Preface

The Promise: A Baseball Odyssey

IT IS THE Nation’s Game, the American National Pastime. It was born during the lifetime of James Madison, the father of the Constitution, and it watched as American homes moved from the candle through the light bulb to the Internet. It is the event that forces the winter to yield to the spring, and there is no sport that better reflects the nature of American culture and no enterprise that better embodies the character of the American people. The name of this game, of course, is baseball.

It is a game for, and about, people. In a way unlike any other sport, baseball puts on display the glories of each player on the field, and lights up the heart and mind of each person in the grandstands. Although it has its rules and equipment, baseball ultimately is not about processes and implements, but purpose and people.

This story is about purpose and people. Sport most profits us when it increases our knowledge of what it is like to be human. From the tales of sport, from the rise and decline of athletes and teams, from the stories of ordinary men and women as they win and lose, as individuals and in groups, we also have the story of the human condition. The athlete’s drives and desires, his tears and fears, and his foibles and follies, are everybody’s.

Games and sports are not philosophy or history or art or any other scholarly pursuit and they are, in fact, a form of recreation. Baseball likewise is only an amusement. But baseball differs from other games in one regard: it lingers in the soul. Baseball games, like the myths of ancient Greece, make a lasting mark upon the heart. Scholar Ralph Graber spoke of baseball as existing in the "interior stadiums of our imagination," and novelist John Steinbeck called it "a state of mind." What other sport or game elicits this kind of symbolism? As with any sport, baseball is the story of how people deal with success and failure and joy and sorrow in a setting that is essentially one of fantasy. But unlike other games and diversions, it is a fantasy that means something to people.

I will leave to the learned men and women of religion, academe, science and the arts the tasks of chronicling and ascertaining the great human purpose. But it takes no great scholar, and no famous practitioner of the arts, to observe that human beings are special—and indeed magnificent—creatures. All it takes is an appreciation of the wonderful metaphor that is American baseball.

The National League’s Boston-Milwaukee-Atlanta Braves are the oldest continuously operating sports franchise in America. The franchise boasts baseball’s greatest left-handed pitcher and its home run king, and these men figure prominently in this story. Although Braves’ clubs were long relegated to the depths of the National League, their history is second to none in richness and color.

This is a story that is true to the actual events. It is told through a narrator and the eyes and experiences of the participants themselves, especially pitcher Warren Spahn.

This book draws on primary and secondary sources, including newspaper accounts, books and articles authored or coauthored by players, and interviews by baseball writers and journalists. These sources are noted in a bibliography. Significant among the newspapers and periodicals are The New York Times, The Sporting News, Sport, Sports Illustrated and Baseball Magazine, and especially valuable have been pieces, in these and other places, by the premier baseball writers of the game’s classical era, men such as Furman Bisher, Bob Broeg, Charles Dexter, John Drebinger, Roger Kahn, Al Hirshberg, Harold Kaese, Tom Meany and Al Silverman. I owe a special debt to the work of the sportswriters at The Milwaukee Journal and The Milwaukee Sentinel: Lou Chapman, Oliver Kuechle, Lloyd Larson, Sam Levy, Russell G. Lynch, Red Thisted, Bob Wolf and Cleon Walfoort. I should mention as well that reference materials by contemporary scholars, such as Charles.

Alexander’s Our Game, Jonathan Fraser Light’s Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball and David Quentin Voigt’s Baseball: An Illustrated History, have also been valuable.

I have tried to tell the story in the words of the participants. For some scenes, I had to recreate dialogue. I employed this technique only sparingly, and always with the intent of remaining true to the actual events. Warren Spahn is a private person who does not easily consent to being interviewed. His accomplishments are worth telling, however, and I have tried my utmost to write about him in a way that is honest and respectful. I hope I haven’t let him down.

I can testify, as others who have written about baseball have noted, that writing about the National Pastime is a true joy. I alone am responsible for the writing of this book, but others have played a vital role.

I would like to acknowledge the following for their assistance in helping me research the book: Steve Daily and Judith Simonsen of the Milwaukee County Historical Society; Sue Warner of the Mitchell Gallery of Flight; Samuel Rushay of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Herbert Pankratz of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library; Bob Brady of the Boston Braves Historical Association; Len Fiorito, Eddie Frierson, John Infanger, Jim Kreuz and Paul Wysard of the Society for American Baseball Research; Furman Bisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Jeff Horrigan of The Boston Herald; and Bob Richardson of The Boston Globe.

I would also like to thank the following individuals for enriching the story by sharing their memories and inspiration with me: Bob Buege, Betty Hernandez and Jerry Maday of Milwaukee; Charles Patterson of the Perini Corporation; Ken Coleman, former Cleveland Indians radio announcer; Joe Brown, former general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates; John J. McHale, former Milwaukee Braves general manager; and Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Ms. Elaine Stefanko, the head of the reference section at the Osterhout Library in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, helped me acquire materials. I also want to thank the men and women at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library and Archive, in

Cooperstown, New York. The assistance of research department director Tim Wiles and the staff during my many pilgrimages to this most hallowed site was invaluable.

Ernest Hemingway wrote about human beings and the human condition and his works, especially The Old Man and the Sea, made, and still make, a deep impact on me. That impact, and my regard for Hemingway, are obvious in this story. He was a complex man fraught with frailty, and accessible only through his contradictions. He was, in other words, an ordinary human being—just like the rest of us.

I also want to thank the students, faculty and administrators at Oglethorpe University, in Atlanta, Georgia, where I taught as an adjunct professor of political studies between 1990 and 1992. They helped me to understand that human beings are not meant for defeat.

Above all, I wish to give special acknowledgment to my late mother. She didn’t much follow baseball, but she made me aware, more than anyone else, of the promise of the angels, which is also the promise of baseball.

The Boston Braves, 1871-1953, by Harold Kaese Northeastern University Press. During its reign in Boston, the storied franchise, now the longest continuously active club in the history of baseball, had captured ten National League pennants and a world championship, and fielded thirty-eight Hall of Famers, including Hank Aaron, Kid Nichols, Warren Spahn, King Kelly, Rabbit Maranville, John Evers, Hugh Duffy, Eddie Matthews, and the Wright brothers.

Warren Spahn, by Peter Bjarkman, Chelsea House Publications. The life story of Warren Spahn tells how his strong left arm and bulldog determination enabled him to post more career wins than any other southpaw to play the game.

Baseball's Greatest Players: The Saga Continues, by David Shiner, Superiorbooks.com Inc. Portraits of modern baseball’s Greats. From Aaron to Yastrzemski, Dave Shiner tells the stories of how and why the greatest players achieved so much.

Milwaukee Braves: A Baseball Eulogy, by Bob Buege. Douglas Amer Sports Pubns. The Fifties was perhaps baseball's last great decade before expansion teams, artificial turf and indoor play changed its shape and parameters. And Milwaukee was the most exciting city to watch the national past time in those days, where the local burghers pushed the Braves to the top of the attendance standings every season from 1953 to 1958. Much larger markets like New York, Philadelphia and Chicago simply could not keep up.

Bob Buege captures this remarkable phenomenon in a series of tight, colorful anecdotes capturing the spirit of this team and its city. His emphasis is less on historical analysis and more on giving the reader a "feel" for the era.