Talkin’ Baseball with Stan “The Man’s” Son

Photo caption:  Dick Musial, above left, at lunch with Jim Vojcsik.

I got an email from an old friend, Mark T, with an invitation to lunch.  Mark was enjoying his recent retirement as the former Editor of the local newspaper, The Stuart News. “Congratulations on the publication of your new book!” You must be thrilled,” he said.  “I want to invite you to lunch with Dick Musial, Stan’s son. Dick would like to meet you and he’s interested in how you got your book published,” his message continued.

I readily accepted Mark’s invitation to meet Dick. After all, Stan Musial is in the select company of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams as one of the greatest left-handed hitters of all-time, and here was an opportunity to meet his son and talk baseball. Born in Denora, Pennsylvania (recent Hall of Fame inductee, Ken Griffey, Jr., was born in the same Western Pa. town) Stan “The Man” played 22 seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals.  You need a calculator to keep track of his career batting statistics, but he retired with a .331 life-time batting average and National League records for at bats (10,972) runs scored (1,949) and doubles (725). He was a seven-time batting champ, three-time MVP, led the Cardinals to three World Series championships and shares the major league record for the most All-Star appearances (24) with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays.  Stan “The Man” was also a stand-up guy, inside and outside the white lines.

Mark and I rode to lunch together and had a chance to catch up. We met Dick at the clubhouse of a golf community in Port St. Lucie, Florida where he lived. He arrived in the lobby, looking fit and trim in a red golf shirt like the military veteran he is.

We sat at a dining room table and the waitress brought us menus. Mark and Dick, die-hard Cardinals’ fans, commiserated over the Cardinals’ arch rival, the Chicago Cubs, winning the division title in St. Louis last night.  “They (the Cardinals) weren’t happy about that,” Dick noted.  Both men were of the opinion that the National League play-offs, starting next week, are wide open this year with several strong teams competing to represent their league in the World Series.  “The Cubs will have a tough time repeating,” Dick predicted.  “The Indians can pitch, hit and field and they have a good manager. They haven’t won a World Series title since 1948, so I think it’s their time this year like it was the Cubs’ time last year,” I said.

I like to ask baseball fans, “What’s your best baseball memory?” so I posed the question to Mark and Dick. That baseball is a bonding experience between fathers and sons was evident from our stories.  I went first. “My best memory was the day my father took me to my first major league baseball game at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.  The Phillies were playing the St. Louis Cardinals and Stan “The Man” was in the Cardinals’ line-up.  I can still recall my first impression walking up a ramp at the ballpark into the bright sunlight and seeing the greenest grass I had ever seen on the baseball diamond,” I said.

Mark’s best memory was similar to mine.  He attended his first major league game with his father and grandfather from Poland at the old Polo Grounds in New York in 1963.  The Mets  were playing the Cardinals that day and Stan “The Man” was in the line-up.  Mark said his dad kept up a running commentary about Stan “The Man” throughout the game.  It was interesting that both of our memories had a connection to Stan Musial.

Mark and I were curious about Dick’s best baseball memory since he has a treasure trove of memories about his dad.  “My uncle stopped by the house one day, and he said to me, ‘Dickie, let’s go to a ballgame today.’  The Cardinals were playing a doubleheader against the New York Giants at their old ballpark in North St. Louis. Well, we went to the game and Dad hit 5 home runs that day.”  No one had ever done that in one day in the major leagues before.

We waved the waitress away twice when she came to take our orders and we hadn’t even glanced at the menus, so it was time to get serious and order lunch.  We chatted about normal stuff:  children, grandchildren, travel, golf, and retirement.  Mark and Dick asked me some questions about my book, but the conversation kept returning to baseball.

“When Dad passed away, so many people came to his wake that I don’t remember them all.  Albert Pujols was there.  He and Dad were close. I was impressed that Jon Jay flew in from Miami.  Jay, a former Cardinals’ outfielder, now plays for the Chicago Cubs.  Most people don’t realize the impact that Dad had on people,” he said proudly. Dick lamented the fact that “the game has changed so much with all the big money contracts, you don’t get to see many ballplayers finishing their careers with one team anymore.” “Cal Ripken, Jr., Tony Gwynn, Chipper Jones and Derek Jeter come to mind, ” I said. “Yadier Molina (the Cardinals’ future Hall of Fame catcher) is another, but he hits into too many double plays, Dick said with a grin.  “I grew up during the best time in baseball,” he added. “Imagine if social media was around in the 1960’s when Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Billy Martin were carousing at those night clubs they liked to frequent” I said, and Dick and Mark laughed.

I told Dick and Mark about my part-time summer job keeping score of games in the Florida State League and why I liked minor league baseball.  We talked about how the St. Louis snowbirds make the trek every spring to Jupiter, Florida to watch Cardinals’ Spring Training games in the sunshine that don’t count in the regular standings. “Hands down, St. Louis is the best baseball town in the country,” I said, and they didn’t disagree. Neither Dick nor Mark had been to a Spring Training game at the new complex in West Palm Beach that was recently built for the Houston Astros and the Washington Nationals, two play-off bound teams this year.  I had seen a game there and liked it.  “The Nationals’ fans will drive down I-95 to see their team, but I don’t think many Astros fans will make the trip from Houston,” Dick said.

Mark paid for lunch over Dick’s offer.  Before we parted, we took some photos and Dick  offered to buy a copy of my book.  “It would be a pleasure to give you one” I said.  Mark thought there might be some interest at the local newspaper in doing a story about my book, so he offered to contact the editor on my behalf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tim Tebow Comes to Town — Keeping Score in the Florida State League

For the past two years, I have worked as an independent contractor, keeping score of minor league baseball games in the Florida State League for Baseball Info Solutions, a private business that collects a variety of data for Major League Baseball franchises. There has been a proliferation of the use of metrics in professional baseball and BIS is on the cutting edge.  You can visit their web site at http://www.baseballinfosolutions.com for more information.

The Florida State League is a Class A-Advanced minor league, which puts it a notch below Class AA on the professional baseball pyramid. The season starts in April and ends on Labor Day.  I usually attend games at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Fl., the Spring Training home of the St. Louis Cardinals and Florida Marlins.  The Palm Beach Cardinals and Jupiter Hammerheads (Marlins) are in the league, along with the St. Lucie Mets, a few exits north of Jupiter on Interstate 95, the Tampa Yankees, Clearwater Phillies, Fort Myers Twins, Daytona Beach Tortugas (Reds) and Florida Fire Frogs (Braves) to name a few of the teams.

The Florida State League is known as a “Pitcher’s League”, which means we get to see some of the best pitching prospects advancing through the minor leagues. It’s a highly competitive league with a fast pace of play, aided by the use of a pitch clock (15 seconds are allowed for each pitch.)  Batting averages are low, few players hit .300, home runs are a premium and speed and defense are utilized effectively.  The average game time of two-and-a-half hours is well below the major league norm.  Occasionally,  we get to see major league players on injury rehabilitation assignments before they re-join their teams.

The score keeping job is a paid gig, but the best perk is free admission to the games.  The score keepers are a diverse group that share a common passion for baseball. Two score keepers are assigned to each game, so we sit together to compare notes.  We are tasked with collecting a variety of data for each plate appearance.  We track the pitch sequence (balls, strikes swinging, strikes taken, foul balls), the velocity of each ball in play (hard, medium or soft), the location of each ball in play (medium ground ball to the shortstop) and the outcome of each play (ground-out, shortstop to first-baseman.) We collect the data manually at the game and upload with a custom software program to BIS headquarters after the game. We are graded on the accuracy of each report.

The crowd attendance at most games is less than 500 people, fewer than 200 at some, but in late June when the New York Mets promoted Tim Tebow, the Heisman Trophy winning quarterback from the University of Florida to Port St. Lucie, a dramatic spike in attendance occurred around the Florida State League.  In the second half of the season, games featuring Tebow and the St. Lucie Mets drew record crowds of 2,000 or more at every ballpark.  Much of the attendance bump was fueled by Florida Gators’ fans who wanted to watch their grid-iron hero in action in his first season of professional baseball.

Tebow is a marketing dream:  famous, handsome, athletic, hard-working, articulate and media-savvy.  In the Florida State League, he was a phenomenon.  He signed autographs, conversed with the fans, gave interviews to the press and made it look easy. When a player comes to the plate in the Florida State League, at best, he is greeted with a smattering of polite applause from a sparse crowd, but when Tebow’s name was announced, the large crowd shouted out his name and gave a loud roar. Among the things that happened during the season was a story-book incident involving Tebow and a an autistic child that actually resulted in Tebow hitting a home run for the child.

Tebow demonstrated that he was a better ballplayer than some two-sport wannabes like Michael Jordan, even though he hadn’t played baseball since high school.  He was a respectable outfielder and served as an occasional designated hitter.  He got off to a torrid start, and one time was batting over .300 with a long streak of reaching base safely in consecutive games.  But, eventually his numbers came back to earth and he ended the half season with a pedestrian .225 batting average, five home runs and a combined on-base and slugging percentage around .650.  The Mets honored Tebow with his own bobble head doll as a give-away item for the fans at the last home game of the season.

I enjoyed watching Tebow play, but in general, I have become a fan of minor league baseball.  It is a pure experience watching young men compete at this level to see how far they can advance up the food chain of professional baseball and fulfill their dreams of reaching the major leagues.  Most of the players in the Florida State League do not have large contracts and are not over-paid.

We get to see some good prospects every summer.  The best prospect I saw this season was Vlad Guerrero, Jr., son of Vlad, with the Dunedin Blue Jays.  He’s a five-tool player that swings the bat like his daddy with a rifle arm at third base.  I like the fast-paced action and silly promotions that entertain fans between innings. It is cheap, old-fashioned family entertainment for young and old, where you can still buy a dog and a beer for less than $10, and it was the perfect place for Tim Tebow.

 

“We’re back! Rain Delays, Slugfests and Steaks at Ted’s, Sun Trust Park, Atlanta 2017

We returned to Atlanta to see a Braves game this past summer in the inaugural season of Sun Trust Park, keeping alive a quest among four friends to visit every major league ballpark.  If they built it, we would come.

Day One, June 21

Our group flew into Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and took a shuttle bus across town to the Hampton Inn where we were staying by the Cumberland Mall in Cobb County, a ten-minute ride to the ballpark.  We arrived at the ballpark just as the outer bands of Tropical Storm Cindy were passing through the Atlanta Metropolitan area.  The gates didn’t open until 6 p.m. for the 7:30 game, so we walked around the huge entertainment complex surrounding the stadium know as “The Battery.” On the walkway around the ballpark, were life-size bronze statues of the Braves’ Hall of Fame pitchers, Warren Spahn and Phil Niekro.

Several restaurants and brew pubs were open. There are plans to build more, but it was still a work in progress.  We ordered drinks at the bar named The Battery and the service was slow as the bartenders were also filling drink orders from customers in the crowded restaurant.

When the gates opened, we checked out the concession stands in the main concourse area. The food choices were standard ballpark fare, but plenty of stands were open and the lines were short.

Monument Garden

The Braves Monument Garden in the main concourse behind home plate is an impressive display of baseball history and memorabilia for a franchise that was founded in 1871 as the Boston Red Stockings. The Braves are one of the charter members of the National League along with the Chicago Cubs.  The replica baseball uniform jerseys displayed in glass cases chronicled the moves of the franchise from the turn of the 20th century.  After several name changes, including the Bees, the team became the Braves and moved to Milwaukee in 1953, and then to Atlanta in the 1960’s.  A life-sized bronze statue of Hank Aaron, smacking his record-breaking 715th home run in Atlanta in 1974, is prominently featured in the exhibit.

Sun Trust Park

My friend, Marty, got complimentary tickets to the game between the Braves and the San Francisco Giants from the son of a former business associate who was employed by the Braves.  We rode the elevator up two levels to the seats with a face value of $7 in “peanut heaven,” section 312.  Everyone had a touch of vertigo descending the steep steps to our seats.

The new home of the Braves was built exclusively for baseball with good site lines for watching the game.  The outfield is dominated by two large, state-of-the-art high definition scoreboards.  An attractive wall of Georgian brick extends the height of the right-field wall by several feet, but it is still an inviting target for batters with a short porch, 325 feet down the line and 375 to the right-field power alley.  The stadium has an asymmetrical design, so it is 335 feet down the left-field line and 385 to the power alley. It is 400 feet to dead center-field, making it a home run-friendly ballpark.  But, it was hard to appreciate the subtleties of the ballpark with a bird’s eye view from seventh heaven.

At the Game

The outer bands of the tropical storm unleashed a ferocious downpour around 7 p.m., delaying the start of the game for an hour and a half.  The storm increased in intensity and the rain fell in sheets.  The temperature dropped as gusty winds swept the stadium and fans ran for cover.  We had weathered rain delays before, but this was ridiculous.

Eventually, it stopped raining, the grounds crew dried the field and the game got started. The Braves and Giants were struggling teams with sub-par records at the mid-point of the season.  The most popular uniform jerseys worn by the Braves’ fans were Chipper Jones’ retired No. 10, and Dansby Swanson, the team’s young shortstop, No. 7.

Undaunted by the rain delay, Braves’ outfielder and ex-Baltimore Oriole, Nick Markakis, belted his third home run of the season over the short right-field porch, and a couple innings later, “Big City” Matt Adams, the Braves’ tattooed first-baseman, tattooed a tater, that put the Braves ahead.  The Braves won the game, 4-3, on Matt Kemp’s walk-off home run in the bottom of the 11th inning.

We caught an Uber ride back to the hotel and it was four bucks cheaper than a cab.  My friend, Jay, was chatting with the driver and asked him.  “Did you hear that the CEO of Uber resigned today?” The driver hadn’t heard, so apparently the corporate culture at Uber was above his pay grade.  He was driving an old car and told us it was a slow night, so we gave him a good tip.  We drank a night cap of Scotch whiskey and drifted off to sleep after midnight.

Day Two, June 22

The day started with a complimentary hot and cold buffet breakfast at the hotel.  It was raining again, so we hung out in the room, drank screwdrivers, played poker and watched Heidi Watney, the honey-haired, Cali girl hostess of the MLB Network show, “Quick Pitch”, do her usual classy rendition of the baseball highlights of the previous night’s games.

We went to Ted’s Montana Grill at the Cumberland Mall for lunch.  “Fellas, in our younger days we went to strip clubs and now we go to the mall,” my friend, Jack, joked.  But no one joked about the steaks we ordered for lunch.  It was a fine meal with excellent service.  Our glory days may have passed us by, but we were still living with  gusto.

On the walk back to the hotel, my friend, Marty, mentioned that he likes to listen to Bruce Springsteen’s music while he uses the treadmill at the “Y.”  We talked about the set that Bruce and the E Street Bank performed at the Super Bowl several years ago.  It was an intense four-song set that lasted about 10 minutes:  “10th Avenue Freeze Out”, “Born to Run”, “Badlands” and “Glory Days”, changing the lyrics from baseball to football.  I recently read Bruce’s autobiography, Born to Run, and recommend it to rock fans that would like to read an honest account of a life well-lived from a true legend.

At the Game

It was raining that evening when we arrived at the ballpark, so we ducked into the Terrapin Taproom, a brew pub on The Battery, for a round of drinks and to sample the Fox Brothers’ BBQ we had heard about. The pub was packed and there was a long wait for a dinner table, so we paid the bar tab and left.

Marty scored complimentary tickets to the game from an Atlanta law firm. The field level seats in section 120 between the Braves’ dugout and the home plate were superb.  It was deja vu all over again when the start of the game was delayed by rain until 9 p.m. When the game started, it quickly evolved into a slug fest with both teams pounding hits and scoring runs in bunches. The Giants’ perennial All-Star catcher and Georgian native, Buster Posey, hit a solo home run and two doubles, staking his team to an early lead.  But the Bravos bounced back with a seven-run fifth inning, highlighted by Nick Markakis’ fourth hit of the night, and home runs by Matt Adams and Lane Adams (no relation). Lane’s moonshot, pinch-hit home run landed in the upper deck of the Hank Aaron Terrace in left-field.  The devotion of the Braves’ fans to the “tomahawk chop” chant never wavered throughout the game.

In the fifth inning, Matt Kemp lofted a foul fly ball toward our seats.  It bounced off the concrete steps and rattled around our section.  There was a brief scramble for the ball and it landed at Jack’s feet.  He reached down and scooped it up for a souvenir.  At every Braves’ home game, a lucky fan gets a chance to compete in a race from foul pole to foul pole across the outfield warning track against a costumed Super Hero named “The Freeze.”  The Freeze gives the fan a huge head start in the race, then proceeds to run him down and pass him at the finish line much to the delight of the roaring crowd. The event has upstaged Milwaukee’s Great Sausage Race on the baseball highlight shows.  When the final out was recorded the Braves had a 13-12 win.

The consensus of our group was that Sun Trust Park is a nice ballpark and the Braves are doing a good job of entertaining their fans.  The location in the suburbs is somewhat remote, but the entertainment complex surrounding the stadium has potential. Despite the lousy weather and rain delays, everyone had a good time.  We have been to 38 ballparks, including all 30 of the current major league parks, and Sun Trust Park kept our streak alive to “hit them all.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Post

Welcome to my blog site!  I will be posting chapters and excerpts from my soon to be published book, Hitting Them All, about the quest of four friends to visit every major league ballpark.  It took 20 years, but my friends and I did it in 2011 and lived to tell about it.  If you like baseball, you will enjoy my book.  Your comments and feedback are always appreciated.

I will also be posting new stories about our continuing journey.  We operate on the principle, and abide by the philosophy, that “If you build it, we will come.”  Our most recent trip this past summer was to Sun Trust Park, the new home of the Atlanta Braves in the Cobb County suburbs. In my next blog, I will be posting a review of the new ballpark with some highlights from the trip.