The Green Of Spring

When you first glance at it in the spring, the field is like a carpet where only those heroes of the game are privileged to walk upon. It is perfectly cut and trimmed, green as green can be. In this time of chasing the statistical universe, one can only marvel at the setting where the basics of the game are played.

Legends bring the game into perspective. Joe walked toward that position. You should have seen him play. Did you see him? Was he as good as they say? He was certainly one of the greatest Yankees of them all. Henry played right there. ‘Slough Foot’ they called him when he first came up. He seemed to glide when catching a fly in left field of old County Stadium. Unbelievable bat speed. “Stan The Man” played there. Every kid in the nation copied his unique batting style regardless if you were a left hander or not. He was one of the few, at least in the games I saw him play, who was never booed at an opposing ballpark. So many stepped on that platform of green on their way to Cooperstown. Willie, Mickey and The Duke. Robin, Reggie and Teddy Ballgame. Who will be next to take this trip from outfield to The Hall?

Spring allows all to show us their wares. Trout, Harper, Cespedes and Aoki all showed exceptional talent in their first year patrolling the outfield, last year. Their rookie seasons presented great promise. Mike Trout had quite a year. At age 20, he hit .326, scored 129 runs, had 182 hits which included 8 triples, walked 67 times and had 315 total bases. He also had 49 steals. Oh yes. He had 30 home runs. In the field he had 4 errors for a .988 fielding percentage. Norichika Aoki, a 29-year-old rookie, batted .288 with 150 hits of which 37 were doubles. As a lead off hitter, he drew 43 base on balls, had 30 stolen bases and had an amazing 10 home runs. With 81 runs scored, he had 255 total bases. In the field, he had only 3 errors for a .988 fielding percentage.

Bryce Harper hit .270 on 144 hits with 26 doubles, 22 home runs and 18 stolen bases. He scored 98 runs. In the field, he had 7 errors for a .979 fielding percentage. At 19 years of age, he unquestionably has a future of brightness in front of him. Yoenis Cespedes, at 26, had 142 hits with 25 doubles, 23 home runs and 82 runs batted in while producing a .292 batting average. He had 70 runs scored and 246 total bases. In the field he had 3 errors for a .987 fielding percentage.

Who will step out and make those giant strides to Cooperstown? Any of them? None of them? That’s why the game is so much fun in the spring. The green of spring brings hope for all, including those of us who cannot seem to get enough of it. Lucky for us, we have a full month left during this amazing time of the year.

Play ball!

The Pasteboard Era of Legendary Charlie Silvera

It was a nice day. Sun was shining. Temperature wasn’t too bad. I was examining the yard when a neighbor asked if I would come over to their house in a day or two to look at some baseball cards he and his wife had collected. The neighbor was wondering what to do with them and how to sell them. As one who has collected the ‘poor man’s stock market’ material for years, I said I would. The day came and I dropped over.

When I sat down and began taking them out of their containers, the anxious rush of childhood enveloped me once again, full of anticipation that the next card would be that of the ‘big one’, Mickey himself. Naturally I want through the 1952 Topps first. And there it was.

The one card that nobody ever wanted to see in their pack, the pack that cost them a nickel which was everything in the world at that time, was that of one Charles Anthony Ryan Silvera, better know as Charlie Silvera. On this card was a brilliant yellow background behind the portrait of the back up catcher for Yogi Berra of the famed New York Yankees. For much of that summer of my youth, to avoid the Silvera card was the task. Every pack that was bought would be carefully peeled away at the back, slowly removing the folded wax paper wrapper to make sure we did not tear the wrapper, damage any of the cards and get the flat wide stick of sugary bubble gum and make sure it didn’t leave a stain on the card.

Then we would look at the first card.

Invariably it would be someone whom few had ever heard about except for his family and friends. This is where Charlie Silvera usually came into our lives. During the course of a year you could end up with five, six or seven Charlie Silvera’s which had absolutely no value in ‘kiddom’. You could only hope that there was a newbie who would move into the neighborhood and not know a thing about the value of these pasteboard wonders. Or, you hoped that a kid would come along and want to trade a card, any card, for a Silvera which he would usually put in the spokes of his bike, secured by a clothes pin to the front bike fork, and create a loud mechanical sound that represented a mad drummer banging at a  faster and faster rhythm against a metal drum the faster the kid peddled his bike.

Silvera was omnipresent. Two kids could go to the corner store and buy two packs of Topps. When they came out and unwrapped their packs, you had a very good chance of each pulling the dreaded Silvera yellow background card from their packs. Ugh……..

Silvera killed us that summer. Topps must have printed 10 Silvera’s for every star player card.

But it wasn’t the first summer he had done that. The 1950 Bowman packs contained the first sighting of Charlie Silvera. Card #96 was his true rookie card. In the 1951 Bowman set, he was missing. But the 1952 Bowman set contained a horizontal beauty. On #197, there he was in a throwing position, ball in his right hand cocked and ready to throw while his big pillow glove on his left hand sighted the way. With his cap on backwards and a stern, square-jawed portrait, it is one of the better looking cards of that era. But, it was a Charlie Silvera card and not that of Mickey, or Yogi or Whitey or ‘The Scooter’, ‘Willie’ or ‘Duke’.

That same year he made his way into one of the two greatest baseball card sets of all time…the 1952 Topps. (Along with the ’52 Topps, the 1957 Topps is one of the most popular Topps sets ever produced.) In fact, he was in every early Topps set from 1952 (#168), 1953 (#242), 1954 (#96), 1955 (188) to 1957 (#255) with the exception of the 1956 set.

Charlie Silvera played for part of 10 season in the Major Leagues hitting .282. However, he only played in 227 games. But he has two things he can tell his grandchildren: he hit one home run. And, although he was on six World Series teams, he only played in the 1949 classic and faced Preacher Roe of the Brooklyn Dodgers twice without a hit. But, he played in the Classic.

So there I was, once again flipping through memories of youthful dreams past, spouting off various statistics to my neighbors about the cards that I knew so well as I was flipping them over and WHAM!

There it was again, Charlie Silvera’s 1957 card, his last. Will this dreaded curse of Silvera never end?

It was a different place in a different time. Here’s to you, Charlie. Hope today in San Francisco you experience nothing but pleasure. I can only say that now. When I came across your image in those glorious days on the front steps of Lincoln Avenue unwrapping that treasured pack of baseball cards with Snookie, my next door baseball friend, seeing you was a dreaded reminder that we were all another pack away from collecting a quiniela of Silvera cards.

Play Ball!

I Saw Jackie Play

One of my childhood hero’s was a Southern Californian who won major letters in four sports: track, football basketball and baseball at UCLA. From the first time I had heard his name, and the exploits  about him from my grandfather, Jackie was a magnet for my attention. The first time I saw him was on television, on the Mutual Television Network from Ebbets Field, there he was at second base. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I had to see him in person.

My Dad took my brother (Mike) and I to Milwaukee County Stadium sitting in the then left field bleachers down the third base line. We were in the 8th row, even with Sid Gordon of the Braves playing in left field. The view was made memorable with all eyes on the hero of the Braves, Eddie Mathews, playing at third. After the pitcher finished up his practice throws, Crandall threw it to Mathews who threw it to Logan who threw it to Dittmar and then to Adcock as they whipped the ball around the infield and gave it back to the pitcher.

Then HE came up to bat. At age 32, Jackie Robinson made $38,000 in 1953, $3,000 less than he made the previous year although he was an All-Star and easily one of the biggest draws in all of baseball. That salary would be equivalent to $326,475.51 today (less than the Major League minimum but huge by 1953 standards. Bobby Schantz, star pitcher of the Philadelphia A’s made $24,000 that year. The youngster, Mickey Mantle of the Yankees made $17,500 while Yogi Berra made $36,000. Stan Musial was one of the tops with $80,000.) The world was not equal in those days. But, an average house cost $9,550. A gallon of gas cost $0.20; average cost of a new car was $1,650 and the average salary in America was $4,000. You get the idea. Times were different.

So much for the ‘stuff’ of the day’. Today was baseball. A game with the Milwaukee Braves and the Brooklyn Dodgers was about to begin. Jackie Robinson was the lead off batter and was at the plate facing Johnny Antonelli. As I remember it, he walked, stole second, went to third on a ground out and then the picture I hoped for was directly in my view. Eddie at third. Jackie bopping up and down, faking to steal home then back to third. He caused havoc on the base paths. Eddie really didn’t know what to do. Should he play his usual position at third with a right-handed batter at the plate or should he stay nearer the bag to keep Jackie close. Everyone was confused, except Jackie. The left-handed pitcher was clearly upset by this force of nature at third. Then bang! Like a shot Jackie stole home. In an instant, THE moment was over.

“Did you see that? Did you see that?”, I repeatedly asked anyone who was near.  Old white men in the crowd complained that Robinson was cheating. “You don’t go jumping all around when you’re on base.”, they would say, complaining that the home team just didn’t stand a chance against the Robinson led Dodgers. “But did you see that?”, I asked my Dad and Mom, who were smiling at the event they just witnessed. My Grandma and Grandpa were smiling as well as my Grandma plainly stated, “That was Jackie Robinson.”

What a statement. It shot through my bones as it was the projectile fact fired from the canon of all that was truthful, my Grandmother’s wisdom.

Then, as if a blessing had occurred, Jackie Robinson came out and played left field, right in front of us. I could nearly reach out and touch him, he seemed that close. He had come up a second baseman, but now the Dodgers played Junior Gilliam at second. There he was. Right in front of me…now in left field, Jackie Robinson. His cleats looked big league. They were polished. His away flannels were baggy looking. But there he was, looking intense, flipping the ball back and forth to “Duke” Snider in Center before the beginning of the bottom of the first.

“That’s Jackie.”, I kept thinking to myself. I was clearly living an out-of-body experience. For the rest of the game, Jackie Robinson and I were one in thought and into the game. There he was. Right in front of me bigger than life. No. It was life itself. There was Jackie Robinson. What a day.

But for all that happened that day, my Grandmother’s comment kept replaying in my mind. Nothing else was so clear on that day. Nothing was so vivid in my mind as we drove home, back to Beloit. Nothing else mattered even though the Braves lost another to their rivals, the Dodgers, in that first year of Major League baseball in Milwaukee. Jackie has stolen 17 bases that season and I had just seen two of them.

I had seen Jackie Robinson play baseball.

That next week was a dream as I retold the story what seemed like a hundred times to friends and acquaintances. During that week, I went to the corner store on Hackett a little more than a block from our home on Lincoln, and bought a pack of baseball cards. This time they were Topps, not Bowman. Bowman were my favorite but I wanted to try my hand with Topps. After I got back home and gave the groceries to my Mom, I went out on the back steps and carefully, separated the wax paper covering the pack of cards without tearing the wrapper, slowly pealing back the covering to see what treasures were inside.

And there, on top of the pack was #1 for the 1953 Topps series, Jackie Robinson.

I was now the luckiest kid in the world.

I took out that card today and looked at it again. Today Major League baseball honored this man with every player wearing his number, “42″, on their uniform.

There he was again, right in front of me. I saw Jackie play…again. This time, it was as bright a memory as when we were heading home to Beloit so very long ago.