TV Classic: Deconstructing “Baseball Bugs”

I received an advance copy of The Best American Sports Writing, 2007 yesterday. One of the first items I noticed, since I was scanning specifically for baseball, was Derek Zumsteg’s ”Bugs Bunny, Greatest Banned Player Ever,” a deconstruction of the 1946 Looney Tunes classic, “Baseball Bugs,” in which the title character takes on a goonish bunch of players in the old days when the good guy always won.

Here it is in the original, albeit slightly washed-out, form.  

Zumsteg, author of the recently-published The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball, wrote the piece as an entry on his blog, U.S.S. Mariner. It’s works much better there, since he includes several frames from the cartoon (which are much sharper and more colorful than the animation) to illustrate his points, which fall into the territory of “This guy has way too much time on his hands.” Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating, thoughtful examination.

Herewith a few thoughts. It’s proably a good idea to watch the cartoon first.

• From where does the pitcher get the new balls? If the hit was a homer, the bases would be clear. Since they are obviously not, the ball should come from one of his teammates or an umpire. Since his back is to us, obscuring our view, perhaps there’s an underground conveyance that keeps him in fresh supply. Didn’t Oakland As owner Charles O. Finley work on something like that?
• Zumsteg writes,
  • “At one point, we are able to see over thirty [Gashouse] Gorillas circling the bases, so close that they actually put their hands on the person in front of them and form a conga line as they walk around the bases, careful not to pass the person in front of them. That there are over thirty tells us several things: The teams were allowed to carry a full major league roster. In the carnage, even the Gorilla coaches, bat boys, and other uniformed staff were able to bat and hit against the weak pitching, and neither the Teatotallers nor the umpires notice this and called the illegal batters out.
  • What was the major league rule for roster size was in 1946? I’m thinking they were smaller than they are these days. The average number of players per National League team was 41 that year. I have not looked at prior or later years, but I would imagine the return of ballplayers from WWII influenced the numbers to some degree. Add on a manager, some coaches (there were fewer in those days), and bat boys (I’m not sure who the “other uniformed staff” would be) and Zumsteg’s premise about works out; there are obviously several players in the conga line (I came up with an estimate of eight) that are not visible given the “camera angle.”
• I must respectfully disagree with Zumsteg’s contention that the Gorillas were “bored.” Bunny clearly calls them out:
  • “Boo,” he cries from his “seat.” “The Gashouse Gorillas are a bunch of doity players. Why, I could lick them in a ballgame with one hand tied behind my back, all by myself, yeh. I’d get up there and, wham! A homer. Wham! Another homer. Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wha…” At which point one of the Gorillas grabs Bugs by the throat and growls: “All right, big shot!” (blows cigar smoke in his face). “So you think you can beat us all by yourself,” (loads the equipment on him). “Well you got yourself a game.”

Bugs immediately starts off at a disadvantage since the game resumes, rather than starts over (“There’s been a slight change in the Teatotaller lineup…” It’s also interesting that even though he plays every position, the pitcher is the one batting cleanup), so he’s already in a 96-0 hole (although, as Zumsteg notes, by the bottom of the ninth the Gorillas have lost a run and trailed 96-95).

• Zumsteg describes how Bunny faces “an unconventional defensive alignment in which all nine Gorillas for up off the third base line.”  A closer look indicates that, depending on the point of view – although it would seem to be from the first base side — many of the players start out in foul territory, which, of course, is illegal.
   

Despite these picayune points, Zumsteg deserves kudos for his diligence in bringing back a cherished memory from childhood days, and for having it recognized as one of the great sports stories of the year.

The things we keep

I was cleaning up my basement and found this old game. Never realized it had the Roger Maris seal of approval.

See it in action.

Of course, the game never worked like it does in the commercial (big surprise). The spring would break, the balls would fly over the edges, and I can never remember shaking anyone’s hand after a defeat.

Commentary from Editor & Publisher: Barry Bonds and “Armor-all”

The medias keeps coming up with new ways to dismiss Barry Bonds’ accomplishments. First it was performance enhancing drugs. Now it’s the elbow protection he wears to the plate.

In an commentary from the Aug. 6 edition of EditorandPublisher.com, illustrator Michael Witte claims the device “may have contributed to no fewer than 75 to 100 home runs to his already steroid-questionable total.”

For years, sportswriters remarked that his massive “protective” gear – unequaled in all of baseball — permits Bonds to lean over the plate without fear of being hit by a pitch. Thus situated, Bonds can handle the outside pitch (where most pitchers live) unusually well. This is unfair advantage enough, but no longer controversial. However, it is only one of at least seven (largely unexplored) advantages conferred by the apparatus.

Witte, who is a “mechanical consultant” for the St. Louis Cardinals, adds several additional ways the gear might aid Bonds, including:

1) The apparatus is hinged at the elbow. It is a literal “hitting machine” that allows Bonds to release his front arm on the same plane during every swing. It largely accounts for the seemingly magical consistency of every Bonds stroke.

2) The apparatus locks at the elbow when the lead arm is fully elongated because of a small flap at the top of the bottom section that fits into a groove in the bottom of the top section. The locked arm forms a rigid front arm fulcrum that allows extraordinary, maximally efficient explosion of the levers of Bonds’ wrists. Bonds hands are quicker than those of average hitters because of his mechanical “assistant.”

3) When Bonds swings, the weight of the apparatus helps to seal his inner upper arm to his torso at impact. Thus “connected,” he automatically hits the ball with the weight of his entire body - not just his arms - as average hitters (”extending”) tend to do.

4) Bonds has performed less well in Home Run Derbies than one might expect because he has no excuse to wear a “protector” facing a batting practice pitcher. As he tires, his front arm elbow tends to lift and he swings under the ball, producing towering pop flies or topspin liners that stay in the park. When the apparatus is worn, its weight keeps his elbow down and he drives the ball with backspin.

5) Bonds enjoys quicker access to the inside pitch than average hitters because his “assistant” - counter-intuitively - allows him to turn more rapidly. Everyone understands that skaters accelerate their spins by pulling their arms into their torsos, closer to their axes of rotation. When Bonds is confronted with an inside pitch, he spins like a skater because his upper front arm is “assistant”-sealed tightly against the side of his chest.

6) At impact, Bonds has additional mass (the weight of his “assistant”) not available to the average hitter. The combined weight of “assistant” and bat is probably equal to the weight of the lumber wielded by Babe Ruth but with more manageable weight distribution.

The writer also notes that while “At the moment, Bonds’ apparatus enjoys ‘grandfathered’ status….[S]imilar devices are presently denied to average major leaguers, who must present evidence of injury before receiving an exemption.” It sure doesn’t look that way in the games I watch on TV.

I have long been opposed to the use of such protective gear because, as Witte points out, it allows the batter to stand closer to the plate with impunity. Add that to the intolerance for allowing pitchers to throw inside and you allow further advantages.

At the same time, I don’t know if it’s fair to damn all such protective items because the technology has improved. Would you similarly object to a knee-stabilizing brace that allows a runner to continue stealing bases, or a fielder doing his job? I realize the difference between Bond’s body armor and more prophylactic devices, but until there’s something in the rule book to prevent their use, I guess it’s another annoyance of modern sports with which we must contend.

(I have similar sentiments about the turn uniforms have taken in recent years. I’m not that old, but I still am traditional enough to think of baseball uniform pants as knickers, rather than pajamas. Several years ago Derek Bell, then a member of the Mets, was called to task for wearing his uni top too baggy.)

The New Yorker, which has been an excellent if surprising source of baseball over the years, did this profile of Witte in 2005.

Shooting the shooters?

NFL Tells Photog Group: Vests With Ads Will Stay

(Because photographs can go on a bookshelf, and because what happens in on sport can spread to the rest of the sports community…)

An Aug. 6 story on Editor and Publisher brings a disturbing story about forcing the NFL mandating that news photographers must wear logo-encrusted “safety vests” which bear the logos for Reebok and Canon. The National Press Photographers Association has complained that such a fiat is a conflict of interest. The vests have also “sparked opposition from the Associated Press Managing Editors, American Society of Newspaper Editors and several other news organizations.” Despite the hue and cry, including the threat of a boycott, the NFL is standing firm in its decision:

According to the story, written by Joe Strupp,

The NFL says there are no plans to add additional logos to the vests, or to increase the size of the marks, and that they think the Reebok and Canon logos are appropriate because the vests are made by Reebok and because Canon ‘has made the commitment to fund the cost of the vest,’” NPPA reported on its Web site after receiving the letter from NFL vice president of public relations Greg Aiello, which added that “Both logos are directly related to the manufacture of the vest. Given this, it is inaccurate to characterize them as advertising messages sold to NFL sponsors or others.

“If our goal had been media visibility, we would have allowed Canon to display its name in much larger letters on the back of the vests where it could more readily be seen by the television cameras that are located above and behind the photographers,” Aiello wrote in the letter, according to NPPA. “Instead, ‘Canon’ appears in letters only 0.7 inches high, less than a quarter of the size of the NFL shield logo and no larger than the logo of Reebok, and actual manufacturer of the vest.”

So, in essence, Aiello is saying that size does matter.

I can’t remember where I read it, but someone warned that this could turn into a NASCAR scenario, with ads plastered on every available inch of those on the sidelines, trying to do their job.

Source: Sci-Fi baseball

As a stand-alone from the previous entry about baseball fiction, I found an extensive list of science fiction/baseball stories, as compiled by Steven Silver. Many of these have appeared in various SF pulp anthologies, rather than as full out novels. I don’t know if I’d agree with each entry; for example, I wonder if some of W.P. Kinsella’s work should fall into the sci-fi genre, even if the author does often delve into the mystic. Silver has done a nice research job; some of the stories go back more than 50 years. SciFi.com held an on-line discussion in 2000 about the genre, which can be found here. One of the problems with such discussions is a tendency to roam from the topic, but once they get into, it can serve as an introduction to heretofore undiscovered treasures.

As I was cataloguing my collection with LibraryThing, I came across The New Atomic Bombshells. At the time I bought it, I’m sure I found it quite good. But it’s lost a lot in the intervening years.

It’s always ays interesting to see how close stories written so relatiuvely long ago come to predicting now-contemporary society. I don’t know how much research Browne did  I’m guessing not a whole lot. But it’s amusing nonethless.

(Just an an aside, baseball has also been the theme of episodes of some favorite sci-fi TV shows including X-Files, Quantum Leap, and Deep Space Nine, as well as the classic  “The Mighty Casey” on The Twilight Zone.)

Source: Lists of baseball fiction

Several guides to baseball fiction have been thoughtfully created by a number of readers and writers. Note that the same titles are bound to appear on the various “rosters.”

• Tim Morris, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, developed this Guide to Baseball Fiction, which includes novels, short stories, juvenile fiction, plays, and criticism.
• Peter Bjarkman, chair of SABR’s Latin American committee offers his list of the dozen best baseball novels, 50 recommended books, and “recent” works. Judging by the publication dates — some of which are more than 20 years old — it would seem he means he discovered them recently, rather than when they arrived at bookstores.
• Marylaine Block’s annotated list of baseball titles from her “BookBytes” Web site.
• Dan Nichols’ bare-bones list of titles, both adult and juvenile. Note that this was last updated seven years ago.

Geography for baseball fans

From Strangemaps.wordpress.com, a blog that considers, well, strange maps, I guess, this geography lesson.

National Pastime Radio: Leonard Lopate and The Entitled

It might be a bit of an unfair advantage since he already has a regular gig on Morning Edition, but Frank Deford, is getting a fair bit of mileage out of his association with NPR. In addtion discussing his latest novel, The Entitled (Sourcebooks), on the July 11 Morning Edition program, he appeared as a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show on Aug. 1 (the same day as Joe Posnanski, author of The Soul of the Game).

Deford is a six-time National Sportswriter of the Year, senior writer for Sports Illustrated, and correspondent for HBO’s RealSports with Bryant Gumble, has appeared on a few programs, in addition to his own commentary. He has been elected to the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters and has been awarded both an Emmy and a Peabody.

Deford discussed his new novel as part of the Authors@Google series at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. on June 26.

Read an excerpt from The Entitled, courtesy (Denver) Examiner.com.

Listen to the Lopate segment:

Other baseball titles by Deford include:

• The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball (Atlantic Monthly Press, hardcover, 2005; Grove Press, paperback, 2006)
• Casey on the Loose (Viking, 1989; his only other novel)

Reference Source: SABR’s Baseball Index

Full disclosure: I am a long time member of SABR’s Bibliography Committee and for many years was one of the volunteers who helped put together The Baseball Index.

Nevertheless, it’s a great resource for locating written material in myriad forms on players, teams, executives, what have you. The researcher can look up material by player or topic. At last count, TBI contains more than 225,000 entries; there are 2,482 citations for Babe Ruth, including 1,760 articles, 378 books, and 44 book sections Here’s an example.

The Web site describes TBI thusly:

The Baseball Index (TBI) is a free catalog to baseball literature. It encompasses books, magazine articles, programs, pamphlets, films, recordings, songs, poems, cartoons, advertising, or anything else that may be of interest to the baseball fan or researcher. It is an ongoing project of the Bibliography Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) to catalog the entirety of baseball literature, from the earliest references to the present day.

Put that in your Funk & Wagnalls (or Merriam-Webster)

Merriam-Webster Online recently ran this item about Franklin P. Adams’ poetic homage to the double play combination of Tinker to Evers to Chance in Baseball’s Sad Lexicon.
Text and an audio version are provided. (So is it pronounced Eh-vers or Ee-vers?).

Books on the Cubs stars include:

• Tinker, Evers, and Chance: A Triple Biography, by Gil Bogen (McFarland)

• Touching Second, by Joe Tinker (McFarland)

Missing the SABR convention boat

One of my regrets is that I missed this year’s SABR convention, held in St. Louis.

Cindy Thomson posted this recap a panel feature some of the contributors to Deadball Stars of the American League. I know she didn’t mean to make me jealous with her description of a wonderful time had by all,  but she did.

Ms. Thompson, a free-lance writer from central Ohio,  is the co-author, along with her cousin, Scott Brown, of Three Finger: The Mordecai Brown Story. They are, in fact, distant relatives of the Hall of Fame pitcher. For more information, visit the “official” Mordecai Brown Web site.

National Pastime Radio: Leonard Lopate and The Soul of the Game

From The Leonard Lopate Show, August 1, 2007:

After spending a few years trying to write a baseball book, sports columnist for the Kansas City Star, Joe Posnanski lucked into a story that had to be told. Buck O’Neil is the iconic Negro Leagues player and manager. During the last year of his life, O’Neil joined Posnanski on a road trip from Kansas City to New York to Minneapolis. The Soul of Baseball recounts O’Neil’s memories of a time when baseball was more like a game and less like a business.

You can listen to the segment via the Web site or download it here.

Baseball Digest, August 2007

One of my favorite publications has been Baseball Digest. Over the years, this compact dynamo has brought legends and lightweights to fans all over the world.

This month’s issue includes features on

• The increasing influence of Japanese players by Gordon Edes of the Boston Globe
• Strange plays, by veteran baseball writer George Vass
• A look back at the 1982 Cardinals by Paul Post
• A look a the game’s greatest goats by Kevin Gemmell, San Diego Union-Tribune

The August issue also features profiles on Jose Reyes by Anthony DiComo, MLB.com; Kevin Youkilis, by Bob Ryan, Boston Globe; and Don Sutton by John Murray, as well as a Q&A with John Smoltz and a piece on Craig Counsel.

The Digest has always done a great job with readers’ letters, which are always entertaining, education, and nostalgic. Other regular features include a “Quick Quiz” (this month the focus is on managers), The Baseball Rules Corner, and a crossword puzzle. This issue’s statistical special is all about hitting for the cycle.

Once in a while, several BD pieces will form the basis of a “best of” volume. See here for a previous entry.

Author interviews on Gelfmagazine.com

I recently re-discovered Gelf, a San Francisco based webzine, which is a great source for baseball author interviews. Of all the topics I read, I am most fascinated by stories that involve the creative process, whether it’s the thoughts of a movie director or an author. For non-fiction writers, there’s a double responsibility. The first part is fact-finding. Lee Lowenfish and Joshua Prager (see below) spent years researching their subjects. But then there’s putting it all together into a readable format. All the details won’t mean anything if the book is unreadable.

One of the reasons I prefer reviewing non-fiction is because fiction is too subjective. Too many variables: the author’s voice, the subject, the genre. For me, it’s “just the facts, ma’am.”

Among those writers who have shared their wisdom and observations with Gelf are:

• “Cor van den Heuvel, a lifelong fan of the Red Sox, has been writing haiku for  nearly half a century. His twin loves come together in Baseball Haiku, a collection of more than 200 haiku and senryu from American and Japanese poets. “
• Curt Smith, author of the Mel Allen biography, The Voice. “When he was growing up in upstate New York, Curt Smith would listen to Mel Allen broadcast the New York Yankees. Allen was the voice of baseball’s most-glamorous and most-successful team, and his articulate gamecasts and signature ‘How about that!’ call made him a celebrity. Then his game started to slip, the Yankees fired him, and he was suddenly a Voice without a sport to call.” (For my profile on Smith, see here.)
• Joshua Prager, author of The Echoing Green. “Prager burrows like a wolverine into the ’shot heard round the world’—the 1951 homer by the New York Giants’ Bobby Thomson that saved the National League pennant from the clutches of the Brooklyn Dodgers and their pitcher Ralph Branca. Heart attacks and faintings accompanied news of the unexpected home run, and the ’shot’ reverberated throughout the country, from the White House to the holding cells of soon-to-be executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.” (For my interview with Prager, see here.)
• Jeff Pearlman, author of the Barry Bonds bio Love Me, Hate Me: “Pearlman interviewed over 500 associates of Bonds, 60% of whom, Pearlman guesses, never had spoken before about Bonds. ‘I loved the challenge of getting inside,’ Pearlman, age 34, tells Gelf. ‘To me, the whole fun of journalism is the digging process.’”
• Sam Walker, author of Fantasyland: “As part of his gig as sportswriter for the Wall Street Journal, Sam Walker would routinely head south and west in the spring to visit baseball training camps in search of feature articles, preferably about the business of baseball. But in 2004, his mission was quite different: Walker, on book leave, was scouting out players for his fantasy-baseball team.” (For my review on Fantasyland, see here.)
• Steven Goldman, co-editor of the Web site (and annual publication) Baseball Prospectus: “Goldman critiques the science of performance-enhancing drugs, rips on center fielder Juan Pierre, and defends BP from the barbs of New York Times writer Murray Chass.” (For my profile on Goldman, see here.)
• Lee Lowenfish, author of the massive new biography on Branch Rickey. “How does an author chronicle the life of Branch Rickey, the baseball innovator who had already built the St. Louis Cardinals into perennial contenders and invented the modern farm system well before his most-famous act of signing Jackie Robinson to break the sport’s color barrier? By not reaching the famous first meeting of Rickey and Robinson until page 373. In Lee Lowenfish’s exhaustive new Rickey biography, the former Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers executive emerges as a political and social conservative who had great capacity for innovation in baseball.”