by Jim Bouton
I even made a Bus League pilot with my friend, Marty Goldensohn. We spent two weeks video taping the Birmingham Barons, the Chicago White Sox AA franchise in the Southern League. Last year, we pitched it as the “noncontrived” reality show where the struggle to make a team, win games, and have a shot at the big leagues represents true “survival.” And now there’s Wahconah Park. The show could be called Desperadoes—The last chance for twenty-five young ballplayers and one old ballpark.
The reason Chip and I haven’t talked about this is because we didn’t want it to complicate our effort for Wahconah Park. We’re not in this to sell a television show. If we get Wahconah Park and the TV thing happens, great. If not, that’s okay too. The television show is just a bonus.
We do not, under any circumstances, want to even mention the TV possibility to anyone. The Berkshire Eagle, which has already blasted us for not building an indoor arena we never promised, would have a field day. I can see the headlines:
SOUTH COUNTY TRIO BANKING ON TV LONGSHOT
NATIONAL EXPOSURE TO BRING TV GAWKERS
TRIO SHOULD GUARANTEE TV SHOW FIRST
TV SHOW PROMISE BROKEN
“If we get an option on the Wirz franchise,” I told Chip, “that might clinch it for ESPN, which almost bought Bus League a few years ago.”
“With ESPN in our pocket,” said Chip. “We could make a helluva presentation to the parks commissioners on August 13.”
“Can you imagine what that would do for Pittsfield?” I said.
“Put them on the map,” said Chip.
“Look how many people go to Dyersville, Iowa, every year,” I said, “just to see the cornfield where they filmed Field of Dreams.”
“And that was ten years ago,” said Chip.
“We could have spring training in Orlando at Champions Park, which is owned by Disney, which owns ESPN,” I said. “The first episode could be a one-hour special about who makes the team.”
“We’d have to add another thousand seats at Wahconah Park,” said Chip.
“No trouble raising money for that,” I said.
“I think we sell forty units at $50,000 a unit,” said Chip, already thinking about how much stock we could sell.
“With two million,” I said, “We could turn Wahconah Park into a showplace. A historic showplace.”
There was a long pause as we dreamed about the possibilities.
“So what do you think our chances are now?” I said.
“Still fifty-fifty,” said Chip.
I called Paula on my cell phone to give her the good news about our meeting with Acton and Goldsmith. She said she heard a piece this morning on WAMC about Fleisig and the Northern League.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “We just leapfrogged over them.”
As the train pulled into the station, I insisted on driving home.
“You’ve still got a long night ahead of you,” I said.
“I can always sleep during the show,” said Chip.
JULY 28
SATURDAY
I’m flying out to California this afternoon because tomorrow I’m going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. The people’s Hall of Fame, that is.
A Pasadena-based non-profit organization “dedicated to fostering an appreciation of American art and culture through baseball history” has set up its own Hall of Fame called “The Baseball Reliquary—The Shrine of the Eternals.” It bills itself as being “similar in concept to the National Baseball Hall of Fame” located in Cooperstown, New York, but differs philosophically in that “statistical accomplishment is not a criterion for election.”
The Reliquary is said to honor “rebels, radicals, and reprobates,” which gave me three shots at it. Officially, the way you get voted in—by fans, not sportswriters—is to be one of those individuals, “from the obscure to the well known, who have impacted the baseball landscape.” I guess they figure Ball Four left a few craters.
I’m being inducted in only the third year of the Reliquary’s existence, along with Satchel Paige and Jimmy Piersall. Previous inductees, all of whom have had books written by or about them, include Moe Berg, Dock Ellis, Curt Flood, Bill Lee, Pam Postema, and Bill Veeck. Pretty distinguished company. We might not win too many ballgames—unless Satchel were pitching—but we could certainly out-spy, out-talk, out-think, out-wit, out-write, out-promote, and out-hallucinate any nine guys from the regular Hall of Fame.
Before I left for the airport, I got a fax from Chip. It’s a letter from Jim Goldsmith saying that our proposal to buy the Wirz franchise “cannot be evaluated within twenty-four hours.” Goldsmith said a more realistic time frame would be next Friday, August 3, since our proposal “requires input from Bob Wirz, Miles Wolff, and Jonathan Fleisig.”
Input from Fleisig? That doesn’t sound good. And from whom might Fleisig seek input?
JULY 29
SUNDAY—PASADENA, CA
I called Chip this morning to get an update. He read a few paragraphs from Friday’s Eagle, which we had missed during our trip to New York. A story quotes Tom Murphy, the mayor’s water boy, saying, “We feel comfortable that everything that could come forward in the way of a proposal for next season is now before us.”
“Coming from Murphy,” I said, “that can mean only one thing. Another proposal is in the works.”
“That sounds paranoid,” said Chip.
“Not if I’m right,” I said. “It makes me clairvoyant. In fact, I want to go on record right now as saying that a surprise is coming.”
“Send me an email to that effect,” said Chip. “It’ll be dated, and we’ll have proof that you’re not paranoid. Or that you are.”
So I sent him the email.
And then I got inducted. Which is not the same as indicted. Which I had been, a long time ago. Which is why I’m now being inducted, if you get my drift.
The Baseball Reliquary, which has no official home, holds its induction ceremonies at the Pasadena Central Library, in a small auditorium off the main reading room. Another room features the official Reliquary artifacts, billed as “a traveling museum of baseball curiosities and wonderments” and looking very much like a Ripley’s Believe It or Not carnival exhibit.
Available for your viewing pleasure are the “Mordecai Brown Finger” (the missing digit belonging to that three-fingered pitcher from the early 1900s), the “Babe Ruth Cigar” (partially smoked and “believed to have been retrieved from Rose Hick’s brothel in Philadelphia on April 27, 1924”), and the “Eddie Gaedel Athletic Supporter” (sweat-stained “souvenir” from the dwarf who once pinch-hit for the St. Louis Browns).
Now isn’t that vastly superior to the more commercialized Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, with its video imagery and cases of balls and bats? As the Reliquary’s resident historian, Albert Kilchesty says, “While the Hall of Fame uses exhibits to trigger the imagination, the Reliquary uses the imagination to trigger the artifact.”
Are the artifacts authentic? In some cases yes, but you have to guess which ones—that’s part of the fun. As Reliquary founder Terry Cannon explains, “An artifact is just an artifact. What’s important are the stories. If we don’t bring them back, they’ll be lost.”
The other part of the fun is spoofing the regular Hall of Fame, which has its own—completely bogus—history. That story, vigorously supported by the citizens of Cooperstown, not to mention the Chamber of Commerce, has baseball being invented by a local guy named Abner Doubleday. It even comes with “the Doubleday ball,” found in a dust-covered attic trunk.
In a game of dueling legends, a prominently featured Reliquary artifact is a mid-nineteenth-century “Soil Sample” taken from the legendary Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, where, most historians agree, the first game of baseball was played, in 1846.
The auditorium at the Pasadena Central Library was filled with about three hundred fans wearing a motley collection of baseball jerseys and hats. The ceremonies began with the clanging of a cow bell in honor of Hilda Chester, the
legendary Brooklyn Dodger fan who used that bell and a drill-sergeant voice to motivate her beloved “Bums.” The new Hilda Award, which recognizes the contributions of fans, was then awarded to seventy-seven-year-old Rea Wilson who, after the death of her husband, visited all thirty major league ballparks, traveling 58,000 miles in her van.
The musical “keynote” address was delivered by four-time Grammy award nominee, pianist/composer David Frishberg. This was a big treat for me, especially when Frishberg played my favorite baseball song, the nostalgic “Van Lingle Mungo,” which is simply the names of players from the ’30s and ’40s sung to a haunting refrain. I had first heard the tune in the early ’70s when I was a TV sportscaster, and I rounded up baseball cards of all the players in the song, shot film of them being shuffled by a kid, and edited the film to match the song. I always played that piece on Opening Day of the baseball season. Of course, I’d sent Frishberg a copy. And it was wonderful to see him after all these years.
Frishberg told a funny story about an appearance he had made on the Dick Cavett show with Van Lingle Mungo himself, shortly after the song came out. The hulking former Dodger pitcher said to him, “So, when am I going to start seeing some money from this, anyway?” Frishberg told Mungo that to make money, he’d have to write a song about Frishberg. Frishberg, a skinny fellow, said he was lucky he wasn’t decked by the big right-hander.
First to be inducted was Satchel Paige, who was represented in the audience by nearly a dozen relatives, including a grandson who accepted the award on his behalf—and who looked like he could throw a decent “hurry-up ball” himself. Satchel, the self-proclaimed “World’s Greatest Pitcher,” was just as memorable for his mouth as for his arm. His rules for life included “Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move” and “Don’t look back; something might be gaining on you.”
Next up was Jimmy Piersall, who overcame mental illness to play seventeen years in the big leagues, and whose book Fear Strikes Out was made into a major motion picture. Unable to attend because of a scheduling conflict, Piersall was represented by his stepson, Robert Jones. Piersall, whose greatest contribution to baseball may have been his insistence that the game should be fun to play, celebrated his 100th career home run by running around the bases backwards, to the dismay of his manager.
Then it was my turn. After an introduction by Mr. Kilchesty that was longer than my career, I thanked some people who had helped me along the way: my dad and brothers for fending off countless knuckleballs in all those games of catch; my American Legion coach Earl DeTella for knowing what it means to rake a field; my high school coach Fred Jacobeit for being a good man; my college coach Fred Stevens for giving a shot to a non-scholarship walk-on; my Yankee pitching coach Johnny Sain who told me not to be afraid to “climb those golden stairs”; my Yankee teammates, Mickey, Whitey, Yogi, and Elston, who helped me win twenty games and took me up on the roof of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., to drink beer and look in windows; my Seattle Pilot teammates, who were the greatest collection of castoffs ever to play the game; my Seattle Pilot manager Joe Schultz, who taught us how to “Pound the old Budweiser”; and my Ball Four editor Lenny Shecter, who used to say that “a guy could make a living just telling the truth.”
Then I took the truth and stretched it a little bit. In a rambling tirade on “The Future of Baseball,” I said the game was doomed because American kids were no longer playing sandlot ball, having been taught in Little League that you needed parents and uniforms in order to play. The only hope was prison.
“That’s right,” I said. “With more kids living below the poverty line and younger kids being tried as adults, our prisons will become the new sandlots—if we build ’em, they will come. With tax dollars going for new stadiums at the expense of our schools, parents will try to get their kids into a good prison. I can see the bumper stickers: My kid plays left field for Sing Sing.
“Once again, American kids will be choosing up sides, playing with taped bats and balls, using rocks for bases. Playing for the love of the game. One day, some French guy might come here and write, ‘Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn about prison baseball.’”
I like to close on a positive note.
JULY 30
MONDAY
Having taken the red-eye back from California, I slept until noon.
When I awoke, I telephoned Chip to get an update.
“A lot is happening,” he said. “First of all, the Eagle ran a story today by Dusty Bahlman saying that a thirty-year lease would require a special act of the state legislature.”
“But we don’t need a thirty-year lease,” I said.
“And Dusty quotes me to that effect,” said Chip, “saying we don’t care whether it’s a lease or a renewable license; we just want to ensure that, if we assume responsibility for all maintenance, repairs, and improvements, the city is not going to come in at the ten- or fifteen-year mark and say ‘Thanks for everything. Goodbye.’”
“It still won’t prevent them from beating us over the head with the thirty-year lease,” I said.
“Right,” said Chip. “Dusty quotes Tom Murphy as saying that ‘a short term license is the best possible scenario at this time.’”
“It’s so nice of Murphy,” I said, “to offer such a helpful suggestion to the park commissioners.”
“Then,” said Chip, “Dusty ends his story by going after Miles Wolff’s misleading statement that he hadn’t spoken with me about buying a Northern League franchise. Dusty wrote that, ‘Wolff did not dispute Elitzer’s account when it was read to him by a reporter.’”
“That was nice of Dusty to follow up,” I said.
“I called Dusty to thank him,” said Chip, “and his comment about Miles was, ‘I hate it when people do that shit.’”
“Too bad Dusty and Bill Carey aren’t running the paper,” I said.
“And get this,” said Chip. “Guess who’s partners with James Ryan, the collegiate league guy who wants to play in Wahconah?”
“Yasser Arafat,” I said.
“Jim Goldsmith,” said Chip. “The same guy who’s trying to sell us the Wirz franchise!”
“You’d think Goldsmith would have said something,” I said.
“I discovered it by accident,” said Chip, “when I happened to be rereading the original article in the Eagle, where the mayor said the New England Collegiate League could provide ‘structured baseball’ for Wahconah.”
“Would you say that was Clintonesque of Goldsmith?” I said.
“Yes, I would,” said Chip. “So then I called Goldsmith and gave him an opportunity to say that he was partners with Ryan, but he never did. Until I asked him directly, and then he acknowledged it.”
“We have to keep an eye on him,” I said.
“Agreed,” said Chip. “Anyway, I told Goldsmith that we still needed the letter from Miles, approving us and Wahconah Park for the long term, so we can be on an equal footing with Fleisig.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He hemmed and hawed,” said Chip, “saying he’s working on it.”
“Based on this,” I said, “I don’t believe we’re going to get Wahconah Park.”
“But I’m still fifty-fifty,” said Chip, “because the Northern League doesn’t want to risk not having a team in Pittsfield.”
“Unless they’ve been told by the mayor,” I said, “that they’re going to get Wahconah Park, no matter what we do.”
“You mean a done deal?” said Chip.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Funny you should say that,” said Chip, “because today I got an email from Gene Nadeau entitled ‘Another Done Deal?’”
“Listening to the mayor on the radio Sunday morning,” wrote Nadeau, “sounded like we’ve got another done deal. There’s no doubt that Fleisig is his man. The mayor said ‘show me the money… show me the team,’ when he knows darn right well that Miles Wolff will make certain that Chip and Jim
and Eric are frozen out from purchasing a team.”
“It’s amazing,” I said, “Nadeau doesn’t even know Fleisig or Wolff and yet he understands the dynamics.”
“Maybe better than we do,” said Chip.
“Now here’s the laugh of the day,” said Chip. “Right after my call to Goldsmith, I get a call from Ryan. And guess what he wants?”
“Peace in the Middle East,” I said.
“Something just as likely,” said Chip. “Ryan asked if we wanted to join forces and buy a New York–Penn League team! Of course, I declined.”
“How can that possibly be?” I asked. “Don’t Ryan and Goldsmith talk to each other?”
“Evidently not,” said Chip.
Before hitting the sack tonight, I was answering some email and an instant message popped onto my screen.
JG: Jim, this is Jim Goldsmith.
JB: What’s happening?
JG: Can you explain something to me? What is the fascination with Pittsfield? I can understand it from your perspective but why are guys like Jonathan Fleisig and Frank Boulton fighting to get in there? It was a marginal draw at best for Gladstone who can’t wait to get out of town. These guys are falling all over themselves like it is Yankee Stadium.
JB: I think Fleisig is being used by the mayor to block us because he still harbors dreams of a new stadium. A commitment to Wahconah ends that. But the mayor is a lame duck, soon to be replaced by one of the pro-Wahconah candidates running for mayor.
JG: I spoke to Fleisig today and it seems he is gearing up for a fight in Pittsfield.
JB: Fleisig is not a good fit for Pittsfield because he wants a new stadium, which was soundly defeated in the June referendum—and that was when the pro-Wahconah folks had no alternative. Now they have us.
JG: He is a bit desperate though with no place to play and the clock ticking on his franchise.
JB: What does Fleisig win if he prevails? If Pittsfield doesn’t build him a stadium he’ll be unhappy and the Northern League will be looking to put him somewhere else.
