May you baseball fans enjoy this day where every team is in first place starting on a clean slate. I’m talkin’ baseball!
The above classic baseball song is Terry Cashman‘s “Willie, Mickey, and the Duke (Talkin’ Baseball).” Cashman, a producer and singer-songwriter who once played minor league baseball, was inspired to write the song after receiving a picture of Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Duke Snider. The original “Talkin’ Baseball” tribute to 1950s baseball came out during a baseball strike year in 1981, reminding fans why they still loved baseball.
According to Wikipedia and ESPN, Cashman has made versions of the song for most, but not all, baseball teams. But even those teams without their own version of “Talkin’ Baseball” can dream on this opening day.
Bonus Opening Day Trivia Question: When and where was the first interleague opening day game in Major League Baseball history? Answer: It was April 1, 2013, caused by the recent realignment moving one team to a different league.
What are you most excited about this baseball season? Leave your two cents in the comments.
After my favorite baseball team had a heartbreaking loss, I picked up my copy of Joe Posnanski’s The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America (2007) for some comfort. While reading it I came across a story from Buck O’Neil about his days in the Negro League that put into perspective my puny broken baseball dreams.
Willard “Sonny” Brown
Willard “Sonny” Brown
In the book, Posnanski relates O’Neil’s story about Willard “Sonny” Brown, who O’Neil had managed on the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro League. In 1947, the same year Jackie Robinson made it to the Major Leagues, the St. Louis Browns signed Brown and his Monarchs teammate, Hank Thompson.
The Dodgers had worked to try to prepare Robinson for the pressure of the Majors with a stint in the Minor Leagues. By contrast, the Browns immediately sent Brown and Thompson to the Majors. There, the two men became the first black teammates on a Major League team.
By the end of the 1947 season, though, the Browns sent both men back to the Negro League’s Monarchs. Thompson would eventually return to the Major Leagues and have a successful career (although a troubled life), but it was Brown’s only time in the league.
The First African-American to Hit an American League Home Run
When Buck O’Neil visited school kids across America, though, he told them about Sonny Brown. And he would tell about one particular at bat.
Late in Brown’s one season in the Majors, on August 13, the team had already given up on the player. But on that Sunday, Brown came in as a pinch hitter in the second game of a double header against the Detroit Tigers.
Brown was surprised about being called into the game. And he did not even have a bat. So, he picked up a damaged bat of the team’s best hitter, Canadian-born Jeff Heath.
At the plate, Sonny Brown connected with a pitch, driving it so it smashed off the center field fence that was 428 feet away. Brown ran around the bases at full speed, turning the hit into an inside-the-park home run. It was the first home run by a black man in the American League.
But there were no congratulations in the dugout for the historic hit. None of Brown’s teammates even looked at him. The only acknowledgement Sonny Brown saw was that the notoriously short-tempered Jeff Heath took his bat that Brown had used and looked at it. Then, in disgust, he smashed the bat against the wall.
“It Wasn’t Easy”
Buck O’Neil used to ask the school children what lesson they learned from the fact that the player had broken Willard Brown’s bat after he hit a home run. He would tell them, “The lesson, children, is that it wasn’t easy.”
In Patty Griffin’s song, “Don’t Come Easy” from Impossible Dream (2004) she sings:
I don’t know nothing except change will come; Year after year what we do is undone; Time keeps moving from a crawl to a run; I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home.
Sonny Brown did find a home. The World War II veteran continued to have a successful career in the Negro Leagues. He ended his career there a few years later with a .355 lifetime batting average, a lot of home runs, and six All Star appearances.
Brown then continued playing baseball in Texas and in Puerto Rico until he retired from the sport with his nickname “Ese Hombre” (The Man) in 1957.
Brown — who was born on June 26, 1911 in Shreveport, Louisiana — died in Houston, Texas in 1996. Ten years after his death in 2006, Major League Baseball gave him the recognition he deserved. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Leave your two cents in the comments.
Minor League Baseball’s South Atlantic League yesterday inducted actor Bill Murray into the league’s Hall of Fame. Murray is the co-owner and “Director of Fun” of the Charleston Riverdogs, a Class A affiliate of the New York Yankees.
In his warm induction speech at a ceremony in Charleston, South Carolina, Murray explained why the honor means so much to him and recounted the first time he saw Wrigley Field. Watch his speech below.
What do you think of his induction speech? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On Monday, former Cincinnati Red reliever Pedro Borbon passed away from cancer in Texas at the age of 65. Borbon, who was born in the Dominican Republic, was an important part of the Big Red Machine teams that won world champions in 1975 and 1976. He pitched in more games than any other Major League Baseball pitcher during the period of 1970-1978. He holds the record for most pitching appearances in a Reds uniform and is in the Reds Hall of Fame.
Growing up in southern Ohio in the 1970s, I was a big fan of the colorful Borbon on my Cincinnati Reds. Most baseball fans discover the sport as kids, and there is nothing like discovering the sport as your team is becoming one of the all-time greats. The Reds manager Sparky Anderson earned the nickname “Captain Hook” for pulling his starting pitchers so much in those days, and one of the reasons he could do so with confidence was because he had Borbon in the bullpen. During Borbon’s Reds’ career, he played in 20 post-season games with an ERA of 2.55.
Borbon had another claim to fame in that he was mentioned in the movie Airplane! (1980). In the film, Ted Striker (played by Robert Hays) is trying to concentrate while hearing voices in his head, including a public address announcer saying “Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon . . . Manny Mota.” From what I can tell, although Borbon had some short stints on a few other teams like the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals, he never played on the same team as record-breaking pinch-hitter Manny Mota. The writers probably chose the Manny Mota reference because Mota was well-known as a pinch hitter, but I have not seen an explanation for why the writers chose Borbon among all the Major League pitchers. Perhaps they chose him because he was well-known, or because he was good, or maybe because he was a colorful character. Among other antics, during on-field brawls he used his teeth on a Mets hat and on Pirates player Daryl Patterson (who then had to get a tetanus shot).
Borbon’s son recently noted that his father often talked about the movie reference: “A lot of people remember him by that. He liked that.” At Borbon’s request, there is not going to be a memorial service in Texas. But I hope he does not mind that I thank him for the memories he gave me by playing the Airplane! clip that he liked. RIP.
Happy baseball opening day! One of the most famous works of art about the sport is the poem, “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon” by New York newspaper columnist Franklin Pierce Adams. The 1910 poem is about the Chicago Cubs double-play combination of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance. In the poem, a New York Giants fan calls “Tinker to Evers to Chance” as “the saddest of possible words,” bemoaning the players’ ability to turn a hit into a double play. Richard Brundage narrates the poem in this video:
The line “Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble” always puzzled me. But “gonfalon” refers to a flag or pennant, so the line is a reference to the Cubs capturing the National League pennant, which they won four times (1906-1908, 1910) while going on to win two World Series wins (1907-1908). The poem first appeared in the New York Evening Mail in July 1910, and the Cubs would go on to win the pennant that Fall. But it was the last for the dynasty, as the poem’s author Franklin Pierce Adams got to see his New York Giants take the gonfalon in 1911 and the following two years (but not the World Series).
The poem’s biggest effect may have been the fame it heaped upon Tinker, Evers, and Chance. Fans have noted that the three men made double plays at around the average of the league and their batting averages were less than spectacular. So many believe the New York poem was the reason all three Cubs were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. Meanwhile, the other Cubs infielder who was left out of the poem, Harry Steinfeldt, never made it to the Hall of Fame.
So whether your favorite player this day is a big-name star like the poetic double-play trio or a lesser-known player like Steinfeldt, enjoy your opening day, where every team is still in the race for the gonfalon.
(2007) for some comfort. While reading it I came across a story from Buck O’Neil about his days in the Negro League that put into perspective my puny broken baseball dreams.
(2004) she sings:
