Baseball's Secret History

Baseball’s truncated season ends this week with the World Series, an event of great interest to we baseball fans and absolutely no interest to everyone else. Perhaps non-fans might develop an interest in the National Pastime by learning about some of the previously unknown artifacts from baseball’s long and celebrated history. Or, if they don't, they could share this with a baseball fan and resume their sad, baseball-less, lives.

Item 1. Dizzy Dean’s Tarot Cards

Everyone knows Jerome Hanna “Dizzy” Dean won 30 games for the Cards in 1934 to propel the famed St. Louis “Gashouse Gang” into the Fall Classic against the Bengals of Detroit. But his interest in tarot? Let “The Wild Horse of the Osage,” hot corner specialist Pepper Martin, tell the story:

Ol’ Diz might have been a hillbilly, but he had his mystic side, too, an’ he never traveled without them tarot cards. We wuz on the train to Detroit when he consulted them cards as to how to pitch to the Tiger line-up, which wuz loaded with big guns like Gehringer, Cochrane, Goose Goslin, and that big sheeny Greenberg. So Diz takes out his deck of the Major Arcana an’ he closes his eyes, spits, makes a sign, and says “Greenberg!” an’ then he draws The Fool, then Temperance, then The Devil, and then The Hanged Man, an’ he says, “I knew it! Curve ball for strike one, a slow one for strike two, then the heater an’ he’s struck out!’ An’ in the third frame of the first game, Diz was holdin’ a 3-1 lead with two gone an’ Cochrane on third an Gehringer on second, an’ he fanned the big Jew on just them same pitches! Go look it up!”

Item 2. Ty Cobb Mechanical Coin Bank

The ever-competitive Cobb held on to every dollar he ever made as resolutely as he did his bat while accumulating the highest lifetime average in the history of the game, .367. This 1908 Ty Cobb version of the then-popular “mechanical penny banks” capitalized on his both his fabled fielding prowess and his parsimony -- place a penny in his glove, and The Georgia Peach “throws” it into a waiting first baseman’s mitt. Moreover, true to his cantankerous nature – inherited from his Ma, who shot Ol’ Ty’s Pa one night and then claimed it was a case of mistaken identity -- the bank could be fitted with a small caliber bullet to catch unawares the larcenous interloper who turned it over without first flipping the bank’s secret “don’t steal” signal switch, resulting in one heck of a “time out.” Caught stealing, Cobb style!

Item 3. Cap Anson’s Gall Stones

Anson, a repugnant racist and the best player of the 1880s, was the first man to collect 3,000 hits, batting a towering .399 as player-manager in Chicago’s 1881 campaign. But did you know he did it while suffering from a debilitating case of gallstones, which were presereved in a jar after surgery? Anson later described the affliction as being as painful as getting plunked in the brisket by Cy Young’s hard one. Absent the malady, Ol' Cap surely would have legged out one more base-knock to reach the magical .400 mark! And the ceaseless agony no doubt played some role in Hall of Famer Anson’s grumpy boycott of competing clubs who put Black players on the field, leading to the Negro’s 60-year hiatus from Big League Action!

Item 4. Casey Stengel’s 1912 First Edition Copy of Remembrance of Things Past

True baseball fans know that the Old Perfesser graduated from Western Dental College in Kansas City in 1912, one year before he won the starting center fielder’s job for the Brooklyn Robins, and the same year Marcel Proust published the first of the thirteen volumes of his literary classic. But how many know that, after being selected as dental school valedictorian, Casey was gifted by his fellow cuspidrilles with a leather-bound first edition of that same first volume of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu? The dog-eared volume, inscribed to ‘Charles D. Stengel, with kudos, from his classmates,’ was Casey’s constant companion on the road in a five-decade baseball career.

Casey's third sacker, Dr. Bobby Brown, shared his love of literature. As Bobby tells it: ‘Case was sitting in the dugout one day, holding that Proust book in his lap -- he was never without it, you know -- when Yogi comes by and says, ‘So, Casey, how’d that book on helping your memory finally turn out?’ and Casey winks at me and turns to Yog’ and says, with that famous twinkle in his eye, 'I can’t remember.’ I thought Woodling and Bauer would bust a gut laughing!”

Item 5. Hitler’s Baseball Glove

As war clouds grew over the Atlantic in the late 1930's, a group of prominent Americans led by Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg encouraged Hitler to court American public opinion. To make their case, they sent him a baseball glove in the hope of stimulating an interest in the National Pastime on the part of the cantankerous tyrant. While war ensued nonetheless, the Fuhrer grew fond of the mitt, a Tris Speaker model, once invoking the great center-fielder when joking to a friend “The Grey Eagle comes to the Eagle’s Nest, no?”

Many a sunny afternoon at Berchtesgaden would be whiled away with the Furor tossing the horsehide pill with ‘Baseball Annie’ Eva Braun. Ol' Adolf's plan to form a playing nine at the German High Command took a nosedive, however, when first-sacker Rudolph Hess jumped the Club to barnstorm rival England. ‘That’s why free agency is so detrimental to baseball,’ the diminutive despot is said to have remarked.

OSS certificate of authenticity included!

Item 6. Satchel Paige's Birth Certificate

Leroy Robert ‘Satchel’ Paige claimed to have won over a thousand games in his Negro League career before he cracked the color line in 1948, going 6 and 1 for the pennant-winning Indians and winning the Rookie of the Year Award. But how old was he? He claimed to be born in Mobile, Alabama in 1906, but some historians put the date at 1905, or even 1904 or 1903!

The discovery of Paige's actual birth certificate ends the debate; Ol' Satch was born in...1875! Blessed with a youthful appearance and a spry agility earned by years of stoop labor, Paige broke into The Show not at 42, but 73, a remarkable athletic achievement.

Former Tribe manager Lou Boudreau wasn't surprised. ‘Ol' Satch used to get these envelopes from the Social Security Administration each month. I'd ask him what they were, and he's say 'They's actuarial tables, Mr. Lou. I'm tryin' to calculate what might be gainin' on me.' I guess Satch put it over on all of us!’

6 and 1 at age 73! Imagine what Ol' Satch might have done if he'd been good enough to make it to the big leagues in his prime!

Oarsman Bob

Captain Sam and his crew of oarsmen where pulling through the ocean when the Captain noticed something strange going on in the boat. One of the oarsman, a fellow named Bob, had taken out a small hand auger and was making ready to drill a hole under his seat of the boat.

“What the hell are you doing, Oarsman Bob?” Captain Sam shouted.

Bob looked up to see if the commotion had something to do with him. “Me?” he asked innocently. “I’m drilling a hole under my seat in the boat,” he replied matter-of-

factly, and returned to work.

“You can’t do that!” Captain Sam hollered back.

Oarsman Bob looked surprised, not really understanding the gist of the question. “Of course, I can. It’s my seat and I get to drill a hole under it if I want to,” he said, stating the obvious. “It’s my right as an oarsman.”

“No, it’s not,” Captain Bob said.

“Well, yes it is,” Oarsman Bob replied, surprised he had to explain himself. “It’s my seat. And my drill, I might add. I have a right to a drill, don’t I?”

Captain Sam was incredulous. “Oarsman Bob, why would you drill a hole under your seat in the boat?”

“Because my feet are hot and very uncomfortable,” Oarsman Bob replied. “Some nice, cool water would be very refreshing. I find the absence of a hole under my seat hot and confining.”

“Oarsman Bob,” the Captain said sternly, “If you drill a hole under your seat in the boat, the boat will sink,” Captain Sam said, stating the obvious.

Oarsman Bob scoffed. “Oh, here we go – the boat will sink,” he said, a mocking sing-song. “There are people who disagree, you know. Some say not drilling a hole in the boat is just something Captains say to keep their oarsmen under their control. I say, give the information to the oarsmen and trust them to make an individual decision.”

Captain Sam maintained his calm. “Captains know boats will sink if people drill holes under their seats. We don’t need oarsmen to make a judgment about that. We have plenty of experience with boats sinking.”

“Who has all this experience?” Oarsman Bob countered. “A bunch of Captains? How good can a Captain be if he’s an expert on boats sinking? In fact, a boat can sink for any number of reasons – there could be a typhoon, or some unseen navigational hazard, or even because of demon sea monsters!”

The mention of demon sea monsters led to a wave of consternation among the other oarsmen.

“In fact,” Oarsman Bob continued, “I’ve heard far many more boats are lost to demon sea monsters than to oarsmen drilling holes under their seats. But you never hear about boats being sunk by demon sea monsters. Why is that? Who’s covering it all up? In fact, I was at the tavern before we left shore and a fellow there told me not many boats sink at all for whatever reason, and many of those that sink with very minor inconvenience and no loss of life, and that if I was worried about my boat sinking, not drilling a hole under my seat was in no way proven to be a foolproof way of avoiding it. As I see it, you can’t let your boat sinking dominate your thinking.”

Captain Sam was incredulous. “Some fellow in a tavern told you what to do?”

“Now just hold on there, Captain Sam. Nobody tells me what to do! But all those supposed experts telling us not to drill a hole under our seat in the boat – what do they really know?” Oarsman Bob turned to his mates. “I say we have rights, my fellow oarsmen, and one of those rights is the right to drill a hole under our seat in the boat.”

“No, you don’t,” Captain Sam said. “I expressly prohibit any of you from drilling a hole under your seat the boat.”

Oarsman Bob became quite cross. “You see! Exactly what I told you!” he shouted to his fellow oarsmen as the Captain watched. “That’s what Captain Sam wants – to take away our rights as oarsmen. Pretty soon, they’ll be telling we oarsmen we can’t have drills! Well, you may not believe oarsmen such as ourselves have rights, but I do. And I wager were we to ask the other oarsmen on this boat whether they had rights they would agree with me.”

Captain Sam withered. “The question isn’t whether you have rights, Oarsman Bob. The question is whether one of those rights is drilling a hole under your seat in the boat at the expense of the well-being of everybody else around you.”

“Well, let’s see what the other fellows think, then,” Oarsman Bob proposed. “Who thinks oarsmen have rights, and if they want to drill a hole under their seat in the boat then that’s their prerogative?”

A commotion arose among the oarsmen. “Hell, yes, I have rights,” one of the oarsmen said.

“I’m with Oarsman Bob,” said another.

“They keep telling us ‘Oh, the boat will sink,’ but there are sinking boats just about everywhere. Who knows why?” said a third.

"And what about the demon sea monsters?” another oarsman yelled. “Why aren’t you protecting us from the demon sea monsters?”

“There are no demon sea monsters!” Captain Sam sputtered, gesticulating towards the monsterless sea.

“It’s the principle of the thing!” yet another oarsman shouted. “Of, sure, it’s easy to give up your rights because your boat might sink, but once you lose your rights, good luck trying to get them back. First it’s don’t drill a hole in your boat, then it’ll be not drinking the salt water, then we’ll have to pull our oars at the same time, and then, who knows what? – maybe we’ll lose the right to piss in the boat!”

The Captain began to argue there was no right to piss in the boat, but by now the oarsmen had rallied around Oarsman Bob’s cause and asserted their right to have cool and comfortable feet, and attacked the Captain’s indifference to the threat posed by demon sea monsters. In short time, the auger had been passed around and almost every man had exercised his right as an oarsman to drill a hole under his seat in the boat.

“Well, are you satisfied?” Captain Sam finally said. “Now we’re sinking.” And, sure enough, water was quickly filling the boat to the gunnels.

“Well, we may be sinking,” Oarsman Bob replied. “But I think we made our point!”

And the other oarsmen shouted triumphantly as they sank into the sea.

Pharaoh

Archeologists at the Gamal Nasser Center for the Study of Antiquity at Cairo University have completed the translation of a previously undeciphered wall of hieroglyphics in the tomb of Pharaoh Ramses II, providing invaluable insights into the administration of his regime.

TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE OF

MS. “BIRD BIRD ARM BIRD SNAKE,”

COMMUNICATIONS VIZIER FOR PHARAOH RAMSES II

MS. SNAKE: Good morning. I’d like to talk about this Pharaoh’s triumphant efforts to combat the rash of plagues now underway in Egypt.

Egypt has never experienced a challenge like these plagues, but thanks to Pharaoh Ramses, we are defeating the plagues and reopening our economy. When the rivers turned to blood, some people – notably the Scribes and the Scholars and the Hebrews -- exaggerated the threat out of partisan political animosity to the Pharaoh. But then the rivers turned back into rivers, despite many predictions to the contrary by the so-called augurers. Then there was a rain of frogs and there were similar predictions of disaster. But we can now say definitively those were not Egyptian frogs.

I’ll now turn to questions.

QUESTIONER ONE: The rivers turned back to water and the frogs went away, but now we have flies, unimaginable swarms of flies. What is your comment on this plague of flies?

MS. SNAKE: Look, we’re Egypt, we’re a great, great dynasty, but we’re going to have flies, we have flies every season. It’s hot and flies like the heat, everybody knows that. When Ra the Sun God lowers the sun in the sky in the coming winter months, it will be cooler and the flies will disappear, just like that. It will be a miracle, just as Pharaoh Ramses has predicted.

QUESTIONER ONE: If I may follow up. Our cattle are now being devastated by pestilence --

MS. SNAKE: That’s a highly offensive word for it. It would be more accurate to say the cattle are indisposed. Pharaoh Ramses has a very good relationship with Egypt’s cattle – the cattle love him and he loves them. You should be ashamed of questions like that.

QUESTIONER TWO: How does the Pharaoh respond to the Scholars of the Library of Alexandria who point out other nations in our region – Nubia, Libya, Sheba – have not had anything remotely similar to our plagues, and that the concentration of plagues in Egypt is direct evidence they arise out of the conflict between Pharaoh and The Lord of Hosts?

MS SNAKE: The idea that these plagues come from some unseen and likely imaginary Lord of Hosts is an insult that endangers the lives of the Egyptian people. As Pharaoh has said, they should call him The Lord of Hoax. As Pharaoh has made clear, these other countries have falsely denied the existence of the plagues within their borders at the cost of countless Egyptian lives. It is beyond question those nations hid the truth about the plagues and they are responsible for them. These frogs could well have been Moabite frogs, and the lice Assyrian lice. But no Pharaoh has ever been tougher on the Moabites and Assyrians than Pharaoh Ramses has been. And just look at the record -- more people have survived plagues in Egypt than in any other country.

QUESTIONER TWO: But that’s because we’ve had more plagues than any other country.

MS SNAKE: The data speak for themselves. I won’t dignify your question with an answer. Next question.

QUESTIONER THREE: How does Pharaoh Ramses feel about the disproportionate incidence of lice, flies, and boils among the Hebrew slaves? The Scholars of the Libraries of Alexandria have argued that the slaves work in very close proximity to each other and are particularly vulnerable.

MS. SNAKE: With regard to the Hebrew slaves, let me point out the Hebrew slaves usually live in squalor and make other poor hygiene and diet choices that leave them susceptible to these various ailments, be they boils or vermin or flies or the invasion of the body with evil spirits that cause acid reflux and sinus congestion, from which many of their race suffer. Moreover, the Hebrew slaves are doing essential work, construction of the Pyramids. Pharaoh Ramses appreciates the contribution of the Hebrew slaves, and I can assure you the Hebrew slaves want the Pyramids to remain open so they can complete their work that is so important to Egypt.

QUESTIONER FOUR: With the plagues being visited upon us, the Egyptian economy is collapsing. What is Pharaoh Ramses’ plan for bringing the economy back?

MS. SNAKE: First, let’s remember that Pharaoh Ramses has built the greatest economy ever known to human history. When Pharaoh Ramses dreamt seven fat cows would came out of the Nile and then be eaten by seven skinny cows, he got the synod to store grain for seven years and then release it, leading to our unprecedented prosperity. And, he cut taxes.

QUESTIONER FOUR: But now our strategic stocks of grain are empty! Was Pharaoh Ramses negligent in not maintaining a larger strategic stockpile of grain?

MS. SNAKE: The stockpile was depleted by previous Pharaohs. Besides, it’s the responsibility of the provinces to maintain these stockpiles, not the Pharaoh’s. And let me also point out that the architect of these economic policies was the Pharaoh’s viceroy, Joseph, a Hebrew. The Hebrew slaves have never had it better than under Pharaoh Ramses, which is why he enjoys their support.

QUESTIONER FIVE: Are we any closer to a cure of these plagues?

MS. SNAKE: Our Scholars at the Libraries of Alexandria are working day and night to come up with a combination of herbs, incantations, and sacrifices to Isis that will prevent people from catching the plagues. The Pharaoh has promised a cure before The Festivals of Opet and Kohiak.

But Pharaoh Ramses believes what many priests are saying – that a regular program of prophylactic scorpion stings and snake bites will help people avoid catching the plagues.

QUESTIONER FIVE: But isn’t it true that scorpion stings and snake bites kill large numbers of their victims? Most scholars dispute the idea --

MS. SNAKE: Let me answer by disclosing to you that Pharaoh Ramses has personally been getting stung by scorpions and bitten by snakes for two weeks now, under the care of his own personal healer, Arm Man Snake Wavy Lines Bird, and has shown no signs of side effects other than an inability to walk down palace ramps and hold his water chalice with one hand. More importantly, he is yet to experience any of the plagues. How do you sleep at night after asking a question like that?

QUESTIONER SIX: There have been reports of some provinces experiencing a second wave of plagues, including outbreaks of hail, locusts, and darkness. Does Pharaoh Ramses have any comment?

MS. SNAKE: I’m not going to comment on unverified reports, but I will say it’s the job of the provinces to decide how to manage themselves, although it is very important that the Temples of Amun-Ra and Horus remain open at this critical time. As Pharaoh has said, Egyptians should not be afraid of these plagues, or let them dominate their lives.

At this point, a messenger enters and gives a scroll to Ms Snake, which she opens and reads.

MS SNAKE: I have just been informed Pharaoh and many of his viziers, high priests, and courtiers have been infested with lice, boils, and vermin, and that Pharaoh’s eldest child is feeling indisposed. Pharaoh’s Royal Wife, lesser wives, and concubines are quarantining themselves in the Palace while Pharaoh is being moved to the Temple of Osiris for observation. Pharaoh Ramses feels fine, and I know the people of Egypt are praying for – wait! There are lice on my arm! And boils!

At this point, the hieroglyphic evidence ends.