Red Smith on Baseball Foreword
Berkow, Ira
TELL IT ON THE i CELEBRATE LITURGY (~ SPIRITUALITY COME TO VERMONT'S LITURGY FESTIVAL KILLINGTON MOUNTAIN LABOR DAY WEEKEND September 1-4, 2000 CELEBRATE WITH
John Buscemi .9 William...
...Maurice Timothy Reidy, a former Com-monweal assistant editor, is a reporter for the Hartford Courant...
...the other names can seem a little, well, inside baseball...
...Quality subsidy publisher accepting man- uscripts...
...And he could hit in the clutch...
...Advance payment required...
...Reiser up, square stance, he's one of those square built guys, not very tall....'" Although baseball fans will be famil- iar with the major figures in these pages (Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, etc...
...Barber spent the home games memorizing the statistics and mannerisms of the players so that he could translate the telegraph's "Reiser up---bats left" to "'And here's Pete Reiser...
...12-word mini- mum...
...In one in- stance, Smith described Red Barber--the legendary radio announcer for the Brook- lyn Dodgers and the New York Yan- kees--cal~g an away game with the help of a telegraph...
...10 per- cent, 6 times...
...15 percent, 12 times...
...Smith's argument against the designated hitter, for example, is still compelling...
...Hank Greenberg hit a ball "on a line flat as an old beer...
...Ac- cording to Smith, the writer, one Lester Rodney, must dream that "in a truly de- mocratic society...Comrade Stanislovov Musial, of the Louisgrad Cardinals, would not strive to hit line drives against Comrade Maxim Surkont, of the Bostonik Workers, because all men would be brothers and Comrade Musial would not do injury to his fellow man...
...Shake- speare knew how to please the crowds--- and so did Smith...
...Come chat with us in Commonweal' s on-line discussion group...
...He's having a tough year, fighting that bad shoulder...
...It re- lieves the manager of all responsibility except to post the lineup card on the dugout wall and make sure everybody gets to the airport on time...
...Dickson will pitch carefully to him...
...Manuscripts Wanted BECOME A PUBLISHED AUTHOR...
...On the contrary: they were the sparkplugs in every single col unm...
...It is useful to have a friend at hand to help parse the base- ballese...
...Sffil, this book isn't a relic bound for some Cooperstown storage room...
...LASSIFIEI RATES: $1.10 per word...
...Smith's columns hold up because he was a five- tool writer...
...On a particularly slow day in spring training, for instance, he tried to come up with the greatest "B" team of all time (with Yogi Berra behind the plate and Home Run Baker on third, of course...
...I had to call my father about Bobo Newsome (journeyman relief pitch- er) and Happy Chandler (ex-Kentucky governor who served as baseball com- missioner in the 1950s), among others...
...Full disclo- sure: I'm a National League fan...
...He was called the "Shake- speare of the Press Box" and was a fa- vorite of English professors...
...Baseball scouts are always on the lookout for the five-tool player: some- one who is able to hit for average, hit for power, throw, field, and run...
...In those days, announc- ers didn't travel with the teams...
...Smith knew how to have a good time...
...Discounts and month- ly billing available for repeat advertisers...
...Or, my favorite, Bugs Ray- mond of the New York Giants was "a man with magnificent stuff who never touched milk...
...To join send an e-mail to: commonweal-subscribe@egroups.com See the discussion on page 4. Commonweal 30 August11,2000...
...Though this volume is not meant to be read from beginning to end, it is set up so the reader can relive the excite- ment of the annual pennant races...
...This may all sound like a recipe for a Pulitzer--Smith in fact won the prize in 1976--but does it make for entertaining copy...
...Discounts 5 percent, 3 times...
...Smith was incredibly funny, and some of the best columns are those in which his wit matches his intelligence...
...Smith also had a knack for conjuring up the perfect image...
...As Wilfrid Sheed wrote in the New York Review of Books in 1982, "To quote these felicities is to suggest they were rare...
...You can follow the Giants in 1951 or the Dodgers in 1955...
...Or--if you're a glutton for punishment--you can read about an- other World Series win for the Yankees...
...405, New York, NY 10115...
...Fur- thermore, his analysis of the problem of income inequality among teams fore- shadowed the biggest problem facing baseball today...
...On another occasion, he chronicled a Yankee game by simply de- scribing the antics of Casey Stengel-- baseball's down prince---as he wandered the dugout...
...1-800-695-9599...
...Yes, they had a sportswriter...
...The columns that fare best over time, though, are those that take place behind the scenes or in the off-season...
...For additional information call 212-662- 4200 or write COMMONWEAL, 475 River- side Dr., Rm...
...Spitball pitchers were the "saliva set...
...Take his column on the sportswriter for the Amer- ican Communist party's The Daily Work-er...
...In short, the answer is yes...
...Brook- lyn's pitching staff was "as shabby as a reporter's wife...
...Hitting .283, 106 base hits...
...He knew when to be amus- ing and when to be smart, when to be nostalgic and when to be critical...
...TELL IT ON THE i CELEBRATE LITURGY (~ SPIRITUALITY COME TO VERMONT'S LITURGY FESTIVAL KILLINGTON MOUNTAIN LABOR DAY WEEKEND September 1-4, 2000 CELEBRATE WITH John Buscemi .9 William Sloan Coffin Fredrick McManus .9 Helen Prejean & many others REFLECT WITH THE MUSIC OF Hildegard VonBingen .9 Mozart Gregorian Chant .9 Haugen .9 Taize A RETREAT AND REVELR Y EVENT Please Call Toll Free (877) 863-0222 Visit our website: WWW.TellltOnTheMountain.com Write: Tell It On The Mountain PO Box 397, Woodstock, VT 05091 he left us, just for a riband to stick in his coat...
Vol. 127 • August 2000 • No. 14
