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Jay Shackford
Opening Day
By Dead-Center Shacks
Opening day for Major League Baseball always has a special place in my heart. It brings back fond memories of playing Little League baseball as well as the first day of skipping school at Rosemary Elementary.
It was a beautiful early April day in 1959 when we (myself and a buddy I can’t remember) walked up to Connecticut Avenue instead of reporting to our 6th grade class and hitch-hiked down to pick up the trolley that crossed Rock Creek Park and took us to old Griffin Stadium located at the corner of Georgia Avenue and 5th Street, NW, now the site of Howard University Hospital.
We managed (can’t remember how) to buy tickets for about $5 and sit in the beer garden, which were bench seats in left field. A lot of the men attending the game wore suits, which seems odd compared to the dress apparel for game’s today. According to official stats, the Senators beat the Baltimore Orioles.
The original Senators finished in last place that season, but won the Opening Day game against the Orioles by a score of 9-2. Pedro Ramos was on the mound and went the distance for the Senators, picking up his first win of the season. Other notable Senators that year were 3rd baseman Harmon KiIlebrew, outfielder Bobby Allison and pitcher Camilo Pascual, who finished the year with a 17-10 record. (The two best bets in baseball back in those days were that the Yankees would win the American League and that the Senators would come in last, which they did indeed do that year.)
When we returned to Rosemary Elementary the next day, nobody in authority said a word about our absences. Hey, skipping school wasn’t all that difficult.
Drinking with Mickey Mantle
In 1961 when we were about to enter 8th grade at Leland Junior High, we attended an early summer game at the soon-to-be retired Griffin Stadium, which was the last year before the Senators moved to Minneapolis/St. Paul and started winning and the final year before Griffin Stadium was abandoned and RFK Stadium opened that fall for the football season.
A bunch of us Leland rowdies (can’t remember who was with me but believe my good friend Chad Allen, who passed away years ago, was one of them) attended a Friday night game against the New York Yankees. Back in those days, it was not unusual for teams to play four game stints — with games on Friday night, Saturday afternoon and then a double header on Sunday afternoon to finish the series.
After the Yankees whipped the Senators once again, we were standing outside the Yankee locker room waiting for the players to emerge and walk to their bus for a short trip to the Shoreham Hotel where most visiting teams stayed. It was the best chance to get autographs, attracting a crowd of about 20 kids.
When Mickey Mantle stepped out of the locker room door, he was swarmed. I ended up next to Mickey (believe second baseman and later manager Billy Martin was with him) and he asked me to hold his paper cup half filled with beer (probably a National Bohemian brew that had a huge billboard in center field) while he signed some programs. This was the beginning of my drinking days at Leland and I a snuck out of the crowd and finished Mickey’s beer as Billy Martin shouted, “Hey, that kid just stole your beer.”
For those who don’t follow baseball, it’s important to note that Mickey Mantle, who along with Ted Williams, was probably the biggest star in the game.
Well, I didn’t get any autographs but I did drink out of the same cup as Mickey and finished his brew.
Yesterday’s Opening Day
It was a day to remember, not so much for the baseball results for the 13 opening day Major League Baseball games of the 2024 season but for the “rock star” fund raising event in the Big Apple featuring President Joe Biden and past presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. It also was the first day of the Sweet 16, which is one of the best sporting events in America.
I’m betting that Connecticut will repeat as winners on the men’s side. The Huskies have been the best team in college basketball all season. The women’s Sweet 16 starts tonight, giving America a chance to see Caitlin Clark of Iowa, perhaps the best player in the women’s game ever. She’s fun to watch — a kind of Seth Curry (nothing but net on her step-back three pointers) on the women’s side of the game. I might add that prices for the women’s final four tournament are higher than for the men’s final four. That should tell you something.
The Radio City funding-raising event took in a record $26 million. But even more important it elevated the excitement and enthusiasm about Joe Biden’s re-election campaign. It was a “rock star” event — hopefully the first of many. The $26 million was more than Old Bone Spurs raised during the entire months of January and February, and most of that money is going to pay for his Trump’s attorneys trying to keep him out of jail.
Now, we need to build on that enthusiasm. As Democrats or Republicans who cringe just thinking about a second Trump term, we need to forget about convicting and sending poor Donald to prison (that’s not going to happen before the November election because the Trump team is good at running out the clock) and concentrate on building support and enthusiasm for the Biden ticket and getting out the vote out in November. That’s means opening up your checkbooks and canvassing and making phone calls for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket.
Two key Senate races worth supporting are JonTester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Senate races in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina are also in play. If you have some extra bucks, think about contributing to the Tester and Brown campaigns. To get something done over the next four years like pouring money into health care and our public education systems as well as overhauling our immigration system and border policies, letting the Trump tax cuts for the rich expire in 2025 and supporting Ukraine and our NATO allies, we need to hold onto the Senate and take control of the House as well as win the presidential race.
(Jack, see you are keeping good company up in New Hampshire these days. Last time I ran into Jennifer Harting was in the mid-70s shortly after I moved back to Washington to join the home builders association. If I recall correctly, she was covering a press conference at the National Housing Center as a producer/reporter for one of major TV networks. In any event, it was good to see her smiling face. Bests everyone, and watch some B-ball this weekend.)
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