The white man who broke MLB's color barrier

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I’ll be taking our 10-year-old to the 12:30 Pirate game today because it’ll simultaneously allow me to achieve two things foremost to my existence: one, have fun; two, brainwash my offspring into believing the old man was once wise and nimble-minded.

It’s easy for me to do today because I’m a student of the game.

I’ll tell Lucy stories of Pirate greats Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell and Honus Wagner and, of course, Jackie Robinson, eternally famous for breaking baseball’s color barrier.

The story of the hallowed Robinson is why I’m chagrinned I’ll be able to relate so little about forgotten Eddie Klep.

Eddie Klep was the Jackie Robinson of baseball 11 months before Jackie Robison became famous for being Jackie Robinson.

Klep broke the color barrier by being the first white to play in the Negro Leagues. 

It happened May 29, 1946, when he pitched seven innings for the Cleveland Buckeyes in what many sources say was an 8-6 win over the Chicago American Giants.

And that’s about the only relevant thing I know about this pale pioneer.

Sadly, the only other thing I know is — God help us — his life story was sold to Adam Sandler’s film company.

So that means, perhaps, sometime in the next 10 years we’ll see an entire movie that’ll play out like the fish-out-of-water Dexter Lake Club scene from “Animal House.”

“Can we dance wit yo’ dates?”

I read about Klep, who died in ’81 at the age of 72, in my go-to source for baseball minutia: The “On This Day in Baseball” feature that runs in wee print on the days when there’s leftover room beneath the newspaper box scores.

Fun fact for Pirate fans: It was 37 years ago today MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti permanently banned Pete Rose for betting on baseball.

I don’t think Rose should be permanently banned for gambling. I think he should be banned for having one of the worst hair cuts of any public figure for the last four decades.

Fun fact for non-sports fans: Bart Giamatti, about whom there is much to admire, is the father of actor Paul Giamatti, about whom there is much to admire (loved him in “Sideways” from ’04).

So many questions about Klep, who was born in Erie in 1918.

Robinson was mercilessly heckled with white fans — and opposing teams — making monkey sounds and screaming the n-word.

Robinson took it all and kicked historic ass.

Did anyone heckle Klep? Was he treated differently? And was he any good?

Most sources I see say he was 1-0, which percentage-wise would make him one of the all-time greatest pitchers. 

But the encyclopedic BaseballReference.com says Klep lost his only game, which percentage-wise would make him one of the all-time worst pitchers and thus a suitable candidate to start for the Bucs from ’93 through ’12.

But what about the man?

Was he trying to make a civil rights statement? Did he feel he’d done something significant? Where his fans called Klep-to-maniacs?

It is said he died of alcoholism in 1981.

What drove this man to drink?

Was it fear he’d be remembered? Or fear he’d be forgotten?

I’ll bet I know.

He had a premonition one day someone like Adam Sandler would be primarily responsible for telling his life story.

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Random thoughts on race, "Three Dog Night" song "Black and White (From '14)

I played “Black and White” by Three Dog Night as soon as I got to my office today. It’s a good song, by a band that really doesn’t get their due as far as being  tuneful craftsman.

The song reached No. 1 in 1972 when many euphorically believed we were on the verge of an era when race issues no longer mattered.

It was written, I learned, in 1954 by David I. Arkin and Earl Robinson to commemorate the Brown v. Board of Education court decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools.

I have no way of knowing, but I’m going to as balm for my frazzled soul believe that Arkin was black and Robinson white.

It is contradictory for me to hate people who hate? Perhaps. I’m hating the blacks who are rioting in Ferguson and I’m hating the whites who are gloating that officer Darren Wilson isn’t going to be charged in the death of Michael Brown.

I have mixed feelings over the whole thing. On the one hand, I can understand blacks being outraged over yet another youth getting gun-downed by a white man who shoots with impunity. On the other hand, the officer’s testimony seemed mostly credible. Of course, you’d never know it from the pictures that he’d been in what he considered a life-and-death struggle with an unarmed assailant. I get more beat up tussling on the waterbed with my 8 year old daughter.

I wish more people would stop looking at all the black and white issues like everything was so black and white.

• Every time I think about writing something serious like Ferguson, I think about a Tennessee friend who was disappointed about a year ago that I’d written something serious. Her exact words were, “Don’t you know we read you to make us laugh?”

Honest, I felt terrible I’d disappointed even one reader. And, really, isn’t that a wonderful thing? To have people take time out of their busy day to read something you’ve written in the expectation it’ll make them laugh? I’ve really tried to adhere to that ever since. So I’ve ever since tried to leave all the dark cloud stuff to the paid pundits and Facebook savants who seem intent on using social media for anti-social means.

• I’d planned to write a piece today with the headline, “To er is humon,” apologizing for typos and welcoming people to point them out. I hate when a post is marred by even a discreet little typo. How many of you caught yesterday’s. It was right at the end of the post about my “high” triglycerides. About half way through I thought I’d come up with a great ending. I jotted it down on a piece of scrap paper. It was:

“I don’t want to live forever. I want to live right now!”

Good line, huh. The problem was I become so enamored of it, I never gave it a careful proofing in the copy and it read: “I don’t want to live forever. I want to life right now!”

Very sloppy. Worse, I didn’t notice it until hours after it’d been posted and I could not access a change. And no one mentioned it. Please feel free to point out my errors. It won’t hurt my feelings. In fact, I’m considering including at least one whopper typo in each post and hosting an ad hoc contest to see which reader can find the most goofs. That would clear up a lot of copy. In addition, it would provide me ample cover any time I made numbskulled typo or two by allowing me to say they were deliberate.

• I thought the other day about how my greatest achievement over the past six difficult years is how I never became an alcoholic, took anti-depressants, had a mid-life crisis or just gave up. In fact, in the face of the worst stretch of time ever to befall my profession or me personally, I did the exact opposite. I created and maintained a blog enjoyed by many people and wrote a book that advocates facing every challenge with cheerful perseverance. I did this when many days I woke up and thought, “What would it really matter if I just gave into hopelessness and spent the day getting good and drunk?” It is, to me, a true accomplishment — just not one I’d ever dream of bragging about to my wife.

• Two years after I should have done so, I’ve finally achieved an admirable YouTube portfolio to show prospective bookers looking for an entertaining speaker. Here’s the most recent. It’s from last week when I addressed about 20 Blair County librarians. I took my whole 45 minute appearance and edited it down so it’s just about 3 minutes of punchlines and laughter. I’m hearing it’s very effective. My favorite part, of course, is the last minute when I use archival Beatlemania footage at the end to simulate the ovation. That stunt was born out of necessity. The camera did cut out at the end, which is fine. This is much better. Trivia: the last speaker talking about getting a free drink is Groucho Marx.

• These have all been slapdash hack jobs of my own. Very amateurish. Yesterday, my friend Brian Henry, a Trib photographer spent the morning with me and shot what will be a very professional-looking YouTube promo that ought to wow. This will be a Cadillac, compared to all the ones I’ve shot which if compared to a Cadillac will look like little cars you seen the circus clowns use. 

• If gas prices were pushing $5 a gallon, many of my idiot friends would be blaming President Obama. How come no one’s giving him credit when it’s gone so far in the other direction? Me, I never credit or blame the Commander-in-Chief for gas prices. I’m wise enough to know gas prices are set by whether or not there is any turmoil in the Middle East. With gas below $3 a gallon almost all over America, it’s obvious that today the Middle East is a bastion of peace and stability.

• My favorite “Three Dog Night” songs are “Old Fashioned Love Song,” “One,” and “Never Been to Spain.”

Right now everyone wants to hear from Cosby. Me, too, just not Bill. I’d love to have a candid conversation with Mrs. Cosby. I might write about that next week.

Or maybe nat.

(That last word is an example of a deliberate typo).

Related . . .

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Was firing Wendy Bell too PC? When canning an anchor over racial writings isn't black and white

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Given the hysterical reaction to the firing of a popular Pittsburgh news personality, I’m sensing I can further my career by writing a blog focused solely on the comings and goings of the shiny breed.

Farewell, Eight Days To Amish . . .

Hello, “Anchors Away!”

I’m sure my readership would surge if I devoted weeks to the now infamous saga of Wendy Bell, a WTAE-TV anchor/anthropologist for the past 18 years.

To be more precise, she was an anchor for the duration, an anthropologist for just one day.

That day cost her dearly.

She unwittingly parodied herself on her Facebook page last week when she dove into always turbulent racial waters following the appalling massacre of five adults and an unborn child. You can read her full text here. 

I advise you to try and read it so that instead of it being composed by a perky woman known for saying things like, “Now, let’s go to Ashley for the forecast …” it is read by God voiced by Morgan Freeman.

And to further extend the innate surreality, try and imagine Freeman as a Caucasian female.

Her heart is broken. She is bereft. She is feeling like Bob Dylan felt when he wrote, “The confusion I’m feelin’ ain’t no tongue can tell!”

Yet, she finds hope!

She sees a small black child wiping tables at a Pittsburgh restaurant. He’s cheerfully doing his duties “with rhythm and a step that gushed positivity.”

All this could have been avoided if she’d have just written that Sammy Davis Jr. is alive and well and washing dishes at the Cheesecake Factory.

But the damage was done.

Sensitive critics pounced, said it was white privilege at its worst.

One observer, Damon Young, went further. He declared her post was so over-the-top it was a veritable “white privilege turducken.”

Because the climate has me fearful of racial insensitivity accusations, I will not assume Young is black. I’ll just report he posts at www.verysmartbrothas.com, has written for Ebony and has a profile picture that makes him appear black, but the picture could have been filtered.

Either way, Bell was canned and our community is in turmoil. 

Her supporters are very upset. They say she was just telling the truth. They say her First Amendment rights have been violated.

The confusion I’m feelin’ ain’t no tongue can tell.

Understand, she’s free to say whatever she wants. But there are consequences to whatever she wants to say.

Even otherwise simple-minded married men understand this. It’s why they thoughtfully pause when their wives ask if the pants make her butt look big.

Many people who rail against tyrannical political correctness are basically asking for a pass to be outright rude.

They fail to realize honesty without tact is like brain surgery without anesthesia. 

The operation could succeed, but the complications could kill.

Bell isn’t being fired for honest insights about race.

She’s being fired for playing God.

And that’s even more unfair because that’s exactly what some WTAE executive years ago advised her to do with her FaceBook account.

They told her to emote. To share. To engage. To bare her ever-lovin’ soul.

What self-respecting TV exec would want a news reader when he or she could have a cult leader?

People in positions of prominence are idiots if they think they can glibly bridge centuries-old racial divides with hallelujah Facebook homilies.

Lesson?

Do not sweepingly judge a people of color until you’ve walked a mile in their $149 Michael Jordan Horizon shoes or whatever footwear all you black people are today liking.

Really, today in America it’s all pretty black and white.

‘cept when it isn’t.

And that’s when things can get pretty ugly.

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Foul balls & Baltimore riots

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Not many of you may know it, but I’ve caught three foul balls at Pittsburgh Pirate baseball games between 1991 and 1999.

I don’t know why I don’t write about some aspect of the feat at least once a week because writing about it always makes me feel good, superior even. I know many life-long fans who’ve never snagged even one.

Poor saps.

They’re the only object described as “foul” everyone wants.

Done with flair and in challenging circumstances, catching one is a thrill you’ll never forget.

It was like that particularly with the one I caught May 20, 1991. I recall being deathly hungover. I’d been to a buddy’s wedding the night before. I was holding in my right hand what I back then referred to as “therapy beer.”

Phillie Randy Reading sent a Bob Smiley heater screaming toward the upper deck facade right behind me and my buddies. Our necks snapped in case there was a rare rebound.

There was.

And it was coming straight for my nose.

The eyes of 32,000 fans followed the ball’s hazardous path. Balls hit that hard have been known to knock unwitting fans unconscious. I’m sure that’s what many fans feared was about to happen to me.

Their fears were unfounded.

I snagged the ball cleanly and instantly raised my arms the way boxers do after an early-round knock-out.

And I began to bask in the cheers.

The whole crowed roared. It was a great accomplishment, the kind they routinely show today on the highlight shows, made even more remarkable because I was suffering from a hangover that would have killed a horse.

There were big leaguers on the field who grinned in appreciation.

It was a great moment.

Given that the Bucs would soon embark on what was destined to become a two-decade slide of historic incompetence, I’m surprised no one offered me a contract on the spot.

I write about it today because I’m wondering about something unprecedented happening today at Baltimore’s Camden Yards. That’s where they’ll be playing the first MLB game without any fans.

And they better mean that.

If I see highlights and there are bunch of well-connected fat white guys yukking it up behind home plate, hell, I’ll set fire to a CVS.

But let’s say they have a game with no fans.

What’ll happen to all the foul balls?

Numbers vary widely, but I’ve read an average of 40 balls are fouled into the stands every MLB game.

Will they just roll around in the stands? Without fans, there ought not to be any vendors there, so they’re not in the picture.

I’ve told the story about my most heroic catch, but the one I caught August 26, 1999, was under conditions similar to what we’ll today see in Baltimore.

There were just a few hundred people at old Three Rivers Stadium that day. The ball was sliced into the section nearby and I sort of just hustled over to get it. I remember the ball had rolled up against someone’s discarded nacho plate.

I took a few of them, too!

There’s bound to be some great journalism coming from today’s eeriness, descriptions of a game without cheers, without heckling, without the joyful babble of voices that makes attending baseball games such a happy memory for me.

There’s just something about sitting in the sun and bantering about baseball that makes all the world’s troubles seem to drift away. 

Really, what they ought to do is let just two fans in — an angry black kid and a white guy with racist leanings.

Gee, do you think we’d be able to find anybody in Baltimore today that would fit those profiles?

They should make them sit together right behind the plate and see who gets more foul balls.

I’ll bet the two would wind up buddies and there’d be some great stories about their chases.

I’m not saying it would lead to any substantial changes in the attitudes that seem to be drowning a city I’ve always enjoyed.

But it’d be nice to read at least one cheerful story out of Baltimore, a place that today is being roiled by so much foul behavior.

Related 8days2Amish tweet of the week (just because I think it’s funny): “I’m appalled by the sight of Baltimore cops beating Baltimore protesters and vice versa. The only thing that gets me through my despair is the realization that deep down they’re all Ravens fans.”

Related . . .

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