Heya, Cyberfans--It's been awhile since ya'll have received anything of substance from moi. Here's an article which is a bit of a departure for me and may come as a surprise. When I was a child, going to the toy store or ice cream store was fun but not as exciting as going to the library and checking out 8 books at a time. The other activity that was better than toys or ice cream was going to any place that had animals (pet shops and the Beverly Park pony rides.) I even have photos of myself at the age of 3 in England. In them I'm talking on the phone, looking at a book, doing a puzzle, and pressing a stuffed animal to my chest. They say that one's personality is 80% formed by the age of 4. Yes, my proclivities began very early, and I'll wager that yours did, too.

     True to form, I visited the Pasadena Central Library recently and ended up staying there for hours. This library was built in 1927, and the architecture is Beaux Arts Mediterranean Revival When inside, it's easy to imagine that one has traveled back many decades in time. As I gathered 27 books and books on cd, I felt like someone who had been given $1000 to spend in 20 minutes and dashed around madly in a febrile feeding frenzy, collecting more books than I could possibly finish in the allotted time. I was about to leave (reluctantly) when I noticed an exhibit that intrigued me. Of all things, it was the annual Baseball Reliquary display with photos, artifacts, and articles of times gone by about America's National Pastime. (In television ratings, Major League baseball ranks a poor third to football and basketball, but it remains the national pastime, because it "resonates more deeply in America's soul than any other sport.")

     Why would I, a person who detests television and would never willingly attend any spectator sport game, be so interested in the Baseball Reliquary? Besides the fact that the display covers many years of American history, I confess that while enrolled at Beverly Hills High School, I did carry a transistor radio to school during the World Series games, read many books about teenagers playing sports, and screamed myself hoarse at the crosstown Bruin-Trojan football games when I was a student at UCLA. (I wasn't really that interested in the technicalities of the game, but I was dating the quarterback and also simply wanted my school to win.)

     I spent over an hour at the library scribbling quasi-indecipherable notes for my swim-buddy, Jose, who is a grand baseball aficionado and expert, but also thought it would be fun to share what I learned with you, my other cyberfans.

     On display was an enormous, multicolored, chewed bubble gum mosaic portrait of Eddie Murray, a former first baseman and designated hitter for the Baltimore Orioles and coach for the LA Dodgers.

     I saw a candy bar named for Reggie Jackson, 
"Mr. October", because it "tells you how good it is." I also saw a tortilla with the likeness of Walter O' Malley, the sports exec who owned the Brooklyn/LA Dodgers. The tortilla is now 40 years old and was discovered by Regina Flores in 1959. Finding it convinced Ms. Flores to give up her home in Chavez Ravine (so Dodger Stadium could be built) and move to Highland Park. She had never been interested in baseball before but became an ardent Dodgers fan until her death. I tried to find out how that tortilla came into existence and did see it online. At the library it looked as though a photo had been pasted onto a tortilla, but I couldn't find out more. We've all heard of the Shroud of Turin, a piece of linen which many believe to show an image of Jesus, and the toasted cheese sandwich image which purportedly looks like the Virgin Mary and was sold for $28,000 on EBay! And then there's the famous lox, cream cheese and bagel sandwich that looks like Golda Meir--okay, I made that one up! (Many of you are well-acquainted with the writer's various eccentricities, so you may not be surprised to learn --and this is an exclusive scoop which I've NEVER revealed to anyone heretofore!-- that there is a likeness of the incarnation of evil himself, Adolf Hitler, (the "Furor", as I call him) on my new bathroom linoleum floor! I see it every time I use the facilities from a certain angle. I'm not making this up or including it for comic or karmic "relief". I just hope that if word "leaks" out, my home won't be "inundated" by curious thrill-seekers. I do actually own an antique velvet couch which escaped from Nazi Germany, but that is a whole other ballgame.

    Getting back to first base, I learned that in 1901 British entrepreneur and concessionaire, Harry M. Stevens, noticed that on a cold day at the N.Y. Polo Grounds, ice cream wasn't selling well. He went out, got some sausages, boiled them, slipped them into some rolls, and told his hawkers to sell them to the crowd, saying, "Get 'em while they're hot." It is now estimated that an average of 862,702 hot dogs is consumed per ballpark every year in the U.S.  Stevens was also the first to serve drinks with straws, so that fans wouldn't have to tilt their heads and miss a play. That Brit was soitenly a brilliant and enterprising chap, by golly.

     Among stadium vendors there is a hierarchy. Lowest on the totem pole are the water vendors. Moving up a notch are the cotton candy and pizza sellers. Even more prestigious are the peanut vendors. I imagine that hot dog vendors are the kings of the sandlot. (Funny, I always thought that water was more essential to survival than cotton candy or pizza but, apparently, not to sports fans.) In April of 1989, the San Diego Padres became the first major league franchise to sell sushi to its fans. Banzai!

Food is intimately tied up with baseball in many ways--more than with any other sport, I'm guessing, unless pie-eating contests are considered a sport. Some players were very superstitious and consumed certain foods ritually, thinking that eating them would keep their winning streaks going. Beer-guzzling legend Wade Boggs (Red Sox, Yankees) ate chicken religiously before every game. 6'7" Ben McDonald (Orioles, Brewers) ate sardines with mustard before every game. Al Lopez, "El Senor", ate kippered herring and eggs for breakfast for 17 days in a row, not wanting to jinx his team's winning streak...and Lou Gehrig's mother supplied his team, the N.Y. Yankees, with pickled eel regularly. Shoeless Joe Jackson ate animal crackers and drank corn liquor at bedtime every night. Perhaps that's why he couldn't find his shoes--or fit into them!

     Besides endorsing many products, including drinks, snacks, and  foods, some baseball greats went into the restaurant business. Mickey Mantle, the famous N.Y.Yankee from Oklahoma, owned the "Country Cookin'" restaurant chain, whose motto was: "To get a better piece of chicken, you'd have to be a rooster." Mantle, an American hero and legend, was plagued by severe alcoholism, which shortened his life and career. His earlier restaurants failed, but "Mickey Mantle's Restaurant and Sports Bar" in NYC's Central Park South was managed by others and became a popular hangout for Yankee fans for 25 years until it closed in 2012. 

     Tommy Lasagna, oops, I mean Lasorda, former pitcher and manager (Brooklyn/LA Dodgers) is famous for his love affair with food, especially Italian food, of course. His prodigious weight gains and losses are well-known and evoke the sympathy of many fans. Lasorda, now 87, (years, not pounds) owns Lasorda Foods and was said to have eaten six helpings of linguine with clams at his now-closed restaurant in Pasadena. His new trattoria is located in Dodger Stadium's new plaza area.

     While we're on the subject of food, how many of you are familiar with the "Mr. Potato-Head of Baseball"? In 1987, 25-year-old Dave Bresnahan, a Minor League catcher, wanted to liven up a dull game. He carved a potato to look like a baseball and threw it past third base as a runner trotted home. The runner was tagged out with the potato, and it would have been a perfect ploy; but the umpire granted a run to the hitter because of Bresnahan's deception. I guess at that moment, the "chips" were down. The next day Bresnahan was fined and expelled from his team's parent club, the Cleveland Indians, for committing an affront to the integrity of baseball. Yet, he became a celebrity overnight and was widely lauded by fans. He said, "Lou Gehrig had to play 2,140 consecutive games and bat .340 before his number was retired, and all I had to do was bat .140 and throw a potato." Today he is a successful stockbroker in Tempe, Arizona.

     As soon as the infamous inning of the game was over, one of the umpires pocketed the potato and then, incredibly, threw it into a wastebasket near the stands! A teenager retrieved it. The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, wasn't interested; but the Baseball Reliquary in Pasadena was. I saw it in the library, preserved in a jar.

    The next section of this article on baseball lore involves two stories about legend George Herman "Babe" Ruth, Jr. (Boston Red Sox and Braves, N.Y. Yankees.) Ruth played for the Major League for 22 seasons from 1914-1935 and was known as  "The Bambino" and "The Sultan of Swat." He is considered by many to be the greatest baseball player of all time and was one of the first five inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Yet, in spite of his enormous skill and popularity, he, too, severely damaged his health, life, and career by excessive eating and alcohol consumption. (The "Elvis" of Baseball?...or was Elvis the "Ruth of Rock 'n' Roll"?) A typical breakfast for the 260- pound Babe would be a quart of whiskey and ginger ale, an enormous Porterhouse steak, six eggs and a plate of hashed brown potatoes.

     This national hero, known also for womanizing and bad behavior, died at the age of 53 in 1948 from cancer but experienced many life-endangering episodes throughout his career. One of the more famous ones was termed "The Bellyache Heard 'Round the World." On a train traveling from North Carolina in 1925, Ruth collapsed and was sent to New York to be hospitalized. The rumor was that he had eaten 12-18 hot dogs (should we blame Harry M. Stevens?) The truth about Ruth's collapse is shrouded in mystery. Some blame excessive alcohol, food and carousing; and, although I couldn't find mention of this on Wikipedia, there was a note at the library that suggests part of Ruth's illness was due to gonorrhea.

     Ending the story of "The Bambino" (but not this rant just yet) on a sweeter note, the candy bar, Baby Ruth, is believed to have been named after the home run hero and came out in 1921, as Ruth's career was on the rise. The Curtiss Candy Company was located on the same street as Wrigley Field in Chicago. Curtiss claimed that the bar was named after President Grover Cleveland's daughter, Ruth; but this is suspected to have been a ploy to avoid paying Babe Ruth royalties. (President Cleveland had left the White House 30 years before the bar made its appearance, and Ruth Cleveland died in 1904 at the age of 12, 17 years before the confection (and the story of its name) were concocted--As an aside, my third-grade teacher at Carthay Center Elementary School in LA was Mrs. Cleveland, married to a great-nephew of the Pres.--we called her "Crabapple Cleveland". She was quite wrinkled, like those apple-faced dolls that became popular in the sixties, when women traded hairspray and beehive hairdos for granola and granny dresses--although we couldn't have known about those dolls in the fifties. Our fourth-grade teacher, pretty, young Mrs. Gertz, was honored by another alliterative epithet, "Girdleface Gertz." Did ya'all know that Grover Cleveland was the only U.S. President to serve two non-consecutive terms? He was the 22nd and 24th P.O.T.U.S. Eventually, Curtiss's denial notwithstanding, Baby Ruth became Major League baseball's official candy bar and proud sponsor of the Chicago Cubs. Hmmm? Researching and writing this article has made my occasionally macabre mind wonder if the Sultan of Swat really died not from cancer, gonorrhea, or hot dogs but from overdosing on the eponymous Baby Ruth candy bars.

       From the relatively few biographies I read during my visit to the library, I was struck ("out"?) by how many sluggers slugged down copious amounts of liquor throughout their lives. In fact, I'm thinking that the name of our national sport should be changed from baseball to "BOOZEBALL"! Talk about your "beer-battered batters!" Here is yet another vignette for your edification and entertainment: it's about baseball's first superstar, Mike "King" Kelly. Kelly was born in 1857 and died in 1894 at the age of 36 from pneumonia. He was extraordinarily gifted as a player and played for and managed many teams, starting at the age of 15. Kelly was daring, tricky, and innovative. He was known for stealing many bases; in one game, he actually stole six of them. He was extremely handsome with a luxuriant handlebar mustache and was considered to be one of the best-dressed men in America.  A song, "Slide, Kelly, Slide", was written about him, as well as a film of the same name in 1927. Though he lived in the puritanical Victorian era, whores, I mean, hordes of women threw themselves at him; and he lived a very racy life filled with sexual exploits and lots of hard drinking. (It is certainly no surprise that heroes in most sports are every bit as promiscuously profligate as politicians--the only exceptions may be fiercely competitive tiddlywink players.) There is a probably true tale which says that on a very hot Chicago day, Kelly decided to take a mug of beer to the outfield. A hitter sent a screaming shot to the right, and witnesses claimed that Kelly made a one-handed catch without spilling a drop of beer! In addition to having a spectacular baseball career, Kelly became a Vaudevillian actor and loved being in the limelight, whether on the field or on stage. His fame and prestige were enormous; yet, until I saw the Reliquary's article and photos, I had never heard of him. Have you?

     As huge as "King" Kelly's stature was, the next story is about the most diminutive player of all. In an odd reversal, a fictitious work inspired a real life event. In 1941 James Thurber, the popular American writer, penned a short story called, "You Could Look It Up." It was about a baseball manager who hires a 3-foot potato, I mean, midget to liven up a sagging season. The midget (a character named Pearl du Monville!) fails to follow instructions and swings at the ball, which messes up the game for his team. The manager is so incensed that he picks Pearl up and hurls him into the crowd. Pearl disappears; but, somehow, in spite of his error, the team rallies and goes on to win the pennant. In real life, the St. Louis Browns' owner, Bill Veeck, hired 65-pound, 3'7" dwarf, Eddie Gaedel to play during a double-header in 1951, as part of a publicity stunt. Gaedel's uniform number was 1/8. Veeck had instructed Gaedel not to swing but to walk to first base. He threatened the dwarf by saying that he had taken out a million dollar insurance policy on him and that he would be standing on the roof with a rifle, ready to kill Gaedel if he even looked as though he were about to take a swing. Gaedel followed instructions and walked to first base to the standing ovation of the fans, bowing as he strolled. The next day Gaedel's contract was voided, and Veeck was accused of making a mockery of the game. From then on midgets and dwarfs were banned from playing Major League baseball. Veeck retaliated by threatening to request an official ruling about whether Phil Rizzuto, the reigning Yankee SHORTstop and MVP winner was a short ballplayer or a tall midget. (Rizzuto, known as "The Scooter" was 5'6".) Although Gaedel earned only $100 for his brief appearance at the plate, he later earned $17,000 by appearing on television. Later, Veeck hired Gaedel and several other dwarfs and midgets to be vendors at the games, so as not to block the view of the spectators. Sadly, Gaedel, like "King" Kelly, died at the age of 36--after being brutally attacked on his way home from a bowling alley.

     The last story in this lengthy baseball article is about a man who was thought to have invented the game of baseball. If you were like me, patient reader, you grew up thinking that a fellow named Abner Doubleday deserves credit for the game. This myth was debunked when it was discovered that baseball was fashioned after a game played in England. Well, that's just not cricket, is it? Even though Doubleday did not invent the sport nor ever claimed to have done so, his name is inextricably bound up with baseball.

     Doubleday was a career army officer and Union general who fired the first shot of the Civil War in defense of Fort Sumter. The myth says that Doubleday invented baseball in a cow pasture in Cooperstown, NY, in 1839; but at that time he was attending West Point Military Academy on the Hudson River in New York. Doubleday had a distinguished military career, and during WWII, a U.S. liberty ship, the S.S. Abner Doubleday, was posthumously named in his honor After retiring from the army, Doubleday became deeply involved with the Theosophical Society, a group that was founded in 1875 in order to explore the nature of divinity, mysticism, philosophy, and religion with the goals of enlightenment and salvation. When Madame Helena Blavatsky, one of the leaders of the foundation, left for India, Doubleday became president of the American branch. Another prominent member was Thomas Edison. If you are interested in learning more about Doubleday, the myth of his invention of baseball, or anything that you have read in this article, I invite you to delve further online.  I also invite you to email me back and comment on what I've written and add your own relevant information! Furthermore, ya'all will be relieved to know that no midgets, dwarfs, shrouds, tortillas, potatoes, candy bars, managers, or drunks were harmed during the writing of this essay.

     I compiled the facts for this piece over a five-day period. I researched, assiduously checked out everything online, sorted and sifted through many articles, and wrote, edited and re-edited, spending well over eleven hours composing what you've read.  I hope you've had as much fun reading it as I have writing it. I've been an educator, business owner, antique auto restorer, artist, choreographer, belly dancer, calligrapher, fortune teller, satirist, poet, singer, playwright, set and costume designer, lyricist, winner of the prestigious BOOBY prize for piano recitals, LAST one chosen for any team sport--I always manage to stand out, even in disgrace!--and much more. Perhaps this article will launch a new career for me as a sportswriter! In fact, if I start hanging out at Dodger Stadium, etc., I'd probably have a much better chance of meeting eligible men than at the operas and concerts I favor, where there is a plethora of superannuated blue-haired ladies and fellas who prefer fellas. All I'd need to do is to trade caviar and champagne for peanuts and beer and my tiara for a backward-facing baseball cap. Tres elegant!!

     Jose, this one's for you...and since it is, I'm going to end with an adorable joke which I did not write and which many of you have heard:  A fellow from Mexico named Jose decides to visit his cousin in Los Angeles. When he returns to Mexico, his friends and family ask him how he liked America. He can't stop raving about how wonderful the Americans were to him. In fact, he tells them that when his cousin took him to Dodger Stadium to see his first baseball game, the entire stadium wanted to know if he had a good view and stood up and sang, "Ho-o-zay, can you see?" The End