Babe Ruth In The Papers

Click here to open the story in the Washington Post in a new window. You may have to register a username and password but it is not a big deal.

This is the photo that is currently on the front page of the Washington Post’s Sunday Metro section:

Before I go any further, let me make sure that I take time to thank the staff at the Gaylord National Hotel inWashington, DC for their tremendous professionalism and attention to every detail. These people are the standard for their industry. I have, in all honesty, never seen such elan in my life. It was a real treat. With the hotel slated to open in a few days, you could ride on the energy of these folks as they readied their jewel of a hotel.

I would also like to thank Michael Hudson of Gaylord Hotels. He is a throwback to a more civil time in America and in business. He is a true gentleman and a visionary in his field. You don’t run into too many people like him and it was my good fortune to have done so. Thanks Michael, for everything.

This is a shot someone took for me with my camera during the installation.

The Babe Ruth statue is now permanently on display at the Gaylord National Hotel & Resort in Washington, DC at the new National Harbor area.

I went down there on Tuesday and stayed until Thursday and The Babe was installed and well received. The Washington Post came by and did a story on the hotel opening and included a fair amount of interest on the statue. I was not sure how much would run on the statue but I was pleased to have folks in Washington DC call and tell me the good news.

The full story of the statue and everything surrounding it is on the Birrerart.com website:

Click here to open the Birrerart.com website up in a new window

Other things that were noteworthy while I was down there was the fact that the Nationals has declared the sportsbar in the Gaylord as the official sportsbar of the team. Because of this, they had sent over the last home plate used at RFK stadium so it could be permanently installed at the entrance to the sportsbar. Here are a few shots of that and the Washington Post getting their story at the time:

That’s Michael Hudson, Director of Brands at Gaylord Hotels, with homeplate from RFK Stadium.

And here is the laying ceremony while the PR folks take photos.

***
The Gaylord National Hotel is so immense that it is difficult to photograph it all in one frame. The atrium that overlooks the Potomac River and Old Alexandria, Virginia, on the opposite bank, is 18 stories high. There is a village of little shops and fountains and trees and restaurants all inside the enclosure. It is so big that you mostly aren’t aware that you are inside.

Here is a view of the upper part of the atrium. These gaslights are 20 feet high. The scale is just hard to fathom.

On the 24th floor, there is a state of the art nightclub and one of the unique features is, believe it or not, the men’s room. Here are the fixtures and the view is outrageous. The Washington Monument can be seen while you are, well…ahem, you know. It’s just one of a myriad of details that make this hotel one of the most amazing in the world.

Babe Ruth Goes to Washington DC Today

 

Up early and caught the first pitch of the 2008 MLB season while booting up with the coffee to take the Babe Ruth statue down to DC to the Gaylord Hotels’ newest property: The National.  A lot of work has gone into this project and it didn’t end until 2am last night.  Babe’s ready.  I’m tired but ready and excited to see the hotel and Babe’s new home outside the sportsbar there.  I’d like to thank my wife and my boss (Nightrangers) for being understanding at various points (different points) all along the way.  We need the money to send little Tommy to college someday so you have to try sometimes and when you try, good things happen.  Thanks.

 

The Greatest Single Inning of Baseball

Just finished The Glory Of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter. Probably my 3rd reading in 20 years or so. I’m glad I hung on to it.

Dizzy and Paul at the Polo Grounds

I’ve spoken of him before, and even of this event re him, but I found a written account of the game that 93 year old Max claims to have gone to at the Polo Grounds.  Apparently the Yankees were out of town.  Max is a big Yankee fan and he lived at 165 and Grand Concourse in the Bronx.  Yankee Stadium is at 161st.  The Polo Grounds was right across the Harlem River in Manhattan at 155th Street and Max was such a fan that he’d go and see the National League doings there if the Yanks were away.  So that way, he didn’t miss Mel Ott, JoJo Moore, Bill Terry, Chick Hafey, The Waner Brothers, Lloyd and Paul and the Gashouse Gang. 

This series with the Deans pitching lights out is as the center of the Gashouse Gang legend in 1934, the year they won it all.  The Gashouse Gang was the St. Louis Cardinals, for those who don’t know.  They got their nickname somehow because of a comment that the American League champs wouldn’t play them “in a gashouse”, whatever that means.  “Gashouse” was some sort of Depression-era place or phrase and I have no idea what it means. 

The Gashouse Gang had the last 30 game winner in the National League in Dizzy Dean and his brother Paul Dean, who won 19.  The manager was Hall of Famer Frankie Frisch, “The Fordham Flash”, who had already played in a ton of World Series with McGraw’s Giants and the 1931 Cards. 

The shortstop was Hall of Famer (as manager–he couldn’t hit) Leo Durocher, who up until that time, was known for passing bad checks and stealing money from his drunken roomate, Babe Ruth, on the ‘28 Yankees. 

Third base was Pepper Martin, “The Wild Horse of the Osage”.  Martin, not only played third without a cup, he such a country boy, he played without even any underwear. 

Ripper Collins drove in a 100+ at first and Joe “Ducky” Medwick played the outfield and had to be removed from the 7th game of the World Series in Detroit, because his presence was inciting a riot.  Yup.  The commisshioner yanked him off the field to restore order.  The commisshioner was Landis and you should use a lower case “c” for Landis, because he doesn’t deserve a capital “c”.  He’s the racist bum who single handedly kept non-whites out of the big leagues for 27 years until Branch Rickey stepped up and signed Robinson.  Besides being a low-down nasty thing to do, it deprived us of seeing guys like Josh Gibson play against big league competition.  And Satchell Paige and Buck O’Neill and Judy Johnson and Double Duty Radcliff and on and on.  Every stadium’s tape measure homer story that didn’t involve Babe Ruth, involved Josh Gibson.

Anyway, Max was at this very historic game, for all of you seamhead geeks who like this stuff.  Apparently, it was the attendance record at the Polo Grounds. 

Kewell: The John McCain of Liverpool FC

[Freddie and I and the old Joe DiMaggio statue at the last Joe DiMaggio Day at Yankee Stadium in 1998. I am wearing the 97 or 98 away kit so that's your tie in.]

Detail Oriented Stadium Meister

Click here to open the site in a new window

http://www.majorleaguemodels.com/about.asp

This is something interesting I found while looking for the little plaster model of Yankee Stadium for 93-year-old-Max’s grandson. This man builds huge, tabletop scale models of old ballparks from scratch. You know, the exacto knife and the balsa wood and a thousand other things. I can relate to this man because of what I do with the wood products and all and will even admit to having built a cardboard model Shea Stadium in 1976 that was pretty darned good.

I love this kind of wacky, I’m-going-to-build-this-thing-in-my-cellar-and-sell-it-for-150k attitude. Take 5 minutes and visit the guy’s site. Look at the original wooden 1888 Polo Grounds model and see how baseball was just after the Civil War. It’s amazing work.

It also points out that I need to do better on my website. But now, we’re 7 minutes from the kickoff of Liverpool-Chelsea. The first league encounter of the year was way back in August, on the day we had our boy christened. I left for the church at half up 1-0 only to come home and find out that the ref called a silly PK and GIFTED the point to Chelsea. So strange was the call, that the next day, the ref PUBLICLY stated that he was wrong to point at the spot! I’ve never heard of such a thing but when taking points from the Reds, the refs have done some funny things. I think it’s because they all grew up in the 1970’s and 1980’s when Liverpool won every darned thing and I think there is some lingering resentment. Kind of like if I worked the plate at a Yankee game.

To give you an idea of how big these things get (he does different scales), take a look at the Old Comiskey Park. Old Comiskey is my favorite of the 38 ballparks I’ve been to. It was a real timewarp to go there and the place just felt right. They say that Jimmy Foxx hit two homers completely over the roof in left between the two light towers. Double-X was the best hitter no one’s ever heard of.

If the first 10 minutes of Liverpool Chelsea are any indicator, then Chelsea will get the points. They seem a whole gear faster than Liverpool and more confident and more creative. Liverpool look slow and I think it’s only a matter of time. Chelsea’s defense is so fast and shuts everything down so tightly, that I don’t see Kuyt and Crouchy cracking it. What we need is the pace of Fernando Torres.

Well, at least ManU lost their derby to City today. No points for Alex. That’s what you get for ripping your boss, Sir. With United coming away with none…if Chelsea could be beaten…oh stop dreaming. Wake up!  And I have to say: After watching only 25 minutes: Dirk Kuyt shouldn’t be in the first team.  Really.  He looks slow and lost.  Zero confidence.  And his play on the right is atrocious.  He can’t beat his man deep and he can’t do anything on the cut inside–every posession that reaches him, goes awry.  Perhaps he can be productive in the middle, but Crouchy is there now.  Play another midfielder and let them go forward.  Kuyt should come off.  Caragher has more mojo going up the right wing than this guy.  Oy.  Rafa.  Help. (Of course Kuyt till make an a** of me and score the winner but I’ll take it and eat my words if that is so).

Joe DiMaggio’s Eyes

Babe and I Live in Squalor

Since someone gave me the tip to include some scale in these photos, I have to jump in there. And I’m not really dressed for it but that is reality in the cold cellar. That’s two pairs of insulated undies and about three or four shirts. Class.

And although the shelves look dishevelled, everything has a place where it goes. Not a place for storage, just the place I found it and the place I keep leaving it. It’s amazing how much time gets lost if any of that stuff is moved even 2 feet. Some things have not been moved since the early 1990s. Some of those things have been used just once or even never, but they’re still there and they are reference points I guess. Like the garbage collector, I’m not going to give up on certain ideas and tools. You know, the neighbor with the 1939 Ford rotting in the yard? It’s always like, “…it’s still good…it’s worth like, a LOT of money…” Some of the things are there for nostalgia as in, “…yea, I remember when I was that stupid!”. Or, you find a relic and immediately remember exactly what you were doing the night it came to be: “…that was ‘92, Tom was hanging out and Johnny Carson did his last show that night…” It could be a tool, a business card or even a little piece of wood that was going to be just right for something. There are times when I wouldn’t trade ANY of this space for the entire Hearst Castle at San Simeon.

Lifesize Babe Ruth (and Mickey)

There were some discussions at Floyd’s last night on the photos found here and one point (a good one) was that you really can’t see the scale too easily from the photos.  I agree.  Photos are my bane. These great looking statues just get crushed by photography.  I have had pros (and paid plenty) shoot them and the results aren’t a whole lot better.  There is NOTHING like standing next to one.  Photos don’t tell the whole story.  But here is a scale shot.  I have to use the timer and as you can see, it isn’t great.  But now you know.

In the other big development at Floyd’s, I learned that Murray’s Cheese Shop is not really on Bleeker Street, but faces another street.  But it looks like it could be on Bleeker to anyone but a postman, who get very precise about these sort of things.

These two shots are of Mickey Mantle, also life size.  This statue was completed in 1996 and needs a sprucing up.  I plan to do some work on the face as well.   Mickey’s face was the hardest one I’ve done and the reason is that he was so good looking, that he didn’t have any stand-out feature.  Ruth and DiMaggio have cartoonish faces that are easy to nail, comparitively.  Mickey spent a few months in Mickey Mantle’s restaurant in the 1990’s as the feature thing that you saw when you walked in the door.  That’s why he needs a refit mostly, because there was no room to create a buffer and the patrons could touch him, and, of course they did.

Last point.  Yesterday, I heard that the Mets will be charging $29 to park at Citi Field?  Are they for real?  That does it.  I hereby formally renounce my Mets fandom.  They can have it back, those plumbers.  I will not go to Citi Field and I will not pay $29 dollars to park my car for 3.5 hours by the airport and the stink of the chop shops on Roosevelt Ave.  I am hereby a fan of the Washington Nationals.  Go Nats.  **** the Mets. **** Fred Wilpon.   And Omar.  And Willy.  And the black uniforms that cater to gang inspired fashions.  And the drunken violence that makes my nephew say to me, “Uncle Fog, I’m scared” while watching a game against Philly in the upper deck last year.  And the ridiculously high percentage of Spanish players and promotions that make me feel like I might be in a foriegn country when I’m at the game.  And the EAR DAMAGING music that they blare out of the speakers all game long so that you go horse trying to converse with the person next to you.  And because Steve Phillips actually worked there.  Bu-bye.

Babe Ruth Bigger Than Jack Benny?

Ok, YOU think of another Babe Ruth headline.

Here, here is Jack Benny…