Baseball dads: the national pastime is a thread that weaves together generations of fathers and sons - and fathers and daughters - Cover Story

The first team picture has always been on that wall at Dad's house, but it means more to me now. We are visiting my hometown, Evansville, Ind., over Memorial Day weekend, and I can't stop staring at those ragtag 1969 "Cards" of the Mustang League. I'm 9, holding a bat in a goofy bunt pose, wearing jeans with a three-inch cuff, a white T-shirt with red iron-on letters, a plain-red cap and a Cub Scout ring. Coach Dad is standing in the picture. He has jeans, a crew cut with no hat, and a white crew-neck shirt that had to have a pocket for his box of Marlboros.

I ask Dad what it was like then. He was a journeyman pipefitter at the time, and he remembers leaving the hospital construction site on those afternoons and showing up at our elementary-school field in the same workboots, changing from jeans to shorts. Sure enough, he's wearing the workboots in the team picture.

That picture means so much now because I'm seeing the other side. Matt, 7, posed last week for his third team picture. He has a real uniform and a real position, shortstop. Our two other boys, Ben, 3, and Josh, 1, will pose for this picture one day as well, and all of them are going to treasure it at first, barely notice it for a wild quarter century and then -- I pray -- treasure it all over again.

"Baseball Dads" is a tradition that has meant as much to the game as the All-Stars themselves. Anyone who has children or grew up with baseball knows what I mean. I have talked to Ruth fans who became DiMaggio fans who became Coors Field season-ticket holders, and I have talked to major leaguers who followed in their fathers' footsteps because they just loved being around the game. Baseball's leisurely pace makes it the one major sport that allows for conversation, and therefore a way for fathers to communicate important lessons through sport to children -- indeed, for some fathers, the only way. In the words of insurance man Larry Anderson, one of our Father's Day subjects, "If you're smart enough as a kid, you'll listen to your dad. He'll tell you certain things -- 'Keep your eye on the pitcher so you won't get picked off.' -- and if you listen to those things, then maybe you'll listen when he says, 'Don't drink and drive -- give someone else the keys.'"

The highlight in this Great Rite of Passage, though, has to be when your boy -- or girl, as two Colorado Silver Bullets will attest -- learns on one sudden afternoon to use that Rawlings modeling just right and return a throw. For those who grew up playing ball and then went off like Magellan, this is an unimaginable high. And for those who play catch for a living, it beats the hell out of warming up in the bullpen. "My son (Murphy) is 4, and I'm trying to show him how to play catch," Reds reliever Jeff Brantley says wistfully. We are talking about Baseball Dads in the visitors' clubhouse at Wrigley Field, where he bides his time until that next precious homestand. "Right now, he wants to hold the glove up lie this (chin-high and aiming the pocket at the ceiling), and I'm trying to get him to turn it over and move it to where the ball is. When that happens, it's going to be wonderful."

STAUB

Lessons from a teacher

Baseball Dads think they know it all, and you're darned right they do. I've told Matt many times he should think about how Ozzie Smith and Cal Ripken act as persons as well as players. "They show respect for other players, and they're good sports if they lose," I say. Somehow though, Matt thinks I've advised him to call the runner on second "Pig sty" during his next game, so I know my work isn't done.

The trick is knowing when to listen, and Rusty Staub was as good at that as anyone. His father, Ray, couldn't help but hold onto that umbilical cord. Ray wasn't allowed to attend Rusty's high school games during his senior season in New Orleans because he suffered from angina attacks and it was feared he would get emotional. So Rusty's sister, Sally, would go instead and take nickels to call their father with updates. Ray asked Rusty to keep a diary of his first pro season in Durham, and the son painstakingly did, recording every at-bat for his dad to look over.

Ray Staub was a teacher, and maybe he had to keep teaching. "The toughest thing for a parent, and my dad, too, is after you've led your child on all these experiences and when the child becomes a young man, they kind of almost have to make their own mistakes," says Staub, now a Mets broadcaster and New York restaurateur after retiring 10 years ago with 2,716 hits. "After I signed a contract and went off on my own, it was very difficult for my father when I came back to realize I was a different person. I think all parents go through that. There's a period when you have to tell your parents, 'You can't control me anymore.'

"Most of the time it's really good, but fathers can get tough. We laugh about it all the time now, but my father used to tell me on the phone what I was doing wrong at the plate. I used to call him and say, 'Look, I'm calling you because I love you guys, but I don't really want to discuss at depth my batting stance. This is a son calling a parent, not a student calling a teacher.' I remember we had a deal -- not a deal, because I told him -- that if he brought up baseball I was going to have to hang up. It got humorous. I'd call home and say, 'Dad, it's Rusty.' He'd say, 'Wait, hold on, I'll get your mom.' Mom would say, 'Let me let your dad talk to you.' If he got to where he was pushing me, I'd have to hang up."

Staub would love to talk baseball with his dad now, but he died 18 years ago from that angina condition. His boy never made the Hall of Fame, maybe a step too slow to get there. It's neither here nor there, though, because being in Cooperstown without his dad would have been hollow. For every obsessive moment, there beat the heart of a lion who worked a second job to make sure ends were met and his cubs had the right equipment. And Rusty Staub would go through it all again.

"In the early stages of every child's life, parents are going to direct them in some avenues of life," says Staub, 51 and single. "There are a lot of kids who don't have that father, which is unfortunate for a lot of youngsters and part of the ills of our society now. As far back as I can remember, my dad taught my brother and I how to play, teaching us the fundamentals and how to have fun doing it. That was the key. Nowadays it's hard to find people who are really knowledgeable of the game to lead kids, and especially in the inner cities. That's something that has to come back.

"I owe Dad a lot. I remember one time taking batting practice at Bunny Field playground, and one of my assistant coaches was a college player who worked in the summertime as college ball was over. He was throwing and I was this young kid, hitting pretty good. I hit him, he kept throwing harder, and one got away from him and crushed my nose. I remember being down and being stunned. I can almost feel it now because nothing had happened to me like that. I got up, said I'm going to finish my B.P. He didn't want me to, but I took a few more cuts, stayed around the ballpark a while longer. Didn't know how bad my face looked. The next day they had to perform surgery and rebuild my nose. I look back at that as not a good thing, but as a thing our father taught us, that if you get down, you've got to get back up. If you think you're a failure at something, you can change it."

VEECK

That's Veeck, as in tech

Mike Veeck's latest idea is called The Marvelous Little Box. He wants to turn a baseball field into a pinball machine. His plan: "Bases each smoke a different color when you touch them. When you go around and hit a home run, the foul lines light up. There are strobes up and down each of the light towers. There are fixed confetti cannons behind that shoot confetti into your hair. There are concussion speakers like at Disney World. It's all designed by the guys who built the effects for Phantom of the Opera."

Veeck says he hasn't sold the idea yet and can't construct it himself because of the expense. But when he does ... "It will make the exploding scoreboard obsolete," he says. "It could be the greatest creation of my short, sweet career. It's also my answer to having been raised by the guy. I mean, I've been dragging that exploding scoreboard around on my back for 40-somethin' years -- 'Hey, you're the kid of that old man that invented the exploding scoreboard!' -- I'm going to get it."

The "guy" is Hall of Famer Bill Veeck, the most fan-friendly owner in baseball history. Bill Veeck, son of Cubs General Manager William Lewis Veeck, was the guy who gave baseball midget batter Eddie Gaedel; planted the ivy at Wrigley Field; staged a night game for wartime workers coming off the night shift; incensed peers by telling his pitcher, Bob Feller, to rest rather than go to the All-Star Game; and built a world champ -- the Indians in '48. And, of course, Bill was the guy who gave baseball the exploding scoreboard at Comiskey.

Today Mike is the essence of his father, right down to his casual attire. He is successfully running the St. Paul Saints of the proudly independent Northern League. He give fans St. Paula the Pig, a mascot that delivers baseballs to the umps between innings. He gives them "I Dream of Jeannie" Night. He gives them a Stress Reduction Zone on each end of the reserved grandstand, where Sister Rosalind Gefre gives massages to the lined-up patrons. He gives them first-base coach Wayne (Twig) Terwilliger, 69, the popular Twins hitting coach who was put to pasture after last season. He gives them walleye sandwiches and locally brewed Summit beer, and they give him a sawbuck to get in. He goes to one Twins game a month and suggests his fans do the same, getting their Kirby Puckett fix seven miles away and seeing his games once a week.

I find Veeck before a Saints exhibition against Duluth-Superior. He is 44, an ordinary-looking but extraordinarily eloquent guy whose dark hair is still a little long -- although not as long as it was when he played guitar and hustled booze at Holiday Inns for the Chicago rock group Chattanooga Glass (named for the maker of whiskey bottles). Mike was born to be a major league executive; his parents used his teething saliva to affix stamps on mailings while running the St. Louis Browns. So what happened? Bill discouraged Mike from following a legend, and Mike liked that because "who wants to be a nothing person?" Then Mike said what the hell and followed him at the age of 24, finally becoming close to the dad he hardly knew. Mike joined the promo staff of the White Sox, and in one incredible night at Comiskey, on July 12, 1979, his career went up in smoke. It was the ex-rocker's idea to stage a Disco Demolition Night, and the problem was that it was too successful. Counting the fans inside and those who had to be turned away, there were about 100,000 folks in the vicinity. Each fan brought one disco record so that a whole pile of them could be blown up, and the White Sox had to forfeit because the inmates wound up running the asylum. Mike, already scrutinized after punching out Jimmy Piersall (who criticized Mike's mom), was quickly out of the majors and never back in. He considers himself blackballed, by virtue of his actions and what he terms as "hatred" of his father by the old guard, and there's no reason to think otherwise.

Mike Veeck says he would do "Disco" again, but that's all in the past. He is reborn now, in his ninth year away from the hard stuff that meant 150 trips to Alcoholics Anonymous. Maybe he'll be welcomed back to the majors one day, but that's all in the future. Right now, he's enjoying his own fatherhood. William Night Train Veeck ("named after my favorite player, Night Train Lane") is 9 and "has good wrists." Daughter Rebecca is 3 1/2. "I just want them to be happy," Mike says. "That's all my dad ever said to me. He just said, 'Be happy.' And I am."

So here he is, leading me on a final walk-through at little Midway Stadium, listening to '70s rock over the P.A. system, checking to make sure the widespread geraniums look just right and even taking tickets at the gate. He has no seat of his own in a place where few seats remain. This Veeck merely mingles, listening to fan wishes and turning them into promotions. This is what he learned from his father, who died in 1986, five years before his induction into Cooperstown.

"It would be impossible to grow up around him and not understand," he says. "We used to have fire drills at our house, and in the fire drill, one of the kids would grab the wooden box with the file cards of ideas. So I grew up in a household where the respect for ideas was paramount. That leaves a huge impression on you. It just means, 'Try everything.' Nobody stood around when dad hired (Larry) Doby and said, 'What a great move. Gosh, you're a civil-rights activist.' The majority of people wrote nasty letters, 15,000 of them or so, and questioned every step of the way. He took chances, but he loved to laugh. He understood that laughter is the great equalizer. The creation of laughter was always very hallowed in my house. I grew up in a large family with lots of laughter and lots of noise. So the things we revered I guess were the things that were fairly simple -- and as you get older in life, the most meaningful."

MCANANY/SATRIANO

It doesn't happen overnight

Michele (Mac) McAnany was in her seventh year as a teacher at St. Augustine School in Culver City, Calif., when she saw a CNN feature about a new women's pro team called the Colorado Silver Bullets. Her dad, Jim McAnany, had played some ball himself: a bespectacled outfielder for the White Sox and Cubs from 1958 through '62. McAnany called her boss, Sister Mary, and told her she wanted to follow her heart. Well, of course. As the Mother Abbess had said of Maria: How can you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

Gina (Satch) Satriano had her "dream job" as a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles when the chance came for her to chase another dream. Her dad, Tom Satriano, had played some ball himself: a versatile infielder for the Angels and Red Sox from 1961 through '70. Gina's boss knew about her passion for baseball because she practiced after work each day. He knew her parents had been the first to file a lawsuit against Little League Baseball so their daughter could play. He knew she had played in the face of mocking peers and parents, causing teammates to up and quit. So he gave her a leave of absence -- now in its second season.

The Silver Bullets roll into Oklahoma one night, and I'm on a conference call with the two legacies from their hotel rooms. Satch is a pitcher, Mac an infielder. All they want is this chance -- to be managed by Phil Niekro, to be respected by all genders. They are American Revolutionary Daughters. The Silver Bullets have applied for a future Class A franchise, but all these two players know is they are paving the road for someone.

Mac: "I grew up across the street from a park. I have five boy cousins, and my dad used to coach my older cousins. He was their American Legion Babe Ruth coach, and my time was spent going up to the field watching them play baseball. As I turned 7, I was interested in playing. At that time I could play, I was picked up by the "Giants" of the culver City National Little League. We played at Ron Smith Field. It was inherited; that's what we did. My mom was in charge of the snack bar, my dad was usually in charge of the field. I'd get up at 7 a.m. and go up with him, watch him line and drag the field. It was kind of something I was born into, but he didn't push me."

Satch: "It just seemed natural. I can remember always having a ball in my hand. I always felt right holding a ball. I never thought about my grip at such a young age. Last year, a lot of women here had to learn how to grip a baseball because they'd only played with a softball. That really caught me offguard because my grip is so natural."

Mac: "We were put into softball. When I turned 13, I didn't get much bigger. Men continue to grow, still bigger and stronger. At that time, scholarships were available for softball. If I wanted to continue with scholarships, I needed to turn to those means. Women have an opportunity to play sports now, but not in a lot of areas. I'm only 5 feet 1 -- I'm not a basketball player. In the East, you have lacrosse, soccer, things like that. Volleyball is just starting to come about in California. So softball was about the only hope."

Satch: "My dad really didn't push me in the area of baseball. If I wanted to play, great, he'd be there to coach. It always surprised him how much desire I had. He didn't expect me to keep playing year after year, especially at this stage, to leave my job and play. When I did go to him for advice, he, as a catcher, could give me a lot of strategy for pitching. Keeping hitters off-balance, location of pitches, reading hitters at the plate, how they're swinging, how to make them off-balance based on their swing. He was very helpful in that way."

Mac: "That was my dad. He never pushed, but if I had a question for him, he would take me to the park and show me the proper way to swing the bat. Instead of pulling out with the left shoulder, showing me how to keep the head down. Work with me. But it was only if I asked him to."

Satch: "Dad never really got involved in the political end of me getting to play. But for my own passion, he was definitely a part of it. My youngest memory is of running around in empty stands before a ballgame, during B.P., just running up and down chasing balls hit into stands, watching all the big players down on the field in their clean, pristine uniforms, hearing the crack of the bat, the pop of a mitt, the smell of a baseball field. That's just what I grew up with. All of that was a part of me. I can step out on a baseball field and be more relaxed than I am in any other situation."

Mac: "I didn't really have the problems getting into baseball that Gina had. To this day, I don't know if it had a lot to do with my dad being involved in our league. I don't know if I was on the All-Star team three years because my dad took care of it. I never really had to go through any of the political things, because my dad was the president, things like that. I just went out and played baseball. I never had a problem. I do know that when we played against other teams, it was like, 'Oh my gosh, there's a girl on the other team.' When we get out there now and warm up, people recognize us completely as women, apart from baseball. That has a lot to do with the stereotype -- we weren't supposed to do it."

Satch: "People who watch us just aren't used to it. They haven't thought about it. When they see us play, we always exceed their expectations, because their expectations are so low. It all comes down to opportunity. Like Mac says, we have the best 24 women's ballplayers right now, and we're still struggling, because there was a time where we didn't play, where we were never given some of the same type of coaching attention. So the opportunity and experience is so important to develop your skills at the highest level."

Mac: "I've competed in the National Sports Festival, college level, World Games -- all against women's teams. I want to see women get an opportunity to continue to develop muscles, develop skills and develop baseball the way men get to. This is an opportunity to allow that to happen. Like Gina says, this thing's a one-day-at-a-time shot now. It's the American way. And the American way means male and female. We might not be as big and strong, but we're developing. It doesn't happen overnight."

MCRAE

Wrigley reunion

Hal and Brian McRae really got to know each other while they were with the Royals, as father-son and as manager-player. But the McRae duo was broken up after the strikeshortened '94 season. Hal was fired and then picked up as hitting coach in Cincinnati, where he had played on the Big Red Machine. Brian signed as a free agent with the Cubs, who needed a center fielder and a leadoff man.

Now it is reunion time at Wrigley Field. Their teams are battling for the lead in the National League Central, and Hal is leaning against the batting cage, chatting with Cubs hitting coach Billy Williams, a chill wind blowing in their faces. Hal wonders if his son is all right, because today's box score says Brian only pinch-hit yesterday at Colorado. He's glad Brian is off on his own and away from family comparisons, but he wants to know how his son is doing and how Cubs Manager Jim Riggleman is hadling him. Out of the corner of his eye, Hal sees his son saunter out of the dugout and onto the field, in his direction.

Dad: "Brian! What's going on?"

Son, nestling under a big, familiar paw on the back: "What's up, Dad?"

Dad: "I saw you just pinch-hit yesterday. You OK?"

Son, rubbing his thigh: "I hit two triples (one in each of the first two games of that Rockies series), and it tightened up. It's just a big knot right there. He was going to give me a day off anyway, so that was a good time to do it."

Dad: "He gave you a day (off) after a night (game) anyway, right?"

Son: "Mmm-hmm. It had been tight since the trip started, but it was OK in L.A. because it was warmer out there. We got in Colorado, and we played three games in about 34 degrees every game. It's a little tight. It swelled up right there, and there's a little swelling by my knee."

Dad: "But you'll be able to run?"

Son: "Yeah, I can run. I played four games with it, and it got worse the last game. He said he wanted me to get a day off anyway, so this was a good chance."

Son: "You all haven't been out to Colorado, have you?" ...

The chat soon breaks up, and Hal's Reds go on to beat Brian's Cubs. Brian goes 1 for 4 and his Cubs don't look like they're in the same league as Hal's Reds, to be honest. But this is about more than standings.

I ask Hal if he misses his son. "No, I'm happy for him to just be away," he says. "And I'm happy that he's with the Cubs, which is a great organization. The family can watch him play on TV every day. He's out of the shadows of myself and Kansas City and everything that went on over there. He has a clean slate. This is all new; this is all different. This gives him an opportunity to make his mark. There are no obstacles. There is no baggage. So he's free to spread his wings now."

I ask Brian if he misses his dad. "Yeah, because we got a chance to spend a lot of time together that we didn't get to do when I was growing up," he says. "He was working and playing, so I didn't get to see him a whole lot. But that's just the way it is. I'm used to it. He's in a better situation being with the Reds, and I'm in a better situation being here than in Kansas City."

MACK

What's in a name?

Cornelius McGillicuddy III is on the cellular on his way to an airport in Florida, the state he represents as a U.S. senator. That is the name on his birth certificate, but the people just know him as Connie Mack. I ask him how much weight that name has carried for him as a politician. "Let me tell you something someone told me early on," Mack says. "'Connie, the name might help you get listened to one time. But if you don't have anything of value to say, you're not going to get listened to a second time.' That was very important. Most people in our country today recognize that when it comes to politics, it's what you believe and how you feel about the people in your state that's important."

Here's how Floridians feel about Mack: He became the state's first Republican senator to be re-elected, and he gained 70 percent of the vote, more than any other Republican Senate candidate. He would have been re-elected no matter what the Democrats had done. And however little it means in the daily lives of his constituents, it didn't hurt that Mack was sounding a lot like his grandfather, Mr. Baseball.

Sen. Mack was fighting for baseball fans' rights before and during the strike. He proposed legislation to strip major league owners of their antitrust exemption, and at the very least he carried some weight when baseball announced it will expand to Tampa-St. Petersburg in 1998. "If there was a time it was going to happen," he says of an exemption removal, "it clearly was during the buildup to the strike." Still, he insists, voices outside of baseball will not go unheeded.

"I want to believe that they've learned a lesson from this last experience, and the way the fans are reacting today there clearly is a collness," Mack says. "Fans feel like owners and players have forgotten what the game is all about, and that's good clean, healthy competition with a sporting attitude and remembering that success can only come if they keep in mind the interest and the role of the fan of the sport. Because without the fan, there is no sport, frankly."

That's the kind of talk that helps get you elected, but it's also something instilled in Mack at an impressionable age. The original Connie Mack (nee Cornelius McGillicuddy) was considered a paragon of virtue during his decades as player, manager and owner. A statue of him, unveiled in 1957, still stands, outside of Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, once home to Mack's dynastic A's, and millions like myself have read and re-read the words on the base. The inscription reads, "Connie Mack's Sportsman's Creed," and one of the five tenets is this: "I will always abide by the rules of the game on the diamond as well as in my daily life."

"The interesting thing about my experiences over the years," Sen. Mack says, "is that, first of all, I'm still stunned at the number of people who come up to me and talk about my grandfather. He's been dead now for almost 40 years. And yet he's still talked about by people all over this country. I'm just amazed at that. We, as politicians, know how hard it is for people to recognize your name."

Sen. Mack was 16 when his grandfather died in 1956. The senator's father, Connie Jr., was one of three Mack boys, a first-base coach for the team at 21 before joining the business side and becoming part owner. For Connie III, that meant getting to hang around the park and watching Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. But Connie Jr. sold his shares to his two brothers in 1950 and left for Florida to start a Gulf shrimping business off Fort Myers and Texas. The shrimp market soured and Connie Jr. got into real estate and started a community called Cape Coral. Connie III became a bank president, and against his dad's wishes ran for Congress, representing southwestern Florida. He served three two-year terms before heading for the Senate. Constituents include his dad, 82, who watches the Braves with his wife on cable; two children; and three grandchildren ages 11, 8 and 2. The two oldest grandkids are ballplayers.

"There's just something special about seeing those boys on a baseball diamond, watching them mimic what they see in professional baseball players," Sen. Mack says. "I picture in my mind my grandson at third base, feet wide, crouched down, ready to get that ball coming his way. Chewing gum when he's up to bat, using the bat to knock dirt off his cleats, which, of course, they don't have.

"It's a part of who we are. And we love it."

BUCK

Two birds on a bat

It is an hour before game time, and I am sitting in a Busch Stadium dining room with Jack and Joe Buck, a living Cardinals timeline that makes the surrounding photos of the Gas House Gang, El Birdos and Vince Coleman an unnecessary show of force. The Bucks are doing all of the talking, because talking is what they do best.

Jack, 70, has been talking baseball since his youth in Cleveland, when his father, a railroad man, went blind. Jack would go to the hospital each day and read his dad the Gordon Cobbledick columns and box scores from the Plain Dealer, out loud, until his father died of high blood pressure at age 49. It was a way for Jack to express his love for his dad, and for baseball. It was the time when Jack developed a voice and a delivery all his own, accenting the end of his sentences.

Jack's some-innings St. Louis broadcast partner, 26-year-old Joe, used to (and still does) hero-worship his dad. Joe would see the kids crowding around his father outside the ballpark to get an autograph, and Joe would nudge his way in and hold his dad's beer for him, lest any kid doubt he was Jack Buck's son. Joe was one of eight Buck children, and one of two by a second marriage. He wanted to be just like his dad and likewise broke in as a Triple-A announcer, although his way was admittedly easier. For an audition at Columbus (International) in 1950, Jack was handed THE SPORTING NEWS' 1949 Baseball Guide and told to pick up the hand-held P.A. and recreate the '48 Boston-Cleveland one-game playoff described in the back of that book. He talked his way right into the Hall of Fame.

I show the pair a 1967 clip with the headline, "Buck Lacks One Thing -- Style." It mentions what Jack had told John Lardner of the New Yorker magazine in 1959: "I suppose you might say my style is that I don't have any. I'd be better off if I had one. Whatever I've got, it's based on humor." To this day, the Bucks' style is no style. Joe will carry the torch once Jack, already scaled back on his way to retirement, says, 'That's a winner' for the final time.

Jack: "I always thought it was my job to broadcast the game, not to make a spectacle out of myself. Then other people came along and they broadcast differently, like (Phil) Rizzuto and Harry Caray. And Bob Prince. I knew from listening to the people in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia and so forth that I could do it. I didn't know how I wanted to do it, but I did it the way I wanted."

Joe: "You can't develop a style now. I think it's almost impossible. You have to be so politically correct every time you open your mouth. The stuff he says and gets away with, the stuff Harry Caray gets away with..."

Jack: "... the stuff I used to say. I bite my tongue now. I swallow my words frequently. You can't fool around, you can't say things tongue-in-cheek, because people take you so seriously."

Joe: "You almost can't have a sense of humor on the air. Everybody's waiting to be offended. It's tough to have a style. I mean, you almost have to go straightforward and just do the game. Everybody says, 'How come there are no more Harry Carays, how come there are no more Jack Bucks, how come there are no more Bob Princes?' The stuff they said, if they said it now ... they'd get in all kinds of trouble and be fired before they ever were around long enough to have a style."

Jack: "Look at Harry Caray. A pitcher walks two in a row. 'Ball four, get him out of there.' I can't do that now, man. You've got (Cardinals General Manager) Walt Jocketty, (President Mark) Lamping, (Owner) August Busch, the radio station -- you'd have everybody after you. I used to listen to him and say, 'Man, he's going to get us both fired.' I never did that. That's why the reference to 'no style.' I don't think any player over the years could justifiably walk up and punch me in the nose for something I said."

The trait they share most is confidence. I ask the father and son to rattle off their most memorable on-air performances in various categories, and when we get to "Broadcast you'd most like to have over," Jack says, "You mean any I (screwed) up? Huh? I don't think so."

ANDERSON

From Babe to Bichette

"I don't know how many years I'll have with my dad."

There was a time when Larry Anderson never thought about that kind of thing. As a kid, you just look up, and dad is there. Anderson was a kid in the '50s, plastering baseball pictures all over the ceiling of the room he shared with brother Joe, the same way his dad had taped pictures from THE SPORTING NEWS all over his walls.

"The No. 1 thing I remember about Dad is, it was always, 'After dinner, let's go out in the backyard and play catch,'" Larry says. "Then it would be hot box. ... It was nothing for him to say, 'Get some sleep tonight, we're catching the Zephyr in the morning and going to Wrigley.'"

The Zephyr... Dear Editor:

It was an early morning when my Dad and I boarded the Burlington Zephyr in Galesburg, Illinois. We were bound for Chicago and the first-ever game between the Nation-al/American League "All-Stars." The game was to be a part of the "Century of Progress" & World's Fair.

My heart pounded as we rode the 160 miles to Chicago. For years I had pasted pictures from our Sp. News on my bedroom walls. Now, I was about to see in person these many Stars. These "action pics" were of Yankees such as "Larupin Lou" Gehrig, Tony "Poosh-em Up" Lazzeri, Bill Dickey, and the Greatest of all, George Herman, The Bambino, Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth.

Due to a change of seats, we made our way to far right field, and to our surprise, found ourselves on "the rail" at Comiskey, as close as one could be to the Babe. An inning later, Chick Hafey sent a long flyball toward the Babe & R.F. Never fear; the Babe backed up a slight incline and "speared the ball." Later on, the Babe hit a Home Run, natural for him, most fitting in this newfound All-Star Game.

On the long ride home, I had lots of time to revel in the thoughts of the great plays of the game. Getting to see Bill Hallahan, Jimmie Foxx, Joe Cronin, Mickey Cochrane, Charlie Gehringer -- WOW! I had seen them all.

Thanks to Dad! At 76, I still recall the Babe and that All-Star Game.

Sincerely, Raymond Anderson Walnut Creek, Calif.

That was one of the letters that didn't appear when we invited readers to tell us their favorite Babe Ruth stories for a February 6 special-issue commemorating Ruth's centennial. The author says he was crestfallen it never appeared. But I have gotten to know the Raymond Anderson family, and it is a poster bunch for baseball's father-child continuum.

Anderson's dad was mayor of Galesburg in 1933, which is how he came upon those two prized tickets to see Ruth. It was the closest thing to heaven when you lived baseball. Across from the mayor's grocery was Alcazar, a billiard hall that had a ticker-tape machine, and you always could find little Ray there on a summer's day. "They had a big, black scoreboard on the wall, so the men who sat around and played cards could look up and see it," he says. "I'd get up on a tall ladder and put up Cubs 3 that inning and Phillies zip, and finally total it out."

Ray Anderson the Cubs fan has three boys -- Joe the Rangers fan, Larry the Rockies fan and Peter the, well, caterer. Joe moved to Texas and became a longtime season-ticket holder at old Arlington Stadium; his sons, winding up youth-league seasons, have the actual seats they used to watch Nolan Ryan whiff Rickey Henderson for strikeout No. 5,000 (signed by Nolan himself). Larry's company has season tickets at new Coors Field, and he has a daughter and son who are more into the band REM and skiing. "Believe me, I hope Sam does see the significance of all sports," Larry says. "He's a fine young gentleman, and that's the most important thing."

Larry says he will hand down his prized Cubs jacket of youth to a grandkid someday. He wants to tell one of them about the time Raymo -- as the boys call him -- took him and Joe to Yankee Stadium in '56. "We're in the upper deck, he's got on a brand new overcoat, and I just see him now, carrying this load of frosty mugs, peanuts, dogs and mustard. A foul ball comes over to us, and do you think in any way, shape or form he just stood there? Everything went flying, and he looked like Mustard's Last Stand."

Raymo Anderson is caring for a wife who just had a stroke, and he has been through a couple of recent surgeries himself. His children think about him and those days with this silly little game. That is a special bond that I can't imagine doing without.

"He," Larry says, "is a pretty special guy."

COPYRIGHT 1995 Sporting News Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group