We revisit one of the greatest baseball trade deadline deals. Hint: It came on June 15, 1964, and then visit early 20th century Los Angeles and take a look at a neglected corner of baseball history, starting with Joe DiMaggio’s father in Sicily, journeying to Japan, and wrapping up in Texas with a player called “Goo-Goo.” And don’t forget “Sore” Feets!
The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?
The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
As we get into the second half of July, we'll
hear more and more about the upcoming trade deadline. Here
are ten candidates bound to be moved. Well, they won't be.
One of them will be. I really do look forward
to this period, though there have been so many great
deals over the years. Back in two thousand and eight,
we at BP did a book called it Ain't Over
(00:21):
and Cliff Corkern and I ran down this long list
of deadline trades to that date, trying to rank them all.
Just about nine out of ten deals in baseball history,
trades I mean not deals. We're not acquiring used cars
here turn out to be forgettable guy A, for forgettable
guy B. And that's all there is to it. And
that tends to remain true even at the trading deadline,
(00:44):
when teams are going for impact short term or long term.
And when we did that ranking, we tried to take
that into account by saying the team that was trying
to arm for the Pennant race, that team came out ahead,
or the team that was rebuilding came out ahead. Now
it's been seventeen years. It's been seventeen years. That's hard
to believe. And there are some great deadline deals that
(01:08):
couldn't make the book. It's possible that we went to print,
say before the Mark to share trade that sent him
from the Rangers to the Braves at the July thirty
first deadline in two thousand and seven, for players who
were with the Rangers for a long time, particularly the
shortstop Elvis Andrews, for example, I haven't checked. I'm not
(01:28):
sure if that one is in there. I do know that,
even though it is not ranked as the greatest deadline
deal ever in that chapter of the book, if forced
to answer which trade did you guys rank first, I
would just always jump to the June fifteenth, nineteen sixty
four deal that was the old deadline that sent pitcher
Ernie Broglio, reliever Bobby Schantz, and outfielder Doug Clemons from
(01:51):
the Saint Louis Cardinals too the Chicago Cubs in return
for two fringe pitchers and a twenty five year old
third year regular. The Cubs just couldn't figure out an
outfielder named lou Brock. Broglio was unhappy with the Cardinals.
The Cardinals for some reason, manager Johnny Keen was unhappy
with him, and the Cubs were unhappy with Brock. Each
(02:14):
side's reaction to the trade sounds backwards from what we
would expect it to be given the benefit of hindsight.
The Cubs sound like they're doing cartwheels, whereas Cardinals general
manager Bing Divine, I almost said Andy Devine, who used
to show up in a lot of old westerns, kind
of a heavyset guy with a hoarse voice. Bing Divine
(02:35):
doesn't sound overwhelmed. He sounds frankly whelmed. Cubs manager Bob
Kennedy said, this gives us as good a pitching staff
as there is in the league. Rock reported the Chicago
Tribune had fallen into some disfavor with Kennedy. A stickler
for a sound application of baseball's fundamentals, but possessed of
tremendous speed, Brock could prove to be a sound investment
(02:58):
for the Cardinals, good calls Cargo Tribune Kennedy was irritated
at times by Brock's erratic outfield play and occasionally by
his unsound bass running. That's another note that sounds ironic,
given that the fellow retired with the all time stolen
base record. That said, at the moment Brock was thinking
of himself as more of a slugger, and it wasn't
(03:19):
totally crazy. He could hit home runs at least before
the Cardinals moved out of Sportsman's Park and into the
Circular Ashtra version of Bush Stadium. But it's not surprising
he wasn't sure who he was because the Cubs were
such a mess at the time. They signed Brock at
college in August nineteen sixty and had him in the
majors the following September. They had limited his minor league
(03:41):
work to just one hundred and twenty eight games, but
they were also frustrated that he wasn't a finished product.
Rock double dribbles everything hit his way, Gene Mock said,
and he wasn't even Brock's manager at the time, or
ever like Brock needed an extra chef in the kitchen.
The Cubs had had six managers in his three and
a half years with the team. When he got to
(04:01):
Saint Louis, Johnny Keene simplified things, told Brock swing away
when you feel like it, and then once you get
on base, run and it worked out pretty well for them.
Wouldn't you say your honor? I submit nearly three thousand
hits nine hundred stolen bases and three pennance as evidence.
I rest my case. In three hundred and twenty seven
games with the Cubs, Brocket hit two fifty seven with
(04:23):
a three zero six on base percentage, a three eighty
three slugging percentage, and fifty steals. And that's about what
he was hitting at the moment of the trade. As well,
when he got to Saint Louis boom, he exploded, hitting
three forty eight, three eighty seven, five twenty seven with
thirty three steals the rest of the way. Now, there
have been some traded hitters who hit that well or
even better, but only so many whose club was twenty
(04:46):
eight and thirty one at the moment they were traded,
then went sixty five and thirty eight the rest of
the way, in part because they were so galvanized by
the acquired player. Overtook the leader in the penn and
race and went on to win the World Series. In
a column written in reaction to the brock Broglio deal,
Saint Louis Post Dispatch writer Neil Russo asked why didn't
(05:07):
the Cardinals get more than brock a flashy outfielder who
could become a star for Broglio, an eighteen game winner
last season and still regarded as a top pitcher. Good question.
Broglio was twenty eight years old. Back in nineteen sixty
he had gone twenty one and nine with a two
seventy four ERA and had finished third in the Cy
(05:28):
Young voting. By war he should have won it, but
that wasn't a thing then, and the Pirates had won
the pennant anyway, and so it went to vern Law.
After an off year in nineteen sixty one, he pitched
quite well again in nineteen sixty two, and, as Russo mentioned,
when eighteen and eight with a two ninety nine ERA
in nineteen sixty three, although he was worse relative to
the league in terms of runs allowed. When the Cardinals
(05:50):
traded him, he was three and five with a three
point fifty ERA, which was fine, unexciting. Heck, he had
been the opening day starter. They couldn't have known he
had seven wins and nineteen losses left to go in
his career. The Cubs. Should they have known it, they didn't,
although they might have noticed that year by year his
strikeoutrate had declined. It was seven and a half per
(06:12):
nine in nineteen sixty fourth in the league. By nineteen
sixty three, he was down to five point two, which
ranked twenty third. When traded, he was at four point seven.
His elbow was starting to go, and that August, well
it went. It happens, when Brock arrived in Saint Louis.
The corresponding move was for the Cardinals to send down
(06:33):
rookie outfielder Johnny Lewis. Lewis was hitting only two thirty
four with a three twenty four on base in a
three sixty two slugging percentage at the time, but he
had hit twoint eighty with a three seventy two on
base and a four to forty five slugging in the
International League the year before, and was regarded as a prospect.
He probably wasn't that different from Brock in a sense.
(06:53):
He had speed but less, and pop but a bit more.
Devine said he hadn't given up on Lewis. In fact,
I feel Lewis probably has more potential than Brock. He
fields better and he throws better well Brock never could throw.
But nevertheless, by December, Divine had indeed given up on Lewis,
trading him to the Mets for Ilio Chicone and Tracy Stollard.
(07:15):
Lewis had a decent year for the Mets in nineteen
sixty five by the standards of Shay Stadium during Beatlemania,
then totally lost the ability to hit at the age
of twenty six, and his major league career ended quickly.
I don't think the brock Broglio kind of trade is
possible now. Everyone has so much more information, everyone knows better,
and they check the medicals too, so you can't be
(07:38):
pleasantly surprised. You can only be disappointed. Hasn't the Raphael
Devers deal been like that for the Giants so far?
Isn't the life like that now for everyone else? Release
the files, they say, but no matter what's in them,
they won't be happy. Oh have we changed subjects? I
say not, really, It's simply the way that just about
everything goes here in the infinite inning. Well, hello there,
(08:37):
and welcome back to the show. Not for the first time,
will I tell you that. I usually let the theme
song play out and kind of psych myself into position
to start this segment of the show. And then as
I begin my song and dance, I realized that the
record button was not armed. Therefore I was all excited
to talk to myself, but to paraphrase and now disgrace comedian. Hey,
(08:59):
it's a conversation with someone I love. How are you?
I am Stephen Goldman. This is the Infinite Inning, episode
three thirty nine in an ongoing series that will probably
culminate in a huge anniversary issue around number five hundred.
I would think some big crossover with our doppelgangers from
an alternative reality, no doubt, and it will disappoint. I mean,
(09:21):
writing is hard. I was just watching the first episode
of the new season of Star Trek Strange New Worlds,
and I was impressed because something like seventeen years ago
when the previous season aired, they left off on a cliffhanger,
and they resume with the cast in dire straits, and
they quickly throw out all the usual cheat codes that
(09:43):
they use traditionally in Star Trek, not so much the
original series, I think, but particularly in the next generation
era shows, where they write themselves into a corner and
then they cheat their way out, and if you've seen
enough of them, you have experienced what I'm talking about. Captain.
This mean certain death for the ship and the crew.
We're trapped in the arms of the Gabunthard destroyer, and
(10:05):
physics insists that there's no way out. But wait, no
one has ever thought about channeling the food processors through
the deflector drive that ought to create a harmonic disruption
that will launch us free. And they do it in
the credits roll and we all get to count our money,
I guess. So in this one, they start out in
a trap and they throw out all of those kinds
of boilerplate kind of ideas and they reject them one
(10:27):
by one, and I thought they're talking to me. They
understand that my expectations are frequently well they're they're met,
but my expectations are set very low, and they say, no,
we're not going to do those things. And then the
episode rolls on for another forty minutes and then they
do exactly that again. I don't begrudge any writer anything.
It's hard, and I know that from experience, not just
(10:49):
because of how long it can take me sometimes to
find my way in and out of a fairly simple
baseball essay, but because I have written novels, I have
written short stories, and traps are hard. And by traps,
I don't necessarily mean a literal trap like the pit
and the pendulum er James Bond on the laser table
with goldfingers saying no, mister Bond, I expect you to die.
(11:09):
But really, any situation in which you've chased your character
up a tree and now you have to get them
out again, and you want to get them out in
the most original way possible. In real life, though a
fellow belted to the laser table by Auric Goldfinger, he's
not getting out. He's just going to be split by
that laser. And so of course the temptation is to say, well,
(11:32):
you didn't know this, but James Bond always pockets a
laser table belt cutter in his rectum before he goes
out on a mission, and yeah, it hurts, but that's
why he's double seven. If you read the Stephen King
novel Misery, I don't remember if this is played up
quite as much in the film version that Kathy Bates
(11:53):
won the Oscar for for playing the deranged fan Annie.
But part of what makes her crazy is she can
accept that, and she talks about watching old movie serials
like the Perils of Pauline and that you go away
one Saturday with the wagon that Pauline is on being
pitched off of a cliff with her in it, and
(12:13):
she's just dead, okay, But you come back the next
week and you find out no, she had jumped out
just in the nick of time. We forgot to show
it to you. That makes her murderous with rage. But
I think part of King's point is you do it.
You fix that, You make an exciting story that has
a realistic resolution. I'm not saying it can't be done.
(12:34):
I am saying it's probably pretty hard to do in
episodic television, even when shows are down to six or
ten episodes a year, just as it was hard to
do when those old serialized shorts days. Some of them
weren't bad either. You just have to fix your expectations appropriately.
I think my problem with Star Trek first now is
(12:55):
that Paramount's corporate owners don't respect the viewers, and of
course they're corporate overlords, don't respect the viewers or the
people in general, given the way they've been trending with
CBS News in Colbert and so on, and I look
forward to deleting that app. My problem with these specific
writers is that they set out at the beginning of
the episode to say we are going to thwar your expectations.
(13:18):
We are going to throw a change up, which is
what good writing does, again not underrating how difficult that is.
And then they do exactly what they said they weren't
going to do. Another diosx machina. Here's a baseball thing
that I came across earlier that thwarted my expectations in
a good way, because the underdogs subverted the overdogs, who,
(13:39):
in this instance happened to be racist. In a few minutes,
I'm going to mention an out of print book of
photographs of the Negro leagues. And when picking up that
book this week to refer to for the story we're
going to get to in the second act, I kept
opening it to the same damn disturbing page. It's of
a roadside sign in Oklahoma for some sort of restaurant,
(14:01):
not a chain or anything, and advertising pie. You should
stop off and try the pie. And I'm not going
to enunciate the word it's spelled out in the sign,
but n word chicken. And about the first three times
that I opened to that page, I quickly flipped away
from it, as if I had accidentally revealed some sort
of pornography In the book, But when I looked at it,
I realized that it had been taken. The picture had
(14:23):
been taken by and with some negro leaguers who were
standing under the sign and pointing at it and laughing
at it. And maybe they're saying, do you know what
kind of chicken that is? Because I've never heard of
that kind of chicken? Does it have some sort of
special feathers before they pluck it? Are they referring to
who the chicken is for, who it's made by, or
(14:46):
the nature of the chicken itself. It's so absurd that
one would resort to denigrating a people or a chicken
in order to sell some of it. And simultaneously, it's
a bit scary and a lot instructive to try to visualize.
And maybe this is what they were laughing at too,
the kind of person who would be receptive to that
(15:08):
sort of come on and would say, oh boy, and chicken,
you're appealing to someone's very low, very lurid sense of authenticity. There.
As I said at the outset of the show, you
can't be surprised, you can only be disappointed. And so
that's why it feels so good to see that, Oh
(15:28):
ninety years ago or so, or whenever that photograph was taken,
that they decided to be amused rather than disgusted to
invert the Elvis Costello phrasing from The Angels want to
wear My Red Shoes, because what else can you do?
You still can and should fight against ignorance wherever it appears,
and you should certainly fight for your own dignity. But
(15:50):
maybe the first step is just not letting them get
you down with stupid stuff like writing your way out
of a corner. It's another thing that's easier said than done.
We can all aspire to it. Real Briefly, if you
were looking for this week's reissue episode, I did not
manage to get it out. I was tied up with
doctor stuff. I'm good. There's some maintenance coming up and
I needed to prepare for that. We'll get her going
(16:13):
again next Wednesday, and I'll tell you about what I
wrote at Baseball Perspectives this week in our next segment,
because our second story takes off from there, and so
I pray you allow us this break, and on the
other side of it, we will visit with the Los
Angeles White Sox. Yeah, there really was such an animal
way back when, and it was kind of important too.
(16:35):
So hey, if you're listening at home, sit comfortably through
this brief pause. If you're driving, keep your eyes fixed
on the road. We'll be back in a second. And
if you're belted to a table with a laser aimed
at your crotch, well, I hope you thought ahead, you
know the way that James Bond did, But I understand
it if you didn't. I'm not sure this story has
(17:17):
a real plot line. Maybe it's just a set of facts.
But the main team in question had a player whose
last name was Foots and whose nickname was Sore, So
how bad could it be. Mainly, I wanted to share
my excitement at finding a new area of baseball history,
just a little islet in the mainstream that I hadn't
(17:37):
known very much at all about prior to this week.
I love learning about things I didn't know, and I
don't know if this will come out quite in English,
but I especially love it when I didn't know that
I didn't know them. I mean, what I don't know about,
Let's say, opera could fill many shelves of a large library.
But okay, I've kind of intentionally neglected that despite the
(18:00):
fact that my late dad really loved opera and would
have liked it if I loved it too. Not that
I hate it or actively dislike it, it's just sort
of not a main thing for me. And so that's
something where I know that I don't know it. I
also know I don't know differential calculus or how to
safely clean a blowfish. The amount of stuff that I
(18:21):
know I don't know is rather huge. But when it
comes to baseball history, I don't flatter myself to think
I know it all. And in fact, in every individual
subject area within baseball, I know there are people who
have devoted themselves to it and thus would know more
about that micro specialty, say the game in eighteen fifty
and the kinds of New York City clerks who were
(18:43):
playing it for the Knickerbocker Club, that sort of thing.
I have a generalist knowledge of that, and if pressed,
I can tell you that Alexander Joy Cartwright wrote down
the rules, but I can't tell you who played third
base in eighteen fifty five. Know that I cannot do.
That's another place where I know what I don't know.
But this what I'm about to tell you about is
an area where I just didn't know that. I didn't
know it. I didn't know it was there. So it
(19:05):
began when I wrote my column at Baseball Perspectives this
week about Joe DiMaggio's dad, Joe Senior, and how he
was classified as an enemy alien after Pearl Harber, despite
having lived here for over forty years at that point.
I don't think Junior was part of Jualton Joe's birth name,
by the way, but he was his dad's namesake, just
americanized they both were. Joe Senior was born in Sicily
(19:27):
as Giuseppe. He came here in eighteen ninety eight, got
established as a fisherman, and sent for his wife and
his only child to that point, a daughter. The rest
of his total nine kids would be born here in
the United States in California. You know, Queen Victoria had
nine children as well. I would say that Joe's kids
accomplished more in life than hers ever did, despite starting
(19:49):
from a much higher place in society. But putting that aside,
I feel for both her and Rosalie, the Yankee Clipper's mom.
If you look at when Queen Victoria had had her kid,
she had the first six over nine years eighteen forty
to eighteen forty eight. Given that biologically pregnancy lasts about
forty weeks from fertilization till birth, she was pregnant about
(20:13):
fifty percent of the time in those years. That's hard
on a body. Rosalie, Giuseppe's wife, had five kids in
seven years after their separation ended, so she was shall
we say, occupied for an even higher proportion of the
time during those years. They both had pretty decent lifespans
despite all that pardon the expression labor, so they were
(20:34):
both pretty lucky. I mean, childbirth mortality back in well,
certainly Victoria's day, but even in Rosalie's was much higher
than it is now. Although we're working on it. We
could get back there with a little more practice. Giuseppe
had done a lot of things right as an American citizen,
providing for his large family, but somehow he had neglected
to get his citizenship papers over those forty plus years
(20:56):
of residing in the San Francisco area, So to Pearl
Harbor and Japanese, German and Italian Americans came under suspicion
of having compromised loyalty. He at seventy years of age,
was considered a potential spy and restricted in his movements.
In no sense do I think they were looking at
senior citizen non naturalized Italians whose sons happened to be
(21:20):
spectacularly famous, among the biggest celebrities in the country. It
was just that they had a broadly written rule and
a number of areas which they had classified as sensitive
for national defense, including the coastal areas off of San
Francisco and specifically Fishermen's Wharf, which is roughly where the
DiMaggio family lived, where they had a restaurant, and where
(21:41):
the Demagio boat tied up, and so not just for Giuseppe,
but for a lot of Italian American fishermen in that area.
They just made it so it would have been better
for them to stay home and not make their living.
This lasted four Italians not quite a year. Unlike Japanese
Americans and their citizenship ldren, they weren't interned in prison camps,
(22:02):
and that confinement didn't last for the duration of the war.
The restrictions on Italians were quietly dropped in November nineteen
forty two, and there wasn't much in the way of pushback.
Whereas letting out the naturalized Japanese citizens and their children
who had citizenship by birthright that didn't happen until the
end of the war. As is often the case, when
(22:25):
you set out to tell a story, you learn things
that aren't necessarily on the trunk of your tail, but
are fascinating in themselves. In this instance, the further I
went into the disparate treatment of quote unquote enemy aliens
white versus Asian, the more I ran into baseball, specifically,
who was interned among the many, which included Americans from
(22:48):
just about every walk of life was Kenichi's Enimura. So
who is Inimura? He was an immigrant from Hiroshima who
went with his family to Hawaii when he was seven
years old, and then, as a young adult, moved to Fresno, California.
What did he do in Fresno? He played and promoted baseball.
When he died in nineteen sixty eight, the Fresno Bee
(23:09):
called him the Dean of Nisse baseball in America. He
was the captain of his high school baseball team, won
a state championship in Hawaii, and in Fresno he organized
the Fresno Japanese baseball team and played shortstop, although he
spotted at just about every position, and by the way,
he would have made Jose Al Tuvey look statuesque because
(23:30):
he was only five feet tall, although everyone was a
bit shorter back then. He did several things to spread
the love of the game among the Japanese community, both
back in the home islands of Japan and in California.
First of all, he used players from his Fresno team
to see Japanese clubs throughout California, and secondly, he made
(23:52):
regular barnstorming trips back to Japan. Even in those internment
camps during the war, he organized ball which helped the
internees get through it, or I should say, play through it.
When you learn about Zenny as he was called, you
also learned that the Fresno team barnstormed throughout California, which
meant that winters they went down to Los Angeles and
(24:15):
played the White Sox aka the Philadelphia Royal Giants or
just the Royal Giants, but also sometimes the New York
Black Yankees. I know that doesn't make a lot of sense,
but bear with me. All will become clear in just
a moment now. As you know, with the notable exception
of the National League New York Giants or later San
(24:35):
Francisco Giants. The name Giants was a signifier of a
black baseball team, and that is true in this instance
during the segregation period. We're talking about the nineteen tens
in nineteen twenties. At that time, the form that the
California Winter League took was of a four team circuit,
(24:55):
with three white teams and one all black team, with
a notable exception, which we'll get to in a second.
This was in a way very pioneering in the sense
that it was not integrated on an individual team basis,
but the league itself was integrated, featuring play between white
and black players. The team was managed and I think
(25:17):
owned by a fellow named Lonnie Goodwin, also a black
player out of Texas who had come up with Rube
Foster back earlier in the century. The Philadelphia Royal Giants
were a team that was part of the Eastern Colored League,
and since black players generally didn't make enough money that
they could just take winters off and tried as best
(25:37):
they could to play year round. I think what happened
was that, whereas the intention was to call the one
black team in the league, the Los Angeles White Sox.
In practical terms, most of the Royal Giants roster just
to camp from Philadelphia to California, and it was just
easier to say, hey, it's us, We're the Philadelphia Royal Giants.
(25:58):
And that scenario tended to RepA heat itself. One year
they had a disproportionate number of New York Black Yankees,
and it just seemed easier to say, look, it's the
Black Yankees. It's not the Royal Giants. It's not the
White Sox or the Black Yankees. One year, pretty much
the entire Kansas City Monarchs team came over. Again. It's
not like a regular club with a reserve clause, where
(26:21):
if you were following the Cubs in that time and
they had Rig Stevenson and year one, unless they went
out of their way to trade him, you knew he
was going to be back in year two. In this instance,
it was whoever showed up. They didn't change the name
to Monarchs that year though. In terms of uniforms, I
think they just wore whatever. So there are photos of
some of their rosters, and you see that Lonnie Goodwin
(26:44):
has a uniform with an RG logo on the breast,
although it looks like RC to me, so I keep
thinking of the cola. When was the last time you
had an RC cola. I don't really drink leaded soda
anymore because it made me a jerk. Frankly, I'd get
wired on the sugar and the caffeine and then crash
off of it and by the end of the evening
(27:04):
be super depressed. And we haven't even talked about the
calories or other deleterious effects on your health. So I
swore that stuff off pretty much a long time ago.
But I think for RC specifically, I'm had a last
had one about nineteen eighty one. I don't know if
I've even seen one since then. All I remember, you
can correct me on this, is that back then it
seemed about half as sweet as say a coke or
(27:26):
a pepsi, and so I would have described it as
unpleasantly dry. I've known people I would describe that way too,
And now that I think about it, I don't really
miss either of them. Only a few players got those
RG or RC uniforms royal cards, and some had uniforms
that just said giants on them, and others might have
just brought their uniform over from their regular season home,
(27:48):
like the Hilldale Club. There's a reason they say you
can't tell the players without a scorecard. By the way,
the league's three non black teams had awful names like
White Kings or White Stars. It's depressing. And yet, given
the great players that were on the Royal Giants rosters,
they won a lot, They won the championship a lot
(28:10):
over the years. As former Major League utility man turned
Los Angeles angel Red Killifer said in nineteen twenty six,
every member of the Giants could make good in the
big leagues if the color line permitted. This seems obvious
now when you look at who passed through that Royal
Giants team and see a huge number of players who
(28:30):
were later inducted into the Hall of Fame, Turkey Sterns, Mules, Subtles,
devil Wells, Satchel Page. But you weren't allowed to prove
that point. Then, how can you say there was never
any systemic racism in the United States when white players
were making comments like that ninety nine years ago. We'll
get back to that in just a second. We'll also
(28:52):
tie all this together with Kenichi Zennemura's Fresno team right
after this brief insion. At least once the Royal Giants
(29:21):
had a team that was integrated, not in the black
and white sense, but in the black and Japanese sense.
They had a Japanese second basement. I haven't yet found
that player's name. I'd like to think that it was
Zenemura himself, but it seems pretty likely he was exclusively
tied up with his Fresno club. However, both threads came
together in Japan in early nineteen twenty seven. That year,
(29:45):
after the Winter League season concluded, both clubs separately. I
think the trips were more or less coincidental, went on
a Pacific tour, visiting, in the Giants case, Japan, China, Korea,
the Philippines, and Hawaii, probably not in that order. Maybe
this tour was a problem for both the Eastern Colored
League and the Negro National League because it left in
(30:07):
March and didn't return until June, which meant that several
of their key players weren't around for about half the season.
The league said that they were going to issue five
year suspensions to catcher Bismacki, a member of the Hilldale
Club and a future Hall of Famer Detroit Stars lefty
Andy Cooper, who also eventually received a plaque, Harrisburg Giants
(30:28):
slugging outfielder Rap Dixon and Monarchs catcher Frank Duncan. But
like a lot of Negro League's attempts at discipline or
enforcing contracts, it was mostly bluster. Lonnie Goodwin's argument he
paid better as much as any of Babe Ruth's trips overseas,
which came later, and Goodwin's gang had gone back by then.
(30:50):
Zinnemuras too. The Royal Giants tour was key to the
establishment of the game in Japan. I mean it was
already there, It was already going. They already had huge stadiums.
Japanese teams were playing in one hundred thousand seed venues,
which would have been intimidating as hell to say the
Saint Louis Browns if they had gone over then when
they were playing before nineteen fans, one of whom was
(31:12):
the shortstop's mom, plus a dog named Clarence who just
happened to sneak in under the turnstiles and no one
had the heart to chase him out. What I mean
is that the Negro League's players impressed with their abilities
and their comportment. They went twenty three to zero to one,
the one type being against the best semi pro team
in Japan's Industrial League, and what they plus Ruth plus
(31:34):
Leftio Duel and so on over the years, including Zennemura's
Fresno team, and he and Goodwin arranged for their clubs
to play each other on this early nineteen twenty seven tour.
What they showed was that Japanese baseball belonged to this
greater community of the game, and that they could aspire
to a higher level of competition that they might not
(31:58):
have achieved had they just been left to their own devices.
They could have just said, hey, this is the way
we do it, and certainly in some aspects they did
do that. They should have done that, and they continue
to do that. But I think it's a big thing
to be reminded that one is or could be part
of something larger than themselves. And though we may be
separated by language or mode of dress or the way
(32:21):
that we play the game, there is common ground here
and what leaders may do or may have done in
the years after that, well, the average person who aspires
to leadership is in some sense crazy. By placing themselves
above the community, they exempt themselves or remove themselves from
the community. Whereas the good, healthy, average center of the
(32:44):
community is not interested in war, It is not interested
in conquest, annihilation, genocide. It just wants to enjoy its life,
its family, its children, to see them grow up and
carry on the family business, which is the business of life,
the one life that we've been given. And perhaps along
the way, all the aforementioned members of the community might
(33:07):
pick up or watch someone pick up a bat, a ball,
and a glove, and that can be a metaphor for
anything you like. But in the case of the infinite inning,
it is simply what it appears to be, the game
of baseball. But for one book from earlier this century,
much of this history, especially as it pertains to the
(33:28):
black players, has been forgotten. This whole benign exchanging of
culture through baseball. It's grand and it shows what you
can accomplish in terms of bringing people together when your
thinking extends beyond the barrel of a gun. And then
there's America. I found this story in a wonderful book.
(33:48):
I referred to it earlier. It has the anodyne but
accurate title of the Negro Baseball League's a photographic history.
It came out way back in nineteen ninety two. It
is credited to Phil Dixon with Patrick J. Hannigan. Oddly,
the copyrights are by some people named Jed and Joanna,
But I suppose that's none of my business. In that
(34:10):
book they have a photo of the nineteen twenty nine
Royal Giants team. I referred to it earlier, and that
picture includes outfielder L. D. Livingston of the Monarchs, also
known as Lee Leo and Google. Maybe they said it
just like that, goog oh googo. In nineteen twenty nine,
the Monarchs went down to Houston to play the Black
(34:31):
Buffaloes of the Texas Colored League in a postseason series.
Now there was also a White Texas League, and it
had a Houston Plain Buffalo's team, Vanilla Buffalo's pale Buffaloes
that don't go out in the sun Buffaloes. That's not
who the Monarchs were in town to play, given that,
as we've observed earlier, they weren't allowed to play them. No,
they were playing another segregated team, the Black Buffaloes, who apparently,
(34:56):
as this story will reveal, had a following among white
police offic officers in Dallas. Go figure. Now ld went
with the rest of his Monarch's teammates to play in
this series, and he was born and died in Fort Worth,
so none of what happened to him should have been
particularly surprising. After one of the games, a game won
(35:16):
by the Monarchs, Livingston went to see relatives in Dallas
and was arrested by two white cops for the crime
of waiting for a cab while black. Livingston identified himself
as a Monarchs ballplayer. You're one of the Northern boys
who beat the Houston Club in that series, the now
enlightened cops said. Livingston was nevertheless taken to jail and
(35:39):
given a twenty dollars fine on what charge he asked?
The only reply was, hell, boy, you're in Texas. Did
I say? More? The more things change, the more things
stay the same. It's just that every once in a
while we change up the costuming so that the play
is staged in modern dress. Ld Livingston good old Goo goo.
(36:01):
He was out twenty bucks, a lot of money back then.
But I suppose in that one instance he had it
a little better than say, Kenichi's and Amura had it.
Once the Zeros flew over Hickhem and Wheeler Fields. Sure
those cops were trying to keep him down, but they
weren't trying to keep him out. Casey Stangele, who helped
discover some of the players who made up the first
(36:22):
generation of Monarchs, played some in the California Winter League.
In one game he had a couple of hits off
a bullet Rogan. Casey was a good player. Should you
wish to be good about following me on social media,
you can do so at Stephen Gooldman dot bsky dot social.
You can also write us by which I mean me
again at Infinite Inning at gmail dot com. And there's
a Facebook group. Simply go to Facebook search on infinite Inning. Bang.
(36:43):
You're there, But would you want to be Day by
day we grow closer to replacing that I swear as always,
this show is brought to you by our sponsors and
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to thank Chris Thomas and Jerry. Thank you so much, fellas.
If you'd like to join them, please visit patreon dot com.
Slash the Infinite Inning gear of a rudimentary kind of
(37:03):
available at the hyphen Infinite hyphen Inning dot creator, dash
spring dot com original soundtrack of available gratis, said casual
Observer Music dot bandcamp dot com. Finally, should you find
yourself with the proverbial moment to spare, please go to
the podcatcher of your choice and rate, review and subscribe.
And if your podcast or doesn't let you do those things,
oh go sue someone for absolutely no reason. It's all
(37:25):
the rage nowadays, but don't do it in California they
have statutes against that. Our theme song, which you are
hearing now and have been listening to throughout the episode,
was a co composition of myself and doctor Rick Mooring.
We wrote the dang thing and I'm proud of it. Conversely,
doctor Rick explains that I saw snakes, big snakes and
little snakes, snakes of all colors who chanted at me
during my long night's vigil, and I have climbed this
(37:47):
granite wall and I'm not coming down until they are gone. Well,
I guess the same goes for me, because who would
leave a friend in that condition? And so assuming we
do get down, I'll be back next week with more
tails from inside the Infinite Inning. Hm
As we get into the second half of July, we'll
hear more and more about the upcoming trade deadline. Here
are ten candidates bound to be moved. Well, they won't be.
One of them will be. I really do look forward
to this period, though there have been so many great
deals over the years. Back in two thousand and eight,
we at BP did a book called it Ain't Over
(00:21):
and Cliff Corkern and I ran down this long list
of deadline trades to that date, trying to rank them all.
Just about nine out of ten deals in baseball history,
trades I mean not deals. We're not acquiring used cars
here turn out to be forgettable guy A, for forgettable
guy B. And that's all there is to it. And
that tends to remain true even at the trading deadline,
(00:44):
when teams are going for impact short term or long term.
And when we did that ranking, we tried to take
that into account by saying the team that was trying
to arm for the Pennant race, that team came out ahead,
or the team that was rebuilding came out ahead. Now
it's been seventeen years. It's been seventeen years. That's hard
to believe. And there are some great deadline deals that
(01:08):
couldn't make the book. It's possible that we went to print,
say before the Mark to share trade that sent him
from the Rangers to the Braves at the July thirty
first deadline in two thousand and seven, for players who
were with the Rangers for a long time, particularly the
shortstop Elvis Andrews, for example, I haven't checked. I'm not
(01:28):
sure if that one is in there. I do know that,
even though it is not ranked as the greatest deadline
deal ever in that chapter of the book, if forced
to answer which trade did you guys rank first, I
would just always jump to the June fifteenth, nineteen sixty
four deal that was the old deadline that sent pitcher
Ernie Broglio, reliever Bobby Schantz, and outfielder Doug Clemons from
(01:51):
the Saint Louis Cardinals too the Chicago Cubs in return
for two fringe pitchers and a twenty five year old
third year regular. The Cubs just couldn't figure out an
outfielder named lou Brock. Broglio was unhappy with the Cardinals.
The Cardinals for some reason, manager Johnny Keen was unhappy
with him, and the Cubs were unhappy with Brock. Each
(02:14):
side's reaction to the trade sounds backwards from what we
would expect it to be given the benefit of hindsight.
The Cubs sound like they're doing cartwheels, whereas Cardinals general
manager Bing Divine, I almost said Andy Devine, who used
to show up in a lot of old westerns, kind
of a heavyset guy with a hoarse voice. Bing Divine
(02:35):
doesn't sound overwhelmed. He sounds frankly whelmed. Cubs manager Bob
Kennedy said, this gives us as good a pitching staff
as there is in the league. Rock reported the Chicago
Tribune had fallen into some disfavor with Kennedy. A stickler
for a sound application of baseball's fundamentals, but possessed of
tremendous speed, Brock could prove to be a sound investment
(02:58):
for the Cardinals, good calls Cargo Tribune Kennedy was irritated
at times by Brock's erratic outfield play and occasionally by
his unsound bass running. That's another note that sounds ironic,
given that the fellow retired with the all time stolen
base record. That said, at the moment Brock was thinking
of himself as more of a slugger, and it wasn't
(03:19):
totally crazy. He could hit home runs at least before
the Cardinals moved out of Sportsman's Park and into the
Circular Ashtra version of Bush Stadium. But it's not surprising
he wasn't sure who he was because the Cubs were
such a mess at the time. They signed Brock at
college in August nineteen sixty and had him in the
majors the following September. They had limited his minor league
(03:41):
work to just one hundred and twenty eight games, but
they were also frustrated that he wasn't a finished product.
Rock double dribbles everything hit his way, Gene Mock said,
and he wasn't even Brock's manager at the time, or
ever like Brock needed an extra chef in the kitchen.
The Cubs had had six managers in his three and
a half years with the team. When he got to
(04:01):
Saint Louis, Johnny Keene simplified things, told Brock swing away
when you feel like it, and then once you get
on base, run and it worked out pretty well for them.
Wouldn't you say your honor? I submit nearly three thousand
hits nine hundred stolen bases and three pennance as evidence.
I rest my case. In three hundred and twenty seven
games with the Cubs, Brocket hit two fifty seven with
(04:23):
a three zero six on base percentage, a three eighty
three slugging percentage, and fifty steals. And that's about what
he was hitting at the moment of the trade. As well,
when he got to Saint Louis boom, he exploded, hitting
three forty eight, three eighty seven, five twenty seven with
thirty three steals the rest of the way. Now, there
have been some traded hitters who hit that well or
even better, but only so many whose club was twenty
(04:46):
eight and thirty one at the moment they were traded,
then went sixty five and thirty eight the rest of
the way, in part because they were so galvanized by
the acquired player. Overtook the leader in the penn and
race and went on to win the World Series. In
a column written in reaction to the brock Broglio deal,
Saint Louis Post Dispatch writer Neil Russo asked why didn't
(05:07):
the Cardinals get more than brock a flashy outfielder who
could become a star for Broglio, an eighteen game winner
last season and still regarded as a top pitcher. Good question.
Broglio was twenty eight years old. Back in nineteen sixty
he had gone twenty one and nine with a two
seventy four ERA and had finished third in the Cy
(05:28):
Young voting. By war he should have won it, but
that wasn't a thing then, and the Pirates had won
the pennant anyway, and so it went to vern Law.
After an off year in nineteen sixty one, he pitched
quite well again in nineteen sixty two, and, as Russo mentioned,
when eighteen and eight with a two ninety nine ERA
in nineteen sixty three, although he was worse relative to
the league in terms of runs allowed. When the Cardinals
(05:50):
traded him, he was three and five with a three
point fifty ERA, which was fine, unexciting. Heck, he had
been the opening day starter. They couldn't have known he
had seven wins and nineteen losses left to go in
his career. The Cubs. Should they have known it, they didn't,
although they might have noticed that year by year his
strikeoutrate had declined. It was seven and a half per
(06:12):
nine in nineteen sixty fourth in the league. By nineteen
sixty three, he was down to five point two, which
ranked twenty third. When traded, he was at four point seven.
His elbow was starting to go, and that August, well
it went. It happens, when Brock arrived in Saint Louis.
The corresponding move was for the Cardinals to send down
(06:33):
rookie outfielder Johnny Lewis. Lewis was hitting only two thirty
four with a three twenty four on base in a
three sixty two slugging percentage at the time, but he
had hit twoint eighty with a three seventy two on
base and a four to forty five slugging in the
International League the year before, and was regarded as a prospect.
He probably wasn't that different from Brock in a sense.
(06:53):
He had speed but less, and pop but a bit more.
Devine said he hadn't given up on Lewis. In fact,
I feel Lewis probably has more potential than Brock. He
fields better and he throws better well Brock never could throw.
But nevertheless, by December, Divine had indeed given up on Lewis,
trading him to the Mets for Ilio Chicone and Tracy Stollard.
(07:15):
Lewis had a decent year for the Mets in nineteen
sixty five by the standards of Shay Stadium during Beatlemania,
then totally lost the ability to hit at the age
of twenty six, and his major league career ended quickly.
I don't think the brock Broglio kind of trade is
possible now. Everyone has so much more information, everyone knows better,
and they check the medicals too, so you can't be
(07:38):
pleasantly surprised. You can only be disappointed. Hasn't the Raphael
Devers deal been like that for the Giants so far?
Isn't the life like that now for everyone else? Release
the files, they say, but no matter what's in them,
they won't be happy. Oh have we changed subjects? I
say not, really, It's simply the way that just about
everything goes here in the infinite inning. Well, hello there,
(08:37):
and welcome back to the show. Not for the first time,
will I tell you that. I usually let the theme
song play out and kind of psych myself into position
to start this segment of the show. And then as
I begin my song and dance, I realized that the
record button was not armed. Therefore I was all excited
to talk to myself, but to paraphrase and now disgrace comedian. Hey,
(08:59):
it's a conversation with someone I love. How are you?
I am Stephen Goldman. This is the Infinite Inning, episode
three thirty nine in an ongoing series that will probably
culminate in a huge anniversary issue around number five hundred.
I would think some big crossover with our doppelgangers from
an alternative reality, no doubt, and it will disappoint. I mean,
(09:21):
writing is hard. I was just watching the first episode
of the new season of Star Trek Strange New Worlds,
and I was impressed because something like seventeen years ago
when the previous season aired, they left off on a cliffhanger,
and they resume with the cast in dire straits, and
they quickly throw out all the usual cheat codes that
(09:43):
they use traditionally in Star Trek, not so much the
original series, I think, but particularly in the next generation
era shows, where they write themselves into a corner and
then they cheat their way out, and if you've seen
enough of them, you have experienced what I'm talking about. Captain.
This mean certain death for the ship and the crew.
We're trapped in the arms of the Gabunthard destroyer, and
(10:05):
physics insists that there's no way out. But wait, no
one has ever thought about channeling the food processors through
the deflector drive that ought to create a harmonic disruption
that will launch us free. And they do it in
the credits roll and we all get to count our money,
I guess. So in this one, they start out in
a trap and they throw out all of those kinds
of boilerplate kind of ideas and they reject them one
(10:27):
by one, and I thought they're talking to me. They
understand that my expectations are frequently well they're they're met,
but my expectations are set very low, and they say, no,
we're not going to do those things. And then the
episode rolls on for another forty minutes and then they
do exactly that again. I don't begrudge any writer anything.
It's hard, and I know that from experience, not just
(10:49):
because of how long it can take me sometimes to
find my way in and out of a fairly simple
baseball essay, but because I have written novels, I have
written short stories, and traps are hard. And by traps,
I don't necessarily mean a literal trap like the pit
and the pendulum er James Bond on the laser table
with goldfingers saying no, mister Bond, I expect you to die.
(11:09):
But really, any situation in which you've chased your character
up a tree and now you have to get them
out again, and you want to get them out in
the most original way possible. In real life, though a
fellow belted to the laser table by Auric Goldfinger, he's
not getting out. He's just going to be split by
that laser. And so of course the temptation is to say, well,
(11:32):
you didn't know this, but James Bond always pockets a
laser table belt cutter in his rectum before he goes
out on a mission, and yeah, it hurts, but that's
why he's double seven. If you read the Stephen King
novel Misery, I don't remember if this is played up
quite as much in the film version that Kathy Bates
(11:53):
won the Oscar for for playing the deranged fan Annie.
But part of what makes her crazy is she can
accept that, and she talks about watching old movie serials
like the Perils of Pauline and that you go away
one Saturday with the wagon that Pauline is on being
pitched off of a cliff with her in it, and
(12:13):
she's just dead, okay, But you come back the next
week and you find out no, she had jumped out
just in the nick of time. We forgot to show
it to you. That makes her murderous with rage. But
I think part of King's point is you do it.
You fix that, You make an exciting story that has
a realistic resolution. I'm not saying it can't be done.
(12:34):
I am saying it's probably pretty hard to do in
episodic television, even when shows are down to six or
ten episodes a year, just as it was hard to
do when those old serialized shorts days. Some of them
weren't bad either. You just have to fix your expectations appropriately.
I think my problem with Star Trek first now is
(12:55):
that Paramount's corporate owners don't respect the viewers, and of
course they're corporate overlords, don't respect the viewers or the
people in general, given the way they've been trending with
CBS News in Colbert and so on, and I look
forward to deleting that app. My problem with these specific
writers is that they set out at the beginning of
the episode to say we are going to thwar your expectations.
(13:18):
We are going to throw a change up, which is
what good writing does, again not underrating how difficult that is.
And then they do exactly what they said they weren't
going to do. Another diosx machina. Here's a baseball thing
that I came across earlier that thwarted my expectations in
a good way, because the underdogs subverted the overdogs, who,
(13:39):
in this instance happened to be racist. In a few minutes,
I'm going to mention an out of print book of
photographs of the Negro leagues. And when picking up that
book this week to refer to for the story we're
going to get to in the second act, I kept
opening it to the same damn disturbing page. It's of
a roadside sign in Oklahoma for some sort of restaurant,
(14:01):
not a chain or anything, and advertising pie. You should
stop off and try the pie. And I'm not going
to enunciate the word it's spelled out in the sign,
but n word chicken. And about the first three times
that I opened to that page, I quickly flipped away
from it, as if I had accidentally revealed some sort
of pornography In the book, But when I looked at it,
I realized that it had been taken. The picture had
(14:23):
been taken by and with some negro leaguers who were
standing under the sign and pointing at it and laughing
at it. And maybe they're saying, do you know what
kind of chicken that is? Because I've never heard of
that kind of chicken? Does it have some sort of
special feathers before they pluck it? Are they referring to
who the chicken is for, who it's made by, or
(14:46):
the nature of the chicken itself. It's so absurd that
one would resort to denigrating a people or a chicken
in order to sell some of it. And simultaneously, it's
a bit scary and a lot instructive to try to visualize.
And maybe this is what they were laughing at too,
the kind of person who would be receptive to that
(15:08):
sort of come on and would say, oh boy, and chicken,
you're appealing to someone's very low, very lurid sense of authenticity. There.
As I said at the outset of the show, you
can't be surprised, you can only be disappointed. And so
that's why it feels so good to see that, Oh
(15:28):
ninety years ago or so, or whenever that photograph was taken,
that they decided to be amused rather than disgusted to
invert the Elvis Costello phrasing from The Angels want to
wear My Red Shoes, because what else can you do?
You still can and should fight against ignorance wherever it appears,
and you should certainly fight for your own dignity. But
(15:50):
maybe the first step is just not letting them get
you down with stupid stuff like writing your way out
of a corner. It's another thing that's easier said than done.
We can all aspire to it. Real Briefly, if you
were looking for this week's reissue episode, I did not
manage to get it out. I was tied up with
doctor stuff. I'm good. There's some maintenance coming up and
I needed to prepare for that. We'll get her going
(16:13):
again next Wednesday, and I'll tell you about what I
wrote at Baseball Perspectives this week in our next segment,
because our second story takes off from there, and so
I pray you allow us this break, and on the
other side of it, we will visit with the Los
Angeles White Sox. Yeah, there really was such an animal
way back when, and it was kind of important too.
(16:35):
So hey, if you're listening at home, sit comfortably through
this brief pause. If you're driving, keep your eyes fixed
on the road. We'll be back in a second. And
if you're belted to a table with a laser aimed
at your crotch, well, I hope you thought ahead, you
know the way that James Bond did, But I understand
it if you didn't. I'm not sure this story has
(17:17):
a real plot line. Maybe it's just a set of facts.
But the main team in question had a player whose
last name was Foots and whose nickname was Sore, So
how bad could it be. Mainly, I wanted to share
my excitement at finding a new area of baseball history,
just a little islet in the mainstream that I hadn't
(17:37):
known very much at all about prior to this week.
I love learning about things I didn't know, and I
don't know if this will come out quite in English,
but I especially love it when I didn't know that
I didn't know them. I mean, what I don't know about,
Let's say, opera could fill many shelves of a large library.
But okay, I've kind of intentionally neglected that despite the
(18:00):
fact that my late dad really loved opera and would
have liked it if I loved it too. Not that
I hate it or actively dislike it, it's just sort
of not a main thing for me. And so that's
something where I know that I don't know it. I
also know I don't know differential calculus or how to
safely clean a blowfish. The amount of stuff that I
(18:21):
know I don't know is rather huge. But when it
comes to baseball history, I don't flatter myself to think
I know it all. And in fact, in every individual
subject area within baseball, I know there are people who
have devoted themselves to it and thus would know more
about that micro specialty, say the game in eighteen fifty
and the kinds of New York City clerks who were
(18:43):
playing it for the Knickerbocker Club, that sort of thing.
I have a generalist knowledge of that, and if pressed,
I can tell you that Alexander Joy Cartwright wrote down
the rules, but I can't tell you who played third
base in eighteen fifty five. Know that I cannot do.
That's another place where I know what I don't know.
But this what I'm about to tell you about is
an area where I just didn't know that. I didn't
know it. I didn't know it was there. So it
(19:05):
began when I wrote my column at Baseball Perspectives this
week about Joe DiMaggio's dad, Joe Senior, and how he
was classified as an enemy alien after Pearl Harber, despite
having lived here for over forty years at that point.
I don't think Junior was part of Jualton Joe's birth name,
by the way, but he was his dad's namesake, just
americanized they both were. Joe Senior was born in Sicily
(19:27):
as Giuseppe. He came here in eighteen ninety eight, got
established as a fisherman, and sent for his wife and
his only child to that point, a daughter. The rest
of his total nine kids would be born here in
the United States in California. You know, Queen Victoria had
nine children as well. I would say that Joe's kids
accomplished more in life than hers ever did, despite starting
(19:49):
from a much higher place in society. But putting that aside,
I feel for both her and Rosalie, the Yankee Clipper's mom.
If you look at when Queen Victoria had had her kid,
she had the first six over nine years eighteen forty
to eighteen forty eight. Given that biologically pregnancy lasts about
forty weeks from fertilization till birth, she was pregnant about
(20:13):
fifty percent of the time in those years. That's hard
on a body. Rosalie, Giuseppe's wife, had five kids in
seven years after their separation ended, so she was shall
we say, occupied for an even higher proportion of the
time during those years. They both had pretty decent lifespans
despite all that pardon the expression labor, so they were
(20:34):
both pretty lucky. I mean, childbirth mortality back in well,
certainly Victoria's day, but even in Rosalie's was much higher
than it is now. Although we're working on it. We
could get back there with a little more practice. Giuseppe
had done a lot of things right as an American citizen,
providing for his large family, but somehow he had neglected
to get his citizenship papers over those forty plus years
(20:56):
of residing in the San Francisco area, So to Pearl
Harbor and Japanese, German and Italian Americans came under suspicion
of having compromised loyalty. He at seventy years of age,
was considered a potential spy and restricted in his movements.
In no sense do I think they were looking at
senior citizen non naturalized Italians whose sons happened to be
(21:20):
spectacularly famous, among the biggest celebrities in the country. It
was just that they had a broadly written rule and
a number of areas which they had classified as sensitive
for national defense, including the coastal areas off of San
Francisco and specifically Fishermen's Wharf, which is roughly where the
DiMaggio family lived, where they had a restaurant, and where
(21:41):
the Demagio boat tied up, and so not just for Giuseppe,
but for a lot of Italian American fishermen in that area.
They just made it so it would have been better
for them to stay home and not make their living.
This lasted four Italians not quite a year. Unlike Japanese
Americans and their citizenship ldren, they weren't interned in prison camps,
(22:02):
and that confinement didn't last for the duration of the war.
The restrictions on Italians were quietly dropped in November nineteen
forty two, and there wasn't much in the way of pushback.
Whereas letting out the naturalized Japanese citizens and their children
who had citizenship by birthright that didn't happen until the
end of the war. As is often the case, when
(22:25):
you set out to tell a story, you learn things
that aren't necessarily on the trunk of your tail, but
are fascinating in themselves. In this instance, the further I
went into the disparate treatment of quote unquote enemy aliens
white versus Asian, the more I ran into baseball, specifically,
who was interned among the many, which included Americans from
(22:48):
just about every walk of life was Kenichi's Enimura. So
who is Inimura? He was an immigrant from Hiroshima who
went with his family to Hawaii when he was seven
years old, and then, as a young adult, moved to Fresno, California.
What did he do in Fresno? He played and promoted baseball.
When he died in nineteen sixty eight, the Fresno Bee
(23:09):
called him the Dean of Nisse baseball in America. He
was the captain of his high school baseball team, won
a state championship in Hawaii, and in Fresno he organized
the Fresno Japanese baseball team and played shortstop, although he
spotted at just about every position, and by the way,
he would have made Jose Al Tuvey look statuesque because
(23:30):
he was only five feet tall, although everyone was a
bit shorter back then. He did several things to spread
the love of the game among the Japanese community, both
back in the home islands of Japan and in California.
First of all, he used players from his Fresno team
to see Japanese clubs throughout California, and secondly, he made
(23:52):
regular barnstorming trips back to Japan. Even in those internment
camps during the war, he organized ball which helped the
internees get through it, or I should say, play through it.
When you learn about Zenny as he was called, you
also learned that the Fresno team barnstormed throughout California, which
meant that winters they went down to Los Angeles and
(24:15):
played the White Sox aka the Philadelphia Royal Giants or
just the Royal Giants, but also sometimes the New York
Black Yankees. I know that doesn't make a lot of sense,
but bear with me. All will become clear in just
a moment now. As you know, with the notable exception
of the National League New York Giants or later San
(24:35):
Francisco Giants. The name Giants was a signifier of a
black baseball team, and that is true in this instance
during the segregation period. We're talking about the nineteen tens
in nineteen twenties. At that time, the form that the
California Winter League took was of a four team circuit,
(24:55):
with three white teams and one all black team, with
a notable exception, which we'll get to in a second.
This was in a way very pioneering in the sense
that it was not integrated on an individual team basis,
but the league itself was integrated, featuring play between white
and black players. The team was managed and I think
(25:17):
owned by a fellow named Lonnie Goodwin, also a black
player out of Texas who had come up with Rube
Foster back earlier in the century. The Philadelphia Royal Giants
were a team that was part of the Eastern Colored League,
and since black players generally didn't make enough money that
they could just take winters off and tried as best
(25:37):
they could to play year round. I think what happened
was that, whereas the intention was to call the one
black team in the league, the Los Angeles White Sox.
In practical terms, most of the Royal Giants roster just
to camp from Philadelphia to California, and it was just
easier to say, hey, it's us, We're the Philadelphia Royal Giants.
(25:58):
And that scenario tended to RepA heat itself. One year
they had a disproportionate number of New York Black Yankees,
and it just seemed easier to say, look, it's the
Black Yankees. It's not the Royal Giants. It's not the
White Sox or the Black Yankees. One year, pretty much
the entire Kansas City Monarchs team came over. Again. It's
not like a regular club with a reserve clause, where
(26:21):
if you were following the Cubs in that time and
they had Rig Stevenson and year one, unless they went
out of their way to trade him, you knew he
was going to be back in year two. In this instance,
it was whoever showed up. They didn't change the name
to Monarchs that year though. In terms of uniforms, I
think they just wore whatever. So there are photos of
some of their rosters, and you see that Lonnie Goodwin
(26:44):
has a uniform with an RG logo on the breast,
although it looks like RC to me, so I keep
thinking of the cola. When was the last time you
had an RC cola. I don't really drink leaded soda
anymore because it made me a jerk. Frankly, I'd get
wired on the sugar and the caffeine and then crash
off of it and by the end of the evening
(27:04):
be super depressed. And we haven't even talked about the
calories or other deleterious effects on your health. So I
swore that stuff off pretty much a long time ago.
But I think for RC specifically, I'm had a last
had one about nineteen eighty one. I don't know if
I've even seen one since then. All I remember, you
can correct me on this, is that back then it
seemed about half as sweet as say a coke or
(27:26):
a pepsi, and so I would have described it as
unpleasantly dry. I've known people I would describe that way too,
And now that I think about it, I don't really
miss either of them. Only a few players got those
RG or RC uniforms royal cards, and some had uniforms
that just said giants on them, and others might have
just brought their uniform over from their regular season home,
(27:48):
like the Hilldale Club. There's a reason they say you
can't tell the players without a scorecard. By the way,
the league's three non black teams had awful names like
White Kings or White Stars. It's depressing. And yet, given
the great players that were on the Royal Giants rosters,
they won a lot, They won the championship a lot
(28:10):
over the years. As former Major League utility man turned
Los Angeles angel Red Killifer said in nineteen twenty six,
every member of the Giants could make good in the
big leagues if the color line permitted. This seems obvious
now when you look at who passed through that Royal
Giants team and see a huge number of players who
(28:30):
were later inducted into the Hall of Fame, Turkey Sterns, Mules, Subtles,
devil Wells, Satchel Page. But you weren't allowed to prove
that point. Then, how can you say there was never
any systemic racism in the United States when white players
were making comments like that ninety nine years ago. We'll
get back to that in just a second. We'll also
(28:52):
tie all this together with Kenichi Zennemura's Fresno team right
after this brief insion. At least once the Royal Giants
(29:21):
had a team that was integrated, not in the black
and white sense, but in the black and Japanese sense.
They had a Japanese second basement. I haven't yet found
that player's name. I'd like to think that it was
Zenemura himself, but it seems pretty likely he was exclusively
tied up with his Fresno club. However, both threads came
together in Japan in early nineteen twenty seven. That year,
(29:45):
after the Winter League season concluded, both clubs separately. I
think the trips were more or less coincidental, went on
a Pacific tour, visiting, in the Giants case, Japan, China, Korea,
the Philippines, and Hawaii, probably not in that order. Maybe
this tour was a problem for both the Eastern Colored
League and the Negro National League because it left in
(30:07):
March and didn't return until June, which meant that several
of their key players weren't around for about half the season.
The league said that they were going to issue five
year suspensions to catcher Bismacki, a member of the Hilldale
Club and a future Hall of Famer Detroit Stars lefty
Andy Cooper, who also eventually received a plaque, Harrisburg Giants
(30:28):
slugging outfielder Rap Dixon and Monarchs catcher Frank Duncan. But
like a lot of Negro League's attempts at discipline or
enforcing contracts, it was mostly bluster. Lonnie Goodwin's argument he
paid better as much as any of Babe Ruth's trips overseas,
which came later, and Goodwin's gang had gone back by then.
(30:50):
Zinnemuras too. The Royal Giants tour was key to the
establishment of the game in Japan. I mean it was
already there, It was already going. They already had huge stadiums.
Japanese teams were playing in one hundred thousand seed venues,
which would have been intimidating as hell to say the
Saint Louis Browns if they had gone over then when
they were playing before nineteen fans, one of whom was
(31:12):
the shortstop's mom, plus a dog named Clarence who just
happened to sneak in under the turnstiles and no one
had the heart to chase him out. What I mean
is that the Negro League's players impressed with their abilities
and their comportment. They went twenty three to zero to one,
the one type being against the best semi pro team
in Japan's Industrial League, and what they plus Ruth plus
(31:34):
Leftio Duel and so on over the years, including Zennemura's
Fresno team, and he and Goodwin arranged for their clubs
to play each other on this early nineteen twenty seven tour.
What they showed was that Japanese baseball belonged to this
greater community of the game, and that they could aspire
to a higher level of competition that they might not
(31:58):
have achieved had they just been left to their own devices.
They could have just said, hey, this is the way
we do it, and certainly in some aspects they did
do that. They should have done that, and they continue
to do that. But I think it's a big thing
to be reminded that one is or could be part
of something larger than themselves. And though we may be
separated by language or mode of dress or the way
(32:21):
that we play the game, there is common ground here
and what leaders may do or may have done in
the years after that, well, the average person who aspires
to leadership is in some sense crazy. By placing themselves
above the community, they exempt themselves or remove themselves from
the community. Whereas the good, healthy, average center of the
(32:44):
community is not interested in war, It is not interested
in conquest, annihilation, genocide. It just wants to enjoy its life,
its family, its children, to see them grow up and
carry on the family business, which is the business of life,
the one life that we've been given. And perhaps along
the way, all the aforementioned members of the community might
(33:07):
pick up or watch someone pick up a bat, a ball,
and a glove, and that can be a metaphor for
anything you like. But in the case of the infinite inning,
it is simply what it appears to be, the game
of baseball. But for one book from earlier this century,
much of this history, especially as it pertains to the
(33:28):
black players, has been forgotten. This whole benign exchanging of
culture through baseball. It's grand and it shows what you
can accomplish in terms of bringing people together when your
thinking extends beyond the barrel of a gun. And then
there's America. I found this story in a wonderful book.
(33:48):
I referred to it earlier. It has the anodyne but
accurate title of the Negro Baseball League's a photographic history.
It came out way back in nineteen ninety two. It
is credited to Phil Dixon with Patrick J. Hannigan. Oddly,
the copyrights are by some people named Jed and Joanna,
But I suppose that's none of my business. In that
(34:10):
book they have a photo of the nineteen twenty nine
Royal Giants team. I referred to it earlier, and that
picture includes outfielder L. D. Livingston of the Monarchs, also
known as Lee Leo and Google. Maybe they said it
just like that, goog oh googo. In nineteen twenty nine,
the Monarchs went down to Houston to play the Black
(34:31):
Buffaloes of the Texas Colored League in a postseason series.
Now there was also a White Texas League, and it
had a Houston Plain Buffalo's team, Vanilla Buffalo's pale Buffaloes
that don't go out in the sun Buffaloes. That's not
who the Monarchs were in town to play, given that,
as we've observed earlier, they weren't allowed to play them. No,
they were playing another segregated team, the Black Buffaloes, who apparently,
(34:56):
as this story will reveal, had a following among white
police offic officers in Dallas. Go figure. Now ld went
with the rest of his Monarch's teammates to play in
this series, and he was born and died in Fort Worth,
so none of what happened to him should have been
particularly surprising. After one of the games, a game won
(35:16):
by the Monarchs, Livingston went to see relatives in Dallas
and was arrested by two white cops for the crime
of waiting for a cab while black. Livingston identified himself
as a Monarchs ballplayer. You're one of the Northern boys
who beat the Houston Club in that series, the now
enlightened cops said. Livingston was nevertheless taken to jail and
(35:39):
given a twenty dollars fine on what charge he asked?
The only reply was, hell, boy, you're in Texas. Did
I say? More? The more things change, the more things
stay the same. It's just that every once in a
while we change up the costuming so that the play
is staged in modern dress. Ld Livingston good old Goo goo.
(36:01):
He was out twenty bucks, a lot of money back then.
But I suppose in that one instance he had it
a little better than say, Kenichi's and Amura had it.
Once the Zeros flew over Hickhem and Wheeler Fields. Sure
those cops were trying to keep him down, but they
weren't trying to keep him out. Casey Stangele, who helped
discover some of the players who made up the first
(36:22):
generation of Monarchs, played some in the California Winter League.
In one game he had a couple of hits off
a bullet Rogan. Casey was a good player. Should you
wish to be good about following me on social media,
you can do so at Stephen Gooldman dot bsky dot social.
You can also write us by which I mean me
again at Infinite Inning at gmail dot com. And there's
a Facebook group. Simply go to Facebook search on infinite Inning. Bang.
(36:43):
You're there, But would you want to be Day by
day we grow closer to replacing that I swear as always,
this show is brought to you by our sponsors and
our Patreon supporters. In on that note, I would like
to thank Chris Thomas and Jerry. Thank you so much, fellas.
If you'd like to join them, please visit patreon dot com.
Slash the Infinite Inning gear of a rudimentary kind of
(37:03):
available at the hyphen Infinite hyphen Inning dot creator, dash
spring dot com original soundtrack of available gratis, said casual
Observer Music dot bandcamp dot com. Finally, should you find
yourself with the proverbial moment to spare, please go to
the podcatcher of your choice and rate, review and subscribe.
And if your podcast or doesn't let you do those things,
oh go sue someone for absolutely no reason. It's all
(37:25):
the rage nowadays, but don't do it in California they
have statutes against that. Our theme song, which you are
hearing now and have been listening to throughout the episode,
was a co composition of myself and doctor Rick Mooring.
We wrote the dang thing and I'm proud of it. Conversely,
doctor Rick explains that I saw snakes, big snakes and
little snakes, snakes of all colors who chanted at me
during my long night's vigil, and I have climbed this
(37:47):
granite wall and I'm not coming down until they are gone. Well,
I guess the same goes for me, because who would
leave a friend in that condition? And so assuming we
do get down, I'll be back next week with more
tails from inside the Infinite Inning. Hm
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