It’s Morgan’s first Opening Day which means - on this blog - Ernie Harwell will be posted.
In 1955, the Tigers own Ernie Harwell wrote a essay in The Sporting News that is the perfect way to kick off Opening Day.
A Game For All America
By Ernie Harwell
Baseball is President Eisenhower tossing out the first ball of the season; and a pudgy schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm. Its the big league pitchers who sin in night clubs. And the Hollywood singer who pitches to the Giants in spring training.
A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from his dugout — that’s baseball. So is the big, fat guy with a bulbous nose running out one of his 714 home runs with mincing steps.
It’s America, this baseball. A re-issued newsreel of boyhood dreams. Dreams lost somewhere between boy and man. It’s the Bronx cheer and the Baltimore farewell. The left-field screen in Boston, the right-field dump at Nashville’s Sulphur Dell, the open stands in San Francisco, the dusty, wind-swept diamond at Albuquerque. And a rock home plate and a chicken wire backstop — anywhere.
There’s a man in Mobile who remembers a triple he saw Honus Wagner hit in Pittsburgh 46 years ago. That’s baseball. So is the scout reporting that a 16-year-old sandlot pitcher in Cheyenne is the new “Walter Johnson.”
It’s a wizened little man shouting insults from the safety of his bleacher seat. And a big, smiling first baseman playfully tousling the hair of a youngster outside the players’ gate.
Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered — or booed. And then becomes a statistic.
In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. Here the only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. Color is something to distinguish one team’s uniform from another.
Baseball is Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, asking his Brooklyn hosts to explain Dodger signals. It’s player Moe Berg speaking seven languages and working crossword puzzles in Sanskrit. It’s a scramble in the box seats for a foul — and a $125 suit ruined. A man barking into a hot microphone about a cool beer, that’s baseball. So is the sportswriter telling a .383 hitter how to stride, and a 20-victory pitcher trying to write his impressions of the World Series.
Baseball is a ballet without music. Drama without words. A carnival without kewpie dolls.
A housewife in California couldn’t tell you the color of her husband’s eyes, but she knows that Yogi Berra is hitting .337, has brown eyes and used to love to eat bananas with mustard. That’s baseball. So is the bright sanctity of Cooperstown’s Hall of Fame. And the former big leaguer, who is playing out the string in a Class B loop.
Baseball is continuity. Pitch to pitch. Inning to inning. Game to game. Series to series. Season to season.
It’s rain, rain, rain splattering on a puddled tarpaulin as thousands sit in damp disappointment. And the click of typewriters and telegraph keys in the press box — like so many awakened crickets. Baseball is a cocky batboy. The old-timer whose batting average increases every time he tells it. A lady celebrating a home team rally by mauling her husband with a rolled-up scorecard.
Baseball is the cool, clear eyes of Rogers Hornsby, the flashing spikes of Ty Cobb, an overaged pixie named Rabbit Maranville, and Jackie Robinson testifying before a Congressional hearing.
Baseball? It’s just a game — as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It’s a sport, business — and sometimes even religion.
Baseball is Tradition in flannel knickerbockers. And Chagrin in being picked off base. It is Dignity in the blue serge of an umpire running the game by rule of thumb. It is Humor, holding its sides when an errant puppy eludes two groundskeepers and the fastest outfielder. And Pathos, dragging itself off the field after being knocked from the box.
Nicknames are baseball. Names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.
Baseball is a sweaty, steaming dressing room where hopes and feelings are as naked as the men themselves. It’s a dugout with spike-scarred flooring. And shadows across an empty ballpark. It’s the endless list of names in box scores, abbreviated almost beyond recognition.
The holdout is baseball, too. He wants 55 grand or he won’t turn a muscle. But, it’s also the youngster who hitch-hikes from South Dakota to Florida just for a tryout.
Arguments, Casey at the Bat, old cigarette cards, photographs, Take Me Out to the Ball Game — all of them are baseball.
Baseball is a rookie — his experience no bigger than the lump in his throat — trying to begin fulfillment of a dream. It’s a veteran, too — a tired old man of 35, hoping his aching muscles can drag him through another sweltering August and September.
For nine innings, baseball is the story of David and Goliath, of Samson, Cinderella, Paul Bunyan, Homer’s Iliad and the Count of Monte Cristo.
Willie Mays making a brilliant World Series catch. And then going home to Harlem to play stick-ball in the street with his teen-age pals — that’s baseball.
And so is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying, “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”
Baseball is cigar smoke, hot-roasted peanuts, The Sporting News, winter trades, “Down in Front,” and the “Seventh-Inning Stretch.” Sore arms, broken bats, a no-hitter, and the strains of the Star-Spangled Banner.Baseball is a highly paid Brooklyn catcher telling the nation’s business leaders: “You have to be a man to be a big leaguer, but you have to have a lot of little boy in you, too.”
This is a game for America, this baseball!
Go Tigers!
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“As Jim Joyce said in his postgame comments, there is no dispute that last night’s game should have ended differently. While the human element has always been an integral part of baseball, it is vital that mistakes on the field be addressed. Given last night’s call and other recent events, I will examine our umpiring system, the expanded use of instant replay and all other related features.” —
MLB will not reverse blown call in Tigers game
Look, I don’t want to wine and complain about this… but I’m going to wine and complain. I’m fine with Selig coming out and saying, “I fear overruling this call will open the floodgates on hundreds of games in the past and set a dangerous precedent for all future games.” That’s a valid reason to not overturn the call from last night. But to release this statement praising the Tigers organization and not even give them an explanation as to why you won’t change the call is complete bullshit.
As I said in my email to Bud himself last night, he - and he alone - has brought this nightmare upon himself. If he had half a backbone, there would’ve been some sort of review on this play as it happened. Baseball could’ve been like every other professional American sports league and had some sort of instant replay. Instead, we’re left with a public relations joke that tells us absolutely nothing.
You suck Bud Selig, in every sense imaginable…
This guy right here is one of the classiest, smartest, most well-spoken and well-rounded human beings to ever step foot on a baseball field and even if he can’t hit lefties, he’s still one hell of a ballplayer.
He’s always been “My Tiger” and, even though he is now a member of every baseball fan’s archenemy, I wish him infinitely more success, money and fame. He deserves it.
Treat him well New York. They don’t make ‘em like this kid anymore.
(With all that said, I think this is a fantastic deal for the Tigers and I’m ecstatic they made it. We get back three pitchers who will help fill the gaps of the bullpen and starting rotation, and have a pretty good young prospect at center. We’ll be ok Tiger fans.)
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Tonight’s the Home Run Derby and we have a bet going around these parts. We’ve set the over/under on the number of Inge home runs in the first round at 6.5. I’m taking the under, Mike’s taking the over. This is a epic battle for a nice lunch. Results tomorrow.
In the first of this three game series against the Texas Rangers, Dontrelle Willis started and Fernando Rodney closed out a combined one hit shutout to give the Tigers a 4-0 win. The two pieces of the Tigers pitching staff that scare me most - Willis and Rodney - were absolutely lights out tonight. Granted Zumaya, Lyon, and Seay all helped in the winning effort, but one can not ask for more than a one hit shutout - even if a combined one. Since Game 2 of the NHL’s Western Conference Finals were on at the same time as the Tigers, I watched the great pitching effort in a limited capacity - everything takes a backseat to playoff hockey: baseball, basketball, eating, sleeping, breathing - but what I did see was impressive and at one point Willis apparently retired 17 Rangers in a row. Phenomenal.
I have to say my fears of Willis are not dissolved after this one outing, but if Willis can keep this up the Tigers pitching staff just got a whole lot deeper and stronger. Same goes fro Rodney who has capitalized on all of his save opportunities this year but for some reason has flashes of the erratic Todd Jones in his non save opps.
And, by the way, the Wings just scored in overtime - 3 on 1 breakaway, Mikael Samuelsson puts in the game winner…this makes up for his errand clearing attempt in the first period that led to the ‘Hawks first goal, let’s not see sloppiness like that again, please…loved the game winner though.
Two good things came out of today for the Tigers.
As an aside, WTF is with the Whitecaps uniforms?