Word: veeck
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hold on to three of its own pitchers, none of them Sandy Koufax (though one of them Rick Sutcliffe), for nearly $4 million a year. "It isn't the fans' fault that the sport has become so expensive, but they'll be the ones deprived of sunshine," says Bill Veeck, baseball's longstanding conscience. "In all history, these fans in Chicago have been the least affected by bad ball clubs, but television teams have to win." If anyone questions whether the Chicago players are fundamentally baseball or television stars, consider the remarkable fact that the Cubs of the free-agent...
...little stiller in time, though grassy and unlit Wrigley Field obviously had much to do with it. "Their ivy-covered burial ground," the late composer Steve Goodman called it, where Gabby Hartnett hit his Homer in the Gloamin' and Babe Ruth may have pointed to the sky. Bill Veeck, who planted the original outfield vines in 1938, sits out there every day now bleaching his peg leg. That style of ivy is called bittersweet...
...personal experience and those less fortunate who remember it only from the worn pages of the record books, is brought back to life. The roll-call of greats that parade through Tygiel's pages pay ample testament to the glory of those days: Rickey, Robinson, Reese, Durocher, Sukeforth, Campanella, Veeck, Mays, Aaron, Newcombe...At the very least, we are grateful to Tygiel for culling these names and others from scrapbooks and long-destroyed card collections. And at the most, Tygiel transforms a dramatic but simple tale into a complex metaphor for some of the driving forces of modern society...
...AHEPA, which, even some of the players forget, stands for the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association. Any White Sox scout might have found Kittle, but the fact that it was Pierce means something to South Siders, who are also pleased to recall that it was Peg-Legged Bill Veeck who signed the young slugger. For Veeck still owned the team in 1978 and was presiding at Comiskey Park on the famous September day when Ron Kittle came...
Baseball, as Bill Veeck said, is meant to be fun. The trouble with Steinbrenner is that he manages to turn it into an Oedipal brawl that reduces his athletes to twitching depressives. Baseball reflects the surrounding culture, of course. Americans may get the sport they deserve: corporate, grandiose, soulless. To say that, however, might be to say that we are all responsible for Steinbrenner. That is going much...