Tony Kubek with microphone: "establishment"

Tony Kubek sat side by side with Curt Gowdy in the broadcast booth for baseball. The two gave us NBC's "Game of the Week" on Saturday afternoon. Only rarely in those days could fans see televised games involving teams other than your own. We in Minnesota were invested in the Twins in the team's first decade of existence in the '60s.
I was rather bored and distressed in school, and baseball was an uplifting departure from that routine. So I paid close attention to the Saturday matinee type of showcase for big league ball. Once a week! A quite limited diet but one we had to accept. The word "digital" would not have even registered with most of us.
We wondered what teams NBC would pick for the next Saturday game. American or National League? Remember, no interleague play then either. To this day many people my age have a hard time, I'm sure, accepting the Astros as American League.
The Astros played in their wondrous dome which we learned in class was "the eighth wonder of the world." Probably learned that from one of those "World Events" posters at East Elementary in Morris. (We needed the "East" to differentiate from Longfellow where I attended grades 1-3.)  Ironic that a stadium like the Astrodome could go from "wonder of the world" to defunct. Life often accelerates and leaves past assumptions in the dust.
Were it not for our pandemic now, we'd see big league ball on TV with lots of choices. And it's a world we now take for granted, which we assume will return - knock on wood - when the mysterious virus abates. Seems at present, we cannot assume anything about the virus. Times change and so does our culture.
So when I introduce Tony Kubek here, I must explain that in the '60s, culture clashes caused people to get pigeon-holed, sometimes fairly and sometimes not. Society today seems largely to have forgotten the cultural divisions and stereotypes.
My image of Kubek is one of a crusty and humorless interview he did, with a player who had written a revolutionary baseball book. Whether you considered "Ball Four" excellent literature or not - I considered it superbly crafted for the kind of journalism it was executing - it was a tome that pried open cultural division.
 
Rose-colored glasses?
Today we are all so forgiving of people who might have offended us then. Offended? Think of what was at stake. War or peace in Southeast Asia. The desperation of young men to avoid military conscription for an obviously unnecessary war. Tens of thousands of young men - let's knock off "men and women" because you know what I'm saying - died. "Body bags" entered our terminology and many years later surfaced again in, of all things, "The Karate Kid."
Civil rights made painful and halting progress. We were on the doorstep of women's liberation but that took time - my, high schools didn't have girls varsity teams until my senior year.
The progressives or liberated crowd in my growing-up years decided the traditional sports book had to shake off pretensions. It was part of peeling through the veneer of idyllic American notions, to see the athletes as real human beings. Just as we needed to see the young U.S. servicemen as vessels of God that needn't be thrust at an enemy that was described as subhuman. That old trick wasn't going to work anymore because people were getting better educated, had more options, and the media world was getting more adventurous in finding truth.

So in 1970 we got the breakthrough book about life in big league baseball. It was written by Jim Bouton but had vital input from Leonard Shecter too. Shecter was known as one of the "chipmunks," a group of New York City sportswriters who broke away from the old mold.

Bouton reviewed a season in which he played for three teams: Seattle of the American League, Tacoma in the minors and Houston in the National League. The book benefited greatly from that variety. Bouton was throwing a new pitch, the knuckleball, and sort of "hung in there" in 1969. He tried extending this into 1970. The notorious niche of the book was a distraction for him and his team I'm sure.
His notoriety put him on the pre-game show for Kubek and Gowdy one Saturday. Kubek did the interview. I'll use 1960s parlance here and say Kubek came off as "establishment." That doesn't register with you? Memories of this have faded as we wish to put our national warts behind us. Another term going along with "establishment" was "narc" (short for narcotics officer).
"Establishment" meant that you weren't likely to second-guess the war much if at all. You'd be down on drugs and probably even on rock 'n' roll. As a kid on the converse end of things, I felt I had to dress at least moderately "grubby" and have hair over my ears.
Silly of course to focus on such things. But focus we did through a troubling decade, with the hinges finally coming off with Kent State and the Manson murders. I grew up when the No. 1 national story was the war and it was a war the U.S. lost, a proclamation heard in the media today even in the most "objective" programs. Wolf Blitzer has said it and NBC's Brian Williams too. So, what a time to grow up, in terms of setting your orientation toward life. A little defeatism maybe? Cynicism?

I remember watching the Kubek interview with Bouton and immediately thinking Kubek was going "establishment." I thought it unfortunate. I remembered Kubek as a Yankee from the early '60s dynastic years. By the time I was old enough to pay much attention, Kubek's offense had fallen off and I had a pedestrian image of him. His was an unfortunate story of injuries cropping up.
A key physical problem for Kubek came away from the diamond: touch football when in the National Guard. As kids we didn't realize just how frail were the bodies of our favorite pro athletes. As time has gone on, I have gained much better understanding, to the point where I have cooled as a fan. As kids we all had the "invulnerability of youth," right?
We might get frustrated with a favorite player when he was out with an injury. Some like Rod Carew had National Guard commitments that protected them from being sent to Vietnam. But we'd get upset about their periodic absence. Need I remind you that the Guard was the ticket out of active combat, used by sons of many favored and well-to-do families? I don't blame anyone for doing anything to get out of Vietnam - this includes George W. Bush.
Interesting how Bush looks more and more like a sympathetic figure as the Trump administration just keeps oozing along.

Bouton stood there gamely for his pre-game interview for NBC's Game of the Week. Kubek was an old teammate of Bouton. Bouton had his prime with the Bronx crew and probably crashed and burned (with his fastball) due to pressure in '65 to pitch through a sore arm. He took notes through the '69 season and worked with Shecter and others to write a groundbreaking book: "Ball Four."
The media began telling us about controversy in connection to the book. The book broke rules. It was derided as "kiss and tell." It showed heroes like Mickey Mantle as flawed mortals while not dissing their talents. It's just that they were human beings with all the ups and downs and human failings as we all possess. Seems no big deal. But it was at the time.
Naturally all the commentary in the media served to push book sales! I remember all the pushback but there were other elements in the legacy baseball journalism apparatus that weren't so quick to criticize. I'm thinking of the Sporting News, "baseball's Bible."
Change can be upsetting and uncomfortable. Wise souls know it has to be confronted. I'm disappointed in Kubek because he could have taken a more measured approach. But this was network TV in the days of censorship and the "Big 3" with all its redundant westerns. Let's stay in our comfortable world, many of the old denizens seemed to think. Kubek's tenor immediately showed he was gravitating toward that. He reported all the intense criticism and said "I agree with them."
Bouton spoke into the mike as best he could with confidence.
There was no turning back in sports journalism once Ball Four found its legs.
Bouton was outspoken against the Vietnam war and most certainly an activist toward civil rights. He represented the new and enlightened wave in American life. And far from hurting the interests of his fellow players - my goodness, his book has been cited as key in bringing more rights and riches to his crowd - he has been presented as a boon. Kubek was a relic. Maybe he was sort of a stooge or an instrument of a status quo that was represented by writers Dick Young and Jim Ogle. Their time had come and gone just like Lawrence Welk.
Today we live in an age of "conflict resolution." There seemed little of that sort of thing in the '60s. But conflict can be good if light shines on the desired way forward.
It seems uncool to think of people like Kubek as regressive today. This is the age of the "Greatest Generation" for WWII which I guess wipes out the generation gap. But the schisms were real and uncomfortable in the '60s - we can too easily forget. I have not forgotten. Paul Harvey, our nation doesn't turn its lonely eyes to you. Hail the Smothers Brothers.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com