Instant Memories of a Dodger Pheenom

8/13/2014

When Karl Spooner Had So Many Next Years.

We were driving through upstate New York and I saw a sign for Oriskany Falls.

Right away, I flashed to a ball park in Brooklyn on the last day of the 1954 season, the Dodgers and Pirates playing out the string.

Before Sandy Koufax became Sandy Koufax, before Clayton Kershaw was invented, there was Karl Spooner.

I was there, one of 9,344 fans. A lefty from the minors, who had shut out the hated Giants on Thursday, came back and shut out the Pirates on Sunday.

Eighteen innings in his first two games. Seven hits. Twenty-seven strikeouts. No runs. One of the best two-game debuts in major-league history.

As my friend and I took three subway lines back to Queens that day, we envisioned the career ahead for Karl Spooner. As Brooklyn Dodger fans always said, wait til next year.

Next year arrived, and Spooner had an 8-6 record, and the Dodgers finally won a World Series.

But he had already blown out his shoulder in spring training of 1955, and never again pitched in the majors. Nowadays, there might be an operation for it, but by 1958, he was retired and living in Vero Beach, Fla., the training base of the team that had just deserted us.

He died in 1984 at the age of 52.

I ascertained via the Internet that a ball field is named for Spooner in Oriskany Falls, so my brother and I made a detour and asked a nice man at the filling station for directions. “I saw him pitch in 1954,” I said. I asked whether people in town still remembered Karl Spooner, and he said a few. I did not ask for their names or numbers; I had my own memories.

We found the field down the hill. This being America in 2014, nobody was on the ball field – no league game, no kids playing choose-up, no game of catch. There was a modest sign, painted in Dodger blue, and on the other side facing the field is a resumé of Spooner’s career, from childhood to Ebbets Field. The records were compiled by Dr. Rich Cohen.

“My friend, my doctor,” said my kid brother Christopher Vecsey, a professor at Colgate University. They umpire Little League games together, and every spring they gambol in a game of town ball, the ancestor of modern baseball.

Dr. Cohen has also written a lovely biography of Spooner for SABR: http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/b6f00e89

My brother said he might take his grown son, who still pitches in an adult league, to this field. He can imagine his son taking aim at the short porch in right field. I strolled out to the mound and approximated a left-handed delivery, in homage to the man I saw pitch in 1954.

Photo by Christopher Vecsey

Gene Palumbo

8/13/2014 07:28:39 am

A good one, George. Thanks for this.

If I'm not mistaken, Roger Craig had a similarly auspicious first game (and maybe even first two) as a Dodger pitcher.

George Vecsey

8/14/2014 01:20:06 pm

Gene, you are absolutely right. Craig was 3-0 in his first 3 starts in July of 1955, but no shutouts. You know your Brooklyn Dodgers. GV

Mendel

8/14/2014 07:49:22 am

In Israel, I am one of a few who refers to the Golan Heights as "upstate." Last I checked there were no ball fields to be found there.

Alan Rubin link

8/14/2014 04:15:09 pm

Mendel

Unfortunately, they play a different kind of game in the Golan Heights.

In Manhattan where I was born, “uptown” is the equivalent of your “upstate”. Depending upon where you are located, “uptown” is a relative term. I grew up in Washington Heights (upper Manhattan), which currently has sections that are more dangerous than the Golan Heights.

I was there with my family, including teenage grandchildren, a year ago January as well as Eilat and Jerusalem. With all the current troubles, the physical beauty and vitality of Israel is forgotten.

Alan Rubin link

8/14/2014 10:00:20 am

Nice flashback!! It is always more interesting when you leave the main road to explore things.

charlie vincent

8/14/2014 11:31:17 am

George: Wow, you never know what memories you might touch when you put something down in black and white. My dad's younger brother. Al Vincent, spent a lifetime in baseball and was manager of the Fort Worth Cats in the Texas League in 1954 when the Dodgers called Spooner up from his club. I was 14 at the time and remember it well and all the expectations and ultimate disappointment. A great baseball story

George Vecsey

8/15/2014 06:36:03 am

Charlie, I remember the name.....never knew you were related. Lots of Dodgers came through Fort Worth....G

Ed Martin

8/14/2014 02:08:51 pm

George, I enjoyed remembering Karl Spooner, "Lefty" is locked in my memory with his name. Another strong starter who hurt his arm when seemingly headed for stardom for the Dodgers in 1947 was Harry Taylor. (from SABR). "In 1947 Taylor made the team out of spring training, winning a spot in the bullpen. But on May 28, with the Dodgers trailing the Chicago Cubs by a half game, new manager Burt Shotten inserted Taylor into the starting rotation. Harry pitched a complete-game five-hitter to defeat the New York Giants, 14–2. He also had two hits and two runs batted in. Taylor’s win and a Cubs’ loss put Brooklyn into first place. Four days later he pitched another complete game in leading the Dodgers to a 6–1 victory over St. Louis, and he followed with a two-hit shutout against Pittsburgh. By July 4 Taylor had seven victories and seven complete games in ten starts. On July 29 Taylor’s three-hit shutout at St. Louis helped the Dodgers stretch their lead to eight games over the New York Giants.

An injury Taylor suffered in a game against the Cardinals on August 18 may have been the reason for his short career. Harry hurt his elbow as he threw a curve to the Cardinals’ Whitey Kurowski, and while he got credit for his tenth victory, it would be his last of the season. Taylor did not pitch again for more than five weeks, and when he did come back, he threw just four innings in two relief appearances. He attributed his elbow trouble to an old injury; whether or not that was true, Taylor was never again the same pitcher. He ended the regular season with a record of 10-5 and a 3.11 earned run average." (highlight for me, "seven victories and seven complete games in 10 starts."

Going back even further was Ed Head, a Dodger starter in 1946, a left-handed pitcher, who almost lost his arm in an accident, and could no longer pitch. He became a right-handed starter for the Dodgers. from Baseball Ref., "Pitcher Ed Head of the Brooklyn Dodgers threw a no-hitter against the Boston Braves at Ebbets Field on April 23, 1946. The same season, he had an arm injury that ended his career.

As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Slaughterhouse Five, ironically, "So it goes." Sad.

George Vecsey

8/14/2014 03:26:04 pm

The Mets had a lefty named Grover Powell who shut out the Phillies in 1963. I was there, a young reporter. We were standing around Powell in the crowded dressing room, asking him our Chipmunk-style questions, and Casey Stengel stood at the edge of the media scrum and blurted: "Wuz you born in Poland?" That was Powell's only major-league victory in 20 games.

Charlie Accetta

8/14/2014 03:58:33 pm

GV - A moment in the sun is better than none, but the memory of the light is small comfort on a cold night.

I hate to make allusions to gladiators, because today's athletes don't face near-certain death on the field, but then there are different kinds of death, just as there are different lives lived in the body of a person. An athlete is guaranteed a finite space in time to perform in the best of circumstances. When that portion of life is cut short by injury, the wound doesn't really heal, because it was mortal. A new life springs forth out of reflex and necessity, but the athlete stays alive in the owner's mind. The moments of triumph, though brief, are everlasting, The grief for the promises unconsummated is unyielding. Every life is a mix of happenstance and joyous misery. This story captures that perfectly. Thanks.

George Vecsey

8/15/2014 06:39:23 am

Charlie, absolutely. Nothing is promised. Careers can end so quickly, before they are begun. I saw Steve Dalkowski pitch in March of 1983...but he never made the majors. Baseball is great about isolating one game, one performance. Thanks for the perspective. GV

Alan Rubin link

8/14/2014 04:19:26 pm

I am always in awe of the collective recall of this group, particularly the Dodger fans. You all either have fantastic recall or a team of fact checkers.

Mike from Whitestone

8/15/2014 08:13:53 am

GV,
I went over this piece with Joe from Flatbush, no, not Torre, my dad. He said to remind you of the "Spooner should've come sooner; phrase of the Dodger fans way back then.
And he said Taylor was called a 'Pony Pitcher'? Schotten wore a suit........he was on a roll, Pavko, Reiser..........more. Dem Bums.
On an important side note, the patient is doing well today.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Instant Memories of a Dodger Pheenom

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