Reusse: Nine traditions lost from baseball

There are numerous lost traditions in today's baseball. The Star Tribune decided to come up with nine innings worth of these, a complete game. That happens to be one of the traditions, the complete game (Bob Gibson had 28 for St. Louis in both 1968 and 1969), that didn't make the cut.

Other traditions lost from our list included boiled hot dogs taken from tepid water and slathered with mustard by vendors, and dugout agitators formerly known as "bench jockeys,'' and bad-breathed managers such as Billy Martin and Earl Weaver kicking dirt on umpires, while league officials look at it as entertainment.

A more recent tradition is players engaging in the intake of steroids and human growth hormones, but we aren't sure that one is lost as of yet, so we skipped it. Here's our list.

FIRST INNING: The Sunday doubleheader

Bill Veeck became the owner of the Chicago White Sox for the second time in 1975, helping to save the team from a move to St. Petersburg, Fla. His son Mike went to work promoting and selling tickets.

"I think we scheduled nine Sunday doubleheaders in 1976,'' Mike said. "The theory was the people from Indiana or from Dubuque could drive to Chicago on Sunday morning knowing they would get a full dose of baseball.''

Veeck was close. The White Sox were home for nine Sundays between May 23 and Sept. 12 and seven were scheduled doubleheaders. Counting the notorious twi-nighters used mostly to make up postponements, the White Sox played 11 doubleheaders at Comiskey Park and three on the road that season.

"Play nine, hopefully, and come back 22 minutes later and play another one,'' Veeck said. "Of course, television wasn't as involved and we played a lot faster.''

Indeed. The Twins played a doubleheader in Comiskey on July 28. The opener was 13-8 for the Twins and took what was then an excruciating 3 hours even; the second game was 7-4 Sox and was played in 2:15. You could add 45 minutes, minimum, to each of those games at today's pace.

Today, the owners start a season determined to have 81 home gates – no scheduled doubleheaders, and makeup games as either day-night (split) doubleheaders or on mutual off-days.

"The manager, the coaches and the players absolutely would prefer to the second game immediately after the first,'' Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "With the split, you sit around for hours. Those are the longest days of the season; they wear on the players.

"We also know it's never going back to the way it was. Lots of season tickets in today's game; lots of money involved. The owners need it to pay those big salaries.''

SECOND INNING: Fungoes & Infield

Fungoes were much in evidence when early arrivers came to the ballpark in days of yore. They were long, lean hunks of wood made by Lousiville Slugger, used to hit fly balls to outfielders and ground balls to infielders.

The legend said they were light, but "not when you're hitting a couple of hundred ground balls,'' Gardenhire said. "The new ones are great, made out of that composite wood, and very light.''

There were fungo magicians in most every organization. "The most famous fungo guy was Jimmy Reese, with the Angels,'' Twins coach Scott Ullger said. "They said he could pitch batting practice hitting balls with a fungo.''

Gardenhire had an old infielder named Johnny Antonelli (not the former Giants' pitcher) in the Mets' organization as a coach and fungo-hitting antagonist. "He would be barking, 'Gardenhire, stay down on the ball, hustle, hustle,' and hit me all the ground balls I could take,'' Gardenhire said. "I loved the guy.''

The pregame tradition at nearly all levels of baseball into the 1980s was for the home team to take batting practice, the visitors to take BP, the home team to come back out for a full round of "infield,'' ground balls, turning double plays, and the visitors would come back to do the same.

"We do all of that during batting practice now,'' Gardenhire said. "In fact, the managers were given notification before this season that we can't have pregame infield, because the field belongs to the promotions people and grounds crew for 30, 35 minutes before the game starts.''

Kerry Ligtenberg, former major league pitcher and now the Saints' pitching coach, said: "My son and I went to a Twins-Sox game, we got there early, and the White Sox were taking a full infield,'' Ligtenberg said. "My son said, 'What's that?' I heard later [manager] Robin Ventura was mad at the way they had been playing in the field, and that was his response.''

THIRD INNING: Pepper

Ballplayers (especially visitors) are notorious for getting to the park early and having much time to kill. A pregame staple was players coming down to the field in mid-afternoon for a robust game of "pepper''

One batter, several fielders 10-15 feet away in a line, making tosses that the batter would hit back at the players, hopefully on one, hard-to-handle hop. Generally, the punishment for booting the ball was to be sent to the end of line, and farther from his chance to be the batter.

Pepper was the enemy of groundskeepers. The game usually took place behind home plate, beating up the grass. "No Pepper'' started appearing in paint on the short wall behind the plate – the area now used for advertising.

"We would play pepper in the outfield in the Metrodome,'' Ullger said. "I did a lot of that with Luis Rivas … makes you move quick with your hands and feet.''

And then along came "flip,'' where several players compete at keeping the ball alive with a flip of their gloves. Johan Santana was a champion of flip.

"I haven't seen a pepper game in a long time,'' Twins coach Joe Vavra said. "It's gone.''

FOURTH INNING: Oldtimers Day

The Yankees are the lone protectors of this tradition in the major leagues. They held the annual Oldtimers celebration in the Bronx on June 23 for the 67th time. You can find a lot of ex-players to get a grand greeting for a sellout crowd as a franchise with 27 World Series championships and another 13 American League pennants.

The zaniest of Yankees' Oldtimers celebrations came on July 29, 1978. Earlier in the month, manager Billy Martin had this to say of star player Reggie Jackson and owner George Steinbrenner : "They deserve each other. One's a born liar and the other's convicted.''

Steinbrenner had been convicted of an illegal campaign contribution to Richard Nixon. The Boss forced Martin's resignation on July 24, and then five days later, he had public address legend Bob Sheppard make the surprise announcement during Oldtimers introductions that Martin would return as manager in 1980.

When Martin came running out of the dugout in his No. 1 uniform … well, I was there, covering the Twins, and it was the loudest 15-minute standing ovation in recorded sports history.

The Twins had occasional Oldtimers games at Met Stadium, including on July 17, 1976 when the attractions included Lyman Bostock Sr. He had played in the Negro Leagues and his son, Lyman Jr., was a rising star with the Twins.

The twist was that Lyman Sr. was long estranged from his son. He showed up a couple of times when Lyman Jr. made it to the big leagues, tried to introduce himself and his son said: "I've never met you. How do I know who you are?''

The Lyman Sr. of 1976had a pot belly that stretched his jersey, but also a sweet swing that resulted in a couple of hits.

The Twins' most-recent oldtimers promotion was the "Legends Game'' on Sept. 5, 2011, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first season in Minnesota. If you missed the game, and Kent Hrbek tearing up the turf chasing a pop-up, there's a chance it is showing on Fox Sports North right now.
FIFTH INNING: The Bullpen Car

Dick Stigman, the pride of Nimrod, Minn., was acquired by the Twins on April 2, 1962 for Pedro Ramos, and was an outstanding left-handed addition over the four years. He spent his share of time in the bullpen (except for 33 starts in 1963) and took rides at Met Stadium in a Dodge, in a Ford and in a golf cart.

"One year, the players got free Dodges for the season from the place out by Southview, so we rode in from the bullpen in a Dodge,'' Stigman said. "Another time we got Fords from Midway, so we rode in a Ford.

"Nobody ran in from the bullpen. I don't think we could've made it. We all smoked.''

George Tsamis, the manager of the Saints, said: "I saw bullpen cars as a fan of the Giants and the A's in the Bay Area. I don't know why they don't have them these days, the way everything in a big-league ballpark is marketed.''

Glen Perkins agrees. The ace lefthander of the Twins' bullpen has campaigned in recent months for a bullpen car at Target Field, mostly through his Twitter handle @glen_perkins.

SIXTH INNING: Keeping Score

Amanda Furth is a 35-year-old attorney with a couple of seats in right field as a partial Twins' season-ticket holder. As she enters Target Field's Gate 34, and goes to the small stand where game programs are sold. She spends $1 for a scorecard, and often another buck for a pencil.

"They give you a regular pencil now with an eraser, not those stubby ones you used to get,'' Furth said. "There's never a line for scorecards. There are a couple of ladies two rows down who bring their own scorebooks, but they are the only others in our area who I see scoring the game.''

Furth offers this excuse for the need to fill out a scorecard when in attendance: "I grew up in the grand baseball town of New Ulm. My dad Bill coached or managed or whatever for the [town-team] Brewers, and I first started keeping score at Johnson Park.

"If I'm at a game, even games in the kickball league where I play, I keep a score sheet.''

Maxine Putz, 92, of Columbia Heights can top that. She keeps score both on occasional visits to Target Field, and also while watching Twins' telecasts.

"My grandmother typically records her favorite team's every action with Dick and Bert, although she enjoys referring to them as 'Bert and Ernie,' '' Lance Olson said. "I first saw her scoring games at the old Met, where she introduced me to Tony O. and Harmon. She made it through watching all 13 heart-breaking innings with the Twins on Thursday night at Tampa Bay.''

Maxine at 92 is closer to the demographic of most diligent scorekeepers than is Amanda is 35. It is an art, and if you look around Target Field, you will find it to be almost lost.

SEVENTH INNING: Averages in Sunday newspaper

The averages appeared en masse for the American and National Leagues for decades. You could find them in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune in the 1950s, for sure, before the Twins came to the Bloomington prairie.

The Associated Press still sends out these league statistics, even though you won't find them in nearly as many Sunday newspapers. The hitters are listed by batting average and the pitchers by earned run average for each league. There are a minimum of at-bats and innings pitched required to be among the listed names.

It was those Sunday stats that led to perhaps the best of all the great quotes uttered by George Brett. In 1980, he said, "The first thing I look at in the Sunday paper is who is below the Mendoza line.''

This was a reference to Mario Mendoza, a light-hitting shortstop who often was stuck below .200 and near the bottom of the listed hitters.

"I got off to a great start with the Mets in 1982,'' Gardenhire said. "The first week the averages were in the Sunday paper, I was leading the league, hitting .420-something. I got a scissors, clipped out the top few names, and still have that tiny piece of the Sunday paper.''

EIGHTH INNING: The Baseball Bible

The Sporting News was founded in 1886 and owned by the Spink family until 1977. It carried "The Baseball Bible'' on its masthead for many decades. You could find a week's worth of box scores, and feature stories and notes for each big-league team.

"We all read the Sporting News, especially in the winter,'' Twins coach Joe Vavra said. "It was the only way to keep up with what was happening with your organization, or with other clubs.''

I was a Sporting News correspondent for the Twins for a few years in the late '70s and into the '80s. By then, the baseball emphasis was lessened to some degree, and mostly what the editors wanted in the winter was a notebook.

Ron Jackson had come to the Twins along with Danny Goodwin for Disco Dan Ford in December 1978. His nickname of "Papa Jack'' fit his gregarious personality. He had a good first season in 1979, and a poor one in 1980.

That winter, the TSN correspondent used a throwaway line about Papa Jack being more like Papa Up the previous season. And that spring, when I first arrived at Tinker Field, Jackson came roaring in my direction in a rage.

That was the danger of covering the hometown ballclub for the Sporting News – everyone read it.

The Sporting News' de-emphasis of baseball continued until January 1 of this year, when it became a website only with heavy NFL coverage.

NINTH INNING: Collecting Baseball Cards

The basic of baseball-card collecting in the 1950s was to buy a Topps pack that included five cards and a stick of cardboard-like bubble gum. The heartbreak was to open a pack and finding Wilmer "Vinegar Bend'' Mizzell as the biggest name … no Mays, no Mantle, no Campanella, not even a Moose Skowron.

Through the years, other card companies have surfaced, thrived and left, multiple cards were issued for players during the year by each company, and collectors moved to buying full, boxed sets.

Tsamis made 41 appearances for the Twins with a 6.19 ERA as a left-handed reliever with a 6.19 ERA.

"I collected every Ken Griffey Jr. card I could get my hands on, and my brother collected every Frank Thomas,'' Tsamis said. "I must have 30, 40 Griffeys; whatever companies were issuing cards, I'd get the Griffeys.''

Tsamis wound up facing Griffey four times (2 for 4, one RBI) in 1993. And he also earned a handful of baseball cards, a few of which were taped to his office wall at Midway Stadium.

"You know what I loved about baseball cards as a player?'' Tsamis said. "You could be completely [lousy] like me, and they'd still say something good about you on the back of the card.

"Look at this one: It says that I 'quickly established myself as having one of the best pickoff moves in the American League.' '