The behavior of the human species, especially when under pressure, is demonstrated with remarkable clarity in both sports and politics. Every day is different; some individuals rise to the occasion; others fail with the misfortune of it being in the public limelight.

Last week I was in Washington, DC watching the Cardinals fail in probably the three most humiliating fashions in baseball: Game 1: blowing a 6-1 lead; Game 2: getting trounced 10-0; and Game 3: losing in extra innings.

However, my spirits brightened when, while there, I came across an on-line article by St. Louis Post-Dispatch political reporter, Jake Wagman, who said:

The Redbirds are in Washington this week, which does more than allow capital Cardinal fans to see their hometown team.

It gives hometown politicians a chance to score some re-election cash.

Ever since the Montreal Expos moved to D.C. and became the Nationals in 2005, Washington’s other players — members of Congress —have watched the team’s schedule for opportunities to bolster their campaign accounts.

In previous years, St. Louis U.S. Rep. Lacy Clay has held a fundraiser at the ballpark when the Cardinals played the Nationals.

On Tuesday night, supporters of U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt paid $1,000 to watch the Cardinals bullpen and defense implode in an 8-6 loss.

Tonight, U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan will ask his fans for the same amount to watch the second game of tonight’s series at Nationals Park.

While Carnahan — a St. Louis Democrat whose district was a casualty of redistricting — doesn’t know what he’ll be running for yet, the Nationals are wise to welcome his party to the game.

Political fund-raising, particularly when the dollars are as high as the event is ostentatious, just does not fit my definition of the people’s democracy. So the fact that 65 months before his next general election, Senator Blunt was shilling for money, and his special event turned into a debacle (at least entertainment-wise), did not sadden me a bit.

But I’m a bi-partisan curmudgeon about political fund-raisers. The fact that those who donated $1,000 each to Russ Carnahan only to see a Cardinal drubbing also seemed to have an element of justice. That’s because they were donating to Russ Carnahan at the same time that he is running for ….. nothing. As is not the case with Blunt, I generally appreciate Russ Carnahan’s voting record. But that doesn’t justify the absurdity of asking supporters to donate $1,000 for him to remain a place-holder to either run in Missouri’s refashioned Second Congressional District or for the esteemed and taxing position of Missouri Lieutenant-Governor. And what happens to that money if Russ Carnahan decides to run for nothing? Well just ask the one-time supporters of Anthony Wiener who funded his five-million- dollar war chest. Wiener could return the money to contributors as an honorable person would do. Or he can hold on to it forever in the hope that, like the Phoenix, he will rise from the ashes and once again run for office.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must acknowledge that, during one game, I sat in the luxury box of a powerful Washington, DC law firm. A good friend from high school is a partner in the firm. I do no business with the firm and would never do so without first reimbursing them for the tickets I used.

Almost every summer, four or five friends from high school in St. Louis get together for two or three days of Cardinals baseball. We all tend to bleed Cardinal red, but with an asterisk. This is the team with which we grew up, but things are not as pure as they once were when the team was owned by a bullying beer baron. We still want to see the team win, but we also get a perverse sense of pleasure out of seeing them fail, because we can’t let recent practices by team management go unnoticed. Primary owner Bill DeWitt (“I like capitalism, if you take the risk and I get the reward”) has legally blackmailed the city of St. Louis and the state of Missouri out of millions of dollars to further line his coffers, already estimated at more than four billion dollars (that’s billion with a ‘b’). The team built a new stadium that at best is the equal of Busch Stadium II, but clearly was unnecessary. Ownership promised a close-by, mixed-use development called Ballpark Village, if they received more tax breaks. The land has moved from barren to now being a largely inaccessible softball field. The only news is the empty quarterly promises by the owners that someday something will happen. Nothing does.

In contrast, Nationals Stadium in Washington has been part of the vital regeneration of the struggling residential and industrial area of Anacostia. I’m sure that there were funny money exchanges in the development of the stadium, but in the end it is value added to the community, something that cannot be said about the current Busch Stadium.

It is no secret that, like all Rust Belt cities, St. Louis is struggling to recover from the near obliteration of manufacturing in the U.S. Poverty gets worse as the direction of income redistribution is from poor to wealthy rather than the other way around.

Our problems are hardly addressed by $1,000 here and $1,000 there going to politicians who will ultimately use the money in a campaign to inflate their own accomplishments and distort the views of their opponents. There seems to be a certain symmetry between Blunt and Carnahan, both of whom profess a commitment to fiscal restraint, entertaining funders by seeing a baseball team that has deprived our region of millions of badly needed tax revenue.

Major League Baseball and politics are not strange bedfellows. For several nights at National Stadium, the ugly game of legalized bribery was a little more visible than usual. Thank you, Jake Wagman, for shedding needed light on the subject.

The post Poetic justice for campaign contributors appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A frequent criticism of  government is that it acts slowly and in a cumbersome fashion. That may be true. However, such conduct does not occur solely in the public domain.

In the private sector, the St. Louis Cardinals and top player Albert Pujols are taking days, weeks, months, even years to do what can be done in a half hour. That’s inefficiency unmatched by any level of government. How difficult can it be to work out an agreement where everybody’s going to be rich?

So here’s what a half hour negotiation session between Bill DeWitt, Jr., owner of the Cardinals, and Albert Pujols could look like.  No attorneys allowed and Tony LaRussa can’t come in with the “non-political” Glenn Beck to offer advice.

I’m happy to play the role of facilitator for a 0% cut.

“Bill, you know Albert; Albert you know Bill.  Okay these negotiations don’t have to be hard; it’s not like we’re trying to bring peace to the Middle East.   We should be able to get this done in less than a half hour.

Here’s the deal: I’m going to give you a range of choices in four areas that are important to each of you. With or without a No. 2 pencil, indicate your choice(s) to each question. After you’ve made your choice and completed the form, we’ll split the difference on all of them. Neither side will feel any pain with the results; you’ll all be rich when it’s said and done.

1.      Salary per year:

a)      $16 mil

b)      $18 mil

c)      $20 mil

d)     $22 mil

e)      $24 mil

f)       $26 mil

g)      $28 mil

h)      $30 mil

2.      Number of years of contract:

a)      1 year

b)      2 years

c)      3 years

d)     4 years

e)      5 years

f)       6 years

g)      7 years

h)      8 years

i)        9 years

j)        10 years

3.      No trade clause (i.e. Albert can choose if he does not want to be traded to another team.  He could alternately list which teams would be acceptable to him for a trade). So, should the contract include a “no-trade” clause?

a)      Yes

b)      Partial; Albert can list ____ (fill in the blank) number of teams to which he would agree to be traded. For the first year, the names of the teams are: __________________ (fill in the blank). This list can be changed every year.

c)      No

4.      Special considerations (each side picks two; each side can veto two)

a)      Albert is consulted on managerial change

b)      Albert has veto power over managerial change

c)      Albert is consulted on general manager change

d)     Albert has veto power over general manager change

e)      Albert can take 0.5% of his salary and invest it into ownership of the team, up to a maximum of five years.

f)       Albert can become manager of Ballpark Village and develop the area entirely for charitable, educational, health care, or low-income housing use.

g)      Albert can take 0.5% of his salary in any given year and have that amount matched by the Cardinals for the purpose of reimbursing the city of St. Louis and/or the state of Missouri for the tax abatements that the Cardinals previously negotiated.

h)      Albert can take 0.5% of his salary in any given year and have that amount matched by the Cardinals for the purpose of meeting basic economic and social needs in Albert’s home country of the Dominican Republic.

You have ten minutes to write down your responses. We will then take ten minutes to discuss “splitting the differences;” i.e. negotiating. Then we’ll take ten minutes to make sure that we’re all fully aware of the terms and satisfied.

*** 30 minute interval for negotiations  ***

“Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure doing business with you and a business doing pleasure with you. Let’s now go to Steak ’n Shake.  Who’s treating?”

The post Got a moment? Let’s negotiate Albert Pujols’ contract appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Albert Pujols has a unique opportunity to not only change the economics of baseball, but also to set an example of restraint for all wealthy individuals.

Pujols is considered  the best player in baseball. He is the only player in the history of the game who has hit over .300, smacked over 30 homers, and driven in more than 100 runs in each of his first ten years. No one else has come close. Pujols’ numbers do not just hover around these milestones, they surpass them by eye-popping margins.

The Cardinals have exercised an option that obliges Pujols to play for them in 2011. Wisely, team management is taking steps to negotiate what might be a lifetime contract with Pujols this off-season. If they don’t, he would hit the open market of free agency following the 2011 year.

For nearly 70 years, the symbol of Cardinal baseball has been Stan (the Man) Musial. Pujols and Musial have much in common: excellence on the field, leadership, a calm demeanor, fan friendliness, and a commitment to both charity and social justice.  When the Cardinal roster integrated in 1954, Musial established a bond with African-American players. He joined them in pressuring team ownership to insist on housing the team in integrated housing in spring training.

Pujols’ charitable activities have addressed numerous needs in St. Louis as well as his home country,  the Dominican Republic. On the justice front, he has expressed his unhappiness with next year’s All-Star Game being in Arizona, the state with the most restrictive immigration law in the union.  There has been speculation that he might lead a boycott of the game by Latin American players.

Players have considerably more power in the modern age, in large part because in 1969, Curt Flood, a former teammate of Musial, refused a trade to the Philadelphia Phillies. He said that he did not want to be a “well-paid slave” who did not have the freedom to bargain with teams of his choice. It is this very right that gives Pujols leverage in negotiations with the Cardinals. Musial played in the era of the “reserve clause” where teams had the power to renew or trade a player’s contract throughout his career.

Pujols has made over $100 million in the first decade of his career. Now, the bar has been raised: St. Louisan Ryan Howard, who plays for the Philadelphia Phillies, is  making $25 million per year. The Cardinals would be fortunate if they could sign Pujols at that rate for what is expected to be the remaining ten or so years of his career.

That would put Pujols’ lifetime earnings in baseball in excess of $300 million. In contrast, Musial made only $1.26 million – total – during his 22-year career. If Musial’s salaries were adjusted for inflation, they would be around $7 million;, slightly more than 2% of Pujols’ projected earnings.

To put things further in perspective, the most Musial ever made in a single season was $100,000, in 1958 and 1959. Now here’s the kicker: after batting .255 in 1959, Musial voluntarily took a 20-percent pay cut before the 1960 season. “I’m glad to sign the contract,” he said. “A couple of times in the past the Cardinals had me sign for more than what we agreed upon orally. This year I thought I’d be kind to them.”

The leverage that Curt Flood gave Albert Pujols and all modern players in maximizing their earning powers did not come without a cost. He did more for the players’ union than any other individual. A strong union can guarantee high salaries, so long as it has exclusive bargaining rights and its members do not try to undercut one another.

Let’s suppose that Albert Pujols agreed to play the balance of his career at $10 million per annum. He could justify this by saying that no one needs more than $10 million per year, and it is still a king’s ransom to someone who grew up poor in the Dominican Republic. He might also add that winning is an important value to him, and that by lowering the proportion of the Cardinals payroll than he consumes the more money the team has to sign other quality players.

But there are problems with the $10 million solution. First, the terms of his 2011 contract guarantee that he will receive a salary of over $14 million. The maximum annual salary reduction that a team can impose on a player is 20%. If Pujols took a 20% cut, he would still be making $11,200,000. To get down to $10 million, he would have to wait until 2013; the maximum reduction over a two year period is 30%, and that would take him to $9.8 million.

There are 600 players who are active in the Major Leagues at any time during the season. Surely one or several of them have generous bones in their bodies. So why is it that no player has said “enough is enough;” I don’t need a high salary; others in our society need the money more than I?

The primary reason this doesn’t happen is loyalty to one’s brethren.  Any player who voluntarily takes a pay cut is (a) lowering the mean salary for players, and (b) giving greedy owners the wedge of telling players that they will not be re-signed unless they “take one for the team;” not just the baseball team, but all of us in society who need the money more than the players do. However, history and common sense tell us that whatever additional salary a player is not paid will go into the owners’ pockets; not for the general populace, even in the form of reduced ticket prices.

It is a sad situation when it becomes virtually impossible for a player of Albert Pujols’ integrity to voluntarily take a pay reduction as a monetary and symbolic gesture of expressing his belief that he has enough money and others need it more.   He would be a pariah among his peers; a “do-gooder” who would be doing harm to the financial well-being of his peers because he would be lowering the salary bar.

So let’s be as realistic as we can. If Pujols signed a ten-year contract at an average salary of $15 – $18 million, he would be receiving a raise, but far less than he could receive on the open market. His actions would not be those of Robin Hood, but they would represent an effort to exercise some restraint in spiraling salaries. Some very wealthy individuals in our society, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Ted Turner,  are giving enormous amounts to philanthropic causes.  You might be surprised to learn that,  not  long ago, Donald Trump proposed a 40% tax on the rich to wipe out our national debt (the figure would be much higher now).

So, suppose that Albert Pujols joined with other high-profile athletes and entertainers to say there is a certain obscenity to excessive salaries at a time when more than a fifth of the American people are out of work or under-employed, and that number is much greater in developing countries.

At the height of the McCarthy hearings, Joseph Welch asked the senator from Wisconsin, “Have you no sense of decency?”  In a thoroughly different venue, it’s something that could be asked of athletes and entertainers and the owners who hire them.  Albert, you need not take a pay cut, but you could do much for our society by exercising restraint and urging your peers to do likewise.  Like Stan, you too would then be “the man.”

The post Albert Pujols could hit a home run for fiscal responsibility appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In 1995, the percentage of African-American players on the Cardinals was above the league average.  In 2009 it was one-fourth the league average, and as the 2010 season begins there are no African-American players on the Cardinals roster or coaching staff.

Below is a partial chronology of important events in the history of African-American players on the Cardinals.

• The first African-American to play for the Cardinals was Tom Alston in 1954, seven years after the major league color barrier was broken by Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers.
• There were African-American players on the Cardinals during the final thirteen years of the first Busch Stadium (Sportsman’s Park).
• In 1964, the Cardinals defeated the New York Yankees in the World Series, four games to three.  There were at least four outstanding African-Americans on the team: Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Bob Gibson, and Bill White.  Brock and Gibson are in the Hall of Fame; Flood paved the way to free agency for players, and White became president of the National League.
• In 1995, journalist David Halberstam published a book about the 1964 World Series.  It was called October 1964.
• The review of October 1964 by Amazon.com states:

The 1964 World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals was coated in myth from the get-go. The Yankees represented the establishment: white, powerful, and seemingly invincible. The victorious Cards, on the other hand, were baseball’s rebellious future: angry and defiant, black, and challenging. Their seven-game barnburner, played out against a backdrop of an America emerging from the Kennedy assassination, escalating the war in Vietnam, and struggling with civil rights, marked a turning point–neither the nation, nor baseball, would ever be quite so innocent again.

• There were African-American players on the Cardinals all forty years that the team played in the second Busch Stadium (1966 – 2005).
• The Cardinals won the National League pennant in 1967 and 1968.  In 1967 they won the World Series.  Among the African-American players on these teams were Brock, Flood, Gibson, Al Jackson, Alex Johnson, Dave Ricketts, Ted Savage and Bobby Tolan.
• In 1975, the percentage of African-American players in the major leagues was 27%, the highest in the history of the game.
• The Cardinals won the World Series in 1982 against the Milwaukee Brewers.  Among the African-American players on the team were George Hendrick, Tito Landrum, Willie McGee, Lonnie Smith and Ozzie Smith.
• There have been only four African-American players on the Cardinals since moving into the third Busch Stadium in 2006.  They are Brian Barton, Joe Thurston, Rico Washington, and Preston Wilson.  None of the four has been a consistent starter.
• The Cardinals won the World Series in 2006 against the Detroit Tigers.  Preston Wilson was the only African-American player on the team.
• In 1996, the first year that Tony LaRussa was manager of the Cardinals and Bill DeWitt, Jr.’s syndicate owned the team, 24% of the players on the roster were African-American.  This was both 7% greater than the major league average for that year and 7% greater than the 1995 Cardinal team under previous ownership and management.
• The 2006 championship team was 2.44% African-American.  The league average that year was 9%.
• 2007 was the low-point of African-American players in the major leagues since integration.  8.2% of the players in the League were African-American; 2.22% of the players on the Cardinal roster were African-American.
• In 2009, the percentage of African-American players in the major leagues rose to 10.2%.  The Cardinal percentage was 2.77%
• On opening day, 2010, the percentage of African-Americans on the Cardinals was 0%.  For the first time in years, there was also no African-American on the team coaching staff.  We do not have figures for the entire league.
• In the history of the third Busch Stadium, 5,761 innings have been pitched by Cardinal hurlers.  Not one pitch by a Cardinal has been thrown by an African-American.
• In the history of the third Busch Stadium, 4.89% of the Cardinal at-bats have been by African-American players.  In 1996, the first year with DeWitt as owner and LaRussa as manager, 41.33% of the Cardinal at-bats were by African-American players.

Change happens for better or worse.

Link to Part I
Link to Part II

Link to article on “St. Louis Baseball in Black and White” on Corresponding Fractions blog.

n 1996 was the first year of the William DeWitt / Tony LaRussa era

n 2006 – 2009 are recent years in Busch Stadium III

The post Baseball and Politics – Part III appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I went off to college at American University in September, 1965; the Cardinals were still technically world champions, but there would be no miracle this year.  American University was a logical choice; I loved politics and where better to be than Washington, DC.  I also loved baseball and the old Washington Senators always had plenty of seats available.  The Baltimore Orioles (formerly St. Louis Browns) were just 40 miles up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

I had been in Los Angeles the month before, but not when the impoverished Watts neighborhood exploded with one of America’s largest race riots to date; 34 people had been killed, 1,032 injured and 3,952 arrested.  It was then that we began to hear the term “rising expectations;” that African-Americans (then called ‘Negroes’ and about to be called ‘blacks’) found that legislative gains and increasing white awareness of their plight had not resulted in decent jobs, good schools, adequate and accessible health care, and de facto equal rights.

The next three summers were characterized by “racial disturbances” (i.e. riots) in over 100 American cities.  St. Louis was the only major city that seemed to escape the carnage.  Theories abounded: St. Louis was neither a northern nor a southern town; there was less (or was it more?) police brutality than elsewhere; and of course everybody’s favorite; the town was otherwise occupied in 1967 and 1968 as the Cardinals once again won the National League pennants.  True or not, race relations and the Cardinals were inexorably mixed in the late 1960s.  What did Bob Gibson, who could be so intimidating on the mound, think about the civil rights struggle and accompanying violence?  What about Cardinal center fielder Curt Flood?  When he was traded following the 1969 season while making $90,000 / year (among the highest salaries in baseball), he likened the reserve clause which took away his freedom to decide for which team he wanted to play, as slavery.  The players didn’t speak publicly about political issues, which while frustrating to a fan, only allowed us to play the game of speculation all the more.  When Flood (along with teammate Tim McCarver) was traded following the 1969 season, it took a large bite out of the hearts of many Cardinal fans.

It almost seemed that the Cardinals were cursed by the trade during the 1970s; they almost always competed but never won the National League Eastern Division (baseball was now

fragmented into divisional play).  There was still a political presence on the team; catcher Ted Simmons openly expressed his opposition to the Vietnam War and for those of us who questioned blind authority, he was a refreshing presence on the team.  His wife, MaryAnne, started a magazine exclusively for baseball wives.  It brought the women’s liberation movement to women who otherwise never would have been enlightened.

Before the 1982 season, manager / general manager Whitey Herzog traded Simmons, perhaps because Herzog thought that his authority would be questioned.  But that same off-season he acquired shortstop Ozzie Smith.  Mr. Herzog must have known something because he put together a championship team that year.  In 1985 and 1987 the team won the National League pennant only to lose seven-game World Series in the most frustrating of ways.   The teams of the 1980s were richly integrated with Smith, Jack Clark Vince Coleman, (Silent) George Hendrick, Tommy Herr, Lance Johnson, Tito Landrum, Jim Lindeman, Willie McGee, Terry Pendleton, Lonnie Smith and Andy Van Slyke.  Had it not been for an errant call at first base in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series and an outfield wall made of Hefty bags in 1987, the Cardinals teams of the mid-1980s might have qualified as a dynasty.

A dry spell ensued; nine years after the 1987 pennant-winning team, Tony LaRussa took the helm of the team.  After a slow start, the team romped to winning the Central Division of the National League by six games.  In the first round of the playoffs they swept the San Diego Padres, but blew a 3-2 game lead in the League Championship Series by tanking in the final two games in Atlanta.  The team had a diverse group of players; over 46% of the at-bats were taken by African-American players; a remarkable figure for any team in any year.  But the team did not seem to have the harmony of the Cardinal teams of the 1960s or 1980s; the impact of long-term contracts and some inflated salaries took their toll on the Cardinals and other teams as well.

Two years later Mark McGwire was on the Cardinals and along with Sammy Sosa they revived baseball with their combined 135 home runs.  As you know, there are associated factors to this story and you can read about them elsewhere.  The team continued to win, but baseball began to change in St. Louis.  It became more and more corporate and there was less diversity on the field.  The new owners bullied the community into an unnecessary new stadium with fewer seats, more luxury boxes, higher prices, and a still unfulfilled promise of a “Ballpark Village” on the site of the previous stadium.  Ownership prospered; taxpayers sacrificed tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue.  The fans didn’t seem to mind; they passed through the turnstiles of the new stadium at a rate of over three million a year, including 2009 in the midst of “the great recession.”  And as we said, the team, while very likable and competitive, entered the 2010 season without a single African-American on the roster as a player or coach.

The teams of the 1960s were intricately tied with the social progress and upheaval of the time.  A large part of the excitement of going to the ballpark was seeing integration work; a special bond among a diverse group of players.  It helped build an ethos that served as a model for people in other industries.  This was especially so in St. Louis because the team was so successful and the team as a group was a collection of very unique individuals.  It was true elsewhere; I loved going to games in Baltimore and seeing the Robinsons (Frank and Brooks) form the nucleus of outstanding teams that also reflected the demographics of the community.

In many ways today’s Cardinals team may reflect a portion of our current body politic.  For me the opening of Spring Training this year was somewhat disturbing when relief pitcher Ryan Franklin took issue with the league’s policy of no guns permitted in the clubhouse.  Somehow his concern for his gun rights just doesn’t measure up to Curt Floods personal sacrifice to remove the shackles of the rules of the game that bound a player to a single team for the entirety of his career.  It’s a different game now for a different audience.  I hope that you’ll pardon me if I this season I choose not to visit Mr. DeWitt’s palace and further fill his coffers.  I still love the game, and when the renaissance occurs, I’ll be there.

Link to Part I
Link to Part III

The post Baseball and Politics – Part II appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Like many people, two of my primary interests are politics and sports.  They both lend themselves to statistical analysis; they have “seasons” (in both cases too long); and winners are sometimes the wealthy front-runners (George W. Bush or the New York Yankees); other times they are among those with the least resources (Dennis Kucinich or the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays).  It is no accident that Nate Silver, the publisher of what is considered to be the most reliable political forecaster (Fivethirtyeight.com) developed his skills handicapping baseball players through a method called baseball sabermetrics.

Thursday we will turn a statistical eye at the history of African-American players on the Cardinals.   For now, let us just say that yesterday, for the first time in 56 years, the Cardinals opened the season with no African-American players on its roster.

The current team is a very good one; reigning National League Central Division champions and odds-on favorite to repeat this year.  It’s a likable team; there are some great hustlers like Brendan Ryan, Skip Schumaker, and Ryan Ludwick.  Albert Pujols may be the finest player to ever don a Cardinal uniform; Matt Holiday is productive, Colby Rasmus is developing into a future star and Yadier Molina may be the game’s most exciting catcher.

The historian Ken Burns produced a wonderful series on PBS called “Baseball.”  He focuses on the evolution of the game, featuring its superstars (far too little attention paid to Stan Musial).  But as a historian, he weaves the history of baseball into the social and economic trends of this country’s legacy.  He has an “inning” (chapter) called “Shadow Ball” about the Negro Leagues that provided separate and unequal opportunities for African-Americans, primarily in the 1920s through the 1940s.  As America changed, so did baseball.  In September, 1945, five months after assuming office, President Harry S Truman began the process of integrating the army.  Only a month later, Brooklyn Dodger general manager Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to a professional contract.  After a year in the minor leagues, Jackie Robinson was on the Dodger opening day roster in 1947 (I feel lucky to have been born the next day and to have always lived in an integrated baseball era).  Eleven weeks later Cleveland Indians general manager Bill Veeck signed Larry Doby who took the field for the team that July 5.  Baseball was integrated; the trend was inexorable.  The first African-American to play for the Cardinals was Tom Alston in 1952.  The last team to integrate was the Boston Red Sox in 1959.

As the country struggled with integration, so did baseball.  Most of the early great African-American players endured treatment in the south ranging from separate and unequal to outright harassment including death threats.  Spring training in Florida was not much better; finally in 1964 a group of African-Americans on the Cardinals convinced owner Gussie Busch to insist on housing the team under one roof in an integrated hotel in St. Petersburg.

The 1964 Cardinal team gelled into a winning team with a special bond between African- American, Hispanic and white players.  But with two weeks remaining in the season they were six and a half games behind the Philadelphia Phillies with a dozen games to play.  What ensued thereafter was remarkable; the Cardinals became a winning juggernaut and the Phillies “pholded.”  Their demise is generally attributed to manager Gene Mauch’s decision to repeatedly use pitchers Chris Short and Jim Bunning on only two days rest.  If you’ve been watching the U.S. Senate lately, you may have noticed that Bunning, now a U.S. Senator from Kentucky, may have suffered permanent damage from the debacle.  The Cardinals, under the cool guidance of manager Johnny Keane, kept winning and when the season was over; their record of 93-69 was one game better than the Phillies and Cincinnati Reds.

The Cardinals entered the World Series as decided underdogs to the vaunted New York Yankees.  As mentioned previously, the Cardinals won the series four games to three and thirty-one years later the seven-games were chronicled by historian David Halberstam in his book October 1964.  A review from Amazon.com states:

The 1964 World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals was coated in myth from the get-go. The Yankees represented the establishment: white, powerful, and seemingly invincible. The victorious Cards, on the other hand, were baseball’s rebellious future: angry and defiant, black, and challenging. Their seven-game barnburner, played out against a backdrop of an America emerging from the Kennedy assassination, escalating the war in Vietnam, and struggling with civil rights, marked a turning point–neither the nation, nor baseball, would ever be quite so innocent again.

On July 2, midway through the season, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the public.  It prohibited discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment.

If you lived in St. Louis, there was a synergy of events as the country moved towards tearing down racial barriers and the Cardinals won the World Series with a truly integrated team.  It was a year when black and white St. Louisans joined the freedom riders, traveling south to face the angry voices in opposition to integration.  It was also a year in which the Cardinals played in a stadium at Grand and Dodier Avenues in north St. Louis.  No one could attend a game without walking through a sea of poverty and seeing faces that bore the stress of years of racial discrimination.

The country was in a period of racial transition; one that we would learn later would have many triumphs and moments of despair.  That continues today.  The 1964 Cardinals showed that baseball was right in the middle of the struggle.  If you were working and hoping for more racial equality and justice, it was a wonderful time to be a Cardinal fan, but the future of the team’s play on the field and unique composition of the roster were always unpredictable variables.  And so it is still today.

Link to Part II
Link to Part III

The post Baseball and Politics – Part I appeared first on Occasional Planet.