Posts Tagged baseball
Media Memories: 1980 Braves & WTBS/Channel 17
A Slice From My Childhood
So tonight I was at my mother’s house, looking for something that required me to dive into the folder of stuff my parents keep in a file for me (honor roll notices from grade school, summer reading program certificates from the 1970s…amazing stuff).
And then, in the file, I found a few of these. Tickets sent to me, due to my good grades (I’m fairly certain I was not a straight A student). As a kid, I did not appreciate the printed signature on the certificate (yep, that’s Ted Turner). The logo was WTBS on the eve of Turner Time (remember when TBS shows started at 5 minutes after the hour or half hour)–before the days of TBS Superstation.
Holding these tickets took me back to my childhood. Back in the days when the Braves were managed by Bobby Cox on his first round with the team (his second to last year as manager on this round)-but far from first place. It’s funny, as a kid I remembered them as always being a last place team, but as documented by Wikipedia, there were two teams (San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres) worse off than the Braves.
[Apologies for the fuzzy quality of the image, O'Shea mansion does not have a readily available scanner, so I shot this with my wife's Blackberry...]
Peter Morris on His Catcher Book
A month or so ago I was reading about Peter Morris‘ knowledge of baseball at The Second Pass. I was curious to learn more from (and about) the baseball historian. So I contacted him to see if he was interested in an email interview. Fortunately, he was and we got a chance to discuss his clear love of the game’s rich past and in particular, his latest book (published in April by Ivan R. Dee), Catcher: How the Man Behind the Plate Became an American Folk Hero.
Tim O’Shea: Given how much you know about the history of baseball, what long dormant rules that used to exist do you think could be re-introduced in the modern era to help revitalize the game?
Peter Morris: What today’s baseball fans rarely realize is that baseball was originally a sport with fast-paced, non-stop action. Catchers snapped the ball back to the pitcher and if the batter stepped out of the box or even looked like he wasn’t paying attention, the pitcher would try to sneak a pitch past him. While every sport has timeouts, only baseball has unlimited timeouts and I think some limit should be put on them. There’s no good reason that a batter should be allowed to step out and take as long as he wants after every pitch. Then you could put and enforce similar restrictions on the pitcher, as well as limiting the number of pickoff throws per at bat.
Chris Epting on Movies, Baseball and Music
Posted by admin in Film, Literature, Music, comedy, episodic TV, pop culture, sports on February 4, 2009
Sometimes the best leads for an interview happen in the library. Such was the case when I ran across pop culture historian Chris Epting’s 2007 book, Led Zeppelin Crashed Here: The Rock and Roll Landmarks of North America. I was impressed with Epting’s research, after flipping through the book, which aims to take the reader “through America’s rich rock ‘n’ roll history with the musical landmarks detailed in this extensive collection. Nearly 600 locations, including birthplaces, concert locales, hotel rooms, and graves, are neatly compiled and paired with historical tidbits, trivia, photographs, and backstage lore—from the site where Elvis got his first guitar and Buddy Holly’s plane crashed to Sid and Nancy’s hotel room and the infamous ‘Riot House’ on the Sunset Strip.” I tracked Epting down at his website and he agreed to an email interview. We covered a great deal of ground and I had a substantial amount of fun along the way. Hopefully you’ll have fun reading this.
Tim O’Shea: Do you think your affinity for pop culture began where you grew up–in Westchester County, New York–an area where you note: “certain notable people became attracted to the area. Jackie Gleason, for one. Other actors. Writers. Thinkers. Even Peter Frampton (on the heels of the blockbuster album “Frampton Comes Alive”)”
Chris Epting: It definitely started at that point in my life, but I think it was more a process of the times than the geography. That said, our close proximity to New York City was valuable in terms of what were exposed to, but in general I think growing up in the thick of the 1970s is what really did it for me. It was an interesting time in that you had some great directors breaking out (Scorcese, Coppola, etc.) some cutting edge TV (All in the Family, MASH, etc), great radio (both am/fm), decent theater—a lot of culture was in flux, and the churn produced, I think, a wonderful storm of pop culture fury that still influences a lot of things today.
Atlanta Jewish Film Festival: Holy Land Hardball
Holy Land Hardball, a documentary directed by Erik Kesten and Brett Rapkin, is set to have its Atlanta premiere at the 2009 Atlanta Jewish Film Festival (AJFF) on January 22 and 23. The 84-minute, 2008 film “follows the dubious formation of the Israel Baseball League (IBL) by Larry Baras, a Boston bakery owner with no sports management experience. Stirred to action by a midlife crisis, Baras recruits a diverse collection of executives and ballplayers for the IBL, the first ever professional baseball circuit in the Middle East. The team’s challenging task is to draw Israelis to America’s pastime, a game they’ve gone 5,767 years without.”
It’s an interesting tale, which I was able to watch thank to an AJFF screener, both from a baseball and family sense. It’s got a comical tinge to the project, for example, as the baseball tryouts were being shown the Talking Heads’ song, Road to Nowhere, was played. Throughout the film, you feel like the effort to form theIBL is doomed, whether it was or not. But that aspect of the tale was secondary to me. For me, it’s a story about loss and the importance of family, and in particular father and son dynamics.
Tom Jones on Working at the Ballpark
Tom Jones made my day when I recently discovered his book, Working at the Ballpark: The Fascinating Lives of Baseball People from Peanut Vendors and Broadcasters to Players and Managers. My late father instilled in me a love of baseball. So right about now, less than a month after the World Series has ended … I’m already missing baseball. I was even more pleased when Jones agreed to this email interview. Here’s the official background on the book and its author, prior to delving into the interview:
“Working at the Ballpark is an inside look at what people in major league baseball do for a living and how they feel about their jobs by taking readers into dugouts, clubhouses, bullpens, press boxes and executive offices where fans dream of going. In the rich oral history tradition of Studs Terkel, this is an entertaining collection of 50 candid, engaging interviews with players, managers, coaches, peanut vendors, ushers, groundskeepers, clubhouse guys, executives, broadcasters, mascots, and others who work at a major league ballpark: From John Guilfoy, who sells sausages behind the Green Monster at Fenway Park, to Chris Hanson, who plays ‘Bernie Brewer’ in Milwaukee, Johnny ‘from Connecticut,’ who is a street ticket hustler, to Glove Glove shortstop Omar Vizquel, who anchors the infield at AT&T Park.
Working at the Ballpark provides fascinating and gritty details about the working lives of men and women who are passionate about baseball. These are their personal, poignant stories. In their own words.
Tom retired in 2005 after 30 years with the State of California where he worked as a legislative director in the administrations of the last five California governors. He lives in Sacramento.”
With the recent passing of Studs Terkel, it really struck a chord with me to see Jones reference Turkel. It’s nice to know there’s at least one writer out there trying to carry on Terkel’s passion for oral history.
Tim O’Shea: How long had you been thinking about writing the book?
Tom Jones: I began thinking about writing an oral history book in 2004, the year before I retired from State government. Initially, I intended to compile an updated version of Studs Terkel’s Working, to be called Working: Revisited. I corresponded for a while with a guy who taught oral history and also was a close friend of Terkel. But one evening I was browsing books at a Borders and came upon Gig—a book exactly written as I wanted to do. That ended my first book project.
Two years later while running along the American River bike trail in Sacramento while training for the 2006 Boston marathon, I thought about putting something I enjoy—baseball—into the same kind of oral history format as Terkel’s work (the marathon was four weeks away). After returning home from running, I quickly showered, and then checked the schedule for the Boston Red Sox and the Houston Astros (my flight made a stop in Houston). Both teams were playing at home during my travels.
I made a list of every baseball occupation I could think off, and sent letters describing the book proposal to the owners of the Red Sox and the Astros, and to the Boston Globe (looking for a sports columnist). The Red Sox didn’t respond to my first request (months later they did; Red Sox employees—including Johnny Pesky–are included in the book). Dan Shaughnessy of the Globe invited me to his house for an interview, and the evening of the marathon I received an e-mail invitation from the Astros to interview their people enroute back to Sacramento.
Tom Peyer: Of Flash and Baseball
I think DC Comics should employ writer Tom Peyer a great deal more. So to see him take on Flash writing chores in the wake of Mark Waid’s departure was a step in the right direction for my money. This Wednesday, April 16, marks the release of Flash 239, the second issue in Peyer’s first arc. We got to discuss his take on this phase in Wally West’s life and also discuss some of Peyer’s other non-DC projects. And, with the return of the baseball season, plus Peyer’s and mine shared love of the game (and in his case, a fondness for the Yankees) we had to talk baseball, however how briefly. I regret I was not quick enough to ask the Yankee fan about the time then-Yankee second baseman Chuck Knoblauch accidentally hit Keith Olbermann’s mom with an errant throw to first that flew into the stands.
Tim O’Shea: When you found out Waid was stepping down from the Flash, what was it mainly that attracted you to the assignment?
Tom Peyer: I’ve loved The Flash since I was a kid, so that’s all I needed right there. I also really enjoy writing characters people outside of comics have heard of. I hope you never have to explain R.E.B.E.L.S. ‘94 to your dental hygienist, because it’s a pain. So thanks, Flash, for being pretty well-known.