With apologies to John Steinbeck, these travels are with Charlie Manuel, the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, not a raggedy dog travelling across the country, although I would like to do that some day. And more, this note is about baseball itself...
Despite the concerted effort of the rich guys who own the teams to ruin baseball, it endures and it sustains itself by memories and nostalgia. You have to be raised in the United States and, maybe, Japan, to appreciate baseball. France won't do it. Belgium, maybe. But they'll have to pronounce BAULLL more clearly.
I once tried to introduce baseball to my girlfriend, Beatrice, an exchange student from France, in the summer of 1960. The Phillies were futile and the old ballpark, Connie Mack Stadium, once known as Shibe Park, was a wreck, but it would continue to host major league baseball for another 10 years. Typically the Phillies would fill about 10,000 of the 55,000 seats available and many less for a day game. I took Beatrice to a day game; a Sunday afternoon match against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
I parked on 21st St. and paid the kid who propositioned me $1.00 to "watch my car, mister," a way to insure having wheels and not milk crates propping up the vehicle after the game. I drove a 1953 Chevy then, purchased with the lucre of my summer job the previous summer on the boardwalk in Ocean City NJ, all $500 of it. It was worth a buck ransom.
We sat along the third base line, I remember, and we played the Dodgers, who had moved to L.A. only two years before, but who were still the team of black America because they had brought Jackie Robinson to the Bigs. Most of North Philadelphia was seated along the third base line too. Everyone had a brown paper bag. And Beatrice and I were treated to every form of booze for the first two innings – Night Train, Baltimore Club, Strawberry Blonde, Jack - we sipped them all. It wasn't long, though, before our newfound friends vacated the seats around us and it wasn't much longer until I realized that I was the reason they had left.
By explaining baseball in front of a crowd who knew everything about baseball, I had alienated my entire section. Telling the infield fly rule might have been acceptable, but who wants to listen to a callow white kid explaining the foul lines? I might have gotten away with strikes and balls, but double plays made them leave in droves and find new seats.
Charlie Manuel would understand this. They left the seats in droves when he came to town too. Beatrice, who has returned to Strasbourg, might not.
Despite the concerted effort of the rich guys who own the teams to ruin baseball, it endures and it sustains itself by memories and nostalgia. You have to be raised in the United States and, maybe, Japan, to appreciate baseball. France won't do it. Belgium, maybe. But they'll have to pronounce BAULLL more clearly.
I once tried to introduce baseball to my girlfriend, Beatrice, an exchange student from France, in the summer of 1960. The Phillies were futile and the old ballpark, Connie Mack Stadium, once known as Shibe Park, was a wreck, but it would continue to host major league baseball for another 10 years. Typically the Phillies would fill about 10,000 of the 55,000 seats available and many less for a day game. I took Beatrice to a day game; a Sunday afternoon match against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
I parked on 21st St. and paid the kid who propositioned me $1.00 to "watch my car, mister," a way to insure having wheels and not milk crates propping up the vehicle after the game. I drove a 1953 Chevy then, purchased with the lucre of my summer job the previous summer on the boardwalk in Ocean City NJ, all $500 of it. It was worth a buck ransom.
We sat along the third base line, I remember, and we played the Dodgers, who had moved to L.A. only two years before, but who were still the team of black America because they had brought Jackie Robinson to the Bigs. Most of North Philadelphia was seated along the third base line too. Everyone had a brown paper bag. And Beatrice and I were treated to every form of booze for the first two innings – Night Train, Baltimore Club, Strawberry Blonde, Jack - we sipped them all. It wasn't long, though, before our newfound friends vacated the seats around us and it wasn't much longer until I realized that I was the reason they had left.
By explaining baseball in front of a crowd who knew everything about baseball, I had alienated my entire section. Telling the infield fly rule might have been acceptable, but who wants to listen to a callow white kid explaining the foul lines? I might have gotten away with strikes and balls, but double plays made them leave in droves and find new seats.
Charlie Manuel would understand this. They left the seats in droves when he came to town too. Beatrice, who has returned to Strasbourg, might not.
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