Reading Baseball

(Pete Peterson (provided))

A large school district in the Jacksonville, Florida area recently voted to ban a children’s book about Hall of Fame baseball player and humanitarian Roberto Clemente.

But just days ago, the book was reviewed after it was removed from classrooms for its references to racism and discrimination and has now been approved for use.

In this latest Reading Baseball commentary, Pete Peterson takes a look at the book, which briefly was deemed inappropriate for young readers.

Reading Baseball is a series of essays and commentaries by Richard “Pete” Peterson, the author of Growing Up With Clemente and the editor of The St. Louis Baseball Reader.

The number 3 (Damar Hamlin's jersey number) became a universal way to show support for him after his injury. (Claudio Schwarz/Unsplash / https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1570521076067-eedca0fff452?ixlib=rb-4.0.3&ixid=MnwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHx8&auto=format&fit=crop&w=687&q=80)

Many football fans probably hadn’t heard of Damar Hamlin before the Buffalo Bills defensive back suffered a cardiac arrest on the field during a game in Cincinnati last month.

Just ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl, his story remains one of the most compelling of the football season.

In this special commentary, Pete Peterson talks about Hamlin’s love of the rough neighborhood of Pittsburgh where the 24-year-old grew up.

(Pete Peterson)

With short days and usually very cold nights, the time after the holidays in January can be depressing, especially for baseball fans waiting for the start of Spring Training.

In this edition of Reading Baseball, Pete Peterson explains how living on the snowy, cold east coast as a young man was demoralizing.

But, that changed one year when the bleakness of January became more tolerable with the introduction of a televised Home Run Derby.

Reading Baseball is a series of essays and commentaries by Richard “Pete” Peterson, the author of Growing Up With Clemente and editor of The St. Louis Baseball Reader.

Pete and his wife Anita(Pete Peterson (provided))

WSIU contributor Pete Peterson is back with his annual holiday commentary.

This year, Pete commemorates the 50th anniversary of one of the most memorable plays in football history and one of baseball’s greatest tragedies, both of which happened in back to back weekends during the holiday season of 1972.

(Bettmann / Corbis)

Jim Thorpe is widely considered as the greatest athlete to ever live.

He is well known for his exploits in the 1912 Olympics and even for his time playing professional football.

But, in this edition of Reading Baseball, Pete Peterson has the story of Thorpe’s lesser known professional baseball career.

Reading Baseball is a series of essays and commentaries by Richard “Pete” Peterson, the author of Growing Up With Clemente and the editor of The St. Louis Baseball Reader, newly released in paperback.

Pete wants to remind listeners a recent health episode has affected his speech, and appreciates your patience as he continues his recovery.
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In the 1913 World Series, played between the Philadelphia As and the New York Giants, each team had a Native American who had excelled in sports at Carlisle Indian Industrial School and gone on to glory on the athletic field against some of the most powerful college teams in the country.

Founded in 1879, Carlisle’s mission was to assimilate Native American children into white society, or as stated in its motto, “Kill the Indian, save the man.” While its motto was a departure from General Sheridan’s view that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” in reality, it was nothing more than a shift in government attitude and policy from destroying Native Americans to eradicating Native American culture.

In 1902, Albert “Chief” Bender, while attending Carlisle, signed a professional baseball contract with Connie Mack’s Philadelphia As. Bender went on to become one of baseball’s greatest pitchers, leading the As to championship seasons in 1910 and 1911. He had his best season in 1913, winning 21 games and led the As to their third championship in four years by winning two games in the 1913 World Series. In 1953, he became the first Native American to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

While the As had “Chief” Bender going into the 1913 World Series, the Giants had their own famous athlete from Carlisle in Jim Thorpe. Just a year earlier, at the 1912 Olympics, Thorpe had won gold medals in the challenging five-event pentathlon and the grueling ten-event decathlon and been roundly declared the greatest athlete in the world. He added to his stature later that fall by becoming an All-American in college football after leading Carlisle to a stunning upset of an Army team that included Dwight Eisenhower.

Unfortunately, just a few months later, The Worchester Telegram reported that Jim Thorpe had violated Olympic rules and was not an amateur athlete because in 1910 and 1911 he had played two summers of professional baseball in the low minor leagues.

Thorpe pleaded, in his own words, that he “was simply an Indian school boy and didn’t know about such things. I did not know I was doing wrong.” He also pointed out that it was common for college athletes to earn a few dollars in the summer by playing semi-pro or minor league baseball, but, unlike Thorpe, they used an assumed name to protect their amateur standing.

In January 1913, after the International Olympic Committee rejected his appeal and demanded the return of his gold medals, Jim Thorpe, with the NFL’s founding a decade away and no opportunity to make money playing professional football, signed a contract to play baseball for John McGraw and the New York Giants. While the Giants went on to win the National League pennant, McGraw, who had a reputation for making life miserable for players he disliked, seldom used the 26-year-old Thorpe, who played in only 19 games that season and sat on the bench for the entire 1913 World Series.

Jim Thorpe stayed with the Giants for several more years, but spent most of his time on the bench. Thorpe finally did get a chance to play regularly when McGraw traded him to the Boston Braves during the 1919 season. He hit .327 for the Braves, but he was released at season’s end. He never played in the major leagues again, though he played minor league and semi-pro baseball until he was in his forties because it was a way to make money.

In his newly released, Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, David Maraniss, author of critically acclaimed biographies of Vince Lombardi and Roberto Clemente, covers Jim Thorpe’s baseball career in great detail and the impact of the mistreatment of Native Americans on Thorpe’s life and reputation, despite his incredible accomplishments as an athlete.

In 1982, the Olympic International Committee, 70 years after it demanded the return of Thorpe’s gold medals, finally gave his medals, or at least facsimiles of his medals, to his family, and, only recently, over 100 years since Jim Thorpe won his gold medals, restored Thorpe’s records to the 1912 Olympics.

(Kirk Thornton/Unsplash / https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1623947451716-9432b96c21f4?ixlib=rb-4.0.3&ixid=MnwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHx8&auto=format&fit=crop&w=687&q=80)

The St. Louis Cardinals had another great regular season that resulted in the franchise’s 4th consecutive playoff appearance.

In this edition of Reading Baseball, Pete Peterson has the story of the Cardinals’ 2022 campaign and how it didn’t end in a storybook fashion.

Reading Baseball is a series of essays and commentaries by Richard “Pete” Peterson, the author of Growing Up With Clemente and the editor of The St. Louis Baseball Reader.

Pete wants listeners to know a recent health episode has affected his speech, but he’s in good spirits and appreciates your patience as he continues his recovery.

Here is the text of Pete's commentary:

If we see baseball’s drama and history as a storybook, then in 2022, St. Louis Cardinal fans were treated to three classic stories. All that they needed was for the three stories to merge into a perfect ending, the “and they lived happily after” fairy tale ending.

First of all and most important to Cardinal fans and to fans around the country was the story of the Prodigal Son. Albert Pujols, after leaving the Cardinals a decade earlier, returned to the Cardinals for his last season. As if he’d discovered some magical elixir, he began, ay mid-season, to hit home runs at a record pace. He was honored around the league, but for Cardinal fans it was a homecoming.

Closely following the Prodigal Son was the story of the Comeback Kid. After suffering what appeared to be a season and career ending injury, Yadier Molina returned at mid-season and led the Cardinals with his clutch hitting and defensives prowess. Though years of wear and tear as a catcher had taken their toll, he came back and played with the energy and enthusiasm of a kid.

Last of all, was the story of the Aging Hero. While most thought that Adam Wainwright’s career was over, that he was too old, had lost too much, to get batters out, he took to the mound and out pitched his opponents. He didn’t try to overpower hitters with his fast ball;. he used cunning and the curve ball, a pitch many thought was obsolete, to get batters out.

At the last home game at Busch Stadium, when the three heroes walked off the mound together, there was that sense of anticipation and expectation, the feeling that the three great stories would merge into one happy ending -- the Cardinals winning the World Series. Cardinal fans didn’t know how it was going to happen -- maybe Pujols would end the World Series with a dramatic home run, maybe Molina would save the World Series with a brilliant defensive play, or maybe Wainwright would end the World Series with a strike out on a curve ball . Cardinal fans didn’t know how, but the storybook season had to end with the Cardinals winning the World Series.

But it didn’t happen ---- there was no happy ending. Though they got hits in their last times at bat, Pujols and Molina hit no home runs, drove in no runs, while Wainwright didn’t even have a chance to throw a curve. The Cardinal didn’t hit, didn’t field, didn’t pitch in the clutch, and they lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Phillies.

Cardinal fans learned all over again that, while baseball can be a field of dreams, it can also break you heart. Like the Mighty Casey, our hero sometimes strikes out and sometimes our best pitcher gives up the game winning hit. We root for our team all season, but when it comes to the moment of triumph, our heroes sometimes let us down. Former Yale scholar and baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti once wrote that baseball “is designed to break you heart.... You count on it, rely on it ... and when you need it the most, it stops.”

We are approaching the 50th anniversary of one of baseball saddest stories --- the death of the hero at the height of his glory. At the end of the 1972 season. in his last at bat, Roberto Clemente lined a double off the left-center field wall. It was his 3,000th hit, a feat rarely accomplished by a major league batter.

Led by Clemente, the Pirates had won the World Series in 1971 and were expected to repeat, but they suffered a heart-breaking. loss to the Reds in the playoffs. The Pirates, however, still had the great Clemente and there was always next year. But all that changed forever, when Clemente, on a plane filled with relief supplies for victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua, died on New Years Eve when the plane crashed into the sea.

It breaks you heart.

Pete Peterson competing in a past Pittsburgh Marathon(Provided by Pete Peterson / Pete Peterson)

WSIU Radio commentator Pete Peterson hasn’t participated in the Pittsburgh Marathon for three years, but that hasn’t stopped organizers from reaching out to him seeking his return to the event held each May.

In this commentary, Pete tells us how the persistent reminders tug at the heart strings for a Pittsburgh native who loves to run.

Before we hear this piece, Pete wants listeners to know a recent health episode has affected his speech, but he’s in good spirits and appreciates your patience as he continues his recovery.

Here is the written copy of Pete's commentary.

When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, there were four movie houses on my working-class South Side, so I saw plenty of movies. I loved then all -- the war movies, the romantic adventures, the musical comedies, the biblical epics, the baseball biographies, the hour-long oaters starring Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, but my favorites, by far, were the science-fiction thrillers, with those invading aliens from outer space and those giant insects and sea monsters spawned by the radiation from atomic bomb tests.

There were so many “creature features” to choose from, but my favorite, and by far the scariest, was called The Thing From Another World. Released in the early 1950s, at the height of the Red Scare, The Thing takes place at the North Pole, where members of a military outpost discover a saucer-shaped aircraft and a nearby body buried in the ice.
They accidentally destroy the aircraft while trying to melt the ice, but they managed to cut the body out of the ice and take it back to their base.

The Thing takes an ominous turn when the guard assigned to protect the block of ice containing the body, covers the block with a blanket, so he won’t have to look at whatever is inside it. Unfortunately, the blanket is electric and when the guard wakes up, he discovers that the ice has melted and the body is gone.

For a good part of the movie, we know something is out there, something that’s killing dogs and humans and draining their blood -- but, in scene after scene, it’s gone before we have a chance to see it -- until finally, when we least expect it, someone casually opens a door and the Thing jumps out.

Those in the audience, including this working-class teenager, reacted in horror, while some got up and ran out of the theater. Looking back at the movie, however, the Thing really wasn’t all that scary. Imagine the Jolly Green Giant reduced in size to a blood-sucking vegetable vampire in human form, played by James Arness, later of Gun Smoke fame, and you’ll see what was waiting behind that door.

It wasn’t so much the creature that terrified us as it was the anticipation, the sense of dread, use to great effect by Steven Spielberg in Jaws, that made the moment when we finally see the Thing so horrifying. In Jaws, we were warned to stay out of the water;
in The Thing, we were warned to look to the sky.

I’ve been living with my own sense of dread lately, but it has nothing to do with vampires from outer space or great white sharks. In 2019, when I turned 80, I ran in my tenth and what I decided was my last Pittsburgh Marathon. That hasn’t stopped organizers, over the past three years, from sending me weekly and sometimes daily notices of the next marathon. Every time I log onto my computer, I hear John Williams’ pulsating music from Jaws as I stare at another email from the Pittsburgh Marathon organizers.

During the pandemic, the organizers had to resort to a virtual marathon, but this past May the marathon returned to the streets of Pittsburgh. While it was easy, for two years, to resist running a virtual marathon or half marathon in my living room, the Pittsburgh Marathon was out there again, waiting for me.

I have to admit that, last fall, with the 2022 Pittsburgh Marathon lurking just a car ride away on the interstate, I did increase my jogging and even ran in a local 5K, but I performed so poorly that a Carbondale policeman stopped in his patrol car and asked if I
needed a lift to the finish line. Though the patrol car actually stopped twice, I did make it to the finish line, but the lesson I learned was to keep my distance from the looming Pittsburgh Marathon.

While the next Pittsburgh Marathon isn’t until May, 2023 I’m already receiving emails
from its organizers and I know that they will increase and intensify over the next several months. I also know that as the marathon draws closer and closer, I’ll be tempted to run again, though, when I told my wife Anita, she just shrugged and said to let her know if I decide to run, so she can notify the Pittsburgh police.

(KeithJJ/Pixabay / https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2016/06/04/02/35/baseball-1434883_960_720.jpg)

On September 10 at Saluki Stadium, the football Salukis lost a heartbreaker to Southeast Missouri State University.

It featured a controversial ending that sent some Saluki coaches, players and fans into a fury.

In this edition of Reading Baseball, Pete Peterson looks at how baseball umpires are often the easiest to abuse.

Reading Baseball is a series of essays and commentaries by Richard “Pete” Peterson, the author of Growing Up With Clemente and the editor of The St. Louis Baseball Reader.

(Anna Sullivan/Unsplash / https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1565483276060-e6730c0cc6a1?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&ixid=MnwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHx8&auto=format&fit=crop&w=735&q=80)

For many decades, baseball was considered America’s game. But now many believe the title of America’s game belongs to football, citing the popularity of the NFL and major college football.

In this edition of Reading Baseball, Pete Peterson looks at the debate and tries to explain why the game’s rich history still leads him to call baseball America’s game.

Reading Baseball is a series of essays and commentaries by Richard “Pete” Peterson, the author of Growing Up With Clemente and the editor of The St. Louis Baseball Reader.

(Provided by Pete Peterson / Ron Shelton)

In the next edition of Reading Baseball, Pete Peterson has a unique story about when Ron Shelton met Ron Shelton after they joined the same minor league team.

As Pete explains, one of them is the father of former Saluki star and current Pittsburgh Pirates manager Derek Shelton.

Reading Baseball is a series of essays and commentaries by Richard “Pete” Peterson, the author of Growing Up With Clemente and the editor of The St. Louis Baseball Reader.