Baseball Diary Vol II #3

Los Angeles May 31, 1983

Cover by Jagne Parkes: Presentation in the Temple

"In Japan, 'Chrees-masu' is of course an adopted holiday. So, appropriately, it is recast as a cross between Halloween and New Year's Eve. Santa Claus in the department store is usually female, and at office parties she is often nude....When Christmas night fell, and it was time to go to the pah-tay, my translator objected that I had not put on my costume. You have to wear a silly costume at Chrees-masu. And the men have to do their own makeup - lipstick, rouge, eye shadow.. My translator turned into an outre-space person swathed in crinkly aluminum foil and topped with crazy antennae, and carried a little of disappearing ink to splash on startled guests; I turned into a transvestite baseball player. With my Giants cap and jacket, female face, and crazy green swimming trunks pulled over orange long johns, I was the 'srender shortstop'. The fun had begun."
Raymond Mungo Confessions from Left Field

"Almost all the white ash used in Louisville Slugger bats is from trees in northern and eastern Pennsylvania. The ideal white ash for bat-making is produced by a tree grown on a ridge crest, or on a north- or east-facing slope. Such sites usually have the richer soils and high moisture retention that result in steady, moderately rapid growth. Because those places are favorable to trees, timber stands there are usually rather dense and the young ashes are forced to develop straight, tall boles to get their share of light. it takes from seventy-five to a hundred years to grow the kind of clean, straight-grained ash tree that (Hillerich & Bradsby) prefers for its baseball bats."
John Madson
Audobon Magazine

"A pitcher with a sore arm visits his doctor. The doctor advises him to soak the arm in hot water. The arm gets worse. The pitcher's cleaning woman suggest ice. When the pain vanishes, the pitcher goes back to the doctor and inquires, 'Why did you recommend hot water? My cleaning woman recommended ice and the arm got well.' The doctor responds, 'That's funny. My cleaning woman told me hot water was better.'"
Baseball humor

"What's invisible and smells like carrots? A rabbit fart."
4th grade humor


Report from Los Angeles
by The Editor

Memorial Day weekend. Hot. Beginning of summer. I was at the theatre playing costume master for a production of WILD OATS, recently discovered (make that re-discovered) 18th Century comedy brought into the public consciousness again by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was Friday night and I was trying to forget the awful feeling of a second loss in a row to the Giants right here in Dodger Stadium. Meanwhile, Donna was nursing a wretched stomach with chicken soup and prescriptions. She was coasting into the last half hour of THE SOUND OF MUSIC on television when her world was literally shaken by a loud crash. She sprang up from the pillows she was reclining on and ran to the window. On her way, there was a loud explosion that sent a blinding flash of white light into the dimly lit apartment. She recoiled, slightly blinded. The TV started sputtering and the picture went out for a few seconds. She shook her head and groped her way to the window. Three stories down, across the railroad tracks, there were a group of people surrounding a car that had smashed into a telephone pole. Suddenly another, louder explosion cut through the apartment and the television and lights went out. Blackness. She grabbed a robe and ran into the hall. She walked into a darkness so dense she thought she'd been thrown into a giant bowl of giblet gravy. She groped her way to the outside as other residents came out of their places, but there weren't many other people around, most of them having gone out of town for the holiday. When she got to the outside looked across the courtyard and over the distant hill was a crimson, radioactive glow. One of her neighbors came stumbling outside.

"What's going on?" He was practically delirious.

"I think a fire's started."

He ran back to his place, screaming for his roommate to get the hell out of there. Donna made her way downstairs and through the gate at the entrance. Down the street, the El Salvadoran refugee community was out in full force, trying to figure out what was going on. Donna saw another neighbor and asked what was happening. He was gesticulating like a madman, one hand free to express his views in what he considered the proper way, the other hand jealously clutching a bottle of wine.

"There's some guy out there trying to electrocute himself! I saw him grab two lines from the telephone pole and put 'em together and then there was all this noise! Migod, we're all gonna fry!"

Donna slapped him, made her way cautiously back upstairs, and awaited my return in the dark.

The next night I was feeling considerably better. The lights were back on, Fernando Valenzuela had shut out the accursed Frisco team, and I was in a better mood in the Los Angeles City College theatre dressing room. Meanwhile, back at the apartment, a new tenant was reaching the breaking point. He was a disturbed man. The first time I met him, he asked me about my sexuality, and confessed that he was confused about his. And in the next breath he started talking about his job at the mortuary. I didn't think too much about him one way or the other, not even when he almost rear ended my Dodge Colt with his black funeral van. After all, there was another guy in the apartment, Steve Yeager's cousin as a matter of fact, who drove around in a hearse all the time and dressed up like Dracula two or three times a week. But this new tenant was troubled. And on this Saturday night, with a girl friend under one arm and a bad grudge under the other, he took out his rifle and handgun and started shooting up the building. Something about his ex-wife just ticked him off. He fired a few rounds off the balcony and retired.

The next day my neighbor came by and gave me the rifle and pistol in question. Seems he and another neighbor, a guy who works out with Lou Ferigno and Arnold Schwartzenegger, paid the tenant a visit and took his toys from him. And I got them for safekeeping. The next day, he was kicked out.

And the Giants won three out of four in Chavez Ravine.


Report from Oakland
by The Fearless Forecaster

Jeez, why didn't you warn me? I took my latest copy of BD out of its envelope when it came in the mail yesterday, and that front cover almost blew my eyes out. Whew! I stumbled around my apartment for two hours to see well enough again to hit a slider. Your art director has really outdone herself this time and I think she deserves an award or something. And that photo essay by Mr. Hastings, well, what can I say about the ol' slugger that hasn't already been said? If only he could have fielded his position as well as he handles a Nikon. (Editors Note: Jack Hastings used to play first base for a softball team called The Power Elite.) I tip my lens cap to him.

Now, about KKKwiz #2. That first kwestion is kind of a lob, isn't it? Our 27th president, William Howard Taft, was the first chief executive to throw out the first ball on Opening Day (by the way, always capitalize "Opening Day", just like Christmas of Bob Dylan's Birthday), in 1910. The game? The Philadelphia Athletics were in town to play the Senators. Walter Johnson pitched a one-hitter and Washington won, 1-0.

I hate to mention this, but Kwestion 2 has a teensy-weensy misprint in it. The first and only Opening Day no-hitter occurred on April 16, 1940, not 1960. Its author was Bob Feller, who was 21 years old that year and beginning his fifth season with Cleveland. Yeah, that's right, Rapid Robert was pitching in the bigs when he was 16. He had a pretty good year in 1940, too. He led the AL in games, games started, complete games, innings pitched, strike outs, shutouts, and ERA. Oh, and wins, he was 27-11. Say, how old is Fernando this year, anyhow? Anyway, it was Feller's first no-no (he pitched two more). The opponent was Chicago (it was the first no-hitter pitched in Comisky Park since 1937) and the final score was 1-0. Feller struck out eight and walked five. His mom, dad, and sister, Marguerite, were among the 14,000 in attendance. Mr. Taft missed this opener because he died in 1930.

Incidentally, I know a lot of you are wondering: no, there has never been an Opening Day no-hitter in the NL. There have been a number of one-hitters, however, the last coming on April 17, 1934, by Lon Warneke of the Cubs. How many no-hitters have been pitched in major league history? All right, all right, I'll stop. But say, can you name the no-hitter that was pitched in 1975 by the combined efforts of four different pitchers? And who - ok, ok, enough.


Letters

Dear Ed: There's been a kind of controversy simmering in the sports section of the Chronicle up here. The people over in San Francisco seem to think that Dodger fans are, well, pigs, but I'm not so sure. What do you think? Is Mr. Bonde, whose Chronicle letter is quite restrained in comparison to others, right in his assessment, or is he exaggerating? Another writer claimed that Dodger fans never change their underwear. How about that? I always kind of liked the Dodgers, especially when the Yankees whomped them in the World Series.
Concerned in San Francisco

Dear Concerned: First of all, for the benefit of our readers, M. Bonde's letter read as follows:

DODGER DEMENTIA
Editor: Dodger fans? Only the most obnoxious, no-class self-centered and ignorant fans in all of sports.
PG Bonde, Fremont

Second of all, we think a lot of this animosity is misplaced hatred for the wretched teams trying to play baseball in northern California; after all, how many pennants have they acquired in recent memory? (Oh, sure, Bill Ball came through one year, but their efforts after that were embarrassing to say the least.)

Third of all, concerning personal hygiene - it was our understanding that the reason so few people turn out for Giants or A's games (as opposed to the hordes of astute aesthetes that regularly turn out in LA) had a lot to do with the awful, deathly stench coming from the zombies that file into the games up north. Maybe they're expecting a good bay area rain to wash through. Heaven knows they could use it. For more reasons than one.

Those mellow vibes up there must be twisting your brains - the Dodgers humiliated the Yankees the last time they met in a Series. Oh, one last comment, Concerned. You smell, too.


Ken Koss Kwiz #3:

1) Name the two major leaguers to play all nine positions during a single game (extra points if year and team named).

2) What was the final score with mighty "Casey at the Bat" striking out (extra points if you do NOT read Ernest Thayer)?

3) Time for a physics lesson: A player running around all four bases (home to home) as fast as possible takes more time between 2nd and 3rd base than between 1st and 2nd. Why?


Baseball Diary published and edited by William Fuller