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It Happens Every Spring
DiMaggio, Mays, the Splendid Splinter, & a Lifetime at the Ballpark
By Ira Berkow Triumph Books LLC
Copyright © 2017 Ira Berkow
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63319-758-9
CHAPTER 1
HEADLINERS
The President Appears at a Ballgame
July 28, 2015
On Thursday, June 17, 2010, I was having lunch in a restaurant near my home in Manhattan with Bill Marovitz, a friend from Chicago, where I was born and raised. Marovitz, of medium build and with a thick thatch of sandy hair, is a former Illinois state senator and possesses a broad smile that surely helped him get elected several times in his Gold Coast district of lakefront Chicago. Marovitz is friends with Jerry Reinsdorf, principal owner of the Chicago White Sox, and the Chicago Bulls. When Marovitz was in the state senate, in 1988, he co-sponsored a bill to keep the White Sox in Chicago rather than, as team ownership threatened, to have the franchise moved to Tampa–St. Petersburg unless it would get a tax break on building a new ballpark. Marovitz was the political face of the bill, appearing on television on numerous occasions and being quoted in newspapers with, "Let's keep the White Sox where they belong, in Chicago. What's it say about a city that can't keep a valuable franchise like this big-league ballclub?"
And Marovitz meant it. He is a fervent sports fan, especially when it comes to the White Sox. (He had even been known to attend a play in a downtown theater while listening to a Sox game with a transistor radio earpiece glued to his ear.) And the bill allowing the use of public funds passed, narrowly, enabling the White Sox to build and finance their present ballpark, U.S. Cellular Field, across 35 Street from old Comiskey Park (now a parking lot). The passing of that bill most surely had something to do with Reinsdorf later smiling when Marovitz would come into his view. And they became very friendly.
"I'm going to D.C. tomorrow," Marovitz was now saying to me. "Strasburg is pitching against the White Sox tomorrow night and Jerry'll be there in a suite." Stephen Strasburg was the new pitching phenom for the Washington Nationals. "Why don't you join us? It'll be great."
"He invited you?" I said.
"Sure."
"I'd love to see Strasburg pitch, but if I'm going to sit in Reinsdorf's box, maybe you should ask him if it's okay. If it's not I still have my Lifetime Baseball Writer's card. I'll go down with you and sit in the press box. Been there before."
"No, I'll call Jerry. It'll be fine. I'll let him know you're coming with me."
In my 26 years as a sports columnist for The New York Times (retired in 2007), a writer for the paper wouldn't want to be caught dead — even worse, alive — in the suite or box of an owner of a team you were covering. It would have the odor of non-objectivity, of being bought off for a chance to hobnob with the swells, something that one could never be accused of while ensconced in the press box. A stringent policy against cozying up — or appearing to cozy up — to Movers and Shakers had been laid down for years by Times editors. I'd been gone from the paper for three years now, and, yes, career experiences are hard to shake, but I considered myself a free agent, and decided to take up Reinsdorf's — and Bill's — offer.
I had known Jerry Reinsdorf for 30 years, and had a good journalistic relationship with him. As for Strasburg, this would be only his third game in the major leagues. In the previous two games, starting both, he had struck out a total of 22 batters — a record start for a pitcher. Some baseball pundits were calling him the next Bob Feller or Bob Gibson, Hall of Fame fireballers. June 18 would be his second start in a home game. Like most baseball fans, Reinsdorf — who would be given a suite and adjoining box by the Nationals as is a league courtesy to a visiting team's owner — was surely eager to see the 21-year-old Strasburg pitch — and now the heralded rookie was going up against his team.
On the morning of June 18, Bill Marovitz and I met at Penn Station on Seventh Avenue and we took the Acela train to Washington, checking the newspapers for late news on the game and on Strasburg — and the weather. We had no need for rain.
As the train whizzed along through the New Jersey countryside and past towns that emerged however briefly outside the car window, I'm sure we talked about the previous two outings of Strasburg, the No. 1 pick in the major-league draft of 2009, who was a pitching marvel at San Diego State and in a brief minor-league career. In his major-league debut on June 8, 10 days before Bill and I boarded our train to Washington, Strasburg had struck out 14 Pittsburgh Pirates — including every batter in the starting lineup — only one strikeout short of the record for a rookie debut. His fastball was clocked as high as an astounding 100 mph. Strasburg's second outing five days earlier, against Cleveland, was only a bit less impressive, eight strikeouts in 5? innings. His won-lost record was now 2–0. "He was," wrote Sports Illustrated, "the most hyped and closely watched pitching prospect in major-league history." Perhaps an exaggeration, but name one pitcher more hyped and more closely watched. As I recall, the conversation went something like this:
"Doc Gooden of the Mets?" said Bill.
"Not quite like this in his first games, I don't think," I said.
"Bob Feller?"
"No TV in his day. And he played for Cleveland, not a big national newspaper story, either."
"Christy Mathewson?"
"Hardly even radio in his time. And the telegraph wouldn't have done the trick. When was the Pony Express, anyway?"
And thus the train rattled on to D.C. Trenton came and went. So did Philadelphia and Wilmington.
"Do you think Obama might show up for the game?" Bill mused. "He's a great White Sox fan, and a great baseball fan."
"Great sports fan. He loves basketball, still plays. I have friends who played with him at the East Bank Club."
"I worked out there with him — in the weight room! When he was in the Illinois Senate."
"Well, in basketball, a friend who has played with him there said that they close off the court and if you guard him too closely the Secret Service guys run out and push you back."
"Hadn't heard that," said Marovitz, with a chuckle. "Funny thing, when Obama was asked to throw out the first ball at the All-Star Game in St. Louis last year, MLB wanted him to wear a Cardinals jacket. He refused."
"Refused?"
"Yeah, he insisted on wearing a White Sox jacket. And that's what he wore."
"I remember him wearing the jacket."
"He threw out the first pitch at the Nationals opener in April, and wore the Nationals jacket — but he wore his White Sox cap — he had hid it in his glove."
"Doesn't give up."
"But I'll bet he's as curious about Strasburg as everyone else," said Bill. "Hey, Reinsdorf's even coming in from Chicago for the game."
"So?"
"So if Obama's in town I'd bet he'd give it serious thought. Jerry told me that he invited him to the game but doesn't know if he'd come."
"But he is kinda busy these days — dealing with the world ..."
"You never know," said Marovitz.
"That would be something," I said. Years later, I learned that Secret Service had checked out the stadium a week prior to the game just in case the President was able to make it.
Bill had known Obama for several years. Besides having worked out with him, he had also organized a fundraiser for him at the Park West concert hall in Chicago when Obama was running for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, in 2004, and elicited entertainers like Stevie Wonder and Robin Williams to perform. Marovitz acted as master of ceremonies for the event.
We rumbled out of a stop in Baltimore and very soon we were at Union Station, D.C. Bill and I made our way through the throngs, caught a cab to our hotel, dropped off our stuff, freshened up, and at around 4:30 caught the Metro subway Green Line to Nationals Park and the first pitch of the game, which would be with Strasburg on the mound in the top of the first inning, scheduled for 7:05.
As we emerged from the train station, it was still rather early for the game but we saw despite that that traffic was heavy around the park. It was a beautiful, balmy night. In the twilight of a clear sky, with only a hint of twinkling stars, the stadium lights glowed in the distance. Bill and I flowed into the mostly shirt-sleeve crowd of fans, some topped by cherry-red Nationals caps with the letter "W" scripted on the front and others with cameras looped about their necks. There was a palpable anticipation. I imagine it's that way with aficionados in Madrid streaming to the Plaza de Toros to see the new hot toreador, or, in medieval times in England, a crush of nobles and vassals in sight of the castle battlements to check out the latest, greatest jousting knight. We walked the long block along Half Street to our destination.
As we got closer, a bright red sign on the façade came into view:Nationals Park. Beyond it, a portion of the blue-seat upper decks seemed beckoning. To the left was the center-field scoreboard, a kind of colossus. Bill and I turned left on N Street to the Will Call window, and picked up our tickets, the tops of which read Natstown, and below that, under Row, it stated Lincoln Suite II. I still carried my Baseball Writer's card in my pocket just in case there was a problem, and I'd simply repair to the press box, if need be.
At the elevator to the luxury suites we ran into Jerry Reinsdorf, waiting to ascend. Reinsdorf seemed pleased to see us. "Great night for a game," he said greeting us, his voice gentle, though a bit raspy. His graying hair was combed in a boyish wavelet at the top of his high forehead, his eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses were direct. He carried a slight paunch. Reinsdorf had been a powerful voice among the owners, most notably in toppling then commissioner Fay Vincent and elevating Bud Selig to the post. Reinsdorf can be sentimental to his roots, which are in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Though he left Brooklyn to attend Northwestern University Law School and remained in Chicago and amassed a fortune in real estate, he has hung on the walls of his Chicago office photographs of Flatbush's long-gone Ebbets Field. Reinsdorf also can be self-deprecating: some 20 years earlier we had gone to dinner in Chicago and went to his private club. I had insisted on paying, since the Times policy was to foot the bill at all times, if possible, but this was his private club and he would just sign the bill, so I'd have to take a rain check on buying him dinner. He hadn't made a reservation and asked the tuxedoed maître d' if he had a table. "Of course, sir," the man said, "right this way." "It's amazing," Reinsdorf whispered to me as we walked, "the influence you can have if you happen to know Michael Jordan." Reinsdorf, after all, was the owner of the basketball team in Chicago that Air Jordan played for.
Both Reinsdorf and Marovitz wore sport jackets with shirts open at the collars. I wore just a long-sleeve shirt, no jacket, and so was, for a sportswriter, even a former one, under-dressed, I felt, though not quite as rumpled as, say, The Odd Couple's Oscar Madison.
At the door to the second-tier suite, we were met by two well-built men in business suits who were checking IDs, and with a list of names on clipboards. "Odd, they aren't your conventional ushers," I thought. "Is this how suites work?" Inside were hot plates with a variety of food and drinks and an assortment of people as well, including the mustachioed David Axelrod, the senior adviser to President Obama, and who was friendly with Reinsdorf and obviously now a guest of his. I had met Axelrod several months earlier, when my wife and I were invited to his office in the White House, following an exchange of emails. We had a Chicago political connection of sorts — he being a political consultant in the city and I was the son of a former Chicago precinct captain under the first Mayor Daley. We had a newspaper connection, as well, since he had been a political columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He was also a baseball fan, a season-ticket holder with the Cubs, but he also followed the White Sox and was a basketball fan, like his boss in the Oval Office. On a shelf in his office Axelrod proudly displayed a basketball signed by Bill Russell who rarely signed autographs, but did for Axelrod when the former Boston Celtic great had been honored at the White House. This autograph read simply, Yo David. Bill Russell.
There was some small talk: I remember Axelrod asking Reinsdorf if the Bulls had a chance to land LeBron James, then a free agent from the Cleveland Cavaliers. Reinsdorf said that he and a few members of the Bulls had gone to Akron, LeBron's hometown, to try to lure him to Chicago. "I don't think we persuaded him," said Reinsdorf. I was about to say something when Axelrod put his hand on my arm. "Wait," he said, with a smile, "this might be breaking news!" Reinsdorf continued, "But I think he's going to stay with the Cavs." It turned out that Reinsdorf was only half right about LeBron — no Bulls and no Cavs, either; James, of course, signed with the Miami Heat.
It was getting close to game time. Most of us walked out from a door of the glass-enclosed suite and into the box. Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, and Janet Napolitano, then the Homeland Security Secretary, remained in the suite for much of the game, as I recall. Reinsdorf did as well — and almost never sat down while nervously rooting for his team.
Rendell, Reinsdorf, and Napolitano were talking about sports broadcasters. "All they do is talk about the obvious, work a few hours and then are off," said Reinsdorf, with a laugh.
"Gee, sounds like a great job," said Napolitano, "how can I get a job like that?"
Axelrod; a man named Eric Whitaker, a long-time friend of Axelrod's; Ken Williams, White Sox general manager; Marovitz and I took our seats, which were located on the third-base side of the field. All of us were surely guests of the owner, and baseball fans. For whatever reason, I thought nothing more of it. There were two rows of cushioned seats, 14 in each row. We all sat in the second row. Axelrod sat to my left and Marovitz to my right, at the left side of the row of seats, with several seats empty to the right. Just below us over the railing was the grandstand, now mostly filled with the baseball fans nestling into their seats — attendance would be listed at 40,325, nearly capacity — only soon to stand again for the national anthem (Jerry Krause, the former general manager of Reinsdorf's Bulls, once told me that if he were to write a book of his experiences, he'd title it Ten Thousand National Anthems).
Beyond those fans just below us was the lush green and clean tan of the ballfield, the stark white bases seemingly popping up like mushrooms on the base paths, the ballplayers trotting out to take their positions, and beyond that the bleachers and the hulking center-field scoreboard that nearly seemed out of place in this otherwise serene setting.
On the mound now taking his warmup tosses was the swiftly acclaimed rookie Strasburg, a strapping 6-foot-4 right-hander, throwing in a sweeping overhand motion, and looking quite cool as his pitches popped into the catcher's mitt. His red cap was tugged low, his red jersey top bore the number 37, his white knickers were tucked just below his knee and thus showed his long red stirrup socks. From my vantage point, I could also make out a clump, as it were, of facial hair clinging to his chin — perhaps a proud symbol of maturity for someone who was not considerably past voting age.
The White Sox, however, seemed not as altogether taken with Strasburg as was the local fandom, to say nothing of the rest of the country. Juan Pierre, Chicago's speedy leadoff batter, managed a slow roller to the first baseman, with Strasburg a little slow coming off the mound to cover first base for the toss. Base hit. Pierre was followed in the lineup by shortstop Omar Vizquel, who — a right-handed batter swinging late on a sizzling fastball — promptly lifted a bloop to right that wound up a double. Pierre stopped at third. Strasburg tugged again at his cap, kicked a little dirt around the mound in apparent slight frustration, and then got Alex Rios, next up, to ground out weakly to first, but Pierre scored. Vizquel made it to third, but went no farther as Strasburg struck out the next two batters. The crowd clamorously expressed its approval. However, despite no solid blows by Chicago, Strasburg's team was behind 1–0 before it even came to the plate. On first sight, though — and in the first inning — it certainly appeared that Stephen Strasburg had a million-dollar arm — actually, $2 million, which was his salary for the 2010 season.
It was around this time that there was a sudden murmur in our box and we looked up to see coming through the door and down the few steps a tall, light-skinned black man in a black-and-white White Sox cap, a white short-sleeve shirt, blue jeans, and white sneakers — followed by two young girls. It was the President of the United States and his daughters, 11-year-old Malia and nine-year-old Sasha.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from It Happens Every Spring by Ira Berkow. Copyright © 2017 Ira Berkow. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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