Cobb

I've been reading Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, widely regarded as the best book on this great ballplayer of the pre-Ruth era (mostly). It's a really fun read, most of all for the way it captures the world of early 20th-century baseball.

Anyway, those were the days that baseball was full of truly colorful "characters." I find myself going to Baseball Reference to look them up. Baseball Reference is great for stat geeks like me. You can look up a player's record, or a whole team's. And of course one of the things you'll notice when you look up team rosters from that era is all the unusual names.

For example, the 1935 Detroit Tigers. This was long after the Cobb era of course. But look at the names! You had Goose Goslin, Gee Walker (aka, the madman from Mississippi) and his brother Hub Walker too, Flea Clifton, Heinie Schuble, and the pitchers Schoolboy Rowe, General Crowder, and of course Firpo Marberry.

Firpo Marberry!

Backward Glances

Baseball is nostalgic. That is, people get nostalgic about baseball. Even people who don't particularly like baseball will sometimes wax nostalgic over Mickey Mantle or Pete Rose or just generally "the old days." Nostalgia is simply glancing backwards and enjoying, or mourning, that which is now lost to time and change.

New York City, like baseball, also causes people to wax nostalgic. I'm sure there is nostalgia for lost Los Angeles, or lost Atlanta, but I never hear about it. But I was loving NYC nostalgia even before I ever visited the city. Part of the appeal of a movie like, say, On the Waterfront, is the vision it provides of an old lost NYC. Do kids still keep pigeon coops on the rooftops?

Me, I'm kind of a sucker for songs and books and films that have an air of nostalgia about them.This is a wide field to play in, so I'm never running out. It's the glossy and new I tend to disdain, and this has always been the way with me. 

Anyway, here are two nostalgic songs. First, the baseball nostalgia. This song is a good example, because it's power is in the way even just the mention of a name can provoke pleasure. As one who does not actually remember any of these ballplayers, it still gives me joy as an ode to baseball's past. Dave Frishberg's "Van Lingle Mungo."

And probably my favorite baseball nostalgia song is also a great New York City nostalgia song. Recorded in 1973, it's Sinatra in a pensive mood, counting the cost of change, as old men often do. The song is called, "There Used to Be a Ballpark Here."

3 thoughts

1. I have only one vote. Out of, what, 130,000,000? It counts, but it doesn't count for much. Nothing hangs in the balance. It's not real important to the outcome of any national election, so no one need get bent out of shape if, well, I simply "throw it away." It's not my civic obligation to choose between two scoundrels. Not voting seems a perfectly legitimate option to me in any election year, but maybe especially in this one. See, no matter who I vote for, one of these two, Donald or Hillary, is going to win. I can't stop either outcome from happening.  One of them, Hillary, represents a political setback for the country in my opinion. The other, Donald, is a nightmare. So I'm skipping this one. It's just a bad, bad choice.
2. Autumn is here. Leaves all over the yard. Drove to Boston over the weekend and in some spots along the highway the color was breathtaking. Other stretches, they hadn't yet begun to change.
3. As I mentioned, I spent my birthday in Boston, having a fine time with the fam. Being there on the last weekend of the David Ortiz era was something. That town really loves Big Papi. As a card carrying member of Red Sox Nation since 1977, so do I. He made our baseball dreams come true.