Negative Capability

Sportswriter Thomas Boswell on the steroids controversy in baseball:

“The moralist wants to decide what’s right and wrong; the artist wants to see things exactly as they are, even if there are so many shades that right and wrong isn’t a place that you get to. John Keats wrote in a letter—and he was talking about William Shakespeare—he said that the feature that distinguished Shakespeare the most and made him the greatest of all writers was what Keats called 'negative capability', which he described as the ability to remain in tension, undecided between opposing poles. And he said that Shakespeare had that negative capability, the ability to see everything and not jump to one side of the question, to a greater degree than any other artist.

“Now we live in a sports age and a baseball age, where nothing’s more valuable than negative capability because if we’re just in a rush, if we can’t wait to see Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds, or whoever it is, as right or wrong, then we’re missing the complexity of these people and the difficulty of the age that they’re living in.”

From "Inning Ten: Bottom of the Tenth (1999-2009)" in Ken Burns Baseball

Photo Credit

"A-Rod's Baseball Collection" by  Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Creative Commons: some rights reserved

Once "a Blue-Collar Sport"

In 1869 Harry Wright, manager and outfielder for the Cincinnati Red Stockings, made seven times the average working man’s wage. In 1976, 107 years later, a ballplayer still made just eight times the working man’s salary. By 1994, the average major league salary would be nearly fifty times that of ordinary Americans.

“The big difference, now that players get so much, is that it has distanced them from us. It was a blue-collar sport, and people in the stands could look at these people playing ball and think of them as workers because they were getting paid workers’ salaries, and this perpetuated the illusion that with a little luck that could be me out there. The sense of “we” between fans and players was very strong in those days and players stayed on a lot longer with a team so they were familiars, like someone who worked in the same office with you almost. And all that has gone; it’s quite different now.”  Roger Angell

From "Inning 9: Home 1970-1992" Ken Burns Baseball

"Mr. Rickey, it's my skin."

Branch Rickey: Baseball people are generally allergic to new ideas. It took years to persuade them to put numbers on uniforms. It is the hardest thing in the world to get baseball to change anything, even spikes on a new pair of shoes. But they will, eventually; they are bound to. 

In March of 1945, Mr. Rickey told me in confidence that only the board of directors of the ball club knew and only his family knew, and now I was going to know that he was going to bring a black player to the white [Brooklyn] Dodgers. 

And Mr. Rickey said that going back to when he was the baseball coach at Ohio Wesleyan University, he took the team to play a series down at South Bend, Indiana with Notre Dame, and he said, “My best player was my catcher, and he was black. But,” said Mr. Rickey, “when we were registering the squad in the hotel, when the black player stepped up to sign the register, the clerk jerked the register back and said. ‘We don’t register niggers in this hotel.’” And Rickey remonstrated and said, “This is the baseball team from Ohio Wesleyan. We’re the guests of Notre Dame University.” He said, “I don’t care who you are. We don’t register niggers in this hotel.” Well,” Mr. Rickey said, “there are two beds in my room, aren’t there?’ And he said, “Yes.” “Well,” he says, “can’t he use one bed and not register?”

The clerk grudgingly allowed that to happen and Mr. Rickey took the key, handed it to the black player, and said, “You go up to the room and wait for me. Soon as I get the rest of the team settled, I’ll be up.”

Mr. Rickey said, “When I opened the door, here was this fine young man, sitting on the edge of his chair, and he was crying. And he was pulling at his hands, and he said, ‘Mr. Rickey, it’s my skin. If I could just tear it off, I’d be like everyone else.’”

And Mr. Rickey told me this day in March of 1945, he said, “In all these years I have heard that boy crying. And now,” he said, “I’m going to do something about it.” Red Barber, sports broadcaster

(From "Inning 6: The National Pastime, 1940-1950") Ken Burns Baseball)

 

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League.

 Photo Credits

Jackie Robinson by Paul Lowry

News History Gallery by ttarasiuk

Creative Commons: some rights reserved

The Legend of the Hot Dog (One version anyway)

Bad food and overpriced drink had been sold at ballparks since the 1850s. But it took one very ambitious British-born caterer to turn concessions into an empire. Harry M. Stevens had begun his career hocking scorecards in the 1880s, all the while regaling the crowds with quotes from Byron and Shakespeare. By 1901 he was peddling hard-boiled eggs, ham sandwiches, ice cream, and slices of pie in stadiums from New York to Ohio. Then, one cold afternoon when ice cream sales slowed at the Polo Grounds, he sent out for German sausages, which he put in long buns so fans could hold and eat them. He had made his greatest contribution to the game, introducing hot dogs to the ballpark.

From "Inning 2: Something Like a War (1900-1910)" in Ken Burns' Baseball

The Louisville Slugger

Pete Browning, the old gladiator of the Louisville Eclipse, had a lifetime batting average of .343 and was the idol of Kentucky fans. One day, in 1884, he broke his favorite bat. After the game, an apprentice woodworker named Bud Hillerich offered to make Browning a new bat. The next day Browning went three for three; thereafter he would use no one else’s bat. It was the first Louisville Slugger and Browning would eventually own more than two hundred of them, to each of which he gave a name taken from the Bible.

From "Inning 1: Our Game" Ken Burns' Baseball