Daily Archives: July 15, 2009

Paul Hemphill, a terrific American writer, passed away last weekend. He was 73.

In the New York Times obituary, William Grimes writes:

Mr. Hemphill turned a flair for sportswriting into a columnist’s job at the old Atlanta Journal in the 1960s, when the New Journalism began to take hold. Like Jimmy Breslin, a writer he was often compared to, he turned his roving eye to ordinary Southerners overlooked by most writers and mined the inexhaustible vein of human experience that he summed up, in his collection “Too Old to Cry” (1981), as “lost dreams and excess baggage and divorce, whiskey, suicide, killing and general unhappiness.” He also wrote blunt columns about race at a time when the topic was incendiary in the South.

“He was the kind of general newspaper columnist that hardly exists anymore,” Roy Blount Jr., who worked with Mr. Hemphill at The Journal, said by e-mail in June. “He’d go out and do things and talk to people and write 2,000 words, daily. He wasn’t a talking head; he was walking ears, or listening legs.”

Hemphill wrote a seminal book about country music called The Nashville Sound and later, a well-received biography of Hank Williams. I love his memoir about the South in the Sixties, Leaving Birmingham.

I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Hemphill over the phone once a few years ago. He was charming and gracious though he was already ill with throat cancer. We spoke about his debut novel, Long Gone, and the 1987 movie adaptaion for HBO (which sadly, is not available on DVD). He didn’t have much to do with the film but was pleased with how it turned out.

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In many ways, Lindy McDaniel is one of the most overlooked Yankee of the last 40 years. On the few occasions that his name is remembered, it’s usually in reference to the fact that he was the player the Yankees traded to the Royals for Sweet Lou Piniella. McDaniel is one of the forgotten Yankee closers (or firemen, as they used to be called), along with Jack “The Chief” Aker, Steve “The Burglar” Farr, and John Wetteland.

This Saturday, McDaniel will be attending his first Old-Timers’ Day, albeit at the new Yankee Stadium. I’m not sure if it’s a case of McDaniel never being invited to the old-timers’ conclave, or that he has simply rejected prior invites, but it’s rather remarkable that he has never returned to the Yankees in any official way since last donning the pinstripes in 1973. For whatever the reason, the drought will end this Saturday. And for a quality and class Yankee, it’s about time.

Acquired for another old favorite in Bill Monbouquette, McDaniel served the Yankees superbly as a durable and effective reliever from 1968 to 1973. Except for his performance in 1971, when his ERA ballooned to 5.04 (the second-worst mark of his career), he consistently turned back opposition hitters in the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings. The long, lean right-hander became a familiar site at the old Stadium, with his old-fashioned, baggy-uniformed look and an easy-going, over-the-top delivery. McDaniel did not overpower hitters, not in the manner of Sparky Lyle with his backbiting slider, Goose Gossage with his chest-high powerball, or Mariano Rivera with his chainsaw cutter. Employing a softer and more subtle forkball as his out-pitch, McDaniel complemented that offering with a pedestrian fastball, an effective slider, and pinpoint control.

Where McDaniel lacked power and dominance, he made up for those shortcomings with endurance and longevity. In 1970, he pitched 111 innings to the tune of a 2.01 ERA and a career-high 29 saves. In 1973, He once pitched 13 innings of relief in a marathon Yankee victory. (You can file that in the category of milestones that today’s relief pitchers will never achieve.) In his final season with the Yankees, McDaniel logged 160 innings at the not-so-tender age of 37. By the time that he retired after two encore seasons with the Royals, McDaniel had amassed 21 years in the major leagues—a rather remarkable total for a nearly fulltime relief pitcher who regularly pitched more than 100 innings a summer.

So why has McDaniel remained so underrated, both as a Yankee and otherwise? From the Yankee perspective, he conceded the fireman role to Lyle in 1972 and ’73, McDaniel’s final two seasons in New York. Then there is the issue of the postseason. Though he played for some competitive Cardinals and Giants teams, the two-time All-Star never sniffed the World Series in either the fifties or the sixties. With the Yankees, he was stuck with some mediocre-to-decent teams that never quite had enough to keep pace with Earl Weaver’s world class Orioles. So there were no Championship Series appearances for McDaniel, either.

Beyond the lack of team support, McDaniel never did much, on an individual level, to promote his own accomplishments. A gentlemanly and reserved man, McDaniel instead preferred promoting the word of God. As an ordained minister for the Church of Christ, McDaniel spent much of his off-the-field time teaching and interpreting the Bible. McDaniel did not preach within the clubhouse or the bullpen, but instead mailed each active major leaguer (at his own cost) a copy of his monthly religious newsletter, entitled “Pitching for the Master.” In looking through McDaniel’s file at the Hall of Fame Library, I could not find any examples of resentment from other players who did not appreciate the religious message. Given the recent backlash against Baseball Chapel, I wonder how Murray Chass would have reacted to McDaniel’s practice in today’s climate.

Nearly 35 years after he last threw a pitch, McDaniel continues to preach his religious beliefs. As with his pitching style, he does it without fanfare or fire-and-brimstone. Now 73, McDaniel-the-minister will wear the pinstripes for the first time in several decades come this Saturday. Though he never had the flare of Mo or Sparky, I hope at least a few Yankee fans remember just how good Lindy was during those five-and-a-half lean years in the Bronx.

Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.

Glenn Stout, a longtime favorite here at Bronx Banter, is most famous around these parts for his historical writing, particularly Yankee Century and Red Sox Century. Stout also serves as the series editor for The Best American Sports Writing; his oral history Nine Months at Ground Zero is one of the most fascinating and devastating things I’ve ever read about 9.11.

Stout has a website as well as a blog, and his latest book, Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World,  may be the most interesting project of his career. It is the story of Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel (read an excerpt here).

I had the chance to talk to Stout about the book. Here is our conversation. Enjoy.

Bronx Banter: I know you are comfortable writing about history, especially in the first part of the 20th century.  What drew you to Ederle?

Glenn Stout: Her story is seminal, as central to the story of American sports in this century as that of Red Grange, Babe Ruth, Jack Johnson or Jackie Robinson, yet to most people Trudy, aka Gertrude Ederle, is unknown.  I wanted to change that. In many ways she was both the first modern female athlete and one of America’s first celebrities.  Had she not done what she had done, which is not only to become the first woman to swim the English Channel, but in the process to beat the existing men’s record by nearly two hours, the entire history of women’s sports would be radically different.  You can, I think, break down the history of women’s sports in this country into “Before Trudy” and “After Trudy.”   Before Trudy female athletes were anomalies, and their accomplishments, with just a few exceptions, primarily took place out of the public eye.  Many early female athletes, like Eleanora Sears, and Annette Kellerman, were sometimes seen as publicity hounds who performed stunts, and not serious athletes.  The question of whether or not women were either psychologically or physically capable of being athletes was still a topic of debate – at least by the men who ran sports.  Although there would still be some who would stubbornly cling to that belief, by swimming the English Channel and shattering the existing men’s record, Trudy answered that question quite definitively.

She was the answer.  One can argue that had it not been for her women would not have been allowed to compete in track and field and many other sports as early as they did – women competed in track events for the first time at the Olympics in 1928.  It may have been another generation – until after World War II – before there was any acceptance of female athletes.  I am old enough to remember when women could not play little league, or run marathons, and when school sports were pretty much limited to gymnastics and basketball.  Now of course, women can and do play everything.  Without Trudy that happens much later than it did.

Trudy also has a compelling personal story that I think resonates with any reader.  She grew up in New York, the daughter of German immigrants and overcame anti-German prejudice in the wake of World War I to become arguably the most famous woman in the world.  At the same time, she was partially deaf, and was able to overcome that challenge.  Swimming the English Channel, while perceived to be somewhat commonplace today, is still extremely difficult – it was the first “extreme” sport.  More people have climbed Mount Everest than have swum the Channel, and most of those who try to swim the Channel fail.  In most years more people will succeed in climbing Everest than in swimming the Channel.   When I first began to research the book, that really, really surprised me, and made Trudy’s story even more compelling.

BB: Why isn’t Ederle remembered like Grange, Thorpe, Ruth and the other greats of the first great era of sports? For someone who had such a profound impact, why has her legacy faded?

GS:  Hopefully, my book will help rectify that, but there are several reasons.  Trudy herself soon discovered she just wasn’t cut out for the spotlight.  Within 48 hours of her return to the United States, where New York gave her an enormous ticker tape parade, she was in the fetal position in her bedroom, completely overwhelmed.  She was both slow and reluctant to “cash in” on her achievement.  Her attorney mis-managed her career, turning down easy money for a grueling vaudeville tour.  By the time that got going a male swimmer had broken her record, and a second female swam the Channel, which stole some of her thunder – the public began to think that swimming the Channel was far easier than it is, something that holds true today.  She also had increasing trouble with her hearing – she was partially deaf since a bout with the measles as a child, and that made her less comfortable in the public eye.  And few years after the swim she fell and was virtually bed-ridden for a time. And let’s face it, swimming simply isn’t a big spectator sport like football or baseball.

BB:  What is Ederle’s reputation in the world of women’s swimming? Is she properly recognized?

GS: Swimming historians certainly recognize her as one of the all-time greats, but in a sport like swimming, records have been broken so many times that it is difficult for any swimmer from her era to remain in the public eye.  Her only contemporary recognized b y the public today is Johnny Weissmuller, and that’s because of the Tarzan films.  But in the world of swimming, she has to rank as one of the top seven or eight swimmers of all-time.  No one else combined her success at shorter distances with open water success, and in the world of open water swimming, I think she’s right at the top.  Anyone who has ever swum the Channel, or thought about it, knows about her.

BB:  How did Ederle manage to beat the existing time of swimming the channel by such a great margin? That seems almost inconceivable.

GS:  There are a couple of reasons.  For one, she used a stroke known then as the “American Crawl” essentially what most people recognize as the “freestyle” today.  Her coach with the Women’s Swimming Association was one of the strokes pioneers and its greatest advocate. And although it had been used for about two decades, no one believed it could be used for long distance swimming – it was thought to be too demanding, physically.  Long distance swimmers usually used the breast stroke at the time, with occasional use of the side-stroke and trudgeon.  The crawl was much faster, and Handley recognized that women in general, and Trudy in particular, although not as strong as a man, had just as much stamina.  She was the first swimmer to use the stroke in the Channel, and proved the superiority of the stroke.  Secondly, her trainer for the Channel swim, William Burgess, was a real student of the Channel currents and tides, and he found a somewhat new route across that was something of a breakthrough.  Also, before Trudy most of the people who tried to swim the Channel simply were not great swimmers.  They had great stamina, and desire, but as swimmers were rather pedestrian.  Trudy was world class at every distance from fifty yards on up.  She was simply a far, far, far better swimmer than anyone else who had swam the Channel before.  For a swimmer of her ability to take on the Channel would be the equivalent of Michael Phelps to do so today – if he had her stamina.  And lastly, while Trudy was growing up she spent summers in Highlands, New Jersey, where she spent hours and hours swimming in the ocean.  She developed a very special relationship with the water, once saying “To me, the sea is like a person – like a child that I’ve known a long time. It sounds crazy, I know, but when I swim in the sea I talk to it. I never feel alone when I’m out there.”  When she was swimming, she was in her place, right where she wanted to be, and where others found only torture, she found joy, and when you love what you do, well, there are no limits.

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How did the individual All-Stars do in last night’s 4-3 American League victory? SI.com asked me to grade the players. I gave Derek Jeter a B-, Mark Teixeira a C-, and Mariano Rivera part of the AL bullpen’s collective A+. See the rest here.