Gangrey.com

'THE UMPIRE THEN PASSES OUT, PRESUMABLY WITH A CONCUSSION'

So look at this. Derek Zumsteg, who writes for a baseball site called Ussmariner.com, recently became the first blogger to have his work included the annual Best American Sportswriting book. The story, a forensic analysis of Bugs Bunny's baseball greatness, made me laugh very loudly on the airplane tonight on the way back from the Mayborn conference in Texas. It illustrates a point that speaker and author Candice Millard made so well this morning: In writing, the idea is everything.

Read it here: With the DVD release of "Looney Tunes Golden Collection" it is at last possible for us to examine in detail one of the most famous baseball games ever played, and see what lessons the contest holds for the analytical community.

"Baseball Bugs" (1946) depicts a game held at the Polo Grounds. No date is given, but artifacts shown such as public address equipment and advertisements ("Filboid Studge," "Nox, 2 for 25," "Manza Champagne") definitively place it during the 1946 season. The visiting Gas House Gorillas are playing against the home team, the Tea Totallers. It is a day game and conditions are good.

The first view of the scoreboard shows the Gorillas at 94 runs (10-28-16-40) after the first four innings. This appears to be footage inserted out of order, as we’ll determine later the score then was not 96-0 but rather 54-0. While obviously neither team was a major league affiliate and it is almost certain that the game played is an exhibition, the score is already notable. The total of 54 runs was far more than the previous all-time run scoring record for a team in a game (held by the Chicago Colts, who scored 36 against Louisville in a game on June 29th, 1897), and the score of forty runs in an inning would be significantly above the most runs scored by any inning by one team (18, by the Chicago Colts in the 7th inning on April 14th, 1883).

The stadium is entirely filled, and as we know that the Polo Grounds could hold 55,000 fans in that year’s configuration, it is fair to assume that this was a game of some note, and that the players participating were extremely popular.

We open to see "a screaming liner" hit by the home team. The outcome of the hit is not defined, and the hit itself seems an indicator that the game was not official: the ball appears to be a shade of grey, and makes an almost-human screaming noise as it travels, neither of which was normal behavior for a regulation baseball in play. Since the balls used in the remainder of the game are white, and since we also see that the Teatotallers are a horrible offensive team, it is reasonable to conclude that this footage is from some kind of pre-game hitting contest, or perhaps an entirely different game.

Comments

Re: Bugs Bunny, Superstar

This piece is, without a doubt, one of the funniest things I have read in a long, long time, and the best thing about it is its originality. I mean, who hasn't seen that episode of Bugs Bunny 100 times. I would never think to break it down like this.

But the Bugs piece wasn't my favorite in Best American Sports Writing 2007. That honor goes to the Forward. That's right, the Forward, written by Editor Glenn Stout, who writes about how computers have changed the way stories are edited, and not for the better:

"I have friends - really, I'm not quite as isolated as many imagine - who work as writers for newspapers and magazines and similar venues. Some are sportswriters, and others write in other genres, yet beyond their shared love of the written word they are all united by something else. Most believe they are too often being edited into monotony."

And later: "Machine-readable text is so easily manipulated that each editor makes change upon change upon change upon change. And each time the story is passed down the assembly line it becomes a little less distinctive and a little safer and a little more bland, until it is finally spit out upon the published page the precise shade of gray as everything else that goes through that process."

And finally: "I am not arguing that there should be no editors (well, I do know of one the world could do without), but in the wrong hands a word processor can be a dangerous, dangerous thing. If I were in charge, there would certainly be fewer editors, and most would be encouraged to take a lot of time off. Editing done for any reason other than space, accuracy, and basic clarity is pretty much guaranteed to kill any chance of authentic communication. As I prepare this book each year I read hundreds of stories that I suspect may once have been memorable but were edited into paste."

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