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. …
Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game
Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game transports us onto diamonds and into dugouts on the other side of the globe, where the vigorous sportsmanship of the game and the impassioned devotion of its fans transcend cultural and geographic borders and prove that baseball is fast becoming an international pastime. Called Yakyu, baseball has been played in Japan since the 1890s but has only recently gained a substantial global following. Robert K. Fitts chronicles the nation's distinctive version of the sport as recounted by twenty-five of its players. Fitts's careful choice of subjects represents the experiences of a mix of American and Japanese players - including stars, titleholders, and members of the Japanese Hall of Fame. Informal, candid, and remarkably specific, these recollections describe teammates and opponents, corporate owners and loyal fans, triumphs and frustrations, collectively capturing all the spirit and emotion engendered by the game from decidedly personal vantage points. Throughout, readers glimpse the unique traits of baseball in Japan and discern how the game has evolved since its inception as well as how it differs from its American counterpart. An unparalleled introduction for an American audience, Remembering Japanese Baseball is augmented by photos of its twenty-five interviewees and a timeline demarking milestone moments in the game's Japanese history. Robert Whiting, author of You Gotta Have Wa! and The Meaning of Ichiro, provides the foreword.
CULTURE, SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND URBAN REGENERATION
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.