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Hot Stove League
WITH the advent of central heating, those big, cast, pot-bellied stoves disappeared from farmhouse kitchens, general stores and small town newspaper offices. There are darn few folks alive today who can remember toasting their feet by one of those monsters on a cold winter day. Thanks to some long-forgotten sports writer however, the phrase “hot stove league” is alive and kicking.
Months after the last World Series putout has been recorded, baseball aficionados still gather in family rooms, American Legion halls and neighborhood taverns to talk about their favorite sport. Although the snow is flying, the fans’ hearts are warm as they swap yarns, RBIs, ERAs, and predictions for next year’s pennant races. For the ajay diamond fan, there’s the added bonus of letters from addicts within the hobby. I’d like to use these pages to share some baseball comments I’ve received from my fellow ajays.
BASEBALL, they say, is a game of angles. Well, they have rounded off the corners so much the diamond is beginning to look like an oval. By angles, I don’t mean geometry. The game’s big appeal is the uncertainty of the outcome, an outcome which for decades was affected by the weather, the vagaries of sod and wind – variables injecting their own element into the X-factor.
Enter the era of roofs and rugs and controlled environment. Bad hops are as welcome as a case of AIDS. To add to the growing influx of seamless, sanitized and well-nigh characterless baseball, we now have the aluminum bat just over the horizon. End of broken bat bloopers. It is now used in spring training and everywhere else except the majors.
I predict the coming of the plastic or fiberglass ball. Winners will be selected by computer. It will still be called the great American pastime and “the game,” but it won’t be real baseball. – Alvin Fick
Get Your Baseball Here!
by Harriette Orbach
April!
Baseball begins
Game of skill, game of will
No other game changes each pitch, each hit
Baseball!
Summer!
Baseball matures.
Stats are met, stats broken
Game of skill renewing itself
Baseball!
Fall comes!
Stars born, stars fall
Game of will, strong, alive
Objectives achieved, World Series
Baseball!
Do I remember the Washington Senators in the World Series? It was the only World Series game I ever attended when Mel Ott hit a home run into the temporary bleachers in the old Griffith Stadium. One of my father’s friends got six tickets and I was a fortunate rider in his car to the game. I think the year was 1933 and I out of high school and without a job. I made my spending money with a Kelsey 5×8 press. – Harold Segal
THE pennant races will be approaching the halfway mark by the time this paper finally gets into the NAPA bundle. That’s the pace best understood by a baseball fan like Fred Liddle of Tampa, Florida 33806.