Young man fulfilled his dream of meeting the Sultan of Swat

It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many people, and most will never get to experience it. If it does happen, you will definitely remember it the rest of your life. I am talking about meeting one’s idol. What most of us wouldn’t give to be able to talk to our idol — if only for a few seconds — or to shake their hand. Well, that’s exactly what happened to one of my friends 66 years ago at Yankee Stadium.

Tyrus Cobb “Tat” Bailey was born in 1913 and named after a popular baseball legend of that era — Ty Cobb. Bailey even has a baseball and baseball bat permanently mounted on the front door of his home to honor the Georgia Peach. But as a youngster growing up on an Alabama farm, Bailey’s attention would be drawn to another baseball great — a player by the name of Babe Ruth. (more…)

By Karl Jacobsen

Opening Day! Just saying those two words creates a glimmer of hope that one of my two teams will wind up playing in Yankee Stadium come October. Why Yankee Stadium? Because everyone who knows the current state of baseball realizes that the World Series is an annual New York event — or so it seems. Am I upset about recent, and past, Yankee championships? Not in the least. Remember, New York fostered the beginnings of the game over a hundred and fifty years ago, and much of traditional baseball history has revolved around New York teams. Don’t get me wrong, if Hell had a baseball team, I’d root for Hell against the Yankees, but for an old traditionalist like me, there is something right about seeing the American League pennant waving over Yankee Stadium. (more…)

By Jason Patzfahl

The sun was hiding somewhere far behind the clouds of winter as layers of gray pillowed the air overhead. Fresh snow, two or three inches thick where the drift carried it, covered the grass which had been dead since last November. Our star pitcher stood in front of me, talking to his brother about something juvenile. With every immature utterance from his mouth, a puff of white breath formed in front of him. His nose ran uncontrollably, making him sniff between every word.

The infield dirt was pale, frozen, and cracked where not covered by snow. Icicles hung, suspended in mid-drip on the chain link fence behind home plate. Our coach leaned up against the fence on his left side, staring into the whitewashed outfield, blowing hot air into his hands as he cuffed them over his mouth. His eyes were tearing from the relentless wind, or from the look of the day. Either way, practice would have to wait at least another week.

The temperature hadn’t broken 30 degrees in the last three weeks, and the snow had been piling up with each storm that rumbled through. The look in his eyes told me that it was going to be another long season, one in which the games started a couple of weeks late and ended with doubleheaders to make up for the freeze-out games. I was the catcher, bound for a great senior season and a possible run for a couple of defensive records. I could see them disappear in front of me though as I knew I would miss catching almost half the games because of the hard doubleheaders and the impact they had on my knees.

We weren’t so much as surprised by the foul weather as we were disappointed by it. Every year around New Year’s time the team held a meeting after school on a Friday to talk about the upcoming season and what we planned to accomplish. Even though the temperature outside was probably about six degrees, we talked and talked for hours inside our tiny warm locker room about how great it would be if we could start the practice season on time or even early that year. We talked about what we could get accomplished outside on an actual baseball field instead of inside the small gym that we shared with the girl’s softball team. Our eyes would be full of hope and anticipation all the way up until that first Monday morning at 6:30 AM when we would wake up, look out our bedroom windows, and see nothing but frost covering the glass.

As you already know, the first day of practice for my senior season was no different, but like true warriors, we turned around from the field, trudged into the sleeping school, and filled the gym, throwing, hitting, and running right along with the softball team. A game of catch consisted of being no more than 20 feet from your partner. If your partner overthrew the ball, you would have to fight your natural instinct to turn around for it, because if you did, you would get plunked in the face with the ball after it bounced off the gym wall. Batting practice consisted of hitting into a net while being soft-tossed balls from a kneeling partner only feet away. Ground balls took quick mean little skips on the wood-tiled floor, usually leaving welts and gashes in your shins.

We survived that year, as we did every other year, and we ended up capturing the conference title with a win of the second game of a doubleheader on the last day of the season. I played first base the first game so I could save my knees for the second. I threw out two runners trying to steal second and took a pounding in my temple from some guy’s right shoulder during a collision at home plate. In the playoffs, we lost our regional game against the defending state champs in an 11-inning fight in the blistering 75-degree heat. If it had been freezing and cloudy, we might have stood a chance. We lived, however, and some of us cried on the final bus trip home, wondering what it must be like to be able to play baseball any season of the year like they do in Florida and Arizona. Our star pitcher and a couple of other guys made it to college and they all picked a warm location in which the climate seemed invented for baseball. As for me, I think that the game of baseball can defy climate if you love it enough.

Jason Patzfahl is a die-hard Brewers fan who likes to throw peanut shells at the opposing batters in the on-deck circle at home games, and sends pictures of his dog’s butt to Marge Schott and jail cell pics to Daryl Strawberry. Anyone know a good defense lawyer?

(originally published in Baseball Ink Vol. 1, No. 4 – March 2001)

By Leo Gillis

My mother brought it home for me one day when I was seven years old. That was thirty-two years ago. It has done serious time in several cardboard boxes, but since about the middle of last baseball season, it has been on a shelf above the television. When I’m watching baseball on TV, I sometimes take the glove and it’s companion — a souvenir ball bought at Nat Bailey Stadium-down from the shelf to enhance my game-watching experience. You can throw the ball into the glove to produce a satisfying “WHUP,” or you can simulate a two- or four-seamer in slow-mo. And, after thirty-two years, the glove still smells the way only a baseball glove can smell.

It could be called a left-handed fielder’s mitt, but I would call it an all-purpose kid’s glove. It has seen action in all positions through elementary and high school, and it has been to several of my wife’s family reunions when we lived in Ontario, but its last good workout was during a softball game two summers ago. Several friends offered to lend me their full-sized gloves, but that just wouldn’t seem right. It is a bit small and frayed, but so what? It is made of “TOP GRAIN COWHIDE” and is a “CUSTOM PRO STYLE” with a “DEEP BALL POCKET.” The original price of $3.47 — marked in black ink in the pocket — is still discernible and so is my name and childhood address written in green ink on the outside of the thumb. Now, that’s gotta be special. Right?

I was thrilled the first time I read W. P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe — not only because it was a great read, but because the main character, Ray, had a left-handed fielder’s glove with green ink on it. When I had read that, I put the book down and searched the house for my glove and was very pleased that I had written on it in green ink. Ray mentioned the glove in reference to Salinger’s Allie Caulfield — Holden’s younger brother — who had written poems in green ink all over his left-handed mitt. Ray felt a connection with Salinger, and I, not having yet read The Catcher In The Rye, felt a connection with W. P. Kinsella. It was an entertaining fantasy which evaporated after I had finished reading Shoeless Joe. Aside from the ‘glove,’ I had nothing at all in common with W. P. Kinsella except that he also lived in the Vancouver area — along with two million other people. When I had read The Catcher last year for the first time, it took me back to when I was a teenager, but I didn’t feel it was ‘speaking’ to me like it probably would have had I read it in my youth. I do, however, find Salinger’s apparent mystical experiences interesting and would like to talk with him about them, but not enough that I would harass him with letters or hang around the end of his driveway.

So what of left-handed gloves and green ink? I go online and search for a few baseball glove manufacturers, but their Web sites have none of the frivolous information I’m looking for, such as the total number of left-handed gloves they’ve ever made. Hmm. What percentage of the population is left-handed? I type “left-handedness” into the Google search engine and soon discover that the figure is around 10 percent, but even after I lookup some population figures (over 30 million for Canada and over 272 million for the USA), I’ll still need an idea of how many people play baseball. My next search is for “amateur baseball” and one site tells me that, of those Canadians over 15-years-old, 900,000 males and 300,000 females participate in baseball. We can’t forget about the under 15′s, but for simplicity let’s say that 1 million baseball gloves see action every year in Canada. If the lefties in amateur baseball represent the general population (unlike professional baseball), then we’re looking at 100,000.

My next online adventure is into the world of ink and pens. You can spend days here and even download your own ink-making recipes. Green ink has been around a lot longer than baseball, and ballpoint pens became commercially available in 1945. Allie Caulfield could’ve used a fountain pen to write on his glove, but The Catcher was published in 1951, so perhaps Salinger had a ballpoint in mind. Assuming that most kids (big or little) would at least write their name on their baseball glove, we have to wonder about the number of kids who would choose a green pen (not taking into account those who would do so because they’ve read The Catcher). For some reason, I’ve retained an image of that moment on that sunny summer day in 1968 when I chose the green pen from the pen, string, and tape drawer in the kitchen. I don’t remember my motivations, if any, but I probably thought that the blue or black pens were boring because I had to use those in school. Now, if we add the number of left-handed gloves in the USA, Caribbean, Mexico, Japan, and, well…you get the picture.

Kinsella himself probably thinks having a lefty’s mitt with green writing on it is no big deal. After all, the obsessed Ray Kinsella was a fictional character, and when I recently asked W. P. to autograph my glove “just above the green ink” when he was at the Vancouver Library to read from his new book of stories, he didn’t flinch or look surprised. He likely signs a fair number of left-handed mitts with green ink on them. So, in the big scheme of things, my glove may not be unique but it’s special to me, and now it’s autographed — in black permanent marker — by my favorite baseball writer, “Bill Kinsella.” But I’ll have to take my mitt outside more often. That’s what it was made for.

Leo Gillis and his wife, Mary, live within strolling distance of Nat Bailey Stadium where the Class A Vancouver Canadians play. He often watches hockey during the winter, but usually finds himself daydreaming about baseball.

(originally published in Baseball Ink Vol. 1, No. 4 – March 2001)

By Tim Darnell

Professional baseball team owners have never been very adept at public relations. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have developed such an unflattering image over the years. From the overweight, stogie-puffing icons of old to the suite-residing, shrimp-cocktail munching owners of modern times, baseball’s CEOs have always received more than their share of bad press, and most of it has been entirely justified.

Now that I’m on the other side of the fence, however, I am starting to change my opinion.

That’s right, I’m part owner of a new professional baseball team…in Albany, Georgia. We’re a part of a new independent minor league organization that starts play this June, the All American Association. Our league has eight teams throughout the southeast and southwest, and right now all of us are working our butts off, trying to sell tickets and sponsorships.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. How did I, once a mostly unknown journalist, wind up a member of this class of heathen, this brethren of tower-dwelling penny-pinchers who cancelled the World Series for the first time in history?

Actually, the story begins with that wretched event. In 1994, I was working as assistant editor of an Atlanta-based lifestyle magazine. I was assigned to do a story on members of the old Atlanta Crackers baseball team. I had a ball with the assignment; I met the all-time Crackers home run leader and several other players, and spoke with fans who remembered the team. The article turned out great; unfortunately, it never appeared. The magazine went belly-up before the piece came out, and I was out of a job and about to get married.

Right about then, Major League Baseball players went on strike. I needed some income, and after learning how the Crackers are one of minor league baseball’s most successful teams in history, decided to take the research one step further and write a book. So I conducted more interviews and did more research…and all the while, looked for a book publisher. After countless publishers rejected the manuscript, arguing that baseball fans in Atlanta only care about the Braves, my wife and I decided to publish the book ourselves. The result, “Southern Yankees: The Story of the Atlanta Crackers,” has sold, to date, more than 1,000 copies worldwide. All in all, I’ve been more than pleased and gratified with the effort.

After the book was published, we began visiting minor league ballparks throughout the southeast. Today, I can safely say there isn’t a minor league park south of the Mason-Dixon Line that we haven’t visited. Minor league baseball gives you something that the majors abandoned long ago — affordable family entertainment, up close and personal.

After “Southern Yankees,” my journalism career continued, with a few bumps here and there. But four years ago, I became enamored with a vision of owning and operating my own minor league team. I can’t say where the idea came from; it really just popped into my head one day. So I began learning all I could about the nuances of running my own franchise. A little over a year ago, I learned through a friend of a new league that was being organized by a group of solid, experienced baseball professionals, the All American Association of Professional Baseball Clubs. I also heard about a wonderful stadium in Albany, a 4,000-seat gem that was a little run down but offered a lot of promise. After putting together a group of nine other private investors in Atlanta, paying a small franchise fee and negotiating a deal with the city of Albany, I joined the somewhat elite corps of professional baseball team owners.

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. First you put together a business plan that hopefully shows your potential investors that you’re going to at least break even after your first season. The idea is to sell as much advertising — that is, outfield billboards, other signage through the ballpark (like through the breezeways), radio advertisements, yearbook ads, etc. — to see you through the entire season. That way, your season ticket sales and game day attendance is extra revenue. In Albany, we also created a lot of specialty sponsorships — like for our autograph booth, customer service area, and family section.

Then you fill out a bunch of paperwork with the league and start negotiating with the city in which you want to play. In Albany, much of the local government and citizenry were disenchanted with professional baseball. In 1993, the city built a $4-million ballpark for its then-team, the Albany Polecats of the South Atlantic League. However, less than a year later, the owner (one of those guys who give the rest of my new fraternity a bad name) moved his team to Delmarva, Maryland, and later sold the franchise. To make matters worse for me, the jerk sued a lot of local businesses on his way out of town.

Given the run-down state of the ballpark and the negative political climate, I knew we were going to have to make some concessions to get the city to commit to repairing the facility. All in all, I feel we negotiated a good lease with Albany, and the city has been great in meeting its commitments. We have newly renovated office space, a gift shop, two concession areas, a press box with two suites, and a magnificent electronic scoreboard.

Once you get the lease signed, that’s when you begin your affordable family sports entertainment public relations campaign. Our Web site, www.albanybaseball.com, offered fans the chance to name their own team. You also have to get in front of local businesses, especially in a climate of skepticism. In six months of making calls, I met more people than the owner of the Polecats did in the four years he fielded a team there.

Sponsorships help…they’re crucial, actually. We have uniform sponsors, mascot sponsors, ticket sponsors — you name it, we have a sponsor for it. Fortunately, Albany has several major manufacturers and businesses, so we have a deep well from which to draw.

You also have to develop a good relationship with the local media, and the Albany press has been great. Of course, we created comprehensive media guides and packets to make their job easier, and having been in journalism for 15 years, I’ve learned a lot about to get along with the fourth estate. Our first big event will be held on the first day of spring, March 20, when we’ll unveil the name of the team, the uniform, the mascot, and the logo on the grounds of the ball park.

All of the steps I’ve described here don’t take place one at a time; usually, a typical workday is filled with multiple efforts and mostly unrelated crises happening all at once. Preparing press releases at the same time as negotiating a billboard deal is just one of many multi-tasking challenges I have faced. Furthermore, I’ve learned that baseball is, indeed, a business mostly like any other. You have to make more money than you spend to be a financial success.

But one thing I will never abandon is my commitment to make the game affordable for the fans. There’s a huge demographic out there who believes that baseball is old, slow, and boring. To that end, our marketing and ad slogan has been, “This Century, The Grand Old Game Gets A New Attitude.” This is what our team, our league, and our ownership group are all about: bringing a new, fresh, aggressive attitude to baseball and adhering to the belief that owners should first — and foremost — be fans of the game.

(originally published in Baseball Ink Vol. 1, No. 4 – March 2001)