Black Baseball Players

When I was born in 1945, there were no black baseball players in the American nor National Leagues.  Why?  They weren't good enough?  No.  It was simply the belief that blacks and whites shouldn't or couldn't play together on the same field at the same time.  In other words, prejudice.

Speaking of prejudice, my parents consistently used the word "schvartze" when referring to black people.  They said it only meant black in Yiddish, but I could sense in the way they said the word it meant something more.  Would I learn this from them?

Segregation in baseball changed forever in 1947 when Branch Rickey, an owner (and General Manager) of the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League, decided on a novel way to improve his ball club.  He would hire a black ballplayer by the name of Jackie Robinson.  Rickey knew he needed not only a good player, but also one who could handle the "harsh criticism from fans, other players, and ever his own teammates."  

Jackie Robinson had such a successful year in 1947 he was voted Rookie of the Year.  He continued playing with the Dodgers for 10 years before retiring in 1956.  Jackie Robinson is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In 1964, I attended a speech Jackie Robinson gave on the Penn campus regarding civil rights in America.  Afterwards, he gave me his autograph which I treasured for many years, especially after he died in 1972 at the age of 53.  Years later I gave the autograph to my son Bret.  I wonder where it is?

Also in 1947, Bill Veeck, owner of the Cleveland Indians of the American League, signed another black baseball player, Larry Doby.  Three of his teammates refused to shake his hand, so Veeck got rid of them.  Two years later, the Indians added a second black player, Luke Easter.  

In 1957, I was at a minor league baseball game in Rochester, New York sitting behind the third base dugout (compliments of my Aunt Doris who had season tickets).  The same Luke Easter was playing for the visiting team and had just cracked his bat.  At the end of the inning, the equipment manager rose to the top of the dugout and offered me the damaged bat.  I kept it for 5 years until my mother gave it away...without asking me.

In 1951, the New York Giants promoted a 20 year-old black ballplayer named Willie Mays.  After making out his first 12 times at bat, Mays hit a home run and his statistics started to blossom.  Like Jackie Robinson, he too was voted Rookie of the Year.  

Since Willie Mays was the new sensation on my favorite team in my favorite sport, he became my favorite player, my sports idol to this day.  I remember how thrilled I was seeing him in person for the first time at old Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia in 1964.  Another time I saw Willie Mays hit one of his 660 home runs.  He is considered one of the greatest players of all time and is also in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  

In 1956, the old Milwaukee Braves added a black player named Wes Covington.  His 45 home runs and 139 runs batted in (RBIs) were instrumental in their winning the National League pennant in both 1957 and 1958.  

I met Wes Covington on June 30, 1960 when he was a member of the Havana Sugar Kings (minor league) baseball team.  They were staying at the same hotel in Rochester where my brother Joel married my sister-in-law Judy.  I'll never forget how a 28 year-old professional baseball player made a 14 year-old fan feel relaxed as we freely conversed for some minutes in the lobby.

I am sure the decisions of Branch Rickey, Bill Veeck and others admitting black baseball players to the Major Leagues affected my attitude toward minorities, civil rights and equal treatment to all in America.  These men deserve a lot of credit for how they changed me and my country for the better.                

Whiskey Sour

A whiskey sour is a mixed drink containing 1 1/2 ounces of either bourbon or rye whiskey, 3/4 of an ounce of fresh lemon juice and 3/4 of an ounce of a mixture of equal parts water and sugar.  

On the rare occasions in my youth when my parents played hosts and a mixed drink was called for, this is how we made whiskey sours: empty a can of frozen lemonade into a pitcher, add 1 can of rye whiskey and 1 can of water.  Stir and pour. 

Based upon my limited experience with mixed drinks, a whiskey sour became my favorite cocktail when I became an adult.  Whenever we went to a restaurant and/or someone suggested an alcoholic beverage, I would ask for a whiskey sour.  Almost never a beer and never a glass of wine.

This all changed one day in 1991.  My ex-wife Bonita, my daughter Rachel, my son Bret and I were in Ithaca, one of the loveliest towns in upstate New York, near Lake Cayuga, one of the Finger Lakes.  We were there to visit Cornell University, which I believe has the most beautiful college campus in America.

We were visiting Cornell as part of an important task, on behalf of my teenage daughter, to visit various campuses of the colleges she was considering applying to.  By actually being on a campus (as opposed to reading about it or seeing pictures of it), she could make a better decision when the time came as to which college she would choose.

I had been to Cornell twice before.  In 1964 and 1966, as a Penn student, I went there for football games at Schoellkopf Field between the two Ivy League rivals.  Neither game ended well.

On this visit in 1991, we drove about 240 miles from our home in New York City to Ithaca.  After touring the campus, which made a good impression on all, we looked for a restaurant in town where we could have dinner.  We chose Joe's Italian Restaurant because we all love Italian food.

While waiting for our dinners, I ordered a whiskey sour.  It was the most delicious whiskey sour I had ever had in my life.  So, I ordered a second one.  Big mistake!

By the end of our dinner at Joe's, I was drunk.  Walking from the restaurant to our car required assistance from both Bonita and Rachel.  Needless to say, I did not drive back to our motel.  I needed to sleep it off.

As a result of this experience, I avoided whiskey sours for more than 25 years.  Recently, my wife Cristina and I were in a restaurant here in Sao Paulo and I saw whiskey sour on a list of cocktails available.  I became nostalgic.  As Cristina had never had one, we shared a whiskey sour.  It brought back memories of Joe's Italian Restaurant in Ithaca.  This time I did not order a second.

     

The Killers

In 1927, the great American writer Ernest Hemingway sold a short story he wrote entitled The Killers to Scribner's Magazine.  It was about two professionals who come to a small town to murder an ex-pugilist named Ole.  They expected to find him at a diner he frequented, but he didn't show.  They leave and look for Ole.  A friend who was at the diner runs to his boarding house.  Ole stoically receives the news of his impending assassination.

In 1946, Mark Hellinger (The Naked City post) produced the movie version of The Killers.  It was directed by Robert Siodmak.  The wonderful music was composed by Miklos Rozsa.  

The first twelve minutes, forty seconds of the movie version of The Killers is an adaptation of Hemingway's short story.  The remainder is the creation of the writer Anthony Veiller, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, but lost to Robert Sherwood for The Best Years of Our Lives.

Al (Charles McGraw) and Max (William Conrad) enter Henry's Diner in Brentwood, New Jersey just before 6 PM, but from separate entrances.  They sit together at the counter and order sandwiches.  They talk to George (Harry Hayden), the counterman, and Nick (Phil Brown), a customer, in a threatening manner.  Finally, they show their true colors and announce they are there to kill the Swede, who is expected to arrive shortly.

While Al ties up Nick and Sam (Bill Walker), the cook, in the kitchen, Max watches over George in the front of the diner.  But, why kill the Swede asks George?  What had he done to them?  

"He never had a chance to do anything to us.  He never even seen us."  

"Why you gonna kill him for?"

I love the next line delivered by Max which was written by Hemingway.

"We're killing him for a friend."

George then convinces Al and Max that since the Swede hadn't arrived by 6 PM, he wouldn't come.  That was his routine.  The two killers leave the diner to look for their victim.  

George tells Nick to go to the Swede's boarding house to alert him of his approaching doom.  When he arrives, the Swede (Burt Lancaster in his first movie) is lying on his bed in a sleeveless undershirt and pants.  He receives the news soberly.  When Nick asks why they want to kill him, the Swede responds with one of my favorite movie lines (which was not written by Hemingway).

"I did something wrong...once."

Nick leaves feeling helpless.  Shortly after, Al and Max arrive and do their job efficiently.  Hemingway loved what they did with his short story.

   



   

The Year 1952, Chapter 5

Harvey Larson arrives home a little after 9 PM on the first Friday of September 1952.  He is famished, but he knows there will be warm leftovers ready for him in the oven.  

Because of the fight at school today, Burt is not hovering around his father, but is staying away without being too obvious.  He sits in front of the television watching The Aldrich Family, a situation-comedy about a teenage boy named Henry.  It immediately precedes and is on the same channel as The Friday Night Fights which go on at 10 PM.

At about 9:50, Harvey finishes his dinner and joins his son in front of the television.  After a few minutes he notices something on Burt's face.

"Hey, is that a bruise below your left eye?"

"Nothing much."

"How did it get there?"

"Well, I got into a small fight today before school."  

"You can't do that.  We can't afford to offend anybody.  They could take their milk business elsewhere.  Do you understand how that could affect the roof over our heads and the food on our table?"

"I do."

"What was it about?"

"A kid at school named Carl was picking on Libby.  I asked him to stop and he punched me.  I hit him back.  I don't think he'll bother either of us again."

"Next time, let Libby fight her own battles.  And let there not be a next for you.  Promise me or you go to bed right now."

"I promise."

At 10 PM, boxing comes on television live from Madison Square Garden in New York City.  Over 4,000 fans are there to watch welterweight contenders Bobby Dykes (24 years-old) from Miami Beach and Gil Turner (22 years-old) from Philadelphia.  

Dykes is the veteran with 86 wins.  Turner has only 32 fights, but has lost only one, that to the champion, Kid Gavilan.  Turns out Dykes has lost to him, as well.  

Whomever Harvey chooses to root for, Burt, in their unannounced rivalry, chooses the other.  Sometimes, Harvey went for experience, sometimes youth.  But, he almost always goes for the white guy, if there is a white guy.  Why is that?  Maybe because Harvey is a white guy.  Well, tonight's white guy is Dykes.

In the fifth round of a very close contest, Turner knocks Dykes through the ropes and out of the ring.  Instead of being the end, it becomes a turning point.  Dykes, who had been losing, regains the initiative.  After ten rounds, the three judges take over.  All three vote 5 rounds to 4, with one round even.  However, two of the three judges vote for Dykes.  

Harvey is all smiles as his man wins...again.  He seems to be showing his son, that again, he knows best.  Both Burt and his man Gil Turner go to bed that night very disappointed.  For Burt, there has to be a day of reckoning with his father...soon.    

    

Why an Accountant?

Before moving to Brazil at the end of May 2013, I had worked in the USA as an accountant for forty years.  I was as an Auditor for Ernst & Ernst, a Federal Tax Manager for Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., an Accountant for the Anti-Defamation League and a Cost Analyst for the Office of Sponsored Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  

Why did I take this career path?  Why an accountant?  In the beginning, it should have been an obvious choice.  My father started out as a bookkeeper, a basic form of accounting.  But he never encouraged this for his son.  However, he did utter these immortal words, "Happiness is a well paying job."  Really?  But I took his advice.

When I was heading to college, I applied (and was accepted) as an engineering student, probably because my brother Paul did the same and I didn't want to be a doctor as my mother had hoped.  But in my last term in high school, I was having difficulty with Chemistry.  Ironically, it turned out great.  I believe I got the highest mark in the Regents exam at OHS that year.  Thanks for your help, Mr. Reed.

Anyway, one day in May 1963, because of Chemistry, I drove to Penn and was easily able to switch from Engineering to Business.  Why Business?  Probably because of my father (President and General Manager of a local dairy).  

In my second year at Penn, I was required to take a basic course in Accounting.  As a morning person, I signed up for the 8 AM class, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  The professor was in his 40s and looked physically fit in his three-piece suit on his way (at 9 AM) to his real job.  He was a practicing CPA-tax attorney and a former Marine (I think he included this in his background to be intimidating) who enjoyed teaching one accounting section each year.  I wish I remembered his name.  He encouraged me, by his energetic example, to take that path to accounting.

Officially, we were Section #1 and the professor wanted us to be the #1 group of accounting students (based upon our test scores on department-wide exams).  He demanded we show up at 8 AM and begin the class on time.  He always took attendance and if you were not in your seat at 8:00 he gave you a half an absence.  If not there by 8:05, a full absence.  Four absences and you failed the course.  So, we had excellent attendance from the very beginning of the semester.

If you like numbers and logic and solving problems, you will like studying basic double entry accounting, which is what we did in that course.  I liked it right away.  The way the professor presented the material was stimulating.  At the end of the year, I was so enthusiastic I chose to be an Accounting major.

Over the next two years, I took four more accounting classes from four different professors.  None of them came close to matching the teaching ability of my first one.  As a matter of fact, two of them made the subject matter quite boring.  But I persevered because of my first professor.

However, I have learned from my years in the accounting field that the most satisfaction I got from being an accountant was the people I worked with.  In this regard, I would like to thank the late Marty Kolins, Joe Giordano, Delferine Spooner and Kevin Maynor.    

The Great War

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist.  The reason was his opposition to the Austro-Hungarian Empire ruling over parts of the Balkans, in south-eastern Europe.  

Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack.

The Russian Empire supported Serbia.  Germany was an ally of Austria-Hungary.  France and Great Britain were allies of Russia.  In August 1914, with each side having long been preparing, the Great War began.  It was not until World War II that it became known as World War I.

During the 1916 US presidential campaign, the Democratic Party  used the slogan, "He (President Woodrow Wilson)  kept us out of war."  This was significant because German submarines had attacked cruise ships travelling the high seas around Great Britain, their enemy.

In April of 1915, a German submarine sank the British cruise ship, Lusitania, near the British coast after having left New York. Almost 1,200 people perished in the attack, including many Americans.  Prior to its departure, the German Embassy in Washington published a warning to travelers on ships flying the British flag found to be in waters around Great Britain did so at great risk.  In fact, material to support its war effort was put on the Lusitania in New York by the British government.  

Obviously, there was a great anti-German outcry in the USA as a result of the Lusitania.  However, the Wilson administration successfully pressured the German government "to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare."

In November of 1916, Wilson won re-election.  Early in 1917, Germany again started attacking neutral shipping (which could be carrying valuable cargo to its enemy) in areas around Great Britain.  Five American merchant ships were sunk.  American public opinion shifted to favoring war.  On April 2, 1917, President Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, which would "make the world safe for democracy."  Really?  Such a war would be "a war to end war."  Really?  

By this time, the Great War had been going on for three bloody years with no military victory in sight.  It was a stalemate with German, French and British armies facing each other across trenches in western Europe.  Germany feared the entry of thousands of fresh American troops could tip the balance against it.  

Before things got worse, Germany launched an offensive in the spring of 1918.  Its army pushed the front westward to within 75 miles of Paris.  The French capital was shelled forcing some residents to flee.  However, the offensive stalled.  British, French and American forces (the Allies) started pushing the Germans back to where they had started before their offensive began.  

In the summer of 1918, Allied forces launched their own campaign which kept pushing the Germans further and further back.  Finally, on November 11, 1918 (100 years ago today), an armistice was signed signaling a German surrender and an end to the Great War.  US involvement won the war but the US suffered over 300,000 casualties in one year of fighting.  Was it worth it?

A final peace treaty (The Treaty of Versailles) was signed on June 28, 1919 (5 years after the assassination).  It required Germany "to disarm, make ample territorial concessions, and make reparations."  This German humiliation and its aftermath led to the rise of the Third Reich a mere fourteen years later.  Twenty years after the above treaty was signed, Europe was at war again.  

America's entry into the Great War "most likely foreclosed the possibility of a negotiated peace among belligerent powers that were exhausted from years mired in trench warfare."  How the history of the world would have been different had America stayed home we'll never know.   

                        

Anatomy of a Murder

In Thelma and Louise (October 7, 2018 post), I discussed alternatives to their fleeing the scene after Louise kills Harlan.  She was responding to his obscenities after he tried to rape Thelma.  Could there be a legal justification for what she did?  

In Otto Preminger's 1959 courtroom drama, Anatomy of a Murder, we may have an answer.  The film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture (won by Ben-Hur), but won none.

In the movie, defense lawyer Paul Biegler (James Stewart, nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor, but lost to Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur) is hired by Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara), a U.S. Army officer, who is accused of murdering Barney Quill, an innkeeper in Thunder Bay, Michigan (Upper Peninsula).  He admits shooting Quill, but only after Quill raped his wife, Laura (Lee Remick).

Laura had been at the bar in Quill's Inn (her husband was home asleep) drinking and playing the pinball machine (while swishing her hips).  After driving Laura near her home, Quill rapes her.  Laura wakes up her husband and tells him what happened.  He goes to the bar and shoots Quill.

Biegler tells Manion his only hope for a not guilty verdict is temporary insanity.  Biegler uses the argument that Manion "may be eligible for a defense of  irresistible impulse (M'Naghten rule), a form of temporary insanity."  This means the accused could not control their behavior even when they knew it was wrong.

The prosecution, led by State Attorney Claude Dancer (George C. Scott, nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, but lost to Hugh Griffith in Ben-Hur), at first tries to prevent the alleged rape from being introduced by the defense since it is unproven.  Thus, Manion would lack a motive for killing Quill.  

Eventually, Judge Weaver (Joseph Welch - Cowardly Acts post on October 14, 2018) allows the alleged rape into the record.  Then the prosecution claims the sex was consensual, which again hurts the defense.

Near the end of the trial, a witness comes forward to corroborate the rape accusation which again helps the defense.  She is Mary Pilant (Kathryn Grant), Quill's manager of the inn who has inherited it after his death.  She found the missing panties (in the hotel laundry) that had been worn by Laura Manion the night of the rape.  

It was "common knowledge" around Thunder Bay that Mary was Quill's mistress.  On cross-examination, Dancer tries to discredit Mary's testimony by strongly suggesting her belief Quill raped Laura Manion was motivated by jealousy.  Shocked by this accusation, she tries to respond.

"Barney Quill was my..."

Dancer presses forward right in her face, "Barney Quill was what?"

Mary then completes her sentence, "Barney Quill was my father."  

Dancer is struck dumb.  A lawyer should never ask a question to which he doesn't know the answer.  Quill and his illegitimate daughter had kept the true nature of their relationship a secret for years.  

How did this new evidence affect the jury?  We don't know for sure, but Frederick Manion was found not guilty.  Maybe with irresistible impulse, Louise could have earned the same verdict for killing Harlan. 

I recently (2022) read the book (same title) written by Robert Traver which was the basis for the movie.  Important differences between the movie and the book were the Laura Manion's panties found by Mary Pilant and that Barney Quill was not Mary Pilant's father.  Give credit to Otto Preminger, the director, and Wendell Mayes, the screenwriter.