DailyNewsGems

01/26/2020

MLB Suffers Black Eye But Not Another Black Sox Scandal

Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch (right) during happier times.

Photo Credit: Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle

***

The dust hasn’t settled yet over the sign-stealing scandal impacting Major League Baseball.

More sign stealing machinations, this time by the Red Sox might be disclosed by MLB in the coming weeks. The Houston Astros, to be sure, are still smarting from the punishment handed down by Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred.

Astros skipper A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, after being suspended for a year, were swiftly fired by Astros owner Jim Crane and sent on their way.

Alex Cora, bench coach for the Astros in 2017 and implicated in the sign-stealing investigation was also cut loose as manager of the Boston Red Sox.

Newly appointed Mets manager Carlos Beltran, a member of the 2017 Astros team and identified as one of the players who pushed for decoding signals was sent to the Tower as well by Mets COO Fred Wilpon.

The sign-stealing scandal clearly was a player directed initiative; the managers, namely, A.J. Hinch was let go because he didn’t put a stop to it.

The Astros players who went unpunished by the MLB hardly leave this nefarious affair unscathed. They’re going to have to prepare themselves for an uncomfortable season of loud boos from fans, and embarrassment when facing their peers. Buzzer or no buzzer, Jose Altuve is more than likely to get drilled by a few pitchers for the suspicious manner in which he refused to take off his jersey after a dramatic walk-off home run in the ALCS against New York Yankees closer, Alrodis Chapman. Many believe the Astros second baseman was wired with a buzzer. Those charges were never proven.

If fans were left to their own devices, I’m sure they would love their stadiums to blast Hank Williams monster hit, “Your Cheatin Heart’’ anytime Houston swings into town.

When the findings of Manfred’s investigation blew up on the Internet, Twitter feeds, and smart phones from coast-to-coast, the reaction was a state of utter shock. Shock quickly turned into anger. Anger by the fans that Astros stole a world championship, beating the Dodgers in seven games during the 2017 World Series by cheating.

I was certainly enraged that this could happen. Channeling my inner-Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks in “A League of their Own”), “There’s No Spying in Baseball!”

The city of Los Angeles who came up on the short end of the stick during the 2017 World Series was so upset of the injustice that the L.A. City Council unanimously passed a resolution to ask Major League Baseball to strip the Astros and Red Sox of the 2017 and 2018 World Series titles and award them to the Dodgers.

As the days passed by and the more I thought about this, however, the more I wondered how different this was from other sign-stealing discoveries.?

For decades, people held deep dark suspicions that New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson was tipped off on what offering was coming from Brooklyn Dodger pitcher, Ralph Branca, before clobbering one deep into the night that clinched the NL pennant for the Giants, a dramatic walk-off home run known as the “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World”

In 2001, those suspicions turned into reality, thanks to Wall Street Journal reporter, Joshua Prager, who published an article which confirmed that Giants coach Herman Franks used a telescope to pilfer signs from the Giants’ clubhouse behind the center field fence from Dodgers catcher Rube Walker.

The Giants sign-stealing scheme was enhanced, greatly, through an electrician they hired, Abe Chadwick, who installed a bell and buzzer system in the clubhouse and wired it to the phones in the bullpen and dugout. Pressing the buzzer once or twice would signal either a fastball or off-speed pitch. This story was chronicled by Chadwick’s nephew, Ina Chadwick, with a headline that read: “My Family Fixed the 1951 Pennant." According to this testimonial, “when Bobby Thomson stepped up to the plate to face Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca-it was Abe’s signal that told Herman Franks-who then signaled to a plant in the bullpen, who signaled to Thomson-when Branca’s fastball was coming.”

And the sign-stealing engineered by the Giants and Leo Durocher as its ringleader wasn’t isolated to the deciding playoff game against the Dodgers. According to published reports, the Giants hired Chadwick, the electrician, on July 19^th of the season. They soon were good to go with the buzzers in right field. The Dodgers held a commanding 13.5 lead over the Giants on August 11. Miraculously, the Giants orchestrated a monstrous comeback to force a three-game playoff against their cross-town rivals.

How influential was the electrician is this heroic comeback is anyone’s guess?

So, in 2001, why wasn’t there any outrage over the revelations of Joshua Prager’s WSJ article? Why weren’t there calls for the Giants to be stripped of the 1951 pennant?

We are well into the 21^st Century and Bobby Thomson’s Shot Heard Round the World is still being lionized. The bat from the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" is in the collection of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp. Sports Illustrated ranked it as the second greatest moment of the 20^th century.

When Prager’s article was published, I never recalled any apologies to Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca who endured years and years of public scorn and humiliation for coughing up Thomson’s historic home run.

Branca died in 2016, five years after Prager’s article was published. As he once said at an old-timer’s game, “A guy commits murder and gets pardoned after 20 years. I didn’t get pardoned.”

The Dodger right-hander, for the most part, kept quiet about his real feelings of Prager’s convincing indictment of Thomson being tipped off. Weeks before Thomson’s death in 2010, however, Branca told the New York Times, “When you took signs all year, and when you had a chance to hit a bloop or hit a home run, would you ignore that sign?” He [Thomson] knew it was coming, Absolutely,’’ Branca said.

Cleveland Indians flame-thrower, Bob Feller

Photo Credit: AP

****

For those interested in reviewing a kaleidoscope of baseball’s sign-stealing conspiracies over the years, the go to book is author Paul Dickson’s “The Hidden Language of Baseball: How Signs and Sign Stealing Have Influenced the Course of Our National Pastime.” The book was just recently revised.

In this timely book, Dickson chronicles the sign-stealing concocted by Cleveland Indians ace, Bob Feller during the 1948 season in which “Rapid Robert’’ would pick up signs from opposing catchers using a telescope that Feller used as a gunnery officer on the USS Alabama during World War II. “The telescope,” according to Dickson, “was mounted on a tripod, placed in the Cleveland scoreboard and operated alternately by Feller or [Bob] Lemon, who remembered that he could see the dirt under the catcher’s fingernails. They would call out the next pitch to a groundskeeper-brothers Marshall and Harold Brossard or their father, Emil, who would then use another opening in the scorecard to relay the signs to Tribe hitters, by a variety of changing signals, from a space otherwise used to post number four out-of-towners.”

“Hey, it’s all fair in love and war,” Feller was quoted as saying, “when you’re trying to win a pennant.”

Many claim Feller’s spy ring didn’t carry over into the 1948 World Series against the Boston Braves, which the Indians won in six games. Braves pitcher Johnny Sain wasn’t so sure, so convinced was he that Indians outfielder Larry Doby was tipped off on a pitch in Game four of the WS, in which he hit for a home run. When questioned, Doby vehemently denied he was tipped off.

“Stolen signs win a lot of ball games,” said Dodgers VP Fresco Thompson in 1952.

Regarded as one of the hardest throwing pitchers of his era, we’ve come to know a great deal about Feller--he was the first major leaguer to enlist in the armed forces after Japan dropped a bomb on Pearl Harbor. We also know he led the American League in strikeouts seven times, was a 20-game winner six times; and is the only pitcher to throw an Opening Day no-hitter (April 16, 1940).

But what is rarely (if ever) mentioned in his biography, is that he pilfered signs with his telescope during the 1948 season, at least enough times to secure an AL Pennant.

Where is the outrage?

Dickson additionally writes that Ty Cobb entered baseball in 1905, when the “spyglass era was in full swing.”

The Georgia Peach wrote an article for Life Magazine in 1952, titled: “Tricks That Won Me Ballgames.” In the article, he wrote, “Near me was an advertisement on the fence that read: THE DETROIT NEWS: BEST NEWSPAPER IN THE WEST,” Cobb wrote, “If you watched the B in the advertisement closely you would watch little slots opening and closing, If the slot was open in the top half of the B, our spotter had picked off the signal for the fastball. If the slot in the bottom of the B opened, we knew a curve was coming. I don’t know whether the ad sold any newspapers, but it was a great thing for Tiger batting averages.”

Another glaring example of duplicity came in the 19^th century (1898) in a game between the Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies. Reds third base coach Tommy Corcoran while coaching at third, got his cleats tangled up in the ground. At first glance, Corcoran thought it was a vine only to discover it was a telegraph wire that ran to the Phillies clubhouse in center field, where a backup catcher sat with binoculars picking up signals and communicating them to the third-base coach, presumably, through vibrations from the wire.

Again, where was the outrage?

MLB always appears late to the dance.

They were late clamping down on steroids during the 1990s, which obviously gave players a competitive advantage. That was the culture then. If Jose Canseco was being injected with steroids and amphetamines, why shouldn’t Alex Rodriquez, to keep up with the Joneses?

When new advanced technology came in the 21^st century with live feeds from the center field camera and cameras in the dugouts, some teams, certainly not all, started gaming the system and figured out ways to decode signs coming from these live feeds.

When this new technology was installed, MLB should have been proactive enough to know boys will be boys and taken measures to prevent the decoding. From all the reports in the last few days, there seemed to be a culture that developed that if this team is decoding, why not us.

Interestingly, discussing the new technology in baseball, A.J. Hinch told the Associated Press during the 2018 AL Championship Series, “there’s some unintended consequences that come with the advancement of technology. It’s a league wide conversation that needs to happen in time,”Hinch said. “It’s happening right now during a really important series, and I just think it’s bigger than us. It’s bigger than any team. It’s bigger than any series. It needs to be corralled because of the state of the concern over it.”

Cleveland Indians fans can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing their beloved Tribe under the leadership of Terry Francona didn’t succumb to sign stealing. But they may have come close.

Speaking to local networks, the Indians manager said “I can tell you there are a lot of nights when I go home where I know I need to have a conversation with a player -- especially like a veteran player -- where he may view it differently than I do. And I lose a lot of sleep over stuff like that because obviously I feel a lot of obligation to get it straightened out. But you don't just want to beat somebody over the head and lose them.”

Despite the embarrassment they must be feeling right now, Francona said he still has plenty of respect for the managers fired. “They’re good people,” he told reporters. “They’re really good baseball people. They’re paying a penalty for making a mistake. That doesn’t make them bad people. They made some errors in judgment. The penalty came down, they’ll serve it and then I think they’ll be back.”

And contrary to some commentaries, the sign-stealing scandal of 2017 and 2018 doesn’t rise to the level of the 1919 Black Sox scandal in which the Chicago White Sox intentionally threw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.

Jacob Pomrenke, Director of editorial content for SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) and editor of “Scandal on the South Side: the 1919 White Sox”, told me, “the White Sox scandal was about taking bribes to lose games on purpose, which is an existential threat to the sport's integrity,” Pomrenke said. “This was about breaking the rules,” Pomrenke argues, “to gain a competitive edge — which has happened many, many times in sports and will undoubtedly happen again. The methods and details evolve, but as long as the rewards are high enough, some human beings will always feel compelled to use nefarious means to gain an edge.”

To MLB's credit, though they were late in putting a screeching halt to the sign-stealing--they sent a clear message of the hard consequences, and humiliation, that comes with trying to game the system.

I think players and most certainly the managers received Rob Manfred’s message loud and clear.

Though this scandal delivered a mighty black eye to baseball; the damage is certainly reparable as long as fans, players, and the media can move on and chalk these unfortunate episodes up to a hard lesson learned underscored by horribly bad judgement.

Speaking at a fan convention for the Chicago White Sox, newly acquired pitcher Dallas Keuchel said he felt what happened was “blown out of proportion,” but he was sorry.

“It’s just what the state of baseball was at that point and time,” the former Astros pitcher said. “Was it against the rules? Yes, it was, and I personally am sorry for what’s come about, the whole situation.”

Keuchel, however, said he isn’t buying the “Oh my gosh, this has never happened before,” mantra that other teams are accusing Houston and Boston of. “I’m not going into specific detail,” the former AL Cy Young Award winner said.

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

January 26, 2020

Posted at 06:12 PM in American Culture, Baseball, Cleveland Indians, Sports | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/29/2019

When Bombs and Bullets Rained Down on Cleveland

Bombs and bullets used to hold a great deal of sway in Northeast Ohio.

Especially when you had ringleaders like John Scalish, James “Jack White” Licavoli, Angelo Lonardo, Carmine "The Bull" Agnello, and “Irish” Danny Greene.

There was yet another: Alex Shondor Birns, a Jewish gangster in Cleveland who rose to become Cleveland’s Public Enemy No. 1; a ruthless if charming racketeer who might have been responsible for the murder of as many as a dozen people in Cleveland, cold blooded murders, that in most cases, went unsolved.

Recently retired Lyndhurst Police Chief Rick Porrello, author of “The Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia” and “To Kill the Irishman: The War that Crippled the Mafia,” has recently published “Bombs, Bullets, and Bribes: The True Story of Notorious Jewish Mobster Alex Shondor Birns."

As Porrello so meticulously chronicles in his smartly written book, Birns criminal footprints in Cleveland stretches back to the Prohibition era.

He was born Szandor (Hungarian for Alexander) Birnstein in either 1905 or 1907 in Lemešany, a village in eastern Slovakia.

His friends called him “Shon.”

His family made its way to Cleveland (E. 59^th Street) when he was only a year old; where they ran a bootlegging business. His mother was killed when the still exploded in their home. Without a mother to look after him, Birns spent time in a Jewish orphanage.

Birns journey into Cleveland’s criminal underworld came thick and fast after dropping out of high school after the 10^th grade.

By 1925, age 19, he was shipped off to a Mansfield Reformatory for auto theft; less than ten years later (1933) he served 30 days in a Workhouse for assault and 60 days for robbery.

After educating himself, navigating the highways and byways of the mean streets of Cleveland, first by running a pool hall at E. 55^th and Woodland Avenue, Birns found his footing venturing into ‘’numbers’’ or “clearinghouse’’ racket, which amounted to an illegal lottery, the same kind of gambling which is now legal in 45 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Birns additionally became skilled at muscling payments from slot machine owners.

Along with his gambling operation, he operated a number of prostitution rings throughout Cleveland; he usually paid police handsomely to avoid raids of his brothels.

Like any successful mobster trying to avoid running afoul of the law, Birns wrapped himself in legitimate business operations. In his case, nightclubs, most notably the Ten-Eleven Club on Chester Avenue; later, the Alhambra at East 105^th Street, popular establishments where Birns mixed with and charmed the major power brokers of the city, including the police and the press who were rarely issued a tab.

Reporters loved Birns, as Porrello tells it, because he made great copy to fill their newspapers; police, some police, that is, loved him because they had their palms greased when Birns was charged with criminal activity.

Remarkably, Porrello underscores through all of his crimes, murders, bombings and other criminal activity, and all the times he was hauled in front of a judge, Birns was only convicted of three felonies in his storied criminal life. The last was in 1965, when he tried to bribe a Parma detective. For that, he was paroled from the Marion Correctional Institution in July, 1971

Birns stabbed a man to death in 1929, but walked away free; he was charged again with a shooting in a speakeasy, but was acquitted; in 1931, he robbed a candy store for $1300, but was yet again acquitted. He also broke the jaw of a cab driver without any criminal prosecution.

Even Cleveland safety director Eliot Ness had his crew hoist a ladder in attempt to catch Birns and his organization booking bets. It was unsuccessful.

For the most part, Birns avoided jail time through bribes and keeping his mouth shut. The local newspapers often splashed with pictures of him leaving the courthouse with a devilish smirk on his face after prosecutors failed, time and time again, to make a crime stick.

One powerful police officer, Captain Louis Cadek, regularly lined his pocket taking payments from Birns in exchange for steering police away from Birns’ crooked operations. These were known as officers ‘’on the pad.” The law eventually caught up with Cadek. In 1936, he was convicted on four counts of bribery and sent to prison.

As Plain Dealer reporter Christopher Evans once wrote: “witnesses had a habit of turning up dead or at least badly injured, and juries almost always seemed to deadlock on the most clear-cut cases.”

In many ways, Birns resembled another infamous gangster, Al “Scarface’’ Capone, who ruled Chicago’s south side with an iron fist during Prohibition.

Much like Capone, Birns dressed for success. He was often seen around town mixing with cronies at the Theatrical Grill on Short Vincent, brandishing expensive cigars, wearing brilliant ties, suede and leather shoes, and stylish, well-tailored suites.

Similar to “Big Al,” Birns, though a hardened criminal, unveiled a charitable streak. Capone was widely remembered for providing three meals a day at his soup kitchens in Chicago during the Great Depression. In 1944, there was a tragic East Ohio Gas explosion in Cleveland, killing 135. Birns had his staff at his Ten-Eleven Club working around the clock feeding police and fireman, and those in need of a meal.

Both Capone and Birns would serve time for income tax evasion. Birns, was in fact charged with income tax evasion on three different occasions: in 1948, 1949, and 1950. He served a total of three years in prison.

In addition to both being christened Public Enemy No. 1, Capone and Birns resembled each other in another important way: they knew how to settle scores if you double-crossed them or owed them money.

The 1929 St Valentine’s Massacre in which Capone’s henchmen took out seven members of Chicago’s North Side Gang is one such extreme example of Capone settling scores.

When world renowned boxing promoter Don King (who cut his teeth operating the numbers racket in Cleveland during the 1950s) refused to keep paying Birns protection money, King soon found his front porch (and part of his living room) blown up with a stick of dynamite.

When Birns absorbed a bullet from the gun of a bouncer at a nightclub in 1934, Birns returned the favor, only this time, killing the bouncer while he was driving his car a few months later. Police were never able to pin the murder on Birns.

The body of Mervin Gold, found in the trunk of his own car on Chagrin River Road in Solon, Ohio.

Photo Credit: Cleveland Public Library, Photograph Collection

***

Arguably, one of the most sensational cases of Cleveland’s unsolved murders centers on the killing of Mervin Gold, a financial manipulator, twice convicted on fraud, who in July, 1963 was found in the trunk of his own car on Chagrin River Road in Solon, Ohio.

According to Gold’s wife, her husband, Mervin Gold was on his way to meet Shondor Birns on the night he went missing. His wife presented police with a document left behind in his briefcase at home, which was an affidavit, showing that Gold received stolen bonds from Birns himself.

Much like he had in the past, Birns arranged an air-tight alibi, saying he was nowhere near the murder and was with another woman of “fine character.”

At the Coroner’s inquest, Birns took the fifth 90 times. Gold’s murder remained unsolved and the case was dropped due to lack of evidence.

Cleveland Police Detective inspect Birns' demolished Lincoln Continental

Photo Credit: Cleveland State University Cleveland Press Collection/Rick Porrello

***

The moral of the story of Cleveland mobsters, undoubtedly must be: If you live by the bomb, you die by the bomb.

On Holy Saturday night, March 29, 1975, Alex (Shondor) Birns, 69, was the victim of a horrific bomb explosion after turning the key in the ignition of his Lincoln Continental after exiting Christy’s Bar at W. 25^th Street and Detroit Avenue. His body was blown through the roof of the car; parts of his body could be found next door at St Malachi Church where parishioners were gathering for the 8. p.m. Holy Saturday Vigil Mass.

Cleveland’s Public Enemy No. 1 was buried on April Fool’s Day, of all days, at Hillcrest Cemetery in Bedford Heights.

Not until 1983 would a Plain Dealer article link Birns murder to members of the Hells Angels.

Two years later, another notorious Cleveland mobster, Danny Greene, met a similar fate. After leaving the dentist’s office in Lyndhurst on October 6, 1977, a bomb planted next to Greene’s car exploded, killing the Irishman immediately. The bomb was thought to have been planted by hitman Ray Ferritto.

After the Danny Greene murder, the thuggish mobsters that lurked on Cleveland streets began to fade away as law enforcement agencies became more circumspect and the FBI became more aggressive in dispatching organized crime task forces to major U.S. cities.

Most successful in combating organized crime, not only in Cleveland, but in major cities nationwide has been the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute (passed into law in 1970), which has provided the FBI with more tools to operate undercover operations, use court-authorized electronic surveillance, and recruit informants, cooperating witnesses, and consensual monitoring.

What makes “Bombs, Bullets & Bribes’’ so fascinating is its author, Rick Porrello, actually has skin in the game.

His grandfather, Raymond Porrello, and his six brothers, the ringleaders of a prominent crime family, were involved in the beginnings of the Cleveland Mafia during Prohibition, most prominently on East 110th and upper Woodland Avenue. Raymond Porrello, Rosario Porrello (a great uncle of Rick Porrello), along with one of their henchmen, Dominic Gueli were gunned down in a cigar shop on E 110th and Woodland, in a spot that came to be infamously known as ``Bloody Corner.”

Porrello, unlike his grandfather and his great uncles, has been on the right side of the law his entire life, as a Lyndhurst Police Officer for 31 years, the last ten years as Police Chief before announcing his retirement.

Unlike most organized crime historians, Porrello is able to write about his subjects having developed keen perspectives from both sides of the fence.

A rare attribute, indeed.

For anyone interested in learning about Cleveland’s social history during a time when mobsters, racketeers, bombs and bullets were symbolic of the criminal underworld, this splendidly written and well researched book is just what the doctor ordered.

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

December 29, 2019

Posted at 07:50 PM in American Culture, Book Review, Cleveland History, Newspaper History, Organized Crime, World War II | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/16/2019

Year in Review: Most Viewed Stories of 2019

Speaker Nancy Pelosi begins formal impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

Photo Credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times

***

Another year has almost passed, and the earth, lo and behold, hasn’t crumbled under our feet.

But the year didn’t pass before some pronounced rumblings, especially in Hong Kong, beginning in June, when the government introduced an anti-extradition bill, which would have allowed criminal suspects to be transferred to mainland China. The bill (later withdrawn) sparked outrage, with residents taking to the streets in violent protests, burning a Chinese flag, blocking roads and throwing petrol bombs at riot police, who responded in kind with volleys of tear gas. After five months of raging protests, two deaths have been reported.

Prior to the Hong Kong protests, in central London, back in March, citizens protested against Brexit (withdrawal from the European Union EU), calling for another EU referendum. Marchers expressed bitter anger with the vote (June, 2016 referendum) and claimed to have been ‘’sold down the river.”

In October, again, protesters, as many as a million strong, gathered outside the Palace of Westminster with chants of “No Brexit!”

The stalemate over Brexit forced British Prime Minister Theresa May to resign as leader of the Conservative Party on June 7. After beating Jeremy Hunt to become leader of the Conservative Party, Boris Johnson, former mayor of London, became the new Prime Minister on July 24^th

Calamity hit Paris in April, during Holy Week no less, when a major fire engulfed the medieval Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, one of France’s most sacred landmarks. Firefighters bravely fought through more than five hours of rising flames in which the 850-year-old cathedral’s spire and two-thirds of its roof were destroyed; but the two iconic 226-foot bell towers, thankfully, remained intact.

President Donald Trump, as can be expected, was at center of a storm in 2019, this time a constitutional storm over whether he should be impeached for withholding military aid to Ukraine unless the Eastern European country investigated corruption charges against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Such a quid pro quo or abuse of power amounted to an impeachable offense, at least in the eyes of a majority of Democrats. Most Republicans argued Trump’s quid pro quo phone call was highly inappropriate, but didn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense.

On December 5, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi asked the House Judiciary Committee to begin drafting Articles of Impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump.

Talk of impeachment clearly overshadowed the release of the Mueller Report in March in which Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election to determine whether there was a conspiracy or coordination between the Russians and Donald Trump, which raised alarming questions of obstruction of justice.

The Mueller Report included references to 14 criminal investigations that were referred to other offices. On the topic of obstruction of justice, the report stated that the investigation "did not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference," but the same report did note that obstruction of justice could still occur "regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong.”

In preparation for the upcoming bruising 2020 U.S. Presidential election, Twitter publicly announced it was not accepting any political advertisements worldwide.

Once again, the year was stained by mass shootings. In August, there were two. On August 3, a 21-year-old from Allen, Texas killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. 22 others were injured. The next day, ten people, including the shooter, were killed along with 27 others injured in a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio.

As of December 12, there were 409 mass shootings in 2019.

And yet more disaster fell from the skies on September 1, when Hurricane Dorian, the first major hurricane of the 2019 Atlantic Hurricane season, made landfall on the Bahamas with sustained winds of 185 mph, leaving 43 dead.

If you forgot who won Super Bowl LIII (53); no worries, it was the lowest scoring game in Super Bowl history. Tom Brady and the Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams, 13-3, at the Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia.

In October, the Washington Nationals, a wild card team, stunned the Houston Astros in six games to win their first Series in franchise history. As of 2015, five NL wild-card teams went on to win the World Series.

Finally, comic book fans will be delighted to know, if they don’t know already, that the motion picture, Avengers: Endgame, based on the Marvel Comics superhero, smashed most box office records, becoming the highest grossing movie of all time, earning nearly $2.8 billion worldwide.

To get a sense of other major stories which dominated the headlines, I checked in with some news organizations to see which story drew the most traffic to their respective websites for 2019.

Here are some responses which came back to my inbox.

Photo Credit: CBS News

CNN: The blaze at the Notre Dame Cathedral drew 27 million viewers to this story

New York Times: The Most-Read NYT's Stories of 2019

Los Angeles Times: The Top 19 L.A. Times Stories of 2019

Fox News: Days 3 and 4 of the House Impeachment Hearings and the Mueller Report and its hearing were the top two most popular stories at FoxNews.com

Tampa Bay Times: The Tampa Bay Times splash that a ground-penetrating radar uncovered 150 coffins buried beneath a Tampa apartment complex was their most viewed story of the year. The story was a follow up to a major Times’ investigation , which reported that nearly 400 bodies were missing underneath five of the 67 buildings in the Robles Park public housing project in Tampa; dead bodies, left behind in what was once Zion Cemetery, the first African-American cemetery in Tampa. Robles Park Village first opened in 1954. The Zion Cemetery dated back to 1901.

Economist: The most viewed story at Economist.com was their report on “Millennial Socialism,” a new left-wing movement embraced by younger voters who have railed largely against capitalism, inequality, and neglect of the environment in America and Europe.

OpenSecrets: At OpenSecrets.org (Center for Responsive Politics), the top “feature” of the year was their Gun Profile , a mighty divisive issue in the country which takes a close look at where the hard cash is flowing in the lobbying battles between gun control vs gun rights advocates. The top ‘’story’’ at OpenSecrets.org was their analysis and guide to Donald Trump’s foreign policy interests, which includes his “sprawling web of foreign properties and investments.”

New York Magazine: The two top stories at NYMag.com centered on Caroline Calloway , a 27 year-old Instagram star, who leaped to internet fame, chronicling her misadventures as an American undergrad at Cambridge University and is now on tour promoting her “Creativity Workshop.” The other top story at NYMag.com for the year was “Hideous Men”, journalist and advice columnist, E. Jean Carroll’s first-person account of the 21 most revolting scoundrels she ever met, including Donald Trump, who she alleges assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room 23 years ago.

Yahoo Finance: The two top most read stories of the year on Yahoo’s Finance page was their report that Amazon will pay nothing in federal taxes for the second year in a row, followed by their survey of America’s favorite burgers.

ProPublica: ProPublica’s (a non-profit newsroom that aims to produce investigate journalism in the public’s interest) most viewed investigation of the year, was their shocking exposé about a Border Patrol Facebook Page in which members made derogatory and racist remarks about migrants, including a vulgar joke about a female representative in Congress.

The Marshall Project: The Marshall Project’s (an online journalism organization focusing on issues related to criminal justice in the U.S.) most viewed story of the year, was their sharp analysis over whether there is a connection between undocumented workers and crime, based on newly released data from the Pew Research Center.

FBI: The most viewed “story” on FBI.gov’s website this year was their article about American serial killer Samuel Little who claims to have killed 93 people, stretching back to 1987. The FBI was able to confirm his involvement with at least 50 murders, making the Georgia native the most prolific serial killer in United States history. The most visited “page’’ on FBI.gov for their year was their list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.

New York Review of Books: The most viewed article at NYBooks.com was Fintan O’Toole’s (Irish columnist and literary critic of the Irish Times) profile on Boris Johnson, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and arguably the most polarizing figure to have taken up residence at 10 Downing Street.

ESPN: The news that generated the most traffic to ESPN.com this year was the tragic death of Los Angeles pitcher Tyler Skaggs, who died while under the influence of fentanyl, oxycodone, and alcohol.

Of ESPN.com’s “original reporting”, the most viewed story was their exclusive on former NBA referee Tim Donaghy conspiring to fix games.

Bleacher Report: The most read story of the year at Bleacherreport.com was Tyler Dunne exposé, chronicling how the relationship between Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay became shattered beyond repair.

Weather Channel: Favorite Photos of 2019

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

December 16, 2019

Searches

Google: Year in Review

YouTube: 2019 Rewind

Social Media

Twitter Highlights for 2019

Posted at 07:33 PM in American Culture, Politics, Popular Culture History, Year in Review | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/30/2019

Downton Abbey, the Movie: A Labor of Love

The Crawley English country estate in Yorkshire, England never looked so magnificently elegant.

Downton addicts would expect nothing less.

Adoring fans of PBS’s Masterpiece historical drama, after all, had to wait four long years for Downton Abbey, the motion picture, to hit the silver screen and get reacquainted with their favorite characters.

Downton Abbey ran for six seasons (52 episodes in all) that covered a 14-year period from 1912 through 1926.

The film is set in 1927. And if the wealthy aristocratic Crawley family didn’t have enough to worry about, King George V and Queen Mary (the grandparents of the current Queen Elizabeth II) are planning to drop in on the Crawley’s Jacobethan style country house while touring Yorkshire, the historic county in Northern England.

So far, the film is a smashing financial success, debuting with $31 million in ticket sales and knocking out two competing films, who were counting on a couple of heavy hitters to blow out the competition. “Ad Astra” with Brad Pitt ($19.2 million) and “Rambo: Last Blood” starring Sylvester Stallone ($19 million) fell well behind Downton Abbey at the box office in its first week.

To date, Downton has grossed $107.6 million worldwide (with $58.3 million in domestic ticket sales).

The film reviews, on the other hand, have been a mixed bag.

Arts critic Johnny Oleksinski from the New York Post gave the film one and a half stars, writing, “Julian Fellowes would have been far better off writing another relaxed Christmas special to satisfy fans. But to pump up the film’s flowery, small-screen plot, shots are overly sweeping and every character’s entrance is given a metaphorical drumroll. The sexy intimacy that made the TV show great is destroyed. Fellowes also went way too wild on the zingers, and suddenly every lady’s maid is Oscar Wilde.”

Across the Atlantic, the reviews were a bit more upbeat.

The Sun’s film critic Grant Rollings thought “It would be easy to criticize Fellowes for turning out what is essentially a two-hour long episode.” “But it was certainly wise,” Rollings continued, “not to send the Crawley's on holiday or to have them saving the world. If you long to escape explosions, political intrigue or social issues then Downton is the number one cinematic destination this weekend.’’

After reading a number of film reviews, I’m convinced a great many of these critics were never close followers of the Masterpiece series for six seasons. And some might not have laid eyes on the TV series at all.

I thought the film, given its time constraints, brilliantly delivered what it was supposed to deliver; a reunion with the Crawley’s, giving fans once last look at the magnificent English country house they grew to adore for six seasons.

The film also tied up some loose ends, such as with the once fierce Irish nationalist Tom Branson, 7 years after the tragic death of his wife, Lady Cybil Branson, finally finding (at least we hope) his soul mate (and future bride).

And we also learn that one of the kitchen cooks, the young outspoken Daisy Mason, is finally ready for marriage with, mostly likely, the raging jealous house footman.

There's no point in spoiling any other significant revelations.

Much like the TV series, the movie is well supplied with machinations, devilish scheming, and questions of where one’s loyalty truly lies, to keep viewers guessing, while being splendidly entertained with all the well-tailored regalia and flamboyance, which comes with an early 20^th century fictional British aristocratic family.

Considering writer Julian Fellowes historical period drama was up against films like "Avengers: Endgame," "Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker," "Toy Story 4," "Joker" "Fast and the Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw," among other action packed movies with little substance, Matt Zoller Seitz, editor-at-large at RogerEbert.com penned the most insightful review of the film, when he wrote: "films like Downton Abbey" are a different kind of franchise product. And they deliver another definition of action cinema, one that is increasingly ill-served by theatrical films: the opportunity to watch people who are very good at ordinary, non-lethal tasks do those things with skill and imagination, even when they don't feel like it. “

Miss Susan Lawrence, left, Labour Party Vice- President, heads a group of women asking for the right to vote for Women above 21, circa 1920 in London, United Kingdom.

***

If there was a disappointment with the movie, it was a minor one, and that was omitting the social history of Britain surrounding their fictional Yorkshire country estate in 1927, when the aristocratic class in the United Kingdom was fading into the thin night air.

There is a brief mention of the General Strike in 1926, a miner’s strike, which sparked fears of revolution in the country when trust between workers and politicians was crumbling. The General Strike and reconnecting with ordinary Britons was supposedly the reason that King George V and Queen Mary were touring Yorkshire.

I was a bit surprised the movie never mentioned an especially historic day in 1927, the year the movie is set in, and that is in April, 1927, when Parliament granted suffrage to women, which added five million voters to the British electorate.

You would have thought Lady Edith Crawley, the youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Grantham, and former editor of a magazine publishing company, would have roundly applauded such a momentous milestone in British history.

In a portent of the future and the vile threat of Adolf Hitler just around the corner, Downton could have additionally mentioned Winston Churchill’s visit to Italy in January, 1927, when the British Chancellor of the Exchequer praised fascism and Benito Mussolini as “the right solution for Italy.” “Not only does fascism help to stabilize Italy’s economy,” Churchill reportedly said, “but it is an effective counter to Communism and an example to the world of how to deal with the red menace.”

You would never have known it by watching Downton Abbey, the movie, that in 1927 Britain was being crushed financially by the First World War. By December, 1927, Britain was paying the United States $95.5 million, a semiannual payment on its war debt; with the remaining balance totaling $4.8 billion.

It wouldn’t have hurt either if the film touched on some new trends sweeping Britain in 1927. In August, 1927, for example, The New York Times reported England’s new craze was greyhound racing, with nightly crowds of 50,000 to 100,000 and a total of 2.5 million attending in just 20 weeks. New tracks were reportedly being built and popping up like toasters.

It was in 1927, when Alfred Hitchcock’s haunting silent thriller “The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog” (considered by many his true directorial debut) was first screened to the British public on January 17, 1927 at the Marble Arch Pavilion, Oxford Street, London.

Film buffs would be interested to note that this film marked the very first cameo appearance of the British born Hitchcock as he appears with his back to the camera in a newsroom.

And as a sign of how the Church was playing a decidedly diminished role in English life--in December, 1927, the House of Commons rejected the new Book of Prayer (a revised version of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of the Church of England), a book which took 21 years to put together. It was soundly rejected by the House of Commons for a second time, the following year.

The movie barely explains how the institution of household service was on the decline in 1927.

Lidia Plaza, a PhD student in British history at Yale University, tells me “the number of people working as household servants like those who appear in Downton Abbey were on the decline from 1870, and especially after World War I. “

“In part, this was due,’’ Plaza explained, “to the fact that the number of “upper class” people who could afford to or wanted to keep household servants had also plummeted. “

Another reason cited for the rapid decline of residential domestic service centered on young women’s desire for freedom, that is, to meet men in the factories, offices, and other industrialized areas of employment.

David Campion, a Lewis & Clark historian of Modern Britain and Ireland, observed that “generally speaking, in 1927, the aristocracy and gentry (people of high social class) were no more than two percent of the population and had been in steady decline for decades.” “The death tax,” Campion pointed out, “after the war eviscerated inheritances and forced the sale of some of money-losing estates. Some were taken over by the National Trust while others were sold to wealthy Americans or torn down and the land parceled into suburban subdivisions.”

Aside from the missed opportunity of not putting the year 1927 into context as far British social history goes, I thought Downton Abbey, the movie, lived up to its expectations, it didn’t try to do too much; they kept every one of the 20 returning cast members in character with their signature idiosyncrasies.

Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams advised young hitters: “Find a pitch you can hit.”

And that’s exactly what the film’s writer Julian Fellowes and director Michael Engler did with dazzling success.

Most importantly, it hand-delivered a valentine to its most loyal viewers on a gold and silver platter.

Very British, indeed!

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

September 30, 2019

Posted at 08:25 PM in British History, Movies, Television | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/08/2019

Is Hofstadter's "The Age of Reform" Still Considered a Classic?

If you ever glance through the most influential history books of all time; you’re most likely to come across books like, Arthur Schlesinger Jr’s, “The Age of Jackson,” “The Guns of August” By Barbara W. Tuchman, and "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany," by William L. Shirer, among other canons of history.

All of these books are considered, by many, vital and enduring classics.

Another monumental book undoubtedly is “The Age of Reform,” Richard Hofstadter’s 1955 Pulitzer-Prize winning book and its pioneering examination of American history from the Populist Movement of the 1890s through the Progressive Era to the New Deal of the 1930s.

As I observed “The Age of Reform’’ popping up like a toaster on a number of political classics of all time, I wondered whether Hofstadter’s opus withstood the passage of time 64 years after it first hit the bookstores?

I also wondered what exactly makes a classic?

So, I put that very question to some scholars.

According to Lawrence Cahoone, Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, and author of “Cultural Revolutions: Reason versus Culture in Philosophy, Politics, and Jihad,” “a "classic" piece of nonfiction is one that had a large and lasting positive impact (positive meaning, its impact is due to people learning from it and agreeing with it). And that means people in the field ought to read it to be well educated in the field. “

“But that does not mean it is right,” Cahoone went on to explain. “I can regard something as a classic and still think it was wrong or misguided. Indeed, if you admit there are "classics" which disagree with each other, you have to accept that.”

Eric Foner, Professor of History at Columbia University, observed that “some of the most influential books are influential precisely because so many people were inspired to refute them. In writing history refutation is often the highest form of flattery. “

Foner additionally tells me that much of “The Age of Reform” has been seriously questioned and indeed refuted by recent scholars. Still, it is well worth reading,” Foner said. “It’s a classic and students should understand why it made so large an impact and what they can learn from it about history and writing.”

In 1985, 35 years after it was published, historian Alan Brinkley considered "The Age of Reform" the most influential book ever published on the history of twentieth-century America. “

Richard Hofstadter at his desk.

Photo Credit: Sam Falk/The New York Times

***

In his Pulitzer-Prize winning book, Hofstadter re-examined Populism, a 19^th century term that is often attributed to the liberal reform tradition of the 1890s.

Populism is generally defined as the “people,” (a morally good force) in riot with “the elite” (corrupt, greedy, and self-serving). It represented the promotion of democracy.

The Populist Movement, in U.S. history, was a coalition of agrarian reformers in the Middle West and South in revolt against the Democratic and Republican leaders for ignoring their interests. They suffered from economic hardship due to falling prices, crop failures, and lack of credit institutions.

So frustrated by the lack of progress, Populists challenged the federal government to help alleviate economic depressions, regulate banks and corporations, and help farmers who were being crushed from economic chaos.

In breaking with his contemporaries, Hofstadter, a Columbia University historian, blistered liberals and their purportedly idealistic reforms by revealing a number of unbecoming traits, including their nativism, jingoism, and anti-Semitism.

Previously, Populists and Progressives of the late 19th and early 20^th centuries were heralded by most historians for ushering in a number of progressive reforms; among them, the secret ballot, direct elections of U.S. senators, and amendments in electoral laws promoting suffrage for women.

These reforms were put in place, history tells us, to combat the corrupt monopolies of the late 19^th century, including the regulation of transportation, finance, utilities, and corporations.

According to Hofstadter, these reforms sprang from resentment from the rural population (“urbanized against their will”) who lost ground to the more socially democratic and multicultural interests of the country. The two groups erupted into a cultural bonfire.

Many of these reforms were hailed as “the rebirth of American democracy.”

Not until “The Age of Reform’’ was published, however, were many of these democratic reforms of the Populists and Progressives put under close scrutiny by Hofstadter.

No book, according to Hofstadter, investigated the anti-Semitism of the rural population.

Stripped to its core, Hofstadter recognized hostility by Populists to the foreign “ideologies” of immigrants who poured through the U.S. in record numbers in the last half of the 19^th century and early 20^th centuries. Yankee Protestants, from Hofstadter’s vantage point, resented the rising status of the Jews, Poles, and Irish, ethnic groups who didn’t fall in line with the social conservatism of the “old Wasp elites.”

The decline of rural America, in other words, awoke a smoldering anti-Semitism within the farming class. Hofstadter’s analysis, in another break from his contemporaries, was taking a hard look at American politics through the prism of culture, not in economic terms.

The Columba University historian inveighed against native-born citizens seeking to define what it meant to be an American on their terms, while condemning supposedly foreign challenges to the nation’s values and institutions.

Shortly after its publication, historian Norman Pollack harshly challenged Hofstadter’s arguments in “The Age of Reform,” which he thought obscured the truly humane character of the movement and denied Populism "its traditional place as a democratic social force.”

Another, C. Vann Woodward, a Pulitzer-Prize winning American historian who wrote extensively about the American South and race relations in the 20^th century took issue with Hofstadter for singling out Populists for their nativism and anti-Semitism, when such traits were shared by elite eastern intellectuals and nation’s urban underprivileged.

64 years after its publication, “The Age of Reform” continues to have its strong supporters, especially in the Donald Trump era.

Harold Bloom, an American literary critic and Professor of Humanities at Yale University, contends that “now that we are all of us in the Age of Trump, I think we have to regard Hofstadter as having been prescient. Populism, whether here or abroad, is anything but a democratic social force. It has become Fascistic. Let us tell the truth. We are now under a Fascistic government. I do not think that I would call the Hofstadter book a classic. It is not a great work. “

Lizabeth Cohen, Professor of American Studies at Harvard University, echoes Harold Bloom’s sentiments.

“Trump’s victory,” Cohen observes, “surely would not have surprised Hofstadter. After all, he tracked extremist revolt in the Heartland of America from the Populists of the 1890s to the anti-urban nativists of the 1920s to the McCarthyites and other anti-communists in the 1950s to the Goldwater Campaigners of 1964.”

Cohen, furthermore, points out that Hofstadter predicted the impact of media celebrity on politics when he wrote in 1964: “The growth of the mass media of communication and their use in politics have brought politics closer to the people than ever before and have made politics a form of entertainment in which the spectators feel themselves involved. Thus, it has become, more than ever before, an arena into which private emotions and personal problems can be readily projected.”

Critics of Hofstadter think his radical politics sprang from his transition from Marxism in the early 1930s, which over time, developed into hostility against “populistic democracy.”

Hofstadter joined the Communist Party in 1938; but was so disheartened with the Moscow show trials, that he quit the party four months later.

Conservative columnist George F. Will once described Hofstadter as a liberal intellectual who “dismissed conservatives as victims of character flaws and psychological disorders.”

Hofstadter was born on August 6, 1916, in Buffalo, New York. His father was a Jewish immigrant from Poland, his mother an American-born Protestant who died when he was ten. He lived at 1125 Park Avenue in NYC.

Not all scholars consider “The Age of Reform” a classic.

Paul E. Peterson, Professor of Government at Harvard University, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said that “when I first read it in graduate school, I thought it did not understand country folk I came to know when running a campaign in rural Minnesota. The people were mainly interested in the weather, the prices for their crops, and any government subsidies they might persuade the federal government to give them. The book appealed to the folks on the eastern seaboard. I never assigned it [to my class].” “Never believe a blurb on the back of a book,” Peterson advised me.

In addition to Populists and Progressives, “The Age of Reform,” examines FDR’s New Deal, which is viewed by the author as the only true political reform movement which was motivated not by the cultural ethos of the nation, emblematic of the Populist Movement, but motivated by sheer economic necessity. The New Deal, according to Hofstadter, "added a social-democratic tinge that had never before been present in American reform movements."

Because of the New Deal, Hofstadter argued, liberals would in the future be less concerned with “entrepreneurial,” reform and increasingly more committed to social legislation (social security, unemployment insurance, wages and hours, and housing).

Hofstadter maintained that the New Deal “represented the triumph of economic emergency and human needs over inherited notions and inhibitions."

Joseph A. McCartin, a historian of the U.S. labor movement and 20th century U.S. social and political history at Georgetown University, strongly believes the Age of Reform is “indeed a classic work of U.S. political history. Hofstadter brilliantly synthesized historical scholarship and he analyzed American political developments during a crucial period in such a compelling way that the book continues to attract readers more than a half-century after he wrote it.”

“I think it is safe to say’’ McCartin went on to tell me, “that most historians of populism in the years since Hofstadter have thought that he had overplayed the extent to which anti-Semitism infected the populist movement and its followers.”

But McCartin was just as quick to point out that “just as his keen awareness of the post-WWII Red Scare and McCarthyism caused Hofstadter to see some illiberal forerunners among the populists, events in our time have served as a warning to present day historians that there has perhaps been a greater persistence of illiberal, tribal, and anti-Semitic tendencies in our culture than we might have hoped or assumed.”

In addition to winning a Pulitzer Prize for “The Age of Reform,” Hofstadter was the recipient of yet another Pulitzer in 1964 for “ Anti-intellectualism in American Life,’’ in which he traced the social movements that altered the role of intellect in American society. He published 13 books, a number of them bestsellers.

The celebrated American historian and public intellectual died in 1970 [Obituary] from leukemia. He was 54.

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

September 8, 2019

Posted at 07:45 PM in American Culture, Book Review, Books, Child Abuse, Immigration Policy, Politics, Popular Culture History, Pulitzer Winners | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/15/2019

Baseball and the Green Green Grass of Ireland

Tom Kelley, President, Baseball Ireland

***

The grass will be just a little greener at League Park in Cleveland on August 19.

That’s when Tom Kelley, a St Ignatius alum, will appear at the Baseball Heritage Museum at League Park to discuss his efforts to promote baseball in Ireland.

While attending Trinity College in Dublin, Kelley became increasingly more involved with the promotion and the eventual rise of baseball in Ireland.

Kelley has been living in Ireland since 1995.

In addition to Kelley, Dan Coughlin, former Plain Dealer and Cleveland Press sports columnist, WJW Fox 8 reporter and author will be on hand, signing books and participating in a Q & A.

The event will additionally consist of a baseball clinic for players of all ages, starting at 5:30pm.

Kelley, a Cleveland native, is a founding member of the Dublin City Hurricanes, former Irish League MVP and National Team coach and player.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to avid baseball fans that the Irish have been well represented in Major League Baseball, especially with 44 players born in Ireland.

Despite popular belief, baseball in Ireland itself does have a brief history.

According to author Josh Chetwynd, the first recorded game taking place in Ireland occurred on August 24, 1874, a game which featured the Boston Red Stockings and the Philadelphia Athletics who made a brief trek to The Emerald Isle to showcase America’s national pastime.

Baseball popped up, once again, in Ireland during World War II.

In July, 1942, in Belfast (east coast of Ireland), a game among U.S. serviceman was featured between the 34^th Infantry Division Midwest Giants and First Armored Division Kentucky Wildcats, a July 4^th game which drew 7,500 spectators.

By November, 1942, the 34^th Infantry Division left Northern Ireland to participate in Operation Torch, an American-Anglo invasion of French Morocco and Algeria during the North African campaign of WW II.

By May 1943, historians note, a 12-team league, featuring the New York Eagles, Medical Corps Pill Rollers and Californian Eagles, among other teams, played games at Belfast’s Ravenhill Rugby Grounds.

The active participation of baseball among young Irelanders themselves in their home country wouldn’t take hold until the end of the 20^th century.

Cormac Eklof, (now living in Seattle as program manager in the IT world) who played baseball on the Dublin City Hurricanes from 1997 through 2015 and on the Irish National Baseball team, across Europe, from 1996 through 2006, tells me that baseball in Ireland started in the blustery winter of 1995.

It was in that year when about 20 ball players in Eklof’s inner circle were looking to do something more than just play softball. So, they started meeting more regularly to play hardball.

As Eklof explains it, they began scheduling some scrimmage games with the long-term hope of perhaps fielding a team in the European B Championships in August, 1996 in Hull, England.

Scrimmaging became more earnest in the summer of 1996; they were helped, mightily, when the young Irish organization received two coaches from Major League International to coach the team.

Before you knew it, what started as a grass roots movement with no real field to speak of, no perfectly trimmed grass to play on, not even a backstop, just a desire to play baseball on weathered soccer and rugby fields, usually in the sporadic, driving rain, resulted in this group (what they lacked in talent was replaced with plenty of heart) representing Ireland in the 1996 European Championships.

Their first venture into competitive baseball wasn’t pretty. The Czech Republic cleaned their clock, 23-2.

The drubbing the Irish team absorbed wasn’t the real story of Ireland’s first offensive into competitive baseball. The real story was when realizing they could compete against the world, hit and field the ball, and even score some runs.

Ireland ended up losing the first four games of the tournament with a whopping 35 errors. Still, in the final game, they were able to beat Yugoslavia, 8-6. “It felt like we won the tournament,” Irish player Gus Hernandez (a native of Mexico) told Dan O’Neill of the St Louis Dispatch.

Ireland soldiered on in subsequent years: winning two games in the 1998 European Championships and another one in the 2000 tournament. By 2002, Ireland finished fourth, though their improved success was helped greatly by adding American-born players who acquired dual citizenship; a popular practice followed throughout Europe.

By 2004, Ireland came away with the bronze medal, beating Serbia-Montenegro in the European B Pool Championships held in Regensburg, Germany. In 2006, they earned a silver medal at the European B-Pool Championships in Antwerp, Belgium.

Many argue the reason Ireland doesn’t produce many quality pitchers, stems from the island’s most popular sports (hurling, soccer, rugby, and Gaelic football), lacking much throwing.

P.J. Conlon was the rare exception.

On May 7, 2018, Conlon, born in Belfast, Ireland, made his major league debut for the New York Mets (with an Irish tricolor stitched into his glove), making him the first major league player born in Ireland since World War II.

U.S. Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith throws the first pitch at dedication ceremonies for the O’Malley Little League and Dodger Baseball Fields in Corkagh Park, West Dublin, Ireland. Peter O’Malley (far right), president of the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1970-98, privately built the two fields, opened July 4, 1998, which serve as the centerpiece of baseball in Ireland. From L-R: Aldo Notari0, President of International Baseball Federation; Dr. Creighton Hale, President, Little League Baseball; Ed Piszek, Little League Foundation Trustee; Ambassador Smith; Rod Dedeaux, legendary head baseball coach at USC; and O’Malley.

Photo Credit: WalterOMalley.com

***

Another major leap forward for Irish baseball was when they were provided with a diamond to finally, at long last, field a team on and call their own.

On March 4, 1998, O’Malley Field was dedicated at Corkagh Park in Dublin, a facility built through the generous contributions from Los Angeles Dodgers president Peter O’Malley.

According to Cormac Eklof, “the O’Malley Field is the spiritual home of baseball in Ireland.” “There’s been hundreds of games,” Eklof says, “and thousands of innings there since the 1990’s.”

In addition to O’Malley Field, there is a brand-new custom baseball facility in Ashbourne, Meath, which is equipped with clubhouses. There are also fields in Belfast, Cork, and Limerick.

Just as baseball in the United States has served as a crazy quilt for different cultures and ethnicities in a united cause: the pure enjoyment of the game; so too has baseball brought different factions of Irish society together during some stormy times in its history.

In the prize-winning 2006 documentary, “Emerald Diamond,” a film about the history of Baseball Ireland and the Irish national baseball team, director John Fitzgerald captures how baseball served as a bulwark against the raging Catholic-Protestant conflicts of the 1990s.

Will baseball, America’s national pastime, ever become as popular as soccer and Gaelic football in Ireland?

Not likely, at least according to Cormac Eklof.

The former pitcher (who sports a Nomar Garciaparra tattoo) tells me that baseball is a minority sport in Ireland, though it has a loyal following.

“Basketball is really popular, with clubs all over the country and thousands of registered players, some TV and media coverage,” said Eklof. “American Football has a very stable and relatively old federation with several teams and I would guess around 5,000 people involved in a relatively high-profile sport. Baseball Ireland is the minnow of that group, with maybe a couple of thousand people as members. It gets little snippets of attention in the media.”

One way to increase Ireland’s love for the game, is to see MLB players compete on Irish soil.

Since the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox traveled across the pond to play in London this year, Eklof is hopeful that MLB schedules a game in Ireland in the not too distant future.

Eklof believes Dublin has several big stadiums which could be accommodate any major league team, such as Croke Park, and the Aviva, both big stadiums.

The Irish American Baseball Society and The Irish Baseball Hall of Fame, in fact, have formally asked Major League Baseball to consider bringing an MLB series to Dublin and have requested supporters sign a petition in support.

So, to learn more about baseball in Ireland, make plans to come down to the Baseball Heritage Museum on Monday evening (August 19) and share some of your favorite Irish tales (and jokes) with Tom Kelley and Cleveland’s own, Danny Coughlin, who will undoubtedly share a few of their own tales.

You won’t be disappointed.

–Bill Lucey

August 15, 2019

WPLucey@gmail.com

***

Facts, Feats, and Irish Firsts

On March 17, 1871 (St. Patrick's Day), the National Association of Professional Baseball Players became baseball's first all-professional league in a saloon called, fittingly enough, “Collier's Café” on the corner of Broadway and Thirteenth Street in New York City.

By the 1880's, Irish immigrants and first-generation Irish-Americans comprised between 33 and 41 percent of professional rosters.

Of the more than 16,000 players to appear in the major league since 1876, 38 were born in Ireland, while hundreds more have been of Irish descent.

Andy Leonard (County Cavan), who was born during the Potato Famine, was the first Irish-born major leaguer, making his debut with the Washington Olympics of the old National Association in 1871.

More than two dozen sons of Irish immigrants, who played in the 1880-1920 period, are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

–Bill Lucey

***

Recommend Websites/Resources

Baseball Ireland

The Birth of Baseball in Ireland

The O’Malley Baseball Field in Dublin, Ireland

Confederation of European Baseball

Irish Central

The Irish By the Numbers (U.S. Census Bureau)

Posted at 05:20 PM in Baseball, Irish Culture, Irish History, Major League Baseball | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/30/2019

MLB All-Star Game Preview: How Much Has Cleveland Changed Since 1997?

Skyline of Downtown Cleveland.

Photo Credit: Marriot.com

***

We thought it would never return.

But lo and behold, after 22 years long years, the MLB All-Star game has returned to Progressive Field in a city stripped of its Chief Wahoo logo, replaced by the more diplomatic Block C

First pitch is set for July 9^th at 7:30 p.m. EST.

The last time there was an MLB All-Star Game in Cleveland, Cleveland Indians catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. was the toast of the town and the game’s MVP, (the first Puerto Rican named MVP in an All-Star game), when he cracked a two-run home run in the bottom of the 7th to break a tie and propel the American League to a 3-1 win. The win broke a three-year losing streak for the AL. The crowd of 44,916 that night, was the largest in Jacobs Field history.

Interestingly, Alomar, 22 years later, is still in an Indians uniform as a first base coach. In 1997, when he was named to the All-Star team, the older brother of Hall-of-Famer Roberto Alomar, was having a monster year going into the break with a 30-game hitting streak and leading the AL with a .375 batting average.

Since 1997, the makeup of MLB players has grown more diverse. In 1997, for example, foreign born players (born outside of the 50 United States) made up 18.9 percent of MLB’s rosters. In 2019, that has leaped to 28.5 percent.

22 years was a long time ago, much has changed in Cleveland since 1997, the same year Michael R. White was mayor, fighting for a new NFL team (the Browns left Cleveland for Baltimore after the 1995 season); and Bill Clinton, the 42^nd U.S. President, was in the White House riding a 55 percent approval rating at a time when few ever heard of a 24-year old female employee of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs and a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.

So, assuming someone has been away from Cleveland for 22 years, what exactly has changed in downtown Cleveland since 1997?

Quite a lot, at least according to Curtis Danburg, Senior Director of Communications at the Cleveland Indians.

“In 1997, we [The Cleveland Indians at Jacobs Field] were in the midst of the sellout streak averaging over 42, 997 thousand per night compared with just under 19 thousand per game in 2019.” “The Cleveland Browns,” Danburg additionally pointed out, “weren’t around and the Cleveland Cavaliers were in a down cycle.

Business activity in Cleveland isn't as robust as it was 22 years ago. There are currently three Fortune 500 companies in Cleveland, down from seven in 1997, according to Fortune Magazine.

There were also more active duty Cleveland Police officers in 1997 than there is today. According to Cleveland Police records, there were 1795 officers in 1997. In 2019, there are 1593 officers, 202 less than in 1997.

Since 1997, Progressive Field has sliced about 7,000 seats from its facility (capacity is now roughly 35,225) as it went through a number of renovations, beginning in 2014, which included a two-story bar area that is partially enclosed and an expanded section for children (Kids Clubhouse). A pedestrian bridge and other structures beyond right field were also installed to allow people outside the park to get a glimpse of the field. And in 2016, the Indians unveiled a 59-by-221-foot scoreboard, (the largest in baseball), a season-ticket holder club behind home plate, a beer garden, new concession stands, and a revamped left-field district, among other additions.

In 1997, at the All-Star break, the Indians led the AL Central with a 44-36 record (.550 winning percentage) winning seven out of their last ten and three games ahead of the Chicago White Sox. In 2019, the Indians carry an almost identical record, 45-38 (.542 winning percentage) but in stark contrast to 22 years ago, they are eight-and-a-half games out of first place; though, with still plenty of baseball left, particularly against their division rival, the Minnesota Twins.

What the second half of the season holds for the Tribe in 2019 is anyone’s guess.

We all know what happened in 1997. The Tribe advanced to the World Series for the second time in three years only to have their hearts slashed in Miami Gardens when the Florida Marlins beat the heavily favored Tribe in seven games on a walk-off single slapped by Édgar Rentería in extra innings.

Other changes in Cleveland since 1997?

For starters, the population has shrunk.

The population of Cleveland in 1997 was 498,246; in 2019 it stands at 383,793, a drop of 114, 453 residents, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But with the addition of the Jack Cleveland Casino (which opened in 2012), along with an explosion of bars (219), breweries (13), clubs (57) and two music venues, including the House of Blues, downtown Cleveland has simply been buzzing with an appreciable increase in hotel rooms.

In 1997, according to the Newmark Knight Frank Valuation & Advisory's Hospitality, Gaming & Leisure Group, the last time there was an MLB All-Star game in Cleveland, there were nine hotels. Since 1997, there have been 16 hotels added. As of June 2019, there are a total of 25 hotels ready to be booked in downtown Cleveland, midtown, and University Circle.

Along with more hotels, obviously, comes more rooms. For the 1997 All-Star game there were 2,722 rooms available in Cleveland spanning 9 hotels. Since 1997, there were 3,325 rooms added over 16 hotels. As of today, there are 6,047 rooms available spanning 25 hotels.

Photo Credit: Rockhall.com

***

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, downtown’s Cleveland’s signature museum, on the shore of Lake Erie, has gone through a significant transformation since 1997.

In 1997, the Rock Hall was only in its second year, the same year they unveiled their first major exhibit: “I Want to Take You Higher: The Psychedelic Era, 1965 – 1969,” a stunning display which included artifacts from John Lennon, Eric Clapton, John Sebastian, the Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and a number of others.

Greg Harris, CEO of the Rock Hall, said that after the initial excitement at the Rock Hall, attendance dipped, albeit remained at steady levels for two decades.

In 2016, according to Harris, “we began a significant transformation to leverage visitor feedback, create new and immersive experiences, and welcome visitors to a space that is true to the power of rock & roll.”

The museum's transformation includes the spectacular Connor Theater, featuring arena-quality sound and larger-than-life screens, an All Access Café with a menu designed by Cleveland celebrity chefs, and a soon to be unveiled highly interactive exhibit, The Garage – a space where visitors can host jam sessions using real instruments and even design their own band merchandise.

Harris additionally points out that "our attendance levels have steadily increased along with these important changes, and now in 2019, our experience is better than ever.”

Another significant transformation in Cleveland since 1997 surrounds the world-renowned Cleveland Orchestra and Severance Hall, a concert hall in the University Circle neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, located on the campus of Case Western Reserve, about four miles east of Downtown Cleveland, at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East Boulevard.

Severance Hall underwent a full renovation from 1997-2000, a massive renovation, in fact, which changed Severance Hall significantly, including restoring and relocating the 6,025 pipe E.M. Skinner organ, allowing it to be used again during concerts.

The renovation also involved removing the “Szell Shell” (a stage that created a shell in the Danish Modern style, aesthetically at odds with the building’s Art Deco style) and installing a stage shell that better matched the architecture style of the Concert Hall — with improved acoustics, along with restoring the murals in Reinberger Chamber Hall. A full-service restaurant was also added.

Since 1997, there’s has been a change of conductor.

Beginning in 2002, Franz Welser-Möst, an Austrian conductor, replaced Christoph von Dohnány as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra.

For those who question whether Cleveland can still support a major orchestra with the explosion of audio streaming platforms, such as iTunes and Spotify, you can take comfort in knowing that the financial health of the orchestra has improved markedly since 1997, despite running into challenges stemming from the financial crisis of the late 2000s.

According to Rebecca Calkin, media relations manager at The Cleveland Orchestra, in 1997, there were a small number of households, mostly subscribers, who attended. “Now, we have a much larger number of households visiting us each year,” Culkin says. “This is fueled by our work developing a younger audience (20 percent of our audience is under 25 years old — around 40,000 people).”

"At the close of the 2017-18 year," Calkin continued, "our deficit has been reduced, ticket sales and touring fees are at an all-time high, and our endowment continues to see solid gains and contributions."

Photo Credit: PlayhouseSquare.org

***

For theater-goers, there's also been major expansions at Playhouse Square, the theater district in downtown Cleveland, the largest performing arts center in the United States outside of New York.

According to Cindi Szymanski, Assistant Director of Brand Marketing and Communications at Playhouse Square, in 1997, only three of their five historic theaters had been restored (they had a total of six performance spaces). In 2019, by comparison, all five historic theaters have been restored (with a total of 11 performance spaces).

In 1996, the year before the last MLB All-Star game in Cleveland, Playhouse Square welcomed more than a million guests; a number that is still maintained today.

Yet another transformation in Cleveland has been the curriculum of Cleveland State University, a public research university in downtown Cleveland, which was first established in 1964. Many might be stunned if they browsed through the curriculum in the liberal arts department of CSU to see how much it has changed since well into the 20^th century.

So many of the standard courses traditionally taught in history, political science, and English departments, to name a few, have been dropped to address the growing demographics and multicultural interests of students, along with the many global challenges of the 21^st century.

The drastic transformation of a liberal arts education at CSU has rankled a number of educators.

Roger B. Manning, emeritus professor from the History Department at CSU, says that in his opinion, "it is not a change for the better. British history has disappeared entirely, and there are fewer courses in European history. " "Courses that I used to teach on history of technology, the Industrial Revolution and War and Western Society," Manning explained, “were not thought worth preserving.” “Throughout my career at Cleveland State, I argued for appointing someone in the history of science without success."

Professor Manning went on to argue that "these courses have been replaced with multiple courses on women's history, black history and queer history.” “While these courses might have a place in the offerings of a large department,” he explains, “and may be worthwhile subjects for research, they should not dominate the offerings of a small department.”

Frederick J Karem, Professor and Chair from the Department of English at CSU, takes a different tack when considering the evolution of a liberal arts education.

"From my standpoint, there's a lot that has remained consistent, but there have been exciting expansions--it's a great time to write and to study literature, at CSU and beyond. We still teach Chaucer, Shakespeare, and lots of classic English writers alongside a diversity of American writers, past and present," Karem says. "I taught one of the first seminars at CSU on Toni Morrison, our Lorain-raised Nobel laureate, and I'm sure they've been 100's more throughout the country since then. "

Karem went on to explain that “CSU has always had a multicultural emphasis because of our city's diversity. In the past two decades we've become more global in our focus, exploring literatures and authors that are in increasing contact in our interconnected world, the area of greatest expansion is what we study in the classroom. "

Karem additionally pointed out that besides hard copy books, they now study stories and narratives in many forms, including films, television shows, graphic novels, and digital media, all of which, according to Karem, "have complexity worth exploring."

In 1997, 22 years ago, it’s amazing how much of the future stared us right in the face; but we just didn’t fully comprehend that we were entering a new age, the digital age.

It was 1997, after all, in which Bill Gates, business magnate and principal founder of Microsoft Corporation, became the world’s richest businessman. The same year Yahoo! Introduced Yahoo Mail, while the domain Facebook.com came online on March 28, 1997, the domain Craigslist.com came online on September 24, 1997, and the domain Netflix.com came online on November 10, 1997.

All powerful forces in our lives in 2019.

In May, 1997, 40 million Americans and thousands in Northeast Ohio used the worldwide communications system, the Internet. A month later, in June, 1997, more than one million job openings were advertised on 5,000 Internet sites, estimated John Sumser, editor of Electronic Recruiting News, an on-line newsletter.

1997 was also the year comedian Ellen DeGeneres (starring on the hit ABC sitcom “Ellen”) courageously came out as a lesbian on the cover of Time Magazine (April 14), paving the way for other performers to pursue gay roles on TV without fear of retribution.

It was 22 years ago, too, when Bedford Heights Mayor Jimmy Dimora, a member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and chairman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, gave serious thought to running for Cuyahoga County Commissioner. NOTE: In 2012, Dimora was convicted of 32 charges, including racketeering, bribery, conspiracy, and tax charges and sentenced to 28 years in federal prison in one of the largest criminal corruption cases in Ohio history.

Finally, in 1997, Tony Grossi of The Cleveland Plain Dealer splashed with page one news (April 21) that Bernie Kosar, 33, hometown hero, after playing 12 NFL seasons, 8 1/2 with the Browns, was retiring from football. His last tour of duty was with the Miami Dolphins. A decision he made so he could "devote his time to business interests and pursue his goal of owning the Cleveland Browns."

The Browns returned to Cleveland (and the NFL) in 1999; but Kosar’s dream of owning the team never came to fruition.

In 1997, nearly 45,000 baseball fans attended the All-Star Game, and another 95,000 participated in Fan Fest activities throughout the weekend, leaving behind an estimated $38 million with hotels, restaurants, taxicabs and shopping centers.

According to Destination Cleveland, the convention and visitor bureau for the Greater Cleveland area, the estimated economic impact for this year’s MLB All-Star week is $65 million and the estimated attendance is over 100,000 guests between Progressive Field and Fan Fest.

So, as visitor’s come streaming into Cleveland in the coming days for the 90^th MLB All-Star Game, they’ll be setting their sights on a city with a more vibrant downtown life than was true 22 years ago, more hotels, a bustling casino, an enhanced theater district, more restaurants, breweries, and clubs, to satisfy young and old ready for a good time and watch some baseball in the rock 'n' roll capital of the world.

—Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

June 30, 2019

Posted at 05:59 PM in Baseball, Cleveland History, Cleveland Indians, Major League Baseball, Sports | Permalink | Comments (2)

06/02/2019

A Book Lovers Paradise: Case Western Reserve University

Much like girl scout cookies, and the Salvation Army bell ringer at the holidays, it’s hard to say no to books.

Especially at the annual Case Western Reserve Book Sale, sponsored by the Association for Continuing Education (ACE), at the Adelbert Gymnasium on the CWRU campus in Cleveland, Ohio.

Saturday marked the 73^rd consecutive year the event is being held.

So, how did it all begin?

Jane Leitch, 94, the "grand dame of literary volunteers."

According to Jane Leitch, 94, the "grand dame of literary volunteers," her sister Caroline, a calculus major at the time, helped launch the book sale back in 1948 to help raise money for the university.

Jane and Caroline (now deceased) were part of the Sutphin family of four girls and two boys. Their father, Albert Sutphin, (known affectionately as the “man in the red necktie”) became president of the Braden Sutphin Ink Co. on East 93rd Street in 1929, a company which produced graphic arts equipment, inks, printing materials, and supplies.

He also owned the Falcon hockey team in 1934, which he renamed the Cleveland Barons. He spearheaded the building of the old Cleveland Arena around East 36th Street and Euclid Avenue.

What started as a modest collection of books (a few thousand) kept in a dusty storage room, quickly ballooned into a full-size gym of books, CDS, records, and memorabilia, divided by subject, now numbering well over 80,000.

The vast majority of the books are donated through the generosity of avid book lovers, or those simply looking to clear shelf space in their homes. Donations pour into their facility throughout the year.

Today, the CWRU book sale is one of the largest in the Midwest and is a destination spot for collectors and dealers from around the region.

As I was walking up the stairs to the Adelbert Gym about 12:30 p.m. today on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon with the blazing sun beating down, I noticed an elderly couple passing by, wheeling two large boxes, as if they were preparing to board a plane for a European vacation.

The CWRU book sale, to be sure, is a weekend event for serious book lovers.

When I walked into the gym, I really had no agenda in what type of books I was looking for.

I recently donated boxes and boxes of books a few months ago to CWRU (of all places) during one of my many moves, so I initially thought this would be a quick browse, since I don’t have that much room in my new apartment.

Unfortunately, I’m attracted to books like bees are to honey.

My eyes were first drawn to an oldie but goodie: William Safire’s, “On Language.” In this book, the former New York Times op-ed columnist and Richard Nixon speech writer, offers a rich and entertaining arrangement to breaking down origins of words, proper usage of phrases, clichés to avoid, and scores of other witty observations.

In addition to his widely-read op-ed column, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist wrote a New York Times Sunday Magazine column, “On Language” which was the very first item I looked for after lugging the New Times Sunday print edition back home.

I miss those days.

Safire’s book was definitely a keeper. I next stumbled on H.W. Fowler’s “Modern English Usage” another indispensable book to word lovers (which I once owned) which delves deeply into the conventions of grammar and vocabulary without being too pedantic. Another keeper.

I chased Safire and Fowler’s books with “Webster’s Synonyms, Antonyms, and Homonyms” by the Ottenheimer Publishers Inc. and the “Harper Dictionary of Foreign Terms” (third edition) based on the original edition by C.O. Sylvester Mawson, a reference book packed with more than 15,000 foreign expressions from more than 50 languages.

How could I pass those up ?

In the box they went.

With so many online tools and references in this day and age, I thought I had enough quotation resources to satisfy me without having to carry another quotation book back to my apartment.

But then I saw “Familiar Quotations From German and Spanish Authors” by Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D. At first glance, it looked like an extremely dull book that would collect dust in anyone’s bookshelf.

But looks, as they say, can be deceiving.

As I skimmed through the book, I found some magnificent quotes in English (with the full text in either German and Spanish), such as from the pen of German poet, Friedrich Schiller, "The May of Life Only Blooms Once;” “Eternity Gives Nothing Back;" "Death is a Blessing to Mortals;"; or from German writer and statesman, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Misfortune Never Comes Single;" "Cut Your Coat According to Your Cloth;" or Miguel de Cervantes, the celebrated Spanish writer and considered one of the world's preeminent novelists, "The Pen is The Tongue of the Mind'' and "Blessing to Him Who Invented Sleep."

Yet another diamond in the rough I simply couldn’t pass up.

As I made my way through the history section, I recall reading a good number of the books they had displayed there. Barbara W. Tuchman’s epic, “The Guns of August” which won a Pulitzer-Prize for General Non-Fiction for 1963 was one acclaimed masterpiece (some historians say flawed interpretation of history) which has been on my reading list for years, but I never got around to reading it.

In the box it went.

There were a number of noteworthy books about Cleveland history, which I couldn’t pass up, such as “The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History” (another indispensable reference book I used to have); “Cleveland: Prodigy of the Western Reserve” (1979) by former Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist, George E. Condon, who explores the birth of the city through its heyday of thriving newspapers, its ascendancy during the Roaring ‘20s, when downtown Cleveland reigned supreme, while underscoring memorable sports moments well before the “Mistake on the Lake” made the city the butt of national ridicule.

Another local history book, which made its way into my box (I now needed a second box) was “Cleveland Cops’’ By John H. Tidyman, a former Cleveland Press scribe who gathers first-hand testimony from Cleveland Police Officers about missing children, armed robberies, gun fights, car chases, and other sordid tales of putting their life on the line in the mean streets of Cleveland with a forward written by Edward P. Kovacic, Police Chief of Cleveland from 1990-1994.

For one brief shining moment, I found a wonderful collection of historic Cleveland Plain Dealer Page Ones.

But my enthusiasm for the book was short-lived.

As I set down the books in my hand to take a picture with my cell phone, someone snatched the book of Plain Dealer Page One Headlines, behind my back and under my nose.

Easy come; easy go.

But then I came across a random collection of Page Ones from different national newspapers, from Babe Ruth’s Death to a screaming headline: “Hitler Sole Dictator of Reich; Hindenburg Dead.”

So, my wound was softened just a bit.

As you might imagine, it was a hot day in the gym with no air-conditioning and some sharp elbows to deal with involving customers positioning themselves in the crowded aisles of books.

For some reason, I forgot about the weather and wore a long sleeve button-down dress shirt to the book sale. After a couple of hours, I was dripping in sweat, weighed down in books, and in need of finding the exit door.

But before calling it a day and heading to the exit, I made one final stop at the Sports Section.

There were so many baseball books to feast my eyes on, I felt like a kid in a candy store. I tried to stay strong and hold off from picking up any of these treasures, but the temptation became too unbearable; and before I knew it, the following books had been added to my boxes: The critically acclaimed: “The Summer of 95” By Thomas Kelly and Marc Jaffe (about Cleveland’s highs and crushing lows) with our professional sports franchises.

Another: “100 Greatest Pitchers’’ By Brent P. Kelley,” The Baseball Scrapbook: The Men and the Magic of America’s National Pastime” By Peter C. Bjarkman, and “Baseball: An Illustrated History” By Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns. It’s certainly a classic; I saw the documentary on PBS (1994), but never owned the book.

Easily, the most interesting item I found all day was a foreign language translator. I always heard about these translators and wondered how accurate they are. I spent all of $3.00 for the item.

The only problem, it’s for translations in French and Arabic only.

But you never know if one day I’m walking through Tower City (located on Public Square in downtown Cleveland) and someone might come up to me and ask: “hal tataHaddath al'ingiliiziyya? (Do you speak English?”).

Now, I’ll just consult with my new handy-dandy Arabic translator and answer the person with great confidence.

My day was done.

I checked in my two boxes of books and the wonderful volunteers gave me a slip of paper of the damages I owed. On to the checkout desk.

Another year of the CWRU book sale went by; and I came away another satisfied customer, while meeting a number of interesting book lovers.

For those who missed the event on Saturday, the book sale continues Sunday through Tuesday, June 4th.

Happy hunting!

--Bill Lucey

June 2, 2019

WPLucey@gmail.com

Posted at 01:36 AM in Baseball, Books, Cleveland History | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/26/2019

Baseball Returns in Cleveland for the 1981 All-Star Game

Vice president George H.W. Bush is accompanied by Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller before baseball's 1981 All-Star Game Aug. 9, 1981, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

***

If IBM swept away competitors when it introduced its first personal computer, the 5150 for $1,565 (equivalent to $4,313 in 2018), a ticket to a Bruce Springsteen concert was $12, the cost of a postage stamp was 20 cents, a McDonald's hamburger was 50 cents, the price of a movie ticket was $2.78, and "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes was the no. 1 song, then it must be 1981.

Cleveland, it seems, has the worst luck.

In 1981, not only were they without a World Series championship for 33 long years, but they were hosting an All-Star Game for the first time in nearly 20 years, the same year, of all years, of a players’ strike.

The strike lasted 50 days. It began on June 12th and ended on July 31, forcing the cancellation of 706 regular-season games, or 38 percent of the season.

According to the New York Times, the strike cost the players $28 million in salaries.

When the strike was finally settled there was a mighty big question mark over whether there would be an All-Star game at all.

After all, with a 50-day layoff, many players were embarrassingly out of shape.

Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich, in concert with city officials, wanted the All-Star Game called off and rescheduled back in Cleveland in 1982.

There was even a lawsuit in the books to get the game postponed.

Cleveland lawyer Arthur F. Clark reportedly filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of his wife, Colleen, to have the game postponed until 1982. Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and League presidents Lee MacPhail and Chub Feeney were named as defendants. The suit was subsequently dismissed.

Despite the grumblings, the All-Star was scheduled for a Sunday evening, August 9. It was already postponed twice, once on July 14 and again on the first alternate date of July 30.

So upset that the mid-season classic was still being played, Plain Dealer Sports editor Hal Lebovitz was moved to write: "I'm ashamed of Major League Baseball for scheduling the All-Star here a week from tomorrow. What an utter farce,” Lebovitz wrote. “To charge top prices for what has to be a charade, a workout, a non-contest is sinful."

When the regular season came to a screeching halt on June 12, the Indians were in 6th place (second to last) with 26-24 record (.520 winning percentage) but only 5 games out of first place. The Toronto Blue Jays were dead last, 16-24 (.276 winning percentage) 19 games out of first place.

The fact that the competitively challenged Indians were still within striking distance of first place, brought some timely sarcasm out of Cleveland Press columnist Bob Sudyk, who wrote: "the Indians just five games out of first place in the month of August? And playing over 500?” “I hate to bring this up,” Sudyk continued, “but the 50-day baseball strike has made the Indians contenders in the heat of the pennant race. The couldn't have done it alone. Or perhaps they needed to be alone, well away from the diamond. There was no place to fold this time."

Like it or not, the All-Star game was in Cleveland for the 4th time in Major League Baseball History.

Cleveland Press columnist Doug Clarke tried to put a positive spin on the game. “Right place, wrong time,” Clarke wrote. “This is the game nobody really wants and yet, as it approaches, people are succumbing to the spectacle--a chance to see people like Mike Schmidt, Dave Winfield, Steve Carlton, Fernando Valenzuela, George Brett, et al, in the flesh."

The Indians as the host city had only two representatives in the All-Star game: starting pitcher Len Barker and catcher Bo Diaz. Neither of them started the game. Indians manager Dave Garcia was selected as a coach.

But Barker pitched a perfect game against the Toronto Blue Jays earlier in the season, May 15, only the 10th perfect game in MLB history.

When the regular season was halted, Barker was 5-3 with a historic perfect game under his belt. Many felt “Large Lenny” should have started the All-Star game in front of his home town crowd.

But American League skipper, Jim Frey of the Kansas City Royals, opted for Detroit Tigers ace, Jack Morris to start the game, who was sporting a 9-3 record with a 2.56 ERA.

Vice President of Public Relations for the Cleveland Indians, Bob DiBiassio, remembers vividly having an argument with his mentor, Bob Fishel, a native Clevelander who did PR work for the Indians, and later became vice president of the New York Yankees in the 1950s, a special assistant to American League President Lee MacPhail and eventually an executive vice president. According to DiBiassio, "we argued because they had decided the A.L.’s starting pitcher should be Jack Morris of the Tigers and not Lenny Barker who was having a great season to that point; pitched a perfect game on May 15 and was the “hometown hero.” The A.L. decided Morris was best choice. Still burns me,'' DiBiassio fumed.

Cleveland Indians beat writer for the Plain Dealer, Terry Pluto, made a strong case that Indians pitcher Bert Blyleven (7-4, 2.84 ERA) should have been added to the All-Star roster, who, after all, was tied for third in complete games and wins and second to teammate Len Barker in strikeouts.

To compound Cleveland’s problems of having to hurry to get the city in shape for the All-Star game, came a host of challenges, including an airline traffic controllers strike. Just four days before the All-Star game, President Ronald Reagan fired 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers who ignored his order for them to return to work, causing some flights to be cancelled.

In addition, the city of Cleveland, including the grounds crew at Cleveland Municipal Stadium were preparing for a Browns-Pittsburgh Steelers preseason game on Saturday evening, just a day before the All-Star game. The stadium grounds crew, in fact, worked feverishly until 4:30 a.m. replacing outfield divots kicked up by Browns and Steelers players the night before. The grounds crew was then back at 9 a.m. to paint the football stripes with water soluble latex green paint.

A mighty tall order, indeed.

Former Plain Dealer sports reporter Tony Grossi, now with ESPN in Cleveland distinctly remembers that Plain Dealer sports columnist, “Danny Coughlin came up with the great idea of delivering beer to the grounds crew." "So," Grossi explained, " we lugged a couple cases down there at night and they were greatly enjoyed. I recall me and Dennis Lustig joining Danny that night. Possibly Joe Maxse and others."

If the Browns-Steelers game and the All-Star game weren’t enough, just a few hours before baseball was about to played on a national stage, Roberto Duran was returning to the boxing ring to face Mike Nino Gonzalez in a 10-round junior middleweight bought at the Public Auditorium with 7,000 expected to attend. The 30-year-old Panamanian won a unanimous decision over Gonzalez.

Mayor Voinovich remarked, "this will be one of the most memorable sports weekends in the city's history."

One major downside of squeezing in the All-Star game in a shortened season meant that the All-Star festivities had to take place in one day instead of the traditional three-day carnival.

But the city nonetheless put on its best face.

There were a number of parties in town, the most prominent being at Stouffers restaurant, where approximately 1,000 guests attended, including the Baseball Commissioner who sponsored the event, along with the Cleveland Indians.

The Sporting News reported that the night before the All-Star game, L.A. Dodger first baseman, Steve Garvey and his friends went out for dinner only to find two of their cars in their entourage were stolen when they exited the restaurant.

The night of the All-Star game was a typical muggy August night, about 80 degrees, but the sky was clear and 72,086 fans in attendance were ready for baseball again in Cleveland once Rocco Scotti, the opera-trained singer (and local favorite) brought the house down with his signature rendition of the national anthem.

Just eight days before the All-Star game, the first 24-hour video music channel MTV (Music Television) launched and aired its first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.

Video may have killed the radio star; but it didn’t kill the TV stars. Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek provided the play-by-play for NBC-TV.

George H.W. Bush, the U.S. Vice President flew in to throw out the first pitch; he was accompanied by Bob Hope and Baseball Commission Bowie Kuhn, where they sat in a specially protected box to the right of home plate. Future Hall of Famer, Carl Yastrzemski, who didn't make the All-Star game, was invited to attend the game with the vice president. They both flew together on Air Force II.

Also in the house was Bob Feller, 62, and Warren Spahn, 60, honorary captains, who last met in the 1948 World Series when the Indians beat the Boston Braves in six games to win their first World Weries since 1920.

The 52nd annual MLB All-Star game didn’t bode well for the Junior Circuit.

Going into the All-Star game, the NL won nine straight, 17 out of the last 18 games, and 28 out of the last 34, leading the series 32 to 18 with one tie.

The last time the AL won an All-Star game was in 1971, the same year Reggie Jackson walloped a 500 foot drive off the light tower in the center field roof at Tiger Stadium.

So sure the AL was in for yet another mid-season classic loss that Tony Grossi of the Plain Dealer wrote that “the three safest bets in the history of sports: Ali over Wepner, Secretariat in the Belmont and the National League in the All-Star Game."

Two young pitchers were ready for battle.

For the NL, Fernando Valenzuela, the L.A. Dodgers rookie sensation, carried a 9-4 record with a 2.25 ERA, while The Detroit Tigers staff ace, Jack Morris, took to the hill for the AL with 9-3 record and a 2.56 ERA.

Baltimore Orioles outfielder Ken Singleton got things going for the AL in the second frame, belting a solo shot off of Tom Seaver (CIN) over the right field fence.

Len Barker took over for Morris in the third, drawing a thunderous round of applause from the home town crowd.

But before firing his first pitch, the Indians staff ace had a secret admirer who was dying to meet him. Morgana Roberts (The notorious Kissing Bandit) ran onto the field and planted a kiss on the Indians pitcher.

Unruffled, Barker set down six straight hitters, leaving to a standing ovation.

The AL held on to a 1-0 lead until the top of the 5th, when Gary Carter bashed Ken Forsch’s (CAL) first offering over the fence in left to tie the score at one.

The NL tacked on another run in the 6th when Dave Parker (PIT) drove a towering ball over the fence in right center off of Mike Norris (OAK), to put the NL on top, 2-1.

In the bottom of the 6th, there was a glimmer of hope that the AL might turn the tide, when they exploded for three runs and five hits to put the AL up, 4-2. After Singleton slapped a single to center, Dwight Evans (BOS) followed with another single to right, moving Singleton to second. Carlton Fisk (CHW) then loaded the bases after slashing a sharp single to right. Fred Lynn (CAL) batted for Bucky Dent (NYY) and beat out an infield single, scoring Singleton. Former Cleveland Indians star and hometown favorite, Buddy Bell (TEX) hit a sac fly to left, scoring Evans.

The AL’s final run in the frame came when Ted Simmons (MIL) batted for Willie Randolph (NYY) and singled to right, scoring Fisk and putting the AL up, 4-2.

Gary Carter’s bat never cooled off in the 7th when he smacked yet another first pitch offering, this time from Ron Davis (NYY) clearing the center field fence, to slice the AL lead to 4-3.

Mike Schmidt's 2-run homer in the 8th puts NL on top for good to secure the Senior Circuit's 10th straight All-Star game win.
Photo Credit: MLB

***

In the top of the 8th, the Cleveland crowd watched as Mike Easler (PIT), age 30, a native Clevelander and Benedictine High School graduate drew a walk from Rollie Fingers (MIL). Easler was taken in the 14th round of the amateur draft by the Houston Astros in 1969. His bonus was $500. The Pirates brought him to the majors in 1979 as a pinch hitter. In 1981, the Benedictine alum was hitting .317 with 6 home runs and 28 RBI's.

Back to the 8th.

With Easler planted on first, Mike Schmidt (PHI) must have come to the plate with his Roy Hobbs “Wonderboy” bat. The Dayton, Ohio native blasted a towering drive deep into the night in center field, putting the NL on top, 5-4 for good, and in doing so-sliced another dagger straight through the hearts of the AL.

The normally reliable Rollie Fingers who came into the All-Star Game with more saves than any other reliever in baseball, absorbed the crushing 5-4 loss.

Vida Blue (SF) was the winning pitcher, becoming the first to win All-Star games both in the National and American Leagues.

NL had sealed their 10th straight mid-season classic win or 18 of the last 19.

Gary Carter's two home runs (both on first pitches) earned him the Commissioner's Trophy as the game's MVP.

The game was far from perfect, the players were still a little rusty and working out the kinks. As The Washington Post’s Jane Leavy wrote: “Errors were charitably called hits and some plays belied the term, midseason classic.”

Undoubtedly, the 1981 MLB All-Star game wasn’t the most memorable (except, that is, for the kissing bandit), but it had just enough theatrics, long balls, and stars galore in a city hungry for baseball to make it enjoyable for fans thankful baseball was back in business.

As baseball prepared to continue the regular season (beginning August 10), there was plenty to look forward to. “Charlie Hustle,” Pete Rose was in pursuit of cracking Stan Musial's 3,660-hit record, which he tied just before the work stoppage. Ferguson Jenkins was 54 strikeouts from 3,000, Gaylord Perry needed just six wins for 300 and the Toronto Blue Jays were in hot pursuit of breaking their 11-game losing streak.

As for Cleveland, it would have to wait 16 years before another MLB All-Star game would roll into town with a President in the White House dubbed: “Slick Willie” and the “Comeback Kid,’’ appropriately enough, since the Indians in 1997 were most definitely, a comeback team in a comeback city.

–Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

April 26, 2019

Posted at 06:01 PM in Baseball, Cleveland History, Cleveland Indians, Sports | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/08/2019

Book a Date at Your Local Library

Photo: Eric J. Shelton-Hattiesburg American

***

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

― Mark Twain

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”

― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

***

This is the perfect time to get between the covers.

No, not in bed, between the covers of your favorite book.

National Library Week (April 7- 13), is an annual celebration highlighting the valuable role libraries, librarians, and library workers play in transforming lives and strengthening our communities.

If you haven’t visited your local library recently, you’re overlooking one of the truly prized possessions a locality bestows on its residents.

Imagine, in the last presented year, 695 million printed books were sold in the U.S., up from 687 in 2017.

That’s a lot of books, and most of these books are available at your local library for absolutely nothing. All you need is a library card and you’re literally good to go.

And what better time to visit a library; during a particularly dispiriting time in our nation’s history when the vitriol on social media, whether on Facebook or Twitter, is getting nastier by the day. It doesn’t matter if it’s pro-Trump posts or anti-Trump posts-the political climate of late is positively toxic.

Myself, I find it refreshing to get away from all the annoying chatter on television and on the Internet and visit my local library, where they have a nice quiet reading room with comfortable chairs. I’m even permitted to bring in my Dunkin Donuts coffee. I shut off my phone and just relax as I plunge into my book for a couple of hours, free from any interruption.

On many occasions, the time I spend at the library reading is easily the most productive and meaningful few hours I’ve spent all week.

And I often wonder why we don’t do it more often.

Residents of Cuyahoga County in Ohio where I live are particularly blessed. The Cleveland Public Library (in the very heart of downtown Cleveland) is the third largest library in the United States. Sadly, a majority of its residents don’t take advantage of this tremendous institution as often as they should.

Most local libraries, of course, have evolved and have kept pace with the changing needs of its residents. Many libraries, for example, accept applications for applying for a passport. They also have a number of computer classes for beginners and seniors (including more advanced classes) taught by highly trained professionals in small settings, free of the hassle (and expense) of having to enroll in a community college or university class. Free access to computers and the Internet is additionally available to any patron with a library card.

Bestselling author and former Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Regina Brett discussed her book of essays, "God Is Always Hiring: 50 Lessons for Finding Fulfilling Work" at the Kent Free Library in April, 2015.

***

And libraries, like the Cuyahoga County Libraries in Ohio regularly feature well known writers and authors to discuss their upcoming books, along with private readings.

All of this, of course, is absolutely free.

Despite all the benefits libraries provide to its residents, recent surveys are a bit discouraging.

According to the Pew Research Center , just under half of all those age 16 and older (48 percent) say they have visited a public library or bookmobile in person in the prior year. More discouraging still, the share of Americans who read for pleasure on a given day has fallen sharply by more than 30 percent since 2004, according to the latest American Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

April, then, is traditionally the time of year when there is a concerted effort to try to focus on books, reading, and libraries in general. In addition to the second week of April being designated as National Library Week; April is School Library Month; while National Library Workers Day is the Tuesday of the week, National Bookmobile Day, and Support Teen Literature Day is the Thursday of the week.

According to the American Library Association’s (ALA) website, “Library programs are designed to encourage community members to meet and discuss civic issues, work together using new technologies like 3D printing or learn alongside one another in English language or technology classes. Library staff also partner with other civic and service organizations to actively engage the people they serve, always striving to make sure their community’s needs are being met.”

The origin of National Library Week dates back to the 1950s. In 1954, a nonprofit National Book Committee was created between the American Libraries Association (ALA) and the American Book Publishers. By 1957, the committee developed the idea for National Library Week, hoping that it would motivate people to read and to support libraries.

Print books remain the most popular format for reading, with 67 percent of Americans having read a print book in the past year.

So, just like as Election Day nears, and civic leaders encourage everyone to get to the polls to vote; so too should we encourage each other to visit your local library this month if for no other reason than to learn of the invaluable and vast display of learning tools with trained professionals that are available to its residents.

–Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

April 8, 2019

Posted at 08:10 PM in Books, Cleveland History, Libraries | Permalink | Comments (0)

DailyNewsGems

Daily News Gems is my personal blog in which I comment, every now and again, on topics of particular interest to me, namely, newspaper history, baseball, American politics, and a selection of other burning issues of the day. -- Bill Lucey

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