Horace Stoneham and the Breaking of Baseball’s Second Color Barrier
Baseball history has not been kind to Horace Stoneham.(1) The owner of one of the most storied major-league franchises during a time when New York dominated the baseball world, who shocked that world when he moved his team to California in 1958, he has become nonetheless almost a forgotten man by those who chronicle the game. On those rare occasions when he is mentioned, it is usually to underscore his reputation as a hard-drinking, friendly yet plodding owner whose shortcomings prevail over his strengths, rather than to comment on his achievements or contributions to the game.(2) The course of this reception runs in large part because of Stoneham's personality A shy and reticent type, he never sought the public stage as did his fellow owners at the time; Jacob Ruppert, Larry MacPhail, Branch Rickey, and Walter O'Malley were outgoing men at ease with writers and journalists. For most baseball historians, Stoneham was affable but uninteresting, someone playing second or third fiddle in the music of New York City baseball, behind the Yankees and the Dodgers. Once he came to San Francisco, his Giants always seemed to finish second best, usually to the Dodgers, who, along with Walter O'Malley, became the darlings of the West Coast media.(3) The last thorough discussion of Stoneham as a baseball man was written over thirty-five years ago by Roger Angell, when he paid a visit to Candlestick Park in 1975, Stoneham's last year as the owner of the San Francisco Giants. Aware that after fifty-seven years of family ownership Stoneham was selling the team (indeed, the chief reason for the writer's visit), Angell views him rather nostalgically, as if granted a fleeting glimpse of a vanishing species, "the last of the pure baseball men, the owners who owned nothing but their team and cared for nothing but the game.'(4) Angell's account is largely an affectionate one, stressing Stoneham's congenial company, his shy somewhat reclusive nature, his well-known kindness and generosity, his sentimentality and loyalty toward his players and those who work in the franchise's organization, and above all else, his deep love for baseball history, especially the Giants' history, evident in his extraordinary recall of past games and previous greats, such as John McGraw, Frank Frisch, Mel Ott, and Carl Hubbell. Once the regular season started, Stoneham rarely missed a Giants home game but never ventured onto the field or into the clubhouse, preferring instead the isolation of his centerfield office in the Polo Grounds or his solitary perch in Candlestick Park's owner's box, high above the action, which is where he sat on the day of Angell's visit, reminiscing about the game he was leaving.(5) In his focus on Stoneham's character and personality, Angell follows the lead of Bill Veeck, a former baseball owner who dealt with Stoneham on many schemes and transactions. Veeck's portrait of Stoneham, different from Angell's in its sarcastic and irreverent slant, appeared almost ten years earlier in 1966 and portrays the Giants owner as one of the shrewdest operators in the game. Veeck was characteristically blunt in his assessment of Stoneham. "The two men I least cared to match myself against during my days of free wheeling hustling were Branch Rickey and Horace Stoneham."(6) Veeck catalogues Stoneham's many victims, himself included, who have wandered into negotiations with Stoneham, hoping to take advantage of his reputation as a notorious drinker and strip him of a player or two, only to end up drunk themselves, giving old Horace exactly what he wanted all along.(7) In 1958, according to Veeck, Phillies general manager Roy Hamey talked Stoneham into trading Ruben Gomez for the journeyman Jack Sanford, not knowing that Stoneham had lost faith in Gomez as a starter and had secretly yearned for a stalwart right-handed pitcher like Sanford. Sanford went on to great things for San Francisco, including winning twenty-four games in their pennant year of 1962; Gomez, on the other hand, won only three games and lost eight between 1959 and 1962. …
After Many a Summer
A comic tale of a scientist who, in attempting to prolong human life by artificial means, is confronted by a bicentenarian whose own experiments tell him all he needs to know and more. The author also wrote "Eyeless in Gaza" and "Time Must Have a Stop".
SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND URBAN REGENERATION DUMITRESCU
Concerns about the conflict between economy, development on one hand and urban cultural heritage on the other hand, have made the urban development to be lately one of the most important themes at European level. Also, another issue of concern is social equity, aiming to strike a balance between economic development and equal access to culture for all generations of inhabitants of urban communities. Basically, ensuring these balances between urban cultural heritage, economy and social equity we express the essence of the concept of sustainable development from the perspective of culture. Urbanization is an ongoing process in all the cities of the world, but urban cultural heritage is a crucial element in the development of the cities and has an important impact over the quality of life of that community. Castles, churches, fortresses, squares and public buildings all contribute at the creating of the community history and of their characteristics.