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Veeck as in Wreck

By Dave
July 21st, 2008 | Leave a comment

I was half-listening to the NPR guy talking about three must-read baseball books, and my ears perked up when I heard Veeck — as in Wreck.” It’s a funny title based on the whacky baseball life of an unapologetic baseball huckster. He left his mark with the Cleveland Indians, among other baseball franchises. I remember seeing it on my dad’s nightstand in the last year of his life. My dad grew up in the Cleveland area, Solon mostly, moved to Columbus when he was in high school and went to Ohio State (as did I — go to Ohio State, that is, not grow up in Solon). But he always had great affection for all things Cleveland, including the Indians and the Browns. Both teams had good years, and they had interminable stretches of being either mediocre or downright awful, especially the Indians.

Veeck (rhymes with wreck) was one colorful character connected to the Indians, staging goofball promotions and fielding funny characters in the games — anything to put butts in chairs, as the expression goes. As far as I can tell, he was not connected with the 10-cent beer fiasco of the early-mid ’70s, one of the most infamous riots in sports history.

But that radio commentator declaring Veeck — as in Wreck a must-read seemed to create a connection to a memory that had begun to fade.

Brought a smile to my face. The reason Alan Schwarz of the New York Times liked it and the other two titles so much is that they didn’t get all nostalgic about the “good old days” when baseball was pure and innocent — because it wasn’t. It was racist, for starters. As Lou Brock told him a while back, baseball tends to reflect society as a whole. Baseball in the ’40s was segregated, observing the same ugly Jim Crow laws American society honored. To look back at the ’40s and ’50s and see segregation viewed as something that’s normal is as foreign to today’s kids as is the concept of slavery. It simply does not compute.

So yeah, maybe you could get a bag of peanuts for a nickel and a beer didn’t cost $8 (or more), but there are some things in baseball’s history that we ought not be so proud of.

Kind of got off on a rant there, didn’t I? Oh, well.

Related posts:

1. Three baseball must-reads