The Baseball Digest Archives

Jul 22, 2024

Living Through History

The inevitable happened; yesterday Joe Biden announced that he is ending his reelection campaign and threw his full support behind Kamala Harris. A large number of prominent Democrats have followed suit. The story is still developing, so there is much more to be determined. Taking the safe assumption that Harris will in fact be the nominee, who will be her veep choice? What are the chances that the T**** campaign will say something unbelievably racist, sexist, or both? For baseball fans, the important question was answered. Like clockwork, on such a historic day, Nick Castellanos did in fact hit a home run. It was a deep drive to left field.

One of the biggest winners of yesterday’s news cycle turned out to be Aaron Sorkin. The entire internet spent the morning dunking on him for his NYT op-ed in which he suggested that the Democratic Party should nominate Mitt Romney. Putting aside the sheer idiocy of that statement all that it did is help remind me how much I hated hated hated hated The Newsroom. All was soon forgotten; Biden released his statement and Sorkin himself walked back his comments.

December 1981

First off, is there a better cover image than Tim Raines in those spectacular old Montreal Expos red white & blue uniforms? I know that most people blame the demise of the franchise on the aftermath of the 1994 strike, but the real reason is that ownership brought some bad mojo when they switched to a more generic looking uniform. You just don’t mess with perfection.

Raines of course had a spectacular rookie season in 1981 and he was rightfully named as a member of Baseball Digest’s all-rookie team. As great as Raines was that year, he did not win the NL Rookie of the Year award. 81 was also the year of Fernandomania, with Fernando Valenzuela winning not only ROY but also the Cy Young award that year. That year’s all-rookie team was a good one. One future Hall of Fame, one legend, two World Series heroes, and several players who had careers of significance.

If you know me by now, you would suspect that I would be drawn to an article about 3 forgotten Hall of Fame candidates like a moth to a flame. The article in this issue doesn’t really attempt to make a compelling argument for those 3 men. It simply looks at a particular metric and stated that every man who had reached the .300 batting average/2500 career hit achievement was in the Hall with the exception of these 3 - Richie Ashburn, along with 19th century players Jimmy Ryan and George Van Haltren. Ashburn was eventually elected in 1995, but no such luck for the other two and to be honest there’s no real case to be made for either. It’s an impressive feat to put together careers like theirs, but nothing about their numbers screams “induct these men!”

The issue contains 2 separate articles in which inner circle greats speak about the current game, and I’m happy to see that neither fully defaulted to grouchy old player mode. Henry Aaron laments a bit over his belief that money and free agency may have spoiled things a bit, but he also spoke of the ways in which he felt the game has improved - he specifically mentioned speed and relief pitching. Ted Williams left open the idea that a .400 average is still possible. After all, Rod Carew and George Brett had both recently flirted with the mark. Williams mentioned Willie Wilson as another player whom he thought might have a chance. As Williams said, “You have to be good, you have to be lucky, and you have to have everything get together in one year.” All these years later, no one has yet been able to put together that magical season. Despite Williams’s optimism in 1981, it seems the longest of long shots that anyone will ever again be able to hit .400.

Quickly running through some of the other articles in this issue, Mike Schmidt was an easy choice for 1981 Player of the Year. 81 was one of the best seasons in his brilliant career. I’d like to know who came up with the headline An Inside Gander At The Yankees’ Goose Gossage. Talk about trying too hard. There was also a lengthy feature on one of the game’s true characters - old Yankees pitcher Lefty Gomez, who was still alive at the time and shared many stories of baseball in the 1930’s. Finally, I always love to share the old ballpark cartoons from Gene Mack when one of them appears in an issue. They are filled with so many wonderful details. This one features Cleveland’s League Park.

Bob Newhart

There were so many different phases to Bob Newhart’s long and brilliant career that it doesn’t seem possible that it was all accomplished by one man. After starting off as an accountant, he got into comedy, famous for his distinctive routine in which he would make phone calls and leave it up to the imagination of the audience as to what the person on the other end of the line was saying. This developed his signature style filled with stammers and pregnant pauses. His 1960 album The Buttoned Down Mind Of Bob Newhart was a phenomenal success. In an era in which comedy albums were often some of the biggest sellers, this one even stood out in that atmosphere, spending 14 weeks at #1 on the Billboard chart. He won Grammy awards for both Album Of the Year and Best New Artist.

He co-starred in films such as Catch-22 and Cold Turkey before landing his own sitcom in 1972. The Bob Newhart Show’s genius came from a simple idea. He was one of the greatest reactive comics ever seen, so it was a brilliant move to cast him as a psychologist leading group therapy sessions. That allowed him to interact with a cast full of eccentric characters; his deadpan reactions were tailor made for the role of Bob Hartley. The show also inspired a popular drinking game. Take a drink every time a character says “hi Bob” and you’re blasted by the first commercial break.

The Bob Newhart Show was a TV classic, but for my money his 1980’s show was the real champ. In Newhart, he portrayed Dick Loudon, a successful writer of how-to books, who purchases an inn in Vermont with the idea that it would be a nice quiet place which would allow him to write in peace. What he did not know was that the inn was located in the most insane small town in New England; many of the people he encountered were even crazier than the patients that Dr. Hartley had treated in the other show. For a second time, it was a testament to Newhart’s skill and his lack of ego that he put himself in a position in which he allowed other talented comedians to thrive. And of course, this show had one of the most brilliant series finales of all time, with the revelation that the entire series was actually a dream that the Bob Hartley character had. The cheers of recognition from the studio audience when they recognized the old bedroom set were amazing. The amplified cheers when he switched on a light and everyone saw his original TV wife Suzanne Pleshette in bed with him were even better.

Newhart spent the last 3 decades or so of his life as an elder statesman of comedy, equally respected and beloved by comedians from every generation that followed in his footsteps. Everyone loved his role in Elf; after a long career he finally won an Emmy award for his guest starring role in The Big Bang Theory. I also want to mention his work on SNL. He hosted the show twice; the most memorable appearance for me came in a season 5 episode. One would think there would have been a vast generation gap. As a sign of how much everyone revered him, he was one of those hosts for whose episode the writers clearly molded the show to fit his sensibilities. Nothing from that episode is on YouTube, but I have clear memories of 2 great sketches. In one, he & Gilda Radner were owners of a variety store in which they had literally every item a customer asked for, no matter how absurd. In another, he was a contestant on a game show called The Dating Zone, which mashed The Dating Game & The Twilight Zone together. The 3 bachelorettes he chose from were a dirty old lady, a dominatrix, and an autistic woman.

Bob Newhart was 94 years old; he seemed to be one of those people who would never die. The word “legend” is one that is sometimes used a little too easily. Bob Newhart was a legend.

50 Years Ago - Sundry One-Season Shows

When I did the initial research to find TV series that debuted in 1974, I came across several short-lived shows that I had not thought of since they first ran way back when. It also reminded me that as a kid I spent a lot of time closely examining the TV Guide Fall Preview issue. When I saw the title Friends & Lovers I immediately flashed to the image in the promotional material of Paul Sand with his standup bass while wearing the hangdog expression on his face that a young David Schwimmer likely studied carefully. That show came with a lot of hype, but it quickly fizzled.

I don’t think I ever actually watched an episode of that one, but I do remember regularly watching The Texas Wheelers. This was a quickly cancelled show which starred Jack Elam as a widower raising his young adult sons. At the time the actor portraying one of the sons caught my attention - Mark Hamill. For the next couple of years whenever I would see him anywhere else I would immediately say to myself “hey, that’s the guy from Texas Wheelers.” Like everyone else, when ads for Star Wars started running a few years later I saw Chewbacca & R2-D2 and knew that I needed to see this movie. But I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I also thought how cool it was that one of the Wheeler sons was in a movie. Fun fact - when I took a look at the show’s IMDB page I noticed that Gary Buddy played the oldest son. Who knew?

Hamill wasn’t the only future film star to have a role in a long-forgotten 1974 series. There was actually a show based on Paper Moon. That was a wonderful movie, but it was a fully self-contained story. I don’t know what anyone saw in the film that would lead one to believe that a weekly series could be made out of it. There is one reason and one reason alone why it’s more than just a minor footnote. The child actress who was cast in the Tatum O’Neal role? It was an actress who even at that young age already had a hefty TV resume - Jodie Foster!

I was a big fan of Get Christie Love! The show made history, as it was the first time an African-American actress was the lead in an hour long police detective drama. I was only 8 years old in 1974, so I had no idea at the time of the historical significance of Teresa Graves’ casting in the title role. I only knew that she, and the show, were so damn cool.

Tending The Herd

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