EXTRA: 66 years since Gaedel had his "moment" in the baseball sun

It was 66 years ago on Saturday that the name Eddie Gaedel became something anyone would bother to remember.

Gaedel was a Chicago native who was a dwarf and would up using his lack of height (3-foot, 7-inches) to make him a performer. On Aug. 19, 1951, he made his grandest performance when Bill Veeck used him to gain national attention for his St. Louis Browns ball club.

GAEDEL PLAYED HIS one-and-only major league game. He was a pinch hitter for the leadoff batter and drew a walk on four straight pitches because the Detroit Tigers hurler couldn't throw strikes to one so short.

It was his only game as a ballplayer. But let's not forget that Gaedel did another stint on a major league playing field. There was that ballgame at Comiskey Park in 1960 where "Martians" landed in a helicopter and used a conveniently-placed microphone placed on the playing field to declare that White Sox stars Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox were honorary Martians (because of their lack of physical stature).

Gaedel being one of the  men from Mars who supposedly took an interest in baseball.

Sadly enough, that latter stunt was his final baseball-related appearance. He was mugged a year later in Chicago, and suffered injuries that resulted in him suffering a heart attack from which he died in 1961. He remains in his eternal rest, buried at St. Mary's Cemetery.

Gaedel one of 'martians' who took to infield at Comiskey Park in 1960

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The goat, vs. Rocky Colavito

Is this destined to be the All-Loser World Series. The one between cursed ball clubs – in which the image of Rocky Colavito gets to beat up on a goat!
 

Whose 'curse'...

The World Series for 2016 has turned out to be a matchup between the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs. Both teams are charter members of their respective leagues, meaning they’re both over a century old.

BOTH HAVE ONLY two World Series victories in their histories (1920 and 1948 for Cleveland, as opposed to 1907 and 1908 for the Cubs). Both have old fans who have never seen their team win the whole thing, and have endured decades of horrendous baseball in the process.

 

... will prevail?

Meaning anybody who’s going into this week thinking that the Cubs just have to come out ahead is seriously misguided. It would be just as much of a moral victory for baseball if this were the year of the Indians.

Heck, one could argue that with the way the Cubs created an allegedly lovable image that makes some people think ivy-covered walls is what baseball is all about and that winning is secondary, the team hasn't suffered at all.

They never played home games in the “Mistake on the Lake,” as in the Lake Erie-based stadium of some 76,000 seats that could look absolutely desolate when only 6,000 or so were showing up to see the Indians contend for last place in their division throughout the years. The less said about “Dime Beer Night,” the better.

Which team will these two spirits...

ONE ALSO HAS to admit that the Curse of the Goat that Cubs fans also cite as the source of their losing teams has a contender in the Curse of Rocky Colavito – Rocky being the slugging ballplayer of the 1950s whom the Indians traded away to the Detroit Tigers for Harvey Kuenn.

It was supposed to be a home run hitter for a potential batting average champion. Rocky went to Detroit and played respectably, while Kuenn never played as well for Cleveland.

By the time the Indians reacquired Colavito in a trade in the mid-1960s, they had to give up a ton of young talent to do so. And by then, Rocky just wasn’t the same ballplayer himself.

...be rooting for this week?

I suppose Cubs fans could claim they have their own bad trade history, what with letting Lou Brock get away to the St. Louis Cardinals. But the point is that this World Series is going to be one in which a team gets to kill off its demons and finally give its fans the championship they’ve been waiting for; no matter who wins.

IT MAKES ME wonder how many cemeteries across northern Ohio are going to wind up with Indians pennants on the gravesites of now-deceased fans who never got to see their team win the whole thing?

Or is that sight destined to occur across the north side of Chicago. Because among those who are tied spiritually to the South Side, there will be those rooting for an Indians victory. I’m not kidding – I’ve talked to enough of them to know Cubdom doesn’t unite the city, no matter how much Cubs fans want to think the whole world is rooting for their ultimate victory.

Is having to play ballgames here enough reason ...

What does amuse me is that the 1948 Indians team that was the last to win a World Series for Cleveland has its Chicago ties. Its player-manager was Lou Boudreau – the prep sports star of Thornton High School in Harvey who later in life paired up with Jack Brickhouse in broadcasting Cubs games on WGN-TV.

And let’s not forget Bill Veeck, who owned that Indians team. It was his first major league team he ran outright, after having worked while a kid for the Cubs when his father was team president who helped put together the teams that won National League championships every three years throughout the 1930s.

YET EVEN THOSE teams always fell short come October. The Yankees of Babe Ruth, then Joe DiMaggio, and the Detroit Tigers were the teams that came out on top. While Cleveland has to live down the shame of being the team that let a second-rate wildcard like the ’97 Florida Marlins beat it in the World Series.

... to be entitled to break a 'curse?'

Thereby leading to our current predicament of seeing whether this is the year of the Cubs, or the Indians. Cleveland’s team this year isn’t a pushover – it whomped all over Boston and Toronto in the playoffs, and isn’t going to be intimidated by Cubbie lore.

So before North Siders get too cocky, keep in mind that it could easily be you come a week from now who will be agonizing aloud, “Why God? When will it FINALLY be our turn to win!”

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Olympics could motivate Chicago to upgrade mass transit system, facilities

It’s a shame that Bill Veeck is not still alive. If he were, he’d be the man whom I would want Chicago to put in charge of the efforts to bring the 2016 Olympic Games to the Second City.

It’s not because I would want midgets or fireworks or any spectacles to be used to entice the International Olympic Committee to realize that Chicago is a much nicer place (in my totally biased opinion) than Tokyo, Madrid or Rio de Janeiro (which my gut says is the front-runner).

BUT VEECK HAD an attitude toward his management of professional baseball clubs that I think would be totally appropriate in trying to persuade the thousands of Chicagoans who are somehow convinced that staging an Olympics in Chicago would be a bad thing.

Veeck was the man who, at various times, owned the Chicago White Sox (twice), the Cleveland Indians, the St. Louis Browns, and minor league teams in Milwaukee and Miami. He never spent more than six years at a time in any one spot, because he realized that actually owning a major league team was not the way to make money.

Veeck, in his 1961 biography “Veeck, as in Wreck,” noted that he made his money when he sold the team, and also managed to make money off sideline interests that fed off of the baseball team.
This computer-generated illustration is what a Chicago Olympic Stadium on the South Side would look like, at least until they disassembled most of it following the games. Illustration provided by http://www.chicago2016.org/.

That logic is relevant because a lot of people are tossing out the notion that Olympic Games spectacles are worthless for their host cities. It is next to impossible for a municipal government to make a profit on the actual staging of the games.

I’LL AGREE. I’LL also say that such logic is pretty much worthless.

What is relevant is how much of the infrastructure built for an Olympic Games remains of use to the city after the games are over and done with.

Many cities use the occasion of hosting an Olympics to build new athletic facilities that later go on to serve as home fields for their professional sports teams. That certainly was the case for the Olympics held in North America – where Los Angeles and Atlanta use their Olympic stadiums for college football and major league baseball, respectively.

And in Montreal, the construction of the “Big O” was what kept the Montreal Expos in the French-Canadian city for nearly three decades.

NOW IN CHICAGO, our sports teams are not in need of new stadiums, with the exception of the Cubs (who likely are committed to a major renovation of their existing building).

So what we have to gain from staging an Olympics are the services that feed into the staging of the games.

In particular, I’m talking about mass transit.

When the International Olympics Committee on Wednesday announced that Chicago was one of the four cities still being considered for 2016, they issued a series of rankings in various categories that indicated they have serious concerns about Chicago’s mass transit and its ability to handle the crush of people who will converge from around the world to the shores of Lake Michigan.

IN SHORT, THE Chicago Transit Authority (in fact, all the agencies that oversee mass transit programs in the six-county Chicago area) is going to need major improvements and expansion.

It’s not like those improvements would disappear once the games were complete (although it still amazes me that city officials are talking about a temporary stadium in Washington Park to host the opening and closing ceremonies and major outdoor events).

I wish Chicago area government officials were willing to take on the task of making mass transit improvements just for the sake of improving the system. But if it takes a major event like an Olympics to get our officials off their duffs, then I’ll settle for it.

Veeck would realize that the notion of whether an Olympic Games was a success for Chicago would be on whether the presence of the event made Chicago a better and more interesting place to be.

PLUS, LET’S NOT forget midgets and fireworks.

I don’t know what kind of crazy stunts he would have been coming up with all across the Chicago area, but he would have created an atmosphere that would have people eagerly anticipating the notion of world-class athletes coming to our city to show off their skills.

He would have made people want to get tickets so they could see the activity for themselves, almost so they could claim in future years that they were present for what was one of Chicago’s historic moments (seriously, an Olympics – if handled correctly – would be as significant event in the city’s history as either of the World’s Fairs held in Chicago).

Veeck also would have come up with stunts during the event so that, even if an athletic world’s record was not broken at the particular event one attended, that person would still have a pleasant memory of having fun.

INSTEAD, WE’RE GETTING Chicago political people who are letting this thing get bogged down in partisan politics. People seriously bring up the petty politics of Antoin Rezko and Todd Stroger – which likely will create an atmosphere among the International Olympics Committee that a Chicago Olympics is too much of a headache.

It’s no wonder that the Olympics observers watching the selection process are convinced that Chicago is Number Four on the list – and probably lucky that it didn’t get dropped Wednesday for Prague.

Yes, Prague.

The Polish city was one of three that learned this week they are no longer in the running to host the Olympic games eight years from now.

CHICAGO CAN SAY it topped Baku and Doha as well. Woo Hoo! (Heavy sarcasm is intended).

I would find it depressing if this is as close as Chicago can come to staging a major international event, particularly since Chicago likes to think it is a “world-class” city (even though no two people have the exact same definition of what constitutes world-class).

I don’t understand the mentality of Chicagoans who would rather not be bothered with such events. The reason we live in a major metropolis is because we want to be at the center of the significant events.

If we wanted to be separated from the masses, we’d go live in some rural burg. Heck, I never would have left Springfield, Ill., which is a completely nice small city with an interesting historic character (you almost expect to see a plaque reading, “On this spot in 1845, Abraham Lincoln blew his nose) to it.

BUT IT’S NOT Chicago.

We ought to realize we are a central point of the United States, and not just because our city is located near the middle of the country. Chicago and the surrounding Midwestern U.S. could provide a truly American atmosphere to an Olympics that wasn’t achieved at any of the previous U.S.-hosted games in California or Georgia.

Instead, we seem too willing to give in and let the games go to Rio de Janeiro (allegedly the frontrunner in part because the games have never before been staged in a South American country).

I find such thoughts discouraging.

I WOULD LIKE it if come the 50th year of my life, my home city were to stage an event that would become one of the classic moments in its history – although I’m not sure an Olympics in Chicago would warrant a fifth star on the city’s flag.

And I would particularly enjoy being able to go to the games while taking a CTA elevated train that does not rock along rickety tracks that are more than a century old.

Not only would the spectacle be something to see, I like the notion that the city could feed off of the infrastructure improvements that would so desperately be needed if the event were to be held in the Chicago area.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: We’re Number Four. We beat Baku. It doesn’t take much to make Mayor Daley (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=29683) “very excited” these days.

The municipalities surrounding Chicago are expecting to garner their own economic benefits (http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2008/06/02/daily25.html) if the (http://www.nwi.com/articles/2008/05/19/news/illiana/doc287bd1abccbaf0a48625744d007d52bd.txt) Olympic Games were to be held here.

Doha official were gracious (http://www.gamesbids.com/cgi-bin/news/viewnews.cgi?category=1&id=1212598639) in offering their congratulations to the cities that remain in the running for the Olympics.

The “Champion of the Little Guy” would have created such a fun-loving atmosphere (http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041027_3631_db078.htm) that Chicagoans would have been clamoring to have the 2016 summer games in their city.

Veeck may return to family's Illinois roots

When it comes to professional baseball, the Veeck family is a batch of travelers from Illinois.

While many remember Bill for his stunts while operating the Cleveland Indians and St. Louis Browns, along with minor league ball clubs in Milwaukee and Miami, the fact is that he was the two-time owner of the Chicago White Sox because they were his hometown team (born in Chicago, he grew up in DuPage County).

THE ELDER STATESMAN of the Veeck family, William Sr., was the Chicago newspaperman-turn-equivalent of general manager of the Chicago Cubs – and he was the guy who put together those teams that actually made the Cubs a baseball power back during the depression.

That’s why it has always been a bit odd that Veeck son (and grandson) Mike had to make his baseball reputation outside of Chicago, as operator of the company that owns the St. Paul Saints and also runs teams in Charleston, S.C., Fort Myers, Fla., and Sioux Falls, S.D., just to name a few.

But now, there’s a chance that Veeck will come back to Illinois to work his promotional stunts that try to make the act of attending a professional baseball game fun – and not just draining on the wallet and/or credit card.

Specifically, officials in Normal, Ill., want to have a professional baseball team in their community (it would be a first ever, although neighboring Bloomington once had teams in the old “Three Eye” League). They are willing to build a new stadium for a team to share with the Heartland Community College athletic program.

THIS WEEK, THEY learned that their professional ball club might very well be owned by Mike Veeck, who runs a company that specializes in operating minor league teams. The youngest baseball Veeck is looking to get more teams in professional leagues not directly affiliated with major league baseball.

So the man who throughout the years has come up with “Vasectomy Night,” hired nuns to work as masseuses and used pigs to work as “ball boys” may soon take on an Illinois team.

In one sense, he owes us a share of experiencing his unique brand of minor league ball. Mike Veeck’s brainchild when he worked menial jobs for the White Sox (similar to how father Bill once performed menial tasks at Wrigley Field working for his father) was to come up with the still-remembered Disco Demolition Night of 1979.

Letting us Chicagoans see his stunts up close (without having to make a lengthy drive to St. Paul or Charleston) would be the way to let us put the memory of a trashed ball field to rest.

SUCH A MOVE also would be a plus for this state’s sporting, and entertainment, scene.

I have been to minor league baseball games in Crestwood, Geneva, Joliet and Schaumburg, along with Peoria and Davenport, Iowa. I also used to enjoy following the old Springfield Cardinals, Sultans of Springfield and Springfield Capitals during the stint I lived in Illinois’ capital city.

Some of those baseball operations are considered among the tops of the minor leagues and others have long glorious histories of supporting low-level professional ball clubs.

But the actual scene for a fan attending a game is cheap and schlock-y. The reason?

MOST OF THESE minor league promoters really don’t have much of an imagination – even though they claim to be putting on a spectacle to keep their fans amused enough to keep plunking down money for hot dogs and beer.

Every single minor league game I have ever attended included a between-innings spectacle known as the “dizzy bat race.” Every team had a fuzzy mascot (with the exception of the old Capitals, who had a guy in an Uncle Sam suit and a giant baseball for a head) that raced a child around the base paths.

Every team had some sort of prize giveaway that was totally worthless (such as a broken-down automobile). In short, minor league ball in Illinois has developed a certain sameness to it.

One literally has to look at the colors of the grass-stained laundry worn by the ballplayers to figure out if we’re in Peoria or Joliet – both of which have developed nice, small-scale stadiums in their downtown areas, although looking out beyond right field at Davenport’s O’Donnell Stadium gives one of the best scenic views available (the mighty Mississippi River) to a minor league operation.

ALL TOO OFTEN, minor league baseball has become an excuse for a lot of people to make significant money off souvenirs and concessions – except for the ballplayers, who at that level usually take in a few hundred dollars per month for the duration of the season.

An imaginative operator has the potential to stand out. If Veeck were to follow through with his talk and actually buy his way into a new team, Normal could become the pre-eminent minor league baseball franchise in Illinois. It could be the one place where fans are justified in making a special trip to see a ballgame.

Now Normal is a college town. The local sports scene focuses on Illinois Wesleyan and Illinois State sports, particularly men’s basketball. I wonder if local officials have the ability to see beyond what they already have and appreciate how a ballclub could boost their town’s image (albeit in the symbolic gesture type of way that can’t be definitively measured on a spreadsheet)?

Already, there is some complaining about whether public monies ought to be used to build a new stadium (although officials in Crestwood and Marion both used funds from state grants to build stadiums for their teams).

OTHERS JUST GRIPE about having any attraction that brings people to their community, preferring the thought of isolation – until they realize that isolated places have very little in the way of tax revenues coming in.

As I understand it, Veeck would want to have any Normal-based team play in the Frontier League, an operation that originally began in West Virginia and southern Ohio but now stretches across the Midwest and has Illinois ball clubs in Crestwood, Marion, Rockford and Sauget.

A Normal team would be centrally located to all of those teams and would provide yet another athletic rival, although most people who go to minor league games usually have no clue as to the actual ballplayers.

CONSIDERING THAT MOST of these kids will see their athletic dreams die in places like Normal, it is no wonder they are soon forgotten. But the joy of minor league baseball can be that its small scale allows you to get up so close to the field that you can see in great detail the skills needed to excel at the game.

There also is the off chance of seeing future talent – although one doesn’t get to realize exactly what they have experienced for about four or five years.

To me, when the Chicago White Sox won the American League pennant and World Series in 2005, one aspect that gave me personal pleasure was the inclusion of reserve infielder Pablo Ozuna.

MOST FANS HAD never heard of the guy before that year, or thought he was just a schlep who couldn’t hang on with a major league team. To me, he was the guy I saw up close back in 1998 when (for some reason) I went to a string of Peoria Chiefs games and he was the star shortstop and leadoff hitter who sparked the Chiefs that season.

Professional baseball at any level has its joys. It is the ultimate evidence that baseball is a game that should be enjoyed live, and that having to watch games on television ought to be considered punishment.

Once you realize that, all the silly stunts are tolerable – even the mascot race, since the only times he wins is when he cheats. But if Veeck the youngest were to actually gain a ball club within driving distance of Chicago (Normal is about a two-hour drive each way), then there just might be crowds of people driving on down Interstate 55 on game days.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Mike Veeck is making a living off of focusing attention on the baseball crowds (http://www.funisgood.net/), rather than the on-field activity. Pay him enough, and he’ll come speak to your group about making money off of having fun.

Some officials in Normal, Ill., want to have their own professional baseball team come (http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/05/21/news/doc483377dfbee1c751971417.txt) the 2010 season.

This older interview with Veeck reflects the spirit that could soon be coming to Illinois (http://www.whitesoxinteractive.com/rwas/index.php?category=11&id=2520), should he manage to gain control of a downstate team. It’s too bad his business group couldn’t buy its way into one of the minor league clubs that exist on the fringes of the Chicago area.