Earlier this month, TheDailyWoo posted this video of his trip to Cooperstown, New York and his walk through the Baseball Hall of Fame. I had the opportunity to visit the town and the museum a few years ago, and this video was a nice reminder of the sights and the atmosphere of the Cooperstown experience. The town is full of nostalgia, the Hall of Fame museum is awe-inspiring, and this video reflects those feelings well.
New York Giants rightfielder Ross Youngs passed away on October 22, 1927 of Brights disease. The future Hall of Famer had a career batting average of .322, having batted over .300 for seven straight seasons, including reaching an average of more than .350 twice. Youngs was also one of John McGraw’s favorite players, who said at Youngs’s funeral, “The game was never over with Youngs until the last man was out. He could do everything a ball player should do, and do it better than most players. As an outfielder he had no superiors, and he was the easiest man I ever knew to handle. In all his years with the Giants, he never caused one minute’s trouble for myself or the club. On top of all this, a gamer ballplayer than Youngs never played ball.”
Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006, Effa Louise Manley co-owned the Newark Eagles baseball franchise in the Negro leagues (alongside her husband, Abe Manley) from 1935 to 1946. After her husband’s death, she then became sole owner of the team through 1948. She was also a noted activist, active in the Civil Rights Movement and serving as treasurer of the Newark chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Effa Manley was born on March 27, 1897 in Philadelphia (some sources cite her birth year as 1900). Her actual racial background also remains a mystery — some speculate that she was of mixed race while others believe she was a white woman who could pass as black. Manley herself seemed to enjoy the confusion generated by her ethnic background. She graduated from Penn Central High School in 1916, completing vocational training in cooking, oral expression, and sewing. Following high school, she moved to New York City.
In New York, Manley could often be found at Yankee Stadium, taking in ballgames. “Babe Ruth made a baseball fan of me,” Manley reportedly said. “I used to go to Yankee Stadium just to see him come to bat.” At a World Series game in 1932, Manley met her future husband, Abe. The couple married in 1935, and he involved her in the operation of his own club, the Newark Eagles in New Jersey.
As co-owner of the Eagles, Manley didn’t fit into the traditional 1930s homemaker mold for women. She managed day-to-day business operations for the team, handled contracts and travel schedules, and she proved particularly talented at marketing. She developed a number of promotions that advanced the Civil Rights Movement as well as a variety of other causes and benefits. Under Manley’s leadership, the Eagles invited soldiers during World War II to Eagles games for free. They also hosted benefits for various causes, including the Harlem Fight for Freedom Committee and the Newark Community Hospital. Within the Negro Leagues, Manley worked to improve conditions for players in the entire league. She advocated for better scheduling, better pay, and better accommodations. Under Manley, the Newark Eagles traveled in an air-conditioned bus, a rare luxury in the Negro Leagues.
During Manley’s time with the team, the Eagles won the Negro League World Series in 1946. Among the Eagles players during Manley’s ownership were future MLB stars such as Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, and Don Newcombe.
Effa Manley died of a heart attack on April 16, 1981. She was buried in Culver City at the Holy Cross Cemetery. She was the first woman inducted into the Hall of Fame.
I spent much of the last week visiting an old friend who now lives in New York state. Though I was only there for a few days, we managed to cram a lot into our limited time together. We spent a full day in Manhattan — my first time ever in New York City. Another day, we went on a five-mile hike up a mountain in the Hudson River Valley. I also insisted, so long as I was making the trip halfway across the country, that we had to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The day we reserved for visiting the Hall of Fame came the day after our NYC day, and we didn’t get to bed until about 2:00 a.m. that night before. Cooperstown is about a three-hour drive from my friend’s home, and as late as we were out the previous night, there was no way we were going to be on the road by 6:00 am to be there in time for the 9:00 open time. Instead we pulled into town a bit after noon, and we stopped for sandwiches and coffee at a nice little café called Stagecoach Coffee (which I highly recommend, by the way, if you’re ever in Cooperstown).
We finished our lunch and arrived at the Hall of Fame around 1:00, leaving us about four hours to explore before closing time. There ended up being a couple of exhibits we didn’t get to see (pro tip: don’t go out the night before so you can get there earlier than we did), but we did see most of it, and I took an insane number of pictures in the process. For sanity’s sake, I’ll just post a few of the highlights here, but if you are somehow just morbidly curious, I’ve created a public album including all my photos here.
The Eighth Inning of Baseball: A Film By Ken Burns brings us into the 1960s. In this decade of the American Pastime, we find that it is being recognized less and less as such. Football has risen to prominence, and a lot of folks come to argue that football, not baseball, has now become the true national game. Additionally, the sixties were quite a stormy and unstable period in American history, filled with race riots, activism, anti-war protests, hippies, and Woodstock.
The game of baseball also finds itself experiencing some changes. In 1961, Babe Ruth’s single season home run record is threatened, then broken, by a man who is far from being a fan favorite. Roger Maris is described as moody and sullen, avoids talking to the press, and starts losing his hair as a result of the pressure he is under as he inadvertently finds himself chasing Ruth’s record.
Pitching sees a rise in dominance as the decade progresses, thanks to commissioner Ford Frick’s commandment that the strike zone be expanded to counter the explosion of home runs. Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson are among those who rise to preeminence from their positions on the mound. As pitching becomes the ruling force in the game, there comes a decline in home runs being hit. This, in turn, contributes to the decline in fan interest in the game.
This time period also sees changes as far as the growth of the league. The success and profitability of the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the west brings the league to consider other ways in which to spread the game throughout the country. Four new teams were added to Major League Baseball. We see the birth of the California Angels, the Washington Senators became the Minnesota Twins, then a newer Senators team moved to Arlington and became the Texas Rangers. The New York Mets and the Houston Colt .45s (later the Astros) also joined the National League. The Braves would move from Milwaukee to Atlanta and the Athletics moved to Oakland. After just one season, the Seattle Pilots left for Milwaukee and became the Brewers, and towards the end of the decade the Royals were established in Kansas City and the Expos in Montreal. (I’m sure I must be missing one or more others here, and for that, I apologize.)
At the beginning of the decade, Ebbets Field met its fate with a wrecking ball painted to resemble a baseball. Jackie Robinson, who had once played at Ebbets, now worked and fought for civil rights, and Branch Rickey, who was the force behind integration in Major League Baseball, passed away in 1965. The Polo Grounds became the home of the New York Metropolitans, led by the one and only Casey Stengel, now getting along in years. Suffices to say, the Mets weren’t very good in those early years. Eventually, Stengel would retire from baseball. After that, the same wrecking ball that took out Ebbets Field would also bring down the Polo Grounds. The Mets moved into Shea Stadium, and by the end of the decade transformed into the “Miracle Mets,” winning the 1969 World Series.
In this inning, we meet Pete Rose and see bits about Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski, Whitey Ford, Roberto Clemente, and many, many others. Sandy Koufax seemingly retires almost as quickly as he broke into the league and became the youngest player ever inducted into the Hall of Fame. In Baltimore, Earl Weaver became manager of the Orioles. One of the greatest managers of all time, the Orioles became the dynasty of the decade under Weaver.
In this decade, we also meet Marvin Miller. Miller became the Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association in 1966. The players loved having Miller speaking on their behalf, but baseball owners, unsurprisingly, hated having Miller around. He was a man who Red Barber would call “one of the two or three most important men in baseball history.”
By the end of the disc, we learn about Curt Flood’s battle against the reserve clause, which at this point is only just beginning. Flood learned that he was to be traded from St. Louis to Philadelphia, and in the face of the racism he knew he would face in Philadelphia, he decided to oppose the trade. This flew in the face of the entire history of baseball business.
I think my favorite feature of this disc comes in all the arguments defending baseball. In spite of George Carlin’s comedy routine that makes baseball seem like a slow, sissy sport, baseball continues to be referred to as America’s National Pastime for good reason. Sure, football is faster and perhaps more suitable to the 30-second attention span that now dominates our culture (though, more recently, football also seems to be declining in popularity). But baseball’s place in the American psyche runs deep, and in a lot of ways, it is the very nature of its leisurely pace that makes it so appealing.
Today marks 20 days until Opening Day! While we continue to wait patiently, the Baseball Hall of Fame has created this fun page of baseball stats and facts that revolve around π. Read up and enjoy some pi(e), and regular season baseball will be here before we know it!
The birth of baseball?
According to legend, Abner Doubleday invented the game of baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York (hence the reason Cooperstown serves as home to the Baseball Hall of Fame). A Union general during the Civil War, Doubleday is known for having fired the first shot in defense against the South at Fort Sumter, thus starting the American Civil War. It makes sense, when you think about it. Of course America’s game would be invented in America, by one of America’s own war heroes, right?
Eh… not quite.
Contrary to legend, baseball did not spring up out of nowhere, brought to America by a patriotic stork gifting us with our national pastime. More than likely, Abner Doubleday had nothing to do with baseball at all. Upon his death in 1893, Doubleday left behind a number of documents and letters, none of which mentioned baseball. Furthermore, references to games resembling the sport existed long before Doubleday was even born. For example, one soldier in George Washington’s army, George Ewing, wrote about his experience playing a game called “base” in April 1778 in Valley Forge.
In truth, baseball most likely evolved from the British games of rounders and cricket. Over time, different versions of bat-and-ball games evolved in America, going by names like “townball” and “roundball.” Different areas of the country also developed their own versions of the sport, including “the Massachusetts game” and “the New York game.” Not surprisingly, each state believed its own version to be better. By the time of the Civil War, the New York version of the game had become the most popular. The establishment of the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) in 1858 marked the creation of baseball’s first centralized governing body, which helped ensure the spread of uniformity in the game’s play and rules.
So why the bogus myth about Abner Doubleday? In the wake of the Civil War, America experienced a surge of nationalism, not an uncommon occurrence following times of great calamity (think: 9/11, Iraq War, etc.). Business and political leaders alike sought out a means through which to help heal the division between North and South. The growing sport of Base Ball, which was becoming popular throughout all socioeconomic classes, seemed an obvious solution for this need. As part of his efforts to build up and promote the idea of baseball as “America’s game,” A. G. Spalding and the Spalding commission asserted in 1907 that baseball was a purely American game with no roots in British sports, and that Abner Doubleday was its inventor. In the years that followed, other baseball historians, consciously or unconsciously, perpetuated this nationalistic myth.
In spite of the research that has since revealed the Abner Doubleday myth, the Baseball Hall of Fame continues to hold fast to the magic that it created, as demonstrated on their website. And who can blame them? Part of the wonder and glory of Cooperstown is the idea that it was the birthplace of America’s National Pastime. Nevertheless, it is important to also keep in mind the facts as revealed by history. Legends can be fun and revealing on their own, but true history gives us a more accurate sense of who we are.
Sources:
Barra, Allen. “The Birth of Baseball: A history of the game dispels many myths — including that Abner Doubleday was its inventor.” StarTribune. 19 March 2011. Web. Accessed 7 March 2013. http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/118242609.html?refer=y
Kirsch, George B. Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime During the Civil War.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Rossi, John P. The National Game: Baseball and American Culture. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000.
Seymour, Harold. Baseball: The Early Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960.
Spalding, Albert G. America’s National Game: Historic Facts Concerning the Beginning
Evolution, Development and Popularity of Base Ball with Personal Reminiscences of its Vicissitudes, its Victories and its Votaries. Revised and re-edited by Samm Coombs and Bob West. San Francisco: Halo Books, 1991.
