Baseball players and 20th century artists

You know that moment in Fever Pitch where Drew Barrymore realizes that her boyfriend is crazy-obsessed with baseball? You readers are about to have that moment with me. Spring Training is starting.

A book to read: The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife

In the summer of 2015, author Brad Balukjian bought a pack of baseball cards from 1986, Then he spend the summer driving across the country in his Honda Accord to track down all the players and talk to them about baseball and life.

Photo (check out my Honda!) by Jenna Vandenberg

I should love this book. I love baseball. I love road trips. I’ve road tripped across the country in my own Honda, frequently for baseball-related purposes.

Plus, it’s a good book. The writing is engaging, the stories about the ball players are cleverly crafted, and the author beautifully weaves his own personal narrative into the tale. The book is a unique mash-up: part travelogue, part sports journalism, with a dash of memoir thrown in.

My problem with the book is an entirely personal one: not all the ex-players love baseball.

My love for baseball is like a parent who blindly loves their children no matter what their faults may be. I can’t stand to hear criticism of my beloved pastime. When cheating scandals make baseball headlines, I refuse to read the article. When colleagues start lamenting the lack of money the Seattle Mariner’s Front Office is willing to put into creating a decent team I leave the room. I covered my ears and screamed during the MLB lockout in 2022. When it comes to me and baseball, ignorance is not only bliss, but my key to sanity.

So I hated how Vince Coleman who, after Jackie Robinson’s widow threw out a ceremonial first pitch, said “I don’t know nuthin about him. Why are you asking me about Jackie Robinson.”

Ugh. Gut punch.

I cringed when Balukjian wrote about how Steve Yeager, “victim of the owners’ collusion scandal…became so depressed that he couldn’t watch baseball on TV.”

I briefly closed the book after the line about how Jaime Cocanower described baseball as “very frustrating,” saying “I don’t look back on it as my fondest memories of life.”

In other words, THE WAX PACK is real. When it comes to baseball, I don’t want real. I want pure fantasy and good vibes only.

Anyway, that’s a me problem. If you like baseball in a reasonable-person way, you’ll probably like this book.

Another clever aspect of this book was how Balukjian managed to weave all the stories together. While each player got his own chapter, the book still hung together as a cohesive unit - no small feat. It must have been challenging to find some commonality between the 16 characters (15 players + himself) that transcended baseball.

That commonality was fatherhood.

Some of the players had great fathers, some had terrible fathers. Steve Yeager’s father “got so drunk that he passed out in the clubhouse,” but Lee Mazzilli’s father who “knows nothing about baseball but everything about fatherhood...frame[d] each of his baseball cards as a reminder of his youngest son’s success.”

Players reflect on their own fathering skills as well. Randy Ready “hugs his six boys every chance he gets,” while Al Cowens got in a fistfight with his son, grabbing his gun when the fists weren’t getting the job done.

Balukjian calls upon his own father in the book, remembering how “the steady calm of his voice as he explained how to score a game.” He loving describes the heart-to-heart he and his dad had after they shared a meal with Lee Mazzilli.

My own dad also taught me (and my daughters) how to keep score, so I enjoyed all the dad content.

My dad and my daughter, keeping score. Photo by Jenna Vandenberg

A lesson to teach: Mr. C’s lesson on finding a common link between disparate people.

It takes some serious research skills to find a connection between different people. Just like author Brad Balukjian found a common link of fathers, asking your students to find a link between people is a worthwhile task. If you want your students to REALLY dig into researching historical figures, have them look for a commonality.

My favorite history teacher did this.

When I was a junior in high school, Mr. C came into class one day with four stacks of index cards. We were learning about the mid-late 20th century. One stack of cards contained musicians from that time period, another stack was for authors, the third stack was architects, and the final stack was visual artists. We all pulled a card randomly from each stack. I remember having Glenn Miller and John Steinbeck. I don’t remember my artist or architect (nobody tell my editor at Western Art and Architecture!).

The assignment was to listen to their music, read their short stories, view their artwork, and study their architecture. We had to complete a short written synopsis of their work, but the meat of the assignment was to find a commonality and explain it to the class (thus also exposing the class to a bunch of 20th-century artists).

You have to do some digging to find a commonality, which is what my teacher probably had intended. I remember the commonality I came up with was “home,” which seems a little basic now, but I remember being proud of it back in the day. I remember explaining how Glenn Miller toured Europe during WWII, giving troops familiar songs from home and how Steinbeck drew inspiration for his novel from his home in California.

As I’m writing this, I’m thinking about how I might incorporate the concept into my classes. Perhaps my World History students can research different Enlightenment philosophers (a scientist, an artist, a writer, and a government leader). I’ve already taught the Enlightenment, so I’ll have to remember that for next year.

Perhaps my Government students can each be assigned 4 random members of Congress. Can you imagine coming up with a commonality between Marjorie Taylor Green, Patty Murray, Dick Durban, and Tommy Tuberville? That sounds fun.

Okay, teacher-readers, I like this government plan. In a few months, I’ll teach it and let you know how it goes. Hold tight for all those student handouts I usually give out here.

A place to explore: Cornfields and baseball

In the meantime, back to baseball.

When deciding which baseball-related trip to feature in this newsletter, I had options.

Should I write about the road trip my friend and I took during the off-season wherein we toured Fenway Park and Wrigley Field? The trips with my mom and brother across the Pacific Northwest to cheer on our favorite minor league team? The bi-monthly trek my ex-husband and I used to make - leaving Las Vegas on weekends to stay in dumpy inland California motels to cheer on the Victorville Mavericks? Spring training vacations? The best baseball game I’d ever witnessed that led me to move to Denver? The yearly trips my husband and I make to wherever the Mariners are playing on our anniversary? My favorite baseball museum? Oh wait - I already wrote about that.

However, looping back to the DAD theme, I’d better write about the baseball trip I took with my dad. We started in his native Wisconsin, loaded up on cheese curds, and then headed to Iowa.

Please don’t be alarmed by my belly. I was very pregnant.

After walking through cornfields and speaking in nothing but Field of Dream quotes, we headed south…

“People will come, Ray. People will come.” Photo by Jenna Vandenberg

…to Pringle Park in Jackson, Tennessee. In 2012, Pringle Park was home to the Jackson Generals, then the AA affiliate of the Seattle Mariners.

See, when a baseball players gets drafted, they don’t go straight to the major leagues. They wind their way through various minor league teams and only the best players get moved up to the next level. For us Seattle Mariner fans, the youngest players begin their careers playing for the Modesto Nuts in California. Then they move up to Everett Aquasox, a team just north of Seattle. From there, it’s onto Little Rock to play for the Arkansas Travelers, back to the Pacific Northwest to play for the Tacoma Rainiers, and THEN the lucky few get called up to become Seattle Mariners. It takes 3 or 4 years for even the best players to make it from Modesto to Seattle.

This minor league system also makes for great road trips for fans who want to keep on cheering for their favorite prospects. Back in 2012, when Mom and Dad and I were traveling through the Midwest, mini-Mariners had a stop in Jackson, Tennessee. The minor leagues were restructured a few years ago, so the Mariners are no longer affiliated with a team in Jackson. We are lucky we got a chance to see them when we did.

The main thing I remember about this game was HOT it was (Tennessee in July while pregnant!), which sounds so glorious right now. Oh, what I’d give for a hot night of baseball instead of this endless February drizzle.

Baseball cannot come back soon enough.

Happy Spring (Training), everyone.

If you purchase books using the links in this post, I get a small portion of the sale, so thank you! The link connects you to Bookshop, which directs your purchase to your local and independent bookstore.

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