Mark Sommer's book brings to life 1960s

(image from Amazon)

I have finished reading the new biography of Rocky Colavito. It's called "Rocky Colavito: Cleveland's Iconic Slugger." This is a player who was the subject of the most recent song I have had recorded. I actually wrote it about three years before I had it recorded. It is a coincidence that I took this step so close to the release of the new bio.
The bio has brought renewed attention to "Cleveland's Iconic Slugger." If it can bring a few extra listeners to my song, that's nice. The author is Mark Sommer, writer for the Buffalo News. We exchanged a couple emails and I appreciated his responses.
We might see Rocky as the equivalent to our Tony Oliva. Both were riveting in their prime. The problem was that their prime wasn't quite long enough to get into the hallowed Hall of Fame. In addition to being hallowed, the Hall is most lucrative for those who get in. Since money is what matters in baseball, I guess the latter consideration is paramount, eh?
Is there something outside of money that ought to matter? Well, first and foremost, I think the World Series should never have abandoned its tradition of games played in the daytime. My argument is that daytime is the setting in which baseball was meant to be played. No artificial light source. No making people stay up until an unreasonably late hour to see the ending of a game on TV. Humor writer Dave Barry has touched on this, saying "major league playoff games are games played after everyone has gone to bed."
Barry uses hyperbole of course. The nighttime schedule was a pragmatic move to try to get the most eyeballs. The afternoon might thus be seen as less commercially appealing. Well, it is. I remember having to wait to hear about the outcome of a World Series game upon getting home from school. This was even in 1965 when the Twins took us on the mesmerizing path to the World Series.
Baseball fans were focused on the games even if not being able to follow them in real time. You might say the games took on a sort of mystical quality, the quality exuded by something that is elusive to a degree. I'm reminded of the truism in marketing about how scarcity, or the perception of scarcity, increases the value of a product.
 
Just shy of the Hall, like Oliva
Rocky Colavito never played in a World Series. The post-season in baseball can give you "creds" toward the Hall of Fame. Colavito's last year was 1968. His stats had lost much of their earlier sheen. Keep in mind that 1968 was "the year of the pitcher" and many offensive stats were in a tailspin. The pitching mound got lowered for 1969. This had the desired effect for the offense.

Author Mark Sommer

So if Colavito had stuck around, as he felt he could have, possibly with an expansion team, he might have coaxed enough from his bat to meet the longevity standards of the Hall. In our Tony Oliva's case, I and many others feel his longevity was sufficient. We must consider how truly outstanding he was in his prime.
Maybe the Hall needs to back off some from the pure longevity criterion.
Oliva did not excel in his post-season play. It didn't help that our Twins lost all our post-season appearances during his career. There was the pennant-winning season of 1965 where we fell in Game 7 to Sandy Koufax. In '69 we played in the first-ever divisional series under Billy Martin. I was distressed about how Minnesotans had seemed to lose some of their enthusiasm for the Twins at this point. We were skeptical how we'd do against the Baltimore Orioles. The skepticism was justified totally, as Oliva and his mates got swept. Then it was ditto in 1970: getting swept by the Orioles. I felt personally devastated.
Eventually Minnesota needed a new playing venue to jump-start interest in the team: we got the Metrodome. I hardly need to remind you of the great glory achieved there.
 
An injustice in '65?
Let's consider one more thing that hurt "Tony O." re. the Hall of Fame. Tony arguably should have been the American League MVP in 1965. To this day many people argue that. This little gem on his resume would have helped. In a decision that seems increasingly to be questionable, Zoilo Versalles got the MVP honor.
Versalles was our shortstop. He definitely did some great things in 1965. We remember him today as a disappointment. We are conflicted as we feel adoration based on him being an original Twin and being quite captivating over the early course of his career. Being a big league player can take a lot out of you. We ought to feel for these people, especially those who played in the days when they weren't rewarded properly and lacked rights.
Versalles declined after 1965. We learn today that he had trouble managing painkillers. His personality seemed generally unstable. Had we put him aside in '67 in favor of any reasonably serviceable shortstop, we could well have won the pennant, with the team that might have been better even than '65. The Twins eventually gave up on Versalles. We belatedly obtained Leo Cardenas, who I have extolled as the most underrated Twin ever, for the '69 season.
I expressed in one of my emails to Mr. Sommer that baseball could seem so entrancing in the '60s even though pitching had gotten too dominant. Boys my age could be transfixed as we thumbed through a new batch of baseball cards. We actually got interested in the top pitchers like Denny McLain. McLain of the Tigers won 31 games in '68, the equivalent, I feel, of Roger Maris hitting 61 home runs for the Yankees in '61.
I feel bad for the players who were handicapped by all sorts of things in that time period. They lacked rights, they lacked freedom, they were locked in a world where they had to produce or just "mosey on." "Pitch or go home," I heard McLain say in a recent podcast from Detroit where he now appears to be leading a happy life. (He has had some major problems with the law.)
However, once players began successfully asserting themselves, I guess due mainly to the Andy Messersmith case - it wasn't Curt Flood as is commonly believed - I got profoundly irritated as well. I could not countenance the players strikes. In general I don't like unions as a way for workers to assert themselves. I guess my hatred of public school teacher unions has built up this feeling. I feel laws can be passed to ensure proper and fair treatment of working people of all stripes. I hate the pure enmity that labor unions promote. I have been around this unpleasantness in my life and I find it odious.
The last straw for me was the 1994 baseball players strike. That crossed a line by a country mile. My feelings about baseball never recovered. If I'm channel-surfing and discover a Twins game, I am only staying there about five seconds and then I move on. And yet my recollection of baseball of the 1960s remains golden as ever. I write often about this.
 
Pining with a melody!
Recently I wrote song lyrics (or a poem) about the 1968 Detroit Tigers. That was McLain's team when he won 31 games. I was 13 years old. A boy's baseball memories made at that age can never be replaced.
I had to make a little adjustment in the lyrics after first posting. I have to apologize because I should have confirmed the definition of a word before posting. I meant to confirm it, then forgot. The word is "sublime." I was searching for a rhyme for this line of lyrics. I used "sublime" with a less than firm grasp of the word. I was writing about the tenor of our society in 1968. So I wrote "War and riots were sublime."
OK, so the meaning of sublime? Tentatively I thought it meant something grand in scope but to an excessive or troubling degree. No, Kemosabe, my impression was off. It is simply something grand or magnificent. Fortunately I found substitute wording rather quickly and the new words are quite apt: "War and riots on our mind."

I then wondered if I could have stuck with "sublime" with sort of a paradoxical or ironic meaning. Maybe I could have fooled people into thinking this is what I meant all along! Not only that, it dawned on me there was precedent. Precedent for using a paradoxical or ironic word. I remembered a movie from around 1970: "Oh! What a Lovely War." War is of course anything but "lovely." So, that is how the point can be made about war being horrible. Use the opposite of what you intend.
I decided not to be smarter than the average bear. I changed the line of lyrics. Many of my lyrics will never be recorded - that's why I use the alternative word "poetry."
Note: My lyrics or poem about the 1968 Tigers are included with my "I Love Morris" post about pitcher Earl Wilson.
I think Rocky Colavito should be in the Hall of Fame. I'm happy for author Mark Sommer and the success of his book. He is Jewish. I admire Jewish people for their drive, their value of education and their standards for success, and feel it sad that some people interpret compliments like this as somehow being prejudiced. What gives? I aspire to be like those people. Should I convert?
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwillhy73@yahoo.com