When it was determined that essays would become a permanent fixture in my life, it was apparent that my long term love affair with baseball would result in a piece about what used to be called, “America’s Pastime.” And so this is a baseball story. No politicians, no preachers, no cats or pets, just baseball.
When I tell you about the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns, and the Kansas City Blues and Royals, the Chicago Cubs and White Sox and the old Washington Senators, don’t be misled. I tell you about those other teams as a means of bringing the New York Yankees, the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers into this little tale about baseball. Hence, because those three New York teams figure prominently in this story, it qualifies as Part 12 of the New York, New York series.
I suppose I have been watching too much of Cardinal Law of the Boston Archdiocese in his testimony about priestly abuse of boys and young men. His testimony has been televised and reported in newspapers. So to ease my conscience, I will disclose and confess that from the age of four, I have actively disliked the New York Yankees. “Actively disliked” comes in at the most benign level of my assessment of the Yankees. It gets worse as we go up the scale. When I spend much time thinking about the Yanks, my dislike increases many fold. I suppose Cardinal Law may banish me to purgatory for the sin of Yankee dislike.
I am not so much of a red hot baseball fan anymore, but given a chance to cheer, the Mets and the St. Louis Cardinals would find me among their rooters. Cardinal Law would still be on my case because I am not a fan of the Boston Red Sox, which I believe is a venial sin.
This is not a completely happy account of the love affair that has gathered me into its clutches. My affair with baseball started in October, 1926 when the Cardinals beat the Yanks in the World Series. In recent years, the love affair has offered blemishes and disillusionment to all its fans. For as long as I can remember, the Yankees have represented full throated and unabashed arrogance. In the old days, the Yankees beat up on the St. Louis Browns and the Washington Senators, poor clubs that could not afford outstanding players. Today, the Yankees vent their spleen upon the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Royals, two minor league teams masquerading as major league clubs.
The owner of the Yanks is George Steinbrenner, a wealthy man who spends so much on his club that no one else can keep up with him in baseball. His all time hero is George Patton, the World War II general who slapped a soldier suffering from shell shock and combat fatigue, accusing him of malingering. How’s that for a hero!
A second disillusion beyond arrogance in baseball has to do with permitting greed and childish behavior to intrude on a game that was once America’s best. In these days when the average major league ballplayer is paid $2.5 million per year, and when the owners are insisting that cities build them a ballpark to their specifications either free of charge or at minimal expense to the owners, I would say that former fans and customers are entitled to default on their love affair with baseball. And if you watched the 2002 World Series on television, you may have noticed that with commercials filling every opportunity, the games lasted 3½ – 4 hours instead of the normal 2½ hours needed to play a game. So greed is everywhere.
So much for greed in baseball for the time being. In the second paragraph of this essay, it was promised that the New York teams would be introduced by reference to several clubs in the Midwest and the Washington Senators. And with that thought in mind, we ought to start with the two St. Louis clubs, the Cardinals and the Browns, mainly because I was born in Clayton, Missouri, some eight miles from Sportsman’s Park where both St. Louis clubs played.
My feelings about baseball came upon me when I was only four years old. That would have been in 1926 when my father was building a new house in Richmond Heights, Missouri, right next door to Clayton. He did most of the work himself to save on contractor costs. All five of the surviving Carr children moved into that house. My brothers who were 11½ years older in one case and nearly 13 in the other, were big fans of the St. Louis Cardinals, a National League baseball team. To a lesser extent, they also rooted for the local American League club, the Browns.
For the first time since the Cardinals came into existence, they won the National League pennant which gave them the right to oppose the American League Champions in the 1926 World Series. Their opponents were the formidable New York Yankees. The Yankees had been to the World Series several times before. For the Cardinals, this was their maiden experience.
It was the American League’s turn to host the first two games of the Series and the last two games of the seven game contest, if the Series lasted that long. Many observers looking at the St. Louis pitching staff predicted a fairly short series, perhaps concluding in a Yankee victory in five or six games. The reason for the pessimism had to do with the age of two Cardinal pitching mainstays and the relative youth of one pitcher who had pitched 258 innings during the 1926 season leading naysayers to say he was overworked.
Flint Rhem was the youngest man at age 25 on the Cardinal staff. He is the one who had pitched so many innings in compiling a 20 win, 7 loss season. Pitching only in the fourth game of the Series, Rhem lasted only four innings and gave up seven hits. Maybe the critics were right about being overworked.
Bill Sherdel, a 29 year old left handed pitcher, worked in the first game and in the fifth game, losing both by only one run in each game. You must remember that before 1960, a 30 year old player was considered an old man. That was particularly true for pitchers.
Jesse Haines was by 1926 standards, an ancient man at 33 years. Haines, a right-hander, threw a knuckle ball. He pitched one inning in the first game, nine innings in the third game and six and 2/3 innings in the seventh game. Not so bad for an old man.
Grover Cleveland Alexander was acquired by the Cardinals from the Chicago Cubs around mid-season. Most sports writers and ball players called him Pete. At age 35 he was a relic and to top it off, he was often thought of as a fellow who had an active interest in whiskey bottles. During the 1926 season, Pete Alexander won 12 games and lost 10 games, a not very outstanding record.
When all things are considered, it is no wonder that critics discounted the Cardinal pitching staff because of overwork, advanced age or mediocre records during the regular season.
In the first two games in New York on October second and third, a Saturday and a Sunday, the Cards split with the Yankees. The old man, Alexander, who resisted the efforts of Temperance preachers, pitched nine innings in the second game and won it.
The Series resumed on Tuesday, October 5th for three games in St. Louis. When those games were finished, New York had won two of them, giving them a commanding three games to two lead with the series returning to the Yankee home field for Saturday and Sunday games.
On October 9th, a Saturday, old Pete Alexander pitched another nine innings for the Cardinals and won to tie the series. At this point, he was entitled to think that he had done more than his part for the Cardinals. According to legend, Pete tied one on that night in New York. It was Saturday and Alexander had done his work very well.
In the final game on Sunday, October 10th, Jesse Haines started and pitched until two men were out in the seventh inning. At that point, the Cardinals were protecting a 3 – 2 lead, but the Yankees had Babe Ruth, Tony Lazzeri, Lou Gehrig and Bob Meusel in their lineup. All of those sluggers could end a game with one swing of the bat.
In the seventh inning, Jesse Haine’s pitching hand was so bloodied that he could pitch no more. Remember, I told you he was a knuckleballer, but that is a misleading term. The knuckleball is thrown using the tips of three or four fingers. The ball is not gripped by the knuckles as one might imagine. Haines had loaded the bases with Tony Lazzeri coming to the plate. Lazzeri was a very feared hitter in the American League. When Haines could go no more, a problem of the greatest magnitude was presented to Rogers Hornsby, the Cardinal manager and second baseman.
Hornsby wanted to call Pete Alexander into the game to face Lazzeri with the bases loaded. But he knew that Pete had won two games in the Series and that he had pitched nine innings only the day before. On top of all that, Hornsby had reason to know that Alexander was suffering a monumental hangover. But Hornsby decided that the Yankees would have to beat the best he had, so he called Pete Alexander to the mound.
The results of that relief appearance are remembered by just about everyone in St. Louis and the Midwest who was alive at the time. Alexander struck out Lazzeri to end the seventh inning and then went on to blank the Yankees in the eighth and ninth. My memory tells me that with two outs in the ninth inning with Babe Ruth on first base, he took off for second base in an attempt to steal a base. The Cardinal catcher was Bob O’Farrell. He threw out Ruth by a “country mile,” as we used to say in Missouri. And so ended the 1926 World Series. David had slain Goliath.
We had one radio in our house in those days, an Atwater Kent. When Ruth was thrown out, St. Louis went wild and my two older brothers were in another world. My two sisters were caught up in the excitement. Even my parents who understood very little about baseball, responded to the joy of their children and of their neighbors. In the final analysis, there was so much commotion over the Cardinal victory over the Yankees that I, a four year old, have that event imprinted on my mind as my very first memory. So when I say that I have been involved with the game for many years, perhaps this will establish my bona fides as a long time aficionado of the game. If my calculator is correct, this past October marks the 76th year of my attraction to baseball. Maybe that’s too long for a love affair to last, but if it is all over, my reaction is one of sadness with a touch of anger. Greed does that to fans.
St Louis was a good place for a baseball fan to grow up. The excitement about the Cardinals was felt as far away as Tennessee, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. It was commonplace for fans from distant places to sleep in their cars and trucks so they would gain an advantageous spot in the ticket lines and to avoid the cost of hotel space. When the Cardinals played the Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series of 1930 and again in 1931, the Clayton Grammar School had a radio in its auditorium. In 1934 when the Cardinals beat the Detroit Tigers, school was largely dismissed while we listened to a radio in the assembly hall. So I was not alone as a fan. Just about everyone, old and young, were Cardinal fans. And these were the grimmest years of the Great Depression.
During all this time, there was a second major team in St. Louis called the Browns. They played in the American League. Before the success of the Cardinals, the Browns were the favorites of the fans, particularly in 1922 when they almost won the pennant. In that year, the Browns won 93 games, but the New York Yankees won 94 games. So the Browns finished one game off the pace. In those years, there was no artificial device such as the “Wild Card Team.” Your team either finished first or it went home after the last game. The Browns missed by a whisker to the hated New York Yankees.
Nobody wanted to admit the obvious fact that St. Louis did not have a fan base that would support two major league teams. Attendance at Browns’ games was not enough for the club to survive much less flourish. These were the years of the Great Depression followed by World War II and fans in the seats were hard to come by. As a holder of a Knot Hole Gang membership, I saw the Browns seven or eight times per year because they had few sellouts, so seats for kids were usually available.
The Browns produced some genuine stars during this period. George Sisler, the Browns first baseman, is a member of baseball’s Hall of Fame. Junior Stephens, Jack Kramer and Harland Clift were such good players that the Browns were forced to sell them to more affluent teams just to keep the franchise in St. Louis. The operator of the Browns in those years was Phil Ball. He hung on as long as he could, and then sold the club to Bill DeWitt. When the chance came to sell the club to Bill Veeck, DeWitt grabbed it. Bill Veeck was a showman. As such, he raised the hackles of other American League owners who were a stuffy lot. In the end, they forced him to sell the club to well heeled suitors in Baltimore. And so the Browns became part of the history of baseball.
When Veeck took over the franchise, there was a little saying about the Browns. You may recall that St. Louis was famous for shoes and for beer. So the saying was:

“First in Shoes,
First in Booze,
And last in the American League.”

Bill Veeck was a good man. Before he was forced out, he brought in a one armed outfielder, Pete Gray, to play center field. On another occasion on a Sunday afternoon, he signed Eddie Gaedel, a 3’ – 10” midget. Late in the game, Gaedel was sent up to hit. He bent over to minimize his strike zone. The Detroit pitcher, Bob Cain, pitching to catcher Bob Swift, came nowhere near Gaedel’s strike zone, so he walked. Gaedel was barred from competing after that game by American League owners. All this, of course, was in keeping with Bill Veeck’s efforts to boast attendance. In the end, his fellow owners forced him out. Veeck was a good man. His fellow American League owners were troglodytes.
Greed, purely and simply, was the reason that the Browns were forced to sell out to Baltimore interests in 1953. As we go forward, there will be other examples of greed by players, owners, broadcasters and by other commercial interests such as real estate developers who want to move a tract to provide a new home for a baseball stadium.
Perhaps at this point, this essayist ought to reveal once more his prejudices and preferences about baseball. I am a National League fan. None of that designated hitter foolishness that is the practice in the American League. If we have designated hitters, can aluminum bats be far behind? And how about designated runners or managers?
Of course, I have a prejudice against the Yankees because of their unspeakable boorishness which goes back to the 1920’s in my personal experience. When the Yankees came to St. Louis to play the Browns, they made it clear to sports writers that they could play the Browns and still have time to get in a game of golf before sundown. There were no lights in ball fields at that time. For any club to beat the Yanks, especially in the World Series, was a great source of pride and accomplishment. Unfortunately, I must say that the Yankee attitude continues to this day in the person of their owner, George Steinbrenner. His sources of income are much greater than any other club by virtue of his being in New York. He uses that income to buy players that other clubs cannot afford. Before the 2002 season started, Steinbrenner offered the Oakland first baseman $17 million per year. All other bidders were scared away by the exorbitant bid. As usual, he got his first baseman. And he largely ruined the Free Agent market.
This year when major league baseball finally got around to revenue sharing, the Yankees were way out in front in terms of total payroll – as everyone knew they would be. Preliminary estimates of the Yankee revenue that must be shared, comes to between $25 million and $50 million. To offset this loss of income, Steinbrenner has decreed that hostesses in the Stadium Club and the elevator operators who take customers to the Club will be fired. Announcements of last week report that approximately 25 low level employees, including people who work on maintaining the field will also be fired. Everyone knew that Steinbrenner would turn to his little people instead of denying several million dollars to Roger Clemens, his 40 year old pitcher who wants $12 million dollars in salary in addition to a $10 million delayed payment to return to the team in 2003. So you see, the high-handedness continues.
While I am in the business of sharing prejudices, it is fair to say that the anger generated in St. Louis was directed almost exclusively at the Yankees. When the New York Giants came to call, they brought with them Walker and Mort Cooper and Johnny Mize, former Cardinal ballplayers. Relations with the Giants were almost always civil even when Leo Durocher, that firebrand, was their manager.
When the Brooklyn Dodgers called at Sportsman’s Park, it was quite difficult to get a seat. That park had vertical posts to hold up the roof. The ticket sellers tried to avoid having fans sit behind a post on ordinary games. But when the Dodgers came to town, every seat was sold, whether it had a clear view of the field or not.
Season tickets were unheard of for working stiffs like myself. I did have one big advantage. Tickets for today’s game and for the next opponent were sold at the Arcade Building in Downtown St. Louis. If I had a few bucks on me, I would go to the Arcade Building on my lunch hour and buy tickets. There were 152 games per year in a major league baseball season. If my math is about right, each team in the eight team league, would play the other 18 times. Nine games would be at the other team’s ballpark and nine would be at home. They were almost always played in sets of three per visit, so the Dodgers would visit Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis on three occasions and the Cardinals would visit Ebbets Field a similar number of times.
While the Dodgers were great rivals of the Cardinals, and vice versa, there was never any bad blood between the fans in those two cities. We looked forward to seeing the Dodgers because they had excellent ballplayers such as Carl Furillo, and Preacher Roe and Gil Hodges. On the other side of the coin, I am inclined to say that the Cardinal’s Stan Musial could have been elected to Borough President of Brooklyn at any time during his Cardinal career.
The manager of the Dodgers from 1934 through 1943 was a colorful character named Charles Dillon Stengel, better known as Casey. Stengel kept the players loose. They played for Casey without reservation. On one occasion, Stengel caught a small bird in his dugout and put it on top of his head under his cap. When an umpire made a questionable call, Casey went out on the field to protest. In the midst of the argument with the umpire, Casey took off his cap allegedly to scratch his forehead and of course, the bird flew away. Even the umpires laughed.
Casey Stengel brought those antics to Sportsman’s Park and every one loved him. The games between the Cardinals and the Dodgers were hard fought but they always had a leavening of good fun. We may not see those kind of games ever again.
So to put the reaction of St. Louis fans to New York baseball, it is clear that Cardinal and Browns fans regarded the Yankees as flat out mean. The Giants were a good team and St. Louis fans applauded for them, and particularly for the Cooper brothers and Johnny Mize, former Cardinal ball players.
Ah, but the Dodgers. They were our favorite visiting team. If there were jeers, it was all in good fun. When a Dodger player made a good play, he heard applause from St. Louis fans. Casey Stengel loved to needle the fans in St. Louis. When they could, they needled him right back.
So, it is clear. The Dodgers were our favorites. The Giants were welcomed by St. Louis fans. But the Yankees, with their superior attitude, were beyond the pale.
A small aside here, if I may. In the lean years for the Browns of 1925 to 1935, one of their pitching mainstays was George Blaeholder, a right hander with no great credentials. Over an 11 year career, Blaeholder had 104 wins, 125 losses with a 4.54 earned run average. Those statistics marked him as a run of the mill pitcher. During his major league career, he struck out 572 batters, again a modest total for an 11 year span of years. But the American League knew Blaeholder as the man Babe Ruth could not hit. Worse than that, Babe Ruth often struck out against Blaeholder. No one knows what spell old Blaeholder had over the Yankee “Sultan of Swat,” but St. Louisans rejoiced when old George struck out the Babe once again. I suppose we all took whatever joy we could when the Yanks came to town.
For many years, the Cardinals had been owned by Sam Breadon, also the owner of a north side Ford dealership. Everyone seemed to trust Breadon and he was well liked. When age caught up with him, he sold out to Robert Hannigan, the Post Master General in the Truman Administration. Hannigan knew very little about baseball. He apparently was interested in profits. Before long he sold out to Fred Saigh, who also knew even less about the game. Saigh set out to exploit the Cardinal name and by 1951 or thereabouts, was convicted of a federal crime and went to jail. So you see the Cardinals fell on hard times because of the absolute greed that afflicted the owners who came after Sam Breadon. It was during these years that, for me, the romance went out of baseball. Greed had started to take over. And it is still there.
That’s enough about St. Louis baseball. In July of 1951, I was offered a job by AT&T in the new Area Headquarters in Kansas City. I took it and moved to a nice community called Prairie Village, Kansas. If nothing else, I liked the name of the town. In my estimation, Kansas City is an attractive town with a “can do” attitude.
I knew that the Yankees had long owned the Kansas City Blues, a club in the top tier of the minor league system of baseball. The Yanks had not given up their superior ways. When they wanted a ball player from the Blues, they took him. Obviously, as the owner of the franchise, they were entitled to do that but a sense of decency should have prevailed here. If the Blues were in a dog fight with the club from Omaha, for example, perhaps the Yanks could have waited a week or so. But that’s not the way the Yankees worked.
In 1955 when major league baseball came to Kansas City and the Royals (named after a cattle show) succeeded the Blues, the Yankees still treated the newcomers as a farm team. Whenever they wanted someone from the Royals roster, it was always worked out with what seemed to be Yankee castoffs being part of the arrangement.
So you see in St. Louis and Kansas City, the Yanks were never viewed in a neutral light as were the New York Giants or in a favorable light as was the case of the Brooklyn Dodgers. They were viewed as the enemy.
In 1953, I accepted another AT&T move to Chicago. We lived on the north side of town which is generally considered National League and Cubs territory. Wrigley Field is on the near North Side of Chicago. People living below the Loop, that is on the South Side, were generally considered White Sox fans.
The Cubs had an intense rivalry with the New York Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals. Their rivalry with the Brooklyn Dodgers did not reach the intensity of their games with the Giants. Wrigley Field was a small ballpark seating about 38,000 fans. It has posts obscuring the view of many of its fans. But it is a wonderful way to see a ballgame. Until four or five years ago, Wrigley was unlighted. There was no better way to spend a lazy afternoon than at the Wrigley ballpark.
The White Sox park was quite a distance from my north side home. In the two years I lived in Chicago, I believe there were only three or four White Sox games that I attended. The ball park was in a depressed area. Parking was a problem because it was never clear that my car would be returned unharmed. But I watched the White Sox games on television with Jack Brickhouse, Chicago’s beloved announcer.
When the Yanks came to Chicago, they did it with the same display of aloofness and boorishness. White Sox fans regarded the Yanks as enemies. That attitude extended to the White Sox ownership which seemed to refuse to trade players with the Yanks. I suspect that Yankee fans would say that there were no players on the White Sox teams that they could use. And that may be true, but I’m here to tell you that there was absolutely no love lost between the fans or the ownership of the Chicago White Sox and the Yankees.
I stayed in Chicago only two years. I enjoyed my time there immensely. The people in that part of the Midwest are genuine. They work hard and play pretty much the same way. Chicago is a place I treasure.
In 1955, I came to AT&T Headquarters in New York City. In baseball terms, there was a three way war going on. The Giant fans couldn’t abide Dodger fans and looked down on Yankee rooters as front runners. Dodger fans actively disliked – or even hated – the Giants. The Dodger-Giants rivalry was so great and so consuming that Dodger fans seemed to pay little attention to the Yanks. As for the Yanks, they went their own self-satisfied way paying attention to no one but themselves. They were disliked by Dodger as well as by Giant fans.
When it comes to arrogance, which the Yanks always had, they even surpassed themselves when it came to dealing with Casey Stengel, their very successful manager. The Yankees had hired Stengel after he had completed his work with the Dodgers.
After the 1948 season, the Yanks must have been in desperate straits. They hired Casey Stengel who had always been a National League player and manager. Stengel guided Yankee fortunes from 1949 until 1960. During that time he took the Yankees to the World Series in ten different seasons. His team won the World Series on seven of those occasions.
After the 1960 World Series which the Yanks lost to Pittsburgh, Casey Stengel was told by Yankee management, to use his own words, “”My services would no longer be needed.” In short, Stengel was fired. In 12 seasons, Stengel had taken the Yanks to the World Series ten times, a winning percentage of 83%. But Stengel’s services “would no longer be required.” I think I have made my case for Yankee arrogance adequately. The attitude the Yankees had may have been attributed to the team’s management. While I was greatly turned off by the teams attitude, I liked Phil Rizzuto, Yogi Berra and Hank Bauer.
In 1966, I accepted a posting in Washington where my work was of a lobbying nature. Washington was a wonderful experience. Part of that wonderment came from a recently started ball club called the “Senators.” The original Senators had taken off for greater gold in Minneapolis at the end of 1961. Washington was without major league baseball in 1962 but an expansion club came into being for the 1963 season.
To build attendance, the Senators would permit children to be admitted for one dollar, or perhaps it may have been two dollars on Saturdays. Adults paid only three or four dollars. A young widow from Venezuela with five children lived across the street from us in Bethesda, Maryland. Our kids played with the Venezuelan children. On quite a few occasions, we would gather up our two kids and two or three from the widowed neighbor and take them to the ball game. That was great fun as the Venezuelans take their baseball seriously. And they even liked the Griffith Stadium hot dogs.
The star of that expansion Senator team was a young first baseman named Mike Epstein. When he began to call himself “The Super Jew,” he seemed to become more popular. The expansion Senators finished last, of course, but Saturday afternoons at Griffith Stadium with a bunch of little kids and “The Super Jew” are something I will long remember. All the kids, the Venezuelans and my kids thought Mike Epstein was great stuff. I was glad to see him do his thing.
Being in the American League, the Yankees dominated the Senators in Washington just as they are now doing to the Tampa Bay team which is not a major league team by any stretch of the imagination.
In 1969, I found myself again in New York just in time to join in the rooting for the Mets who won the World Series that year. I have rooted for the Mets and the Cardinals all these years, but my efforts have only occasionally been rewarded.
Sometimes the Mets are hard to be interested in. For example, they have a right fielder who cost them two good players and who makes $11.5 million per year. In the 2002 season, he hit for an average of .215. Good outfielders hit .300 or more – and this fellow is paid $11.5 million. The Mets pay their shortstop more than $6 million per year and he insults the fans and sulks. Their second baseman makes $8 million per year and often appears lost. The new left fielder is paid $4 million per year and often appears clueless when he tries to catch a fly ball in left field. Well, I suppose you can’t win them all.
I told you when you started this essay that it was about baseball. If I started in 1926 for the Cardinal-Yankee World Series that year, it means that using the standard depreciated ordinary life tables that I have been at it for 76 years. That is a long time no matter how you measure it. On the other hand, I’ve had 76 years of enjoyment and great fun from baseball. Even during the World War II years, arrangements were made to bring World Series scores to troops in Africa, Europe, the Orient or wherever American troops were asked to serve.
I came fairly close to missing the 1942 World Series because Spanish speaking carpenters who were building the base at Camp Luna near Las Vegas, New Mexico, had little or no interest in baseball matters. I joined the United States Army in the summer of 1942 and soon found my way to “The Land of Enchantment,” New Mexico. It may have been enchanted but it had no radio in that whole military base at Las Vegas. When we were able to get the civilian carpenters to ask about the score between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Yankees, they would go home and report to us the next morning. The World Series was not big news in New Mexico particularly among Spanish speaking people, but I learned a little about Espanol. The Cardinals won the 1942 World Series.
I still follow baseball, but in recent years the greed has seriously depressed the fun that the game provides. As I said earlier, greed cuts across lines between management and players. This year some owners are saying the they are going to cut back on player salaries. When salaries come down to a manageable level, I’d like to be around, but I’m afraid that day will not arrive during my lifetime.
Earlier in this essay, I had spoken about Grover Cleveland Alexander, the Cardinal pitcher in the World Series of 1926. When Tip O’Neill was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, he invited Ronald Reagan to lunch in his office. Reagan had recently been sworn in as President of the United States. In a tour of his office, O’Neill pointed to his desk and said that it had been used by Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland was one of Reagan’s predecessors as a President of the U. S.
Reagan said, “Oh yes. I know all about him. I played him in a movie about his baseball career.” O’Neill said he meant Grover Cleveland, the former President. Reagan dismissed him by repeating that he had a good time playing in the movie about Grover Cleveland Alexander. O’Neill gave up.
If I am still hanging in there perhaps it is because I never went to see Reagan playing Old Pete Alexander. If people of Jewish faith can say “Next year in Jerusalem,” then I think it reasonable for Mets or Cardinal fans to say next year is our year. We’ll have to see.
So starting in 1926, I have been involved in New York baseball. I had exposure to it in St. Louis. I saw how the fans of Kansas City reacted. I came to know how fans in Chicago and Washington responded to the New York team. And of course, from the time I first came to New York in 1948, I could see for myself what New York baseball was all about.
From the standpoint of someone who grew up in the Midwest, there was great sport about the game. When the Cubs or the Pirates came to town, there was a spirit of good sportsmanship and spirited competition. When the Giants showed up it was all business. When the Dodgers came to Sportsman’s Park, there was joy all over St. Louis. But when the Yankees came to town, they were usually greeted with sullen hostility because of the superior attitude that St. Louisans perceived.
Well, even with Yankee arrogance, my affair with baseball which has now lasted more than three quarters of a century, has been a very rewarding experience. I know we feel let down by teams such as the 2002 Mets. Ah, but here I am in November looking forward to next Spring when the home plate umpire will again say, “Play Ball.” I am ready now to resume my love affair with baseball even though I know it may all turn out badly. But on the other hand, who knows? We will have to see.
E. E. CARR
November 8, 2002
 
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ABOUT BASEBALL
Sven and Ella Lernevall of Bandhagen, Sweden, are dear friends who may not always comprehend some of the facts that American baseball lovers take for granted. So these few additional thoughts may be worthwhile.
Until 1954, the major Leagues of American baseball lined up in this fashion:

NOTES:
*For a year or two they were called the Boston Bees. That name did not sit well for fans in the Northeast.
**They were called originally the Trolley Dodgers. By the time I came along, it was simply the Dodgers.
The two St. Louis teams were named originally after colors. In the 1880’s, Chris von der Ahe operated an elaborate beer garden. To help his beer garden along, he sponsored a baseball team. They wore brown uniforms and hence, were called the Browns. No big mystery there. In Missouri, we are plain spoken folks.
In 1899, the Cleveland Spiders moved to St. Louis. The Spiders wore uniforms with red piping. Two stories exist. A sports writer in St. Louis named Willie McHale, began calling the team the Cardinals after the color of their piping on their uniforms. In the other story, a female fan remarked that the color of the uniform piping was cardinal and suggested that name to replace the former name of Spiders. A few years later, the club put images of cardinal birds on the front of their uniforms. A hundred years later, those images and that nickname still exist.
Now about St. Louis. In 1763, Pierce LaClede and Auguste Chouteau chose a site on the west bank of the Mississippi River just south of the mouth of the Missouri River as their new fur trading post. It was named for Louis IX of France. The population, customs and type of government remained predominantly French well into the 19th century. Because the French did not play baseball, they had to be replaced with citizens who understood the intricacies of the well known Infield Fly Rule. Jim Reese is the savant who knows everything about this basic American concept of justice.
The citizens of Iraq also are ignorant of the Infield Fly Rule. This constitutes a “material breech” of the United Nations agreement with Iraq. It also gives George Bush a complete reason to launch his massive retaliation against such infidels. The message to all countries is: you mess with the Infield Fly Rule at your own peril.

~~~
I just spend several minutes trying to figure out if “Cardinal Law” is a pun on the St. Louis Cardinals, and if such a pun is actively used by the fanclub of that team. Under punny Cardinal Law, presumably, supporting any non-Cardinal team would be considered a sin. But some cursory Google searching turned up no results, which tells me that this interpretation of Cardinal Law is unique.
It’s worth noting that this is both the longest essay in the history of the site, having trumped the essay immediately before this one (part 11 of the series), AND it’s being published on baseball’s opening day, 2016. Let’s just say that I planned it that way all along.
Anyway, so concludes the 12-part series on New York. I’ve been a big fan, and particularly enjoyed all the essays specific to the friends he made there. Even this baseball essay was great, though it was never really my (or either of my brothers’) cup of tea, because it’s fun anytime someone can write so passionately about something they care about.