to ever hit Houston.

Jimmy Menutis’s place boomed fast as no ordinary club in town ever had – and with good reason. Jimmy started bringing in some of the biggest, most popular rock ‘n roll, jazz, and blues stars in the country – and they were all pumping their talents into the lore of the Houston East End at a scale and rate that no one could ever  have predicted, or accepted as reality, until it actually landed on top of us and happened.

Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Brook Benton, Sam Cooke, Earl Grant, Jimmy Reed, and countless others were simply a few of the headliners who played at Jimmy Menutis. Except for Elvis, and I’m not sure what happened there; Elvis loved playing Houston; just about everyone else made it here to play this hottest venue in the South.

Menutis had gutted the old theater seats, replacing that area with ample table settings and plenty of room left over for dancing. The old stage remained for performers, but acts were free to wind their away into the seating areas and perform up close and personal for members of the audience.

As a young man who got to experience the greats of rock and roll in live performances because of Jimmy Menutis, all I can tell you is that it was one “cool and crazy” ride, my friends. For me personally, on a site  that stood no more than two miles from my childhood home in Pecan Park, I was getting to hear all of my major music heroes in person, doing all the popular music I then still owned on vinyl .45’s and very  breakable .78s.

“Maybelline” by Chuck Berry, “Good Golly, Miss Molly” by Little Richard, “Blueberry Hill” by Fats Domino, “Jeepers Creepers” by Louis Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World It Will Be” by Sam Cooke, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” by Jerry Lee Lewis, and “Ain’t That Lovin’ You, Baby” by Jimmy Reed,  are just a few of the great songs that came straight to the heart of Houston because of Jimmy Menutis.

Jimmy Menutis closed sometime in the mid-1960s, during the time I already had moved to New Orleans for graduate school at Tulane. Music was changing by then and so was the country. By then, the Beatles had captured the hearts of the even younger generation and Viet Nam and the Civil Rights Movement had put a final wrap on our old 1950s age of innocent denial or oblivion to weightier matters.

Rock ‘n Roll wasn’t going away with the death of places like Jimmy Menutis. It was simply heading into a quieter phase of it’s still continuous evolution as an American musical art form. Those of us who came of age with Chuck, Fats, Jerry Lee, and Little Richard will keep their brash bashing of words, beat, and melody alive for as long as we all last and longer.

By the time I came back to Houston from school and teaching at Tulane, some of the old rock ‘n rollers were still skirting through Houston for a few gigs and, as a still single young man at that time, I did what I could to catch their acts whenever any of the biggies came to town.

My favorite memory dates back to 1970, when my date and I went out to the Club Bwana in Pasadena to hear a weekend performance by Chuck Berry. It’s good we made early reservations for the Saturday night show because the little place was packed with people waiting on stand-by in the hope of getting in. Our small table was right near the performer’s dressing room, which was great because Chuck Berry would have to pass right by us to get to the stage. My back was to his dressing room door, but I kept looking over my shoulder, hoping to catch him from the moment he appeared.

I didn’t make it. I got distracted by the emcee’s introduction. Then it suddenly dawned on me that he was no longer doing a blah-lah about someone else. He was introducing Chuck Berry.

Chuck Berry Rocked the Club Bwana Back in 1970!

I turned to my left and abruptly found myself staring eye-level into the shine of a beautifully red-surfaced, heart-shaped guitar. Lifting my gaze, I just as suddenly found myself staring into the eyes of the one and only Chuck Berry. He was standing right beside our table, waiting for the emcee to finish his intro.

“Hi Ya, Chuck!” I blurted out.

“How you doin’, man?” Chuck Berry answered.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, … THE ONE AND ONLY … CHUCK BERRY!” The emcee boomed.

The golden moment had ended, but the imagery lives on forever in my brain, right there with the time I made eye contact with Joe DiMaggio in April 1951, right after he caught a fly ball in the outfield at Buff Stadium and I was standing behind the SRO crowd ropes in left center field near the spot of his catch.

People like me never forget a conversation with someone like Chuck Berry, even one as short as ours in 1970.

The rest of the night was legendary for all who crowded into the Club Bwana that night. Chuck Berry played on violently for about two hours, stopping only long enough to wipe perspiration and slug down another glass of water. He was getting all of our love that special night and he fed on it with a non-stop heart and soul performance.

I don’t get around much, anymore, but I sure remember the times I did. And I wouldn’t trade any of them for anything in the world. And places like Jimmy Menutis and the Club Bwana hold a lot of very special memories for me.

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Lagniappe and Marse Joe McCarthy

August 4, 2010

Lagniappe is a word I learned during my graduate school years at Tulane in New Orleans. Spanish in origin, it basically means anything you give to another person as a little something extra. It pretty well conveys the same idea we embrace in English as the “baker’s dozen.” In lagniappe, the reward is in the giving itself. – How’s that for a novel idea?

At any rate, my lagniappe addition today to my usual lagniappe column, anyway, is to point out or try to clarify my transferential association of Astros new first baseman Brett Wallace in physical appearance to a certain comic from yesterday.

Am I wrong, or does Brett Wallace sort of look like a youthful version of Harpo Marx, before his hair turned white with the help of a fright wig? Check out these comparison photos and let us know what you think in the space below. Please.

Brett Wallace

Harpo Marx

Now for a few comments on Marse Joe McCarthy, the manager who capitalized the “D” in Dynasty when he took over the club’s field reins in 1931. Over the next thirteen seasons, the modest, unselfish McCarthy would lead the Bronx Bombers to eight AL pennants, seven World Series titles, and the first run for any team through four World Series championships in a row (1936-39).

How unattached was “Marse Joe,” a racist-sounding nickname for his plantation slavedriver status in the New York Yankee baseball killing fields, – how really attached was McCarthy from his own needs for ego attention during this several season melee?

The answer: plenty. Joe McCarthy didn’t even wear a uniform number on his back.

Joe McCarthy

Lacking the need for personal attention isn’t to be construed as an assessment of Joe McCarthy as an angel. He had some ego needs all right, and they just happened to mesh perfectly with the man who hired him, Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert. You see, Joe McCarthy lived to destroy his opponents by as big a run margin as possible. McCarthy would have loved walking around in Astros Manager Brad Mills shoes last night. He loved scores like 18-4 – as long as the heavy first figure favored his Yankees.

It’s no wonder the  world hates the Yankees. Owner Ruppert cared little about close individual game outcomes. He just wanted to know how soon the club was going to clinch the pennant each year. Jake Ruppert hated finishing second and so did Joe McCarthy.

In Talmadge Boston’s excellent work, “1939,” he outlines Yankee manager Joe McCarthy’s Ten Commandments of Baseball:

(1) Nobody ever became a ballplayer by walking after a ball.

(2) You will never become a .300 hitter unless you take the bat off your shoulder.

(3) An outfielder who throws back of a runner is locking the barn after the horse is stolen.

(4) Keep your head up and you may not have to keep it down.

(5) When you start to slide, slide. He who changes his mind may have to change a good leg for a bad one.

(6) Do not alibi on bad hops. Anybody can field the good ones.

(7) Always run them out. You never can tell.

(8) Do not quit.

(9) Do not find too much fault with the umpires. You cannot expect them to be as perfect as you are.

(10) A pitcher who hasn’t control, hasn’t anything.

In spite of his demands for excellence, Joe McCarthy was not a screamer. He believed in giving pats on the back and nurturing the best from his players in his own grandfatherly way. A player simply had to go all out and show signs of excellence to get any long-term support from Joe McCarthy. The player didn’t put out was quickly dumped. When ace reliever Johnny Murphy finally convinced Joe McCarthy that he was concerned more about himself than the Yankees, the club shipped Murphy off to Cleveland.

Most players can have a big league career winning some and losing some. To play for Joe McCarthy, and just about every other New York Yankee club that’s come down the pike ever since, you had to win some and then win some more – just to stick.

Joe McCarthy was one of the strongest early links in the Yankee chain of winning. As a player, you didn’t have to like him. You just had to play on a level you may never previously have realized you had in you to stay on the Yankee roster.

Stay out of the Houston heat today, folks. It literally sucks the life out of you, if you push it too hard.

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Graham McNamee: The Inventor of Play-by-Play

August 3, 2010

Graham McNamee: Father of the Play-by-Play

“The father of us all.” That’s how renowned sports broadcaster Dick Enberg described Graham McNamee, the man who invented play-by-play broadcasting as e know it today. Deservedly, McNamee stood out as one the first class inductees when the American Sportscasters Association (ASA) formed and created their Hall of Fame in 1984. The other members of that tribute to high standards in sports broadcasting included Red Barber, Don Dunphy, Ted Husing, and Bill Stern. Only Barber was strictly baseball, but none did baseball earlier, or contributed anything more basic to the performing art than Graham McNamee. Yet, when the National Baseball Hall of Fame organized its own annual Ford C. Frick Award in 1978 for contributions to baseball broadcasting it chose Mel Allen and Red Barber, plus a hot of others since, but never Graham McNamee for his most essential contribution to baseball over the airways, first and foremost, among all American sports.

What did Graham McNamee do? All he did was invent play-by-play broadcasting in real-time. All he did in 1923 was to become the first broadcaster to cover baseball on a more than sporadic basis from the Polo Grounds – and then to broadcast all games of the 1923 World Series between the Giants and Yankees. All he did was become the guy who called the phenomenal fourth game of the 1929 World Series in which the Philadelphia Athletics came roaring back from an 8-0 deficit to the Chicago Cubs be scoring 10 runs in the bottom of the seventh for a 10-8 win and a 3-1 lead in games. All he did was broadcast Babe Ruth’s “called shot” home run for the New York Yankees in the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs.

All he did too, unfortunately, was get so good at what he did that he was the man people wanted to hear whenever a major sporting event came down the pike in America. He had a national relationship with his audience back in the time when nobody wrote or spoke of such things in such highfalutin social science terms. All the advertisers knew was that people listened when Graham did the contest, no matter what it was. Graham NcNamee, for example, was the guy that called the famous “long count” win for Gene Tunney over Jack Dempsey for the world heavyweight boxing title in 1927. He also worked radio shows with famous stars of the day, Ed Wynn and Rudy Vallee – and he did a lot newsreel voice-over work too.

Sadly, that explosive demand for McNamee’s talents in the early days of a medium that he practically invented single-handedly now costs him due recognition among those who annually vote on the Ford C. Frick Award.

I once asked Astros broadcaster Milo Hamilton for his thoughts on the long-neglect of Graham McNamee by the Ford C. Frick voters. I found his answer to be quite revealing. “He didn’t broadcast baseball long enough (to be recognized by the Baseball Hall of Fame with a Frick Award),” Milo told me. I’ve since learned that Milo isn’t alone in that opinion. I just beg to differ with it.

No, he didn’t do it very long by comparison to today’s full season, baseball-only broadcasters. All he did was invent and continue to improve upon play-by-play in the nineteen years that passed between his first radio game in 1923 and his death in 1942.

The Graham McNamee story is straight out of the mind of a 1930s or 1940s screenplay writer: A young man from Minnesota goes to New York City in the early 1920s with hopes of becoming an opera singer. Early on, he takes what work he can find, but draws jury duty one day. While walking to the courthouse in 1923, he spies a “help wanted” ad in the window at radio station WEAF. On a whim, he decides to drop in and check it out.

McNamee walks right into an audition for an announcing job and is hired on the spot. He soon finds himself working as a sort of back-up man with a rotating crew of writers who are starting to cover the New York Giants over the radio at the Polo Grounds. The writers cover the game as though it were a typed report for their newspapers. If a batter grounds out 6-3, the writer/announcer would simply watch as the play was transpiring. Then he would say something like: “The batter just hit a ground ball to the shortstop. The shortstop threw the ball to first base for a put out.” Then the air would just go silent until something else happened that could be reported in the past tense.

McNamee jumped on the dead air. He started telling people what the day looked like, what the fans were doing, and, sin-of-sins, he started talking about the game in real-time, speculating on strategies and the like. What he mainly got in return from his colleagues was silence, but that didn’t stop young 33-year old Graham McNamee. He was going to inject some color into the game or die trying.

Then, one destiny-day it happened. Not death, but life descended upon baseball broadcasting. While working with the iconic writer Grantland Rice, who hated the radio responsibility, anyway, McNamee suddenly found himself on the air alone. Rice told him to just finish the game by himself, that he had worked it all he wanted and was moving on.

Whoa! All of a sudden, young McNamee has the plane to himself as pilot Rice hits the silk. What does he do?

You bet right. He starts describing the game in real-time – and in a most informal and conversational way – one that speaks for his desire to be the listener’s partner in “seeing” this game fully as it plays out in the theater of the mind. He was wildly successful at these efforts from the start – so much so that the call for his radio services reached quickly beyond baseball alone.

Does Graham McNamee deserve better recognition by Cooperstown for his primal contributions to sports broadcasting than he has so far received to date? You tell me. Then tell the Hall of Fame. I’m tired of watching politics rather than serious contribution win out in the battle for recognition by so many various halls of honor. To me, the Ford C Frick Award without Graham McNamee is like any building that leaves out a serious foundation plank. The thing is going to wobble.

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The Old Scotchman, Gordon McLendon

August 2, 2010

From 1947-1952, young Gordon McClendon, the “Old Scotchman,” mastered the art of baseball game recreations at his Liberty Broadcasting System studio in Dallas.

29-year old Gordon McLendon walked among us in the years following World War II as one of the shrewdest, most creative independent broadcasters ever  to come down the pike. Recognizing the appeal of baseball far beyond the narrow confines of the few eastern and midwestern cities of the big leagues, young McLendon pieced together the Liberty Broadcasting System in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff in 1947 and proceeded from there over the next three years to build a national audience for his studio-recreated games of major league baseball.

In competition with the powerful Mutual Broadcasting System and their live big league game coverage, Gordon McLendon understood that his battle was not against the money and talent that MBS could throw against his LBS for the national audience at stake. “G Mac” figured correctly that his challenge was in the “Theatre of the Mind.” The network that best captured the visual imagination of the fans through this strictly words and sounds medium would be the winner down the line.

G Mac guessed right. As a 12-year old in the summer of 1950, I can attest to his victory and I can relate exactly when and how it happened for me. Confined indoors during the so-called “heat of the day” (12-3PM). I struggled like most of my friends with a choice of the two networks for big league action during the daily time of confinement from the sandlot. We knew that LBS was giving us simulated broadcasts and, no matter how good we found G Mac to be, that fact alone often pushed us over to MBS and the mellow voice of Al Helfer and live action.

G Mac bought a parrot and confined him to a room all day that played his station call letters, “K-L-I-F” on a recorded loop for as long as it took the bird to learn to say those words. Then the bird went on the air with G Mac and said the call letters on cue at break time.

Then one day that all changed. Somehow, G Mac and LBS came up short on a big league game to broadcast and were forced to either cancel or go to musical “rain out” programming. G Mac chose to go another way. He went to the history books and pulled up a detailed account of Game Two from the 1916 World Series. All of a sudden, I’m listening to Babe Ruth warming up on the sidelines; the date is October 9, 1916; Ruth is getting ready to face off against Sherry Smith and the visiting Brooklyn Robins.

I was captivated by G Mac’s time-machine-invite to join him for a batter-by-batter trip back to that golden day in baseball history. And G Mac and LBS brought me everything from what happened each step of the way to changes in the wind that caused uniform sleeves to flap and trash and dust to blow across the infield – and, of course, all of the changes in light patterns brought about by cloud movements and the length of the game. 14 innings later, Ruth and the Red Sox had prevailed over Smith and the Robins by a 2-1 final score. This may have been the day that my lifelong romance with baseball history found its truckload of cement. I just remember being hooked on the trip through time.

Legendary LBS Broadcaster Gordon McLendon ~ The Old Scotchman – G Mac. He’s the reason that Houston Radio Station KILT first bore those call letters as an affiliate.

For a complexity of reasons, including the new era of franchise-shifting and MLB closing down harder on independent broadcasters who made an unregistered living off the labors of major league baseball, the LBS broadcasts began to fade. By 1952, the network was dead and McClendon had moved on to other things, like inventing “Top 40 Song Hits of the Week” programming – and producing  one mildly disastrous independent horror movie in which he also starred as a mad doctor in “The Killer Shrews” (1959). G Mac also served as Executive Producer of “The Giant Gila Monster” that same year. “Shrew” has since become something of a cult horror movie classic among fan circles that have nothing to do with baseball.

Gordon McLendon died in 1986 at the age of 65. He was posthumously inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1994.

To me, G Mac will always be one of those people who made history come alive. He didn’t invent   simulated game broadcasting. He simply fine tuned it into a magic carpet ride into baseball history.

Thanks, Old Scotchman! A lot us out here shall remember you forever!

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Bill McKechnie: Manager for the Ages

July 31, 2010

Bill McKechnie: Only Manager to Take Three Different City Clubs to the World Series.

Hall of Fame baseball manager Bill McKechnie had a personality reputation that wore out all the most popular clichés on the subject. “Dull as dishwater” and “a man bearing all the excitement of watching paint dry” jump immediately to mind.

All the man did was quietly and quickly come in and take three different clubs to the World Series during the first half of the 20th century. He was never “the show” that a few of his more famous contemporaries were. Fiery guys like John McGraw and the umpire-baiting Leo Durocher may have been a lot more fun to watch. They just didn’t accomplish what Bill McKechnie did with three wholly different franchises.

As often happens, this great historical manager had not been a great player. Over an 11-season big league career played non-contiguously from 1907 to 1920, McKechnie the infielder batted .251 with only 8 home runs, but he went to school on all phases of baseball during that period and he impressed others with his quiet observations and suggestions for personal improvement. He apparently was one of those teachers who understood that a teacher has nothing to teach unless he has a student who is willing to listen. It became a characteristic of McKechnie’s that he surrounded himself with players with raw talent who would also listen to ways they could improve. Pitchers were the key to winning in McKechnie’s book and having pitchers who were willing to improve themselves and extend their innings of effective pitching were important to Manager Bill.

By the time that Bill McKechnie reached the Reds in 1938, the common wisdom in baseball had distilled to this simple straightforward advisory to pitching prospects joining his Reds clubs: “If you can’t pitch for McKechnie, you can’t pitch for anybody.”

Bill McKechnie managed the Pittsburgh Pirates for five seasons (1922-26), leading the club to the World Series championship in 1925 over the Washington Nationals. He next managed the St. Louis Cardinals for two seasons (1928-29). He quickly led the Cards to a National League pennant in 1928 before losing the World Series to the New York Yankees. McKechnie then spent eight seasons (1930-1937) managing the Boston Braves/Bees, a club that couldn’t win for anybody, before taking over for a final nine-year run (1938-46) as manager of the Cincinnati Reds. At Cincinnati, McKechnie would lead the Reds from the last place club they were in 1937 to the NL pennant in 1939 and then to another Series loss to the ’39 Yankees, a club that many consider as the greatest team of all time. McKechnie then returned  the Reds to the top in 1940 for a World Series victory over the Detroit Tigers, his second title in four tries at three spots.

McKechnie was a laid back, quiet fatherly type who quickly earned the trust of any player worth keeping. That trust was crucible to the art of him getting across his beliefs about the central role of pitching and what he expected from his staff. McKechnie had a simple philosophy about pitching: (1) No big league pitcher can get by with a fast ball alone. He believed that a pitcher has to develop a curve that he can control for strikes. (2) McKechnie forbade his pitchers from throwing sliders. He believed that all sliders did was hurt pitching arms and shorten pitching careers. (3) He wanted starters to build confidence and belief in their stuff – and their abilities to win. (4) He wanted his pitchers to develop the stamina to pitch a complete game, whenever possible. (5) McKechnie believed that pitching required constant intelligence to the job at hand and that anger in any form robbed a pitcher of his ability in that moment to work intelligently. No matter how well a pitcher was throwing, McKechnie would take his man out if he saw signs of anger on the mound. His pitchers understood that was going to happen too, if they had fits on the mound, and they adjusted to the idea of “don’t get mad; stay focused and give the next pitch your best shot.”

Pitchers on the Reds like Paul Derringer, Bucky Walters, and Johnny Vander Meer blossomed under McKechnie. Vander Meer, in fact, pitched his back-to-back no-no’s for the 1938 Reds. He also gave McKechnie credit for prolonging his career through the 1951 season due to changes he made in his pitching style under Bill’s guidance. The main change was that he gave up the more stressful sidearm delivery for a straight over the shoulder throw.

Bill McKechnie also managed the National League club in the 1940 and 1941 All Star Games.

Bill McKechnie’s record speaks for itself. Not counting a minor league starter job as a playing manager with Newark in 1915, he finished his major league managerial career with a mark of 1,842 wins and 1,678 losses.

“Deacon” Bill McKechnie received the nod into the Hall of Fame by the Veteran’s Committee in 1962. Three years later, on October 29, 1965, he passed away in Bradenton, Florida at the age of 79. He will be quietly missed and remembered forever by all people who choose to scratch the surface on the study of people who made the game of baseball the great national sport it became.

The baseball chain of cause and effect even reaches directly to Houston in the matter of Bill McKechnie. His Reds center fielder for five years (1938-42) was an eager-to-learn young fellow named Harry Craft, the same fatherly, good-listening first manager of the first ever major league club in Houston, the 1962 Houston Colt .45’s.  If there ever was a mystery as to who mentored Harry Craft into becoming the just- right-for-the-times manager he became for us in Houston back at the start, consider that question now resolved. And try to keep that very clear example in mind when you look around at what and who you are mentoring now in life by your own role model behavior. The chain of cause and effect is never-ending.

I’m just glad that Bill McKechnie and Harry Craft were part of our Houston baseball chain. And based upon what I’ve seen of him, so far, I kind of think that current Astros manager Brad Mills may be cut out of the same good quality spiritual cloth. Let’s just hope that Brad is now being provided with the kind of young talent that both needs to learn and knows how to listen to the wiser heads that are being made available to them.

Have a nice Saturday, everybody!

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