2021 Reading: Marquard & Seeley

 

Before Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez, even well before Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, there were notable romances involving baseball stars and talented women in show business. This is the story of one of those romances involving Rube Marquard, a star pitcher for the then-New York Giants and Blossom Seeley, a star of the vaudeville stage who was immensely popular in the 1910s and beyond. This very interesting book by Noel Hynd details the lives and scandalous affair that resulted in a brief marriage and a lasting friendship. 

Neither Marquard nor Seeley were using their original names by the time they became famous. Although there is some controversy about this (I will take Noel Hynd's word for it), Marquard started out in Cleveland, Ohio as Richard LeMarquis, son of a civil engineer who wanted no part of his son's baseball dreams. He later claimed to have changed his name to Marquard in order to play baseball. Blossom Seeley started life as Minnie Guyer in San Francisco in 1891. 

Seeley's road to stardom was smoother than Marquard's. A child star in her native city, she used her dancing and acting ability in addition to her big singing voice to belt out ragtime songs and made her way east via the vaudeville circuit. Upon arriving in New York she became a sensation. She also married her manager, Joe Kane. 

Marquard ran away from home to play baseball at age 16. Following an abortive trial with the Waterloo, Iowa club of the Iowa State League, he played semipro ball for an industrial league in Cleveland. Catching on with Indianapolis  of the American Association, he developed into a fine pitcher. The team's owner waited until Marquard's value was high enough to make selling his contract to a major league club most advantageous. A bidding war broke out in 1908 that the Giants won for $11,000. With an impressive fastball, the New York newspapers immediately dubbed him the "$11,000 Beauty", although his rookie salary was more like $800. Giants manager John McGraw made clear that the young prospect would spend most of his time initially sitting on the bench and observing the opposing hitters. In his first appearance of 1908 against Cincinnati, he hit the first batter he faced, walked the next two, and then gave up a grand slam. The loss marked his only decision of the season, and things were not much better in 1909, a year in which the Giants were a largely revamped club. Marquard posted a respectable 2.60 ERA and his record was an unimpressive 5-13. By the end of the 1910 season, the once highly-touted pitcher was reduced to a mop-up role in the bullpen and finished at 4-4 with a 4.46 ERA, and he was tagged "the $11,000 lemon". It all turned around in 1911 thanks to Marquard's work in the spring with pitching coach Wilbert Robinson (who is pictured at far left below, accompanied by manager John McGraw at center and long-time ace pitcher Christy Mathewson, at right in sweater, who was also Marquard's road roommate). 

 With an improved delivery and repertoire of pitches, Marquard posted a 24-7 record for the pennant-winning Giants. Greater things were in store in 1912 as the 25-year-old pitcher put together a record 19-game winning streak on his way to a 26-11 tally. Not only was this good for the Giants, it made Marquard a marketable offseason quantity on the vaudeville circuit. Handsome and more sophisticated than his nickname implied, he found himself teamed up with Blossom Seeley. The pairing blew up in the face of her manager/husband Joe Kane. Unhappy in her marriage, Seeley became involved with Marquard as more than a show business partner. The two were a hit on Broadway as Seeley performed a number called "The Marquard Glide". The pitcher held his own as a song and dance man. And off-stage scandal erupted as the aggrieved husband sought legal recourse for Marquard's alleged alienation of Seeley's affection, as opposed to his own abusive behavior toward her. A November trip to Atlantic City set off a bizarre series of events that could have come out of a movie comedy. Seeley's divorce from Kane was finalized early in 1913 and Marquard and Seeley went on tour, with Marquard making it clear that he expected a raise to $10,000 from the Giants for the next season. In California, with Seeley having become pregnant, the two married.    

Marquard signed with the Giants for less than $10,000, but still received a raise. As the Giants cruised to a third straight NL pennant, Marquard produced a 23-10 record and a 2.50 ERA. 

In August, the two became parents (the only time for either) to a son. The two returned to touring together in the fall of 1913, with critics panning Marquard's singing and dancing abilities as compared to those of his wife, although the duo remained popular with the public. 1914 proved to be a much more difficult year on the mound for Marquard, who went 12-22. As a result, he lost much of his drawing power as an entertainer, while Blossom's popularity remained high. The marriage began to unravel as Marquard suggested that she quit the stage and become a more traditional wife (it was truly a different time). Blossom stuck to her career, even if it meant parting company with her husband.

In the meantime, Marquard was also being courted by the new Federal League, a circuit that sought to lure talent away from the two existing leagues.  The Brooklyn franchise of the new league pursued Marquard, despite his off year in 1914. The pitcher was open to challenging baseball's reserve clause but ended up back with the Giants in 1915, where he had another uneven season until he was dealt to Brooklyn in August, which reunited him with Wilbert Robinson, his one-time pitching coach who now managed the Robins (which the Dodgers were called at that time due to their association with Robinson). 

With his marriage on the rocks and pitching for a new club, Marquard revived his career in 1916.  As a starter and sometime reliever, he posted a 13-6 record and 1.58 ERA for the pennant-winning Robins. The World Series against the Red Sox went less well, and an attempt to return to show business failed as well. Divorced from Blossom, his pitching career with Brooklyn continued effectively for several more seasons. 

As for Blossom, her career continued along successfully, and she found a new partner for her act, Benny Fields, who also became her third husband. Marquard and Seeley maintained a friendly correspondence following their failed marriage that lasted until her death in a New York City nursing home at age 82 in 1974. Marquard, whose major league baseball career ended in 1925, married twice more and remained a popular interview subject long after his playing days had ended. Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971, he lived until 1980 when he died at age 93.

As Noel Hynd aptly pointed out, the two of them belonged to a past that has largely faded away. Vaudeville is long gone, as are baseball's New York Giants, who departed for San Francisco following the 1957 season. What remains is their story, so well told in this slender volume. The background information, as well as their story, could be of interest to people intrigued by cultural or entertainment history in addition to baseball fans.  

 

2021 Reading, How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed

 

This is a serious work of history, well researched and written by Thomas W. Gilbert, a Brooklyn-based baseball author. Not only does he blow much of the mythology surrounding baseball's origins out of the water, he also tells a lot about the history of New York City and the manner in which the United States developed socially and economically in the nineteenth century. I already knew that General Abner Doubleday did not invent the game. But I had believed that Englishman Alexander Cartwright (one of many bogus "fathers of baseball") had played a key role in baseball's development, which is not true. Nor is it true that baseball descended from the British games of cricket and rounders. While it has been a nice thing for Cooperstown, New York to host the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the true birthplace of baseball is New York City, with a major assist from Brooklyn. Hoboken, New Jersey, gets in on the action, due to it having contained the Elysian Fields, a popular resort area for mid-19th century New Yorkers where New York-based baseball clubs went to play. 

The man pictured above is Henry Chadwick, a transplanted Englishman who wrote about baseball, although he preferred cricket, and was a pioneering baseball statistician. He is among those who have been called "the father of baseball", although he certainly didn't invent the game by any stretch of the imagination. He was quick to question the Doubleday founding myth, although he mistakenly considered baseball to be descended from rounders. 

There are many other popularly believed myths about baseball's founding and early years that are shattered in this book. The Knickerbockers of New York were not the first organized club, and the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings were not the first to use paid players. Other than the variation on the name, the modern Reds are in no way related to the 1869 team. 

Charging admission to baseball games came about as a result of the early contests between clubs from Brooklyn and New York, which created fan interest. James Creighton, a Brooklyn pitcher, became baseball's first major star during the amateur era.

Utilizing a unique delivery, in keeping with the rules at the time, Creighton was highly successful until his untimely death at age 21. Like many of the baseball players of the mid-nineteenth century, he also played cricket. 

The so-called "New York game" followed the railroads and mercantile routes to become America's national game, pushing aside cricket and local bat-and-ball variations like "town ball". Philadelphia and Washington were fairly quick to adopt baseball, but Boston and eastern Massachusetts stuck with their local game for several more years. 

Where did the Doubleday myth come from, you might ask? It was a product of the Mills Commission that was created by baseball pioneer and sporting goods manufacturer Albert Spalding (pictured above) in 1905 with the goal of determining baseball's origins and proving that it was not derived from rounders, as Henry Chadwick had written in an article. The commission concluded that Doubleday invented the game in Cooperstown, New York in 1839. The commission-ratified myth became the officially-sanctioned story (taking on the mantle of holy writ, which is often similarly nonsensical, and like this myth, is no longer believed by knowledgeable people today). But the important thing is that the myth is a myth, or as author Gilbert terms it, bullshit. 

This book exposes lots of myths and bullshit. It is also an excellent read and very informative about baseball and America during the sport's early years.  

2021 Reading, 1964 The Greatest Year in the History of Japan: How the Tokyo Olympics Symbolized Japan's Miraculous Rise From the Ashes

 

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were the first Summer Olympic Games that I can remember (although they were held in October). Names like Billy Mills and Bob Hayes first entered my awareness. This interesting book with a rather overblown title by journalist and author Roy Tomizawa, places those Olympic Games within the context of Japan's rise from World War II defeat 19 years before. Tomizawa sets the scene very adroitly and fills his chapters with vignettes about various participants and their stories. One of the most interesting pertains to Yoshinori Sakai, who is pictured at right carrying the Olympic flame into the stadium. He was born in Hiroshima on the day the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945 and was dubbed "Atomic Bomb Boy" by the press. His presence caused some discomfort to the Americans and was viewed as a surprisingly bold move by the Japanese organizers. 

There are other brief discussions pertaining to aspects of Japanese culture that had arisen following the war such as the Godzilla movies and songs like the misnamed Sukiyaki, which was a hit in the US, and Konichiwa Akachan. 

And then there were the athletic events, some of which brought disappointment to the Japanese, such as the defeat of Akio Kaminaga in the open weight judo final by Dutchman Anton Geesink. 

There was also the triumph of the Japanese women's volleyball team, pictured below with their controversial hard-driving coach Hirobumi Daimatsu, a veteran of World War II who was criticized for his harsh methods in molding the so-called "Oriental Witches" (not a name that would be considered appropriate today) to championship form.

The book isn't exclusively about the Japanese, who were very eager to please as they hosted the games, and drew praise for their hospitality. There is also the story of Australian swimming legend Dawn Fraser (pictured below), who overcame personal tragedy to add to her collection of medals earned at Melbourne in 1956 and Rome in 1960.  

And there was Ethiopian Abebe Bikila, who had won the 1960 Olympic marathon (a male-only event at that time) running barefoot through the streets of Rome, and repeated as marathon champion in Tokyo while shod (pictured below).

The battle in the marathon was for silver, where Japan's Kokichi Tsuburaya (#77 below) was overtaken by Britain's Basil Heatley (#8, on the right) in the final stretch, which proved to be another disappointment for the host country.

There was also American swimmer Dick Roth (pictured below) who battled an attack of appendicitis (he chose to delay surgery so he could compete) to win the men's 400-meter medley event in record time.

Native American runner Billy Mills (pictured below) pulled off a stunning upset to win gold in the men's 10,000 meter race. Mills had a difficult road to Olympic glory and his story is one of perseverance and triumph over prejudice.

It was no upset when American sprinter Bob Hayes (pictured below) won gold in the men's 100-meter race in world record time. The interesting part of the story is that he was wearing borrowed shoes. He was back in his own shoes when he won a second gold medal as anchor of the men's 4X100-meter relay team. "The World's Fastest Human" went on to become a star wide receiver with the NFL's Dallas Cowboys.

There are other stories of victory, defeat, and human drama recounted concisely and interestingly throughout this book. There is also a good discussion of the Paralympics and how those held in 1964 had a positive effect on attitudes toward disabled people in Japan. It is very worthwhile reading for sports fans, like me, who enjoy the Olympics. But there is plenty of material that readers less interested in sports can enjoy.