Ron Santo has finally been elected to the Hall of Fame. The third-baseman for the Cubbies back in sixties and seventies and should have been elected a while back. He died of complications to bladder cancer last December 10th.
Santo had raised large amounts of money for diabetes research, a disease that had claimed both of his legs below the knee in the last few years of his life.
Better late than never. He was elected by a newly formed panel that decides at the winter meetings. Needing just 12 of the 16 voters to accede to make the Hall, Santo got 15 votes.
As a player he won five Gold Gloves, played in nine All-Star Games, and hit 342 homers over his fifteen year career. He even once hit 13 triples and led the league, a large amount for today's fastest players, let alone barrel-chested third-basemen.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Friday, December 2, 2011
The Dinosaurs of Long Beach
Starting with the dregs, we get the pigeons. Stripped from their usual perch around piles of garbage or power lines away from the ocean proper, at the beach they do their usual thing; scavenging for food. Scattered in large groups cooing around the sand, finding a rare place of solace from the tiny sparrows that always seem to bounce around their larger cousins and nimbly rob them.
Not totally absent, mind you, but the sparrows are not the normal presence you'd expect.
The pigeons are on the bottom of the totem pole. Not that they know, or care, really. They loudly scavenge mindlessly. Instead of the smaller sparrows (mostly), the pigeons are menaced, if that's an appropriate word, by seagulls.
The seagulls are larger and stronger than the pigeons, but they seem a more brutish form of scavenger. The ability to pose a serious bodily threat to the pigeons exist in these gulls, but they seldom act on it.
It being the fall and heading into winter, a series of resting migratory flocks seem to be catching a breather.
The cormorants are off in the water, doing their dense-bone lifestyle.
The gulls do have a nemesis of sorts: crows.
Already the thugs of the world of land, at the continent's edge the crows are forcing their will on the sandy mainstays (gulls and pigeons) with limited success.
I would hazard that the average gull has the ability to easily exert a physical dominance over the average crow. Possessing the ability and exercising the ability aren't the same thing, though, and these baller crows push around the gulls.
The seagulls don't seem to possess that same killer instinct that the crows do.
The pigeon coos and follows you for food. The rare sparrow (at the beach) swoops in and snatches up what the pigeon goes after. A few gulls show up and horn in on the food, not entirely dispelling the pigeons.
The crows are trying to find pigeon and gull eggs to eat.
They seem more out for territory and power, and routinely get in skirmishes with angry mamma gulls. They're the brutes of the beach scene.
Some compassionate part of us humans says something like, "Stupid jerk crow. Let them have their peace." Something I just learned is, why not, crow? Those stupid pigeons and gulls don't have shit to do without being told, so they're probably better off. At least the crow might respect the intrepid sparrow, actively stealing from the pigeons (at least the rare ones out at the sand).
This still leaves the big bad boss to be discussed.
This talk up until now makes it almost sound like the crow is the boss of the beach. The gulls out here aren't actively conceding too much to the crow; they seem to repel the incursions well. That's just what it is: the crow is the instigator, the gull plays defense.
But...
Unconcerned with territory, power plays, or even the notion of being attacked, the true head dinosaur out here literally rises above it all.
The pelican, larger, bulkier, stronger, and tougher than the crows and gulls alike, is left alone. They spend their days not scavenging or scoring territory. They hunt.
All day.
It's very cool to watch. Circling high above the water, they focus their eyes on the surface below. These are the brown pelicans. Ironically, they are the smallest of the pelican species. They are also the only pelicans to dive bomb fish in an ambush to hunt.
There isn't much cooler things to be able to watch in nature than the dive bombing pelican's attack. No other act of predation happens as often or as regularly as the diving pelican. This isn't a Bird of Paradise mating dance. Even if the shoals are gone, it'll only take a few minutes to catch a single hunt. Seriously, it's awesome.
The pelican out here is the apex hunter, the true bird of prey. The crow is the bird of power; the gull is the power scavenger; the pigeon is the prey scavenger; the sparrow is the opportunistic dynamo.
Not totally absent, mind you, but the sparrows are not the normal presence you'd expect.
The pigeons are on the bottom of the totem pole. Not that they know, or care, really. They loudly scavenge mindlessly. Instead of the smaller sparrows (mostly), the pigeons are menaced, if that's an appropriate word, by seagulls.
The seagulls are larger and stronger than the pigeons, but they seem a more brutish form of scavenger. The ability to pose a serious bodily threat to the pigeons exist in these gulls, but they seldom act on it.
It being the fall and heading into winter, a series of resting migratory flocks seem to be catching a breather.
The cormorants are off in the water, doing their dense-bone lifestyle.
The gulls do have a nemesis of sorts: crows.
Already the thugs of the world of land, at the continent's edge the crows are forcing their will on the sandy mainstays (gulls and pigeons) with limited success.
I would hazard that the average gull has the ability to easily exert a physical dominance over the average crow. Possessing the ability and exercising the ability aren't the same thing, though, and these baller crows push around the gulls.
The seagulls don't seem to possess that same killer instinct that the crows do.
The pigeon coos and follows you for food. The rare sparrow (at the beach) swoops in and snatches up what the pigeon goes after. A few gulls show up and horn in on the food, not entirely dispelling the pigeons.
The crows are trying to find pigeon and gull eggs to eat.
They seem more out for territory and power, and routinely get in skirmishes with angry mamma gulls. They're the brutes of the beach scene.
Some compassionate part of us humans says something like, "Stupid jerk crow. Let them have their peace." Something I just learned is, why not, crow? Those stupid pigeons and gulls don't have shit to do without being told, so they're probably better off. At least the crow might respect the intrepid sparrow, actively stealing from the pigeons (at least the rare ones out at the sand).
This still leaves the big bad boss to be discussed.
This talk up until now makes it almost sound like the crow is the boss of the beach. The gulls out here aren't actively conceding too much to the crow; they seem to repel the incursions well. That's just what it is: the crow is the instigator, the gull plays defense.
But...
Unconcerned with territory, power plays, or even the notion of being attacked, the true head dinosaur out here literally rises above it all.
The pelican, larger, bulkier, stronger, and tougher than the crows and gulls alike, is left alone. They spend their days not scavenging or scoring territory. They hunt.
All day.
It's very cool to watch. Circling high above the water, they focus their eyes on the surface below. These are the brown pelicans. Ironically, they are the smallest of the pelican species. They are also the only pelicans to dive bomb fish in an ambush to hunt.
There isn't much cooler things to be able to watch in nature than the dive bombing pelican's attack. No other act of predation happens as often or as regularly as the diving pelican. This isn't a Bird of Paradise mating dance. Even if the shoals are gone, it'll only take a few minutes to catch a single hunt. Seriously, it's awesome.
The pelican out here is the apex hunter, the true bird of prey. The crow is the bird of power; the gull is the power scavenger; the pigeon is the prey scavenger; the sparrow is the opportunistic dynamo.
The Seventh Moon of Saturn
Leaving a domicile, heading down through the balmy air, hazy with orange and gray mist, to the gently lapping shores of a briny lake, the strolls through the atmosphere of the Seventh Moon of Saturn has inspiring moments.
Not cold, not warm, the day just is. Sitting in the sand lets one watch the critters flutter about their world running their lives. Battles are waged with squawks pecks, while the top predator sails above it all, hunting the shoals of water prey, dive-bombing regularly.
It's all pretty spectacular, even when the air taste like something other than salt and the sky is blotted with dense clouds.
Sometimes it just makes me see us out on a weird rock, rotating around a remote outpost.
Not cold, not warm, the day just is. Sitting in the sand lets one watch the critters flutter about their world running their lives. Battles are waged with squawks pecks, while the top predator sails above it all, hunting the shoals of water prey, dive-bombing regularly.
It's all pretty spectacular, even when the air taste like something other than salt and the sky is blotted with dense clouds.
Sometimes it just makes me see us out on a weird rock, rotating around a remote outpost.
The American West
After having visited Seattle I decided that I could discuss the the disparate regions of America that are called "the American West." I tried to come up with some characteristics of people in the West, or society/culture out here, because that seemed necessary. People out here are similar to other Americans, but without being in the clutches of traditions, like society on the east coast. There's a touch more of self reliance and shedding of family than you get back east. Also, considerations of space and distance are different for folks from the American West. Something I think is surprising is that when comparing progressives from the East and the West you get slightly opposing views from folks on the same side of the political spectrum.
The east coast cities and society as a whole is more conservative in dress. Venturing down to the grocery store in pajama bottoms? You better be in California and not New York; that doesn't fly back east. Weird observations like that show the rigidity of east coast life, where it's all a little more free and loosey-goosey out west.
Progressives from the east tend to be for a little more government control and spending, while being slightly more socially conservative (I'm still talking about liberals, here, so relatively speaking). Progressives from the west are slightly more libertarian in that they generally want less government intervention (though not as little as republican voters) but are more open minded when it comes to social mores.
Really, I just wanted to make a list of the regions I think make up the American West. I hadn't, until a few minutes ago, really delved into the cultural similarities and differences between the cultures. I wanted to save a full exploration of that for later.
Really, my regional list that I spent the flight from Seatts to Long Beach espousing sparked this post. It's more of a map talk, maybe, than a social studies class.
Historically St. Louis was seen as the start of the West, but now that seems outdated. Lincoln, Nebraska and Oklahoma City aren't western cities, so we have move the needle a little farther.
I started thinking about Denver. Denver, with it's NRA strong hold and lax pot laws really exemplifies the start of the West. Denver, for me, is as far east as the West extends.
I lump Denver in with Boulder and Billings, Montana, in the region I call the Mountain West. I've read various discussions of the American West, and almost all have the same name for this basic region.
My next region isn't included in any list I've seen. I lump Utah and Idaho, with their respective cities, into a region I call the Mormon West. This seems like a reasonable thing to me. Both those states have western American qualities while being more conservative due to the nature of the overwhelming religious attention.
With Seattle and Portland and the other cities in Washington and Oregon I put into the Northwest region. Sometimes called the Pacific Northwest, I think Northwest works just as well.
Stretching from Barstow in California all the way to El Paso in Texas I have, swallowing up the entirety of Arizona and New Mexico, the American Southwest. I think the Southwest is as ripe for its own post as any region.
Now, the last two regions are as distinct as western entities can be, and they live in the same state. With the idea that Crescent City and Eureka in California are closer to Vancouver than they are to Tijuana, it makes sense to include them in the Northwest.
Now, I've broken the rest of California up into Northern California, extending from Chico to Fresno and from the Bay Area to Reno; and Southern California from SLO to San Diego, from LA to Las Vegas.
I've decided to lump the major cities of Nevada into the California regions, which maybe is the lone original thing on this list (other than calling one area the Mormon West). That may be unfair to people from Nevada, but really, it just seems like Reno and Vegas are more about being outside California, and what that implies, rather than how original Nevada is.
So there we go. An airplane's ride worth of ideas:
1) Mountain West;
2) Mormon West;
3) Northwest;
4) Southwest;
5) Northern California;
6) Southern California.
It's got to be narcissistic to claim California as it's own region, twice, but that's how I see it. People who've never visited the state would claim that I'm a self-involved Californian. That's probably true, anyway, but the romantic view of California that people have outside the state, back east and in the south, is only an imagination, similar to our San Luis acquaintances' ideas about New York before we left for there.
Having lived in some of the places and traveled through many others, I feel I've gathered evidence, maybe not enough to make ultimate judgments, but enough to discuss things from experience and not just imagination.
Take what you want from this discussion.
The east coast cities and society as a whole is more conservative in dress. Venturing down to the grocery store in pajama bottoms? You better be in California and not New York; that doesn't fly back east. Weird observations like that show the rigidity of east coast life, where it's all a little more free and loosey-goosey out west.
Progressives from the east tend to be for a little more government control and spending, while being slightly more socially conservative (I'm still talking about liberals, here, so relatively speaking). Progressives from the west are slightly more libertarian in that they generally want less government intervention (though not as little as republican voters) but are more open minded when it comes to social mores.
Really, I just wanted to make a list of the regions I think make up the American West. I hadn't, until a few minutes ago, really delved into the cultural similarities and differences between the cultures. I wanted to save a full exploration of that for later.
Really, my regional list that I spent the flight from Seatts to Long Beach espousing sparked this post. It's more of a map talk, maybe, than a social studies class.
Historically St. Louis was seen as the start of the West, but now that seems outdated. Lincoln, Nebraska and Oklahoma City aren't western cities, so we have move the needle a little farther.
I started thinking about Denver. Denver, with it's NRA strong hold and lax pot laws really exemplifies the start of the West. Denver, for me, is as far east as the West extends.
I lump Denver in with Boulder and Billings, Montana, in the region I call the Mountain West. I've read various discussions of the American West, and almost all have the same name for this basic region.
My next region isn't included in any list I've seen. I lump Utah and Idaho, with their respective cities, into a region I call the Mormon West. This seems like a reasonable thing to me. Both those states have western American qualities while being more conservative due to the nature of the overwhelming religious attention.
With Seattle and Portland and the other cities in Washington and Oregon I put into the Northwest region. Sometimes called the Pacific Northwest, I think Northwest works just as well.
Stretching from Barstow in California all the way to El Paso in Texas I have, swallowing up the entirety of Arizona and New Mexico, the American Southwest. I think the Southwest is as ripe for its own post as any region.
Now, the last two regions are as distinct as western entities can be, and they live in the same state. With the idea that Crescent City and Eureka in California are closer to Vancouver than they are to Tijuana, it makes sense to include them in the Northwest.
Now, I've broken the rest of California up into Northern California, extending from Chico to Fresno and from the Bay Area to Reno; and Southern California from SLO to San Diego, from LA to Las Vegas.
I've decided to lump the major cities of Nevada into the California regions, which maybe is the lone original thing on this list (other than calling one area the Mormon West). That may be unfair to people from Nevada, but really, it just seems like Reno and Vegas are more about being outside California, and what that implies, rather than how original Nevada is.
So there we go. An airplane's ride worth of ideas:
1) Mountain West;
2) Mormon West;
3) Northwest;
4) Southwest;
5) Northern California;
6) Southern California.
It's got to be narcissistic to claim California as it's own region, twice, but that's how I see it. People who've never visited the state would claim that I'm a self-involved Californian. That's probably true, anyway, but the romantic view of California that people have outside the state, back east and in the south, is only an imagination, similar to our San Luis acquaintances' ideas about New York before we left for there.
Having lived in some of the places and traveled through many others, I feel I've gathered evidence, maybe not enough to make ultimate judgments, but enough to discuss things from experience and not just imagination.
Take what you want from this discussion.
What's In a Name?
This post could easily be called "The Intertwining of Three Mid-Market Baseball Teams' Histories", which is boring. As I was doing a little research about a piece about the Pacific Coast League and sports teams' names, every little tidbit added to this greater mosaic of history, which led to the breaking up of the original idea into at least three posts.
This particular post I feel could be expanded into a bigger thing. I just think the connections between the identities of the cities is ripe. This idea is bigger, anyway.
So I'll just shut up and get on with it.
There are some cities in America that get along with baseball. They enjoy it here and there, definitely when the team is doing well, but they never seem to get too bent out of shape about it. Dallas is like this. They like their Rangers, but it's almost secondary. Sometimes I get that feeling about Oakland as well. Maybe they just haven't had a lot to work with in a while--hell, they were home to the Oakland Oaks back in the day, so there was some reason Finley decided to move them there from KC.
The three cities I'm talking about in this post aren't those types of cities. These are the hard-core baseball cities. These have had historical teams ripped away only to replace them the next year (or a few years down the way), complete with the same name and team history. The teams acted as an extension of the city itself. They were institutions more than today's business venture identities.
These three cities are connected in a strange way that highlights what I spoke of in the "Introduction" piece.
The cities: Baltimore, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.
I put St. Louis last because they've had the most recent success; they just won the world series, won it in 2006, and lost it in 2004. That's three World Series appearances in ten years. That's more than the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rangers, the only other teams with multiple visits in that span (2002-2011).
Milwaukee I put second, since they're coming up, won their division, but just couldn't get all the way to the Fall Classic.
Baltimore has been in a prolonged funk since Jeffery Maier hauled in then rookie Derek Jeter's fly ball in the playoffs in 1996, causing an erroneous home run to be awarded to Jeter, spelling the eventual doom of the Orioles that year. The fans aren't really turning out. I've been reading about the beleaguered Baltimore baseball fan; they're screaming for new ownership to right the ship. They desperately want to return the franchise to it's rightful place of glory.
The Baltimore Oriole baseball team has a colorful history. They were fielding teams in Baltimore called the "Orioles" from before the Civil War. Over the course of a few decades they'd have success, major successes, and were invited to join the more major leagues many times. They refused as many times. The team would go through a rough patch, nearly go bankrupt, be sold and moved. This happened as well. Not every year was a championship year.
Soon after these moves, another organization would be built, and a new Oriole team would be established. Soon they'd be kicking butt, then they might falter. Before what we call the major leagues totally enslaved the minor league, there were two teams from minor leagues that repeatedly bested the teams from the lone major league (the National League) whenever they played: the Newark Bears and the Baltimore Orioles. Both were asked to join the NL, both refused. During a period of financial hardships, an Oriole owner accepted an invitation to join the upstart American League.
After just one year, he moved the team to New York, where it eventually became the Yankees. Baltimore would get another team through a move, another one of the charter members of the American league, but it would take a number of years, and other stops along the way.
Much has been made of the Dodgers and Giants leaving their boroughs in New York for California during the same winter, changing the baseball landscape and truly connecting a basically rural America through sport.
That, though, was not the first time a major league team headed west. The Philadelphia A's moved to Kansas City before the Dodgers and Giants, but before the A's the original abandoners of their East Coast origins were the Boston Braves.
The Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee. Just as the Dodgers displaced the LA Angels and Hollywood Stars, and the Giants displaced the SF Seals, the Braves displaced the favorite sons of Milwaukee baseball, their very own minor leaguers. Care to guess on their name? If you said the Brewers, you've been paying attention or are a good guesser. Say what you will for Milwaukee baseball nowadays, but for almost the entire first decade the Braves were in Milwaukee, they led the entire major leagues in attendance. They even won the only World Series in both Milwaukee and Hank Aaron's history. (Way to go Hammer! Still more than Barry!)
The Braves in Milwaukee adopted the color scheme of the Brewers, navy and red. Even until recently the Braves have had two-tone caps, red bills with navy crowns and a white A, reminiscent of the white M used for both the Brewers and Braves.
A few years after the Braves vacated Milwaukee for Atlanta, a used car salesman named Bud Selig, a fervent lover of Milwaukee baseball, organized the purchase of the the strapped Seattle Pilots expansion team, and after only a single year in Seattle, they were relocated to Milwaukee. Their name? Do I have to tell you?
The Brewers were supposed to reclaim the navy and red color scheme from the original Brewer team, only the sale happened so fast and a reliable apparel company couldn't be found, so they just tore the Pilots logos off and sewed on Brewer logos. They simply adopted the Pilots' colors of gold and blue as their own.
But, see, the story of Milwaukee baseball goes back almost as far as the Orioles. The Brewers were a successful baseball team in Milwaukee during the 1880s and 1890s, and were extended an invitation to the new American League in 1901.
Isn't that wild? Two of the original franchises in the American League are the Baltimore Orioles and the Milwaukee Brewers, neither of which is still named that or located there.
In any case, something spooked the owner of the Brewers, because before the beginning of the 1902 season, after just one year of play in Milwaukee, the team was moved to St. Louis. Before the 1902 season in Milwaukee, after the American League team left, they easily fielded another team, named it the Brewers, and joined a minor league, most likely the one that they'd left to join the AL a year earlier. From 1902 to 1952 that same Brewer team was Milwaukee's baseball team, right up until the Braves came to town.
The Brewer team that moved to St. Louis adopted the name Browns, and became a staple of St. Louis sports. For the first few decades the Browns were in St. Louis, the goal of the owner's group was to run the Cardinals out of town. For a while they seemed to be working. Not that the Browns were winning a whole lot, but they were doing better than the Cardinals, which was all that they wanted. Any takers of the name choice? The Browns was a shortening of the original name for what turned into the Cardinals, the Brown Stockings.
The bitterness was palpable. People were still so upset that the Browns had changed into the Cardinals that they got another team and called them the Browns. they actively tried to destroy their opposition's franchise. It worked for a hot minute, then, with players like Dizzy Dean and Stan Musial, the Cardinals went on to be one of baseball's model franchises, where it remains today, having won the second most World Series in baseball history.
The Browns had their colorful owner Bill Veeck, who angered the rest of the group of stodgy owners through his clowning up the league. A well known example of a Veeck stunt was when he put a midget, Eddie Gaedel, up to bat in a game.
Eventually the other owners forced him to sell. He'd wanted to move the team, and the other owners wanted him out of St. Louis as well, but they wanted him just out. They let him sell, and the Browns were finally out of St. Loo, and any guesses as to where they went?
They were moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles that we have today. With such a rich tradition and history stemming from a brief single season in Milwaukee and a half century in St. Louis, it's almost strange that the Orioles have basically wiped that history from their teams identity. The Washington Nationals might celebrate Rusty Staub, a player from the (more or less) glory years as an Expo in Montreal, but you don't get a whole lot of history from Wisconsin or Missouri at Camden Yards, the home of the Orioles.
That history is irrelevant to the identity of the of the Baltimore baseball fan. That's one of the criteria for being a baseball hotbed; baseball tunnel vision.
In Milwaukee, they field a team called the Brewers. When a major league team comes along, they embrace them, but after they spurn you, you do what you do, and field a team called the Brewers.
In St. Louis they field a team just to run another team out of town, going so far as to name it the original team's original name. That there's enough support for baseball is during those times is what a hotbed's all about.
In Baltimore they wash away the history that has nothing to do with the history of the Baltimore Orioles.
Singular focus.
There truly is plenty in a name. Plenty.
This particular post I feel could be expanded into a bigger thing. I just think the connections between the identities of the cities is ripe. This idea is bigger, anyway.
So I'll just shut up and get on with it.
There are some cities in America that get along with baseball. They enjoy it here and there, definitely when the team is doing well, but they never seem to get too bent out of shape about it. Dallas is like this. They like their Rangers, but it's almost secondary. Sometimes I get that feeling about Oakland as well. Maybe they just haven't had a lot to work with in a while--hell, they were home to the Oakland Oaks back in the day, so there was some reason Finley decided to move them there from KC.
The three cities I'm talking about in this post aren't those types of cities. These are the hard-core baseball cities. These have had historical teams ripped away only to replace them the next year (or a few years down the way), complete with the same name and team history. The teams acted as an extension of the city itself. They were institutions more than today's business venture identities.
These three cities are connected in a strange way that highlights what I spoke of in the "Introduction" piece.
The cities: Baltimore, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.
I put St. Louis last because they've had the most recent success; they just won the world series, won it in 2006, and lost it in 2004. That's three World Series appearances in ten years. That's more than the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rangers, the only other teams with multiple visits in that span (2002-2011).
Milwaukee I put second, since they're coming up, won their division, but just couldn't get all the way to the Fall Classic.
Baltimore has been in a prolonged funk since Jeffery Maier hauled in then rookie Derek Jeter's fly ball in the playoffs in 1996, causing an erroneous home run to be awarded to Jeter, spelling the eventual doom of the Orioles that year. The fans aren't really turning out. I've been reading about the beleaguered Baltimore baseball fan; they're screaming for new ownership to right the ship. They desperately want to return the franchise to it's rightful place of glory.
The Baltimore Oriole baseball team has a colorful history. They were fielding teams in Baltimore called the "Orioles" from before the Civil War. Over the course of a few decades they'd have success, major successes, and were invited to join the more major leagues many times. They refused as many times. The team would go through a rough patch, nearly go bankrupt, be sold and moved. This happened as well. Not every year was a championship year.
Soon after these moves, another organization would be built, and a new Oriole team would be established. Soon they'd be kicking butt, then they might falter. Before what we call the major leagues totally enslaved the minor league, there were two teams from minor leagues that repeatedly bested the teams from the lone major league (the National League) whenever they played: the Newark Bears and the Baltimore Orioles. Both were asked to join the NL, both refused. During a period of financial hardships, an Oriole owner accepted an invitation to join the upstart American League.
After just one year, he moved the team to New York, where it eventually became the Yankees. Baltimore would get another team through a move, another one of the charter members of the American league, but it would take a number of years, and other stops along the way.
Much has been made of the Dodgers and Giants leaving their boroughs in New York for California during the same winter, changing the baseball landscape and truly connecting a basically rural America through sport.
That, though, was not the first time a major league team headed west. The Philadelphia A's moved to Kansas City before the Dodgers and Giants, but before the A's the original abandoners of their East Coast origins were the Boston Braves.
The Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee. Just as the Dodgers displaced the LA Angels and Hollywood Stars, and the Giants displaced the SF Seals, the Braves displaced the favorite sons of Milwaukee baseball, their very own minor leaguers. Care to guess on their name? If you said the Brewers, you've been paying attention or are a good guesser. Say what you will for Milwaukee baseball nowadays, but for almost the entire first decade the Braves were in Milwaukee, they led the entire major leagues in attendance. They even won the only World Series in both Milwaukee and Hank Aaron's history. (Way to go Hammer! Still more than Barry!)
The Braves in Milwaukee adopted the color scheme of the Brewers, navy and red. Even until recently the Braves have had two-tone caps, red bills with navy crowns and a white A, reminiscent of the white M used for both the Brewers and Braves.
A few years after the Braves vacated Milwaukee for Atlanta, a used car salesman named Bud Selig, a fervent lover of Milwaukee baseball, organized the purchase of the the strapped Seattle Pilots expansion team, and after only a single year in Seattle, they were relocated to Milwaukee. Their name? Do I have to tell you?
The Brewers were supposed to reclaim the navy and red color scheme from the original Brewer team, only the sale happened so fast and a reliable apparel company couldn't be found, so they just tore the Pilots logos off and sewed on Brewer logos. They simply adopted the Pilots' colors of gold and blue as their own.
But, see, the story of Milwaukee baseball goes back almost as far as the Orioles. The Brewers were a successful baseball team in Milwaukee during the 1880s and 1890s, and were extended an invitation to the new American League in 1901.
Isn't that wild? Two of the original franchises in the American League are the Baltimore Orioles and the Milwaukee Brewers, neither of which is still named that or located there.
In any case, something spooked the owner of the Brewers, because before the beginning of the 1902 season, after just one year of play in Milwaukee, the team was moved to St. Louis. Before the 1902 season in Milwaukee, after the American League team left, they easily fielded another team, named it the Brewers, and joined a minor league, most likely the one that they'd left to join the AL a year earlier. From 1902 to 1952 that same Brewer team was Milwaukee's baseball team, right up until the Braves came to town.
The Brewer team that moved to St. Louis adopted the name Browns, and became a staple of St. Louis sports. For the first few decades the Browns were in St. Louis, the goal of the owner's group was to run the Cardinals out of town. For a while they seemed to be working. Not that the Browns were winning a whole lot, but they were doing better than the Cardinals, which was all that they wanted. Any takers of the name choice? The Browns was a shortening of the original name for what turned into the Cardinals, the Brown Stockings.
The bitterness was palpable. People were still so upset that the Browns had changed into the Cardinals that they got another team and called them the Browns. they actively tried to destroy their opposition's franchise. It worked for a hot minute, then, with players like Dizzy Dean and Stan Musial, the Cardinals went on to be one of baseball's model franchises, where it remains today, having won the second most World Series in baseball history.
The Browns had their colorful owner Bill Veeck, who angered the rest of the group of stodgy owners through his clowning up the league. A well known example of a Veeck stunt was when he put a midget, Eddie Gaedel, up to bat in a game.
Eventually the other owners forced him to sell. He'd wanted to move the team, and the other owners wanted him out of St. Louis as well, but they wanted him just out. They let him sell, and the Browns were finally out of St. Loo, and any guesses as to where they went?
They were moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles that we have today. With such a rich tradition and history stemming from a brief single season in Milwaukee and a half century in St. Louis, it's almost strange that the Orioles have basically wiped that history from their teams identity. The Washington Nationals might celebrate Rusty Staub, a player from the (more or less) glory years as an Expo in Montreal, but you don't get a whole lot of history from Wisconsin or Missouri at Camden Yards, the home of the Orioles.
That history is irrelevant to the identity of the of the Baltimore baseball fan. That's one of the criteria for being a baseball hotbed; baseball tunnel vision.
In Milwaukee, they field a team called the Brewers. When a major league team comes along, they embrace them, but after they spurn you, you do what you do, and field a team called the Brewers.
In St. Louis they field a team just to run another team out of town, going so far as to name it the original team's original name. That there's enough support for baseball is during those times is what a hotbed's all about.
In Baltimore they wash away the history that has nothing to do with the history of the Baltimore Orioles.
Singular focus.
There truly is plenty in a name. Plenty.
What's in a name? Introduction
This is a little introduction to a larger piece about the names people assign to their sporting teams. Sports in America is for many men the only emotional connection they allow themselves to be tethered to, and this is a shame, since human beings obviously need emotional connections. Why else would sports be so popular the world over?
The nicknames for American sports teams, if we go back far enough, come from descriptions of people from those areas. This is a roundabout way to discuss the popularity of college football in the post-Civil War era. People from Ohio were called Buckeyes; people from Michigan were Wolverines; from Wisconsin were called Badgers; Gophers in Minnesota...I'm sticking with the Big 10 because they still retain those customs--rather, those customs have been so ingrained as to be thought of in the reverse. The major universities from those states--Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota--adopted the names that midwest settlers had begun calling each other. A Hoosier is someone from Indiana. After a hundred years of the University of Indiana using "Hoosier" as its team's mascot, people have begun to think that calling someone a Hoosier means you're identifying their university of choice.
A few quick points seen through examples: in 1989 Charlotte, North Carolina was awarded an NBA expansion franchise. They started play in 1991 (I think), and their color scheme of teal and purple rocked the professional sports world. Their name: the Charlotte Hornets.
You might be surprised to learn that the main minor league baseball team that was a part of Charlotte's identity for almost a hundred years (almost all cities had their own team, in various levels of pro leagues) was named the Charlotte Hornets.
The sense this makes is kind of my point for the bigger post to follow. Owners tend to leave the naming of an expansion team up to the fans by way of voting on an approved set of names. This usually results in fans picking the name that has the most connection to teams of the past. Any guesses as to the name of Denver's main minor league team? It was the Rockies. How about from the same year, in Miami? They just switched back, actually, but the Miami Marlins originally was a team that played ball in the forties and fifties in Miami. How about the original LA team, the one here before the Dodgers showed up? The Angels.
Any guesses as to what the main Pacific Coast League San Diego baseball franchise was called? It was the Padres.The Padres, Rockies, Marlins, and Angels are all teams in today's major leagues, and their nicknames hearken back to their minor league origins.
Teams like the Hornets of Charlotte have a longer tradition for that nickname, similar to the Yankees. The Yankees started out in Baltimore, but when the moved to New York they were called the Highlanders. They were changed by the writers, as at the time nicknames were only nicknames and sports-page writers had the power to label the team as they felt, to the "Yankees" mainly because it could be shortened easier. "Yanks" was easier to print.
In any case, colonists were referred to as "Yankees" and "Yanks" by their British overseers, using a term with a Dutch background. Eventually people from the North were known as Yanks during and after the Civil War. Even later, during both World Wars, American soldiers were called Yankees, and now abroad, Yankees is synonymous with American, like Aussie, Kiwi, Springbok...The word made a type of sense to the New York City sports writer in 1907 to represent an American sports team in the City at the time.
A British naval officer, when complaining about the unruly people of the Carolina colony, and speaking of Charlotte specifically, likened it to a hornet's nest. The name Charlotte Hornets was used in a few different endeavors before the minor league baseball team came to be, but the nickname is one to which people in Charlotte feel connected.
But, fans can go horribly wrong in picking nicknames. Case in point (I'm not going to mention modern minor leagues of baseball, since they're absolutely fraught with awful, awful nicknames): the Washington Bullets. For those fans of the NBA, you'll recognize that there is no team called the Bullets anymore. This is correct. When Washington DC was in the top five for murder rate and total homicides in American cities, the city officials decided that the Bullets as a nickname was a little too insensitive.
The multiple choice they gave their residents is lost to me, but the final two, if I'm remembering correctly, were the Sea Dawgs and the Wizards. Both are horrible names for a major league franchise. The winner, the Wizards, is easily the worst nickname of the big four American sports.
The nicknames for American sports teams, if we go back far enough, come from descriptions of people from those areas. This is a roundabout way to discuss the popularity of college football in the post-Civil War era. People from Ohio were called Buckeyes; people from Michigan were Wolverines; from Wisconsin were called Badgers; Gophers in Minnesota...I'm sticking with the Big 10 because they still retain those customs--rather, those customs have been so ingrained as to be thought of in the reverse. The major universities from those states--Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota--adopted the names that midwest settlers had begun calling each other. A Hoosier is someone from Indiana. After a hundred years of the University of Indiana using "Hoosier" as its team's mascot, people have begun to think that calling someone a Hoosier means you're identifying their university of choice.
A few quick points seen through examples: in 1989 Charlotte, North Carolina was awarded an NBA expansion franchise. They started play in 1991 (I think), and their color scheme of teal and purple rocked the professional sports world. Their name: the Charlotte Hornets.
You might be surprised to learn that the main minor league baseball team that was a part of Charlotte's identity for almost a hundred years (almost all cities had their own team, in various levels of pro leagues) was named the Charlotte Hornets.
The sense this makes is kind of my point for the bigger post to follow. Owners tend to leave the naming of an expansion team up to the fans by way of voting on an approved set of names. This usually results in fans picking the name that has the most connection to teams of the past. Any guesses as to the name of Denver's main minor league team? It was the Rockies. How about from the same year, in Miami? They just switched back, actually, but the Miami Marlins originally was a team that played ball in the forties and fifties in Miami. How about the original LA team, the one here before the Dodgers showed up? The Angels.
Any guesses as to what the main Pacific Coast League San Diego baseball franchise was called? It was the Padres.The Padres, Rockies, Marlins, and Angels are all teams in today's major leagues, and their nicknames hearken back to their minor league origins.
Teams like the Hornets of Charlotte have a longer tradition for that nickname, similar to the Yankees. The Yankees started out in Baltimore, but when the moved to New York they were called the Highlanders. They were changed by the writers, as at the time nicknames were only nicknames and sports-page writers had the power to label the team as they felt, to the "Yankees" mainly because it could be shortened easier. "Yanks" was easier to print.
In any case, colonists were referred to as "Yankees" and "Yanks" by their British overseers, using a term with a Dutch background. Eventually people from the North were known as Yanks during and after the Civil War. Even later, during both World Wars, American soldiers were called Yankees, and now abroad, Yankees is synonymous with American, like Aussie, Kiwi, Springbok...The word made a type of sense to the New York City sports writer in 1907 to represent an American sports team in the City at the time.
A British naval officer, when complaining about the unruly people of the Carolina colony, and speaking of Charlotte specifically, likened it to a hornet's nest. The name Charlotte Hornets was used in a few different endeavors before the minor league baseball team came to be, but the nickname is one to which people in Charlotte feel connected.
But, fans can go horribly wrong in picking nicknames. Case in point (I'm not going to mention modern minor leagues of baseball, since they're absolutely fraught with awful, awful nicknames): the Washington Bullets. For those fans of the NBA, you'll recognize that there is no team called the Bullets anymore. This is correct. When Washington DC was in the top five for murder rate and total homicides in American cities, the city officials decided that the Bullets as a nickname was a little too insensitive.
The multiple choice they gave their residents is lost to me, but the final two, if I'm remembering correctly, were the Sea Dawgs and the Wizards. Both are horrible names for a major league franchise. The winner, the Wizards, is easily the worst nickname of the big four American sports.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Welcoming December
This time last year we were debating whether or not to go after a possible move to California. That seemed to work out.
The past few months I've started each month with a post about the upcoming stuff, or how I held back a few posts a bit so they'll make the new month even more exciting.
I've finally smoothed out my post about teams' names, context, dinosaurs of Long Beach, the American West, and go-go music and Slim Charles.
I wrote a few days ago about Thor, and using that as inspiration we tried Green Lantern.
Um...okay. Green Lantern, as a character--the Hal Jordan iteration--is one of fans favorites, but always with a caveat. Green Lantern is one of the silliest-yet-coolest DC characters, and fans know it. No character is as comic-book-y as Jordan's Lantern. His power ring manifests will power, which is very cool, but it does so as a green lit energy, and is powerless against yellow.
Superman (a flying super-strong alien), Batman (billionaire martial arts master), Spiderman (bit by a radioactive spider), the Hulk (radioactivity makes him turn into a brute)...Green Lantern (ring that needs recharging manifests will-power). Do you see it?
Manifesting will power is cool...using an item than can run out of power and needs recharging? Maybe that's closer to real life and the need for food or emotional sustenance.
A Green Lantern movie always makes fans first ecstatic, due to the love of the story, then second nervous, due to how easy it is to screw it up. If the movie would be any fun, even if corny, most would be forgiven.
Plot holes would be overlooked. Wooden acting could be forgiven. Scenery chewing would be lauded.
It's just too bad this movie wasn't any fun. Maybe I'm being too hard. It just looked like everyone was fighting their days being on set, and that lack of enthusiasm permeates the data captured by those fancy HD cameras.
Another quick Redbox note: we checked out Source Code. That one's fun. A sci-fi treatment of Bill Murray's Groundhog Day, the frenetic pace and chemistry between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan is amusing as he works through the eight minutes of quanta repeatedly. It's serviceable as science fiction, and having seen some of the recent "Fabric of the Cosmos" episodes of Nova, the outcome isn't so fantastical.
Directed by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, Source Code makes me want to see his directorial debut, starring Sam Rockwell, Moon.
Pleasant movie surprises please me.
The past few months I've started each month with a post about the upcoming stuff, or how I held back a few posts a bit so they'll make the new month even more exciting.
I've finally smoothed out my post about teams' names, context, dinosaurs of Long Beach, the American West, and go-go music and Slim Charles.
I wrote a few days ago about Thor, and using that as inspiration we tried Green Lantern.
Um...okay. Green Lantern, as a character--the Hal Jordan iteration--is one of fans favorites, but always with a caveat. Green Lantern is one of the silliest-yet-coolest DC characters, and fans know it. No character is as comic-book-y as Jordan's Lantern. His power ring manifests will power, which is very cool, but it does so as a green lit energy, and is powerless against yellow.
Superman (a flying super-strong alien), Batman (billionaire martial arts master), Spiderman (bit by a radioactive spider), the Hulk (radioactivity makes him turn into a brute)...Green Lantern (ring that needs recharging manifests will-power). Do you see it?
Manifesting will power is cool...using an item than can run out of power and needs recharging? Maybe that's closer to real life and the need for food or emotional sustenance.
A Green Lantern movie always makes fans first ecstatic, due to the love of the story, then second nervous, due to how easy it is to screw it up. If the movie would be any fun, even if corny, most would be forgiven.
Plot holes would be overlooked. Wooden acting could be forgiven. Scenery chewing would be lauded.
It's just too bad this movie wasn't any fun. Maybe I'm being too hard. It just looked like everyone was fighting their days being on set, and that lack of enthusiasm permeates the data captured by those fancy HD cameras.
Another quick Redbox note: we checked out Source Code. That one's fun. A sci-fi treatment of Bill Murray's Groundhog Day, the frenetic pace and chemistry between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan is amusing as he works through the eight minutes of quanta repeatedly. It's serviceable as science fiction, and having seen some of the recent "Fabric of the Cosmos" episodes of Nova, the outcome isn't so fantastical.
Directed by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, Source Code makes me want to see his directorial debut, starring Sam Rockwell, Moon.
Pleasant movie surprises please me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)