 AND
ON THIS DAY WE REJOICE…
"I might have been a small part of your
life, but you've been a big part of mine, and
it's my privilege and honor to share with you
the greatest game of all." —Ernie
Harwell
I suppose that it was fitting that the news of
Ernie Harwell's passing came in between the seventh
inning of a Twins-Tigers game, just before the
stretch. Despite knowing he was sick with cancer
and wouldn't live long, the news came as a complete
surprise to this fan. The game went on, as it
should, and it was a crack contest: the Tigers
tied a 3-2 game in the ninth, with a solo homer
by Brennan Bosch, only to give it away an inning
later with a wild pitch that scored J. J. Hardy
from third. Though feeling profoundly blue, I
shouted and screamed… for the Twins, because
I've come to understand and accept my betrayal
to the Detroit squad, and know that the locals
are now my team. Though I still root for both
clubs.
In a small way, it is also fitting,
for me anyway, to close Mudville Magazine
after eight erratic years with a tribute to the
man who personified baseball more than any player,
manager, or even team. If you lived in Michigan,
Ernie Harwell was baseball. And he was a part
of the memories we associate with baseball.
That night, I rode my bike home from Twins Stadium,
by the railroad tracks, and thought about Ernie.
There was a strange mix of emotion, a twinge of
happiness fluttering beneath the melancholy. When
I got home and read the tributes online, Tigers'
manager Jim Leyland summed up Ernie's passing
perfectly. He said, "This is one where you
rejoice. I hope nobody takes me out of context
here. The passing of Ernie is really a celebration
of his life. It's not a tragic thing."
If there was ever a life to celebrate, it was
Ernie Harwell's. He wasn't a hero, in the sense
of a person who saves lives, or pulls the country
from a depression, or blasts a home run in game
seven to bring a championship home to a beleaguered
town. No, Harwell's gift was simple and profound:
he broadcast baseball games, and in the process
brought joy. And there are few people who have
brought so much joy to a city or state than Ernie
Harwell.
Harwell was a master of calling a game, and his
absence—he's been retired since 2002—has
been palpable. The lack of an Ernie Harwell made
the Tigers hard to bear, even when they were good.
Distance didn't help—living in Minnesota,
with a great team that actually reminds me more
of the the Tigers of the late 70s and early 80s
(a nice admixture of young and old, home-grown
talent and scrap-heap signings.) Not having a
radio that picked up Detroit broadcasts, I followed
the Tigers from afar.
For one, there was the silence. Ernie's take on
a game had little fluff. It was very calming,
very simple, very straightforward. There was a
description of how the players in the field were
situation, the count, the batter readying themselves,
the pitcher preparing. And then, often, silence.
The sound of the ballpark would come through your
radio for just a moment, just long enough to know
that you're sharing in this baseball game with
however many thousands of people were there at
Tiger Stadium.
My own memories of Ernie always involve my Grandma,
my Aunt Mary, and my brother, John. We'd spend
a week or two at my Grandma's cabin in a town
called Lake (which always made for confusion—no
we did not have a cabin on Lake Michigan, but
in Lake, Michigan.) Our nights were spent playing
canasta or euchre, and listening to Ernie Harwell
and Paul Carey broadcast Tigers' games. This was
the late 70s and early 80s, and the Tigers were
a mediocre team on the rise. Fidrych came in but
his career ended, and we followed the exploits
of Trammell and Whitaker, then Jack Morris, then
Kirk Gibson, until the team became the powerhouse
that wrecked the American League all the way to
the title in '84.
I remember driving through the back roads en route
to canvassing small towns to goad people into
giving money (and, consequently, commission) to
save the environment or institute auto insurance
reform. The whole van of self-loathing canvassers,
beaten by our failures or guilty over successfully
making people feel like crap, would listen to
Ernie, including my good friends Joe and Jon.
There was nothing better than listening to the
Tigers with the windows down, Ernie on the box,
and just the night sky hovered over some county
road on the way home.
For that's the beauty of radio—you enjoy
one another's company when you enjoyed Ernie's.
From cabins up north, to factories, to a couple
of old men loafing on their driveways, to all
the cars with their windows down, you'd hear Ernie
throughout Michigan. Every summer.
As time went on, and Harwell retired, I've been
searching for something to replace that soothing
voice. The local mouths, Dan Gladden and John
Gordon, aren't bad, but they talk, talk, talk
too much, often about nothing, like Harely-Davidsons
or complaints about how much better baseball was
when Gladden was playing. I could buy a copy of
one of Ernie's broadcasts, but that's about as
effective as having a conversation with a picture
of a loved one—it's unreal, the product
of a melancholy imagination. It was only when
he broadcast live that he was really with us,
and you knew that far away, Ernie Harwell was
sitting in cramped booth watching the game and
telling me about it, like you might call someone
on the phone.
But as Leyland pointed out, let us rejoice. Harwell
called games for over forty years; personally,
I had the privilege to follow the Tigers for twenty-six
of those years. He lived to be 92, with his beloved
wife, Lulu, at his side. I'd say that he was the
most perfectly realized Christian I've encountered:
deeply devout, unjudgmental, unwilling to shove
his faith in your face, and living with a true
humility. He was a beautiful man. Those close
to him claim that even if you only heard him on
the radio, really you knew him.
My brother mentioned that with the death of Ernie
Harwell, a part of his childhood died. That's
true, but it's also true that we move on, and
that there's hope for the next generation. They
have their Ernie Harwell (in whatever incarnation
that may be), just as we had ours. Ernie knew
that. He was, as he put it just a few weeks before
his death, "ready for his next adventure."
So I'm glad to say I knew him. But he was wrong
about one thing: he was a much larger part of
our lives than he would ever know.—Peter
Schilling Jr.
 THE
VOICE IS STILL THE FACE
When the results came in for ESPN's
"Faces of the Franchises" poll, a
few years ago, some results were jarring and some
were not. What does it tell you, I wondered then,
that five of those faces were not players, two
were not managers, and one was neither?
But nobody pondering the Face of
the Dodgers could think seriously enough, in mass
enough, of any player, coach, or executive? According
to the ESPN tally, the Face of the Dodgers proved
to be . . . Vin Scully.
I couldn't think of any other
baseball broadcaster who'd have come anywhere
close to winning any poll as the Face of their
franchise. Not even Mel Allen, Red Barber, Curt
Gowdy, Bob Prince, or Phil Rizzuto.
Could you imagine Gowdy, or Ken
Coleman, beating out Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski,
Tony Conigliaro, Jim Rice, Carlton Fisk, or (an
untainted) Roger Clemens as the Face of the Red
Sox?
What odds would you have given that
Mel Allen would have turned aside Joe DiMaggio,
Casey Stengel, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, or Whitey
Ford as the Face of the Yankees?
Not even Red Barber might have overthrown
Dixie (The People's Cherce) Walker, Pee
Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella,
or Don Newcombe in Flatbush.
Even Ernie Harwell and Herb Score
might have had battles on their hands trying to
obstruct Denny McLain, Mickey Lolich, Al Kaline,
Willie Horton, Mark (The Bird, God rest his soul)
Fidrych, Ron LeFlore, Kirk Gibson, or Jack Morris
in Detroit.
I'm pretty sure I can think
of only one broadcaster who might—might—have
outpointed any player, manager, or executive to
become his franchise's Face. Even Harry
Caray, God rest his soul, might have set his own
self-importance aside just long enough to tell
you he wasn't fit to be in the same area
code as Vin Scully. Just as Vin Scully—for
whom there should have been a law mandating he
shall broadcast the World Series until he a) retires;
or, b) dies, whichever comes first—probably
would turn the results away and set to convincing
you this player or that player should have been
chosen over himself.
"It may sound corny, but I
enjoyed listening to Vin Scully call a game almost
more than playing in them." Thus said Sandy
Koufax—himself the face of the Dodgers,
if not (juxtaposed to Willie Mays) the face of
all baseball for a brief but shining era—once
upon a time. That sweet man yielded just another
sweet affirmation of Scully's iconic position,
for a franchise whose names and faces have included
two luminous Robinsons (Jackie and Uncle Wilbert),
a Stengel, a Mungo, a Rickey, a Reese, a Campanella,
a Snider, a Drysdale, a Koufax, a Lasorda (who
wouldn't have had it any other way, anyway),
a Valenzuela, a Guerrero (Pedro, that is), a Hershiser,
a Nomo, and a Gagne.
"Of course, Vin Scully is
the Dodgers' most beloved personality,"
purred Dodger Thoughts' Jon Weisman, in
declaring his support for Martin, prior to the
final tally, "but now that Scully mainly
broadcasts on television, he's the best
reason to stay home from the games, not go to
them."
Oh? Then, and even today, there
remain Dodger fans who still carry old, small,
portable television sets into the park. They turn
down the picture but turn up the sound, even as
they're watching the field action. No matter
the view, no matter the acuteness of their vision
and perception, no matter the surreality (such
as the night four straight Dodgers, against two
San Diego relievers including Trevor Hoffman,
hit four consecutive pitches into the seats),
they still want to hear it from Scully before
they'll believe it.
Or, not hear it—as they didn't
the night Scully, only too well aware of the electricity
in the ballpark when interleague combatant Bernie
Williams squared off against Eric Gagne, with
every last Yankee including The Mariano himself
hanging over the dugout rail to watch Gagne on
the job, told his listeners, "You really
ought to just see it for yourself, so I'm
going to keep my mouth shut." Which is precisely
what he did, right up to the moment Gagne tied
Williams up with a soap-bubble changeup for strike
three.
So the vote made sense, after all.
—Jeff Kallman
THE
TEMPLE AT THIRD AND FIFTH
In what must account as the greatest
April in Minnesota history, the new Twins Stadium
opened to tremendous fanfare Monday, the 12th.
Count yours truly as one of the rooters—aside
from the very amazing fact that it is quite literally
just under twenty-five minutes from my back door
to my seat by bike, Twins Stadium is the most
beautiful, easily accessible, sunniest, windiest,
oddly-angled ballpark I've ever seen. No stadium
is perfect, but after ten games with packed crowds,
you've got me beat to try and come up with a negative.
Simply put, it's perfect.
But that doesn't mean I still can't
complain. And complain we should.
For the new ball has me thinking
about my Dad. Dad would have been 66 this October,
and by the plans he made before he died in July
of 2008, we had hoped he would move to the Twin
Cities this very summer. My family hails from
Michigan, and my parents split in 1975, so it
would have been 35 years since I lived in the
same town as my pop. At times I'm reminded of
this dream of ours—as I visit the St. Paul
Farmers' Market, the Trylon
microcinema, the Heights
Theatre, the Mid-Town Global Market, the Greenway,
and many of the great places the cities have to
offer. I'm proud of this town, and honestly it
pains me still to think that he isn't here to
share it with me.
Truth be told, my father and I did
not share a love of baseball. Readers of this
site know that I fell for the nation's pastime
in 1976, June 28 to be exact, when Mark Fidrych
beat the Yankees on ABC's "Game of the Week".
Dad dutifully endured my rants on baseball, and
bought me Go Bird Go! by Free Press
scribe Jim Hawkins, and wondered how in the
hell any son of his got so involved with a sport
of all things. He hated pro sports, and didn't
much care for athletes, either, save those few
precious souls who used their fame to elicit change
in the world—Jackie Robinson, Jim Bouton,
Mohammed Ali (though he felt boxing was cruel
and racist.)
Over the years he softened his stance—I
guess when my passion for the sport finally hit
the three decade mark and I'd published a novel
about same he finally relinquished. He admired
my book and Hano's A Day in the Bleachers,
which I'd bought him just after he read my novel.
I think he would have enjoyed going to see a game
with me had he lived to make it to Minnesota.
But he also would've said "Hmph."
Friends of his are no doubt nodding appreciatively.
For Dad would do that often—a knowing "hmph",
a way to get in a little dig about something even
when he knew not to be a jerk when others were
enjoying themselves. That's "Hmph,"
though, was very important to him. Just as it
is to me.
I would have heard that "hmph"
at the Twins Stadium on Opening Day. In fact,
I made that little noise myself when I got there.
Because I've got a lot of my Dad in me, and one
thing he taught me is that it's not enough to
be beautiful, to be amazing. Really, you should
also be fair.
How much easier it would have been
for me if the Vikings had twisted the collective
arms of the populace and built their stadium with
our hard-earned dollars. Then I would have complained
but moved on. It doesn't do any good to keep griping
after something's been built—it's not like
war, which you can fight to hasten its terrible
end. But at least with a stadium built for a sport
I loathe, it wouldn't be rubbed in my face with
every contest.
Baseball, even during the summer,
is a fleeting delight. Yes, there are 162 games
in a year. But of course there's 365 days in a
year, the countless hours and minutes, and life
grinds on. The game isn't really so overwhelming
as to blot out life itself. I come home after
every game to a wife who teaches, who is losing
good colleauges to a lack of funding. I live across
the street from a nurse who probably makes hundreds
of times less money than Joe Mauer, and yet who
performs feats greater than anything that guy
will every perform—after all, he only hits
a ball, while she saves lives in her burn unit
who knows how many times a year. I don't have
to tell you about our state's troubles (or our
nation's troubles for that matter). If our Republican
governor had used the same means to pay for the
stadium as for health care for the poor, we wouldn't
have had the recent budget fight on the subject.
So I remain conflicted. I have to—it's
in my nature. I'm stunned by the majesty of the
place as I ride my bike to the golden confines
of Twins Stadium, and yet I can't get these notions
out of my head. "Someone has to," a
friend said. Dad certainly would have wanted it
that way.
I do believe that he would also
have told me to move on and enjoy myself as well.
He disliked folks who were rude and felt that
sanctimoniousness was more important that simple
human kindness. "Damn it all," Vonnegut
said, "You've got to be kind." Dad believed
that, had a sign (with Vonnegut self-portrait)
hanging over his desk. That kindness means not
spoiling an afternoon at the stadium for myself
and others. That's good policy, too.
And so I go to enjoy baseball in
the sun, my favorite player, Denard Span, chasing
down flies in front of a row of white pine trees.
With mixed feelings, the Stadium has really helped
drive home the reality that the Twins are my team,
now, in part because I never realized how important
a great stadium was to me—Tiger Stadium
was a wonderful place, and I was proud to call
it my baseball home, but the new Tiger digs quite
nearly suck. But there's also the fact that I
love this town, and the Twins are here. They're
the team covered in the paper. Back in 2006, when
the Tigers roared into the series, I felt a touch
of melancholy, in part because I didn't really
know those guys. I knew the Twins more, because
I saw them live twenty-plus times a year, listened
to them on the radio another fifty or so times,
and read about them every day in the paper all
year long. When I think of the Detroit Tigers
I think of Ernie Harwell and Mark Fidrych and
Trammel/Whitaker and Cecil Fielder and Tony Phillips
and the teams of the late 1970s through the early
1990s, when I left Michigan, probably forever.
Twins Stadium is a real gift to
a fan like myself, a sort of a welcome to the
fold. It's accessible by bike... in fact, it's
easier to take a bike than a car or bus (for me,
anyway.) The first game was Monday, and I've been
to three contests since then, riding each time,
and once through the rain. I'm not sure I've ever
seen a stadium so easily accessible. You walk
right and can get to your seat quickly and easily—and
this at what have probably been the most congested
games the Twins will see.
The park is squeezed into what might be the craziest
configuration of warehouses, freeways, parking
garages, and a garbage burner and yet it is…
beautiful. The neighborhood is great—old
warehouses in the distance, nothing too distracting.
Trains run to the North and West, and the bike
path curves up and over to the South.
I could go on about the open concourses,
the white pines in center field, just the fact
that the damn place is open, but those words are
abundant in the papers and online. What I love
is that the place is a living thing, and that
we'll be treated to a number of surprises over
the years, like the owl who perched on the right
field foul pole through most of a night game against
Cleveland. He sat, looking around, just a dot
far off, and then every so often he'd spread his
wings and fly about before returning to the same
spot to watch the game.
In few years this place will start
to get a bit worn, and I look forward to its aging.
I look forward to sitting in the relentless sun
in mid-August, when the Twins dynasty has long
been broken and only the die hards are around
to watch. By then, perhaps the place will have
been paid for fully, and the feelings of guilt
will have subsided. But I'll still hear a quiet,
"hmmph." And that's OK, too. —Peter
Schilling Jr.
 SAYING
HELLO ALL OVER AGAIN
Granted that it would be while he
inflicted punishment upon my hapless, embryonic
New York Mets, in the ballpark I learned in due
course had been the crib of his baseball childhood.
But I saw Willie Mays play when
he was still very much in prime. And I know of
no other baseball player, in all my years of loving
and watching the game, who really was what the
mythology would come to have him. He really did
have a baseball mind that seemed to snap into
place at the mere crack of a bat. He really did
care not two pins for breaking records, ruthsrecord
(so help me God that's the way they described
the single-season home run record in that era)
or otherwise. He really did turn center field
into a circus ring, a scampering part hunter,
part acrobat, who ran down flies destined otherwise
for oblivion and stopped or cut down advancing
baserunners in a whipsaw-fast motion after running
one down or hauling one in. He really was a marksman
at the plate whose wide stance cranked into a
shotgun line drive stroke or a lofty power swing.
And, he really was an eager-to-please
kid who learned the hard way that children will
never betray you while their parents just might
run a shuck-and-jive on you, and learned the harder
way that the life of a baseball player is finite.
Mays has not been immune to close
study, at least as close as one can ever study
him, but not until former New York Times'
James S. Hirsch has Mays himself authorized any
such study, never mind the warts and all treatment
Hirsch affords while straining to keep the very
real image of Mays alive and reasonably well.
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend
(New York: Scribner, 2010; 628 pages, $30.00)
has the virtue of presenting the sorrows that
buffeted Mays as profoundly as the pleasures that
burnished him with both a genuine affection and
a genuine empathy for his subject.
Did you know that even Ty Cobb,
who wasn't necessarily to be remembered
as one of nature's noblemen, admired Mays?
Hirsch exhumes the commentary, first published
in The Sporting News, in which Cobb thought Mays
might revive the running game Cobb had evoked
and enhanced in an earlier time. It fits. Mays
the baseball player was a hybrid of Cobb and Ruth;
he blended Cobb's basepath recklessness
and hitting precision with Ruth's surrealistic
power (as did Mickey Mantle until the leg injuries
sapped his speed) but bore neither man's
personality flaws. He wasn't even close
to being at war with the world, the way Cobb had
been; he'd been raised in far gentler circumstances,
by a far more loving family. And he wasn't
as rapacious or as self-congratulatory as Ruth
had been; in part because of his race, they would
have murdered Mays if he'd had even a fraction
of the passion Ruth had for gambling, boozing,
and women not necessarily identifiable as Mrs.
Ruth.
Mays preferred to get along, and
it caused him a headache or three when facing
the bigots. When he and his first wife sought
to buy a home in San Francisco, as the Giants
relocated there, they were shocked to discover
that a city with San Francisco's reputation
for progressivity could still yield up cadres
of racists who would obstruct their househunting
actively. Hirsch does a splendid job of recounting
that disgrace without mounting a soapbox.
As his subject would not have wanted
him to do. Jackie Robinson may have considered
him an Uncle Tom for his trouble, and perhaps
Robinson's late-life frustrations got the
better of him in that regard, too, but Willie
Mays preferred to beat you the old-fashioned way—with
his bat and his glove and his legs on the field,
with his personality (he is, at heart, a good-humoured
man who has struggled to sustain his belief in
the good) and his warmth (Hirsch discloses a number
of heretofore undetected stories of Mays's
spontaneous generosity with great but understated
affection) off the field. Even the bigots had
to admit in due course that you could do a lot
worse than having Willie Mays as your neighbor,
or your friend.
He couldn't be Willie Mays
forever, and it finally ground him down. Others
have written of the hour but few have done so
with Hirsch's sensitivity. A bit player
for the Mets, albeit an occasionally useful and
even exciting one (the first time he saw action
as a Met, in a series against the Giants, of all
people, he managed to crank one out late in the
game—though he almost ran into the Giants'
dugout after crossing the plate, out of all those
years' habit—and send New York into
a nostalgic meltdown), Mays came around slowly
to the idea that his time was done. His knees
were sending him messages; manager Yogi Berra—struggling
to keep an injury-addled team pennant competitive—didn't
really want whoever this was masquerading as Willie
Mays.
Neither, at last, did Mays. "I
just feel that the people of America shouldn't
have to see a guy play who can't produce,"
he told The Today Show down the stretch in 1973,
as the Mets were in the thick of their remarkable
from-the-basement surge to the National League
East title. Five days later, he said it with poignancy
almost unheard from a baseball player since Lou
Gehrig's wrenching, spontaneous farewell
speech.
This is a sad day for me, to hear
you cheer me and not to do anything about it,
he told the crowd. I hope you go on to win the
flag for the New York people. This is your night
as well as mine, he told his fellow Mets. I also
want to thank the Montreal ball club. I know this
is a delay for you, he told the Expos, whom the
Mets were about to face.
But this is my farewell, he said,
returning to the full gathering. I thought I'd
never quit. I see these kids over here, and I
see how these kids are fighting for a pennant,
and to me it says one thing: Willie, say goodbye
to America.
He may have gone home frustrated
but he went to the Hall of Fame grateful. He weathered
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn's banning of him
(and of Mickey Mantle) from the game so long as
he worked as a Bally's casino greeter, a
nebulous ban at best. He bore up stoically as
his godson Barry Bonds refused his counsel to
humanize himself a little more, and he kept an
uncomfortable silence as the spectre of actual
or alleged performance-enhancing substances swarmed
Bonds and he simply could not bring himself to
criticize any player. He continues reaching out
to youth in and beyond baseball. And, as he cared
for his father over long years, so does he care
for his second wife, Mae, stricken with Alzheimer's
disease but loved by a husband who refuses to
allow her to die.
And he is still Willie Mays. Who
has found one of his least fawning but most sober
biographers, and who has allowed America to say
hello all over again.—Jeff Kallman
THE
FINAL OUT
There is no joy in Mudville. The
mighty Schilling is striking out. In search of
deeper greens, of course, for which we wish him
as well as he wished us who had the pleasure and,
yes, the honour of writing for his singular journal
and, as did I, cultivating his singular and delightful
friendship.
The thinking person's sport
had no more amiable portal for thinking aloud,
whether while watching a game or reflecting upon
the mirth, mischief, and mind behind or around
the game. And this thinking person's portal
had no more amiable shepherd than the gentleman
who accepted no coin but affection, laughter,
thought, and pleasure from those he invited to
join.
Or, from those who deigned to approach
cold, as did I in 2003, when I whipped out my
first entry caught up in the surrealities of that
newborn postseason. For my chutzpah I received
a cheerful admonition: If you're serious
and you're going to write every day, okay.
If you're not, don't waste my time.
I think it was probably the single time the mighty
Schilling was ever stern in his communications.
The poor man didn't know what
he was getting himself into. By the time I got
through with that postseason and him, and in that
order, I think he must have concluded that at
long enough last he had found his match for cheerful
insanity.
We were bound to be kindred, having
in common a lifelong affection for baseball teams
rich in occasional triumph and habitually triumphant
disaster, an oxymoron that can only make sense,
one supposes, to fans of the New York Mets since
the day they were born or the Minnesota Twins
since they escaped the nation's capital
of organised crime.
Of course he had no clue that his
newest and most persistent case of arrested envelopment
was also a Boston Red Sox fan since the 1967 pennant
race. The proprietor of this portal had engaged
the man singlehandedly responsible for sinking
Omaha, Nebraska's pharmaceutical market
in October 1986.
And we were off to share some transcendence,
many letters, many books, and many spirited brainstorms.
I like to think that between us we were at our
absolute best in 2004's postseason surrealities,
the ones that did what we thought couldn't
be done a year earlier: made 2003's resemble
a comic script spurned as unworkable by Fred Allen.
This is not to say we had been horrible
otherwise, but any Red Sox fan will tell you that
great pain has a tendency to return in more exaggerated
guise while great, unexpected, and extraterrestrial
pleasure can only arrive once.
Our man Schilling has been a generous
soul, with knowledge, with enthusiasm, with encouragement,
with flattery, and with spreading the wealth.
I'm convinced that several were the books
he floated my way that he hankered to read and
review himself, and I'd like to think that
if the roles were reversed I'd have done
likewise. It would have been impossible to resist.
When Peter Schilling grabs you into an enthusiasm
none but an automaton could refuse him. My lone
regret is that, for reasons strictly economic,
I haven't been even close to repaying or
reciprocating his generosities.
Make that one of my two lone regrets.
The other is that, among the outlets who have
been kind enough to open their pages to my baseball
brainstorming over the past decade, my personal
favourite, the one in which I felt more than anything
not like a writer but, rather, like fraternity,
is about to become a memory. A pleasant memory,
of course, but a memory regardless. Those who
were fortunate to be part of it should never feel
less than having been edified and matured, even
as the game we love seems anything but off the
field or in the business offices.
Nor should we feel less than a loss.
Not of our man Schilling's delightful friendship,
but of a journal which I like to think upheld
Andujar's Law: "In baseball, there's
just one word—you never know." You
never knew quite what the game would bring to
you; you never knew quite what would be said above
and beyond your own role therein; and that was
the great joy in Mudville. The only thing you
knew was that it was edited and presented with
a love of the game that, to my absolute astonishment,
has rivaled and even overmatched my own, once
in awhile.
That was one of many things I thought
impossible until I had the honour of knowing and
working with the mighty Schilling. He never struck
out in these pages, and if you were lucky enough
to become one of his contributors, he made you
feel invariably as if you'd hit the nastiest
curve ball in town across the state line. As a
writer, as an editor, and most of all as a man,
he has been a blessing to know. That may transcend
the innings of Mudville, whose final out is about
to be nailed but whose play will stay alive in
the hearts of those who had the honor to be in
the game.—Jeff Kallman
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