What This Blog Is About

Baseball...duh!

I will be talking about baseball, especially commenting on the history of the game, how it has changed, and how it should be changed. I am a baseball traditionalist, but also practical. I am fascinated by some of the marvelous and crazy things that have happened in the American National Pastime, the characters, stadiums and teams. I can remember attending games at Gilmore Field in Los Angeles, home of the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League, when it really was the Pacific League. I was a charter member of the Junior Angels Fan Club when the Angels joined the American League in 1961. I saw my first major league game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and was one of the 93,000 at the Coliseum on the night that the Yankees and Dodgers played an exhibition game to benefit Dodger Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campenella who had been paralyzed in an auto accident in the winter between the '57 and '58 seasons. I also had a great uncle, my father's uncle who was a major league player with a career .333 average: 1 for 3 with the Cleveland Indians at the end of the1928 season.

 I bought my first two baseball cards from a machine in front of a liquor store near my grandmother's house in what is now the city of West Hollywood, California, in 1957, the year before the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. One of the cards was of Pee Wee Reese, the Brooklyn Dodgers' Hall of Fame shortstop and captain. The other card was either Bob Miller, a right-handed pitcher for the Phillies, or Robin Roberts, also a right handed pitcher for the Phillies and a Hall of Famer at that. I don't remember which Phillie pitcher's card I got that day, but I vividly remember what the baseball card looked like (I can remember what a lot of players cards looked like back in the day, when kids collected cards because they liked collecting cards; who knew that they would be worth money some day). For years I thought that it was Robin Roberts, and I thought how unbelievable it was to have my first two cards be Hall of Famers. It may have been Roberts, but years later, at a baseball card show, I saw the 1957 baseball cards and Roberts and Miller had identical poses. I will never know which one I had in 1957, but I have them both now.

Future posts will include commentary on collecting baseball cards in the late 50s and early 60s, my first awareness of Hank Aaron, how the All Star Game should be changed, and how the game has changed. I hope to make a major project of commentary on the 1951 baseball season, beginning with Opening Day in 2011, the 60th anniversary of the 1951 season, and focusing on the New York teams and the Hollywood Stars and Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League.

If you are a fan of baseball who loves the history of the game as well as the day to day angst of following your favorite team, I hope that you will enjoy this blog.