Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1887: There Used to Be a Ballpark (And it’s Still There)

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Dodgers’ and Mets’ “statement” series and the awe and anxiety inspired by Jacob deGrom, follow up on Vin Scully’s musical taste, retractable mounds, and Justin Verlander vs. Max Scherzer, and discuss a recent Rockies pickup and promotion and a hazardous mound visit, followed (33:00) by a Past […]

Slow up baby, wind it down Oh slow up baby, when you're moving round It's the movement not the beat It's the friction not the heat If you're holding right back, you're on the right track. Hello and welcome to episode 1887 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. You know, I am not a big believer in momentum in baseball, either from inning to inning or game to game or series to series. But I do love a good statement series. Oh. And we just had a couple of those because we had the Mets facing off with the Braves. We had the Dodgers facing off with the Padres.

And there were pretty convincing statements made in those series. Now, I don't know what that portends for the rest of the season, if anything. But you had the Mets who came close to furthering away their division lead or not really even furthering away. It was just that Atlanta was winning every day. But now they have taken four out of five from the Braves and put some daylight between the two. And they had Jacob deGrom just shove as usual. Just kind of incredible. Just like throwing 96 mile per hour sliders and 102 mile per hour fastballs, which, as usual, is wonderful to see and also extremely scary to see. Just take a little off it's fine you could just

you have margin for error yeah too good like you're good enough that you can be a little less good maybe i don't know but nice to see him dealing yeah and then you had the padres dodgers series where the dodgers swept and it was like 20 to 4 they outscored the Padres who were of course just the new hotness right now but not so much in this series and man I know that the Padres are the dads but they're sort of the sons in this rivalry or at least the little brothers I love this Padres-Dodgers rivalry I know like last year it turned out to be more in name only than an actual rivalry by the end of the season. But there's just so much juice between those teams now. And you had the Padres coming out of their incredible deadline with Juan Soto and all the rest.

And then the Dodgers are just like, no, we are still the class of this division until you prove otherwise. And they have a pretty hefty lead in that division. I know Fernando Tatis Jr. is not back yet, but man, that was the Dodgers just being like, you know what? We're still the Dodgers. Nice that you made all those moves. Good job at the deadline, but we are going to crush you in this series at least. But Padres will be back and they'll have Tatis and who knows, could be heading for a playoff matchup. I mean, it's just a really exciting matchup between those two teams. Yeah. I think that we have at times bemoaned the lack of excitement in baseball, at least in terms of how contentious and contested some of the races will be, right? We end up with divisions that feel decided very early.

We end up with divisions that feel like no one maybe wants to win at all. And there are still problems to be had there, certainly. But it does feel like the contested divisions, there's some juice, you know? There's some energy to it there are fans who really don't like each other yeah there are fans who are you know i get it it's a rivalry it's your biggest rivalry but like and and he took it in stride and it wasn't like a thing that we need to feel you know away about i think it fine. But it was very funny to me that in his first plate appearance

in Dodger Stadium as a Padre that like Juan Soto got roundly booed by the whole crowd. And like a week ago, they had been like, future Dodger. Right. You know, and he can't control where he gets traded. That's kind of the whole thing about trades, right? And I'm not here to like make dodger fans

feel bad it just shows that there's like a lot of investment and energy and that's that's good for uh the sport it's good for these teams you know we went from having petco park feel like a playoff atmosphere in that first series after the deadline to the the vibe that was at dodger stadium and then you know just like the i do love that the mets even when the mets managed to like come back and they win games and they have de grom and they have scherzer you know they did have some moments where you're like they're gonna mets this oh yeah mets it up and i wonder you know it's like a it's's like a Russian nesting doll of potential Metzing because I, too, was like, Jacob, Jacob, look, I get what you're doing, man. And I get that this probably feels good and you got to air it out, but you could come off the gas just a little bit, you know? The thing is with him, it doesn't look max effort.

It doesn't. It obviously is. I mean, I got to think it is. Right. And that he could not be throwing 105 and 99 mile per hour sliders if he wanted to yeah he'd tear in half yeah it's almost like it it might be better if it looked more effortful right so that he wanted to restrain himself or others wanted to restrain him it looks so free and easy which is good like i'm sure the fact that it looks less effortful i mean maybe that can kind of correlate to strain but not necessarily right and the fact that it looks like oh he's just playing catch out there it's just free and easy well we know that

that's not necessarily the case because he has broken quite a few times of late so it's sort of deceptive i think like his arm is still whipping super fast even if it doesn't look jerky or anything yeah you know and here we are a bunch of jokers what do we know right i mean we know that he has been hurt before and we know that being hurt before especially when your picture can you know correlate to being hurt again later but we're like we don't know anything you know we're just a bunch of people with a podcast but i was like i wonder how long he'll have to be healthy before i feel easy and then i was like will i ever he's still a met he's a pitcher and he's a pitcher who throws really hard so right no i will never feel secure no but it sure is something often when people talk

about you know the best deadline acquisition this team will make will be getting this guy back healthy. Like sometimes when people are saying that, it's like giving them a pass for being inactive, right? Sometimes it's like, you know, you get it. Yeah, in the Mets case even, but yeah. Right. And, you know, I don't remember if I said this when we talked about the deadline because,

you know, it's like the ionization blackout period. I just don't remember if I said this when we talked about the deadline because it's like the ionization blackout period. I just don't remember this week at all. But I meant to say they could have added some bullpen help. There are things that they could have done that probably would have been good for them to do. But they sure did get Jacob deGrom back. That doesn't give them a pass for being like, how many lefties does a bullpen need?

Not many. But, you know, it's sure nice to have Jacob deGrom. And I hope that we all get to enjoy the Jacob deGrom of it all for a while here. Because, you know, like he's a lot of fun, even if he does make you a little bit nervous. He makes you a little bit nervous. Jolie Rodriguez is really like the only lefty in that pulpit yep that's a you know it's an active choice right it's not a it's it's an active choice one makes right that edwin diaz entrance was awesome too i know the video of that went

viral but there's just a lot of excitement in these series so that's great because there are already series that have like zero leverage or stakes in terms of like playoff probability because teams are just out of it. But at least we have series like Dodgers, Padres and Mets, Braves. So a couple of quick follow ups. Last time when we were talking about Vin Scully with Dan Byrne, we wondered whether Vin Scully had heard Dan Byrne's song, The Golden Voice of Vin Scully. And that led to a little discussion of what music Vin Scully liked to listen to. And a listener pointed me to an L.A. Times article by Bill Plaschke from 2016, which had this paragraph. Scully not only sings his play by play, he actually sings.

Driving around town, he punches up old show tunes like the music man and belts them out songs fueled by gratitude and hope so at least while he was commuting it seems like he was a show tunes guy i guess that tracks yeah that seems right right he came of age in like big band era you know it's nice to know that i don't have a lot in common with vinceully, but I wonder if he and I had like a mutual appreciation for Louis Prima. Yeah, could be. I'm an 80-year-old Italian man in my spare time.

Yeah. And also we talked recently about a listener suggestion to have a retractable mound. Sort of an elevator mound that would lower as a penalty for pitchers who take too long. So instead of an automatic ball being assessed when the pitch clock counted down, the mound would just start lowering into the earth. And there was some discussion about this

in the Discord group because apparently at Globe Life Field, there is in Texas a retractable mound. I'm reading from the Rangers website here. A concrete subsurface is the base of the turf system, which is extremely flat to accommodate the turf system. It's built up in layers, a drainage mat and a shock resistant mat. The infield and warning track will be clay surfaces. There will also be a retractable mound for easy storage during non-baseball events on the field. And I think this may be something that happens at other multipurpose stadiums and ballparks where you have football and baseball or just non-baseball events and baseball. Maybe the Metrodome had something similar. I know some places have had movable mounds. I'm not sure if that's the same in all cases as a retractable mound or whether you're shifting it laterally as opposed to vertically. But maybe this is where we can test this idea. I guess really we would want to test this in lab league first in accordance with Effectively Wild philosophy.

But this is a thing. I don't know how quickly it lowers or raises, but we don't have to come up with some new engineering solution. There are retractable mounds. Not sure if they retract quickly enough for our needs here, but they have tested something like this. The concept exists. The proof of concept is out there. I love the suggestion that the engineering of it all was really the gating factor for the retractable mound. that the engineering of it all was really the gating factor for the retractable mound.

We were full steam ahead, but then we're like, can we make this math work? What are angles like? What are the hydraulics of this system going to be? But I'm glad to learn that that hurdle has been cleared. It makes good sense because I know of a minor league ballpark that holds soccer stuff on a fairly regular basis, and they have to remove the mound for that. And I'm given to understand that that sometimes causes track man problems because they have to recalibrate the track man every time.

Sure, yeah. And there aren't an endless supply of track man recalibration folks. And so I think it has sometimes led to some wonky outputs. So if you could have the precision of advanced hydraulics, that sounds like a win for everybody who save on plane tickets for the track and folks have nothing else. Yeah. And also we picked lately on the at stats by stats Twitter account and some of its tortured fun facts. And we also talked lately about Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer and some of the tortured fun facts. And we also talked lately about Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer and some of the parallels between their careers and which one we would choose if,

for some arbitrary reason, we were forced to choose. Well, those topics came together in an at-stats-by-stats tweet on Saturday that read, Justin Verlander, Astros 1.73 ERA, Max Scherzer Mets 1.98 ERA. They're the first pair of pitchers, 38 or older, to have season ERAs under two at the end of the same day, minimum 15 starts, since Spud Chandler and Fritz Ostermuller on August 6th, 1946, exactly 76 years ago today. exactly 76 years ago today. A lot of qualifiers in that one, but just highlights the fact that these two are having awesome old guy still got it type of seasons. Pretty great.

And in fact, they are tied now with exactly the same number of career strikeouts, 31-40. Each of them has after their last excellent starts. So I maybe could have saved my topic of comparing these guys for now because it's even more applicable, but glad they got a kind of weird but also semi-impressive fun fact to their names.

Like what kind of strange criminal is like forcing us into this decision? We've been taken hostage and in order to escape, we must make a terrible choice. There should be more people named Spud. So he is next on the list. And it's actually interesting that Scherzer is tied with Verlander because he has quite a few fewer innings, as I noted in that previous discussion. And we actually got an email from listener John recently who said, is it surprising that Justin Verlander only had 24 more career strikeouts than innings pitched? As of the minute I'm writing this email, he seems like a guy who should have a couple hundred more strikeouts than innings pitched. As of the minute I'm writing this email, he seems like a guy who should have a couple hundred more strikeouts than innings pitched. So Scherzer has quite a few more strikeouts than innings pitched. Verlander does not. And I'm not sure how many more strikeouts than innings pitched I would have guessed he had, but he's been pitching for so long, as I wrote back to John, that the average strikeout rate has risen significantly since

he entered the league. So like when Verlander made his MLB debut, starters were striking out only six batters per nine on average. And now they don't quite average a strikeout per inning, but fairly close down a bit this year. So his highest strikeout rate seasons have come later in his career. So that's what we tend to think of now is late career, even higher strikeout Justin Verlander. But he debuted in a different era and was kind of a different guy. And plus, he tends to go deep into games, which probably lowers his overall strikeout rate because his career strikeout rates as a percentage of player appearances by times through the order declined from 26.5 to 25.2 to 22.4 with each successive trip through.

So because he brings endurance that maybe Scherzer hasn't quite, although he's fairly durable too, he maybe costs himself a little bit in strikeout rate. But lately, you know, it wasn't until 2019, I guess, that his strikeouts finally went ahead of his innings pitch. But now he is, I guess, putting additional daylight between those things, but not necessarily because he actually has 130 innings pitch this year and 127 strikeouts. So more of a bulk strikeout guy than a rate strikeout guy, although he is just slightly ahead strikeouts versus innings pitched. Yeah. I don't have a thing to add to that. All right. Well, I did want to

mention one more thing. So I know we've been ragging on the Rockies a lot lately, but I've got to go back to the well one more time. First, I will say something nice about them first. Yeah. I thought you were going to be like, we've been ragging on the Rockies, but here's a heartwarming tale. You're like, I've been ragging on the Rockies. I'm going to throw more rocks at them. No, but I will throw a bone to the Rockies fans by just saying the Denelson-Lamette pickup seems smart. Sure. Seems good, right? We talked about the Brewers and the Josh Hader-Taylor Rodgers trade. We were kind of complimentary about picking up Denelson LeMet, who has been very effective at times, although injury plagued. And we thought, well, maybe the Brewers will make something out of him and find a use and help rebuild him. And as it turned out, they almost immediately designated him for assignment, which was somewhat surprising. And they said it was because of subsequent trades

they had made. They had made other bullpen additions, and I guess they didn't feel like they had a spot for him. And he had just passed five years of service time, so he could not be optioned back to the minors without passing through waivers. And he did not pass through waivers. The Rockies claimed him. So maybe the Rockies will get to reap the rewards of Nelson Lumet. So for all the grief that we and others give them, they have done a decent job of developing some pretty good pitchers in recent years. So great. You got Denelson Lumet, who we thought might be a good pickup for Milwaukee. Now he will be a good pickup for Colorado. So there, I said something

nice about the Rockies, sort of. But this was maybe the most Rockies thing I've ever read. Oh, no. I don't know anything personally about the person who was promoted here, so I am not passing judgment on that person. I know nothing that would disagree with what is in this article. I only know that and what's on his LinkedIn page. But let me just read a few paragraphs here. The Rockies steadily put their baseball operations research department back together again over the past several months, topped with a new director of analytics, Brian Jones, a club official said Friday. Jones, who started with the Rockies in 2002 and over the past 16 years has worked as the team's video coordinator, is well-known and much-liked in Colorado's clubhouse and

front office. Jonesy, as he's known around Coors Field, had been in charge of all video operations, including player analysis and scouting, and since 2014 has overseen the team's instant replay room. He's the one who relays to manager Bud Black in the dugout whether they should dispute an umpire's call. He also tailors scouting videos for players and helps produce a package of advanced scouting. When he started in that role in 2006, teams were still using VHS tapes. Oh, wow. I wonder how many teams were. I buy that the Rockies were.

Over the past two weeks, Jones has taken on his new analytics duties, and he will continue to perform his video scouting role through the end of the season. In Jones, the Rockies promoted a familiar face who can bridge departments among analyst scouts, players, and coaches. In other words, he speaks multiple baseball languages. It goes on to say that he has Bud Black's trust. He has everybody's trust, et cetera. So again, probably a great guy. Sounds like it. But this does sound like a hiring that smacks of Rockies for better or worse in that to, first of all, promote someone internally, which is what the Rockies tend to do. Now, they strayed from that strategy when they hired their previous analytics director, Scott Van Lenten, away from the Nationals. And he was fired after about five months. And so maybe they have decided,

okay, we tried going outside the organization once, that didn't stick. Now we will do the usual Rocky's thing of promoting someone from within, which promoting people from within, that can be a great thing. Reward your people you have in house. Perhaps it's not as great a thing, A, when they're related to the owner, perhaps, but also maybe when your organization has not been very successful over a long period of time, then maybe that argues in favor of bringing in people from outside the organization. like a full-time job of video advanced scouting and replay review in games and also have that person be your analytics director yeah it's maybe not quite the anecdote about the rockies having their front office staff like doing laundry in the clubhouse but it's closer to that than you might want yeah it's the same genre and again like I don't know anything about Brian Jones personally and I don't know his exact skill set, but I don't think you would see any other organization recently promoting the replay review person and the video coordinator to be a quantitative analysis director, R&D director, because I'm not saying there's no overlap between those roles, but- But they're different jobs.

They definitely are different jobs. And I'm also not saying you have to be a total quant and number cruncher to be the quantitative director. You can be a big picture person and you have people who can crunch the numbers for you and you're the ideas person and you're helping steer their research efforts and maybe you're helping communicate those efforts to others in the organization, which it sounds like Jonesy here would be well positioned to do because he has branched several departments and has buy in from people and trust from the players and all of that. But that has become a fairly specialized skill set to be an R&D director. So again, this could be the perfect person, but it also sounds like the sort of hire or at least resume or background that many other organizations would not make for better or worse. I was just trying to find one of the more recent hires for an equivalent position in another organization. And I just went to the Nationals who lost Van Lenten to the Rockies. And then also their former R&D director, Sam Mondry-Cohen, left that organization. So they hired someone new or promoted someone new back in November, someone named Lee Mandelowitz. And so Mike Rizzo at the time said, we went with Lee Mandelowitz. He's really capable.

I mean, he's a genius. We're really satisfied with the decision. And again here, not speaking from any personal knowledge of Lee Mandelowitz, I don't know the man, but just reading from the Washington Post here, Mandelowitz, 35, has been with the organization since 2014. He was an analyst on Mondry Cohen's earliest research and development staffs. In the years since, he climbed from analyst to senior analyst, then director of baseball research, working just under Mondry Cohen. Mandelowitz's new title is senior director of research and development. He has a PhD in

applied math, statistics, and scientific computation from the University of Maryland. He also holds an undergraduate degree in applied engineering and physics from Cornell. I don't think those things are true about Brian Jones from what I could tell about his LinkedIn page where it says he studied management information systems at Oklahoma State and seems to have been involved in video coordination at various places ever since, mostly with the Rockies. And so, again, don't want to gatekeep here and say you have to have an exact type of degree to get this job. But also, this just is sort of another case of it seems like the Rockies are just doing things that other organizations probably would not quite do.

So I don't want to rag on this person personally who I do not know and seems to have respect from within the organization. But it's just another Rockies thing that makes me raise my eyebrow and say, I don't know that someone with that resume, again, for better or worse, would have gotten that job with another organization. Yeah. It also seems like there's like compounding issues here, right? Because when you make a hire that doesn't work out and you have to let someone go at a moment in the, and I don't know that this is like a one-to-one, is it a one-to-one replacement for the guy who they fired? Well, it says they've been making some additions to their what was a very small R&D department. There's a Keith Law tweet from March where he says the exodus from the Rockies R&D department in the last 12 months has no parallel I can remember in the sport. Just a lot of people came in and then left fairly quickly. And according to Groke, that department is up to eight people now, which is bigger than it was, but still smaller than a lot of teams. So I guess Brian Jones was promoted to replace Van Lenten's role, although there have been some other additions to that department, it seems like. hire that doesn't work out and then you let that person go and you're sort of not in the prime window for hiring, right? Because the folks who are going to kind of come free, right, who you might be interested in won't come free until later into the fall, right? Just based on when front office contracts tend to come up. And that doesn't mean that you can't make a higher mid season teams do do that. But, you know, that can be more difficult, both because the candidate involved might want

to see a season through and because depending on whether that that hire is a lateral one, they might block, you know, a potential interview or what have you. So it's it feels like a compounding problem where it's like, well, we need someone in this role and we're not likely to be able to hire in the way that we might want to at this point in the calendar. So we're going to make this promotion. And again, I don't like you, I don't, I don't know this guy, like I, maybe he's great. Like it could totally be possible. So I don't want to, you know, feel like we're picking on him in particular, but I agree with you that it just seems like there is a, you know, sort of a recurring pattern here where there's always something a little bit off. And if

you do a big exhaustive search and you, and at the end of that, you're like, you know, we, we really like this internal candidate. We think that they have a good resume for this. They're talented. They have good organizational rapport like that, you know, isn't necessarily indicative of a bad process, right? You can end up with the internal promotion. And I think that there are a lot of teams that sort of pride themselves on giving meaningful advancement opportunities to their more junior staff that you can grow through the organization and that you can advance and that you can have an entire career with one club. I think that there are good functional organizations where

that is the case. But I think that those clubs are cognizant of the fact that if you're only doing that, if your primary pipeline is that, that there are going to be a lot of really talented people from outside of your organization who you're going to miss out on, right? And that, you know, that comes with all kinds of problems. So it doesn't feel like an org that has a good handle on sort of what is good practice and is typical. And you're right that like this promotion doesn't involve someone who's related to the ownership group. And so in that respect, it's, you know. It's progress. Progress. And, you know, when they decided to make Schmidt the permanent GM, permanent makes it sound like a lifetime appointment. Like he's been-

Well, with the Rockies, it's kind of close to that. Right. Like, you know, this is the Supreme it's kind of close to you know this is the supreme court or something but you know i know people in the industry who have a high opinion of him and who thought that you know like for all the things you could say about the rockies like some of their drafts particularly among their college hitters were good and like there's skill there but you know when you're an organization in transition and you're trying to sort of reimagine the way that your team is going to engage with the sport and chart a new course process. So maybe there was more consideration given to external candidates than we're aware of, but based on the reporting we have, it doesn't sound like that's true. And it feels like a place that could use some fresh ideas that are then met with sort

of a receptive and welcoming atmosphere, right? The fact that you have the external people you are hiring are cycling through at such a high rate seems like a red flag. closer to the scouty side of the spectrum. And yet they're still hiring someone with a background that you would sort of expect to see. And again, maybe the Rockies can't attract the best candidates these days, you know, especially after the last guy didn't last long and just all the questions about that organization. And I guess I should say, you know, if there were an interim tag associated with this, that might be understandable. It doesn't sound like there is. Like they're two months away from the end of their season, at least, when you think they could do a concerted search if you wanted to. So even more than this particular person or his qualifications, I think maybe the concerning thing is just like the idea that he's going to be doing double duty in these roles at least till the end of the season, like doing video guiding a bunch of analysts and figuring out strategy for that department.

I mean, that just seems like too much for one person to do. And so the fact that they think that one person can do those things at the same time, that sounds kind of concerning. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's not as if I'm not guilty of this sometimes for my own self, but like, it's not the worst to let people just do the one job. Just let people do one job, you know? Tampa Bay Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder hurt himself doing a mound visit to Shane McClanahan on Saturday. He pulled his calf muscle, pulled it or strained it or popped it or something. Former pitcher Kyle Snyder, now 44 years old. But that just highlighted to me that maybe mid-inning visits by coaches.

We've talked about this before, I think. But I think I'm anti-mid-inning visits because not only does it slow down the game, but also you can talk to your heart's content between innings. And I think players can go out there and do their jobs without coaches intervening. And you don't tend to see this in other sports. There are timeouts maybe, but you don't generally see just people walking onto the field of play or the court or whatever you call it, the playing surface, the ice, whatever it is in that sport. Baseball's semi-unique in that sense. And I don't know, maybe this just highlights if a pitching coach is hurting himself walking to the mound. Maybe this is a job that they should be doing. Although sometimes players can hurt themselves in sometimes serious ways, not doing anything that looks all that strenuous. I don't know that I need to relitigate this. How did he hurt himself?

Just walking. Just walking? Just walking. All right. Okay. So, you know, like he could have just hurt himself just walking from one end of the dugout to the other then. from one end of the dugout to the other then. Like, I think that, I think, Ben,

I don't want to accuse you of anything, but I think that you might be conflating the walking to the mound of it all with just, you know, liking mid-inning mound visits, which, you know, is a position that I disagree with. I think that, like, it's fine. I think it's fine. It was good to limit the number of them because some of them, they were getting out of hand.

We had too many. But now we have the right number. It's fine. It's okay. But I hope that he's better. How did he – what was his injury? Just a calf strain of some sort. I don't know how serious it is.

So I don't want to downplay that. But so he's – Kevin Cash had to come out. He's fine, right? It's not like life-threatening or career-threatening or anything. He hurt himself walking. I mean, we've all hurt ourselves doing things that are sort of silly and not all that strenuous. Yeah, I'm 36.

You don't have to tell me. Yeah. All right. So let me give you a past blast. This is episode 1887. So let me give you a past blast. This is episode 1887. And so this past blast comes from 1887 and from Richard Hershberger, historian, saber researcher, author of Strike Four, The Evolution of Baseball.

He writes, 1887 saw a momentous first, the earliest lawsuit brought by a fan hit by a foul ball. The incident was the previous season, 1886, but finally came to trial as reported in the Sporting Life of March 30, 1887. James E. Dolan went to the polo grounds on June 8 last to see the Chicago and New York clubs play ball. He had a seat on one of the lower benches of the grandstand directly behind the catcher. In the course of the game, Anson tipped a foul ball over catcher Ewing's head and landed it on Dolan's eye. The sight of the eye was destroyed, and a glass eye was substituted. Dolan sued the Metropolitan Exhibition Company, the owners of the Giants, in the Supreme Court, claiming $25,000 damages for negligence,

and the case was brought to trial before Judge Donahue yesterday. Several witnesses testified for the plaintiff that there was no wire screen back of the catcher to protect the spectators and that such a screen was necessary for safety. Again, 1887. Wow. We're talking about screens being necessary for safety. Lawyer W.H. Reed for Dolan argued that the absence of protection against foul balls constituted negligence on the part of the exhibition company. There was no dispute as to the fact in the suit, but Judge Donahue dismissed the complaint, holding that there was nothing to

show that the company had been guilty of negligence or that it was compulsory upon it to put up a screen or network. He said that the company appeared to have taken all necessary precautions to prevent accidents, aside from putting up a screen, apparently. I was going to say, what precautions did they take? I don't know. They didn't have them throw balls at them. So what can we do? Yeah.

And when a ticket to the grandstand was sold, it was a mutual contract between the company and the purchaser that a seat would be provided and a game of ball played. That ended the contract and the spectator must take all risks of accidents. And Richard writes, the judge's dismissal of the case is based on the legal doctrine of assumption of risk. That the spectators knew or should have known that foul balls in the stands were a risk, and they assume this risk when they attend a game. This principle still applies. The blurb on the back of the ticket is not really necessary, but emphasizes that you are on your own. That being said, I don't know why the polo grounds didn't have a backstop screen, as did some other parks by the time.

the complaints a few years ago when the screen was extended down the lines. My guess is that some patrons preferred a completely unobstructed view, but sitting directly behind the plate with no screen is a bit too exciting for my taste. Also, we always need to explain with New York cases that the Supreme Court is the trial level court in New York, not the top level like in most states and federal courts. So if you know some New York lawyer who brags about arguing a case Yes. Yes. established and is still bandied about today. And not until the past few years did we actually get around to extending the screens down the lines, which was not even compulsory at that point. I think it was just sort of recommended by the league and teams went along with it belatedly. But a lot of other fans had to have injuries before they actually did something about it. In this case, it was the screen right behind home plate.

Fortunately, they figured that out in most places soon enough. But yeah, this just, again, like so many things, just goes back almost to the beginning. We have been indifferent to safety for a long time. It's like, you know, it's as American as apple pie. Yep. for a long time. It's like, you know, it's as American as apple pie. Yep. By the way, I meant to mention that Joe Sheehan in the most recent edition of his newsletter, he brought up a hypothesis about the Rockies that was proposed by one of his readers, Avi P., who wrote in to say to him, I'm convinced the Rockies are operating under a different

incentive system from everyone else. I don't think they're trying to win. I'm convinced the Rockies are operating under a different incentive system from everyone else. I don't think they're trying to win. I think they're trying to create a community among the players and management where everyone feels like they belong and has a stress-free work experience. And I think they're quite successful at that. They understand they're playing a game and the results don't really matter. They're a baseball club. When you look at it that way, maybe they're the best run team in the league. Everyone else is unhappy most of the time. And maybe that would support the idea of,

hey, Jonesy, we like Jonesy. Everyone likes Jonesy. Let's promote Jonesy. I mean, that does seem to be like a big factor in their decision-making, which again, like loyalty to your people can be a good thing at times. And maybe this is too cutthroat and competitive a business.

Maybe we should all be a bit more laid back like the Rockies and just try to have fun out there. Joe wrote, I don't know if I completely buy into this, but the idea one degree removed that the Rockies simply value some things more than winning games makes sense to me. I can make a similar argument about the Royals. I don't think it is an appropriate way to run a baseball team, but as a thesis for why the Rockies do the things they do, it makes more sense than trying to explain them using, you know, baseball analysis. I get the instinct to look to this, and I think that I wouldn't be surprised if there were

other stated organizational principles and goals besides winning. But like, here's the thing. When Chris Bryant was pitched on being Iraqi, a lot of it was the money. But I bet they told him, we think you can help us win a World Series here. You know, like I understand. But I think that sometimes and because we are so enamored with whimsy ourselves, maybe we are sometimes guilty of this. So I know I'm the pot calling the kettle black here, but I think Connor Joe wants a World Series ring, right?

I think Charlie Blackman wants a World Series ring. I'm just picking guys. I'm like, hey, look at all of the Rockies players I know. Right. Denelson Lumet wants a World Series ring. Right. I think they, you know, I think Herman Marquez wants a World Series ring. So I think it is good to remind highly competitive people that there are a lot of things in life that are worthwhile beyond simply winning.

simply winning but also i think most baseball players at least most professional baseball players and certainly most major leaguers are highly competitive people to the point that they could all be encouraged to chill out a little bit i just don't know that the rockies have optimized the way to do that and i think that you know like losing relentlessly and getting made fun of on podcasts i don't think that people enjoy that. You know, I think that they are like, hey, that feels bad. So, you know, there's a balance to be struck here. Like you want to feel like you have a rudder, you know? Yeah, right.

And when Rocky's ownership makes public comments about their competitive prospects, they don't say, eh, you know. Yeah. We know we're not going to win, but we're all having a great time. Yeah. You win some, you lose some. Yeah. I'm not saying that. No.

They're saying other stuff, which is part of the problem. We think we will win. We think we are good. Right. Yeah. Joe points out in that newsletter that Rockies batters have the second highest ground ball rate of any team, just slightly behind the Cubs, which seems not ideal in Coors Field. Now, the pitching staff does get some grounders, but you'd think you would maybe want some hitters who hit the ball in the air in Coors Field. So

maybe that can be an action item on the new R&D director's to-do list. But hopefully we'll leave the Rockies alone for a little while. I'm sorry, Rockies fans, if you're still with us. But I'm sure many of you are just as aggrieved, frankly. So if you don't mind commiserating, this is cathartic for you, I hope. I really can't say enough nice things about how pretty that ballpark is. And at some point, I imagine you will actually get to enjoy watching Chris Bryan play baseball. Wait, I ended on a bad note. It's a beautiful ballpark. I feel like when I have been there in normal competitive settings, not during the Futures game or what

have you, they do a good job of having a bunch of different price points there so you can take your family to a Rockies game and get a hot dog and a soda and not bankrupt yourself. So, you know, they do do some things right. Yeah. A lot of those just don't happen to be baseball at this particular moment. But remember when the Rockies were like good for a little while? That was wild. That was fun.

Yeah. And it wasn't that long ago. No. You know? And Rockies fans, they support that team. I mean, I guess arguably if they all just had a mass exodus from the ballpark when the Rockies were losing, perhaps that would put even more pressure on the Rockies to get good. But you could say, I mean, there are some fan bases that, you know, they're fair weather fans, I guess you could say. But understandably so when, you know, like Oakland, right? Understandably so when, you know, like Oakland, right?

I mean, when they're not putting a competitive product on the field and they're doing everything they can to alienate the fans, the fans don't show up. Understandably. Why should they? Rockies fans, maybe because it's just that the ballpark is so nice. I mean, the attendance is pretty decent even when the team is not. Yeah. Well, and it's like right there in downtown Denver. So, you know, that helps you get some spillover, I guess. But yeah, I, you know, I don't know.

We don't want to make anyone feel bad. We hope everybody has a baseball team that like puts a good product on the field because that can be very fun. We hope everyone gets to enjoy that someday. Mm-hmm. All right. Looks to me, Lucas Apostolaris just ran the numbers for me, Lucas, from baseball prospectus using the pitch info tags.

Looks like the only faster sliders they have on record than DeGrom's 95.6, according to pitch info in that Sunday game. They have Kota Glover throwing some faster ones. Emmanuel Classe, Matt Bush just traded to the Brewers. Noah Sindergaard. They are the only pitchers who have been clocked in the pitch tracking era with faster sliders. So I guess that was not quite a record. But still, relax, Jacob.

Take it easy. Be careful. Preserve yourself. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. All right. So we just did a past blast and the rest of this episode is going to be a blast from the past too. And hopefully a fun one.

It was for us. So we are about to talk to Ron Teasley, who is one of four surviving Negro Leaguers from the 1920 to 1948 period that MLB now classifies as major league. And he played for the New York Cubans in 1948. He also played in the Dodgers farm system before that. He was one of the first black players signed by an AL or NL team in the 20th century. And then he went on to a long coaching career in Detroit. So he had a fascinating life and career, knew a lot of Negro Leagues legends and played with some and has stories to tell about them. So last time we talked about Vin Scully. This time we are talking to someone who was born before

Vin Scully. You know I love my nonagenarian guests on this podcast. And for good reason. Ron Peasley is 95 years young, and he has appeared on this podcast before. In a sense, his voice has appeared on this podcast because back in episode 1630, when we talked about the reclassification of the Negro Leagues, I played a snippet of his voice because when I reported that MLB was changing that designation, I called him quickly for a reaction to that and then played a snippet of that on the podcast. But he has not been on the podcast per se until now. And so we had a nice lengthy conversation with him. And then following that, we talked to Gary Jolette, a friend of Ron Teasley's, who is a historian and researcher and also an activist and preservationist when it comes to Negro League's history. And Gary was one of the people who were spearheading an effort to save historic Hamtramck Stadium, which is in Michigan, is one of the five surviving Negro League's dedicated stadiums.

And he helmed an effort to restore it. And it has been restored. And earlier this year, there was a great event on June 20th where they dedicated the field and there was a game and Ron Teasley was honored and spoke at that event. So we've been trying to get them on ever since. And now we have them and had good conversations with both. So we will be right back with Ron Teasley and then after that, Gary Gillette.

The night that you told me Those little white lies I tried But there's no regretting In spite of my tears Hi, how are you? Hi Ron, this is Ben and I'm here with my co-host Meg. How are you? Okay, fine Ben.

Well, great to talk to you. There are so many things we could ask you to start, but maybe we'll go back to the beginning. I was reading some old articles about you, and it mentioned that you had started playing baseball when you were 12, I think. And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about what it was like at the time in Detroit on the sandlots. Well, yeah, actually, I started before that, but I was 12 or 13 years old. Believe it or not, I was playing with grown men. I happened to see them practicing at one of the recreation center fields, and I just walked over and started shagging balls and things like that and taking up broken bats and using them. But my kids, my age.

But anyway, I worked out with them for a while. And then they were in a battery league. And some of them were former Negro League players. They had played with the Detroit Stars and several other Negro League teams. And so it was a good learning situation for me. Yeah. So sometimes they actually put me on their roster.

And if a player didn't show up, they would put me out in the right field. And I would have a chance to experience it. And that worked out pretty good. As long as no balls hit out that way. Could you keep up with them? Were you a big kid? Big and good for your age, I guess? No, no, no.

I really wasn't. I was pretty athletic. And like I say, I just improved. And, you know, it was fairly successful. Good enough to keep them, you know, satisfied at my play. And so eventually, some of these players also played semi-pro ball. Pretty soon, I was playing with semi-pro players.

Once in a while, they put me in a game, but mostly, I was just a fill-in. Back then, too, the reason I guess I was playing with them is because the African American kids were not into baseball too much because of the segregation of the Tigers.

And so, as a matter of fact, my father was an avid baseball fan, never took me to a Tiger game. But he went to a lot of Negro League games when they came to town. And also, the Detroit Stars were very active and they had a good team. And they had a star player by the name of

Turkey Stearns. And my father had a great appreciation for him. Most of the other kids were into softball. As a matter of fact, in my neighborhood,

we had a, I guess you could say, a world-class softball team. So we were attracted to that game somewhat. But that shifted away from that game and went into baseball. And it worked out very well. Because when I entered high school, I tried out for the baseball team, which had only had one African-American player on the team since they came into existence. I made the team.

That was quite an event, especially in the neighborhood, because I was like a little minor hero because of the fact that I was on the Northwestern High School baseball team. That same school is the school where Willie Horton, John Mayberry, Alex Johnson, and a few other, Hobie Landress, and a few other major league players came from. And then you continued your career at Wayne State University, is that right? And then you continued your career at Wayne State University. Is that right? in 1945 to 1946 I went into the Navy. And I played Navy baseball. And also I was given a rank of athletic specialist third class.

And so that was interesting as well. The fact that my baseball coach in the Navy was Gene Woodling of the New York Yankees. That was a good experience. We learned a lot from him. And you got to play overseas in the Navy too, right?

You went to... Yes, I played on the island of Saipan. I was there for eight months. I was only in for 13 months, but eight of the 13 months were in on the island of Saipan. And they had a league there. And I guess one of the best pitches I faced on the island of Saipan. And they had a lead there. And I guess one of the best pictures I faced when I was there was Mel Queen. I think of Pittsburgh Pirates.

That was a good experience because he had a real mean curveball. I've never seen a curveball like that. I was like, wow. So this is what major league baseball is like. So this is what Major League Baseball is like. And was it before you joined the Navy in 45 that you were going to play in Branch to play against the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers, the team that Jackie was playing with. The French Rookie team. Then we

stopped off in Warren, Ohio. The manager went in, made a phone call to Brooklyn and let them know we were on our way. They told him, well, you can cancel your trip because we have signed Jackie Robinson and the league is disbanding. That was interesting.

So that was it. We came back. And in 1947, I was at Wayne again. What were the emotions at that moment when you heard that Jackie had been signed and that also that that league would not be happening. Oh, yeah. I was very excited, you know, except that there was some fear that it might harm the league teams.

Right. The league teams, yeah. They're going to, a lot of the fans would abandon us and go out to see Jackie. And basically, that's what happened. Yeah. I was going to ask you about that because, of course, the integration is celebrated, but then that did lead to the demise of the Negro Leagues eventually.

So I wonder what you thought of that. Was that inevitable? Was that just a sad thing that was going to happen? Or could that have been avoided in some way? Well, that was very interesting. Okay, so in 1947, when I was back at Wayne, I had a good season. I batted actually 500, which is a school record. Yeah.

Still a school record. Then I got a letter from the Dodgers inviting me down to Vero Beach to try out for their team. And so he, I, and another player from Detroit by the name of Sammy Chee, we went down and after a couple of weeks of tryouts, they signed us. And we were assigned to play in Odeon, New York in the Class D Pony League. We were signed and we met our teammates and we arrived in Odeon. There was a group there to meet us and welcome us to the city.

And then when the season started, I started at first base, Samuel was playing shortstop. And we played what I thought was a good-paced ball. And eventually, I led the league in home runs with three home runs. But still, if you're kind of familiar with Man of League ball products, they have some long. The outfields are quite long.

But anyway, I led the league in home runs. But all of a sudden, after we played in 23 games, I was batting 270. Sam was batting, I think, 335. We were called into the manager's, I guess the president's office, the league president for the Dodgers, and told that we were being released because they had to make room for players for higher classification. That was naturally a shock because we thought we were doing well.

The newspapers were giving us growing reports about our play, and that was devastating to us. Why do you think that happened so soon? think that happened so soon? Well, we were shocked because they kept players who some who had never played. I mean, they played two or four games. We were there

23 games, and I ended up getting 23 hits in the 23 games, and Sam, I think, he played a few games. I think he played 24 games, and he had 24 hits. I think he was batting around. I think he played 24 games, and he had 24 hits. I think he was batting around 335. But we just thought maybe that, well, I talked to some older players

from the Negro League who told me that he thought at that time they were only signing African-American players who they thought could make it to the majors in the next year in one season or so. And so that was just speaking. Yeah. But then there are other thoughts

that maybe they were just doing that to... That was the main reason, I think. The main reason was the fact that they were not keeping bench players. We had development players, bench players who might need three or four seasons or more to be ready for the major league team. And what was it like to integrate a league like that? I guess it was not new for you to be the only black player even going

back to school on a team. But in a league, was there a lot of hostility? Was it lonely? Absolutely not. You must remember, these players who had to go along with the signing of Jackie Robinson. So I never, ever had any kind of problems with the players. We all played as a team, worked together, and sometimes had dinner together and that sort of thing. Even when we were in the camp, we played like horseshoes and table tennis and things like that. And we all had a good time. But then after we were released, we came back home.

And the gentleman who was responsible for us signing with the Dodgers, named Will Robinson, who was a outstanding basketball coach in the Detroit area. And later on, he was the first African-American to coach a division one basketball team. African-American to coach a Division I basketball team. But he was able to make contacts with the New York Cubans. And then we were signed by the New York Cubans. And what was that experience like? Well, I tell you, it was really disturbing in some ways because, take for instance instance right but i my main position is first base yeah when i

arrived in washington joined the uh the cubans they had three other players who were playing first base oh wow so that that i was assigned to be a utility player and uh And that was really interesting, too, because they would just give me a club. And one game, I played center field in the polo grounds of all places. Oh, wow. Wow. Imagine that now.

And I'd heard about Willie Mays making a great play out there. And sure enough, when I was playing center playing, I got one of those kind of balls that just line drives. It starts rising right over your head. I had to go all the way back to the corner of that horseshoe and achieve the ball. In other games, I played shortstop, second base.

I finished out most of the season with Dan. You have a story about Mini Mignoso, right? Who just was inducted into the Hall of Fame, but I guess he was one of the players who was blocking you at that position, maybe. Well, actually, his

main position was third base. Another interesting thing about the Mini Mignoso situation is when I joined the team, I joined the team in Washington, D.C. Right. And when I arrived, I had not received my uniform yet. But Manoso came to the ballpark and said that he could not find his uniform. He had misplaced it or something, or maybe somebody had sent it to the lounge or something, but anyway,

he said he didn't have a uniform. So they had to take someone else's uniform, and that was the one that they picked to give my uniform to Milosa for that game. It just didn't start. I was at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. And what other great players did you get to play with or against? Because I know that you went on to play more semi-pro ball in Canada for years after that, right? And I read that you had grown up watching Buck Leonard, for instance, and eventually maybe got to play against him.

So which other players did you cross paths with? Well, Buck Leonard, Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige. I remember one game that I'll never forget, of course, is when I first faced Satchel Paige in an exhibition game in Detroit. I faced him, I hit a triple. And actually, that was really a thrill. I was so excited. The next time up, I'm not really sure what I did

the second time I turned up against him. I think I found it out. That was kind of thrilled. Then I played several games on the same team that he pitched because I was playing with a team in Toledo, Ohio. The Toledo Cubs.

One thing I'll tell you about, he pitched a lot of exhibition games. He would come to town, pitch a couple of innings and take off for the next town. It was very exciting playing against them. He was a real crowd pleaser.

When he came to the park, he was the center of attention. He would walk over and he would just warm up. He didn't have anybody to warm him up, but he'd take a rock and he'd throw it down and put this rock down there for a home plate. And he'd warm up by throwing the ball over that rock instead of a plate. He wound up throwing the ball over that rock instead of a plate. He threw it over a rock. That was sort of interesting.

He was well-respected. I remember even when I was in the sand lots and working out with the former Negro New Clippers, they all just worshipped him. Another player they worshipped too was Turkey Stearns. He played for the Detroit Stars and my father idolized him. It was also interesting

when I was playing the Toledo team, we had booked a series of games in the South and Turkey Stearns came by my home to pick me up to go on the trip and my father was so excited I said wow he never got that excited about my games I think another interesting

thing as well is my father would afternoons and 35 years he worked at the Detroit company he was never late except for that one day and 35 years he worked at the Detroit Board of Company. He was never late except for that one day when he came by to pick me up and he has to talk to Turkey Stearns

and say, okay, you can ask them, but make sure you take care of my boy. Turkey said, oh yeah, we'll take good care of him. Don't worry. That's a good reason to be late for work. And speaking of crowd pleasers, good character. Don't worry. That's a good reason to be late for work. Yeah. And speaking of crowd pleasers, Buck O'Neill also was just inducted into the Hall of Fame. Did you

get to know him at all over the years? Oh, yes. I met him several times. Matter of fact, when I attended a Negro League reunion, he was kind of skeptical about my playing in the Negro League reunion, he was kind of, I would say, skeptical about my playing in the Negro League. I showed him a picture

of Xanadu and I, and he said, oh, okay, you're okay then. He was so interested in this and his knowledge of baseball, especially in the Negro League, was just something you never forget. He was our ambassador. He could tell us a story that passed out on end.

Very, very, very interesting to listen to him. And there's been a lot of attention, fortunately and belatedly, on the Negro Leagues in recent years, maybe partly as a result of or maybe it was the cause of Major League Baseball finally reclassifying, recognizing the Negro Leagues as major leagues. I read somewhere that you had seen your page on the baseball reference website. And I wonder what you thought of that or what it meant to you, that change in the classification. Well, I thought it was wonderful. I felt that you must keep in mind now. I always felt that the Negro League leagues were a major league.

They were major league players. They played a series of games against the right major league teams. According to Buck, he was very diplomatic. He would always say, well, we won as many games

against them as we lost. I thought the fact that they, I thought it was good because that made, that made the general population, I think that made us more, that made us more legitimate in the eyes of more people. But that was just for,

that was only for statistics though. Right. But it came to other things like insurance or bonuses or pensions and that sort of thing. It did not include that. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, actually, because there was a column by Mike Freeman not long ago, I think in USA Today about that, not long ago, I think in USA Today about that, where he said that MLB should offer some form of compensation to you and the other Negro Leaguers who are still around. And I assume they have not contacted you about that, or that would be welcome if they did. Well, yeah, of course. But, you know, they did know, they did give, because we just talked about the pensions,

that's just the word I'm trying to say, pensions to New England players. Now, the way they did it was they said, well, if you played from 1947 to the, any years before 1947, if you played in one game, you were eligible to receive a pension. But it just so happened I played in 1948. Yes. And so I didn't get a pension. But then on the other side,

they said, well, okay, if you played in 52 or 53, you had to play a series of games before you could get a pension. So I never received a pension because I played in 1948. I could never understand why they put that little break in there from 1948 to 1952, something like that. Right. Yeah, especially now because up until and through 1948, that's the period that they included in the stats and everything. So, yeah.

Actually, also, we always talk about when did the Negro League really disband. So basically, in 1948, I mean, it was a sad situation because players were coming and going, and there was no real team unity spirit, you know, because if you came on the team, you were more or less, well, I'm just trying to take my job or things like that. I seem to be pregnant. As a matter of fact, at the end of the season, the following year, I played up in Canada for two years,

and they paid considerably more than we got when we played in the Negro League. We played against several former Negro League players. Willie Wells was there. He was a Hall of Famer. A player named Sanford from the Baltimore Eli Giants. He was there. There were many

other, I think, Double Duty Radcliffe, he managed the team up there. The league, that was pretty much it. There were a few teams that I've been talking about. I think the Indianapolis Clowns, they more or less existed for a few years after that. Most of the other teams are more or less disbanded and it's a sad thing.

Well, I know that in addition to recognizing, as Ben said belatedly, the quality of that play, there's also been a huge emphasis on preserving and even restoring aspects of Negro League history, including the stadium where the Detroit Stars used to play. I know that you were able to attend a commemorative game there earlier this year and see the renovated ballpark. And I wonder if you could talk about what it felt like to see that ballpark preserved and restored to what it might have looked like when they were playing there. Actually, I was there when they were playing. I went to a few games, but I think I was quite young. I can strictly recall my father taking me to games at the Hamptown Javits Stadium, but I spent most of my time

under the stands just picking up, I don't know what, you know, and just playing in the dirt and the sand and that sort of thing. How long did I remember that? And then when I was at Wayne, there's another thing too. Mention the former Negro League players that I, Wayne, that's another thing too. Mention the former Negro League players, my mentors, we might say. They played there, and that was one of the things they really talked about. They enjoyed playing there, and they felt like it was a badge of honor to have played with the Stars and played at that stadium. And so it was then that when I was at Wayne State, Wayne State, when I played at that stadium. And so it was when I was at Wayne State,

Wayne State, when I played at Wayne State, really did not have a permanent field to play. We played a high school field, we played recreation fields, and so one of our games, we played at

Hamside Stadium. So I was out there quite a bit. The shit restored was really a thrill. When I was there, the job that they did to reconstruct it was a beautiful job. I understand there's more to come. They didn't have a scoreboard.

I understand a scoreboard is coming and they put a fence around the park and the lights. Also, they use it for several sports as well, soccer and whatever, you know, other sports that don't light there. You know, just an empty goose might want to play there. So it was quite a thrill. Yeah.

The gentleman who was responsible for it, Gary Jeanette, did a great job putting communities harder to recruit kids to the teams, right? And so when you were at Hamtramck at that game, I know that there was a great game with kids there. And I watched some video from that event. But we have seen a lower percentage of black players in the major leagues these days. players in the major leagues these days. And I wonder if you had any thoughts on how that has changed or what could be done to get kids interested in the community and playing baseball again. Well, I just want to say that when I was growing up as a kid, early on, I wanted to play baseball and maybe make it to the play in the Negro Leagues. And if I didn't make it as a baseball player, I wanted to coach. So after my playing, the days were over, and I had completed most of my requirements to teach and coach. So I went back after I spent two years up in Canada,

the Carmen Cardinals. And by the way, here, ironically, the two years I was there, I made the All-Star team both years. And then I had a batting average of 299 both years. But those scouts who came around, I said, wait a minute here. So I said, I better go back to school to get my degree and just do what I wanted to do

if I did not make it as a Major League Baseball player. But that was quite a thrill coaching. I really enjoyed that so much. And then my first few years there, But that was quite a thrill coaching. I really enjoyed that so much. And then my first few years there, we had just a great interest in baseball. Matter of fact, one year I even had a junior varsity team, which is very unusual for a public school team to have.

So I started coaching in 1969. And I coached a team that won two straight championships. When I coached them, for my first year of coaching, we won a championship. Coaching baseball was very interesting. Some of the things that you do in high school baseball, baseball is quite a little different from what you do in Major League Baseball is quite a little different from what you do in the Major League Baseball. Yeah. But I had some very interesting young men, and I'm proud to say that I coached there for 20 years.

Yeah. And as you were saying, toward the end, from 1969 up until about 1984, there was a great interest in baseball. Up until about 1984, there was a great interest in baseball, but it just started to wane, I would say, right around, I think it was about the time that a basketball player by the name of Michael Jordan came up. I've heard of him, yeah. It seems like all of a sudden, all of the interest shifted to the basketball. Matter of fact, I have two sons.

He was into baseball. Matter of fact, he played junior college and then he played at Wayne State. I had another son who was into baseball until he got a scholarship to play basketball at Northwestern. He gave up baseball and concentrated on his basketball. I was just so proud of the young men that I coached.

I'm just proud to say that I would say that 99% of the kids I coached, they did graduate from high school. Then quite a few, I would say maybe 60-65% attended college. That was quite a few, I would say maybe like 60, 65% attended college. And that was quite a thrill.

I'm sure you'll just think I was, you know, so excited about that. In other words, I just felt that, you know, at the place don't overemphasize the winning aspects of it. You want to win. You get to keep those grades up and prepare yourself for the future as a good citizen and it worked out

quite well. The interest did win. From 1940 to 1984 and 85, you could tell, the kids would just stop playing.

If a kid came out for the team, if he could just simply catch a ball or throw a ball, he would make the team. But I retired about 1989 after 20 years of coaching. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. Matter of fact,

this year we had a, this year we had a Tiger, every year the Tigers honor the Negro Leagues with what they call the Negro League Weekend. And my players

surprised me about the 40 players that came to the game and they gave me shirts with my name on it

and called me number one coach and they had a cap and a shirt and that was, that was, made me feel like, made up the shirts with my name on it and called me number one coach. He had a cap and a shirt. That made me feel like, well, maybe I did something right. Yeah, it certainly sounds like it.

After what happened to me, I knew that I had to be more concerned about the future of this band. About 15 of my kids or more were assigned by major league teams. And only, I think they debated to triple A baseball, the others were cut before that. I thought they were outstanding players, you know, because one thing about major league baseball,

they say, well, we're just going to come out and look at a player. That means that player was an outstanding player. Yeah. So we had 15 players who were outstanding who were signed. Well, we did have a couple, though. I think one player went to Michigan, and again, he rounded third base because he sprained an ankle.

He's like, he's raiding as a player. He kind of dropped across with that. Then we had another player, that's AAA. He said, well, look, I was playing. He told me why he left the team. He said, well, all of a sudden, there'd be Latin players coming in,

and my playing time was reduced. So he quit. He quit baseball, went back to school, Morehead State and graduated and then they had one other player that went to

Michigan State that was a really wonderful kid as well in about 6'2 a switch hitter he was playing second base

he was a Big Ten batting champion I think in 1984 he was playing second base and the players slid into second, and I think broke his leg. And they, for some reason, the team did not try to rehabilitate him or anything. They just released him. And unfortunately, he had, I think he left in his senior year,

so he went back to Michigan State. He graduated. And I just thought that was a sad situation for you. We have a player, but that's basically how my career went. And I really, really, really enjoyed it. The coaching was really something that I enjoyed. The other aspects of the game, especially with the Dodgers,

was very disappointing. There were some people who thought maybe the reason the Dodgers released us was to maybe taint the players who might join the Negro League to cut down their chances of reviving any teams. And that sounds far-fetched,

but that was part of their motive. Well, as well as the fact, of course, the Dodgers and the other teams, they knew that we were outjoying them quite a bit. And in many cities, we had crowds of 20,000, 30,000 people. And so they wanted to, I guess they wanted that fan base to move over to their side as well. So that was just something that some people had that feeling. I did mean to ask the last thing.

I think you were the eighth player signed, right? And I wondered how they had heard about you because you went to a tryout with the Dodgers, right? Or at Vero Beach in Florida. And because some players, of course, were signed out of the Negro Leagues, whereas you were in the Dodgers system first, and then you went to the Negro Leagues in reverse, sort of. So how had they heard of you, or how did you get invited to that tryout with the Dodgers

or get scouted? Well, I remember in 1947, this judge went back to Wayne. That's the odd bet at 500. So you just got scouted there or saw the numbers. Yeah. Another thing, too, that's very interesting

that I don't know if it ever came out very much, but actually the Detroit Tigers in 1940, early 1947, invited two players from Detroit, myself and a player by the name of Little Cobb. We had what they call a secret workout. One of the players in Detroit,

and the scout, that kid, they call him a super scout by the name of DiNunzio. We had a workout with him, and after the workout, he said, well, I like the way you guys play, but I would have to wait to see you. So we never heard from the Tigers.

But I thought that was also very interesting. Yeah, I know. Sometimes they would give players workouts, but it wasn't serious, right? It was just for show, sort of? I'm not sure if it was. When we never heard, I don't think it's ever publicized.

It was never publicized that he had the workout. Like I said, like a secret workout, I guess you'd say. The scout, the nun show, he was one of those scouts that if he said,

if he gave you the okay, ordinarily, well, that was it. You could sign. But in our case, we would not sign. I think the Tigers, as a matter of fact, I think one of the last teams to sign an African American player. I think Boston was the last run, but Detroit was pretty near that point. Well, thank you so much for your time. I was so glad that we could connect with you and that you are willing to reminisce and share all of these great stories.

Thank you. here to talk about all of this. It's really, it's wonderful to hear it from someone who was a player and participating and got to know all of these people. So this was really wonderful. Thank you so much, Ron. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. All right. You just heard Ron talking about Historic Hamtramck Stadium, one of the few surviving dedicated sites of Negro Leagues baseball. Next, we will talk to Gary Gillette, who helped preserve and restore that park, about that effort, as well as the other surviving Negro League ballparks,

and some of the lessons that he's learned as a historian and scholar of Negro Leagues history. So we'll be right back with Gary. Detroit Diamond Listen to me Detroit Diamond Can't forget her feet Now I can't even walk the streets Without hearing Detroit Diamond Well, you just heard Ron Teasley mention the name Gary Gillette when he was speaking about Hamtramck Stadium and the efforts to restore it.

And Gary is joining us now. He is an author and editor and historian. He's also the founder and board chair of the non-profit Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium that made that project happen. Gary, congrats and welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Ben. I should properly distinguish that I was a co-founder. I had two co-founders who are no longer on our board, but the three of us were all in it together at the start. Got it. And how did you get to know Ron? We all just got to know Ron and that was a pleasure, but I know you've known him for some time. That's a good question. I don't know when

I first met Ron, probably either after one of the Tigers Negro League weekends at Comerica Park or else at a function at the Detroit Public Library, which did several Negro League events, League's events, talks in the 2006 to 2010 timeframe. I moved to Detroit in 2005, and I started researching Hampton Arena Stadium in 2008. So I would guess it was probably 2009 or 10. Mm-hmm. And how did he get involved with the efforts and the event? I should note that you held an event the day after Juneteenth to dedicate the new restored stadium, and Ron was honored there. So how did he get involved in connection with these efforts? Well, you know, Ron is one of the few living Negro Leaguers. I mean, the major Negro Leaguers go into 48. Of course, there are a lot of guys from the mid to late 50s, but they're not,

by Major League definition, Major League League and I think that's reasonable. I don't remember. I probably asked him to help out around 2014 after we got the historic marker installed and he agreed to join our board, which he did briefly and then he resigned because of health reasons, I believe family reasons. But we've been in touch ever since and I consult with him on things. I've interviewed him several times. He's a delightful guy. He tells good stories. And his memory ever since I met him, well, he would have been in his mid-80s when I met him. His memory then was better than a ballplayer who was 55. You know, as you know, interviewing ballplayers,

they love to tell you how they hit that 3-2 curveball off this pitcher on this day with the bases loaded in the ninth inning to win the game and you go check and they got the year wrong maybe the day is right the inning is wrong there were two runners on base yeah you know and maybe it was off a relief pitcher not the starter they thought but Ron's memory is good and he's got great storage you know he played in the majoragues. He played in the minor leagues when the black players were, you could count them on the fingers of a couple of hands. And I was just looking before you dialed me that the Olean New York paper where he played in the, I guess it was the Pony League in 48, there was an article about him being released saying that the club said

they released him and Sammy G, another prospect from Detroit, because following their policy that they weren't going to keep guys who were not thought of as prospects. They couldn't go higher. Yeah. He talked a bit about that. Yeah. Yeah. And G was hitting 321 and playing shortstop. And I saw nothing indicate he wasn't adequate defensively at shortstop. Ron was tied for the league lead in home runs. I mean, early in the season, it was only three, but there was nothing to indicate they couldn't play. They weren't, you know, 27-year-old prospect Monkeys. There was nothing to indicate they couldn't play, if given a chance. And maybe they would have topped out at Class A, or maybe they would have made it to the majors, but who would know? They cut them loose after, you know, less than half a

season of a tryout in the New York Penn League. So Ron was involved with the ballpark and the effort, but can you just describe for our listeners, what was the state of Hamtramck before the restoration effort really got underway? Well, I had been researching the stadium from 2008 to 2010, and then in 2010, you've had our late 2009, the Hamtramck newspaper printed an editorial saying nobody plays baseball in Hamtramck anymore.

It was pretty much true. There was a high school baseball team, but the kids are mostly playing soccer or even cricket. Bangladeshi immigrant community, their kids play cricket as well as soccer. And nobody's coming back and we should just tear what they call the grandstand down. And this is because the history of the stadium had been lost over the years. People, there were a few old-timers, I interviewed a 95 year old guy at the time who remembered watching Negro League games there, he's now deceased, and

there were a few other old-timers who remembered the Negro League playing there, but not many, and so to them it was just a hulk. It was fenced off. It had been fenced off a cyclone fence since 1997. I have to tell you I learned this last year from a friend of mine. The last event in Hamtramck Stadium before they closed it off in 1987 was a rock concert called Hamstock. Hamstock.

You can't make this up. And apparently the promoter sold the city on supporting it, and the city put some money into it. I don't know how much. And hardly anyone showed up, and there were a lot of bad feelings, and they closed the stadium down. Now they close it down for other reasons. Sure.

You know, that's just the kind of trivia that you just look at that and say, man, if I were writing a novel, I wouldn't be that inventive. Who played Hamstock? Anyone notable? I don't think so. My knowledge of popular music ends a long time before that. Hamtramck does have an annual sort of like battle of the bands where they get 50, 60, 100 bands to play in all the bars,

and Hamtramck's got a thriving bar club scene where local bands will play. But those are, you know, I'm not going out to the bars much anymore. So it had been left there and it was, you know, in okay shape. The same thing with Tiger Stadium. When I worked on the Tiger Stadium Conservancy, people said, well, the stadium's falling down. I would say, no, it's not. These buildings were designed to be out in the snow and the rain. They were outdoor buildings. And so while the condition certainly deteriorates over time, it doesn't stay the same. Nothing stays the same that gets older. It's not an imminent danger of collapse or anything. What it needed was money to renovate it and a purpose. And I have to say, I provided the purpose by talking about

the Negro Leagues history. And I talked to the mayor of provided the purpose by talking about the Negro Leagues history. And I talked to the mayor of Hamtramck in 2010 after that editorial and told her, I said, I'm not a resident of Hamtramck. I never have been. I live in Detroit. I'm not even a Detroit native. But before you talk about knocking that down, you should know the history. She was very receptive, Karen Majewski. She was mayor until this January. And she asked me to talk to city council. I talked to city council. They were very receptive and supportive, but Hamtramck didn't have any money. I think at that time they were still under emergency financial management. If not, they had been under emergency management twice in the past 10, 15 years. They had no money,

so it was important to rally the troops. And the first step to rallying the troops was getting it on the National Register of Historic Places, which me and my two co-founders, Rebecca Abino-Sabb, which is a preservationist, and Ian Parada, who is a local activist, which we did in 2012. And the National Register does not prevent anyone from tearing down a historic site. Its main value is you cannot use any federal money to tear down a national register site. You can use private money though, and plenty of historic sites have been demolished using private money, but it also gives you a moral cachet. It says, this property has been certified by professional historians in the government. Now you have to trust the government here,

which I do. Certified by professional historians having national significance. the government here, which I do, certified by professional historians having national significance. And we made that case, and they agreed. And two years later, we persuaded the state of Michigan to let us install a historic marker on the site. And that gave us enough visibility to start going out and talking to people to raise money. Now, it took another five years before we got our first major grant, a grant of $50,000 from the National Park Service. It was one of the earliest African-American civil rights grants they made and that allowed a the City of Hamptrack to hire a architectural firm that did a historic structures report and there they go in there and look at every board and every

nail and every brick and figure out where it came from, what its condition is, how it should be rehabilitated, that's the phrase they use, and what the cost might be. And that provided us a roadmap. And then two years later, we raised $115,000, including a $50,000 grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation to restore the field, which we did in 2020. Of course, the pandemic put everything on, you know, a different timeline than we expected. Sure. We restored the field and asked the city to let us name it Turkey Stearns Field, which they did. So it is officially Norman Turkey Stearns Field at Hamtramck Stadium.

And we started doing programming. You know, previous to that, people played on mown lawn with weeds all over the base paths and a pitcher's mound that was, you know, barely distinguishable from the grass. Although people played there. In 2019, we had Jack White and his Warstick Bat Company crew, which is co-owned by Ian Kinsley, a former Tigers and Rangers player, play what they call a sandlot game there against some of our local Joes and Janes. Vanessa Ivy Rose, Turkey Stern's granddaughter, played center field in that game. It was very sweet and very moving. And Jack and Warstick donated, well, ultimately $40,000 to us before and after that game. So that was

another big help, both for publicity and for funding. And then we restored the field in 2020, and then Wayne County, Michigan got involved, and they persuaded the Detroit Tigers Foundation to make a $410,000 grant. They got a second grant from the National Park Service African American Civil Rights Fund for $490,000. And then we were off to the races. I think about 800,000 I was finding from the Ralph Wilson Foundation, which is focused on southeast Michigan and western New York State. Because, you know, he was a longtime owner of the Buffalo Build, but he was a Detroit native until he died. And we also got a couple hundred thousand from the Cresby Foundation. That, plus the pandemic, plus a bunch of construction delays and weather delays, meant the ballpark wasn't ready to be used, the grandstand, until

about June 16th, four days before our big event. And by the way, you said it was the day after Juneteenth, which is true, but it's actually a federal Juneteenth holiday was on Monday. So we called it a Juneteenth event. The historical date is the 19th, but of course, we're fond of making holidays into three-day weekends. So the federal government designated the 20th as the holiday. And we had a rededication ceremony, which Ron spoke at, as well as any number of other people. And then we had a Negro Leagues tribute game, two high school age teams, one from Chicago, an RBI team from Chicago, high school age teams, one from Chicago, an RBI team from Chicago that was coached by one of Double Duty Radcliffe's descendants. And the Detroit Stars team, we had them dressed up in replica Negro League uniforms. You know, they're not the authentic heavy wolf flannels. But we did

research into the logos and the lettering and the colors. And the team from Detroit was African American high school prospects, mostly underclassmen. And they played on the field, and this was a tribute to Ron Teasley. And I'm happy to say that it had some effect. I just learned from the family last week that Ron is going to be given a treasure award from the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame this year. And given that Ron's been around for a while, and I, as well as others, have talked to them about putting him in the Hall of Fame, I have to think that our tribute game pushed them over the line. That's great. And can you tell us a little bit about the history of Hamtramck Stadium? Just when it was built, who played there, how long, etc.? Sure. I'll try to give you the two to three minute version because I just yesterday spoke for a half hour on it.

two to three minute version because I just yesterday spoke for a half hour on it. The woman who was guiding the tour said, I said, how much time do I have when I get done speaking? She said, as much time as you want. I said, my wife would tell you never to say that. You would miss dinner if he gave me that much time. This was at before noon at the grandstand. So Hamtramck Stadium was built in 1930 for the Detroit Stars Negro League team. The Detroit Stars founded 1919, one year before the Negro National League. They were charter members of the Negro National League in 1920. From 1919 to 1929, they played in a park on the east side of Detroit called Mack Park, which is really a big venue for semi-pro baseball and semi-pro football, but they also did soccer and boxing and you name it there.

Back in those days, outdoor boxing in the summertime was really a big deal. And there were, of course, boxing clubs, fight clubs all over town. So they did a lot of boxing outdoors. In 1929, there was a disastrous fire in July and the local neighbors, white people, racists, banded together to petition city council and hire an attorney to prevent the Detroit Stars from rebuilding the grandstand that had burned down. The park actually was still usable. Many historical sources say inaccurately that it burned down, but one out of three grandstands burned down. There was also bleacher seating. And within three days, they had bulldozed the wreckage, put in some temporary seating, and they played a doubleheader against the Kansas City Monarchs three days after the fire. But in order to get

permission from the city to continue using the site, because they wouldn't let them rebuild the grandstand, the Detroit Stars owner agreed to leave the neighborhood at the end of the year. So they were chased out of the east side of Detroit by intolerant white people, and they landed in Hamtramck which is a small city at then probably about 40 to 50,000 people now about 27 28,000 completely enclosed by the city of Detroit but it is a separate city home rural city and Hamtramck was mostly Polish and Polish American very proud of it although they did have a small historic African-American community there. In fact, the president of the Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium, my good friend Mike Wilson, grew up in Hamtramck in the African-American

neighborhood. And so the Stars moved to the new ballpark that was built in 1930 in the spring. They started construction in March and were finished in May. Back then, you know, that they didn't have OSHA and they didn't have people looking out for the workers. And so they worked these people like dogs and they could build things really fast. And if people got hurt, well, you just sent them home. You know, there was no workers' comp. There was nothing like that. So after 1930, the Stars folded at the end of the 31 season along with the Negro National League. They were reborn sort of in 1933 when the Indianapolis

ABCs moved to town. At the start of the second Negro National League season, the ABCs folded after one year, and the Detroit Stars were revived one more time in 1937 as charter members of the Negro American League. But, of course, these clubs were unrelated. The 37 Club was a local semi-pro team that brought in Turkey Stearns and a couple of other Negro League veterans. Mostly it was a semi-pro team, and they lasted one year while the Negro American League would go on to play until 1962. I've read that there are five original Negro League parks still standing, including Hamtramck. Is that true?

And if so, could you reel them off or let us know in what state they still are? Especially since I'm responsible for that number. You know, if you talk to Kevin Johnson, who's a friend of mine, great guy, and one of the seam heads principals, he'll tell you there's more than 100 places around where Negro League teams played. But I'm looking for a much narrower range. You know, it's not that I don't care if the Homestead Grays went barnstorming, played at a field in Muncie, Indiana, and Negro League teams did play in Muncie, Indiana, and I've been to the park where they played, although there's no structure left. But I thought it was important to classify the major sites, and the major sites, by my

definition, are you have to have been the home field for a major Negro League team, 1920 to 48, the seven major Negro Leagues that I could rattle off, but you know. You have to have, the team had to play its official league games there because sometimes teams had two ballparks, like the old mistake at the lake, league park thing, where they play weekends and holidays at Cleveland Stadium, but they played their weekday games at league park because it was smaller and cheaper to operate.

You had to play official league games there. There has to be some meaningful amount of structure left, and the field has to be there. So if any of those criteria aren't there, I don't count it. That leaves five. That leaves Hamtramck Stadium in Detroit, Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, which has been around since 1910. It is the oldest ballpark in the United States. There's J.P. Small in Jacksonville, Florida, which is now a city park. That dates back to the late 30s under a different name when it was home to the Jacksonville Redcaps of the Negro American League. There's Hinchcliffe Stadium in Patterson, New Jersey, which last year got a $90 million rehabilitation package awarded. I mean, there are various parts of it.

And they had a big groundbreaking. CeCe Sabathia was there, a few other players, the mayor. But that includes not only rehabilitation of this enormous stadium, but also housing and museum and retail. It's a much, much bigger project than ours. Our grandstand rehabilitation was a little bit less than $3 million. So that's a much bigger project. Hinchcliffe Stadium, which will be ready for a new ball game sometime later this year, I believe. And then there's League Park in Cleveland, which has the former ticket offices and the former Cleveland Indians team offices and part of one side of the grandstand wall there, that was reopened by Cleveland Recreation Department in 2014 after being restored. That's a nice facility, but they put artificial turf on the field, which really hurts my eyes when I look at it.

I joke that I had to wear Ray Charles glasses when I look at artificial turf fields on historic sites. So those are the five, and they're not making any more of them. sites. So that those are the five and they're not making any more of them. And we've lost, you know, in the five years or so I was working on this before we got the historic Markham Stadium, we lost several others. There was Newark School Stadium. There was Old Yankee Stadium, the original Yankee Stadium. There was Bush Stadium in Indianapolis, which had been an historic Negro League park, also known as Victory Stadium and Bush Stadium. Bush being Donnie Bush, the former ballplayer, not Bush as in Anheuser-Busch. And that field, the grandstand was literally collapsing.

When I first saw it in 2009 at the winter meetings, they were using the infield and outfield as a junkyard for cash for clunkers under the Obama administration. Literally, it was just a sea of broken down cars. The grandstand was on verge of collapse, so someone rehabilitated it and made it into apartments. But in doing so, they preserved the facade beautifully, but the grandstand was completely gutted and they poured concrete over parts of the field. So you wouldn't want to play on it unless you're playing wiffle ball and no one was going to slide. So I don't count that. There's a fragment of a field in Louisville, Parkway Field down there. There are a few other places where the field is there or where there's

a little bit of structure, but none of them have the field, a meaningful amount of structure, and were host to official league games during the major Negro League period. That's how you get to five. I'm curious. I know that the number of these ballparks that aren't in the midst of a renovation project, it sounds like, are kind of limited. But in your experience of doing both the education to sort of make the cultural and historical case for preserving sites like this, and then also the fundraising, are there lessons we can take for other efforts to preserve aspects of Negro League history? Well, that's a great question, Meg. I can see why you're the queen of baseball podcasts.

I don't know if I deserve that title, but thank you. I think you are. I mean, no, that's a great question. I mean, flattery aside. You know, from working on Tiger Stadium, which we lost, I worked for 10 years on Tiger Stadium for three years before it was completely demolished. And then for another six or seven years till we had the site leased by the city of Detroit to the Detroit Police Athletic League for their headquarters in a new field. And while it's not preserving Tiger Stadium, only the flagpole is left, really. They did keep the final field dimensions, but even that was a fight because one of the developers was going to put housing around the perimeter of the site, wanted to cut the right field corner to like 270 feet.

Oh, geez. And we told them you can't have meaningful baseball games with a 270-foot right field foul line. And then they hauled some historical stat out of their ass and argued with us till we finally wore them down but i mean you have to be stubborn you have to assume that if you want to preserve something if you estimate it's going to take x amount of effort it's going to take three to five times that amount of effort if you think it's going to take two years it's going to take three to five times that length of time. You're going to have to enlist every ally you can get, people at the city, the county. You really want to get that National Register Historic Listing.

That's really important if you can. If not, you can sometimes get on the State Register, although most sites on State Registers are also on the National Register, the most important sites. You want to get an army of volunteers because if you don't have an army, if you only have a battalion, you're going to work yourself to death. You want to get publicity about the importance of the site. You want to have a historic marker and the availing of that. We planned that so that the SAVER Jerry Molloy Negro Leagues Conference

was in town when we unveiled the marker, and we got a lot of publicity because we had all these Negro League scholars at the unveiling. You need to work lots of angles. You need to beg for money. You need to enlist allies in government and in the preservation community. You need to be indefatigable. You need to be annoying when people aren't listening. You need to talk to your blue in the face about the merits of the site, and you need to feed really good stories to the media. Because of course, the media, present company accepted, doesn't care about history. They care about warm and fuzzy stories that readers or listeners will tune into. And how much of the original Hamtramck is left at this point? And what else, if anything, would you like to do to spruce the place up? Well, that's another good question. There really isn't a lot left from the 1930s

stadium. In 1940, the city got possession of the property after a tax-related default. And the city, along with Wayne County, was rebuilding it using WPA, which is New Deal federal money from the Roosevelt administration, over the winter of 40-41 when the roof blew off in a windstorm. And that was significant because this was an unusual grandstand where the grandstand seats were 100% covered by the roof. I think that was related to the fact that the ballpark was built next to the city trash incinerator and also next to a double track railroad line with lots of trains coming down it every day and back then the trains were you know the old kind of smoke chugging out

the the stack they weren't electric and so i'm pretty sure the fact that they went to the expense of the full roof was because of the two um polluting entities next next door So the roof blew off, which caused a lot more work to be done. And so in 1941, it was rebuilt. And then in 1973, when the city took over maintenance from Wayne County, it was cut back in size. Originally, the grandstand was like a reverse J. It started out behind third base, went down the third baseline, curved behind home plate, and went halfway to first base. And the reason for that is back then, the home teams always sat behind in the third baseline. And the home team fans would pay more to sit behind the home team dugout than on the other side. So when you didn't have the money to build a symmetrical, you know, like a shallow V or a U, you built longer on the third base side where the

hometown fans would sit. So in, in 73 73 they cut back the stadium 20-30 feet on the first base side but cut it all the way back from behind third base almost a home plate on the third base side so you have a small grandstand the original capacity about 9,000. After the renovation in the 70s it would have been about 2,400 we estimate. This is all bleacher seating, so the estimates are just that. The amount of tickets they would sell depended on demand, and they would just squeeze you in close to your neighbor. You got to know your neighbors very intimately if they could sell every ticket in the grandstand, and they would keep selling them until they had to put ropes around the field and stand you up on the field. So it went from a roughly 9,000-seat

grandstand to about a 2,400-seat grandstand, and then that was used from the early 70s till 1997. From 41 to 97, it was mostly used for amateur sports, high school football, high school baseball, soccer, other events, community events. There was a war-bound rally there during World War II, things like that, occasionally movie nights. But mostly it was prep sports. In the summertime, it would be American Legion baseball, semi-pro ball. It wasn't used mostly for many professional events after 1941. You mentioned that the Tigers contributed to the effort to restore the stadium.

I'm curious what you think both teams and the league more generally can do to help with efforts like this going forward, whether they're large-scale projects like restorations or smaller-scale projects just to preserve Negro League history. Well, Major League Baseball is involved with the Hinchcliffe Stadium rehabilitation effort, which is good because, as I said, it's very expensive. If you look at pictures on the web, Hinchcliffe is huge. It's built around a football field and then a 440 track around the field, which many high school athletes will know that. And the baseball diamond was just slapped in the middle of the football, the gridiron,

with the track running around it. It's also stucco, concrete and stucco, so it's very much more expensive to rehabilitate than ours. Ours is a grandstand that has a roof, but the roof is metal. The structural steel, which is original to 1930, is metal. The bleacher seats are all wood. And the bleacher seating certainly didn't date back before 1941, and probably most of it, if not all, but not before the 1973 renovation. and probably most of it, if not all, but not before the 73 renovation.

So as you asked, we had a brick wall in front of the grandstand that is believed to be dated to 1930. We had the structural steel. People say the flagpole is original, but the original flagpole is in right center. The current flagpole is on the left field line, so I'm not sure if anyone has evidence they moved that. And then there's the field itself. You know, I don't want to know the answer to the question. If there were 30 of these ballparks out there, would we have gotten on the National Register

with that sort of slender amount of historical structure? I can't tell you that. But I can tell you there aren't many places in the country where you can stand on the pitching ground and say Satchel Paige stood here, and you can walk to the batter's box and say Turkey Stearns or Josh Gibson batted here, and you can look up in the grandstand and imagine the crowd there on a Sunday, dressed in their Sunday best because many Negro League fans came from church on Sunday morning to watch the Sunday afternoon doubleheaders, which is the biggest attendance day in the Negro Leagues. And you can't find many places like that. You

know, like I said, you can find a lot of fields. You can find a few pieces of structure here and there. You can't find both of them. And you can't find it where the whole field is intact, too. We have the whole field. There's nothing impinging on it. A minor bit of history and trivia is that in 1959, the Hamtramck Little League team won the Little League World Series. Now, of course, they won the World Series in Williamsport, where all the World Series are played, but their home field was at Hamtramck Stadium. They had a Little League diamond in dead center field with home plate pointed toward home plate at Hamtramck Stadium. And then the pitcher would be in the Little League field, would be facing away from home plate in Hamtramck Stadium. And they also had Little League and softball diamonds in either corner, in the right field and left field corner.

So from sometime in the late 40s until the early 80s, at least, they had four diamonds there. Now, you couldn't play a game on the main diamond and play on any of the Little League or softball diamonds, because some kid might get conked in the back of the head with a line drive. But you could play two or three games on the other diamonds. You could have a softball game going on in the right field corner, a Little League game going on in center field, and a pickup game going on in left field. Because, A, those diamonds were far enough apart,

because, as you know, the Little League and softball diamonds are smaller, and, B, the kids didn't hit the ball as hard, right? So, I mean, Hamtramck was a hotbed of baseball activity back then. Pinky Darius, who was a star hitter and pitcher of the 59 Little League team, he just died two months ago. Pinky Darius is considered by Little League historians to be the greatest Little Leaguer who ever lived. He was the Barry Bonds and the Bob Gibson of Little League that year.

He hit like 600, hit, I think, one home run every game, was intentionally walk with the bases loaded many times, and he threw a no-hitter, you know multiple no-hitters that year, and had I don't know like a 900 winning percentage as a pitcher. It was amazing. Anyway, so that was their home field. Tom Pachorek, the ex-Major League player and longtime broadcaster, also played there a couple years later because two years later, that cohort of kids won the Pony League World Series. And a year after that, in 62, the same team, again, the same cohort of players, went to the finals in the Colt League World Series. And to this day, players on that team insist they were

robbed by the umpire in the final game. So one last loosely related question. You are just a historian and scholar of the Negro Leagues in general. You've been involved in the 42 for 21 committee that we talked to a couple of your partners in that effort about last December on episode 1785. And I know you're working on some book projects related to black baseball and the Negro Leagues. And you've been writing about the Detroit Stars, but also, and I don't know what stage you're at in this process and how much you can talk about it, but I know you've been working on editing a new edition of James A. Riley's Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, which is a landmark book from 1994. And so much more information has come to light since then that I wonder what you are able to avail yourself of now and what you're able to add to that book and just in general, I suppose, what the last few years of renewed interest or new interest in the Negro Leagues has meant for historians and scholars like you. Well, unless I blab that to you, you have good sources, Ben.

It's actually on the hamcharmickstadium.org website. Yeah, yeah. I'm just joking. It's not a secret. Yeah, Jim Riley is a great Negro League scholar. He's still alive, but he's not writing anymore. Jim published that book, or it was published, you know, Jim's book in 1994. It is one of the five essential Negro League books, starting with Saul White's 1907 or 08 book, The First History of the Negro Leagues, Robert Peterson's 1970 book, Only the Ball Was White, which jump-started modern Negro League scholarship. The 1994 Larry Lester, Dick Clark, Sabre book, the Negro League's book, and Don Rogeson's 1980s book, Invisible Man, a couple of John Holway's oral histories. These early books had huge impact because people literally knew nothing about it. And Riley's book has more than 3,400 entries. And if you had never heard of Ted Strong,

you could go in there and read about Ted Strong. And of course, when it was published, there was no internet and the World Wide Web. Well, there was for academics, of course, and there was a World Wide Web, but the average person and baseball fan had no access. And so this was really critical. The book was reissued in 2002 with a very minor update. So this was really critical. The book was reissued in 2002 with a very minor update. I'm working with Jim and his wife, Dottie, on an update of it. It's a monumental undertaking.

The original book was about 900 pages. I'm estimating now we have 950 to 1,000 pages. Of course, without printing it, it's sort of irrelevant. I have made, I estimate, 15,000 updates to the book. I am working on a deal to publish that online. Hopefully that will be announced soon. And it'll be published in my, if it's published the way I want, it'll be published as sort of a living manuscript. It will be both an update to the original book,

but it will also be updated as new scholarship comes out. Because literally every month there's something new about the Negro Leagues that people learn. And that's because of new biographies, it's because of new presentations at conferences like the Jerry Molloy Negro Leagues Conference, Saber Holds every year. It's because of academic research, you name it. And so I want this to be a living testament to the Negro Leagues

and a testimony to Jim Riley's groundbreaking research. I know how he did it. I know how those guys before Internet and online newspapers did it. I sort of can't imagine doing it. Right now I have access to 11 African-American weekly newspapers online that cover the Negro Leagues. Kansas City Call isn't online, which is to my regret, I still got to work from microfilm with that. But I can't imagine working with all 11 of those papers in microfilm. And it just would be so time consuming. And these were

literally monumental achievements. John Holway was still alive. For those of your listeners who ever saw the movie Red Tails about the Tuskegee Airmen. John was a guy who wrote the treatment or the story became the movie. John's early oral histories, when there were a lot of these guys still alive, when he interviewed them in the 70s and 80s, are absolutely critical. And they're also critical both for getting that information on tape and in books, but also to popularizing the Negro Leagues. So Riley's book is a landmark book. I hope to see it in print, print being digital print, later this year.

And if I can make the deal I'm working on, I will be working on it every week to update it because I'm sure there will be lots of smarty pants guys who say, hey, and women too, but mostly guys with the obnoxious, hey, you jackass, you got this wrong. And I'll look at it and say, hey, you know what? They're right. And I'll fix it and give them credit. So yeah, I'm working on that. I'm also working on a book on the Detroit Stars and the history of the Negro Leagues in Detroit. That book will come out next year because I control the rights and I may self-publish it rather than wait for a publisher to take a year to get it out in print. Well, we wish you luck with those efforts and others. I'm sorry you weren't able to preserve Tiger Stadium, but I guess you went one for two,

which is not bad in baseball when it comes to saving ballparks. I'll tell you, one for two feels good because 0 for 1 felt really, really awful. Yeah. When they knocked down, the city of Detroit knocked down the one-third of Tiger State, and we called it Navin Field because it was really the original Navin Field 1912 footprint with the upper deck that was added in the early 20s over that footprint. When they knocked that down, it took me a year before I could drive by the site or before I could actually go back to work on trying to save the field so it wouldn't be paved over for a parking lot or wouldn't be used as a dog park or a CVS or something. It took a long time. And I said that I wasn't going to lose Hamtramck Stadium.

I wasn't going to save Hamtramck Stadium or die trying. I don't think it ever came close to killing me, but I worked real hard on it. And I did say in my June 20th speech, because I organized the event and I was the emcee, I did say in my brief remarks that if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to save a ballpark. Because I had help from my co-founders, preservation community, from donors, I had help from my co-founders, preservation community, from donors, from baseball fans, from that former Navin Field grounds crew, now the Amtramck Stadium grounds crew, who maintain the grounds for almost free. I mean, we pay their expenses, but they volunteer their labor.

From the city of Amtramck, from the Wilson Foundation, from the Kresge Foundation, the Detroit Tigers Foundation, from Wayne County, Michigan, which allocated federal funds to it and managed a construction project, from the National Park Service. And I'm probably forgetting somebody. I mean, literally, it took all those people to save Hamtramck Stadium, but we did it. You asked earlier, and if I still have a little bit of time before you get the shepherd's crook and yanking off stage, You asked earlier, and if I still have a little bit of time before you get the shepherd's crook and yanking off stage, what the future is. There are three masonry buildings, mostly brick, but also some concrete block, that are either underneath the edge of the back edge of the grandstand or sticking out down the third baseline where they had been covered until the grandstand was reduced in size.

One of them will become next year bathrooms and locker rooms, which is great. The funding is already in place. The other two, there's no money for yet, but we hope within the next two to three years to have them rehabilitated for concessions, first aid, security, storage, and a small exhibit area. If you've ever been to League Park in Cleveland, the Cleveland Baseball History Museum, run by a bunch of good people, has a really nice small museum there right on site, well worth going to. And we hope to have a nice small museum there in the rehabilitated masonry buildings. We also are going to add a period appropriate sign in front of the stadium. And the reason it won't be on the stadium is I can find absolutely no historical evidence there ever was a sign on the stadium so we're going to put a sign on the between the parking lot and the stadium to announce Hamtramck Stadium we're going to put

banners for Hamtramck Stadium on the street leading up to it street pole banners and we are working on in outdoor interpretive exhibits on the stadium site and and the Friends of Historic Camp Traveller Stadium are now affiliated with the Detroit Historical Society, which runs the Detroit Historical Museum, and they are great people, and we're working on, well, there's a Negro League exhibit, a pop-up exhibit at the Detroit Historical Museum right now. We had done that originally in 2019. We brought it back this year with some updates. We're going to be working on, in the near future, travel exhibits that could be traveled to colleges, high schools, libraries, senior centers, bank lobbies, ballparks, you name it. So they would travel around southeast Michigan, showing the history of the Negro Leagues in Michigan, the history of the Detroit Stars, Turkey Stearns, Hamtramck Stadium. Well, there's a website, hamtramckstadium.org. That's H-A-M-T-R-A-M-C-K.

If you go to that site, which we will link to on the show page, there's a Get Involved tab where you can find out how you can help if you're interested, and you can contact Gary and his collaborators in this project. So we've been speaking to Gary Gillette and Gary, congrats on helping shepherd this thing to, if not completion, at least a pretty impressive milestone. We are close. It has been saved. It might take longer to do some things. People talk about putting lights on the field. I'm not sure that's going to happen. The cost is less of an obstacle than whether the community wants lights there, sure that's going to happen. The cost is less of an obstacle than whether the community wants lights there, because that'll mean there'll be events till 10 o'clock in the evening all summer. Right now, the park closes at dusk, and the community around it may not want nighttime

activities. You know, we had a professional firm that builds minor league and college field, build the infield, but the outfield needs to be regraded and re-sotted, and we hope to have the money to do that next year, amongst other things. So, I mean, there's more work to be done, but it has been saved, and I can tell you that the day that we got the African American Civil Rights Grant to do the planning was the day I knew that we were going to succeed. I couldn't have told you in 2017 when the grant was announced how long it would take, and I wouldn't have guessed another four years, five years, depending on which event you take, restoration of the field or the grandstand,

but I knew we were going to succeed. So I'm at peace with that, and I'm hoping to raise some more money the rest of this year and then get back to finishing my book off, because there's a lot of new stories to tell, just like other Negro League scholars who research the league. There's almost always something new that hasn't been discovered or was discovered and sort of forgotten, or the story is passed down inaccurately. And I'm looking forward to telling the story that Turkey Sterns and Detroit Stars completely and accurately for the first time. Well, we'll be looking forward to it too. So Gary, thanks for your efforts and thanks for filling us in. Great to talk to you.

Well, thank you, Ben. Thank you, Meg. You guys are great. All right. Well, thank you to Ron. Thank you to Gary. Hope you enjoyed listening to them as much as we enjoyed talking to them. If you are wondering, the other three surviving former Negro leaguers from the 1920 to 1948 period are Reverend Bill Greeson, Clyde Golden, and, of course, Willie Mays, who broke in with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948, the same year that Ron was with the New York Cubans. Different leagues, though. Black Barons were in the Negro American League. Cubans were in the Negro National League. Before we go, just wanted to read a couple of responses from Orioles fans who wrote in after hearing our discussion of what the Orioles did and didn't do on the trade deadline reaction pod. We talked a little bit about Baltimore quote-unquote selling, not as much as they might have, but maybe more than they had to. I think Meg and I differed slightly on how we viewed that. This email is from Josh who says, I have a question about the meaning of selling at the trade deadline. I'm a lifelong Orioles fan, and it seems like the general consensus,

including on the Effectively Wild trade deadline episode, is that the Orioles decided to sell at the deadline this year by moving Trey Mancini and Jorge Lopez in exchange for mostly prospects. But to my mind, selling involves moving players in such a way that, one, the team's current roster gets meaningfully worse, and two, the team's current roster gets meaningfully worse, and two, the team's competitive window is pushed back. Obviously, I understand the fan attachment to Mancini, especially since I've got plenty myself, so I'm not trying to discount that element in this particular transaction, but I'm not sure the Orioles met either of those criteria

this year, so I didn't particularly think of what they were doing as selling until I saw it so widely reported that way. Which brings me to my question, is simply any trade in which major leaguers are swapped for minor leaguers classifiable as selling at the deadline? Or could you imagine a scenario where a team is losing major leaguers in an exchange for prospects that wouldn't qualify as selling in your mind? I'd classify it as selling if it negatively affects your short-term playoff odds, if it makes you less likely to make it to October in the present season. I think it counts, although there are obviously many degrees of that, which is why I thought what the Orioles did was defensible, if perhaps tough for some fans to swallow and some players

too, although the Orioles have been doing just fine since the deadline. But if you want to make a case, Mike Goliath essentially said that he didn't think the Orioles had a real chance to make the playoffs this year anyway. Their playoff odds did go down a little bit, according to Dan Szymborski's Zips calculations, although that was partly because of what their rivals did as much as what they did. But our other Orioles fan writer here, Joe, makes the case that maybe they didn't actually get worse even for this season. He says, I'm a big Orioles fan and I wanted to share my thoughts about the trades of Mancini and Lopez on your recent trade deadline episode.

You were both kind of implying that those trades were bummers for Orioles fans, but I don't see it that way at all, especially with the Mancini trade. In fact, I think the Mancini trade makes the Orioles better right now, and I thought that before the trade was made. With Mancini, the Orioles were stuck playing either Mancini or Santander in the outfield, where they are both horrendous. By trading Mancini, they can permanently DH Santander and give at-bats and outfield play to either Ryan McKenna, whose 2022 war at the time of the trade was only 0.3 less than Mancini's despite having only one-third of the plate appearances, or Taron Vavra, who is potentially the kind of OBP machine that the Orioles never seem to have. It is an understatement to say that both McKenna and Vavra are way better in the field than Mancini

and Santander, and with this suboptimal starting pitching staff, outfield defense can matter a lot. So as much as I love Mancini and what he has meant for this club and city, I think that his immediate replacements actually represent upgrades. Stated more succinctly, having to never again watch Santander play the outfield is hardly cause for despair. The Lopez trade does not make the Orioles better right now, but I do like it because one, Lopez has historically not been very good. Two, he has been pitching out of his mind this season, and at least some of that is luck. And three, his value may never be higher than it is right now. So let's go get four pitching

prospects in exchange for a 29-year-old with a career ERA of 5.5 and career FIP of 4.88. Of course, there's always the chance that the new Lopez, the bullpen Lopez, is the real Lopez and that it will look bad in a few years. But if I were a betting man, I'd say that these four prospects will provide more value going forward than Lopez will. And yes, it makes the Orioles worse right now, but they do have a number of promising arms in the bullpen and I think they can make do. Bottom line, this is exactly how I want the Orioles front office to behave. And obviously, it's exactly how the Orioles front office did behave. So I'm sure some opinions were split among Orioles fans, but wanted to read a couple responses so that you didn't solely hear from us speaking for that fan base.

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