The LuLac Edition #5, 084, March 26th, 2024

 

MAYBE I’M AMAZED

Our “Maybe I’m Amazed” logo.

Tools of the trade

BASEBALL EDITION

MAYBE I’M AMAZED…… the baseball is about the size of an adult's fist, around nine inches (23 centimeters) in circumference. It has a rubber or cork center, wound in yarn, and covered in white cowhide, with red stitching.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED……. that the bat is a hitting tool, traditionally made of a single, solid piece of wood. Other materials are now commonly used for nonprofessional games. It is a hard round stick, about 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) in diameter at the hitting end, tapering to a narrower handle and culminating in a knob. Bats used by adults are typically around thirty-four inches (86 centimeters) long, and no longer than forty-two inches (110 centimeters.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED……. The glove or mitt is a fielding tool, made of padded leather with webbing between the fingers. As an aid in catching and holding onto the ball, it takes various shapes to meet the specific needs of different fielding positions.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED……. that in the mid-1850s, a baseball craze hit the New York metropolitan area, and by 1856, local journals were referring to baseball as the "national pastime" or "national game". A year later, the sport's first governing body, the National Association of Base Ball Players, was formed. In 1867, it barred participation by African Americans. The more formally structured National League was founded in 1876. Professional Negro leagues formed, but quickly folded. In 1887, softball, under the name of indoor baseball or indoor-outdoor, was invented as a winter version of the parent game. The National League's first successful counterpart, the American League, which evolved from the minor Western League, was established in 1893, and all the modern baseball rules were in place by then.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED…. The National Agreement of 1903 formalized relations both between the two major leagues and between them and the National Association of Professional Base Ball Leagues, representing most of the country's minor professional leagues. The World Series, pitting the two major league champions against each other, was inaugurated that fall.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED……. but not really that the Black Sox Scandal of the 1919 World Series led to the formation of the office of the Commissioner of Baseball. The first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was elected in 1920. That year also saw the founding of the Negro National League; the first significant Negro league, it would operate until 1931. For part of the 1920s, it was joined by the Eastern Colored League.

 MAYBE I’M AMAZED…that the St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey invested in several minor league clubs and developed the first modern farm system.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED that the first elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame took place in 1936. The first inductees were t Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED…. that Little League baseball was started in South Bill town. Founded by Carl Stotz in 1939 as a three-team league in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and formally incorporated on October 10, 1950, Little League Baseball encourages local volunteers to organize and operate Little League programs that are annually chartered through Little League International.

 MAYBE I’M AMAZED....that a large number of minor league teams disbanded when World War II led to a player shortage. Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley led the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League to help keep the game in the public eye.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED..... that the first crack in the unwritten agreement barring Black people from white-controlled professional ball occurred in 1945: Jackie Robinson was signed by the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers and began playing for their minor league team in Montreal. In 1947, Robinson broke the major leagues' color barrier when he debuted with the Dodgers. Latin-American players, overlooked before, also started entering the majors in greater numbers. In 1951, two Chicago White Sox, Venezuelan-born Chico Carrasquel and Black Cuban-born Minnie Miñoso, became the first Hispanic All-Stars. Integration proceeded slowly: by 1953, only six of the sixteen major league teams had a Black player on the roster.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED…. Baseball has inspired many works of art and entertainment. One of the first major examples, Ernest Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat", appeared in 1888. A wry description of the failure of a star player in what would now be called a "clutch situation", the poem became the source of vaudeville and other staged performances, audio recordings, film adaptations, and an opera, as well as a host of sequels and parodies in various media. There have been many baseball movies, including the Academy Award–winning The Pride of the Yankees (1942) and the Oscar nominees The Natural (1984) and Field of Dreams (1989). The American Film Institute's selection of the ten best sports movies includes The Pride of the Yankees at number 3 and Bull Durham (1988) at number 5.Baseball has provided thematic material for hits on both stage—the Adler–Ross musical Damn Yankees—and record—George J. Gaskin's "Slide, Kelly, Slide", Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson", and John Fogerty's "Centerfield". The baseball-inspired comedic sketch "Who's on First?", popularized by Abbott and Costello in 1938, quickly became famous. Six decades later, Time named it the best comedy routine of the 20th century.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED…. that there are two people in Cooperstown who technically had nothing to do with baseball in terms of signing a contract, playing or even broadcasting. They were Bud Abbot and Lou Costello for the “Who’s on First” bit.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED…. after changes, strikes, strife, scandals, and more than 170 years in existence we still root, argue, watch, and talk about this great sport…baseball.  (Wikipedia, LuLac) 

 PLAY BALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!