Don Malcolm's Deep Count

Welcome to deep-count.com, where you will see an occasional, irregular (but not too-random-for-chance) collection of essays about baseball (although some of you may disagree).

I kick things off here by confessing to you that as I write this I am completely baffled, given that the article below has been languishing somewhere in the bowels of the Baseball Think Factory for more than three weeks.

I have published essays about the Baseball Reliquary there for a number of years, and while they have occasionally been delayed or somewhat mangled, this year seems to be an entirely new approach. I really do think that the Chimp must now be in charge there, and clearly I have been remiss in not supplying His Apeiness with a truckload of bananas.

Herewith, my take on the Baseball Reliquary's ninth annual Shrine of the Eternals induction ceremonies.

BASEBALL AND THE SUBLIME
Celebrating Language and Eternity with the Baseball Reliquary

Don Malcolm (of course, you know that already...)
special to BTF (for reference only...)

The mysteries of language, creativity and knowledge have been debated since ancient times, in what might best be described as an eternal extra-inning game. In such discussion we often find ourselves caught in the midst of trees; how refreshing to find that, once again, the Baseball Reliquary's annual enshrinement ceremony (their ninth, this past July 22nd in Pasadena) gives us a generous glimpse of the forest.

Baseball is literally a language of contradiction: an urban game celebrated for its unlikely but somehow enduring pastoral qualities, its hold on those variously entrenched in it is bound up in a vastness of episodic revelation. And the three inductees into the Reliquary's "Shrine of the Eternals" for 2007--Yogi Berra, Jim Brosnan, and Bill James--are each, in their differing ways, embodiments of this strangely poised tension.

Tapping so directly into this quality often gets the Reliquary labeled as "quirky." But there is frequently more reverence for the deep-seated allure of the game to be found in their activities (and in their "alternative Hall of Fame" ceremonies) than in the so-called "real thing." That, too, is a contradiction that any long-time follower of baseball can (and should) appreciate.

And it is uncanny (almost to the point of suspicion) how the Reliquary voters have managed to create an annual trio of inductees who epitomize some new variation of this pervasive-but-evanescent quality in the game. However, this skill--measurable or not--is rapidly becoming an article of faith. There is an almost umbilical connection to baseball's version of the sublime into which the Reliquary and its voters have tapped, and it is a very rich mother lode indeed.

No other combination of inductees could embody so many varied aspects of baseball's relationship to language than Berra, Brosnan, and James. Each has his own take on and connection with the sublime--not just in baseball, but in terms of human existence. Keynote speaker Tomas Benitez touched upon this odd but palpable resonance in his stirring address, exhorting us to ponder how the game calls out an "imperfect beauty" of infinite, inchoate shapes. One can sense something akin to a Platonic order in the way Benitez portrayed the three inductees--Berra the appetitive, Brosnan the passionate, James the seeker of reason.

Of course, there are the Reliquary's offbeat trappings, which should not be missed even if they occasionally misfire. One such rare fizzle was in Don Kirby's performance of the National Anthem on the ukulele: an accomplished sitarist, Kirby's short tenure on the ukulele betrayed him and produced a halting, tentative performance. (He recovered his poise and proficiency on the audience-supported version of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".)

And there are the "ancillary" awards--the Hilda Award, named for the foghorn-voiced Hilda Chester, whose ghostly essence is still swirling over the site of Ebbets Field, went to the impossibly intrepid Cass Sapir, whose youthful good cheer clearly conceals a relentless drive. In 2006, Sapir visited all 159 major and minor league ballparks, a trip of more than 44,000 miles, and accomplished the feat in 152 days (slightly less than five months). Embodying a kind of "can-do" Americanism that some might have thought extinct, Sapir genially invited the audience to duplicate his amazing feat--and you could see that he fully expected to have a high preponderance of volunteers!

The great pictorial archivist Mark Rucker was given the Tony Salin Award for distinguished contributions to historical preservation. It served as a highly deserved acknowledgment for Rucker, and a fitting tip o'the cap to matters non-linguistic.

BERRA

Yogi was unable to attend, but in a typically inspired touch, the Reliquary recruited Berra's long-time backup, Charlie Silvera, to provide an introduction. A slightly-too-literal acolyte of Bill James suggested that Yogi and Charlie hold the record for the most homers hit by two catchers on the same team over an eight-year period (212: Berra 211, Silvera 1), but Charlie proved to be as preternaturally savvy as Yogi by suggesting that another fifties catching icon, Roy Campanella, might be the true champ. (And Charlie was right--Campy hit 220 by himself over an eight-year stretch.)

Silvera, with a stash of anecdotes and lore from baseball's most glorious dynasty, was not far off the giddy lexical regions inhabited by Berra and Casey Stengel (a wisecracking Virgil to Yogi's screwball Dante). This phenomenon feeds into the theory that Berra's tautological mastery is actually shamanistic in its ability to permeate into other's synapses--i.e., the longer you hang around Yogi, the more you become like Yogi (at least in terms of expressing oneself).

Yogi's animalistic affinities--monkey and bear--further attest to his "force of nature" essence. He is as naturally direct as he is is lexically off-kilter. And this is still apparently part of his life force, as several of the lines in his acceptance remarks (relayed to the audience by Stengel's grandniece, Toni Mollett) could easily fit into the mainstream of Berra's most famous sayings:

"I want to thank the Baseball Reliquary for making this day necessary."

"I'm sorry I can't be here today because I'm somewhere else."

"Casey used to call me his assistant manager, but he didn't need any assistant. He was a good manager and I'm glad he believed in me because he knew what he was doing."

Despite what your eyes and ears told you, it was easy to believe in Yogi Berra. Not believing in him can ultimately be seen as a violation of one's faith in the mystery of life itself.

BROSNAN

And then there is one's faith in oneself--something that Jim Brosnan developed as a pitcher once he'd mastered his talent as a writer. Brosnan was a journeyman pitcher known more for his offbeat intellectual tendencies than for his accomplishment on the mound--until he wrote The Long Season.

Channeling Hemingway through his own brand of comedic caricature, Brosnan invented the "tell all" sports book, and gave it a biting wit that has never been duplicated. And, as writer John Schulian noted in his elegant appreciation, Brosnan found that cementing his identity on a personal level brought out a new level of competitiveness when he took the mound. This heightened confidence allowed Brosnan to simultaneously write a second book, Pennant Race, and make a significant contribution to his team (the Cincinnati Reds) as they made a successful pennant run in 1961.

Brosnan's books were the templates for much that followed, including Jim Bouton, whose raunchier material made a bigger splash in the middle of the VietNam era. Without Brosnan's example, however, it's hard to say whether Bouton (an earlier Reliquary inductee) would have had the opportunity to create such a stink.

Executive director Terry Cannon was slightly ashamed to admit that he and his nominating committee had managed to overlook Brosnan until this year. "Once we got him on the ballot," Cannon noted, "it quickly became clear how much reverence there was for those two books." As he noted in his own remarks about Brosnan, there are only five members of the Relquary's "Eternals" who were elected on their first try--the three inductees for the first year in 1999 (Bill Veeck, Curt Flood, and Dock Ellis), a pioneering woman pitcher (Ila Borders), and Brosnan. While the first four selections might seem, well, "quirky," Brosnan's does not.

Alas, Brosnan, now 78, was unable to attend, as he had sustained a fall at his home. He joked with freelance writer David Davis that he'd survived the fall because he'd landed on his head. A typical response, perhaps, from a man whose most frequently repeated quote is "There's nothing like a book to keep you from thinking."

JAMES

And while Brosnan continues to cast a playful eye at contradiction, Bill James has embraced it with all of the gravitas that he can muster--which is considerable. Even as he has carved out an indelible place in historical analysis over a thirty-year publishing career, James has assiduously attempted to broaden his horizons.

"Breaking the wand" may have left the field of sabermetrics to a bratty pack of predatory, regression-besotted cultists, but it was an essential step in James' personal evolution, freeing him for more expansive pursuits--from which emerged a series of works that embraced a more searching, relativist approach to baseball history. That he is now arguably more controversial within the computational microuniverse of "saber-econometrics" than he was when first tilting windmills at baseball insiders is an irony that he would appreciate--if it mattered to him.

But weightier, more lofty notions are clearly on James' mind these days. For one thing, there is his immersion in the insider world of baseball--one can tell that he is reveling in his association with the Red Sox, working to shift the organization's evaluative emphasis toward pitching as Boston tries to get a long-term advantage over their bitter rivals in the Bronx.

Another is an expanded sense of the "richness of man's ignorance"--a close paraphrase of the words he used during his acceptance speech in Pasadena. Making a connection between man's often uneven progress over ignorance and his presence in the home town of Jackie Robinson (one of James' most admired individuals), he suggested that a greater recognition of our ignorance can promote a more encompassing forgiveness. "We all change the world," he insisted even as he downplayed his own importance. "It's important that we see how each of us does that, and increase our knowledge and our compassion as a result."

James could have been quoting from Aldous Huxley in the sweep of his understanding that the complexity of the world and its contradictory correlations go beyond man's ability to describe it. "Thought is coarse, matter infinitely subtle," Huxley wrote in Literature and Science, his last collection of essays (from 1963) that attempted to bridge two usually antipodal worldviews. The great dystopian was never one to underestimate the fog; and, as James edges closer to his golden years, he isn't either. Where others in the field have added a cloying coyness to their ideological quiver, Bill is actively seeking out the contradictory elements in the discussion, and will apparently be engaging them in hand-to-hand combat over the ensuing years.

And for that, many will be grateful. As we should also be for the Reliquary, which once again demonstrated that it has a finger on the pulse of sublimity in baseball's place in the world. While things might not be so sublime anywhere else at the moment, there is no small comfort in knowing that forces of nature like Berra, forces of awareness like Brosnan, and forces of transformation like James can coexist in one small gathering place, reminding us that there should be no fear in embracing these eternal mysteries. One small ceremony for baseball, one giant leap in faith for a future worth facing.



Reliquary luminaries (from L to R): Bill James, Toni Mollett, John Schulian, Charlie Silvera, Rich Lederer, Tomas Benitez

CREDITS

Photos by Jeff Levie

Permission to quote from Yogi Berra's acceptance remarks from David Kaplan, director of the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center, Montclair, NJ

Links and other references:

http://www.baseballreliquary.org/
The Baseball Reliquary

http://www.yogiberramuseum.org/
The Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center

http://www.yogiberra.com/
Official Yogi Berra site

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/04/23/yogi_berra/
The 2008 election, explained by Yogi Berra

http://www.laobserved.com/sports/2007/07/an_interview_with_jim_brosnan.php
L.A.-based freelance writer David Davis' recent interview with Brosnan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56411-2004Apr6.html
Jonathan Yardley's appreciation of Brosnan from 2004

http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-sp-brosnan22jul22,0,4586230.story?coll=cl-books-util
L.A. Times preview of John Schulian's Reliquary speech on Brosnan's behalf

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,826580-1,00.html
Time's portrait of Brosnan in 1960 (at the time of The Long Season)

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/sports/content/sports/epaper/2006/04/02/PBP_AMPHET_0402.html
Brosnan's comments on PEDs in context of a "history of baseball and amphetamines"

http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2005/02/breakfast_with.php
http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2005/03/breakfast_with_1.php
http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2005/03/breakfast_with_2.php
Rich Lederer's 2004 "breakfast interview" with Bill James (three parts)

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/07/14/030714fa_fact1
Ben McGrath's profile of James in The New Yorker from 2003