Pennant fever! It’s torture!
I love the way Duane Kuiper has characterized this Giants’ season. He first nailed it early in the year, when heart-stopping, heat-throwing closer Brian Wilson nearly blew a lead in that inimitable way of his. But it describes everything the Giants are doing to us – the way they lost all those low-scoring games early in the year when the pitchers were brilliant and the hitters anemic, and then lost all those high-scoring games in August, when the hitters scorched everything and the pitchers fooled no one.
And yet the Giants stayed in the hunt, and kept us on the edge of our seats. And now they are in an honest-to-goodness race for the playoffs, 3 games out of first place and 1.5 games out of the Wild Card lead, with only 28 games to go.
Here we go again! I’ve already done it, even though I should know better – I’ve given my heart to this team, after all the times it has broken it in the past. I can’t say I’ll be satisfied with a near-miss of the playoffs; I want post-season baseball at AT&T Park. It is within reach.
Having said that, I want to report (since I have not updated this in ages) that I have had a glorious summer, filled with baseball games, book events, and family vacations from coast to coast. I will try to offer up a recap at some point, but a few baseball highlights include a book party in Portland, a pair of Mariners-Yankees games in Seattle (one with Steve Steinberg, co-author of “1921,” with whom I’ll be appearing in New York City in November), the SABR convention in Atlanta in August (stay indoors!), a brutal, sweltering Giant loss to the Braves at Turner Field, and a Bulls game in Durham, NC. And – I now have a bobblehead of Joe DiMaggio in a San Francisco Seals uniform, thanks to the Giants!
What could be better than that?
Ask me in October…
Hall of Fame memories
Giants Past and Present author Dan Fost meets Giants Hall of Famer Monte Irvin at AT&T Park.
The men were old, but their star power burned brightly. A room full of journalists, often cynical, was nothing but reverent. Lined up at the table at the front of the room, flanking San Francisco Giants’ managing general partner Bill Neukom, were six of the greatest players ever to don the orange and black: Gaylord Perry, Orlando Cepeda and Juan Marichal on Neukom’s right, and Monte Irvin, Willie Mays and Willie McCovey on Neukom’s left.
The center of attention was Irvin, who at long last was getting an honor that had been bestowed on the other five Hall of Famers: His number 20 would be retired, never to be worn by another Giant again, enshrined on the ballpark’s balcony between Carl Hubbell’s 11 and Mays’s 24.
Perry put the honor in some perspective: “It is harder to get your number retired,” he told Irvin, “than it is to make the Hall of Fame.”
Irvin himself seemed to acknowledge as much when he said, in his on-field remarks, “I thank the Giants, but I say to them, ‘Why did it take you so long?’”
As he said that, I stood with Bob Tobener and his son Dave, whose Golden Gate Giants is one of the best blogs on the team. Bob had been writing to the Giants for years, asking them to retire Irvin’s number, but had consistently been rebuffed by former managing general partner Peter Magowan. Before Irvin was ushered onto the field, he paused for a photo opportunity with Tobener, expressing gratitude for his advocacy and asking him to keep in touch.
I had my own moment with Irvin, after the ceremony. I went up to the suite where he sat with Perry and Marichal, watching the game, and gave each of them a book. (Perry had me sign his — what a thrill!) Irvin, who is 91 years old and in a wheelchair, lived up to his reputation as a class act and one of the most gracious men in baseball. I told him I was born in East Orange, NJ, as he lived in Orange; it turns out he first lived in Bloomfield, where I grew up.
In the press conference, Willie Mays told about his rookie year of 1951, and what an influence Monte Irvin was for him. Irvin said Giants manager Leo Durocher assigned Mays to be Irvin’s roommate, and told Irvin to look after him.
“In my time, you had to have some kind of guidance,” Mays said. “Monte was like my brother. I couldn’t go anywhere without him, especially on the road. You have to understand things like where to go, how to dress. Monte would take me to his house in Orange, NJ, to get me out of the city. His wife Dee would cook me greens and cornbread, and he’d say, ‘You come from the South, you need Southern food.’”
“I didn’t understand life in New York until I met Monte,” Mays said. “He protected me dearly.”
Irvin modestly deflected questions about his own pioneering role in integrating baseball. “Jackie Robinson was really the pioneer,” he said. “He was the real hero. I was so happy that he was successful. It made it so easy for the rest of us.”
Of course, it wasn’t really that easy.
“He went through a lot of the same stuff that Jackie went through,” Willie McCovey said. “A lot of us went through a lot of the same stuff, but it just wasn’t as bad as what Jackie had to face.”
Irvin, in fact, almost was the pioneer that Robinson came to be. As one of the few survivors of the Negro Leagues, Irvin recalled, “I couldn’t aspire to be a major leaguer, because that door was closed. He ticked off the names of others who “would have been superstars in the majors if they had been given the chance,” men like Martin Dihigo and Josh Gibson.
According to a Web site hosted by the state of New Jersey in honor of its famous long-time resident, Irvin was signed by the Negro Leagues’ Newark Eagles in 1939:
Monte wasted no time establishing his dominance in the Negro Leagues. He was one of the rare five-tool players, able to run, throw, field, hit, and hit for power exceptionally well. He was widely considered the game’s greatest all-around star. Monte had all-star seasons in the outfield as well as at shortstop and third base.
In 1940, Monte batted .422. He followed up that amazing year with an MVP season in 1941, hitting .386 and belting a league-leading 41 home runs.
Monte continued his success as MVP in the Winter Leagues in Cuba. In 1942, he left the Eagles to join the Mexican League. While there, he dominated each of the Triple Crown categories and was also named MVP.
Irvin was then drafted, and served three years in World War II. In 1945, upon his return, Dodger general manager Branch Rickey signed him to a contract. But two things kept him from breaking the color barrier. One, Rickey wouldn’t recognize Irvin’s contract with the Eagles, and Eagles owner Effa Manley — the only woman in the Hall of Fame — refused to let him out of it. And two, Irvin felt rusty after his Army service, and wasn’t ready to play.
“I had been in the Army for three years and was not feeling that well,” he said. “I wanted to regain the old feeling, so I went to Puerto Rico to play. Larry Doby and I went together to the Cuban Winter League.”
In Puerto Rico, a baseball-playing father took his young son Orlando Cepeda to see Irvin play. “It was the first game I ever saw,” Cepeda said. He went just to see Irvin and Leon Day, but Irvin had hurt his arm and was out of the lineup. He pinch-hit, however, and “he hit a double with one arm!” Cepeda said. “It was incredible! Right Monte? Monte was everybody’s idol in Puerto Rico. After I saw him play, I said, ‘I want to be a baseball player.’”
While Irvin played, Robinson integrated baseball.
“When the Dodgers signed Jackie, we knew it was the demise of the Negro Leagues,” he said. While the players all hoped for their shot at the big show, they also mourned the loss of their way of life.
Soon enough, fabled scout Alex Pompez signed Irvin and Hank Thompson to contracts for the Giants, and they were assigned to the farm team in Jersey City, NJ. Irvin said Giants owner Horace Stoneham paid Effa Manley $5,000 for the rights. “After getting the chance, I slowly regained my form and started to play very good baseball,” Irvin said.
Irvin was 30 when he and Thompson debuted for the Giants on the same day in 1949. Although his best years were behind him, he still tore up the National League in 1951, leading the Giants to an amazing comeback that culminated in Bobby Thomson’s home run and the National League pennant. Mays remembered Irvin stealing home in the World Series; Giants announcer Jon Miller, who emceed the ceremony honoring Irvin on the field, said it was the first straight steal of home in 30 years.
Miller noted Irvin’s .394 lifetime World Series batting average, and said, “The man knew how to rise to the occasion.”
He was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1973.
The ceremony was great: Mays spoke, the Giants played a documentary about Irvin, and a video tribute from Commissioner Bud Selig; the “Junior Giants” unveiled his number, right next to his outfield mate Mays; and Irvin himself made a charming speech. (The event was only marred, for me, by Red Sox fans who jabbered through it; I think they couldn’t stand the notion that Willie Mays was not only a better all-around player than Ted Williams, but that he also had the World Series ring that Teddy Ballgame never achieved.)
“It’s a pleasure to be here,” Irvin said, “although at my stage of life, it’s a pleasure to be anywhere.”
While he had so many great moments in baseball, he said, he had few disappointments. “One of the disappointments,” he said, “was I never had the chance to play here in San Francisco.”
No matter. San Francisco knows greatness. The fans cheered as if he were one of their own.
Taking it to the A’s
The Giants and A’s have a long history – one that predates their moves to the Bay Area. The New York Giants and Philadelphia A’s met several times in the first decade of the World Series, with the Giants taking the 1905 classic behind Christy Mathewson’s amazing three shutouts. Alas, the A’s roared back to beat the Giants in the Series in 1911 and 1913 (and the Giants fell to the Red Sox in 1912 as well).
Before they ever even met in a World Series, Giant manager John McGraw referred to Connie Mack’s A’s as a bunch of “white elephants,” part of McGraw’s contempt for the American League that had cast him out. Mack showed McGraw, however, adopting the elephant as the team mascot – the forerunner of Oakland’s friendly fuzzy pachyderm Stomper.
Of course, the A’s moved to Kansas City in 1955, the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, and the A’s moved to Oakland in 1968, bringing the rivalry to California. The move worked for the A’s, who roared to three straight Series wins in 1972-1974, and with one more coming at the expense of the Giants in the earthquake-marred 1989 Bay Bridge World Series.
The two teams have been fairly competitive in the 20th century, with both of them seemingly in sync through playoff runs and rebuilding years. They appear fairly evenly matched now; the A’s swept the Giants in Oakland in interleague play in May, and the Giants returned the favor, sweeping the A’s in San Francisco in June.
And now – did I bury the lead? – the rivalry takes on a new dimension, when I bring my “Giants Past and Present” book tour into A’s territory, and read and tell stories at Oakland’s Laurel Bookstore, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., at 7 pm Thursday, June 24.
I hope to see you there!
Paging the Panda: Giant nicknames now on YouTube
Does baseball still give its players good nicknames? From my chapter on Nicknames in “Giants Past and Present”:
Baseball players used to need nicknames like they needed gloves and bats. Getting a nickname was almost a rite of passage.
From the first Gothams team—featuring Dasher Troy, Buck Ewing, Tip O’Neill, and Smiling Mickey Welch—the Giants have featured some of baseball’s most evocative nicknames.
Fortunately, the Giants have kept the tradition alive, all the way through today, with stars like The Freak and The Panda. I had some fun discussing the tradition in this video, now on my YouTube channel:
Borders by the Ballpark
Today is a big baseball day for me. At noon, my son Harry’s Cubs play for the Mill Valley City Championship. From 3:30 to 6 pm, I’ll be signing books at the Borders by AT&T Park. And then at 6:05, I’ll hustle across the street for the Giants-A’s game tonight.
It was great to see the Giants beat the A’s last night. Tim Lincecum appears to have gotten his groove back, and the misery of the A’s three game sweep of the Giants in Oakland last month is gone.
Borders Mission Bay store, at 200 King Street, San Francisco, has always seemed to me the ideal place to sell baseball books. Hundreds of fans stream by on their way to the ballgame. Stop in and say hello this afternoon!
Left-handed compliments
One of my favorite Giants blogs, El Lefty Malo, has a Q&A with me in which we discuss Horace Stoneham, Darryl Spencer, Barry Bonds, and more. It’s a lot of fun, check it out!
Me and the Mad Dog
Dan Fost, Christopher "Mad Dog" Russo, Harry Barker-Fost
Last week, I received something precious in my e-mail: A digital recording of the half-hour I had spent on the radio with Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo. You can listen to it here (look for the link to Mad Dog on that page), and I figure with the Giants ready to take on the Mets in New York – the city of the Giants’ birth and their greatest successes, and home base of one of their most avid fans – it would be appropriate to recount in greater detail that marvelous experience.
I have had some great radio experiences since my book was published, but none quite like the half hour I spent with Russo on “Mad Dog Radio” in New York in April. True to his nickname, Russo is a rabid Giants fan, with a deep knowledge that he can summon at a rapid rate.
Russo told me he became a Giants fan when he was eight years old. His father, a jeweler, took him to see the Giants play the Phillies in Philadelphia – this would have been around 1970 – and they went to the Giants’ hotel. “I got all of their autographs, except Willie Mays,” he told me. “Mays wouldn’t sign.”
Of such encounters, fandom begins, even for a kid on Long Island – even for someone who rose to become a kingpin of New York sports talk radio. Kudos to Russo for staying true to his team, in the face of all those Yankees and Mets fans! His Giants cred was sealed after the 2003 season, when he was still on WFAN on the “Mike and the Mad Dog” show; he went on a beautiful rant after that never-shoulda-happened loss to the Marlins, culminating in, “Just one lousy goddamn time!”
We had a spirited conversation, going through Giants history from John McGraw, through Bill Terry, Mel Ott and Leo Durocher, and through the 1960s, the Arctic years of the 1970s and ‘80s, and the return to glory with Will Clark and then Barry Bonds. We picked the 1962 Giants as the best team ever in San Francisco, although we also liked 1993 and 2002. He blamed Horace Stoneham for the failures in San Francisco; I agreed, but spread it a little wider.
We capped it off with a fantastic exercise, where Russo asked me to name my top 10 Giants of all time. With his help, our list: Mays, Christy Mathewson, Bonds, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Buck Ewing, Ott, Carl Hubbell, Orlando Cepeda (questionable only for the duration of his Giants’ tenure) and Terry. We think Tim Lincecum is heading there, but hasn’t played long enough to earn the spot.
We agreed that Willie Mays was the best Giant of all time. I pick him as best player of all time; Russo says that’s Babe Ruth, because he could pitch as well; and that Joe DiMaggio was a better hitter.
Russo was also a generous host, and allowed my wife and son into the small Sirius studio; that’s my son, Harry, in the photo with me and the Mad Dog. (Footnote to a near close-encounter: As we signed in at the Sirius studios on the 36th floor of the McGraw Hill building in midtown Manhattan, I could see that a few minutes earlier, author Kitty Kelley – touting her new book on Oprah Winfrey – had signed in on the same ledger.)
I love (my two days in) L.A.!
Dan Fost and Michael D'Antonio
I survived. I wore a Giants cap and shirt to Los Angeles and lived to tell about it.
I was a panelist on Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and can’t say enough good things about the great time I had in enemy territory. My panel was titled “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and featured Michael D’Antonio, author of “Forever Blue,” about Walter O’Malley and the Dodgers’ move out of Brooklyn, and Mark Frost, author of “Game Six,” about the pivotal game of the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds. Novelist Bruce Bauman, a knowledgeable and enthusiastic baseball fan, moderated.
I was clearly the novelty act. Bauman was surprised a Giant book was picked for the festival, but there are Giant fans in LA. And I think all five of them came to the panel. We have to stick together. I acknowledged being surprised myself that I was included, but noted my gratitude that festival staff was wearing orange and black t-shirts to make me feel comfortable. (That may not be the reason for the color choice, but I’m sticking with my story.)
The Times also did that one better: They sent a guy named Sandoval to write a post about the panel, and he did a great job capturing the laughter in the room. (Writer Joshua is no relation to Giant Pablo, but no matter to me!)
We had a lot of fun telling stories and talking baseball. D’Antonio told how he spent a year combing through O’Malley’s personal documents – 30,000 of them – that had been stored in musty boxes, and revealed an incredible, never-before-told story that completely upended the modern myth of the Dodgers’ departure from Brooklyn. O’Malley was not the diabolical villain who engineered Brooklyn’s misery, but instead worked tirelessly to build a new ballpark in the borough, only to be thwarted at every turn by Robert Moses, the unelected autocrat who ruled New York City politics for decades.
Frost also offered up great untold stories, including about the alcoholic, inept owner of the Red Sox, Tom Yawkey, and the boozing, drug-addled, nearly forgotten hero of the sixth game, Bernie Carbo. And he told how that Series – featuring a dozen Hall of Famers – marked the end of an era, as six weeks later, free agency began and baseball changed forever. It also remains the single most watched baseball game of all time, with an audience of 76 million people – the “high water mark” for the pastime, Frost said.
We had a lively discussion of steroids and cheating, and I reiterated my belief that Barry Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame when his time comes. When Bauman offered one last chance to pitch our books to the audience, the best I could come with was, “I think Dodger fans will love the stories of Giant heartbreak and frustration that populate my book.”
The festival itself is a marvelous celebration of the written word. I attended two other panels that inspired and encouraged, both featuring my friend, David Ulin, the book editor of the Los Angeles Times, as moderator. The first – featuring Nicholas Carr, David Shields, and Ander Monson – addressed how reading and writing will survive in an age of increasing fragmentation. Some conclusions were inspiring (the written word is constantly evolving, and there is more writing and reading now than ever) and some depressing (people are increasingly incapable of reading at any length). But by the afternoon, when Ulin engaged Dave Eggers in conversation, optimism ruled the day. Eggers was funny, witty, upbeat and inspiring on so many levels: as a writer, as a publishing business visionary, and as a pied piper of the written word, whose “826” centers in San Francisco and elsewhere teach so many young people the joy of writing.
I think it’s rather a sad statement that Eggers is such a publishing visionary, because the simplicity of his vision reveals how broken the industry is. His publishing house, McSweeney’s, looks merely to recoup its costs and make a little bit of money for its writers, and get great stories out to the public in the way that writers like to tell them. He is satisfied with little or no profits and an 8-person operation. He looks at publishing and sees that more people bought books last year than ever before. The sad part to me is that book publishers – like the newspaper publishers I know all too well – want to run a high volume, high profit business, and the disappearance of those big profits is what has the industry wringing its hands and declaring doom.
As if that wasn’t enough, the weekend was full of many other personal highlights:
- A visit to friends at the Los Angeles Times, a magnificent Art Deco building that stands as a monument to great journalism, but which sadly now has vast empty sections as the paper struggles in the new economy.
- My first game at the Big A – Anaheim Stadium – where the Angels beat the Yankees Friday night. (Yes, I wore pinstripes.)
- Two outstanding meals at some of Los Angeles’ legendary Jewish delis: pastrami at Junior’s in Westwood on Saturday night, and matzo brei at Nate n Al in Beverly Hills Sunday morning. (Thank you, David Sax, author of “Save the Deli,” for the inspiration.)
- Post-panel surprise encounters with two friends from my childhood in New Jersey. One of them came to my panel with a friend – the friend was there to see her friend, Mark Frost! The other, Carol Fitzgerald, was my babysitter; her mother, Sylvia Cicetti, had been my third grade teacher. Carol has run the site the Book Reporter for years now, and knows more about the publishing industry and the Internet than anybody I’ve ever met.
Yogi and the Giants
Dan Fost signs a book for his third grade teacher, Sylvia Cicetti, at the Yogi Berra Museum. (Photo by Ron Kaplan)
After a whirlwind week, I can finally take a breath and give a little more detail about the great event I had at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center – my first book event, and a homecoming at that.
About 70 people turned out, and it was great to see so many friends, relatives and former teachers from my formative years in New Jersey. And the Berra museum is the perfect venue for a baseball event. The auditorium is even set up like a baseball stadium, complete with scoreboard. The event received coverage in The Record newspaper, and on Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf.
Highlights for me included re-connecting with my seventh grade English teacher, Jean Anderson, nee Smolinski. She is the teacher who saw my love of writing and my love of sports, and my ability (or potential) at one but not the other, and launched me as a sportswriter for the local town newspaper, Bloomfield’s Independent Press. (A lot of credit also goes to the late Russell Roemmele, a crusading local newspaperman who gave a teenager space to write every week.) Amazingly, Mrs. Anderson’s son Brian accompanied her – he is a newly minted newspaper reporter himself! I look forward to staying in touch and following his career through these perilous times for the newspaper industry.
My third grade teacher Mrs. Sylvia Cicetti was there as well, with her husband, Al, another newspaper veteran. Mrs. Cicetti closed the event by noting that the tables were turned, and she had to listen to me for a change; afterward, she told me, “In Show and Tell in third grade, I’d always say it was time for the next child, and you’d say, ‘But I just have one more thing to say.’ You haven’t changed a bit.” (Her daughter Carol was one of my favorite babysitters – and now she’s Carol Fitzgerald, running The Book Reporter, and we’re going to connect at the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend!)
There were friends I have stayed in touch with, friends I hadn’t seen in years, and most amazingly (to me), people who didn’t even know me! One was a guy who still gloats to his Dodger buddy over Bobby Thomson’s home run, taunting him with “Never forget, Howie!” Another was a niece of Eddie Brannick, a longtime Giants executive who unfortunately wound up cut from my book.
Yogi and Harry, 2007
I also got to tell a story about Yogi Berra and the Giants. As luck would have it, I had the privilege of meeting Yogi at his museum three years ago. (That’s him in the photo with my son Harry.) He told how he was present at the greatest moment in Giant history, the Bobby Thomson home run in 1951. He didn’t say it, but he was the reigning American League MVP that year. The Yankees had already wrapped up the AL pennant and were waiting to see who they would play in the World Series, the Giants or the Dodgers. Yogi was rooting for the Giants, because the World Series shares were based on the gate, and the Polo Grounds held more people than Ebbetts Field. But with the Dodgers taking a 4-1 lead in the ninth, the game appeared to be in hand, and Yogi decided to beat the traffic and get home. So he missed possibly the greatest home run in baseball history, the Shot Heard ‘Round the World.
As the museum director Dave Kaplan said when Yogi told that story: “Mr. ‘It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over.’”
Beat L.A.!
This is the weekend we’ve been waiting for. The Giants are in Los Angeles for a three-game series with the Dodgers, the first of 2010. The Dodgers are the defending division champs, but the Giants are the team in ascendancy, and I have to say, I like their chances, especially with Tim Lincecum and Barry Zito pitching games two and three, and no one on the hill for the Dodgers who looks particularly able to stop the Giants’ hot bats.
But anything can happen when these two teams meet, given the history of bad blood. I’ve got a chapter in “Giants Past and Present” devoted to the long and sometimes bloody rivalry, and I talk about it in this new video on my YouTube channel. (Please subscribe!)
I’d love to get your thoughts on some of the greatest moments in the rivalry. I personally savor Dodger-killing homers — Joe Morgan in 1982, Brian Johnson in 1997, and Barry Bonds, pirouetting at home plate the day before Johnson’s blast. How about you?
Next Page »