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Jim Basso: The Old Man and The Baseball Sea.

April 18, 2010

Jim Basso, Houston Buffs, 1946-48.

Jim Basso lived as the personification of the career minor leaguer back in the pre and post World II years. He loved baseball, he played the outfield well, he hit with some punch, he didn’t really have much education or a lot of skills that gave him a good or passionate alternative to the game, and he always dreamed of breaking into the big leagues with some team, somewhere along the way by just hanging in there long enough, showing up every spring, whether he was hurt or not, and giving it his best, no matter where he was playing.

The big leagues never happened for Jim Basso. Sadly, he went to his grave, forever regretting the fact that he never got so much as a single time at bat with any big league club in a regular season game.

“It would’ve meant a  lot to me,” Jim once told me. “Just to know that I had gotten into into the big record book as one of the few players who made it to the big leagues would’ve meant everything to me.”

It wasn’t meant to be, but it surely wasn’t because Jim Basso didn’t have the tools or performance record to at leat earn a trial in the bigs. He simply played in the era of great major league club exclusivity. With only sixteen total big league clubs in both major leagues until expansion started in 1961, Jim Basso belongs to a large, not-so-exclusive legion of lost opportunity. A lot of ball players who would at least get a playing look today never even got there back then. With the reserve clause governing all player movements prior to free agency, a lot of players also missed the majors because the parent club either couldn’t find roster room or didn’t want certain players from falling into the hands of their big league rivals. We will never know for sure how many players actually had their MLB careers denied by a parent club that may have been hoarding talent in the minors in self-defense.

James Sebastian (Jim) Basso (BR/TR, 6’0″, 185 Lbs.) was born in Omaha, Nebraska on October 5, 1919. Signing with the St. Louis Cardinals, but eventually winding his way into the systems of the Reds, Braves, and White Sox, Basso compiled a 13-season minor league record (1941, 1946-57) and a three-season stint as a member of the Houston Buffs (1946-48). Jimmy didn’t even get into a game from the roster of the ’48 Buffs before he was dealt away, but he stayed long enough to make the Houston area and his place in Pearland a permanent residence beyond baseball.

Jim Basso was a pretty fair country hitter. His career batting average was .297 with a slugging average of .464. He racked up 1,815 total hits that included 335 doubles, 57 triples, and 191 home runs. Wow! Do you think a guy with Basso’s stats might have gotten an AB or two in the big leagues somewhere in 2010?

For better, but mostly worse, Jim Basso played hurt.

“You had to play hurt back then,” Jim often said. “If you took a day off to nurse an injury back in my day, you knew that you just might wake up the next morning to find somebody else wearing your jock strap. You couldn’t let that happen. You had to play, even if it made things worse on your injury.”

Jim Basso also played a few winters in Cuba during his career. He even managed to meet Ernest Hemingway when the great American writer invited Basso and some of his teammates over to the house for drinks in the evening.

One day, late in Jim’s life, I drove out to Pearland with former Buff Jerry Witte to visit. During our stay, Jim said he wanted to show me his workshop in the garage so we walked out in the back to see the place in the detached building that held it all. It was quite nice, but the summer heat had turned the place into a boiler room.

It was then that I looked over to a work shelf and spied a single book in place. Since it was a book, I had to walk over and see what it was.

It turned out to be a first edition copy of “The Old Man and the Sea” and it had been personally autographed “To my good friends, Jim and Connie Basso! Affectionately, Ernest Hemingway.”

Ernest Hemingway & Jim Basso in Cuba, 1952, (center); unidentified ballplayers on flanks.

“Jim,” I cried out a little too school marmishly. “You’ve got to get this book inside and out of this light and heat right away!”

“Yeah?” Jim asked.

Yeah!” I affirmed.

Once I explained the problem, Jim jumped on it himself. He picked up the book and took it inside. Then he told me the story of how he and his wife Connie had met Hemingway in Cuba, and how he and his fellow ball players had enjoyed drinking and talking baseball with the great author in the Cuban evenings at Hemingway’s home.

Jim Basso passed away on May 21, 1999 in Pearland, Texas at the age of 79. He took with him so many good stories, a heart of gold, an unending passion for the game of baseball, and that awful nobody-could-take-it-from-him regret that he never got that time at bat in the majors.

Since the Hemingway book discovery, I’ve thought of Jim Basso as the living baseball symbol of the old fisherman in Hemingway’s book. For many years, Jim Basso went down to the Sea of Baseball every morning, always hoping to catch the big fish of big league opportunity. He never even hooked his dream monster, but he never gave up. It was not within his heart to do so. He kept going back to the sea each day for as long as he could. And then he went home each night to sleep. And to dream again of the lions. And to wake up later and read the box scores in the newspapers. And to learn the  latest stories of the great DiMaggio.

Goodnight, Jim Basso, wherever you may now be. To those of us who knew and loved you, you will always be one of our major leaguers. No matter what.

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Ticket to Yesterday.

April 17, 2010

Excerpt from 1919 Houston City Directory, Part One.

Excerpt from 1919 Houston City Directory, Part Two.*

* The small print above reads: “Take it home with you and do away with the dust, the worry, the grime.  Make it pleasant for your wife.” Houston Lighting & Power Company (now Reliant) was located at San Jacinto & Capitol back then and their telephone number was Preston 4140.

This 1919 advertisement for the Houston Lighting & Power Company goes on to extol the modern  conveniences of those new applainces that were then available, but only to those businesses and families that subscribed to the provision of electrical power for the office and home. Such items as vacuum cleaners, irons, toasters, sewing machines, fans, and grills were all then listed as items that any family should want to have live and running back in the post World War I days of life in Houston, There was no mention of radio and air conditioning, Those luxuries were an eye blink and another world war away from widespread popularity and dependency – and forget television, microwave ovens, and the Internet. Those convenient consumer addictions were several amusement and comfort-hungry generations down the road.

Now, in 2010, it’s only possible for me to be sharing this story because of our ready and taken-for-granted-until-Rita-and-Ike dependency upon the everyday  availability of electricity here in Houston. Boy! Did those two monsters of nature ever take us quickly back instantly to the everyday realities of our steaming hot and humid way of life in Houston back in General Sam’s day!

All of this commotion here too is just my way of sharing the news with those of you who don’t already know that our wonderful Houston Public Library system has now made several ancient Houston city directories available to all of us online for the first time. Now we are helped again with our local research by the library’s constantly moving efforts to make our work easier and freer of physical trips downtown to the archives for everything.

For those of us involved in local baseball research, the availability of these sources dating back to the Civil War era are a monumental gain for all of us non-funded research people who would otherwise have to schedule time for going downtown, and paying for gas and parking, simply to look up an antiquated street address. Now we shouldn’t have to do that on many occasions.

The danger of these ready resources is similar to the risks we all face in local reasearch. You will find so many items of distraction from your original purpose that you will need to stay focused on why you are doing a particular search. (One of these days, I’m going to have to go back and try to learn more about that bar I found in downtown Houston back in the 1890s. They called it the “Two Orphan’s Saloon.” What a great name for a turn of the 20th century watering hole.)

Here’s the link that will get you to the general site where all the directories are online.

http://digital.houstonlibrary.org/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fcitydir

Thank you, John Civitello, for letting me know about the availability of this incredible resource. And have a nice weekend, everybody – especially if you plan to spend it in search of Houston’s history.

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Kids Today and Baseball.

April 14, 2010

Former Astro Norm Miller, 2010.

Former Astros outfielder spoke to our Larry Dierker Chapter of SABR last night. His speech lit a fire that almost burns by spontaneous combustion for most of us elder folk. The topic, put simply, is the subject of kids and baseball today. It’s a  much bigger subject than baseball alone.

Miller began his talk with the disclaimer that he knows nothing about baseball’s history or the rules, claiming to be just a guy who played the game. As most of you know, you need to watch out when you hear that kind of opening disclaimer by a public figure in a public talk. It usually means you are about to take “a good old country lawyer” spraying of the speaker’s thoughts on the topic at hand. As per thesis, Norm Miller proved himself capable of delivering a ton of words on the subject he sort of chose for himself: Baseball Today.

Norm began with his opening question to the audience: “How do you feel about baseball today?”

Miller proceeded to take us through the facts that he was an old school Southern California guy who participated in baseball, football, basketball, and surfing during their appropriate seasons and times of day, but that baseball today is more about kids being controlled into playing baseball 24 hours a day, twelve months per year, and all in the parents’ invested hopes that the training experience will lead to a successful professional career in the big leagues. He mentioned the Select Baseball program as an approach that panders to that exalted expectation.

Norm also talkeed about his brief experience coaching in Select before he fully realized what he was getting into and being blown away by the attitude of so many kids he tried to coach. These kids on Norm’s watch resented being told what to do and some had the kind of sailor-vocabulary mouths to express themselves on the subject. One kid walked away from a practice order from Miller. When Miller then tried to stop him, the kid just looked up at Norm and said something like, “Get out of my way, you blankety-blank old man!”

Norm says it took all he had within him to keep from whacking the kid, but it proved to be the incident that led Norm to getting out. In general, he now feels that the pressure there to win and get better is so relentless that the kids can’t stand it, even though the parents seem to be buying into the hope that their child’s participation is going to lead to a big breakthrough career in baseball.

To me, it all simply sounded like too much baseball for all the wrong reasons. Those of us from the sandlot generation played the game all day during the season because we chose it for ourselves. We weren’t playing the game for the purpose of becoming big leaguers, even though we dreamed a lot about that sort of thing. There was no pressure to get better or die.

We simply had the good fortune back in the day to have grown up in a world in which it was still safe for kids to play in the neighborhood on their own without any over-the-shoulder supervision from all the adults in our lives. Because we did live in that safer world, parents didn’t feel so much that they had to control and supervise our time and guide our activities as preparations for the adult world to come.

Most of us got the message: It’s up to you to learn something that will allow you to support yourself when you’re grown. You have some talents inside, but it’s up to you to find out what they are and to then develop them by your own dedication to learning. College is a good way to go, but you’re going to have to help find a way to pay for it and, even if you get there through college, you are still going to have to decide what it is you want to do and make the most of your talents and opportunities. Not having an honest way to take care of yourself is the only unacceptable outcome of your childhood.

Pretty basic stuff was at play for us, but we got it.

Norm Miller, MLB, 1965-74.

Now the combination of an unsafe world and the additional discretionary resources of ambitious parents seem to be taking over the lives of many kids. And that’s really too bad. Way beyond the loss of the sandlot itself, kids have lost the relatively safe opportunity to simply work things out on the street with other kids without adult involvement. It’s really too bad.

Parents today can’t buy the kind of healing childhood experiences that our post World War II generation got for free.

Thank you, Norm Miller, for reminding us on the larger plane of what was so important about the sandlot. It went way beyond baseball alone to everything we did and tried to become.

By the way, Norm Miller has written and self-published a book recently on his big league experience. It’s entitled “To all my fans…from Norm Who?” You may purchase the book over the Internet or through your local bookstore.

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Eagle Memories: The Way We Were.

April 13, 2010

The culture of field behavior changes forever.

Unless you are one of us ancients, you may not have noticed the wide range of change in field behavior that has taken place in baseball over the past half century. The game remains the same, of course, but player behavior on the field has mutated considerably from what it used to be. I’ll try to cover some of the major things I see here. Feel free to add, refresh, or comment on this subject below as a response to this subject.

Changes in Baseball Field Behavior Since 1960:

(1) Baseball Gloves on the Field When Your Team is Batting. We used yo copy the pros on the sandlot, throwing our gloves on the outfield grass while our club was at bat. I never played in a game or saw a Buffs game in which a tossed fielder glove interfered with a batted ball or a running fielder. The practice disappeared about 1959-60. I can’t recall exactly how or when it came about.

(2) Pepper Games. Prior to games, players in groups of two to five used to play pepper near the stands almost every time in spite of the “No Pepper Games” signs that prevailed in the interest of fan safety from errantly batted balls. A pepper game was simply a gingerly batted ball at close range to a group of three or four fielders standing back about six ro eight feet from the batter. I haven’t seen a pepper game in ages now.

(3) Infield Practice. It used to be as routine a pre-game ritual as batting practice still is. And what a thing of grace and beauty it was to watch too, but no more. I guess infielders must have gotten so good at what they do that the practice of fielding became unnecessary.

(4) Infield Game Chatter. Infielders used to keep us this hum of chatter on defense. It was there as a voice of distraction to hitters and runners and a show of support for the pitcher. At some point, it became un-cool to do – and infielders stopped. When they did, they seemed to lapse into stone-cold expressions and a more tranquil face on the subject of game conflict in action.

(5) Bench Jockeys. These guys were the original trash talkers. A baseball bench jockey worked on pitchers and batters of the other team. When one of the Detroit Tiger pitchers Schoolboy Rowe went on the air to do a radio show prior to the 1934 World Series, he finished his radio remarks by asking his wife, “How am I doin’, Edna?” And that’s exactly what he got from Leo Durocher, the St. Louis Cardinals’ chief bench jockey in his first pitching assignment. Every time Rowe walked a man or gave up a hit, Durocher let fly with a deriding cry of “How am I doin’, Edna?” It unnerved Rowe and helped the Cardinals beat him in the Series. Somewhere along the way, the bench jockeys of baseball either all died, retired, or shut up for all time. Too bad. The loss of bench jockeys leaves the world of baseball a slightly duller place to be.

Gloves on the ground were common. Gloves with balls in a tree were rare.

(6) Indifference to Opposition. Baseball used to enforce its rule about players not “fraternizing” on the field with players from the other team. Today players disregard that rule as though it were no longer on the books and, who knows, maybe it isn’t. Lance Berkman stands out in my mind as a guy who treats every enemy runner who makes it to first base as though he were a long-lost friend. And who knows again, maybe they are. Lance is a pretty sociable guy.

(7) Pitchers as Pinch Runners. Clubs, especially the minor league clubs with their small rosters, used to use pitchers as pinch runners in late innings. I guess that baseball finally figured out that it wasn’t worth the risk to a pitcher’s arm or general welfare to put him out there under those circumstances of potential harm, doing something he ordinarily doesn’t do very often.

(8) Players (especially visiting team players) Often Began Day Games with Dirty Uniforms from the Night Before. We have better, faster washer dryers today and a little more support help on uniform maintenance.

(9) You used to be able to see the major spots on the field where the fielders spit their tobacco juices. Less chawing has led to a cleaner look in most ballparks today.

(10) Night Spot Team Brawls. Teams like the Yankees of the 1950s or even the Mets of the 1980s are getting into fewer club arrests for drunk and disorderly behavior arrests in night clubs these days.  I’m not sure if this means that today’s players are more problem-free than their predecessors or that today’s players are simply more discrete in the ways they choose to stir up trouble as a form of entertainment.

Either way, it’s a different ballgame today. In baseball and in life.

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Sandlot Wisdom: Things We Figured Out on Our Own.

April 12, 2010

Houston East, 1952. (I'm the kid kneeling at left and wearing the Hawaiian shirt.)

Back on the Post World War II Sandlot, we didn’t have the best coaching or equipment in the world. As a matter of fact, we hardly had any coaching at all beyond those things that we picked up from our dads by chance in games of catch in the backyard after our dads’ work was done, but that didn’t happen every day. Our dads in the Houston East End worked long hard blue-collar job hours and they weren’t always home or simply up to playing catch every day that they were there.

Out on the sandlot, of course, we did a lot of “my dad says this” talking with each other. “Get in front of the ball on grounders. If you can’t catch ’em, at least, block ’em with your body” stands out in my memory as the most universal lesson we all picked up as a dad throwaway message. We might never have picked that one up on our own. There was no such thing as a true hop on our Eagle Park field, but we still came around to blocking grounders at the risk of  broken teeth and black eyes. It was the thing to do. Our fathers told us it was.

So, let’s give dads the credit for that first wisdom of the sandlot and then hit upon some of the other things we pretty much figured out on our own by simply playing the game with each other from dawn to dusk during the summers.

Some Wisdom of the Sandlot:

(1)  Get in front of the ball on grounders. If you can’t catch ’em, at least, block ’em with your body. Kids who didn’t block grounders were at risk of being labeled as “dog catchers.” These were fielders who chased hot grounders like dogs chase cars. If they do catch up with the ball, they just run along beside it, barking all the way as the ball clears the lot and rolls on down the street.

(2) In making out a batting order, put the fast little guys who show they can get on base in there ahead of the bigger, slower-moving, but harder-hitting guys.

(3) If you’re pitching, throw strikes. If you can get that first one in there for a strike, you put the batter at a disadvantage that remains with him, unless you give it away by forgetting where the strike zone is located.

(4) If you’re pitching, “accidentally” throw one hard, inside, and wild every now and then. If a wild pitch  makes the batter fall back or down, it becomes easier to throw a strike with your next pitch, especially if you can put it on the outside corner.

(5) As an outfielder, throw the ball ahead of the runner. To learn this one, all we had to do was watch little kids in right field throw ground ball singles to first base, allowing the runner to safely move on to second base in the process. What we didn’t learn on our own in the sandlot is how to effectively set up and use cut-off men on balls hit deep to the outfield. I didn’t learn that one until I played organized ball with an adult coach.

(6) Play the game to win. If you don’t play to win, you may as well not be playing. (Sandlot Yoga would not have been very popular in Pecan Park back in the day. It probably still isn’t.)

(7) If your opponent has an obvious weakness, take advantage of it. This value taught us how to hit to all fields. In fact, Wee Willie Keeler’s credo, “Hit ’em where they ain’t” simply meant to us: “hit ’em where the other team doesn’t have somebody positioned who looks like they can catch or stop a hard-batted ball. And hey, if it looks like nobody out there can catch, go ahead and swing from the heels, Eagles! This is “track-meet-on-the-bases” day!

(8) Never let the other team back in the game because you feel sorry for them. (See Lesson 6 again.) Don’t confuse the absence of mercy with unsportsmanlike behavior. You play the game of baseball to win – or you don’t play the game at all. Good sports understand this creed. Bad sports are the crumb-bums who beg for mercy and then have a tantrum when you beat ’em fair and square.

(9) Always try to find your highest level of competitive ability. If the other players in your world are bigger, better, and older than you, making it impossible for you to compete successfully, there’s nothing wrong with you stepping back and finding your niche with players who are more at your own level. There’s a place for almost everyone who wants to play. I said “almost.” If you can’t play well enough at any level to keep from hurting your team, you can learn to live with it and still enjoy the game as a fan.

(10) Most of all, the sandlot taught us that we’d never figure out the game completely on our own. To understand baseball better, we need to be dedicated to a lifetime of learning about the game’s history, strategies, and techniques.  We still won’t walk away knowing as much about pitching as a Larry Dierker does – or as much about hitting as a Jimmy Wynn, but we will become more knowledgeable – and that just makes the game all the more fun.

If you picked up some special lesson from the sandlot, please post it below as a comment on this article. We’d all like to hear what it was, whether it was a lesson about baseball specifically or life in general.

Have a great week, everybody. Unlesss you’re a Cardinal fan, let’s hope this may be the day that our 2010 Houston Astros start learning something about how to win their first game of the new season.

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Why Do Fans Go To Ballgames or Stay Home?

April 9, 2010

Major League Baseball's Biggest Fear.

Why do people go to ballgames? In major league baseball, for that matter, why do some baseball fans go to ballgames in person while others simply stay home and watch on TV?

I could spend all day and several columns on this subject and still get lost in all the variables that I think  tilt people into one category or the other so let’s just hit the highlights here on my observations. You and others may likely see it differently.

(1) Multi-Tasking Opportunities at Home: Sometimes people who know the game and its history well prefer to watch from home where they can simultaneously surf the Internet for other sources of information historically on what is transpiring on the field. This group may increase their future game appearances as the technology to do certain analytical functions becomes more portable and affordable.

(2) The Personal Atmosphere and Ambience of the Ballpark: There’s something about the smell of hot dogs, the sounds of batted balls, the assorted shapes and sizes of other fans in person, the summer weather, the company of family and game buddies that are all – and I mean ALL and EVERYTHING ELSE that emanates from the senses and our emotional connections to each other that are ALL only available at the ballpark.

(3) Some people stay home because they can watch the game better on TV: The presence of strategically located TV sets at the ballpark is helping this ballpark competition from stay-at-home-ease, but HD big screen reception at home, with all of broadcasting’s multi-camera dynamic perspectives on a single game will always be superior as a view to even the best seat at the ballpark. The antidote for this problem has never been engaged fully in any of the newly constructed ballpark venues.

What’s the answer? Give the fans true stadium seating, the kind they are building into new movie theatres today at a record clip. These are seats that cannot be obscured by some 6’5″ bald-headed guy who gets the seat in front of you. Even if you are able to catch a glimpse of home plate around his right ear under these circumstances, you still end up with a moon-like memory of the moles and craters on his bald pate that is superior to any live recollections you may have of the action on the field. Unobstructed sight lines makes up for a lot of the loss of TV’s multiple perspectives and replays.

(4) Some fans go to games because they crave (and, using my day-job career as my point of reference credential,  I do mean “crave” in an obsessive-compulsive sense) an authentic connection to the game. These fans want to be near their stars, wearing the kinds of gear and uniforms that their local heroes are wearing on the field. The needs of these fans are the source of a major fairly unexplored potentially more personal revenue stream for MLB products. The next step up from here, which a few clubs already seem to realize better than others, is the sale to fans of authentic game-used uniforms and equipment. This development means that ballpark souvenir sales have gone from pennants in the beginning – to tee shirts with the team’s name on it – to replica jerseys – to authentic jerseys and game gear now – and all in just a few short years.

(5) Some fans only go to games in person when they perceive that the home club has a chance of reaching the World Series. Remember, I didn’t say that a club actually has to reach the World Series to attract this population. These fans simply have to have invested informed and sentimental hope in that possibility. Owners who pull this string to build their short-term gate need to bear in mind that fans are never fooled forever. The effort to win must be sincere and based upon some plan for winning that makes sense. Otherwise, fans are capable of turning away and never looking back. The old myth that “fans always have a short memory” is a dangerous rope bridge over troubled attendance waters in any big league market.

Conclusion: Today’s baseball fans will follow the game forever if they are not made to feel like suckers – and if they are not too reminded too often by increasing prices that they are the cash cows at the whole big-salary circus of big league baseball.

Whatever we all can do to keep the cost of MLB baseball at a family friendly budget level is all important to the future of the game. That’s especially true in this era of the new fans who are still kids playing little league ball and going to big league or minor league games with their parents. They are not quite the same as those of us who grew up loving baseball from our dawn-to-dusk sandlot days. To today’s kids, baseball is more or less just another adult-organized activity they go through seasonally, along with football, basketball, soccer, gymnastics, music, karate, and other extracurricular what have yous.

I’ll take our generational difference this far: Our post-WWII youth generation’s love of baseball from the sandlot was systemic. Baseball got into our bloodstreams and it directed everything we did. For today’s generation, however, it seems that baseball is more often than not little more than a topical condition, one applied by parents, complete with all the external things like replica uniforms we only wished for, but could never dream of affording.

Back in the day, our love of the game was for life. The value of baseball to this generation is something we shall have to wait to learn more about over the course of the next ten to twenty years. It’s this current generation that will answer an important long-term question: Who goes to baseball games and who stays home?

While we’re waiting, baseball needs to continue its efforts to find ways that will help young people choose the game for themselves. Certainly, building ballparks where kids can play the game anywhere is a nice general step in that direction. Unfortunately, the predator-danger to children in today’s world virtually wipes out the possbility of resurrecting the pure sandlot ball experience on a broad scale – and that’s a sad loss, one that goes far beyond baseball.

We used to have the freedom to work things out together as kids. Now that opportunity has been taken away from our children and our grandchildren by an increasingly dangerous street world. How sad that realization suddenly makes me.

America, where did you go?

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Cleveland “The Big Cat” Williams.

April 8, 2010

Cleveland Williams of Houston.

They called him “The Big Cat” because of his athletic hand and foot speed and his paralyzing punching power. He seemed to have it all. Back in the early 1950’s, in fact, Cleveland Williams stood alone and tall (6’3″ & 195-230 lbs.) as Houston’s major hope for honor as home of the next heavyweight boxing champion of the world. A younger fellow named Tod Herring was still street fighting his way up, but Tod was several maturity laps behind the devastating force that The Big Cat had become by 1954.

Born June 30, 1933 in Griffin, Georgia, Williams moved his training base and home to Houston around 1957 after starting his boxing career earlier with a KO win over Lee Hunt in the 3rd round of a fight in Tampa on December 11, 1951.

Williams won his first 27 bouts, recording 23 of those victories by the KO route before losing a decision to Sonny Jones in New York City on September 24, 1953.

Cleveland then ran off another four straight KO wins, capped by an avenging 3rd round clobbering of Sonny Jones, before suffering his first KO loss, a 3rd round fall to Bob Satterfield in Miami Beach on June 22, 1954.

Following his second loss, Williams ran off another 12 straight victories over the next five years, finally signing to meet the monster Sonny Liston in Miami Beach on April 15, 1959. It turned out to be a turning point night in the boxing career of Cleveland Williams. Liston totally dominated the short match, taking it all on a 3rd round TKO of Cleveland Williams. Williams would later fight Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight crown, but he would never again come close to being seen as a serious contender for the crown after the first loss to Liston. The sentence was complete when Williams again lost on a TKO to Liston in a March 21, 1960 rematch in Houston. In the second match, Williams lost in the 2nd round, a round earlier than his loss in first loss to Liston in Florida.

On June 28, 1966, 33-year old Cleveland Williams finally squared off against Houston street brawler-bully Tod Herring in their mutual home town. The Big Cat still had enough to take out the younger Herring, winning in three rounds on a TKO and clearing the way for a heavyweight championship challenge of Muhammad Ali at the Astrodome in Houston on November 14, 1966.

November 14, 1966: Ali KO’s Big Cat Williams in 3rd Round of Astrodome bout.

Big Cat Dreams died quickly. Ali took charge early and hammered away at Cleveland Williams at will. The fight ended in the 3rd round as another KO win for Ali and the effectively sealed end-of-the-line for Cleveland Williams as a serious national challenger – although,  I am among those who contend that the real end to the world-serious career of Cleveland Williams came earlier – in the two fights with Liston.

Cleveland Williams would later defeat Terry Daniels in Dallas on May 11, 1972 in a 12-round decision that would give him the World Heavyweight Championship of Texas, but so what? By then, the man was 39 years old and fighting for a prize that few fans cared anything about. After two more meaningless wins in 1972, Cleveland “The Big Cat” Williams retired from boxing after his last bout of October 28, 1972. He had won most of his fights (80-11-1) and the hearts of Houston boxing fans along the way. That has to count for something.

Cleveland Williams died on September 11, 1999 at the age of 66.

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Tod Herring: Terror of the East End.

April 7, 2010

Tod Herring, As Many of Us Older East Enders Remember Him.

If you grew up male in the Houston East End in the years following World War II, you knew who Tod Herring was by reputation, if not from painful personal experience. He was the meanest dog on any block for miles and none of us who grew up in his territory are likely to ever forget him. I was reminded of Tod yesterday when jack Murphy, an old St. Chistopher’s Catholic School buddy wrote to remind me of Tod’s once dominant terror upon our collective unconscious.

In Herring’s case, “collective unconscious” bears a more literal meaning than the definition intended by Dr. Carl Jung. With Tod, “collectively unconscious” would have been the probable group outcome for six average guys who tried to take on the biggest bully in Pecan Park and environs by themselves with no back-up plan.

Here’s what Jack Murphy said to me in his e-mail:

“Bill, if memory serves, the absolute official start of summer (in the East End) was marked by the reopening of the bathtub sized Mason Park Pool and the annual attempted drowning of yours truly by Tod Herring and his Southmayd (Elemenery School) gang of pagans.”

“Brother Bill (Murphy) always came to my rescue and the St. Christopher Catholics lived to drown another day while Tod went on to become the Texas Heavyweight champion and a sometime drinking companion.” – Jack Murphy

Jack Murphy’s memories of Tod Herring are a lot more personal than mine. They were each older than me, a fact that us younger eyewitnesses to street mayhem always quietly celebrated. Being younger and smaller than Tod Herring bought you a degree of invisibility in his presence. Tod always seemed more aware of those guys who were just as big or bigger than him, especially if they showed any kind of attitude that suggested they thought they were hot spit. On the physical and psychological planes, Tod Herring lived simply as the dominant alpha male – one main guy who wasn’t going to take any spit from anyone, especially from those who also thought they were more deserving of his top position in the pecking order of life on the East End streets.

The first time I saw Tod Herring in action was sufficiently convincing to me. Several of us were walking home from the Pecan Park school bus when we came up upon Tod getting into a screaming match with some other guy about his size. All of a sudden, the two guys are squaring off with double fists, and making this little circular look around each other.

Tod Herring

All of a sudden, the argument and fight are over with one blow to the jaw from a Herring right hand to the other fellow’s face. The other guy dropped to the sidewalk like a dead pigeon. He was out cold. The fairly ripped Tod Herring stood over him for a second or two and then just walked away. He never spoke or even acknowledged the presence of the rest of us before he walked away like Mr. Cool. I guess our cloaks of invisibility were working pretty good. And the other guy didn’t die. We helped him up as best we could. He then walked quietly away in the other direction from Herring, and also in a state of not saying much, if anything, to us onlookers.

My awareness of Tod Herring sort of dimmed after I finished the 8th grade at St. Christopher’s Catholic School and started commuting across town to St. Thomas High School. Herring and most of my Pecan Park neighborhood pals had headed for Milby High School. I’m not sure how Todd Herring got along in high school, but I can’t imagine it being much different from anything we had seen up to that point. My next awareness of Herring surfaced during my undergraduate years at UH (1956-60). I started reading about Tod Herring in the Houston Post as an up and coming heavyweight boxer.

That recognition of him as a boxer, left me with only four more freeze frame pictures of Tod Herring’s life to come as I went my own way through the early adult years:

(1) Fighting the Former Heavyweight Champ. On May 14, 1965, Tod Herring of Houston fought former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson in Stockholm, Sweden. Patterson knocked out Herring in 40 seconds of the third round, pretty much ending whatever hopes the former Houston bad boy still had for winning the title. I never thought much of Patterson prior to that fight, but that KO of Herring changed everything. Anyone who could knock out Tod Herring had to have something special going for him.

(2) Tod Herring Charged with Killing a Man in a Bar Fight. I have no dates for this memory or for any of the rest. It happened sometime in Houston in the early years that followed the end of Herring’s boxing career. Herring was charged with killing a man with his fists over some kind of bar argument. The prosecution argued that Herring’s professional background as a boxer even made his fists a “deadly weapon.” (Heck! A lot of us non-lawyers from the East End could have testified to that assertion.) At any rate, Tod was sentenced to the penitentiary, apparently going there with a drinking problem that wasn’t that easy to arrest.

(3) Tod Herring in Recovery. Sometime around 1980, I read in the Houston Post that Tod Herring was now out of prison and living a clean and sober life again back in the East End. The article even featured a great smiling photo of Tod Herring, swinging a golf club out in the sunshine of the Glenbrook Country Club, as Herring also bubbled with gentle praise for the lessons of recovery. He sounded nothing like the archetypical bogeyman that many of us grew up fearing. I was happy for him. He had family around him and they all seemed to love and support him in his recovery.

(4) Tod Herring is Dead. Not too many years later, I picked up the paper one day and learned that Todd Herring had passed away suddenly – from a heart attack, I think. I have no idea if Tod had been able to stay out the grip of his addictions since the time of that earlier feel-good article or not. He was just gone now. Gone again and this time for good. He was also gone again from my mind until my memory of him was reawakened in the e-mail from Jack Murphy.

What’s the lesson here? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s simply that even the monsters of our childhood memories are not all bad and terrible sometimes. Sometimes they are, but other times, they are just human beings who found a deeper way to get lost from love.

God rest your soul, Tod Herring, wherever you may be.


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Easter Saturday Fanfest at Minute Maid Park.

April 4, 2010

HAPPY EASTER, EVERYBODY!

Saturday, April 3, 2010.

It was a great day for baseball. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a day in which a lot of great baseball found its way to Minute Maid Park in Houston in behalf of the home team. In their spring training finale against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Houston Astros combined hittable pitching, goofy fielding, an early evaporation of critical hitting, all the lobsters that failed critical hitting inevitably produces, and a questionable waste of reliever Jeff Fulcino for 31 pitches over two-thirds of an inning at work to fall together as a dead pigeon does on any street in downtown Houston.

Splat! After four innings of play, it was Toronto by 11-0; at the end of the day, it was the Blue Jays by 13-6.

On the bright side? At least we got spring training done without putting anyone else on the disabled list. Other than that, we shall only h0pe that this team responds with greater life, moxie, and production than they’ve shown for the most part, so far.

You may put this question in my “what the heck does this guy know?”  file any time you please, but I really didn’t see the sense of wasting Jeff Fulcino for 31 pitches over two-thirds of an inning in the top of the seventh. It was obvious much earlier in the pitch count that he had no control Saturday and that further use of that wild wing was only going to make him even more questionable for the coming up Opener that counts on Monday night.

To me, this season is really about building for the future. Sure, we need the Big Three of Berkman, Oswalt, and Lee to come through for any real hope of success this season, but the bigger long run questions are about our lack of proven production at catcher and shortstop – and the need for a vision beyond this season as to where we go at second and third base. If Chris Johnson is able to maintain anything close to the pace he’s set this spring, Johnson’s the obvious man for the long-range run at third, but we will also need to soon start grooming someone as Matsui’s replacement at second base too.

Then there’s the matter of pitching. Oswalt cannot be the ace forever. And we don’t know for sure how firm Wandy’s progress is until we see a little more of same in 2010. Either way, neither Oswalt or Rodriguez is likely to be our ace card over the next five seasons. Let’s hope our scouts are out there sifting the seeds of our talent pool crop, “looking for the next Lincecum or the potential of lightning in a bottle.” I have a hunch that we are not far away from needing a new ace yesterday, plus two or three other better than average starters who not either too young or too long of tooth today.

Bob Dorrill, Jimmy Wynn, & Marsha Franty share some smiles for SABR!

If you noticed how quickly I slide from “they” to “we” when discussing the Astros, it’s because I don’t work for the Houston Chronicle or FOX or anyone else who might require me to put on the mask of objective reporting, Like many of you, I’m just an Astros fan who wants my team to win it all every game, series, and season they take the field. I can accept whatever they each do, as long as I feel they are each giving it the best of their abilities. I will never rally to the defense of any player or team, however,  that “mails it in” with no apparent enthusiasm for winning. Let’s hope we see some life on the field come Monday night.
Saturday’s beautiful weather day at the ballpark also featured Fanfest, the Astros annual fun day for fans who want to collect autographs, shop for memorabilia from independent vendors, and maybe, just maybe, hear some good reasons us SABR members who manned a table to explains the benefits of belonging to the Society for American Baseball Research to other Houstonians.
Under the fine leadership of our Larry Dierker Chapter director, Bob Dorrill, a number of us showed up Saturday to pass out membership information brochures, explain SABR, show people the lights-out baseball publications available for free with membership, and have some fun with several trivia contests we used to stoke interest. Trivia contest winners won the right to select a SABR book as their prize.
Interest in SABR led to a double-digit lst of names and e-mail addresses that we shall pursue with all vigor, Once people find out the benefits, SABR sells itself.
Annual dues are only $55 for people from age 31 to 65. If you are 30 or under, or over 65, membership fees drop to $45 a year. In Houston, that will buy you monthly meetings, ten months a year, with some of the brightest stars and most entertaining figures in Houston baseball history, plus the annual arrival of several out-of-the-blue-and-into-the-mailbox baseball publications from SABR. You will get to meet and hear from great baseball people like former Astro and ongoing icon Jimmy Wynn, plus rub elbows with former Houston Buff and fellow SABR member Larry Miggins. – You will be about as deep into the bosom of the Houston baseball family that you can reach without signing your own personal services contract with the Astros.

Former Buff Larry Miggins (L), Phil Holland, & Bob Stevens man the SABR table during this shift at Fanfest.

For more information about SABR and how you may join a local chapter near you practically anywhere in the United States , check out the national organization website.

http://www.sabr.org/

SABR: For more information on the Houston Larry Dierker SABR chapter, contact our chapter leader, Bob Dorrill, at 281-361-7874.

Our thanks go out to the Houston Astros for making Fanfest possible.

Happy Easter, Everybody! Starting Monday, we’ll see you at the ballpark for the games that count!

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Baseball’s Back in Town!

April 3, 2010

April 2, 2010: Astros serve up lobsters in 3-3 tie with Blue Jays.

Baseball’s back in Houston, friends. That is, if you consider a ten inning “tie” played with the DH rule in place in a National League park in a game that didn’t count, but the prices for tickets and concessions did on a night in which the Astros served up more lobsters than  a Kennedy family campaign dinner in Boston a real game.

All kidding aside, it was good to back in Minute Maid Park, and in all fairness, it was a little too little too soon to see the whole flow of this season unfolding with Berkman still out, Oswalt and Wandy yet tested under fire in games that count, and Manzella with a little more time under his belt at shortstop. What we saw is what we don’t want to see too often this year:

The starting pitcher gives up 3 runs in the first and then settles down. The offense then starts pecking away, loading the bases and, inning by inning, it starts racking up the lobsters, but no runs. The starter settles down, but the relievers are forced into being perfect as the Astros 1,1,1 their scoring way back into a 3-3 tie through nine. The ‘Stros might have taken the game in the bottom of the ninth, but a stumble-bum running older rookie named Shelton tripa on second base after doubling in the tying run and is retired to save the night for the Blue Jays. The game plays out uneventfully in the tenth as a 3-3 tie by common sense and mutual team agreement. There’s no point in wearing out arms and legs in extra innings on the last weekend of games that mean nothing in the 2010 standings.

Sammy Gervacio is straight out of the Mark Fydrich school of dramatic posturing.

I really hope that reliever Sammy Gervacio makes the bullpen roster over time this season. He is already, by far, one of the most entertaining pitchers to come down the Crawford- Street-Texas Avenue pike in years, as things stand. Gervacio’s full wind-up ritual is a thing of beauty to behold, one that would make oldtimers like Mark Fydrich and Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky quite proud. As you may be able to see in the picture, Sammy seems to listen to his baseballs before he turns with a menacing glare toward the plate and lets them fly with more body-torqing movement off the herky-jerky fulcrum area of the hip that you are likely to ever have seen.

Nobody scored on Sammy and his reliever pals, but starter Brett Myers gave us too much of a copy on a bad Wandy Day. The three-runs that Myers gave up in the first, but they proved enough to keep us from winning on a night that critical hitting failed all over the place. Hopefully, the Astros will get better before Tim Lincecum and the San Francisco Giants hit town for Opening Day on Monday, April 5th. Like it or not, the 2010 Astros are going to have to prove themselves better than mediocre. That means they can’t have too many games that are accented by early bad innings from starters and the appearance of termite bats in critical offensive situations.

Check out SABR at Fanfest Today, Saturday, April 3rd.

Just a note: Don’t miss SABR today! Our Larry Dierker Chapter of SABR (the Society for American Baseball Research) will man an information table at the Minute Maid Park Fanfest today. We will be located next to the player autograph area on the first floor concourse behind home plate. If you’re at the park this morning or later for the 1:00 PM Astros game with the Blue Jays, drop by and say hello. Find out the simple and affordable benefits of SABR membership and consider joining us. SABR is for every fan that enjoys close up contact with the people who play and run the game – and it thrives for folks who like their baseball news served up on a year round basis. There’s also plenty of room for those who want to do research or writing on baseball, but those aren’t the main things you have to crave to enjoy SABR. You simply have to love baseball in a way that never tires your desire for more.

Former Astros slugger Jimmy Wynn and others have promised to dropped by our table today, so please join us, if possible. You never know who you may run into and have a chance to meet.

Meanwhile, Happy Easter! And GO ASTROS!

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