A longtime fan who lives in my house did something quite unexpected the other night - he chose baseball’s past over its present by skipping the baseball playoffs on TV to read a book.
The tome was “Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress,” a recently published and totally intriguing coffee-table offering written by historian/curator/baseball nut Frank Ceresi and several co-authors that traces the glory of our national pastime over more than two centuries. Nor does it skip its shame, such as the Black Sox scandal and more than six decades of overt racism.
It’s not easy to be a fan in these parts nowadays, not with the Nationals and Orioles holding up the rest of their respective divisions and no end in sight. When was the last winning season in Washington or Baltimore? Way, way back, meaning sometime in the previous century.
To that sorry situation we can add the ennui inspired by four-hour games, greedy owners, steroids, high-priced concessions, ridiculously rewarded ballplayers who don’t run out ground balls and, in the American League, that preposterous designated-hitter rule.
Is it any wonder that baseball’s so-called good old days often seem exactly that?
Ceresi, a former Arlington family court judge, spent two years digging with his associates through voluminous baseball materials owned by the Library of Congress. Probably enjoyed every moment of it.
“We uncovered baseball prints, photographs, illustrations, posters, sheet music, film, postcards, newspapers, comics and ephemera of every type and kind, and we only scratched the surface,” Ceresi says. “Making the choices [for the book] was difficult, but it was fun difficult.”
Any favorites?
“Sure, we found several uncut proof sheets of Old Judge cigarette baseball cards from the 1880s. I know a lot about 19th-century baseball, but I didn’t know these existed. I was stunned - and thrilled.”
One such sheet shows pristine sepia shots of the terrible 1887 Washington Statesmen of the National League. One of the players is catcher Connie Mack, who was 6-feet-1, 150 pounds and young. Mack, who would hang around the major leagues as a manager through 1950, batted .201 that dismal (46-76) season for the Statesmen.
Bad Washington teams, it seems, we will always have with us. Except when we don’t have any at all like from 1971 until 2005.
I have my own favorites as well. For instance, an 1859 “diagram of a base ball field” for the “N.Y. Game” shows the “short stop” positioned to the right of second base. Perhaps this was the inspiration for the famous Williams Shift, although Cleveland manager Lou Boudreau didn’t unveil it against Teddy Ballgame until 87 years later.
And, “Baseball Americana” tells us, Confederate soldiers came upon members of the 114th New York regiment playing a game and captured the center fielder. Took the ball, too, rotten guys.
We also learn that the 1889 Spalding Guide preached this message: “Star players do not make a winning team.” Obviously, earlier members of the Steinbrenner clan weren’t listening.
And how’s this for being socially and sexually incorrect? An 1895 song dedicated to “the New Woman” asks the musical question “Who Would Doubt That I’m a Man?” while a formidable female wields a bat on the sheet music cover.
All this material and so much more could fill a whole bunch of postseason evenings while today’s knickered lads cavort until midnight and beyond. What’s more, you can put down the book and go to bed whenever you like.
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