Baseball History

I recently listened to Ken Burns’ Baseball Documentary on tape. Going through the history of baseball is always fascinating. But the thing that struck me, the way the tape was narrated, was the changes that baseball made and how ridiculous the changes before or after seem.

For example: in 1973 the designated hitter was adopted in the American League, blemishing baseball. The way the narration went was “and from this point forward baseball would be played by two sets of rules”. When I heard those words, my first thought was “Who would ever agree to that?” What sense does it make to have played baseball for over 100 years with everyone following the same rules and then decide that there would be two sets of rules from now on? It doesn’t. It’s stupid.

In 1961 an amazing race was on between Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. Maris, as we all know, eventually won the race over Mantle to surpass Ruth’s single season homerun record. But Commissioner Happy Chandler decided that an asterisk should be used to denote the fact that Maris needed eight more games in a regular season to reach 61. Funny, but no one ever considered the need to put an asterisk next to Cy Young’s name even though the rules allowed him (or made him) pitch underhand, putting less stress on his arm.

Another stupid factor is (and I know baseball wasn’t only at fault here, it was the whole country) that only white ballplayers could play in the major leagues until 1947. Interesting note from the Baseball tapes: During the off-season it was common for the Negro League ballplayers to barnstorm against the Major Leaguers. In fact they played against each other over 300 times. The Negro League teams won over 200 of those contests.

Here’s a random thought on the whole Jackie Robinson celebration night. I get the fact that baseball wanted to honor Jackie Robinson and his accomplishment on the 60th anniversary of him breaking the color barrier. But if baseball decided to honor Jackie, doesn’t it make sense to honor him AS SOON AS POSSIBLE? By that I mean, someone thought of the idea and then baseball waited around how ever much time until the 60th anniversary rolled around. Blacks were made to wait an ungodly amount of time to join their white brothers and then there are more delays to honor Robinson simply because of a convenient round number (60).

If you’re celebrating an accomplishment (like a wedding anniversary or the CFCL’s 25th year in existence) it makes sense to wait until the appropriate date. But if you want to celebrate something long overdue, why wouldn’t you do it RIGHT AWAY?

Another thought from the tapes. Pete Rose, obviously, has been banned for life for betting on baseball. Pete even, finally, admitted betting on his own team. I don’t particularly care for Rose now or when he played, although he was a hell of a player who accomplished things with his hard work and talent – as opposed to McGwire, Bonds, Sosa and a host of others who had to use steroids and HGH to produce their gargantuan numbers. The thing with Rose is, he’s banned from baseball for betting on his own team, yet John McGraw, one of the greatest managers in baseball history, also was known to have bet on his team back in the day.

And yet with all the stupidity and inequity in baseball, after listening to the tapes and picturing Mays running down Vic Wertz’ deep fly ball, and Hank Aaron chasing Al Downing’s pitch over the left field wall and hearing about Fisk using his body english to make the ball hit the foul pole ----- Baseball is the greatest sport in the world.