Baseball and a Wedding-(Part 1)
So, I opened my newspaper this morning to an article written by Vin Mannix, and there was a picture of a local couple standing on the pitchers mound at McKechnie Field in Bradenton, the spring training home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. They will be married at home plate on Saturday, February 6th. It seems the couple, Laura D. and Damon Z., met while playing softball and their second date was at McKechnie Field. They dated for a year then got engaged, but couldn’t settle on a wedding location.
Damon is a native of Franklin, PA and a lifelong Pirates fan, as are most of his family. The couple wanted an outdoor wedding and Laura, a third grade teacher, thought-how about the ballpark? Damon agreed and they approached the Pirates organization with the idea, and they said yes! The details are pretty cool. The groomsmen will be given baseball bats from the Pirates. (I’m not sure why, as this reminds me of a caveman whacking a lady over her head with his club and dragging her off to his cave, but that’s just me.) See part 2 tomorrow…
The 7th Inning Stretch (Part 5)
So, just when did “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” first get sung during a seventh inning stretch? Well, first we have to look at where it came from. A fellow named Jack Norworth was on a train in 1908 heading to Manhattan when the idea for the song came to him, and he jotted it down. It was put to music, and has become the best known baseball song of all time.
No one is really sure when it first got sung at a ballgame, but Chicago White Sox announcer, Harry Caray had the fans sing it during the seventh inning stretch in 1971. The White Sox owner Bill Veeck, snuck a microphone into the booth & Harry Caray sang it loudly at Comiskey Park, without knowing everyone could hear his not-so-smooth voice. (Maybe that’s why fans were putting baseball gloves over their ears.) At any rate, it was a mainstay in Chicago after that. Caray switched to the Cubs and began to let celebrities lead the singing. The most memorable was Mike Ditka, but that’s another story…
The 7th Inning Stretch (Part 4)
A third theory was dug up by baseball historians. It shows a manuscript dated in 1869, a full thirteen years before the “Perfect” Brother Jasper’s timeout. It seems to be documenting what can only be described as a seventh inning stretch. The letter was penned by a member of the first professional baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, whose name was Harry Wright.
Harry describes in his letter that the spectators would all get up off the hard seats and move around and stretch in the middle of the seventh inning. Now, call me slow but you don’t have to hit me over the head with a baseball bat to think that it sounds like they were all taking a seventh inning stretch! So, when did singing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” get added to the fray? Well, there’s another theory…
The 7th Inning Stretch (Part 3)
Another theory was that Brother Jasper of Mary was given credit for bringing baseball to Manhattan College in the late 1800’s. Now, Brother Jasper was known as the “Perfect of Discipline,” (which means being in charge of keeping unruly students in line. This might have involved a baseball bat, but that is just my theory) as well as the coach of the team.
In 1882 during a game on a muggy day, the students were getting restless in the seventh inning, so the “Perfect” (man, I love that title) stopped the game and had everyone stand up and unwind. That worked so well that he did it every game. The Manhattan College custom spread to the majors after the New York Giants saw their first seventh inning stretch at an exhibition game, and the rest is history-or is it? Another theory…
The 7th Inning Stretch (Part 2)
That was tradition number one. The second tradition that began that day was the first seventh-inning stretch. President Taft, as you may or may not know, was a very large man. At 300 pounds, he was the largest president our country has ever had. That opening day game between the Athletics and the Senators was beginning to drag on.
In the middle of the seventh-inning, President Taft just couldn’t sit still on that hard wooden seat much longer, so he stood up to “stretch his legs” and move around a bit. When he did that, everyone else did the same thing. Who knows, if he was sitting on a catchers mitt, we might not have a seventh-inning stretch today? At any rate, he didn’t-and we do. Now, for some other theories…
The 7th Inning Stretch (Part 1)
Ever since I was a little kid and watching baseball, there has always been a seventh inning stretch. I never thought much about it, but then I began to wonder; was it always part of the game? Naturally, I had to do some research to see just when and where it all began. These are some fun “facts” I uncovered. Two traditions actually began that day.
Folklore has it (I say this because there is more than one theory on the subject) that it all began on April 14, 1910 at Griffith Stadium in Washington, DC. The game was between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Washington Senators and was attended by the President of the United States, William Howard Taft. Before the game began, the umpire, Billy Evans, on the spur of the moment handed the baseball to the President and asked him to throw it over the plate. Without even wearing a baseball glove, Taft threw out the “first pitch” –a tradition that has seen every president since, except Jimmy Carter, carry it out…
Statue Unveiled Honoring Mazeroski
It was a baseball game you would never forget if you had either seen it on TV or heard it on the Radio. Game 7 of the 1960 World Series featured the Pittsburgh Pirates and the heavily favored New York Yankees. It was the bottom of the 9th inning and Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending, World Series winning home run to left field.
“Maz” grew up in a one room house near Wheeling, WV and pretended to play baseball with a wooden stick and a rock because his family couldn’t afford either a baseball glove or a baseball bat. The Hall of Famer now has a street named after him, and is getting this 12’ tall statue of him rounding second base with his batting helmet held high in his right hand, after hitting the homerun, erected outside of PNC Park. Thanks for the memories Bill…
It’s Almost Spring Training Time
Now that I live in Florida, I still look forward to spring training, but not quite as much as I did as when I lived in the Chicago area. For those of you who live in the “frozen north” I feel your pain. Somewhere under all that “beautiful” snow, there are baseball diamonds just waiting to thaw out.
In just a week or two, pitchers and catchers from both the Orioles and the Pirates will be reporting to our area. It won’t be long before we’ll hear the sound of the umpires yelling “PLAY BALL” and the crack of the baseball bat. By the way, we have flocks of robin red-breasts down here on vacation. They said they’ll see you again in about four or five weeks and not to worry, they won’t drink and fly when they are on their way home…
Playing Softball in Combat Boots
Back in the late 1960’s I spent three years in the US Army. After spending 14-months in South Korea, I was reassigned to Germany which was like going to a party for 16-months compared to Korea. I was stationed at a Nike-Hercules Guided Missile Battery located in the middle of nowhere. We did however have a softball team which I wasn’t on.
One day, our battery had an “away game” but they were one player short of a team. The team captain asked me if I could play third base. I told him I could but I didn’t have any softball equipment, not even shoes. He said they had plenty of softball gloves, but I would have to wear my own footgear. So, I played my first softball game in Germany wearing combat boots. We lost 8-3…
Time to Pass the Baton
With Little League baseball many decades behind me, I had a son of my own. When my son Andy became Little League age, he wanted to play also. We would play catch to improve his skills so naturally, the next step was to buy him a catchers mitt of his very own. Andy was a little excited about being catcher until he found out there was pain involved.
He managed to squeak out one season as catcher, but he really didn’t like it-not like I did when I was a kid. If you don’t like being catcher it’s just too hard a position to play and be any good at it. That was when Andy started his pitching career which I blogged about back in November. At least he was involved with a catcher…