Good Sports

by Budd Glassberg

Reprinted with permission from the Zionsville Times Sentinel on November 22, 2006

Five Decades of Love and Frustration

“I said, “What would happen if I hurt my arm?”

He said, “Mr. Wrigley will take care of you for the rest of your life.”

He didn’t, but I didn’t ask him either. He might have given me a package of gum. I wish I was playing now. I’d be making more money.” – Hank Wyse, pitcher on the 1945 Cubs from Banks to Sandberg to Grace

Because I am not running as much as usual, I now have more time to read. Knowing this, my friend Ron Martin gave me a book that he knew I would enjoy. Ron and I are both avid baseball fans. I played the game as a youth and was never very good, while Ron continues to play in the over-the-hill leagues and can still bring it when he pitches. Both of us enjoy the lore of the game.

I have read dozens of books about my favorite team, the Chicago Cubs, and expected Banks to Sandberg to Grace compiled by Carrie Muskat to be a rehash of the many accounts of Cub blundering. Surprisingly, this book takes a fresh approach to the subject by interviewing 69 people associated with the team from the 1940’s through the 1990’s. There are interviews with players, coaches, managers, front office personnel, and clubhouse workers. It is immediately apparent that the accounts are in the teller’s own words and Muskat makes no attempt to alter the accounts by cleaning up the player’s grammar. Once I began reading the accounts, the book brought me back to days of my youth, parts of my teen years and well past my middle age. Aside from a few interviews with players from the 1940’s, I remember each of the story tellers. Hearing inside accounts about games I had witnessed allowed me to fully grasp the events from several perspectives.

This book takes the reader through the metamorphosis of baseball from a time when 20 game winner, Claude Passeau, never made more than $20,000 in a year to a time when pitcher, Greg Maddox, turned down an offer for $27.5 million over 5 years. The game of baseball went from a game where owners dictated to the players to a business where labor and management were on equal footing. The gradual steps from game to business are like a thread that is weaved throughout the five decades through the interviews. With each suceeding decade, players climbed the salary ladder on the backs of the players before them. With each step, a chip of baseball’s glory fell and took with it a part of the game had hooked young fans like Ron and me.

While the “good old days” had much that was in fact good, Banks to Sandberg to Grace does not sugarcoat what baseball was like for African American players in the 1950’s. Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and George Altman reflect on an era when racial intolerance was the norm. Like the salary changes, the interviews take the reader through the five decades of racial change in baseball. To a great extent, baseball was a driving force of our society’s change in attitude regarding race. Some of the players acknowledged the pioneers who paved the way for them, while others had no regard or understanding of the prior sacrifices which eased their way.

What surprised me most was another common thread among players, managers and coaches. Almost to the man, in a sport where changing teams and firings are widespread, these individuals seemed extremely disturbed when they are told they had been traded or let go. The accounts reveal a great amount of pain in leaving an organization where some had toiled without success. Jealousies are exposed in these stories, blame is often affixed and some of the hard feelings that were initiated decades ago have not dissipated.

Without trying to make the point, the stories in aggregate, explain the inability of this organization to get to or win a world series. After finishing the book, I had a much better understanding of why the Cubs have been mired in mediocrity over the past six plus decades.

The final interview of the book is with Yosh Kawano, the Cubs equipment manager who has been with the Cubs since the 1940’s. While players, managers and coaches came and left, Yosh Kawano was the one constant throughout the time covered in this book. He speaks with equal fondness of Gabby Hartnett, Ted Lyons as well as Ryne Sandberg and Andre Dawson. Yosh is the ideal interview to end the book.

Banks to Sandberg to Grace would make a fine holiday gift to the die hard fan that can’t get enough of the lovable losers. Thank you Ron, for the memories the book brought back to me.

Budd Glassberg is a resident of Zionsville who is active in the local running community. Visit www.runz.com for reprints of all his columns. You can reach him by email at budd@runz.com.