California Baseball: Willie, Rickey and Bob Uecker

Plus: United Cigar smoke shop and Christmas Eve, 1975

Bob Uecker, aka “Mr. Baseball”

The other day I was driving in Alameda, the little island city on the eastern shores of San Francisco Bay, when I came to an intersection with a cross street by the name of “Wilver Stargell Avenue.”

While waiting for the red light to turn, I wondered to myself how many people who live in this city or pass through this intersection know who Stargell was.

Ardent baseball fans will surely know. Willie Stargell was the genial, slugging first baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates whose golden years as a player occurred in the 1970s. Even some fans, however, may wonder why they named a street after him in this former Navy town across the estuary from Oakland.

Here’s why: Big Willie went to Encinal High in Alameda and grew up in Oakland. When he was a boy he would walk to a lumberyard near his home and hit rocks using a stick of wood for a bat. If there were no good 2x4s available, he hit with an ax or broom handle.

From such humble beginnings are Hall of Famers made.

“I was exposed to everything an average black gets to see,” Willie said, reflecting back as an adult on his childhood in Oakland. “Pimps or con men, dope pushers and gamblers. I could have easily taken the wrong road but I always wanted to be a baseball player.”

Twenty-five baseball seasons ago, outside PNC Park in Pittsburgh, they erected a statue of him in his honor. Two days after the unveiling of the statue, he died. Age 61.

Rickey Henderson, another great Hall of Fame baseball player from Oakland, passed in December. I wonder if they’ll name a street or a park after him in Oakland. They sure should, and then some.

Almost certainly they’ll erect a statue of him in Las Vegas after the Athletics move there and the new stadium gets built in the years to come. Being an Oakland guy, I doubt if Rickey was too thrilled about the move to Nevada by the team he grew up watching.

A’s players are wearing a sleeve patch in his memory this season.

Rickey attended Oakland Tech. His first love was football but his mother worried about him being hurt so he stuck with baseball. After coming up through the A’s farm system he broke into the big leagues and his home run power, speed, and daring as a baserunner became evident to all.

In 1982 he set the major league record for most steals in a single season with 130. Since then no one has come within shouting distance of that record. After he did it Rickey described himself as the “greatest of all time.”

Some observers objected to his brashness, feeling that the young man did not show the appropriate amount of humility. They may have also been upset because it was true.

Rickey starred on a team of stars, those great Athletics teams of the 1980s that won the World Series in 1989 (in the famous earthquake series, beating the Giants), but probably should have won more than one. That era in Oakland featured a number of homegrown California stars such as solid third-baseman Carney Lansford, out of Wilcox High in Santa Clara, and Dave Stewart, the big-game fireballing Oakland native who pitched as a prep for St. Elizabeth’s High.

Batting cleanup in that lineup was a representative from Southern California, one-half of the big bopping, beefy-armed Bash Brothers. Mark McGwire attended Damien High in Claremont and smacked home runs for USC before moving on to the next level.

Let’s not forget the closer: Dennis Eckersley, a graduate of Washington High in Fremont. A one-time starter for the Red Sox, Eck came west to his old East Bay stomping grounds and matched his new teammate Henderson for brashness and competitive intensity.

In a game with two outs and men on base, a rookie hitter stood at the plate ready to face him. Then the rook stepped out of the box and tapped his cleats in an effort to unnerve Eck.

The future Hall of Famer was not easily unnerved. “Nobody is trying to take your picture,” he shouted at the batter. “Just get in there. You’re the last out.” And he was.

Eck is still with us, happily, although another famous baseball character with ties to California died last week after a long and celebrated life. Bob Uecker caught six seasons in the majors before becoming a radio and TV broadcaster best known for his humor and self-deprecating wit.

“Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues,” he liked to say. “But to be able to to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat.”

His most famous line, quoted in virtually all his obituaries, had to do with catching the topsy-turvy floater of a pitch known as a knuckleball: “The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until the ball stops and pick it up.” But almost as good was his observation on the tendency of Philadelphia sports fans to boo anything and everybody: “They have Easter egg hunts in Philadelphia, and if the kids don’t find the eggs they get booed.”

Uecker was born, raised, and lived in Wisconsin. He played for Milwaukee in the majors and did most of his broadcasting for the hometown Brewers. He is, or was, Milwaukee and Wisconsin to the core.

So what’s he doing in a tribute to California baseball?

While well-known within major league baseball, Uecker evolved into a national celebrity only after his multiple appearances with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, taped in front of a live studio audience in Burbank, California.

It was Carson who dubbed him “Mr. Baseball,” and it was Mr. Baseball’s comic successes with Johnny that led him to being cast in one of the funniest baseball movies ever made, Major League.

As game announcer Harry Doyle, Uecker showcases his dry, hilarious wit particularly when Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughan enters the game as the closer. Charlie Sheen played Vaughan in a role that was made for him, and in the beginning the Wild Thing’s pitches go everywhere but where they’re supposed to.

“Juuust a bit outside,” Harry Doyle would say.

But, in real life, the young Charlie Sheen was anything but erratic on the mound. In high school he starred at shortstop and won 40 games as a starting pitcher in his career. And where he did his play his prep ball and what school did he go to? The Santa Monica High Vikings.

Now, I could go on like this for a long time, and maybe I should. I haven’t even touched on the Californians who starred for the Giants, Dodgers, Angels, and Padres, nor all the players with California ties whose big league careers (such as Stargell) were spent outside the state.

Years ago I wrote a book somewhat on this same topic. It was called The Golden Game: The Story of California Baseball. It did pretty well, too. Both the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times named it as one of their Best Books of the Year. The Today Show featured it on the air and public television made a documentary based on it that still gets shown around the country.

The photos you see in this post were not grabbed from the Internet; they come from my personal collection of hard copy photographs that were given to me while doing research for The Golden Game and other books.

Because of all this, I have lots of good stories and vintage photos dating back all the way to the gold rush. It was 1849 when the inventor of baseball, Alexander Cartwright of the New York Knickerbockers, migrated across the country from New York to California. So, if nobody objects, as we move into baseball season I’ll write more historical pieces relating to California and baseball.

For after all, although they will never admit it in New York or Missouri or Florida or Massachusetts, when it comes to the national pastime, there really is no place like California.

United Cigar smoke shop

I have to apologize because lately I’ve been pretty lax about posting the texts and emails I receive from readers. Thank you, all! Keep those cards and letters coming. I save most everything that is sent to me, it just takes a while sometimes to get what you send me into these posts.

For example, my December post They Work on Christmas Day. It generated quite a few nostalgic responses, including this text from Ron Barrington of Scotts Valley, California. As a young man Ron worked at his uncle’s smoke shop in Santa Cruz; it was called United Cigar, “the store for smokers and sportsmen.” Cousin Kim is on the left, Uncle Al is pictured on the right.

“We were open 365 days a year and I didn’t think twice about working on Christmas,” Ron remembers. “I’d always work with Kim from 7 to 2 and then go home for the family Christmas dinner. There was such a crew of regulars that would come there for their papers and such—it was like family. And we were always relieved when the Christmas rush was over.”

In doing the research for that story I reached out to both Denny Carmo and Jeff Brinkhaus. Both drove a bread truck in the past and I wondered if the job ever forced them to work that day. Jeff, who drove for Colombo, said no, “I don’t have any bah humbug stories of laboring on Christmas.” Although he did say that it is very unusual for bread delivery drivers to get two days off in a row. Typically their days off are Sunday and Wednesday.

Denny, who drove for Thomas’ Muffins, said he never drove on Christmas but “they would work us the day before and the day after. If not for the union they would have worked us on Christmas! We never had two days off in a row.” He added, “If you see a Frito Lay driver working that day that’s because they voted to give up the five main holidays for an extra week off yearly. They are not union anymore.”

Christmas Eve, 1975

The Christmas story also stirred memories for Mark Croghan: “Got me to thinking of the Christmas days we spent on Minnie Street. Christmas Day was always an adventure—all the neighborhood kids in the street playing and sharing Christmas toys and gadgets.”

Mark and his brothers and sister can’t think of Christmas, however, without thinking of their mother Lannie who died, tragically and shockingly, on Christmas Eve, 1975.

“My mom loved Christmas and always made us all feel her love,” Mark continued. “I remember her fruitcakes and cookies and the magic she produced in such a small kitchen.”

On the 23rd of that year the family had gotten together at the house for an old-fashioned taffy pull. Lots of friends came over and it was a big party.

Everything was perfect. Mark was a new graduate of UC Berkeley. His sister Marcia was getting ready to be married that coming June, the same month their brother Mike was set to graduate from high school. The youngest child in the family, Matt, was 12. Even Jack, Lannie’s husband and their father, was starting a promising new job.

After the party Lannie went to bed not feeling well. A brain embolism came over her in the night and by the afternoon she was gone. She was 45. The gifts for her were all wrapped and under the tree.

Mark as a boy and his mom.

I grew up across the street from the Croghans and their family was almost as close to me as my own. That Christmas Eve I was in New York City. After watching the Rockettes in Radio City Music Hall, I came outside and called my mother from a sidewalk pay phone booth to wish her merry Christmas.

That was when she told me the sudden, sad, horrible news. It was snowing all over New York. And as I walked back to my place on the East Side it felt like it was snowing all over the world.