Horace Stoneham. The name register with you? Maybe not. We're plumbing baseball history here. Going way back, as it were. We're going back to when Minnesota was seeking big league status in the sport. Imagine the Twin Cities being shy of big league status. Well, there was a time.
That time included the first five years of my life. As a preschooler I could not have paid much attention. I gathered years later that U of M Gopher football was the really big-time sport in Minnesota. But that was just one team. And it was not the big league pros.
The history of getting big league ball for our far north location is pretty involved. We had a ballpark located in the Twin Cities suburbs to dangle for the big league interests. You would think that would be enough, right there. You would think the pro sports owners would be salivating to come to Minnesota.
Up through the early and mid '50s, "a trip west" in big league baseball meant St. Louis or Chicago. Amazing! Perhaps it took a while for plane transportation to develop and be reliable. Nothing promotes nostalgia more about big league ball than to conjure up images of the ballplayers on trains! They probably developed more cohesion as a unit with the arrangement, the forced togetherness.
The Robert Redford movie "The Natural" did a good job of impressing the memories. A strange thing about that movie, incidentally - very strange I'd observe - is that it romanticized baseball before integration. Why not an issue? I would suggest it was because of Redford's reputation as a progressive. He got slack.
I wouldn't slam the movie: the players themselves were always just pawns. I remember the biopic about Jackie Robinson a few years back. Chadwick Boseman starred. A scene that pops back for me was where the Leo Durocher character - the Brooklyn manager - advises his team about how black players were on the way: "They're good and they want to play," he told his Dodgers.
Major league baseball of today would want such ambition to return, I suggest, because blacks have withdrawn from baseball and gravitated to football and basketball. They certainly flourish in the latter two sports - a tip of the hat.
Well, the advancing black players in the '50s included Willie Mays. Willie Mays! In the news recently for having passed on. RIP Willie, you had unmatched talent, impressive career longevity and were controversy-free. You plied your talents for us all to enjoy, congratulations. Born to play baseball.
But would he be a baseball player today? Good question. Surely he could excel in the other two sports I cited. Many of the top MLB stars in my childhood were African-American or black. Tony Oliva was a Cuban black. Vic Power was from Puerto Rico where he grew up in a culture with no racism. Fascinating.
He noticed the success of the Braves after their 1953 shift from Boston to Milwaukee. So as a result, to use the wording of the Wikipedia profile of Stoneham, "Stoneham decided to move his Giants to the Twin Cities of Minnesota." Intriguing to read all this now.
Willie Mays could have come to our state to enjoy the prime of his career. The team had many strengths as it would win the National League pennant in 1962. Committed as Stoneham seemed to be, we know of course that he and Mays did not come here. Stoneham broke bread with Walter O'Malley, owner of the Dodgers. O'Malley related that he was negotiating to transfer his Dodgers from Brooklyn to L.A.
"California here we come." The culmination of inevitability.
In previous times California had the Pacific Coast League which had a talent level nearly as good as the majors. The actor Chuck Connors played there.
O'Malley was set on continuing the rivalry with the Giants, as both the Dodgers and Giants had been storied denizens of The Big Apple. How could New York City lose two major league teams? The power and prestige of that market? Left with just the A.L.'s New York Yankees for a few years? And when the National League came back in 1962, it was as if MLB was punishing NYC - the Mets were hugely non-competitive.
O'Malley suggested that Stoneham contact the San Francisco mayor. "Stoneham soon abandoned his Minnesota plan and shifted his attention, permanently, to San Francisco," Wikipedia tells us.
But just think how close Minnesota was, to getting a completely different team with a different set of star players, from the Senators-turned-Twins. Yes we got the Senators with the crusty, cheap, curmudgeonly owner Calvin Griffith. We tried making his image charming. Never really worked.
Of course Minnesota was gaga for a time, may I say, with orgasmic pleasure over the Twins being created. How could we be denied big league ball before 1961? Strange. But it finally started in '61. And in '62 we chased the Yankees and finished second in the A.L. when only one team from each league played post-season. That is hugely strange too. I'm sure economics explains.
I was six years old when the Twins and Vikings started. The new big league world was just in time to treat my generation of the boomers.
Baseball reached a climax in 1965 of course. But we lost that cotton pickin' Game 7 of the World Series to those Dodgers of L.A. After that the orgasmic quality of the support faded, to be revived well down the road in 1987 with a completely new generation of players. We had forgotten the mere thrill of having big league baseball. We had forgotten the novelty of the once shiny new Met Stadium. We had begun taking things for granted, got spoiled maybe, and leave it to my boomer generation to get spoiled.
Today! Heavens, look how we bask in big league sports ventures with so many sport-specific stadiums. If anyone thought the Metrodome would be the "last word," home of the Twins, Gophers and Vikings, well forget it! So we're more spoiled than ever? Maybe. Do we appreciate it all?
I remember the thrill of having the Timberwolves established here, 1989. I was 34 years old.
Minnesota dazzles today. And just think how we could have dazzled with Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda! Mays played with the Minneapolis Millers in 1951. Cepeda played with the old St. Cloud "Rox."
Today we have the female "Lynx" to cheer on in hoops. That would have been a hard sell for 1950s Minnesota!
Once again, Willie Mays RIP.
 |
| I had this baseball card. |
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment