One of the real highlights of the trip was visiting Baseball Hall of Fame with our college ball playing grandson. Getting to some of his games was one of the main reasons for the trip.
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- Grandson and author with Babe Ruth between us.
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- Under an hour for a baseball game. And with no pitch clock!
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- I was glad to see players from the old Negro leagues celebrated. Of course, The Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City has more.
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- I would have loved to see him play. I’ve read a number of biographies.
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- Joe was a flash in the pan.. Still it was exciting to hear his exploits on the radio (few games were televised in those days). During the strike in 1981, the radio broadcast still included him because he had been optioned to AAA Charleston.
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- The team first in my heart will always be the Cleveland Indians. See note below.
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- Home plate from the Japanese interment camp on the Gila River Reservation. The camp was known for its baseball team.
Cleveland Indians (always Indians, never the new name that must not be uttered) display signage:
The Indians Great Pitchers
The Indians had great pitching in both of their pennant-winning years. Bob Feller, the Iowa plowboy, was a blazing bulwark of the staff and Bob Lemon, who had failed both as a third baseman and outfielder, made it big as a hurler for the 1948 pennant campaign. Lefty Gene Bearden, a Purple Heart hero, also was brilliant in 1948, pitching the playoff victory over the Red Sox. Satchel Paige, the greatest of all black league pitchers, was a late-season contributor to the 1948 pennant drive. Early Wynn came on to become the big man on the 1954 staff, and he was with Lopez again in Chicago when the White Sox won it in 1959.
See my post Negro League Baseball for more on the Negro players.
Japanese internment camp. Disappointing actions by the Roosevelt government led to Japanese Americans being uprooted from their homes and herded into camps throughout the West. Despite these actions baseball was popular. More information: Gila River War Relocation Center (Wikipedia) and Densho. I wanted to visit this site but the tribe restricts visitors to mostly just descendants from the camp,