The wonder is that it lasted so long. It seemed nobody in Seattle ever accepted the explanation that Junior wanted to be closer to home -- to his parents in Cincinnati, to his wife and children who live near Orlando, Fla. There were other reasons, including a dislike for Safeco Field. Including the belief that Seattle fans had somehow come to take him for granted.
I grew up watching my dad, I was at the ballpark. I played baseball all my senior year, I got drafted on June 2, and graduated two days later. Four days after that, I was in Seattle and on the 16th of June, I played my first game as a professional. Someday, all this will be behind me and I'll play again. Last year, his parents divorced and moved out of Ohio to separate homes in Florida. My dad lives four miles from our house, my mom lives two miles the other direction.
When father and son talk now, it is long distance. Last month, Griffey came off the disabled list and singled in his first at-bat. A few days later, running the bases, he strained his left hamstring. We're not talking about a player who won't work his way back -- he's worked as hard as anyone can. Last August, he was healthy -- and what a show he put on. Griffey had missed much of the season, seen his parents divorce, and watched his team fall far under. One local columnist asked the question Northwest writers had asked years earlier.
Where was that Griffey smile? Not often -- and not in years. Griffey doesn't deny that, but seems mystified he should have to explain. So what do I want to be, a guy who doesn't care or a guy who's always mad? Why should those be my only two choices? And if you're looking for a defining franchise moment, think back to the photograph taken moments after Junior had scored the winning run against New York in Game 5 of the Mariners' Divisional series victory in There he is, buried beneath teammates, smiling that megawatt grin.
It was a memorable moment for everyone. Griffey thinks it should have been Edgar Martinez's who hit the double to score him , not his, but learned long ago that what he thinks isn't always what gets printed. As in one of Shakespeare's plays, the loss of innocence with Griffey didn't spring from one dramatic moment, but from a series of them. He came to baseball as a child. Within months of his first big-league game, there was a candy bar named after him -- and a half dozen different posters.
He was idolized before he'd been through the league one time. I was afraid I was going back to the minors. They would call me "Butterfingers" and similar names, but of course it was all in fun. I wasn't cut in for any of our world series money we finished third , as batboys and ball boys often are, but I hadn't really expected to be. After all, I had been work- ing in the home clubhouse only a month or so. And be- sides, my pay during the season hadn't been bad at all. Jerry Maday, who had been the Braves' batboy in and '54, was leaving.
Looks like you're in line for the job next year. Well, no more so than any one of a mil- lion kids would be if he heard that he might be the bat- boy for a major league team. I had figured that Jerry probably would have to give up the job, but I hadn't heard anything definite.
Innocence and Wonder, Baseball Through the Eyes of Batboys, by Neil D. Isaacs
Now I was really up in the clouds. You've definitely got the inside track. Never did a winter take so long to end, and Milwaukee has some pretty long winters.
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I even had to sweat out spring training before I got word. Then it came at last. When the Braves got home from their exhibition trip, Taylor gave me the news I'd been waiting for since the previous September. I was batboy for the Milwaukee Braves. At the tender age of sixteen, I had it made. This one could be summed up in a single word school. My extended vacation had ended the previous fall, and now I was a second semester freshman at Marquette High School.
Since the Braves played some of their games on weekday afternoons, there could be complications if I failed to receive the proper co-operation from the school principal. This, Dad figured, would make it a cinch for me to get the special permission necessary. We were together in basket- ball, too. He was an all-state guard and I was the tenth man on a ten-man squad. I can't see where you have any- thing to worry about.
Father McKenney was not one to let old friendships stand in the way of duty. When I went to see him and made my request, he recalled old times for a mo- ment, then said sternly, "It's perfectly all right, Paul if you maintain a 90 average. So was I, for that matter. I could scarcely get the words out. Was that all I needed? Sure, I was in that vicinity so far, but how long could I keep it up?
This bat- boy job was sure to cut a pretty deep hole in my study time. Oh, well, I could worry about that small matter later. At the moment all that mattered was that I could keep my job. Even with the requirement of a 90 average staring me in the face, I felt as though a big load had been taken off my shoulders. Now I could go about the business of getting the season under way.
Opening day April 12 came a few days later. The players will tell you that there is something special about opening day that makes even a veteran nervous. You can imagine, then, how nervous I was. True, I already had put in a season as a big leaguer, I was mighty proud of myself the day I wore a Braves uniform for the -first time. I'm the third from the left in this group of attentive high school students. It was a thrill to be out on the field with the major leaguers I had heard and read about. Here I serve in a supervisory capacity as Eddie Mathews picks out a bat. I considered myself a rookie, and that's exactly how I felt.
I got to the Stadium early for my "debut," although not quite as early as I would have liked. Remember, I had to put in the better part of the morning in class. I rushed through my pre-game duties so fast that I had time to waste before the Braves finally took the field. I guess I just couldn't wait to begin my career as batboy.
When the game finally did get going, it developed into one of the greatest thrillers I've ever seen. Warren Spahn was pitching against Gerry Staley of the Cincinnati Redlegs, and Warren was turning in one of his finest per- formances. Going into the eighth inning, he had a five- hitter going and we led, i-o. Bobby Thomson had doubled to score Billy Bruton in the first. The eighth spelled trouble for Spahn and for us. Ted Kluszewski, the monstrous first baseman of the Redlegs, hit a two-run homer.
We trailed , with only two more swings left. Then came a thrill which wasn't duplicated all season. Chuck was a rookie, batting for the first time in the major leagues, and what a debut he made! He lined Staley's first pitch into the right-field bleachers for a home run. Chuck joined a select group of ball players with that dramatic drive. As he rounded the bases, the 43, fans in the Sta- dium let out a roar that must have been heard for miles.
And I think I yelled louder than anybody there. The dramatic quality of Tanner's home run was not the only thing that made this a special moment for me. It was my first chance to shake the hand of a Milwaukee home run hitter. I had done it with the enemy the year before, when I was the visitors' batboy, but this was different.
Now I could be sincere when I offered my congratulations. I made up my mind to be the first to shake Chuck's hand. I succeeded, too, and I'll never forget the smile on his face as he reached the plate. In the two seasons I've served as the Braves' batboy, plus the short time with the visitors, I don't think I ever shook hands with a happier person.
Tanner's home run tied the score. Not only that, it started a rally which drove Staley to the showers and gave us a victory. Certainly I couldn't have asked for a more thrilling debut! After opening day, things settled down to a routine. It wasn't that life became dull, because it didn't. It was just that I, with that first attack of stagefright out of the way, quickly adjusted myself to the wonderful sensation of be- ing part of a big league ball club. I didn't go on the road with the Braves except on one eastern trip late in the season , and the days got pretty long when they were away. I was awarded first honors in scholarship, ranking ninth in a freshman class of Having fulfilled the requirement, and made both my parents and myself proud of my scholastic achieve- ments, I was now free to concentrate on my duties as bat- boy.
I never particularly disliked school, but under the cir- cumstances I was mighty happy to get away from it for three months.
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I put in eight or more hours every day the Braves play, and about eleven if there is a double header. That can add up to around sixty hours a week if there are no rainouts, When the Braves play at night, which they ordinarily do except on week-ends and getaway days, my workday begins at 3: If they play in daylight, I start at 9: I usually get through about an hour and a half after the game ends, which means around midnight or 5: Of course, if a game runs into extra innings or we have a double header, quitting time comes a little later.
Don't misunderstand I'm not com- plaining. I love every minute of it. As batboy, I'm one of three assistants to Joe Taylor in the clubhouse. Blossfield started last season as clubhouse boy and Williams as ball boy, and in midseason they traded jobs. The first thing we do after reaching the clubhouse is to change into our work uniforms. These consist of white slacks and sport shirts and are not to be confused with the uniforms which we later wear on the field.
They are con- siderably lighter in weight than the game suits and far better suited for the menial tasks which fall to us in the clubhouse. In quick succession, every day, I am a laundry man, a shoe shine boy, a waiter, an errand boy, a ballplayer shagging flies in practice , a janitor, and a messenger all this in addition to my primary duties as batboy.
How can a job get humdrum with variety like that? Actual work begins with distribution of clothes T-- shirts, sweatshirts, shorts, and socks. We take them out of the two huge dryers at one end of the clubhouse and de- liver them to the players' lockers. Occasionally an item will vanish into thin air, and if it does, we invariably hear about it. Del Crandall, for some reason, seems to have the most trouble in this respect.
When we hear him yell, "Hey, Joe," to Joe Taylor, we can expect to search every locker for his missing clothes. The next detail is our biggest pain in the neck shining shoes. We have to shine every pair of shoes every day, and this means about forty pairs, since several players own more than one. Two of us get stuck with this. At best, cleaning shoes is an unpleasant task. But if the previous day's game has been played in the mud, it can be downright hazardous.
We scrape the mud off with a ma- chine that sends bits of dirt flying all over the place and into our eyes. I finally started wearing sun glasses to pro- tect my eyes, but they made it hard for me to see what I was doing. If I wasn't careful I could rip the sole of the shoe with the machine.
I also covered my face with a towel, like a bandit. This did a pretty good job of keeping my face clean, but it made it hard to breathe. Many of the players wear two pairs of shoes a day, changing after the pregame workout to newly shined shoes for the game. Torre goes even further if the Braves play a double header, he wears three pairs.
With quick-change artists like that around, it is easy to see how the shoes can pile up on us. Besides that, some of the players, like Spahn and Johnny Logan, often bring their sons to the park. The kids always put on uniforms with the same numbers that their dads wear , and of course they want shiny shoes, too.
The one saving grace of this detail is that Gene Conley, our skyscraping pitcher, has only one pair of shoes. If he had as many pairs as Torre, we might not get through in time for the ball game! He's no giant, of course, but there are several players who are smaller. By the time this bit of drudgery is completed at about 4: Pafko is usually the early bird, with Torre and Joe Adcock not far behind.
The real eager beaver of the club, of course, is Coach Bob Keely. Sometimes I think he lives at the Stadium. They say he gets there at 3 o'clock for a night game and 8: I have never been there in time to find out. If a player arrives and doesn't find Keely, he always asks where Bob is. Bob takes an endless stream of ribbing for his eagerness, but he never seems to mind. I don't think anybody in baseball loves the game more.
He once said to me, "I'd like to coach 'til I'm eighty. You can't beat this game of baseball. I usually start around the clubhouse with one or two baseballs and wind up with eight or nine or even a dozen. The players always have friends and relatives who want them, and the management also has to take care of important clients whose wives or children re- quest them. Each ball is brand new and is signed by every member of the club. These autographed balls are not to be confused with those sold at the ball park.
The autographs on those are stamped on. These are not sold just given away to friends and relatives. Besides the baseballs that I personally have signed, Joe Taylor puts at least a dozen on a table in the middle of the clubhouse for the players to autograph at their leisure. When the players let their leisure stretch too far, Joe will yell out, "Come on, fellas, let's get goin' and get these balls signed. We've got a flock of orders for 'em. The Braves can be a playful lot, and once in a while they get gay during the autographing period. Eddie Mathews, for example, was in a clowning mood one day and splashed ink all over my clean white pants.
This is just one more reason why we don't put on our baseball uni- forms until later. Bob Keely is custodian of the baseballs, and the zeal- ousness with which he guards them makes him the butt of countless jokes. He has a lock on his baseball bag, and it is obvious that anybody who tried to swipe one would be taking his life in his hands. This is how the "syndicate" got started. The syndicate was so named for conducting a "racket" with baseballs. A player could trade two baseballs that he acquired in practice, dirty and unsigned, for one clean ball that was already autographed.
This eliminated both the trouble in getting a ball signed and the waiting period invariably involved in such an operation. Some of the players devised even shorter short-cuts, and that was where I fitted into the picture. Frank Torre, Johnny Logan, and Taylor Phillips gave me the balls they had "collected" instead of trading two for one. Then I got them autographed by the rest of the players, and for beating the "two for one" rap I occasionally got myself a tip.
I'm actually the only person who makes any money through this baseball "racket. By then it's about 5 o'clock and time to get dressed. I get out of my work clothes and into my game uniform, and there is always a bit of a thrill in this part of the routine. The only difference is that my shirt doesn't have a number, and that to me is unimpor- tant. I'm wearing the uniform of the Braves, number or no number. We have a lot more than fifty or sixty bats, but the players keep all but three or four apiece in their lockers and save them for emergencies. The emer- gencies arise, too.
We average one or two broken bats a game, and sometimes we go as high as three or four. Henry Aaron and Joe Adcock are the champion bat breakers, and I'm not at all surprised. They hit the ball so hard that I sometimes wonder why they don't maim opposing pitchers and infielders. They crack about fifteen bats a season at home and I imagine about the same num- ber on the road.
With bats being broken at that rate, players have to keep ordering new ones always at the club's expense. They have to buy their own gloves and certain other equipment, but the club furnishes all bats. Players usually get a half dozen bats at a time. Even so, their supply sometimes runs out. For instance, Adcock found himself out of bats at Brooklyn last summer; so he borrowed one from Carl Furillo of the Dodgers and hit one of the longest home runs ever clouted at Ebbets Field.
It may have been the longest, in fact. Joe decided he liked Furillo's bat. Carl had a large inventory at the time and didn't mind if Joe kept one with one provision: Adcock carried out his end of the bargain, but while he didn't hit any more balls over the Ebbets Field roof, he hit plenty of them into the stands. Against Furillo and his Brooklyn teammates he hit thirteen all told, to tie the league record for homers in one season against one club.
He almost killed them almost, but, unfortunately for us, not quite. When Joe finally broke the Furillo bat, after using it "only on special occasions," as he put it, he ordered more of the same type. It was a lighter model than his and it seemed to improve his hitting. I don't try to pull it all the time like I used to.
I notice it when I collect the bats after batting practice. This happens, inadvertently or otherwise, when players of the visiting club cluster around the batting cage shortly before the home club gets through hitting. Sometimes they just pick up the wrong bat. Warren Spahn uses the Musial model quite a bit. I think it's because Warren respects Stan so much as a hitter that he tries to pattern his own stance after Stan's. It could be because they're good friends, too, although you wouldn't know it from the way they battle each other as pitcher and hitter on the field.
When Spahn pitches to Mu- sial, you've got two of the canniest veterans in the game trying to outwit each other. For some unknown reason, broken bats have almost the same souvenir value as baseballs. I've had people come to me before a game and ask, "If any bats are cracked tonight, will you save one for me? I never have any trouble getting somebody to take the things off my hands. Even the ushers and ground keepers are interested in souvenirs. As I mentioned earlier, I spend most of batting practice shagging flies in the outfield.
I also take an occasional turn at the plate with the pitchers and extra men before the regulars start hitting. With my pounds, I don't ex- actly endanger the safety of the early arrivals in the bleach- ers. You've guessed it Keely was pitching. After that show of power, I sort of expected somebody to come rushing out with a contract for me to sign.
No- body did, though. In fact, nobody even congratulated me. The only comment at all was from a player who shouted, "Nice goin', Keely. Now even the batboys are hitting you. He just kept on serving up the same fat nothing balls that did so much for our hitters' pregame morale. When batting practice ends, I pick up the bats and put them in the rack at the end of the dugout.
Then comes the unusual part of my day's routine known as relaxation. I get a coke out of the cooler, and if I haven't had a chance earlier, I grab a sandwich. Meanwhile I either chew the fat with my "locker neighbors," Henry Aaron and Billy Bruton, or kibitz a nearby card game.
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Then I fill up a bucket with ice, to be used if somebody gets hurt. So far, I've needed the ice only once in two seasons when Gene Con- ley knocked out Art Fowler of Cincinnati with a line drive. But I always have it ready just in case. If Del is catching that game, he gives the visiting club's line-up to me and I take it back to our manager. For some reason, I always get a big kick out of this de- tail. I know it is nothing more than messenger duty, but being out there with the umpires and captains makes me feel like a u wheel.
People will say to me, "You can't tell me they have to discuss those same ground rules every night. After all, some manager or even an umpire heaven forbid! And as far as trying to kid the public, they aren't. They meet in the interests of tradition, and who can say that tradition isn't a wonderful thing? Besides, the pregame get-together is the only chance for members of rival clubs to converse legally before a game.
Fraternizing during practice is taboo, and one of the umpires is always present in the stands to enforce the rule against it. Violation is punishable by a ten-dollar fine. I have figured out that I walk or run three or four miles at every game. The distance from the dugout to the plate is short enough, but I cover it a good many times.
And none of this takes into consideration the wear and tear on my back from bending over to pick up bats.
A batboy's day or night does not end with the third out in the ninth inning. After I put the bats away, in a lit- tle ,room ofF the runway to the dugout, I get back into my work clothes for a fast hour of labor. Towels have to be put into containers for dispatch to the laundry, soggy uniforms hung up in the lockers, "wet stuff" T-shirts, socks and shorts stuffed into the washing machines, mirrors washed, spittoons cleaned, floors mopped, shoes placed on chairs in front of the lockers all this and sometimes more has to be done before I can jump into the shower and get ready to go home.
Even if the game ends at a reasonable hour, say Some- times I don't make it before i o'clock in the morning. It's a long day, but never a dull one. Maybe the other clubs are, too. But it's a cinch that none of them could make life as interesting as it is with the Braves.
Innocence and Wonder: Baseball Through the Eyes of Batboys
Don't get me wrong. Once the Braves take the field, they are deadly serious. All they think about then is winning. But off the field whether they happen to be in the club- house, on a train, in a plane, or on the street they're lia- ble to cut up like a bunch of schoolboys. I've heard some people say that this is the wrong way to get into the proper frame of mind for serious pennant chasing, but I don't agree.
After all, there is no sense in just sitting around and worrying about the tough game or tough series ahead. In my mind, a player is a lot less likely to tighten up under pressure if he stays "loose" off the field. Anyway, that's the way my "teammates" are. They are full of more practical jokes than a "Truth or Conse- quences" program. With three second place fin- ishes and one third since they came to Milwaukee, they have one of the best over-all records in the major leagues over that period.
Life won't be complete, of course, either for me or for the rabid fans of Milwaukee and Wisconsin, until the Braves win the National League pennant and the World Series. But that glorious day certainly can't be far away. Remember, we wound up only a game behind the Dodgers last season, and you know what they say about the Dodgers' old men.
They certainly can't keep on winning pennants much longer. The funniest Brave of all is Danny O'ConnelL He has a bookful of jokes, a hatful of card tricks, and a mental telep- athy act that has had just about everybody baffled at one time or another. I'll never forget the time Danny worked his telepathy stunt on Dave Williams, the clubhouse boy.
Dave thought for a minute that we had another Houdini in our midst. Of course, he had a lot of company from time to time. Danny was downright uncanny at mind reading this kind, anyway. Besides his flair for comedy and magic, O'Connell is the club's No. Probably his best effort is a rendi- tion of "Oh, Mein Papa," which by no coincidence was one of Fisher's big records a few years ago. It used to sound especially good when Charlie Grimm, our former man- ager, accompanied him on the banjo.
A teammate and his belongings just aren't safe when one of these pranksters is around. Sometimes even a sports writer or a radio broadcaster is vulnerable. For example, Burdette pulled something on Cleon Walfoort, a Milwaukee Journal sports writer, that makes me laugh every time I think about it. The team was on the train from New York to Philadelphia, and Cleon was catching up on his sleep. Lew noted that his feet were crossed, and he thereupon decided to tie his shoes to- gether. Lew stealthily untied Cleon's shoes and then retied them together.
The train was nearing Philadelphia by that time, and Cleon showed no signs of waking up. In a few minutes the train pulled into the station, and still Cleon didn't wake up. We all stood around with disap- pointed looks on our faces, scared stiff that we wouldn't get to see what happened when Cleon tried to jump to his feet. Finally, Lew could stand the suspense no longer. When Cleon did open his eyes at last, Lew and a couple of other stragglers beat a hasty and strategic retreat.
As they looked back, though, they could see Cleon, still half asleep, shaking his feet in a vain and befuddled effort to get them apart. Apparently he didn't succeed immediately. A chartered bus met us at the station to take us to the Warwick Hotel, and poor Cleon didn't make it. We knocked ourselves out laughing about the incident on the way to the hotel. As far as I know, though, nobody ever had the nerve to ask the victim how he managed to get off the train.
Perhaps it was just as well. Another time, Elaine Walsh, who teams with Earl Gilles- pie to broadcast the Braves' games, was reading a news- paper on a bus when the paper suddenly caught on fire. One of the pranksters, probably Burdette, had lit a match to the paper while Walsh was engrossed in the latest box scores. Elaine kept right on reading, and the more he read the hotter the news got. By the time he realized what was go- ing on, he was holding little more than a handful of fire.
He hastily dropped the flaming mess to the floor in the center of the bus, and as luck would have it, the torch landed on another section of the newspaper. The fire spread immediately, and when it threatened to get out of hand, I led the race for the nearest exit. It was only fitting, too, that Ernie Johnson, the No. The bus arrived at the station just as the fire went out, but yours truly took no chances.
I was off that bus before it came to a complete stop. Setting fires is not confined to buses. Walker Cooper, the veteran catcher who was with the club in and now is a coach with the Cardinals, has been a "firebug" as long as the oldest Brave can remember. Cooper had two favorite fire tricks when he was a Brave, and I don't imagine he has reformed since he left. Whenever Coop would pass one of those wire trash baskets on the street, he would light a match and toss it in.
Within a matter of seconds, passers-by would be thrown into a state of near panic. Coop's other pet prank was the hot foot. The trick was so old that it had whiskers, but no one dared breathe easily when Coop was around. Almost any time and almost any place Coop happened to be, you were liable to hear the cry of anguish that comes from the victim of an efficiently ap- plied hot foot. I wasn't with the Braves when Cooper was, so my in- formation is strictly hearsay.
But last season, when I asked Red Schoendienst, who was then with the Cardinals, if Coop had changed any in his old age he was 41 then , Red said, "Are you kidding? He gives you those double ones, and, brother, they hurt! Mathews told me that Coop once nailed his baseball shoes to the clubhouse floor. It's a good thing I didn't pull any harder.
The shoes might have come loose and I would have gone sailing across the room. I could just see myself being assigned the job of removing the nails from Mathews' shoes. There was the time, too, that Coop's imitation of a Pull- man porter was so well executed that Johnny Logan got up and dressed eight hours ahead of time. This happened on an overnight ride from New York to Pittsburgh. Logan was already in bed when Coop and a few other late comers boarded the train. Coop pounded on Johnny's door and yelled, "Thirty minutes out! He put on his clothes, shoved his suitcase into the aisle, and was all set to get off the train before he discovered that it was barely midnight!
Mathews and Buhl once pulled a sleight-of-hand act that had Joe Taylor at his wit's end to figure out what had hap- pened. Joe wanted to get something out of one of the giant trunks he keeps in the clubhouse, but to his dismay he couldn't find it. The trunk had disappeared. Now a trunk gets up and walks away. Mathews and Buhl had merely put the trunk on top of the lockers, and it just happened that Joe neglected to look there. When the miss- ing item was found at last, it took five or six men to get it down.
Taylor and Mathews are close friends, but that doesn't prevent them from indulging in occasional horseplay at each other's expense. One time, for example, they got into a beer and water fight. It all started when Taylor was open- ing a beer for one of the players after a game. The beer and soft drink cooler happens to be near the shower room, and at this particular moment, Mathews was taking a shower.
Eddie playfully threw water at Joe, and Joe re- taliated by throwing beer. This proved to be a strategical error on Joe's part, since he had his clothes on at the time. Eddie doused him to the skin. The fight ended then and there as Joe stalked away to change into dry clothes. Taylor doesn't always come out second best, however. Spahn once smeared him with shaving cream, and instead of fighting back immediately, he used the indirect method.
He went to Spahnie's locker and cut off the top of Spahn's baseball socks. The next day, Warren went through bat- ting practice before he realized that there was daylight showing between his socks and his pants. The best authority for this statement is Wes Covington, the young outfielder who made the big jump last year from the Class A South At- lantic League to the Braves' varsity. Wes bought himself a natty gray hat with a blue band, and it wasn't long before Burdette and Company made it plain that he wouldn't get away with it.
Finally, one day in Brooklyn, they set a match to it. I'll say this for Wes, though. He didn't give up easily. A few days later he turned up with another hat a tan one this time. This, of course, was asking for trouble, which came even sooner than it had the first time. You might say that Spahn ate the hat. Actually, he just bit into the brim until he ruined it.
I guess that was the last straw for Cov- ington. While Cleon Walfoort was the butt of an amusing prank recounted earlier, a far more frequent victim among the sports writers is Lou Chapman of the Milwaukee Sentinel At one time or another, Lou has had his typewriter wrapped in adhesive tape, has had ink splashed on a light- colored suit, and has been tossed into the whirlpool bath with all his clothes on.
Jack Dittmer is not ordinarily classified with the prac- tical jokers, but he does have one specialty that makes him an occasional menace in the dugout. He has a penchant for lighting shoelaces of unsuspecting teammates. Sometimes, of course, I don't have to smell anything. The victim will tell me what happened by yelling that his foot has been singed.
While O'Connell gets my vote as the funniest man on the club, the real comedian of the bunch is Joe Taylor. Joe is so good that I sometimes wonder why he wastes his time being the Braves' equipment manager and assistant trainer. With his talent he should be in show business. I told Joe this, and he came back with: My favorite is his imitation of Sam Spade, the fast- talking private eye of recent radio memory. One part of the routine makes me chuckle every time it comes to my mind. This is when Joe, or rather Sam Spade, says: He said, 'Sure, a guy was in just a minute ago.
He had on a purple suit, an orange necktie, and green shoes, and he had a television set strapped to his back. Henry Aaron was my pick at first, but he lost his title when Phil- lips was brought up from Wichita in June, Phillips is as Southern as corn pone and hominy grits.
His drawl is so thick that you need an interpreter to know what he is talking about, and his conversation sounds as though it came straight out of Ring Lardner. The boys call Phillips "T-Bone," a nickname which started out merely as "T," short for Taylor, and finally was lengthened. Pecorino Sasquatch proves that he is still the silliest boy in the world when his first day of Little League arrives and he realizes he has never hit or caught a baseball before--nor even chewed bubblegum.
Play Ball with Me! A kitten, being picked up from preschool by his parent, asks, "What will we play today? Let's play a ballgame! Out of the Ballpark. Although Alex is nervous about his role in the approaching baseball playoffs and championship game, he soon figures out how to fix his mistakes and become a better player. A Birds-eye View of the World Series. Seymour the seagull brings his friend, a boy who is learning to play baseball, to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox play in the World Series. A baseball tries to talk a young boy into going outside to play by describing the throwing, catching, and hitting they can do together.
Oliver's grandfather tells him the story of how he almost joined the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Dad, Jackie, and Me.
Innocent until proven guilty? | 38 Pitches
In Brooklyn, New York, in , a boy learns about discrimination and tolerance as he and his deaf father share their enthusiasm over baseball and the Dodgers' first baseman, Jackie Robinson. Easy Reader Hill, Mary. Describes the experiences of a young boy and his father when they go to a stadium to watch a baseball game.
Charlie tries to use lucky charms to win a baseball game, but all he really needs is his lucky pitching arm. Babe Ruth Saves Baseball. It's and baseball is in trouble! All across the country, people are throwing down their bats, and giving up America's national pastime. It's up to Babe Ruth to win back fans and save baseball!
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Can he do it, or will he strike out? Easy Chapter Adler, David. Cam Jansen Adventure, 6 Cam uses her photographic memory to identify the person who stole a valuable autographed baseball. A to Z Mysteries, 21 When the umpire at the baseball game fundraiser is accused of stealing a collection of autographed baseballs, Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose try to prove his innocence. J Fiction Corbett, Sue. Angry with his mother for having too little time for him, eleven-year-old Felix takes advantage of an opportunity to become bat boy for a minor league baseball team, hoping to someday be like his father, a famous Cuban outfielder.
A Baseball Card Adventure. With his ability to travel through time using vintage baseball cards, Joe takes Flip with him to find out whether Satchel Paige really was the fastest pitcher ever. Two Hotdogs with Everything. Although everyone credits him and his superstitions for the Slugger's first winning streak in baseball seasons, eleven-year-old Danny Gurkin believes that his discovery of a secret from the team's past may be the real reason behind the ball club's success.
Pitching prodigy Michael Arroyo is on the run from social services after being banned from playing Little League baseball because rival coaches doubt he is only twelve years old and he has no parents to offer them proof. Say-Hey and the Babe: Two Mostly-True Baseball Stories.