No origin story of the New York Mets is complete without Ed Kranepool. The lefty first baseman known as "Steady Eddie" made his major-league debut at age 17 during the team's inaugural season and would eventually depart, nearly two decades later, with his name written throughout the franchise's record books. In this definitive autobiography, Kranepool shares a remarkable life story, including early years playing stickball in the streets of the Bronx, the growing pains the Mets endured as an expansion club, his offseasons working as a New York stockbroker, and of course the miracle 1969 season that ended in an unforgettable World Series victory. He also opens up about the personal miracle which came 50 years after that famous championship: a lifesaving kidney transplant made possible by a Mets fan donor. A month after the surgery, Kranepool threw out the first pitch at Citi Field and boldly offered his services as a pinch hitter. Affable, open, and brimming with knowledge of the game, this thoroughly New York tale will delight baseball fans in Queens and beyond.
This issue of The National Pastime is dedicated to baseball in Houston since 1961. Each annual issue of TNP has centers on the geographic area of SABR’s national convention summer site. In 2014 the convention took place in Houston, Texas. The local chapter (named for former Houston Astro Larry Dierker) produced a coffee-table book cover HOUSTON BASEBALL up to 1961, so this issue of The National Pastime focuses on the space age and the arrival of Major League Baseball in the region. So here we have a special issue centered almost entirely on the Houston Astros (né Colt .45s) and their two influential and iconic homes, short-lived Colt Stadium and the Astrodome. The Houston MLB franchise has amassed more than its share of history in the five-plus decades since their launch. A well-worn adage is “everything is bigger in Texas,” and that certainly applies to the role of the Astrodome in pop culture, and to the outsize personality of team owner Roy Hofheinz, who was one part P.T. Barnum, two parts George Steinbrenner, and all Texan. If you weren’t able to attend the convention in Houston, please enjoy reading this issue of The National Pastime as your virtual trip to “Space City” in the Lone Star State will employ seventeen SABR members as your tour guides: Contents Introduction by Cecilia Tan Houston’s Role in the Initiation of Sunday Night Baseball by Bill McCurdy Movies, Bullfights, and Baseball, Too: A Sports Stadium Built for Spectacle First and Sports Second by Eric Robinson Wooing Women Fans:The Houston Astros by Will Flaherty The Colt .45s and the 1961 Expansion Draft by Stephen D. Boren and Eric Thompson Dick “Turk” Farrell: Houston’s First All-Star by Ron Briley The 1963 Pepsi Cola Colt .45s Baseball Card Set by Charles Harrison Astros 1, Mets 0: Almost Three Games in One by John McMurray The 1968 All-Star Game by Brendan Bingham The Saga of J.R. Richard’s Debut: Blowing Away 15 Sticks at Candlestick by Dan VanDeMortel From the Gashouse to the Glasshouse: Leo Durocher and the 1972–73 Houston Astros by Jimmy Keenan There Used to Be a Big Dome by Francis Kinlaw Houston’s Fallen Star: Don Wilson by Matthew M. Clifford Rainout in the Astrodome by Rick Schabowski Catching Rainbows and Calling Stars: Alan Ashby and the Houston Astros by Maxwell Kates The Greatest Game Ever Played? October 15, 1986 by Ron Briley The Houston Astros Hall of Stats by Adam Darowski Astrodome Proves to Be No Hitters Park by Paul Geisler Dome Attendance Below League Average by Paul Geisler
Hairs vs. Squares is an ode to an unforgettable season that began with the first major players' strike in the history of North American sports and ended with a record-setting World Series played by two of the game's greatest and most colorful dynasties. In a sign of the times it was Hippies vs. Hardhats, a clash of cultures with the hirsute, mod Mustache Gang colliding with the clean-cut, conservative Big Red Machine on the game's grandest stage. When the Oakland A's met the Cincinnati Reds in the 1972 Fall Classic, more than a championship was at stake. The more than two dozen interviews bring to life a time when controversy was commonplace, both inside and outside the national pastime. In baseball, Willie Mays was traded, Hank Aaron was chasing down Babe Ruth's home run record, and Dick Allen was helping to save the Chicago White Sox franchise while winning the American League's Most Valuable Player award. Outside the American pastime the war in Vietnam was raging, campus protests spread throughout the country, and Watergate and the Munich Olympics headlined the tumultuous year. The 1972 Major League Baseball season was marked by the rapid rise of rookies and young stars, the fall of established teams and veterans, courageous comebacks, and personal redemptions. Along with the many unforgettable and outrageous characters inside baseball, Hairs vs. Squares emphasizes the dramatic changes that took place on and off the field in the 1970s. Owners' lockouts, on-field fights, maverick managers, controversial trades, artificial fields, the first full five-game League Championship Series, and the closest, most competitive World Series ever, combined to make the 1972 season as complex as the social and political unrest that marked the era.
Baseball and law have intersected since the primordial days. In 1791, a Pittsfield, Massachusetts, ordinance prohibited ball playing near the town's meeting house. Ball games on Sundays were barred by a Pennsylvania statute in 1794. In 2015, a federal court held that baseball's exemption from antitrust laws applied to franchise relocations. Another court overturned the conviction of Barry Bonds for obstruction of justice. A third denied a request by rooftop entrepreneurs to enjoin the construction of a massive video screen at Wrigley Field. This exhaustive chronology traces the effects the law has had on the national pastime, both pro and con, on and off the field, from the use of copyright to protect not only equipment but also "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" to frequent litigation between players and owners over contracts and the reserve clause. The stories of lawyers like Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Branch Rickey are entertainingly instructive.
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