Too wet, too hot, and too humid to do anything else, I took time to watch Sunday’s Hall of Fame ceremonies in Cooperstown. Saw a lot of people that I once knew, and enjoyed every minute of it.
Between rainstorms and suffocating humidity Sunday, I sat on the couch with a sleeping bulldog and took in the Hall of Fame ceremonies from Cooperstown.
For Ichiro Suzuki, Dick Allen, Dave Parker, CC Sabathia, and Billy Wagner, baseball did it with grace and respect for both the people, and the game.
And representing the game, some 50 past Hall of Fame inductees showed up, including Sandy Koufax, Billy Williams, and Juan Marichal, heroes from my youth and baseball fantasies in my then home community of Getaway, Ohio.
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Yes, there is a place called Getaway, alongside Symmes Creek, on state route 378, with two churches, two cemeteries, some old familiar names, and a lot of memories. It’s where I caught the school bus to go to the first and second grade at Chesapeake East Elementary…and it’s where I received my first pack of baseball cards. I still have them.
But that had nothing to do with Cooperstown, and Sunday, except for the part it played in launching a 60-year path of loving baseball as an under-talented, but over-achieving player in high school and college.
And failing to overcome my deficiencies as a player, I had eight memorable years in the minor leagues as an umpire (A, AA, and AAA), coming within one level of making it to the major leagues. Short of making it that far, I smile now when I think of how many people, and how many places, I experienced along the way.
Sunday brought back some of those memories. When they introduced Dave Winfield as a returning hall of famer, it made me think of the April day in 1972 when he hit what my pitching coach Dick Finn called a “not ready for the Big Ten” fastball off me onto the roof of the North Athletic Facility…dead center field…probably 450 feet!
Former Phillies slugger Richie Allen was inducted for being one of the most dangerous power hitters of the 60s and 70s era. He was famous for swinging the biggest bat in the major leagues and for saying this about the introduction of AstroTurf: “If a horse can’t eat it…I ain’t playing on it.” In 1965 I saw Allen hit a home run OVER the scoreboard at Crosley Field and onto I-75 south.
Tony LaRussa got dumped in Des Moines in 1980 for claiming as a lawyer he knew the rule book better than Triple A umpires.
Former Cubs reliever Lee Smith was introduced…and I worked home plate in Smith’s first professional appearance for the Chicago Cubs. Smith was a huge man, threw murderously hard – as hard as anyone I ever saw in professional baseball – and while he was warming up for the first inning he threw a fastball so hard that his catcher missed it altogether and it struck me directly in the mask, tearing it off my head and staggering me backwards. I hadn’t even called an official ball or strike yet, and it was an inauspicious beginning. My neck hurt for weeks.
Harold Baines was introduced, and frankly when I worked games for the White Sox AA and AAA teams in the late 70s I questioned whether he would even make it to the major leagues. Now he’s a hall of famer, though a lot of baseball writers I’ve met question it.
When I was in AA and AAA I had Alan Trammel, the Tigers’ great shortstop. I remember him from playing in the Southern League in 1977, the awful heat and humidity, and his work ethic to come to the park early every day and take extra ground balls in that Montgomery, Alabama, heat. It’s little wonder he’s in Cooperstown.
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I saw Jim Leyland introduced, the former manager for the Tigers, Pirates, and Marlins, and I remember him from the Florida State League in 1976. Leyland was a chain smoker, always had one fired up in the dugout, and he drove a cherry red Cadillac Eldorado convertible up and down the main drag in Lakeland after games. And he was never alone.
Tony LaRussa was introduced as the hall of fame manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. I knew LaRussa from AAA in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1978. I threw him out of a game one time for arguing a rule interpretation, producing a rule book from his hip pocket during the heat of the moment. What got him pitched was when he said he had a law degree and understood the rules better than a Triple A umpire.
And let me add Johnny Bench, and the one time I worked behind him in a morning workout in 1977 during spring training.
The Reds were trying to decide on whether to sign or release pitcher Gary Nolan, coming off an arm injury. And at old Al Lopez Field in Tampa there was a screen 20 feet behind home plate with Sparky, Larry Shepard, and Bob Howsam watching from behind it.
Bench was not too happy about catching a Triple-A game at 10 am, and when he walked out to the plate he looked at me and said, “How’d you get this gig?”
I answered, “How did you get this this gig?”
Nolan was terrible, but the Reds kept him anyway, only to release him in May.
Hal McCoy with a Dodger great that hasn’t made it to Cooperstown (yet), Claude Osteen.
It was fun to watch, and fun to reminisce over old names and memories. There’s 357 members of the hall of fame, and proudly, our own Hal McCoy is one of them. Hal was enshrined in 2002 for his meritorious contribution to the art of baseball writing, and he annually votes on player membership to the hall of fame.
I have friends and past teammates who actually played professional baseball – Heath Murray and Craig Stammen – but I dare say that few had more fun and better memories having made it that far than I did without making it. Except for days with guys like Lee Smith, I suppose.
And Hal would tell you that it’s a long way from growing up in Akron (which he did) to making it to Cooperstown. But not as far as it is from Getaway, down on Symmes Creek, on route 378.
You could look that up, as hall of famer Casey Stengel once said. Casey was usually right.
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