Knowing what an acute analytical mind he has, I wasn’t surprised
to learn that Charles Krauthammer is a baseball fan of the first
order, or to learn that he is a habitué of Nationals Park, where
the Washington Nationals are playing some fine baseball this
spring.
Krauthammer is in his regular seat at Nationals most week nights
and enjoying his team’s division-leading efforts this year. He
stuck with them during a string of forgettable seasons while they
were losing lots of games and doing a pretty good impersonation of
the old Washington Senators. That team long represented a city that
history tells us was first in war, first in peace, and last in the
American League.
OK, the new Washington team, formerly the Expos of Montreal
where Krauthammer was raised and attended McGill University, is a
National League team. But it started life in the Capital the way
the old Senators finished theirs. Losing a lot. Now Krauthammer’s
patience and loyalty, and that of other long-suffering Washington
fans, are being rewarded. The team is really good. Moral victories
are being replaced by actual ones.
I can relate. I spent an unsupportable number of hours keeping
up with and pulling for the Tampa Bay Rays in their first decade
(the Devil Rays in those bad old days) when the team threatened to
outdo even the St. Louis Browns for baseball futility and
consecutive last-place finishes. Now they are very entertaining
winners.
In a column last week Krauthammer
chronicled some of his favorite Nationals, including
19-year-old rookie phenom Bryce Harper and manager Davey Johnson, a
baseball graybeard who has been in the game since Father Time was
playing in the Tri-State League. He also spoke of pitcher Henry
Rodriguez, who recently lost his job as the Nationals’ closer.
Henry can throw 100 mph, but may as well be nicknamed Scud, because
he never knows where the missile will come down.
Rodriguez, his stuff and his lack of control, recalls to my
baseball-story-clogged mind, one Ryne Duren, a flame-throwing
reliever who had a couple of good years with the Yankees in the
fifties before losing his stuff and drifting on to short stints on
a half dozen other major league teams. (His final team: the
Washington Senators.) The Yankees called Duren up in 1958 from
their American League farm team, the Kansas City Athletics.
Baseball fans of a certain age will recall that Kansas City was
where, in addition to Duren, the Yankees developed such stars as
Roger Maris, Art Ditmar, Ralph Terry, et al., and where they
stashed Enos Slaughter when they didn’t need him. Being banished to
Kansas City in those pre-double-knit days was the baseball
equivalent of being cast into outer darkness. In 13 seasons in
Kansas City the A’s never played .500 ball. But they did help keep
the Yankees dominant by passing their promising talent on to
them.
But back to Duren in pin-stripe days. He almost certainly put up
triple-digit speed. But this was in the days before speed guns, so
we don’t know for sure. A guy who throws this hard is downright
scary to hitters, at least the sane ones, and was probably even
more so in the pre-batting helmet fifties. Here’s how the
ever-eloquent Casey Stengel, Duren’s manager with the Yankees, put
it: “I would not admire hitting against Ryne Duren, because if he
ever hit you in the head you might be in the past tense.”
Exactly so. A baseball may only weigh five ounces. But it has
the approximate density of a rock. And any pitcher with the muzzle
velocity Duren had then must be approached, as one would a
poisonous snake, with great respect if the encounter can’t be
avoided altogether.
Adding to the terror in Duren’s case was the fact that he had
the visual acuity of Mr. Magoo and wore Coke bottle lens glasses.
Also, he could be wild. He would, intentionally I believe, throw
one of his eight warm-up pitches over Yogi Berra’s head. When the
batter stepped in, Yogi would say stuff to him like, “Geez, I have
to give Ryne signals with my whole hand. He can’t see fingers.”
All this led opposing hitters to think more about
self-preservation than about squaring one up. I don’t remember
anybody digging in on Duren. The guys in the on-deck circle didn’t
take their eyes off him. Sometimes even the home-plate umpire —
who in those days wore a thick, outside chest protector big enough
to stop shoulder-fired missiles — looked like he was ready to
bolt.
Thus endeth my baseball story. But don’t get me started. I have
lots more. Baseball, with its rich history and host of slightly
off-plumb characters, is a story-teller’s dream.
In our febrile, quick-cut, modern existence, many of us have
forgotten that patience is a virtue. Baseball, for those of us with
the requisite attention span to attend it, reminds us of this. And
teaches that patience is often rewarded for lifetime enthusiasts
like Krauthammer, and me. Unlike the many manic pastimes now
available, the luxuriously-paced Grand Old Game, with its endless
subtleties, remains a feast for the careful and unhurried
observer.
Please join me in wishing the best to Krauthammer and his
talented young Washington Nationals. And raise a cup to Ryne Duren,
who died last year at 81 in the small Central Florida town of Lake
Wales, where I began my journalism career 40+ years ago.
