Wanting Something Good

We are in a drought.  I’m not referring to the 100+ degrees outside…I’m referring to the shortage of news worthy of a smile.  We have a looming debt crisis in Washington and total gridlock from our elected officials.  We have rising unemployment and falling home prices.  Money is tight.  Even our weather forecast is full of misery.  We need something good, something positive.

Normally, we’d turn to sports to give us that shot in the arm.  But Maryland is sorely lacking ANY good sporting news.  The Orioles continue to struggle, the NFL is still without an agreement, the NBA has a lockout… and it goes on and on.  Marylanders are desperate for something good…so much so that Baltimore boasted the highest viewership for the Women’s World Cup.  I’m not saying the World Cup wasn’t exciting, but the lack of anything else positive suddenly made many of us instant fans.  We wanted…we needed something to cheer about.

It is a difficult time for Maryland sports fans.  But we can still make the most of it.  I just spent three days talking to Red Sox fans about Babe Ruth.  The nostalgia and history helped put a smile back on my face.  It could work for you, too.  If you are desperate for sports, now seems like a good time to visit the Babe Ruth Birthplace, the Sports Legends Museum or the Lacrosse Museum and Hall of Fame.  Come relive the exploits of the Bambino, Johnny Unitas, and Brooks Robinson.  Come relive the glory of the ’58 Game, the ’83 World Series or Michael’s Olympic gold!  Times are tough, but we’re all in this together.

Shawn Herne is the Chief Curator for the Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation, Inc.

How to Keep Score

I’ve been playing and coaching baseball and softball for more than fifty years now, and one of the absolute joys of the game is keeping score and compiling statistics. The different eras of baseball, after all, can be contrasted and compared better than any other sport, because of statistics.

In my basement you’ll find box after box crammed with scorebooks, and while they primarily serve as historic snapshots of by-gone games played by by-gone players, those books also vividly demonstrate that the standard guidelines for keeping score are more often than not replaced by abstract offerings from the mostly ignorant masses searching for ways to interpret and record what just happened on the field.

In amateur ball, the person responsible for scorekeeping may vary from inning to inning, game to game. And each scorekeeper, guaranteed, brings his or her special nuance to the page. To record an infield putout, for example, some game trackers use the conventional system wherein numbers are assigned to each defensive position. A 6-3 putout means the shortstop (6) fields a grounder and throws to first (3) for the out. But I’ve seen that same play recorded by letters: GO (groundout), S-1^st.

And while there are as many ways to keep score as there are scorekeepers, there’s something else going on that’s worth mentioning here. Scorekeeping seems to be going the way of the dinosaur. If I ask some of the young guys on our softball team to keep score, they look at me like I’ve got a hole in my head! They don’t know how. Go to an Orioles game and look around. Virtually no one keeps score any more. In the fifties, sixties and seventies, you went to the ball game, bought your game program with the scorecard, and kept score. I remember asking my father how to record tricky plays, over and over and over.

All of which leads me to announce that on Saturday, June 25, at 4pm at Sports Legends, we are going to have a program on how to keep score. Every MLB game is recorded by an official scorer provided by the home team. It is his job to keep score, rule on whether a play is a hit or error, and interpret the game according to official scorekeeping standards. Jim Hennemann is the Orioles official scorekeeper. Bill Stetka used to be. Both will be at Legends to discuss and demonstrate how to keep score…the right way.

But -guaranteed- they will tell you that even in their official capacity they still find ways to deviate from the norm, which makes every page of every scorebook a unique interpretation of another chapter of the greatest game ever invented, our national pastime.

Come on down to Legends; you’ll be glad you did.

Mike Gibbons is the executive director for the Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation, Inc.

“Killer” Harmon Killebrew, 1936-2011

Hall of Fame baseball great Harmon Killebrew passed away this week. His quiet, off-field demeanor was in direct contradiction to a menacing, aggressive plate presence that earned him the nickname “Killer.” Killebrew spent 22 seasons in the American League, all but the final year slugging and slashing away at the opposition under the auspices of the Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins. And during that time he did more than a little damage to my home town Baltimore Orioles.

In a 1991 interview, the “Killer” noted how much he loved to play at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. He said it was one of his favorite parks to hit in, despite “those darned white houses behind center field, which made seeing the ball difficult for day games, and some of the worst lighting in the league at night.” But hit he did against the orange and black, including the longest home run in the history of Memorial Stadium, a 471 foot blast over the hedge in left center off righty Milt Pappas on May 24, 1964!

But despite his prowess as one of the game’s all-time sluggers (573 homers), and a locker full of VIP credentials and awards, Harmon Killebrew will most likely be better remembered by those who knew him as a regular kind of guy, and as a real gentleman. He came to the Babe Ruth Birthplace twice, once in the early eighties and again to help commemorate the 100^th birthday of Ruth in 1995. On both occasions he seemed more intent on doing what he could to make our jobs as hosts easier than to be acknowledged for his superstar status.

One of the last times I saw “Killer” was at a Babe Ruth symposium at Hofstra University in the spring of 1995. The University had pulled out all the stops to put on a first rate event, and that included inviting in a full roster of Hall-of-Famers, including Killebrew, to talk about Ruth’s impact on the game.

The museum was represented by several staff and board members, and one morning, as we prepared to drive from the hotel to the symposium, Harmon knocked on the driver’s window and said, “Mind if I grab a ride?” Over the next few minutes we talked a little weather, a little politics, and maybe a little Babe Ruth. Just normal, everyday conversation, but with Harmon “Killer” Killebrew, Hall of Fame class of 1984…and one of the true gentlemen of the game.

See you out there,

Mike Gibbons

Mike Gibbons is the executive director for the Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation, Inc.

Our Native Game

As the MIAA High School lacrosse playoffs are about to begin and Baltimore is once again hosting the NCAA Lacrosse Championships at M&T Bank Stadium I thought it appropriate to dig up an old piece I wrote about the origins of the game. 

When I first moved to Maryland in 1996 I was surprised to discover the popularity of lacrosse in the Old Line State. I was even more shocked to learn that lacrosse was the state’s official team sport. For me, lacrosse was an Indian game. Growing up on an Indian reservation along the St. Lawrence River in northern New York and southern Quebec, lacrosse was everywhere. It was the game given to us by the Creator and played by my ancestors. It was played by friends and relatives on teams called the Akwesasne Thunder and the Warriors. It was our game and I’d never seen it played by anyone who didn’t look like me.

The exact origins of North America’s oldest game are not known. Each Indian tribe has a different story told in the oral tradition about how the game came into being. My people, the Mohawks of the Iroquois Confederacy, believed that lacrosse was given to us by the Creator through the prophet Handsome Lake. We called it Tewaarathon. It was believed the game was played for the Creator’s enjoyment. It was a means of giving thanks and showing respect.

The traditional game we played varied significantly from what lacrosse fans see today.  Field and team sizes were negotiated prior to competition by tribal elders. The rules required that both teams were equal in number.  One or two hundred playing players were not unusual. Field dimensions were also negotiated in advance. Some games involved players running for miles.  No player could touch the ball. Competition continued until three goals were scored by a single team.  Games could last for days.

The men playing the game were the tribe’s best. Players trained for weeks in preparation of a single game, building strength, controlling their diet, and imposing strict discipline to mind and body.  In the heat of battle, competition was fierce and bloody, bones were broken, lives were occasionally lost. All believed that the Creator was watching. No one wanted to be weak.  No one wanted to be disrespectful. The game was spiritual as much as it was athletic. 

This was the game the French missionaries witnessed when they first made contact with the Iroquois and Algonquin tribes in present day Canada. The earliest report came from Jean De Brebeuf, a Jesuit missionary who lived among the Hurons in the region around Montreal. Other missionaries expressed outrage over the spiritual significance of the game and frustration for their failure to stop it. 

But, despite the church’s opposition to the game, other non-Native people took notice. In 1834 a lacrosse exhibition was staged at Ville St. Pierre near Montreal by two seven-man teams made up of Mohawks from the Akwesasne and Kahnawáke communities. The spectators enjoyed the game. For the next several years teams of non-native players challenged Mohawk teams in competition. 

Then, in 1856, the evolution of lacrosse into its modern form began with the creation of the Montreal Lacrosse Club. This organization, along with others that soon followed, helped define the modern game with field dimensions, rules of play and equipment design. This game, unlike the Indian version, was based on passing and had no spiritual significance.  And, like baseball to the south, it was a club sport. By 1867, the year Canada was born, as many as eighty lacrosse clubs existed.

Exhibition games in the United States, Great Britain and Australia led to the formation of lacrosse clubs around the world. In 1877, Manhattan College and New York University staged the first intercollegiate game, which spurred other schools to add the sport to their athletic programs. The following year, it is believed, a track team from Baltimore witnessed a Fourth of July competition in Boston and brought it back to the Maryland.

But the spirit of goodwill generated by these exhibitions did not last. The first lacrosse rules book from 1867 stated “No Indian must play in a match for a white club, unless previously agreed upon.” In 1880, the National Lacrosse Association of Canada called for games to be played by amateurs and banned competition with anyone it considered “professional”. Since Indians charged spectators to cover their travel expenses, the latter were excluded from competition. One hundred years would pass before an Indian team participated in international competition. Racial segregation prevented most Indians from playing the game they introduced until 1990 when the Iroquois National Team played in the Lacrosse World Cup held in Australia. The team lost but at least they were able to compete.   

By the mid-twentieth century Indian lacrosse was evolving, too. Indian teams moved from the open outdoor fields to the indoor hockey arenas throughout Canada. It was the beginning of box lacrosse. Equipment was also changing. The lacrosse stick factories at Akwesasne (New York) produced the sticks used throughout the sport. Thomas Vennum, Jr, author of American Indian Lacrosse: Little Brother of War, estimates that, at its height of production, Akwesasne produced 97% of the world’s wooden lacrosse sticks. 

Indian lacrosse began as the Creator’s game. But as Christianity spread and the role of traditional beliefs diminished, lacrosse’s spiritual significance deteriorated. Today, with increased college enrollments, American Indian lacrosse players have begun to make their way on to college lacrosse teams. It is a different game from the one played by our ancestors. The rules have changed, the equipment has changed and the significance has changed, but at least it is still our game.

Shawn Herne is the Chief Curator for the Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation, Inc.

Babe Ruth Was More Than a Yankee!

One of the great challenges our institution faces is luring Baltimoreans to the Babe Ruth Birthplace. Ask them why they haven’t visited 216 Emory Street, “just a long fly ball from Camden Yards,” and they respond simply: Babe Ruth was a Yankee! And, indeed, for most baseball fans, local, national and international, Ruth was and remains the iconic pinstripe.

But that should not stop home town visitors from flocking to his Birthplace. Here’s why.

George Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth was born in southwest Baltimore, on the verge dividing Pigtown and Camden Yards, in 1895. He was raised on hardscrabble streets by hardworking parents who were so busy running their family saloon that they were forced to send their son to St. Mary’s Industrial School for a heavy dose of discipline, religion…and baseball.

Babe Ruth’s rags to riches story was emblematic of the turn-of-the-century Baltimore environment from which he sprouted. He was a tough kid from a tough town, but also from a community that cared enough to raise him right and let his extraordinary skills develop.

And keep this in mind. Babe Ruth, the Yankee, was discovered by Jack Dunn, owner and manager of the International League Baltimore Orioles, in 1913. Dunn signed Ruth to his first pro contract in 1914, and agreed to serve as the boy’s legal guardian to boot. That led to the ‘phenom from Pigtown’ being referred to as “Jack Dunn’s Baby” in spring training that year, which, a couple of months later, had shortened to “Babe.”

Please, Baltimore, be proud that the greatest ballplayer of all time and baseball’s greatest star is one of your own, and an Oriole to boot! Without his Baltimore beginnings, there would have been no New York end! Celebrate Babe Ruth, our most famous native son.

Mike Gibbons is the executive director for the Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation, Inc.

My First Love

I remember my first grand prix.  My family loaded up our 1974 Chevrolet Impala and drove the hour and a half to Montreal.  It was June 1984, and I was about to experience the Canadian Grand Prix at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.  I was 13 years old.

That first race changed me.  Like most teenage boys I loved cars.  The sounds, the smells and the speeds of these machines were enough to make a young man’s heart pound out of his chest.  It was a three day adrenaline rush unlike anything I’d ever experienced.  It wasn’t like my first kiss…it was better!  I instantly loved racing and everything that went with it. 

The trip to Montreal became an annual pilgrimage for my family.  I remember the car rides to and from the track.  I remember passing through the obscure border crossing at Trout River, New York; there were a few houses nearby, a building with a couple Canadian border agents and another with the American agents, nothing else.  I remember my mother telling the same story of how her grandmother and grandfather left Quebec to start a new life in northern New York State as we passed through their old hometown.  My brother and I would interrupt her midway through the story we’d heard countless times with embellished tales of my great-grandparents’ harrowing journey out of St. Martine, Quebec to a new life thirty miles away in Malone, New York.  We even took to calling the little town “our homeland” and “the old country.”  Mom did not appreciate our humor.

I remember the subway ride from the parking lot in the outskirts of Montreal to the racetrack on the island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River.  If we were late and the cars were already on the track we’d run to the subway, dragging lawn chairs, sunscreen, rain gear and coolers.  It was torture knowing the cars were out and we weren’t there to see them.  I remember my mother complaining that her “short legs” (she was 5’ but my brother and I teased her claiming she was 4’12”) couldn’t keep up with my father’s near sprint speed.  I remember the Metro ride in jammed packed subway cars with passengers decked out in their favorite team gear.  It was all so exciting!

And, of course, I remember the races.  I’ve seen many grand prix since that first one in Montreal.  But looking back I remember the moments with my family.  As an adult, I have a better appreciation of what it took to get a family of four there with a single income.  It was too expensive to stay in a hotel, too expensive to buy lunch at the track, andtoo expensive to keep hydrated with beer, water and soda.  We managed, though.   Mom packed lunches and snacks.  We lugged coolers of beer (lots of beer) and soda.  And we drove back and forth, all three days.  Dad allowed us one souvenir.  I still have most of them.

Most importantly, I remember good times with my family.  We created memories that will last a lifetime.  And this year we’ll do it again.  It won’t be Montreal, though.  It will be Baltimore. We won’t be dragging coolers of beer and sandwiches and we won’t be jammed packed in subway cars.  But Mom and Dad will make the 10 hour drive to Baltimore and we’ll enjoy another grand prix just as that thirteen year old boy did all those years ago.  We might even find a way to work a story about St. Martine into the weekend.

Shawn Herne is the Chief Curator for the Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation, Inc.