John Miller, head coach of the Brussels Kangaroos and a reporter for a major American newspaper, is chronicling his team’s 2008 season in a column that will appear every Monday on mister-baseball.com. It is the first of several Mister-Baseball Blogs this year.
The attraction of Josh Chetwynd’s new book “Baseball in Europe: A country by country history” is the sheer curious delight buried in a mountain stories. They are appetizers. Occasionally, we’d like a meal. But that’s more than forgivable in a story as unchronicled as European baseball, and the reader happily looks forward to the candy on the next page. As Mr. Chetwynd says in his preface, “Ideally, my work is a beginning upon which future authors will build, uncovering more stories and other elements of the vibrant and colorful history of European baseball.”
I had never heard of the 1992 Olympic game between Team USA and Spain. The Spaniards, behind pitchers named Felix Cano and Juan Damborenea, lost only 4-1 to a team that lined up Nomar Garciaparra, Jason Varitek, Charles Johnson and Michael Tucker. Later on, Spain beat Puerto Rico.
Incidentally, Spain is another example of a country where baseball grew up on the backs of soccer clubs like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. When the footies withdrew their support, the summer game foundered. Spain also invested too much in flying over Cuban and Dominican players, taking away from positions from promising homegrowners.
There’s the story of monks playing a ballgame in 1891 in Rome. Mr. Chetwynd quotes a letter writer of the day. “The monks were attired in their official robes, long flowing black gown, a broad, red ribbon tied around the waist and hanging down on one side, and black, broad-rimmed felt hats.”
In hindsight, the first half-century of European baseball resembles the first. A wave of Americans brings the game over. A generation of Europeans falls in love. There are intimations of societal contagion. In the end, not enough people care, and the game fades. It never dies, because some love it very much.
The most riveting tale Mr. Chetwynd tells is of the exhibition game held before the 1936 Berlin Olympics. I had heard about the game before, but its details are juicer than I imagined. As they planned their Olympics, the Nazis were keen to show their soft, tolerant side to a world already catching on to a sick ideology.
A party hack had an idea: Put on a ballgame. In the end, only the U.S. team showed up, so they played themselves. The crowd was estimated at 125,000, making it the biggest baseball crowd of all time. Like European fields we’ve all seen, it was set up on a soccer field. Right field was only 200 feet away.
The Germans set up a box for the fuehrer, 10 feet inside fair territory down the right field line. “We were told that under no circumstances were we to hit a ball into right or right-center field,” a player said 10 years later. “Well, being Americans, you never saw so many line drives hit to right in warm-ups.”
Weirdly, Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun were fascinated with the ballplayers. Braun, said pitcher Carson Thompson, “was beautiful with reddish brown hair. I couldn’t figure out what she saw in that Hitler.”
Meanwhile, while not reading this fascinating book, I’m enjoying a much more pleasant second half. The Kangoes have won six in a row, after taking out Louvain-la-Neuve twice this weekend, 6-4 and 10-0. Winning is, like, better than losing.
I’m no historian but I am collecting pictures of European ballfields. Please send to oldworldpastime@gmail.com