An Interesting Twist On The Game Of Baseball

Fox Business reported yesterday that Major Leage Baseball has announced that the New York Yankees will plan the Chicago White Sox at the “Field of Dreams” stadium located in the cornfields of Dyersville, Iowa. The temporary stadium seats 8,000. This will be the first ever Major League Baseball game played there.

The article reports:

“As a sport that is proud of its history linking generations, Major League Baseball is excited to bring a regular-season game to the site of Field of Dreams,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “We look forward to celebrating the movie’s enduring message of how baseball brings people together at this special cornfield in Iowa.”

This won’t be the first time that Major League Baseball has built a temporary stadium for just one game. Iin 2016, a 12,500-seat stadium was erected at Fort Bragg in North Carolina to give military members and their families a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

What a great idea!

 

 

Foolishly Ending A Tradition

One of my favorite baseball traditions is the seventh-inning stretch and the singing of “God Bless America.” The tradition of singing “God Bless America”
began after 9/11. The Washington Times reported yesterday that the New York Yankees will no longer play the recording of Kate Smith singing the song. Now I will admit that having lived in Massachusetts for thirty-five years, I really don’t care what the Yankees do, but this is just political correctness run amok.

The article reports:

The New York Yankees‘ anti-racism efforts have extended to pulling from their seventh-inning stretch a famous recording of the legendary Kate Smith singing “God Bless America.”

Not because anyone has complained that the song is racist, but because Smith recorded other racially insensitive standards from and during the Jim Crow era.

The Yankees pulled Smith’s “God Bless America” from the rotation at the start of the season, but the New York Daily News reported the reason Thursday — “the Yankees were made aware of Smith’s history of potential racism.”

So can’t they get anyone else to record the song?

The article states:

“The Yankees have been made aware of a recording that had been previously unknown to us and decided to immediately and carefully review this new information,” a club spokesman said. “The Yankees take social, racial and cultural insensitivities very seriously. And while no final conclusions have been made, we are erring on the side of sensitivity.”

This is another example of judging history by the standards of today. There were a lot of things that have happened in the past that were not noteworthy at the time that are being taken out of context in hindsight. In order to truly evaluate history, you need to immerse yourself in the culture of the time you are studying. Insensitivity is not a crime–insensitivity in the past was not even considered insensitivity because there weren’t so many people running around being professional victims.

Keep the song. Let someone else sing it if you have to. Don’t end an American tradition because of political correctness.

 

We Will All Miss Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra was a major part of an era when baseball was a wonderful sport and most of its players were positive role models. My husband talks about the days when Whitey Ford used to play basketball with the neighborhood children at the local elementary school. Those were the days.

Everyone who remembers those days is saddened by the news that Yogi Berra has died at the age of 90.

Newsmax has posted fifty-three Yogi Berra quotes. Here are a few of them:

  • “I never said most of the things I said.”
  • “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
  • Mickey Mantle was a very good golfer, but we weren’t allowed to play golf during the season; only at spring training.”
  • “If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.”
  • “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.”
  • “I can see how he (Sandy Koufax) won 25 games. What I don’t understand is how he lost five.”
  • “In baseball, you don’t know nothing.”
  • “I never blame myself when I’m not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn’t my fault that I’m not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?”
  • “I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house.”
  • “I wish everybody had the drive he (Joe DiMaggio) had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I’d never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest-high catch, and he never walked off the field.”
  • “It’s deja vu all over again.”
  • “I usually take a two-hour nap from 1 to 4.”
  • “Never answer an anonymous letter.”
  • “We made too many wrong mistakes.”
  • “You can observe a lot by watching.”
  • “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
  • “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”
  • “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.”
  • “It gets late early out here.”

Other articles about Yogi Berra note that he won 10 World Series as a player and three more as a coach. Today’s New York Post quoted the players that knew him and their comments.

Here are two of the quotes from The New York Post:

Derek Jeter

“To those who didn’t know Yogi personally, he was one of the greatest baseball players and Yankees of all time. To those lucky ones who did, he was an even better person. To me he was a dear friend and mentor. He will always be remembered for his success on the field, but I believe his finest quality was how he treated everyone with sincerity and kindness. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.

Hal Steinbrenner, Yankees general partner

“Yogi Berra’s legacy transcends baseball. Though slight in stature, he was a giant in the most significant of ways through his service to his country, compassion for others and genuine enthusiasm for the game he loved. He has always been a role model and hero that America could look up to.

“While his baseball wit and wisdom brought out the best in generations of Yankees, his imprint in society stretches far beyond the walls of Yankee Stadium. He simply had a way of reaching and relating to people that was unmatched. That’s what made him such a national treasure.

“On behalf of my family and the entire Yankees organization, we extend our deepest condolences to Yogi’s family, friends and loved ones.”

Yogi Berra’s quotes and observations on life will be missed.