April 25, 1974: Portugal's Carnation Revolution

April 25, 1974, 50 years ago: A military coup overthrows the Fascist government of Portugal, ending it after 41 years. Because of the flowers that the soldiers wore in their lapels, it became known as the Carnation Revolution.

Portugal's First Republic was overthrown in a coup on May 28, 1926, leading to the Ditadura Nacional (National Dictatorship). It was replaced on April 11, 1933 by the Estado Novo (New State). Historians would falsely label this combined era as the Second Portuguese Republic.

From its founding in 1933 until 1968, the Estado Novo was run by António de Oliveira Salazar. It was Fascist: Corporatist, nationalist, and bigoted, heavily oppressing Portugal's overseas colonies, especially in Africa: Mozambique, Angola, and Cape Verde. Like most Fascist regimes, including the one that began in Italy in 1922 and the one that would begin in neighboring Spain in 1939, it was tied in with the Catholic Church, itself conservative and autocratic.

António Salazar

Like Spain, Portugal remained neutral during World War II, and postwar American Administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, looked the other way at their abuses, domestic and foreign, since they were part of the worldwide bulwark against Communism. Portugal was a founding member of NATO in 1949, although Spain was kept out until 1982, due to not wanting to antagonize the Soviets, with their memories of the Spanish Civil War that was lost in 1939. Both Portugal and Spain joined the United Nations in 1955.

From 1950 until 1970, Portugal saw its Gross Domestic Product per capita increase at an annual average rate of 5.7 percent. Despite this remarkable economic growth, by the fall of the Estado Novo in 1974, Portugal still had the lowest per capita income and the lowest literacy rate in Western Europe. They were in so deep of a hole that this remained true following the fall, and continues to the present day.

After the Second Vatican Council (1962-66), a large number of Catholics became active in the democratic opposition. The outbreak of the colonial wars in Angola, Guinea and Mozambique – in March 1961, January 1963 and September 1964 respectively – exacerbated the divisions within the Catholic sector along progressive and traditionalist lines.

On August 3, 1968, Salazar fell in his bath and hit his head. At first, he seemed fine. But on August 19, he felt sick, and was admitted to a hospital. On September 16, he went into a coma. Américo Tomás, who, as the President of Portugal, had ceremonial duties but otherwise had little power, presumed that Salazar would never recover, and dismissed him on September 25, replacing him with Marcelo Caetano.

But Salazar did emerge from his coma, and was even lucid. He was not told that he had been removed from power. He was allowed to continue to believe that he ruled the nation, until he died on July 27, 1970, at the age of 81.

Caetano continued to pave the way towards economic integration with Europe and a higher level of economic liberalization in the country, achieving the signing of an important free-trade agreement with the European Economic Community (a.k.a. the EEC or the "Common Market") in 1972.

In February 1974, Caetano decided to remove General António de Spínola from the command of Portuguese forces in Guinea, in the face of Spínola's increasing disagreement with the promotion of military officers and the direction of Portuguese colonial policy. This occurred shortly after the publication of Spínola's book, Portugal and the Future, which expressed his political and military views of the Portuguese Colonial War.

Several military officers who opposed the war formed the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA, or Armed Forces Movement) to overthrow the government in a military coup. The movement was aided by other Portuguese army officers who supported Spínola and democratic civil and military reform.

Thousands of Portuguese took to the streets, mingling with, and supporting, the military insurgents. A central gathering point was the Lisbon flower market, then richly stocked with carnations (which were in season). Some of the insurgents put carnations in their gun barrels, an image broadcast on television worldwide, which gave the revolution its name. Caetano was permitted to flee to Portuguese-speaking Brazil.

Portugal's 1st free election, ever, was held on the 1st anniversary of the Revolution, April 25, 1975 to write a new constitution replacing the Constitution of 1933, which prevailed during the Estado Novo era. Another election was held in 1976 and the first constitutional government, led by centre-left socialist Mário Soares, took office. He served as Prime Minister until 1978, and again from 1983 to 1985, and later as the President of Portugal from 1986 to 1996.

Mário Soares

Portugal became free, and remains free to this day. But freedom from Fascism for them meant independence for its colonies. And that proved to be troublesome, even disastrous:

* Guinea-Bisseau: Portugal recognized its independence on September 10, 1974. At first, things went well. But in 1980, as in many other countries, the economy went sour, and there was a coup. Multi-party elections were not held again until 1994. A civil war was fought in 1998-99, and there were coups again in 2003 and 2004, a Presidential assassination in 2009, another coup in 2012. Things stabilized after that, although there was a failed attempt at another coup in 2022.

* Mozambique: Portugal recognized its independence on June 25, 1975. After just 2 years of independence, a civil war broke out, and lasted until 1992. Finally, in 1994, they had their 1st multi-party elections, and the country became free, and remains so.

* Cape Verde: Portugal recognized the independence of this archipelago off the West Coast of Africa on July 5, 1975. This is easily the most successful of the ex-colonies, having remained democratic since independence. In 2013, they officially changed their name to the Portuguese-language Cabo Verde. In 2020, they were voted Africa's most democratic nation by the V-Dem Institute, which tracks emerging democracies.

* São Tomé and Príncipe: Portugal recognized its independence on July 12, 1975. Like Cabo Verde, it has been comparatively stable and free.

* Angola: Portugal recognized its independence on November 11, 1975. But it went Communist, and descended into a civil war that lasted until 2002, well after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the point where the only outside aid it was getting was from Cuba. The People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, or MPLA) has ruled the country from the beginning, and José Eduardo dos Santos ruled as President from 1979 to 2017. He retired for health reasons, and was succeeded by João Lourenço, who has reformed things somewhat. Nevertheless, Angola remains a one-party dictatorship.

Marcelo Caetano lived until 1980, António de Spínola until 1996, and Mário Soares until 2017. 

Reason for Cautious Optimism

Another week, another reason for cautious optimism for the 2024 Yankees.

They continued a roadtrip with a 12-4 record, and took on the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre. Luis Gil allowed 3 runs in 5 innings. He struck out 6, but walked 7. The Yankees only got 4 hits, and lost, 3-1.

The next night, Carlos Rodón only got through 4 innings, and reliever Luke Weaver put the Yankees further behind. Alex Verdugo got 2 hits, but the rest of the team, combined, only got 4. They stranded a runner on 3rd in the top of the 9th, and lost, 5-4.

The Yankees now had a 3-game losing streak. It was time to step up, show some character, and let the fans know that this was a different team from the one of the last few years.

At first, it didn't look like it would happen. Marcus Stroman allowed 2 runs in the 2nd inning. They were down 4-1 after 7 innings, and it was the kind of moment when a fan wondered if the season was now going down the drain.

But in the 8th, Juan Soto hit a home run. Giancarlo Stanton led off the 9th with a tremendous home run, to make it 4-3. Gleyber Torres singled, and Verdugo doubled.

Oswaldo Cabrera grounded out, and the runners couldn't advance. But Jose Trevino singled Torres home, and the game was tied. Anthony Volpe popped up, but Soto drew a walk, and Aaron Judge singled Verdugo and Trevino home. 

Clay Holmes pitched a scoreless bottom of the 9th, and the Yankees salvaged the last game of the series, 6-4. Victor González, who got the last out in the 8th, was the winning pitcher.

*

They came home to face the Tampa Bay Rays. Clarke Schmidt allowed just 1 run over 5 1/3rd innings, but the Yankees were still down 1-0 going to the bottom of the 7th. It was another moment to find your inner Yankee.

They found it -- with help. Two errors, a single by Volpe, and a home run by Soto meant 5 runs. Ian Hamilton allowed 2 runs in the 8th, but Holmes got out of a jam in the 9th, and the Yankees won, 5-3.

The Saturday game followed an on-field ceremony honoring broadcaster John Sterling, retiring after 36 years with the team.

It was a pitchers' duel. Nestor Cortés pitched 7 innings of shutout ball, but the Yankees only got 4 hits all game. It went to extra innings scoreless, and a combination of the ghost runner and Caleb Ferguson's shakiness gave the Rays a 2-0 win in 10 innings. 

Yesterday, Gil pitched into the 6th inning, allowing 1 run, unearned, on 2 hits, although he walked 3. He struck out 9.

The Yankees got an RBI single from Anthony Rizzo in the 1st inning, followed in the 5th by 3 straight walks by Stanton, Rizzo and Torres -- and think of the lack of control it takes to walk all of those in a row -- and 3 straight RBI singles by Verdugo, Trevino and Cabrera.

Weaver was fine in relief of Gil, but Dennis Santana allowed 3 runs in the 8th. In the 9th, González got the 1st 2 outs, but walked Randy Arozarena, putting the tying run on base.

Harold Ramirez was sent up to pinch-hit. He's a right-handed hitter with a good record against lefthanded pitchers, like González. It was beginning to look like one of those games, especially after he hit a line drive up the middle that González couldn't field.

But González, showing excellent awareness, got to the ball, and wisely tossed it underhanded to 1st base. Although Ramirez slid, the ball got into Rizzo's glove first. Ballgame over. Yankees 5, Rays 4.

Someone online said that last year's Yankees would have lost that game. I'll take it further than that: Last year's Yankees would have e lost all 6 of these games.

*

Nevertheless, the Yankees finished the week at 15-7, in 1st place in the American League Eastern Division, half a game ahead of the Baltimore Orioles.

This has been done without Gerrit Cole, DJ LeMahieu or Jonathan Loáisiga. It's been done with Aaron Judge batting .183, Torres batting .200, Stanton batting .227, Rizzo batting .235, and catchers Trevino and Austin Wells batting a combined .171.

And it's been done with a few good relievers, but, as yet, no single closer.

Today, the Yankees start a 4-game series against the Oakland Athletics. Rodón starts against former Yankee JP Sears. It's an afternoon game, because tonight is the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover.

In all likelihood, it will be the last visit of the A's to Yankee Stadium as an Oakland team. Their current plan is to leave the Oakland Coliseum after this season, play 3 seasons in Sacramento, and then move to a retractable-roof stadium in Las Vegas for 2028.

April 20, 1999: The Columbine Massacre

April 20, 1999, 25 years ago: A mass shooting kills 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School, in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Colorado. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting at an American school. Another 21 were wounded, but survived.

What made it more chilling is that it was done by 2 of the school's own students, both seniors within weeks of graduation: Eric Harris, who had just turned 18 and had recently moved there after many places as the child of a U.S. Air Force officer; and Dylan Klebold, still 17 and a lifelong resident of the community.

Both worked at a nearby pizza parlor. According to Harris' journal, he had planned to exceed the death toll of the Oklahoma City bombing, 4 years plus 1 day earlier: 168.

President Bill Clinton, being a Democrat, had managed, through legislation while Congress was controlled by Democrats, to greatly reduce gun crime in America. Now, he wanted to do more. The Congress of that time, being controlled by Republicans, did nothing. No new legislation regarding gun control was put on the Presidential desk.

The school, and the unincorporated community in which it stands, were named for the State Flower of Colorado. The school opened in 1973, and, with retroactive irony, its mascot is the Rebels, with a logo reminiscent of the Continental Army in the War of the American Revolution. If Harris and Klebold only had the kind of weapons available then, the death toll would have been much lower.

Among Columbine's graduates is Darrel Akerfelds, who pitched for 4 different major league teams from 1986 to 1991. He also died too soon, at 50, in 2012, from cancer.

A memorial to the victims opened at the school near the start of the 2007-08 schoolyear. Today, the school has an enrollment of about 1,700.

Only 1 game was canceled in any sport: The Colorado Rockies, the team closest to the crime, canceled their games that night and the next one, at Coors Field against the Montreal Expos.

*

On a separate note, although this is about a game that I do not consider a sport: On this day, for his comic strip B.C., Johnny Hart drew this strip, showing that he loves golf, but is frustrated by it:

In case you're having trouble reading it:

Panel 1: Woman asks male golfer, "Let me get this straight, the less I hit the ball, the better I am doing." Golfer says, "That's right."

Panel 2: Woman asks golfer, "Then why do it at all?"

Panel 3, at night, so, clearly, golfer has been thinking about it the whole time: "Why... do it... at all?"

April 20, 1944: Elmer Gedeon Is Killed In Action

April 20, 1944, 80 years ago: Elmer Gedeon dies in action in World War II. He was 1 of 2 Major League Baseball players lost in "The Big One."

Elmer John Gedeon was born on April 15, 1917 in Cleveland. At that city's West High School, he starred in baseball, football and track. His uncle, Joe Gedeon, was a major league 2nd baseman from 1913 to 1920, before he was banned from baseball for "having guilty knowledge" of the Black Sox Scandal.

Elmer would not be banned. He went to the University of Michigan, and kept going in all 3 sports, tying a world record in the high hurdles. Graduating in 1939, he was signed by the Washington Senators, and played 67 games as an outfielder for their farm team, the Orlando Senators of the Florida State League.

The Senators called him up in September, and he played 5 games, on September 18, 19, 20, 21 and 23: The 1st in right field, the rest in center field. He got 3 hits in 15 at-bats, none of them for extra bases.

He spent the 1940 season with the Charlotte Hornets -- which was the name of a minor-league baseball team before it was that of a World Football League team in the 1970s and an NBA team starting in 1988 -- batting .271 with 11 home runs. But that was his last professional season, as he was drafted by the U.S. Army, before the 1941 season started, let alone before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

On August 9, 1942, he was the navigator on a B-25 bomber which crashed into a swamp adjacent to an airport at Raleigh, North Carolina. He managed to get out of the burning plane, and, despite his own injuries, dragged another crewmate out, saving his life, although 2 others died. Gedeon was decorated for this, and was convinced he had used up his bad luck, and would return to baseball after the war.

But it was not to be. On April 20, 1944, Captain Elmer J. Gedeon took off flying a B-26 bomber from RAF Boreham, north of London, to attack a German position in Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise in northern France. His plane was hit, and he was 1 of 6 crew members killed as it crashed. He was 27 years old, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Gedeon is the subject of 2 weird coincidences. Both MLB players who were killed in World War II, Gedeon and Harry O'Neill, and the one who was killed in the Korean War, Bob Neighbors, played in the majors only briefly, during the 1939 season. And Gedeon's uniform number with the Washington Senators was 34, which would be worn after the war by Bert Shepard, the only major league player to play with a prosthetic leg. 

April 19, 1954: "Seduction of the Innocent" Is Published

April 19, 1954, 70 years ago: Dr. Fredric Wertham publishes his book Seduction of the Innocent. It turns the world of comic books on its head.

Born on March 20, 1895, in Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, as Friedrich Ignatz Wertheimer, he anglicized his name to Fredric Wertham in 1927, after moving to America and becoming an American citizen. Subsequently, he married an American sculptor, Florence Hesketh. He had studied at the University of Munich and King's College, London.

He joined the senior staff at New York's Bellevue Hospital, famous (or infamous) for having America's best-known psychiatric ward. In 1946, he opened a low-cost psychiatric clinic in the basement of a church in Harlem, specializing in improving the mental health of black teenagers, and was successful at gaining charitable contributions for it. To this point, he seemed like a good man doing good work.

But that work led him to look into the causes of juvenile delinquency. And in 1954, he published his book, saying he'd found a source. Not rock and roll music, which was then in its infancy. Not movies about young criminals, like the ones starring Marlon Brando and James Dean. Comic books.

He specifically cited "crime comics," which he used to describe not only the popular gangster/murder-oriented titles of the time, but also superhero and horror comics as well. He asserted, based largely on undocumented anecdotes, that reading this material encouraged similar behavior in children. He said that 95 percent of children in reform schools read comics, so that must be what caused it. The logical fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc: "After it, therefore, because of it." A was followed by B, so A must have caused B. Not necessarily.

He went after superheroes. Since the creation of Batman's teenaged crimefighting partner Robin in 1940, people had joked that the Dynamic Duo were what would now be called a gay couple. But Wertham wrote it, making the suspicion, which he believed, part of the public record.

It was no secret that William Marston, creator of Wonder Woman, had given her a bondage subtext. What was a secret was that Marston -- who had died in 1947, and was therefore unable to publicly defend himself or his character -- had lived in a ménage à trois with his wife Elizabeth and their research assistant Olive Byrne.

But Wertham suggested that being a woman but also being so strong -- physically and emotionally -- and independent meant that she was a lesbian. Such was the thinking about gay people in the 1950s, and a psychiatrist should have known better.

Stan Lee, already writing for the company that would become Marvel Comics, recalled that Wertham "said things that impressed the public, and it was like shouting 'Fire!' in a theater. But there was little scientific validity to it. And yet, because he had the name 'Doctor,' people took what he said seriously, and it started a whole crusade against comics."

(Lee didn't exactly have credibility on the subject: Although he respected science enough to make many of his best characters scientists -- Mr. Fantastic, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the human form of the Hulk -- the actual science in his stories made little sense. He was a storyteller, not a scientist.)

The advertisements in comic books didn't help. They sold knives. They even sold air rifles, like the one Ralphie wanted in the 1940-set 1983 film A Christmas Story. You know the tagline: "You'll shoot your eye out!" Wertham claimed that this made kids want these instruments of violence. Had I been around at the time, I would have been with him on this claim, at the least.

(Then again, people said the same thing about video games in the 1980s. I was a video game addict as a teenager at that time. And I haven't gone on to fight invading aliens.)

Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, an anti-crime crusader, called Wertham before his Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. In his testimony, Wertham repeated a call he had made in his book, for "national legislation based on the public health ideal that would prohibit the circulation and display of comic books to children under the age of 15."

The Committee did not blame comic books for teenage crime in its report, and did not draft legislation addressing the situation. Instead, it suggested that the comics regulate themselves "voluntarily." (Quotation marks mine.) This was an implied threat, much like President Theodore Roosevelt, nearly half a century earlier, telling the colleges to regulate their football, or he would act.

And so, just as TR's threat led to the creation of the NCAA and the streamlining of football rules, the publishers of comic books responded to the Kefauver Subcommittee's suggestion by creating the Comics Code Authority, to censor their own content. Much like Hollywood's Hays Code, it dictated that criminals must always be punished.

This was pretty much the end of murder comics and horror comics. Detective comics -- not to be confused with DC, which originally stood for "Detective Comics" and still published (and still does today) a magazine with that very title -- adventure comics (which was also the title of a DC series) and superhero comics became sanitized, their rough edges gone.

This effect was seen on television as well. In its 1st couple of seasons, The Adventures of Superman had some hard-hitting stories about Superman (played by George Reeves) taking on gangsters. They didn't have much of a choice in terms of opponents: The limited TV budgets of the time precluded the appearances of comics supervillains like Lex Luthor and Mr. Mxyzptlk. After Seduction of the Innocent, the show's episodes became sillier in tone. By 1966, the Batman series that developed, while occasionally going "dark," was known, even at the time, as "campy."

After Crisis On Infinite Earths in 1985, DC retconned much of its history. Putting the 1940s superheroes on "the same Earth" as their current heroes, they said that most of the earlier heroes went into a reluctant retirement in the early 1950s, due to Congressional hearings demanding that they reveal their secret identities to the public in order to continue their costumed crimefighting, and most refused. This was Werthamism, disguised as McCarthyism.

In 1971, Marvel published a story about drug abuse in a Spider-Man issue, doing so without the seal of the Comics Code Authority on its cover. This was considered a huge risk. It worked. The Authority wasn't dead, but it was now as defanged as it had once rendered the comics. Two years later, a Spider-Man story showed Spidey's arch-enemy, the Green Goblin, killing Spidey's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. He didn't get away with it, but it did end Part 1 of a two-part story. If Wertham knew about it, he was probably infuriated by it.

After 1954, Wertham continued to look for sources of juvenile delinquency. He decided that television was a bad influence, and in 1959, he wrote The War On Children. Just 5 years after he shook up America, no publishing house would touch his work.

Nevertheless, the comics' killjoy continued to advocate for civil rights, and his writings about segregation were used as evidence in the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. He became a senior psychiatrist at the New York City Department of Hospitals, and the director of the Mental Hygiene Clinic at Bellevue.

In his 1599 play Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare put these words in the mouth of Marc Antony at Caesar's funeral: "The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones." Dr. Fredric Wertham died on November 18, 1981, at age 86. His work for civil rights, which made him a hero, were forgotten. His work to subdue comics, which made him a villain -- or, at least momentarily, a fool -- live on.

Carl Erskine, 1926-2024

I see the boys of summer in their ruin

Lay the gold tithings barren,

Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils.

Dylan Thomas wrote that. The great Welsh poet died on November 9, 1953, in New York, from the effects of raging alcoholism. Roger Kahn had just completed 2 seasons as the beat reporter for the Brooklyn Dodgers for the New York Herald Tribune. He would later write a book about the Dodger players that he covered in the 1952 and '53 seasons.

The last survivor of the players he looked up while they were in middle age, and profiled in the book The Boys of Summer, was Carl Erskine.

In 1985, with a few of the others still alive, rock and roll legend Don Henley wrote this:

I can tell you

my love for you will still be strong

after the boys of summer have gone.

Henley was from Texas, not a Dodger fan, and wasn't talking about baseball. Nevertheless, the "boys" of whom Kahn wrote -- as is Kahn himself -- are now all gone.

*

Carl Daniel Erskine was born on December 13, 1926 in Anderson, Indiana. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he signed as a pitcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He made his major league debut on July 26, 1948, pitching the 7th inning for the Dodgers, against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field. He ended up as the winning pitcher in a 7-6 Dodger win.

The Brooks were in a transition: The men who'd led them to the National League Pennant in 1941 and 1947, and nearly did so in 1942 and 1946, were, or had been, traded away, due to either advancing age or their unwillingness to play with the 1st black player in modern baseball, Jackie Robinson. The men who would help the Dodgers win 5, and nearly 7, out of 8 Pennants were on their way up, and Erskine was one of them.

He was not one of the Dodger players who had a problem with playing with a black man. He recalled a moment from early in his career, meeting Jackie, his wife Rachel, and their son, Jackie Jr.:

In Brooklyn, I came out of the clubhouse one day, and there was an area where wives and family members could wait. When I came out of the clubhouse, Rachel and little Jackie were there. I just walked over, the natural thing to do, and talked with them for a few minutes.

The next day, Jackie said he wanted to thank me for what I did. I said, "I didn't pitch yesterday." He said, "No, you walked over to talk, out in front of the crowd, to talk with Jackie and Rachel." I was almost embarrassed. I said, "Jackie, don't thank me for that. Shake my hand for a well-pitched game." That was a natural thing for me to do. But he was impressed by that.

Soon, Dodger fans would be impressed with the man who, in their Brooklyn accent, called "Oisk." He was used mainly as a reliever in the Pennant season of 1949, and the near-miss seasons of 1950 and '51. In 1951, he went 16-12 with 4 saves. He was in the bullpen, along with Ralph Branca, in the bottom of the 9th inning of the Playoff game between the Dodgers and their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, when manager Charlie Dressen needed a relief pitcher.

Erskine had one of the best curveballs in the game at the time, but, at just the right moment, he threw a bad one. Bullpen coach Clyde Sukeforth saw this, and told Dressen over the phone that Branca looked better. Branca gave up a Pennant-winning home run to Bobby Thomas. Erskine would later call the curveball he bounced in the bullpen dirt the best pitch he ever threw.

Dressen moved Erskine into the starting rotation in 1952. It worked: Erskine went 14-6 with a 2.70 ERA, including a no-hitter against the Chicago Cubs on June 19. He went 20-6 in 1953, leading the NL with a .769 winning percentage. In Game 4 of the World Series, against the New York Yankees, he struck out 14 batters, a World Series record that stood for 10 years, and a record for righthanders that stood for 15 years. Still, the Dodgers lost both Series.

Those seasons, 1952 and '53, were Roger Kahn's years covering the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. He got to know the players very well. Kahn's father was a Dodger fan, but was also was a book editor, and his mother was a schoolteacher, so he had a healthy respect for good writing. Kahn wrote of how Erskine sat next to him on a team flight, and they recited poetry to each other.

Don Newcombe, the Dodgers' best pitcher in that era, missed the entire '52 and '53 seasons, serving in the Korean War. For that reason, he was not one of the Dodger players that Kahn profiled in The Boys of Summer, as he looked up his former heroes, to see what they were doing in middle age: 2nd baseman Jackie Robinson, catcher Roy Campanella, 1st baseman Gil Hodges, shortstop Harold "Pee Wee" Reese, center fielder Edwin "Duke" Snider (all eventually Hall-of-Famers), 3rd baseman Billy Cox, left fielders George "Shotgun" Shuba and Andy Pafko, right fielder Carl "the Reading Rifle" Furillo; and pitchers Erskine, Elwin "Preacher" Roe, Clem Labine and Joe Black.

In 1954, Erskine went 18-15, and made his only All-Star Game. In 1955, he went 11-8, and the Dodgers finally won the World Series, beating the Yankees, after losing to them in the Series of 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953. (They also lost to the Boston Red Sox in 1916, and the Cleveland Indians in 1920.)

In 1956, he seemed to slow down, only going 13-11. He did, however, pitch a 2nd no-hitter, against the hated Giants, on May 12, 1956. It was the 1st no-hitter broadcast on national television, on the NBC Game of the Week. Given that the Dodgers were still the defending World Champions, and that Robinson was still with the team, this may have been the all-time high-water mark for Brooklyn baseball.

The Dodgers lost the World Series to the Yankees that year. Robinson retired after it. In 1957, the Dodgers were moved to Los Angeles. Erskine lasted until 1959, but was not on the Dodgers' roster when they made that year's World Series. He finished his career with a record of 122-78, an ERA of 4.00, and a WHIP of 1.328.

He went back to Indiana, and coached the baseball team at Anderson College, an NAIA school, winning 4 league titles. He became president of the Star Bank of Anderson. In 1960, already with 3 children, Danny, Gary and Susan, Carl and Betty Erskine became the parents of James. He was born with Down syndrome.

It was a time when many doctors told parents that babies with Down syndrome should be sent to an institution, that they would be a societal hindrance, that they would disrupt family life. Carl and Betty wouldn't do that. Instead, they raised Jimmy just as they did their other three children.

Ted Green, a documentary filmmaker, said in his film The Best We've Got: The Carl Erskine Story, "They let him fly. They took Jimmy out with them wherever they went, to church, to restaurants. It was always Jimmy was there and if he acted up, he acted up." Just like every other kid acts up. The Erskines blazed a trail for other families with children who had special needs. They showed quietly though their actions how to raise a child with intellectual disabilities.

As an adult, Jimmy lived at home, and held a job nearby, at the Hopewell center, for people with developmental difficulties, assisting those who didn't have parents as strong as his own. Together, the Erskines, parents and children, raised money for the Special Olympics.

Anderson named an elementary school and a hospital after him. Brooklyn named a street after him. In 2010, Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana gave him the State's highest honor, the Sachem Award. In 2023, the Baseball Hall of Fame gave him the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to charity.

That year, Jimmy's health difficulties caught up with him, and he died at the age of 63, which is longer than most Down's patients live. It's not much of a surprise that Carl Erskine died yesterday, April 16, 2024, at the age of 97, less than a year after his son.

Hodges was the 1st of "the Boys of Summer" to die, in 1972. Robinson, due to his health difficulties, told a reporter at Hodges' funeral that he believed he would be the 1st to go. He wasn't off by much, dying later in the year. Cox died in 1978, Furillo in 1989, Campanella in 1993, Reese in 1999, Black in 2002, Labine in 2007, Roe in 2008, Snider in 2011, Pafko in 2013, Shuba in 2014, and Newcombe in 2019. Now, with Erskine, they're all gone.

With his death, that leaves 5 living former Brooklyn Dodgers: Tommy Brown, Jim Gentile, Fred Kipp, Bob Aspromonte and Sandy Koufax. It leaves Koufax as the last surviving member of the 1955 World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers, although Erskine was the last one who played in that World Series. And it leaves 3 surviving players who played in the 1940s: Ed Mickelson, Frank Saucier and Bobby Shantz.

Whitey Herzog, 1931-2024

Prior to World War II, a major league sports team's field boss, its manager, and it's business boss, its general manager, were often the same person. As time went on, this became less common. We still see it every once in a while in the NBA and the NHL.

In the NFL, it usually happens when a Super Bowl-winning coach falls out with his team's owner, and another team's owner wants to hired him, and the coach says not unless I get full control over player decisions, and that usually doesn't work out well.

In Major League Baseball, since World War II, only one man has been a team's manager and its general manager, and still won a Pennant, much less a World Series. That one man was Whitey Herzog.

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Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog was born on November 9, 1931 in New Athens, Illinois, outside St. Louis. Like Edward Charles Ford, Don Richard Ashburn, and a previous St. Louis Cardinals legend, George John Kurowski, his light blond hair led to the nickname "Whitey." He could have gone by one of his middle names, and the English translation of his German surname: "Norman Duke." In 1953, he married Mary Lou Sinn, and they had 3 children.

"Baseball has been good to me since I quit trying to play it." A lefthanded hitter and a righthanded outfielder, he played for the Washington Senators from 1956 to 1958, making him a teammate of Harmon Killebrew; the Kansas City Athletics from 1958 to 1960, making him a teammate of Roger Maris; the Baltimore Orioles in 1961 and 1962, making him a teammate of Brooks Robinson; and the Detroit Tigers in 1963, making him a teammate of Al Kaline.

Not much rubbed off on him: In 634 major league games, he batted .257 with 25 home runs and 172 RBIs, and never got close to a Pennant. In 1964, the Kansas City Athletics hired him as a scout, and promoted him to a major league coach in 1965.

In 1966, he was hired as the 3rd base coach for the New York Mets. In 1967, the Mets made him director of player development. So he had a role in building the team that won the 1969 World Series and the 1973 National League Pennant.

Just before the start of the 1972 season, Met manager Gil Hodges died. Herzog thought he should be the next manager. Team chairman M. Donald Grant ordered Herzog not to attend Hodges' funeral, to avoid speculation. Grant hired Yogi Berra instead.

Herzog knew Grant was a rotten guy, and decided to get out of the Met organization and take the 1st managing job he was offered. After the 1972 season, Joe Burke, the general manager of the Texas Rangers, hired him. But he didn't get through the 1973 season, as the team's owner, Bob Short, fired him on September 7. In 1974, he became the California Angels' 3rd base coach, and served as interim manager for 4 games after Bobby Winkles was fired and Dick Williams was hired.

That year, Burke became the GM of the Kansas City Royals, and on July 24, 1975, he fired Jack McKeon as manager and hired Herzog. Between Burke's player moves and Herzog's managing, the Royals won the American League Western Division title in 1976, 1977 and 1978.

They were a team that used its ballpark to its advantage: Royals Stadium, now named Kauffman Stadium, had deep power alleys, so it was hard to hit home runs in, but it encouraged doubles and triples. The field was artificial turf. So Burke and Herzog built a team of line-drive hitters and speedsters who were good on defense, and pitchers who were good at inducing ground balls rather than fly balls.

Case in point was George Brett, to this day the greatest player the Royals franchise has ever had: His lifetime batting average was .305, and he collected 3,154 hits, 665 of them doubles and 137 of them triples -- but despite his obvious power, he hit "only" 317 home runs in 20 full seasons.

But, all 3 times, the Royals lost the AL Championship Series to the New York Yankees, despite Brett's tendency to use the "short porch" in right field at Yankee Stadium for home runs. Clearly, something had to change. After falling well short of the Division title in 1979, the Royals fired Herzog, and hired Jim Frey. This, and some other changes, including boosting the bullpen, gave the Royals what they needed to finally beat the Yankees in the ALCS, in 1980.

"The White Rat" was hired by the St. Louis Cardinals, as both manager and GM. It was already a rare thing to be both in MLB. But he knew that Busch Memorial Stadium was also a pitcher's park with artificial turf, and built a new "Whiteyball" team of pitching, contact hitting, speed and defense.

This time, the signature player was shortstop Ozzie Smith. But he also had good hitters and fielders, like 1st baseman Keith Hernandez, 2nd baseman Tommie Herr, right fielder George Hendrick, center fielder Willie McGee (who became that season's National League Rookie of the Year), and his former catcher in Kansas City, Darrell Porter.

With a pitching staff topped by Bruce Sutter, the best reliever in the NL, the Cardinals won the World Series in 1982, beating the Milwaukee Brewers. This made Herzog the 1st manager/GM to win a World Series since Connie Mack of the 1930 Philadelphia Athletics -- and he was also a part-owner.

Herzog found out that Hernandez was using cocaine, so he traded him in 1983, to the Mets, for pitchers Neil Allen and Rick Ownby. This trade helped rebuild the Mets, and it worked out badly for the Cards. Prior to the 1985 season, Herzog traded for San Francisco Giants' 1st baseman Jack Clark, one of the top sluggers of the time. In the 1985 NL Championship Series, Herzog outmanaged Tommy Lasorda of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Clark's home run in the top of the 9th inning of Game 6 won the Pennant.

It would be the Royals that the Cards would face, in the 1st (and still only) All-Missouri World Series. The Cardinals led the Royals 1-0 in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 6, and needed just 3 more outs to win the Series. Jorge Orta hit a ground ball to Clark. Clark flipped to reliever Todd Worrell, who was covering 1st base. Orta was unquestionably out. The instant replay cameras and a now-familiar photograph confirmed this. Except 1st base umpire Don Denkinger blew the call, and called Orta safe.

The next batter, Steve Balboni, popped up, and Clark couldn't handle it, and Balboni singled on his next swing. A passed ball by Porter made it men on 2nd and 3rd, and Hal McRae was intentionally walked. Dane Iorg, another former Cardinal, stepped up, and singled home Orta and Balboni, and the Royals had a 2-1 walkoff win to force a Game 7 at home.

The Cardinals were furious. So were their fans. Understandably so. They all thought Denkinger stole the World Series from them. They still think so, 39 years later. There's just one problem with this theory: There was still 1 game to go. If the Cardinals had won Game 7, Denkinger's blown call would have been just a footnote.

So Herzog should have taken his team into the clubhouse and said, "Men, we got screwed tonight, but there's nothing we can do about it now. So let's win this thing tomorrow, and what happened tonight won't matter." Instead, the White Rat whined about the call to the media, and let it get into his head, and into his team's heads. The shock isn't that the Cards lost Game 7 by a whopping 11-0. The shock is that the Royals won it by only 11 runs.

The Cardinals won another Pennant in 1987, making it 3 in 6 seasons, but lost the World Series to the Minnesota Twins. Herzog remained the Cardinal manager and GM until July 6, 1990, resigning of his own accord, saying, "I came here in last place, and I leave here in last place. I left them right where I started." He never managed again, although he did serve as GM of the California Angels in 1993 and 1994. His career record as a manager was 1,281-1,185, for a .532 winning percentage. He reached 6 postseasons, winning 3 Pennants and 1 World Series.

Whitey Herzog was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans' Committee in 2009. The Cardinals subsequently retired his Number 24. Both the Royals and the Cardinals elected him to their team Halls of Fame, and he was elected to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. He died this past Monday, April 15, 2024, at the age of 92.