In which the decreasingly Royal We insert various passages representative of the Western Canon into works of Dick Allen, thus adding to those various works the grandeur of perspective.

In today’s episode, Dick Allen finds himself decked in the gold and green garb of the Oakland Athletics, unsure of what purpose he serves baseball and of how it serves him. The date is June 19, 1977, and the Athletics, led by Bobby Winkles, face Francisco Barrios and the Chicago White Sox in the second game of a doubleheader. It is a dark and stormy night.

Top of the 7th, Athletics Batting, Behind 1-4, White Sox’ Francisco Barrios facing 4-5-6

• Wayne Gross singled to center.
• Earl Williams grounded into fielder’s choice to pitcher, Gross out at second.
• Willie Crawford walked, Williams to second.
• Jim Tyrone grounded out to second, Williams to third, Willie Crawford to second.
• Dick Allen pinch hits for Tony Armas (CF), batting eighth.
• Dick Allen took all his pain and what was left of his strength and his long gone pride and put it against the ball’s agony and the ball came over onto the outside corner, its stitches almost touching the edges of the plate.  Allen dropped his shoulders and put his foot forward and lifted the bat as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength, and more strength he had just summoned, into the ball.  He felt the wood go in and he he leaned on it and drove it further and then pushed all his weight after it.
• Dick Allen struck out swinging.
• Dick Allen to tears. It is easy when you are beaten, he thought.  He never knew how easy it was.  And what beat you, he thought.  “Nothing,” he said aloud.  “I went out too far.”  He returned to the dugout and dozed, dreaming about the lions.

0 runs, 1 hit, 0 errors, 2 LOB. Athletics 1, White Sox 4.

This has been the latest episode of Inserting Literature Into Works of Dick Allen.

Last week, I wrote a series of fairly meaningless words about a largely forgotten group of men who, at one point or another in their lives, had baseball cards made of them. In my original draft, one of these players was Chris Brown, former all-star third baseman of the San Francisco Giants. He’d led the league in being hit by pitches in 1986, and I thought, hey, free Chris Brown joke, sort of. Once I discovered that Brown the Athlete had actually passed away several years ago in an unfortunate incident, I scrapped the joke and replaced him at the last minute with the least record-setting name I could think of, one who happened to be involved in a trade for the very same Chris Brown. That name was Craig Lindsay Lefferts.

It seemed a safe choice: he played the most obscure position in baseball, left-handed reliever, and he wielded (past tense, sadly) a healthy if ubiquitous eighties mustache. He also spent most of his career playing for the Padres and Giants, two west-coast teams with occasional success and similar orange logos. To be perfectly honest, if you’d asked me two weeks ago who Craig Lefferts was, I would have told you he was Tom Niedenfuer.

But as I learned, Craig Lefferts is not the Platonic form of the left-handed reliever I assumed he was. Craig Lefferts is instead the Platonic form of all Craig Leffertses: the perfect example of what it is to be a Craig Lefferts, and the one by which all others are reflected as mere shadows. To generalize him is an injustice; he, like each of us, is so much more.

Given these things, I’d like to share a few Entirely True Facts about the aforementioned:

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The year is 1987.  The nation is reeling from a combination of Iran-Contra hearings and Cold War-induced deficit crisis.  Toni Morrison publishes Beloved, depressing the hell out of everyone. Vince Coleman becomes baseball’s new darling, and Full House appears on television screens for the first time.  Patrick Swayze has not yet recorded “She’s Like the Wind”, but he is about to do so.  Clearly, American morale is foundering, and the baseball card manufacturing companies are needed to revive the spirit of America.  No longer was one set per brand enough; we need more.

They fill this demand by selling small, forty-four card individually boxed sets.  These cards were sold, through exclusive retailers, on the premise that if people liked to collect pictures of baseball players printed on small pieces of cardboard, they might want to collect pictures of baseball players printed on different pieces of cardboard.  To increase jubilance, these cards were given red, white and/or blue borders and exciting names. They loaded these cards with as much Gershwin-esque bombast as they could scrounge.

Essentially, they lied to us.  They lied to America. Read the rest of this entry »

There may come a time in your life, dear reader, when you find yourself face to face with Jeffrey Leonard. It may be at the barbecue of your slightly shady uncle, in the elevator at the building of your investment manager, or perhaps in a high-stakes poker game on a Louisiana riverboat piloted by a man wearing both tattoos of snakes as well as actual snakes. Regardless, the prospect of repartee with Mr. Leonard can be an intimidating affair. Thus, as a public service, we’d like to provide the following set of guidelines regarding his facial expressions, and what he may be conveying through each particular contraction of facial muscles. If you rank your social skills as anywhere below the level of “enchanting”, it may be wise to print this reference out and carry a copy in your wallet.

Be warned that Jeffrey Leonard is a complicated man, a man who has some degree of mastery over his own presence. As such, there can be no guarantee that his facial expression exactly aligns with any specific emotion.  We wish you luck in your future badinage.

1.  Jeffrey Leonard is not sure he should have left his coat lying over there.

2.  Jeffrey Leonard would like to respond to your criticism of the meatpacking industry, but his mouth is still full of peanut butter.

3.  Jeffrey Leonard is stunned that you have chosen the Caro-Kann Defense in your chess game, when his success against the variant is well-documented.

4.  Jeffrey Leonard really is interested in what you have to say, but he probably shouldn’t have watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest this afternoon.

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You may not have been alive back in 1991.  Or perhaps you were, but you weren’t of the age where you came home from school to eat macaroni and cheese and watch Disney Afternoon on syndicated television.  But if you were, and you had parents who bought you Nintendo games for Christmas and didn’t consult with you about them first, you may have once before opened up an instruction booklet to read these words:

At last it can be told. How, at the turn of the 24th Century
the game of baseball was changed forever. It happened in Cape
Codpiece, Florida during the annual winter meetings. On the
aluminum paneled walls of the posh hotel’s Presidential Room
hung stirring portraits of baseball’s all-time greats. Legends
like Cecil “Rooftop” Shingleton, Travis “Tee” O’ Justice, and Tip
“Rude” Wayter. Around the huge conference table sat a group of
sour, seething executives collectively known as the baseball
team owners. The issue before them-astronomical player salaries.
(A Solar League official had just ordered one of the weakest
franchises to shell out $2.4 billion a year to Gomer “Go Homer”
Gomez, a lifetime .250 hitter.)

For hours the owners debated their options. Until suddenly
Irving Flopilidopolous, owner of the Boston Banshees, leaped from
his chair and slammed his fist on the table.

“Robots!” he exclaimed. The other owners looked blankly
at each other. Then smiles slowly crept across their faces as they
realized they had found the solution-replace the players with
mechanical men. No more salary demands. Better yet, no more salaries!
Just obedient automatons pre-programmed for action.

The now inspired owners worked feverishly that weekend
to refine their new sport which they christened Base Wars. The
public was quickly captivated by this bizarre combination of
baseball and gladiatorial combat played by an army of armor clad
cybernetic swingers. They especially loved the one-on-one battle
royales for base possession, the loser of which is retired to the
scrap yard. It wasn’t long before Base Wars became the new
intergalactic pastime.

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Our voyage through multiple layers of meaning continues this week with the storied Cincinnati Redleg franchise.  The last sixty iterations of the Reds are somewhat lackluster from a comedy standpoint: never terrible, sometimes excellent, generally consistent.  Sure, they have Dusty Baker as a manager, but he has Bronson Arroyo’s elbow to bend back and forth like a Stretch Armstrong doll, so there’s no harm done.  The Big Red Machine seemed to destroy the league slowly, inexorably, and humorlessly.  There isn’t even a joke in Bill Bray.

There’s an unfortunate drawback for dealing with the older ballclubs: names didn’t appear on the backs of jerseys until 1960, when Bill Veeck was busy ruining the game.  The Reds didn’t get on board until 1964.  This eliminates some golden opportunities for historically-minded jokesters: there’s no showing off one’s literary chops by throwing on some Coke-bottle glasses and some Jim Brosnan gear, nor can one effectively rock the Dummy Hoy. It’s particularly tragic that there’s no Christy Mathewson jersey, because the combination of unwise trade, twilight appearance, and wonderful old-fashioned bagginess would make it pretty much unstoppable.  Alas.

Still, a poor craftsman blames the tools of his ancestors.  And so, undaunted, we proceed:

1966 Milt Pappas: The list could never start anywhere else.  Pappas was the key piece of the worst trade in Cincinnati history (or second – see Mathewson, above) when an over-the-hill 30 year-old Frank Robinson was sent to the Baltimore Orioles in the offseason.  Robinson went on to win the Triple Crown in 1966, and Milt Pappas went on to be Milt Pappas: winning a dozen or so games a year, posting a FIP in the low to mid threes, and complaining about everything from umpires to lower back pain to anyone within earshot.  Necessary for wearing this jersey: limb flailing.

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As a wise man once said, “It’s dangerous to go alone.”  Sometimes, however, a man has to break away from his predecessors and forge his own path.  He has to challenge the accepted wisdom of their time.  He has to fight for the downtrodden, the shamed and ridiculed.   But despite his leadership and vision, unlike heroes like Jackie Robinson and John Glenn, one particular man will never have his number retired by major league baseball.

The problem: we aren’t exactly sure who that man is.

The spring of 1956 saw a country still gripped in the fear of the McCarthy era, a culture terrified of deviance.  It was the time for keeping one’s head down, maintaining the status quo.  And yet two men stood up to the crowd, unashamed of being who they were.  Unashamed of being nearsighted.  But which umpire bared his soul first?

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Somewhere, David Eckstein was doing something: eating a sandwich, perhaps, or polishing the wood surfaces of his home with lemon-scented chemicals. It’s impossible to say exactly. What we do know, or can at least safely assume, is that he paused for a moment, a gust of cool air sweeping over him from an unknown source, a shudder of momentary weakness in the arms and stiffness in the fingers. Something felt off. He scanned his surroundings, trying to make out the difference, to sort out the nature of this new universe. And then the truth of it all revealed itself unto him: some of his grit had been expropriated.

Marvel at the precision of the ground ball, hit smartly enough for the ball to speed into the hole but gently enough for that hole to close in on it. Watch how the hit pulls the throw up the line, giving Brendan Ryan the opportunity to coast into first with his head up. Notice how the Oakland infielders scatter in the face of this strident display of pluck and determination, leading each of them to individually pause and reflect on how they have wasted their superior athletic skills. As they spit and curse the earth that bore them, Ryan is already nearly at second. Then Ryan slides superfluously not once, but twice, dirtying each leg in the process. Finally, he pops up to his feet immediately, already prepared to roundhouse kick any would-be ninjas in the vicinity. What you’re seeing is textbook fundamentals.

Justin Smoak is so joyful he uncurls both halves of his lips as far as they can muster. Third base coach Jeff Datz, ordinarily focusedon the myriad of instructions he is bound by his occupation to convey, can only wander over and pat Ryan on the back. Not pictured in the clip is the moment when Eric Sogard’s fabulous eyeglasses are cast forcibly from his face by the heart and spirit of Ryan’s second slide, delaying the game by several minutes as he hunts for them in the outfield grass. Nor is the rare honorary walk delivered by a stunned and reverent home umpire Mike Winters.

A true, unquestionable double-hustle play. I tried to mark the event in my calendar, dear readers, but I found my hands, like Eckstein’s, trembling.

It’s August 1, the Boxing Day of baseball.  Fans everywhere are waking up late, stumbling downstairs to the tree, and realizing that the ballplayer they were so excited about yesterday looked a little better when it was still in the box.  For others, there are unfulfilled wishes of prospects uncollected, and moves unmade.  This somber disquiet sets the perfect backdrop by which to partake in a little feasting, and reflect on the true meaning of disappointment.  It’s also the perfect opportunity to pay tribute to that elfin figure of the past, Gregg Jefferies.

Life: As a rookie in 1987, Gregg Jefferies had six plate appearances.  In the process he raked two singles and a double and earned a 0.1 WAR. Fans over the world extrapolated these numbers into 600 at-bats and a ten-win season, and reacted accordingly.  In an era when a pack of baseball cards cost forty or fifty cents, his rookie cards sold for upwards of eight dollars, a princely sum.  Owning a Jefferies rookie card was a mark of pride, a membership card into the collecting elite.  Sadly, the precocious Jefferies was never able to match the twenty home runs he hit as a teenager in Double-A, and went on to produce an ironically undistinguished fourteen-year career. Jefferies hit for decent average, wielded a little power and a splash of speed.  If he had stayed with the Mets, he may have developed his own local legend, but instead he was sent into exile, wandering from team to team.  In the end, the man seemingly predestined for the Hall of Fame received two votes.

Spiritual Exercise: First, if you have any rosebuds around, gather them as ye may.  Once that’s done, reflect on baseball as a symbol for the fleeting nature of youth, and the psychological significance of a system in which 97% of teams struggle for six months only to result in definitive failure.  Ask yourself: is Gregg Jefferies a victim of society?  Should we prize the naiveté of the shepherd Daphnis, or the Machiavellian cunning of Odysseus?  Did Gregg Jefferies fail the city of New York, or did New York fail Gregg Jefferies?

A Prayer for Gregg Jefferies

Gregg Jefferies!
You were the golden ticket of a generation.
Your face, ink pressed into cardboard
Instilled a sense of vitality and promise
The possibilities of summer.
Your face matched the youth of our own.
Greatness was something ephemeral
And inevitable.

As we grew older
And left (collectively) for college
To earn our business degrees
You disappeared somewhere between
Philadelphia and Detroit.
Your visage, encased in vinyl,
Frozen in its impish, hopeful grin,
We left in the attic to slowly depreciate.

Last weekend the Right Honourable Dayn Perry, Esq. cast a wary glance into the soulful eyes of Von Hayes.  The archetypal quick-aging baseball player, Hayes was finished physically by the age of 32.  His spirit was crushed by the weight of five men and the city of Philadelphia somewhat earlier.  What we see in Von Hayes is the human gamut of emotion, a timeline that encompasses innocence, hope, fatigue, mistrust, despair, and eventually resignation.  In Von Hayes, we see ourselves.

Witness the early years of Von Hayes, ones of unfamiliarity and wavering confidence, the tender mustache worn perhaps to deflect questions as to whether he is Robert Hays.  Even his unibrow reaches tenuously from his forehead, seeking to make its way in the world. Advance to the early evenings in Philadelphia, and observe the brave mask he wears even as he disappoints men and women he has never met. They are unhappy with him because of what he is not. They are unhappy with him because it is not enough to be Von Hayes.

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