‘Chris Gonna Find Lou Brock!’

9/7/2020

I was trying to write something about Tom Seaver that had not been said in the past few days.
Then our-son-the-newsman texted me on Sunday afternoon: “Omigosh, now Lou Brock.”
Immediately, immediately, I thought of a falsetto voice in the cramped old Busch Stadium clubhouse, piercing the hubbub of a great team:
“Chris going to America! Chris gonna find Lou Brock!”
That was Bob Gibson, the crabby but funny straw boss of the Cardinal clubhouse, emitting the punch line of Flip Wilson in his epic routine about Christopher Columbus:
Queen Isabel -- Elizabeth Johnson, that is -- is underwriting the mission of Columbus, and she is down at the dock cheering him on -- in American Black patois:
“Chris going to America!” the queen shrieks. “Chris gonna find Ray Charles!” (*-see below)

By inserting Brock, Gibson paid tribute to the player whose legs and brain and will helped the Cardinals win three pennants in the mid-60s, and for a while made Brock the all-time stolen base leader.
Lou Brock, who died Sunday, was the final piece of the 1964 Cardinals, coming over in a one-sided trade with the Cubs. (You got it: for Ernie Broglio.)
He gave the Cardinals one more star to go along with Gibson, Bill White, Curt Flood, Dick Groat, Tim McCarver and Ken Boyer, one of the great teams (and clubhouses) I ever covered.

Brock also gave Stan Musial one of his favorite punch lines during the World Series of 1964. Musial had retired after the 1963 season, and the Cardinals landed Brock in mid-June of 1964.
Why were the Cardinals celebrating in October of 1964?
“We finally got a left-fielder,” Musial would say with his giggle.

Brock did not come from nowhere. While the Mets were still waiting for The Youth of America, in Casey Stengel’s prophecy, the Cubs already had talent but negated by bad management.
In 1962, the Cubs promoted Brock to the majors, to his surprise. On His first at-bat in a Sunday doubleheader in the Polo Grounds, he lofted a drive that landed directly on top of the bleacher fence -- only the third player in history to hit a home run into those bleachers.
“You won’t ever do that again!” shouted Alvin Jackson, the Mets’ lefty, who gave up the homer. Brock agreed, he never would. (Two college men from the South they became friends.)

Brock soon acquired the reputation of an under-performer who was skittery in left field. The Cubs gave up on him in 1964, and the Cardinals’ manager, Johnny Keane, did the same thing with for Brock that he was doing with Gibson. (“I had a commitment to his heart,” Keane once said about Gibson, one of the most beautiful statements I have ever heard from a coach or manager. Overlooking old racial stereotypes was part of Keane’s life vision.)

After the Cardinals won the 1964 World Series, I had dinner with Brock in Chicago, for a profile of him for Sport Magazine.
“They needed a lift,” Brock said. “I had a history of not being able to help anybody. I think the ballplayers felt this. Nobody said anything to me but I could feel it.”
By 1967, Brock was an established all-star who had never seen Seaver closer than 60 feet, 6 inches. Their first encounter in the National League all-star clubhouse is a wonderful story that Seaver told many times over the years. (The Brock-Seaver part is about 60 seconds into it:)

Brock and the “kid” eventually faced each other 157 times, more than either faced any opponent. The record shows that Seaver got the better of Brock. (But Brock played in three World Series.)

Many years later, Brock made a great contribution to the Mets, without meaning it. He was a soothing older teammate to a hard-driving young Cardinal named Keith Hernandez, telling him to relax and play his game.
When Hernandez became the infield straw boss of the Mets in the 80’s, he often referred to Brock’s kindness and encouragement. I am sure Hernandez is gutted today, because his mentor has passed, after losing a leg to diabetes years ago.

Two giants, a few days apart. I was lucky to be around the Cardinals and Brock, just as I was proud to cover Tom Seaver on some of his epic days. I can’t claim I knew him well, but I had plenty of opportunity to observe. One of my last impressions was Seaver’s inner Marine joining Manager Gil Hodges to give the Mets’ self-image a posture adjustment in the late 60s. I wrote about it last year:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/sports/baseball/gil-hodges-tom-seaver-mets.html?searchResultPosition=1

In this weird, truncated season, these two Hall of Fame players, linked by familiarity in their careers, are linked again.
*- Here's the origin of the Columbus/Queen Isabel (Isabel Johnson) /Ray Charles riff.

PTO’N

9/7/2020 01:49:05 pm

Hi George, highly recommend Halberstram’s “October 1964” for a chronicle of the ‘64 baseball season with a focus on the Yanks and the Cards, culminating in their WS matchup.

bruce

9/7/2020 07:38:58 pm

pto'n

was a good read as were the fifties and the summer of '49.

bruce

George Vecsey

9/7/2020 08:47:23 pm

Thanks for the recommendation. Halberstam was a great reporter who was a legend with my colleagues at the NYT and also a legend in Nashville when I was covering that region. I covered that 1964 Series -- the first Series on the road for me...epic personalities and a grand old baseball town, St. Louis. GV

Roy Edelsack

9/7/2020 06:46:35 pm

Brock homering into the centerfield bleachers at the Polo Grounds so far exceeded what we believed were his natural abilities that the only thing I can compare it to is Bob Beamon in Mexico City in 1968.

George Vecsey

9/7/2020 08:49:08 pm

Roy: a friend of mine played against Brock in A ball a year before that 1962 home run. I'm going to chat with my pal later this week -- he met Brock and has some stories to tell. GV

George Vecsey

9/10/2020 09:18:08 am

Roy and Others: I'll get to my Brock story soon...but the mention of Beamon reminds me that he went to the same high school I did -- Jamaica High -- albeit a decade later. Jamaica High still in the public eye, via Sheila Jackson Lee (now from Houston) and Jelani Cobb, writer for New Yorker and teacher at Columbia.,
NYC, in all its wisdom, broke up JHS 4-5 years ago splitting it into little schools with no identification or history -- in the same beautiful campus and building, made to last forever. Another legacy of DiBlasio. GV

bruce

9/7/2020 07:45:37 pm

george,

they're dying in bunches these days.

funny seaver/brock story. hadn't heard it before.

sometimes forget just how big flip wilson was. gone for 22 years now!?

and, as times have changed, weird seeing him smoking and exhaling all over the place.

i wonder if the first time i read any of your stuff was in sport magazine.

i started subscribing for several years when i was 12 or so.

bruce

bruce

George

9/7/2020 08:50:48 pm

Bruce: I was going to comment on the smoking -- on national TV -- but wanted to stay on message. It's a great prop/stage device but the stink of the cigarets was going into my brain as I watched the video. GV

Michael

9/7/2020 07:55:00 pm

Great stuff and thanks so much George.

Alan Rubin link

9/8/2020 11:50:02 am

Smoking was everywhere back then. It was rare to see a movie in which stars like Bogart and Bacall were not smoking.

Flip Wilson's era of comedians did not need four letter words to be funny. Dick Gregory was low key and used sarcasm with great effect. He once commented that when Dinah Shore ended each of her shows with a kiss to the TV audience that it was not meant for him.

There are many great comics today who do not need profanity. Trevor Noah is great in combining humor with social commentary. His book "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" is a delight, funny but also very insightful. It is best listened to an Audible as his reading adds considerable flavor.

I loved Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen, Morey Amsterdam, Art Carney, Sid Ceaser, Woody Allen, Henry Morgan as well as several lesser known comedians.

Gerry Lester was very popular back when I was in college in the the 1950's. I was in a two week summer workshop program at Proctor & Gamble in 1956 and saw Gerry's brother Buddy at a nightclub in Covington, KY. He was much funnier.

We all need some humor right now.

The Jack Benny and Fred Allen radio shows back to back justified the invention of radio.

As Abigail Adams told John, don't forget the ladies-Carol Burnett, Lily Tomlin, Joan Rivers, Tina Faye, Phyllis Diller and more.

The early days of TV had live shows, including drama and comedy. The late night shows before Johnny Carson had several different hosts who often had famous comedians talking about their vaudeville days. These discussions were often more humerus then the regular comedy shows. They would swap stories of what it was like traveling around to all the small towns.

It was believed that W. C. Fields had unclaimed money in banks across the U.S. when he died. He loved to play poker and when he needed credit to continue in a game he would tell the other players to call the local bank president. It was never determined how much money was in his accounts.

ED MARTIN

9/8/2020 03:12:48 pm

I thought the Queen’s name was Geraldine.

ED MARTIN

9/8/2020 03:17:11 pm

Here’s one after a rusty synapse Although he compiled a 14–10 won/loss mark (with a 4.48 earned run average) in his three-year MLB pitching career and was highly regarded as a third-base coach, Schacht's ability to mimic other players from the coaching lines, and his comedy routines with fellow Washington coach Nick Altrock, earned him the nickname of "The Clown Prince of Baseball". Ironically, at the height of their collaboration, Schacht and Altrock developed a deep personal animosity and stopped speaking to each other off the field. During their famous comic re-enactments of the Dempsey–Tunney championship boxing match, many speculated that they pulled no punches as they rained blows on each other.[2]

After 11 seasons (1924–34) as a Senator coach, Schacht broke up his act with Altrock to follow Washington manager Joe Cronin to the Boston Red Sox, where Schacht coached at third base in 1935–36. He then focused on a solo career as a baseball entertainer.

Gene Palumbo

9/10/2020 01:59:01 am

George,
I remember reading the Hodges-Seaver column when it was published, and liking it a lot. I liked it even more this time around; in fact, read it twice. I think it's one of your best.
If anyone in our blogging community here hasn't clicked on the link and read that column, I suggest you do so.

George Vecsey

9/10/2020 09:19:37 am

Michael, Gene, Ed and Alan: thank you all for your comments. GV

ED MARTIN

9/10/2020 02:17:29 pm

Thanks Gene,

Re read the Hodges, Tom article, and it stirred memory, although I am at the “never trust a memory” stage of life.

I remember Gil, as Dodger (a real Dodger), picking up a teammate and carrying him away from a fight. Like the fighter was a child.

Later, I saw Frank “Hondo” Howard do the same with a Washington teammate. Hondo was 6’8, about 250, my guess, so it was a bit less impressive than Gil’s feat.

Gil was a real leader by example on the field/team.

bruce

9/10/2020 02:31:13 pm

dear all,

i was born in 1950.

i remember hodges when he was past his prime and as a manager.

curious what this group's thoughts on why he's not a hall of famer?

his omission certainly stirs some strong emotions.

apparently, he was only behind trump in his baseball ability in nyc.

bruce

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

‘Chris Gonna Find Lou Brock!’

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