Why baseball was so important in avoiding global thermonuclear war
"Are you trying to tell me Mikhail Gorbachev could've hit my curve ball?"
As most Americans are likely aware, Ronald Reagan was a famous Hollywood actor before he became Governor of California or President of the United States.
He got into politics early. Elected student body president at Eureka College (Illinois), “The Gipper” also played football for the Red Devils and was a member of college swimming team.
After he graduated with the Class of 1932, the Illinois native moved to Iowa and became a radio announcer.
Regan’s first stint was at WCO in Davenport, then he spent the next four years in Des Moines.
At radio station WHO in Des Moines, Dutch became the play-by-play man for the Chicago Cubs.
Say what?
In Iowa?
Reagan described his role:
“In the 1930s a team didn’t have its own announcers, and five or six of us did the same game. We kinda’ competed for the audience. What made it tough is that some of our competitors were doing games live at Wrigley Field while I was in Des Moines, hundreds of miles away.
I was doing the games by telegraphic report. Well, just picture that the fellow sat on the other side of a window with a little slit underneath, the headphones on, getting the Morse Code from the ball park, and he typed out the play. And the paper would come through to me saying something like, ‘S1C.’ That means strike one on the corner. But you’re not going to sell Wheaties yelling ‘S1C!” So I would say, ‘So-and-so comes out of the windup, here comes the pitch…and it’s called a strike breaking over the outside corner to a batter that likes the ball a little higher.’”
Reagan had to create the game in his own mind and tell the story of the game to his audience. A decidedly different skill than what a play-by-play man does today.
All for the princely sum of $75-per-week. He started at $10 per game with WCO.
Broadcasters re-created games from wire reports well into the 1970s.
Once radio voices were employed by a club or by the station with exclusive rights to broadcast the club, in many cases it was too expensive, especially for minor league franchises, to send their broadcasters on the road to experience the action first-hand.
A young Al Michaels famously did re-creations in Honolulu when the Triple-A Hawaii Islanders he did play-by-play for were on the road.
As for Dutch, in 1937 and in something out of the ordinary for him at the time, Reagan travelled with the Cubs to Spring Training...all the way out in California!
Ostensibly, the young broadcaster was going west to familiarize himself with the Cubs ballplayers.
William Wrigley Jr., the Cubs owner, also owned Santa Catalina Island—off the coast of California in Los Angeles County—and for many years, the Cubs held spring training on the island.
As fortune would have it, Reagan had some spare time and a desire to ramp up his career in the entertainment industry. He wanted to get into the “pictures.”
Reagan broke from Cubs camp—and the noisy bar in Avalon—for a day or two as he journeyed over to L.A. proper to take a screen test for Warner Brothers.
When he returned to Des Moines and his apartment-within-a-house on the southeast corner of Fourth and Center, he found a six-month, $200-per-week contract waiting for him in the mailbox.
Warner Brothers liked the young radio man.
Reagan left the Hawkeye State behind him at the end of May 1937, eventually parlaying that first contract into a seven-year run with Warner Bros.
The rest is history.
By the end of 1939, the future president had already appeared in 19 films.
In a 1952 biopic, Reagan even played Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander in a role opposite Doris Day in a film entitled The Winning Team.
Reagan occasionally revisited the press box, notably getting back to his roots in the Cubs booth (with the legendary Harry Caray) toward the end of his second presidential term in 1988.
He was also on the call with Vin Scully the following season in the bottom of the first inning of the 1989 All-Star Game.
The former president chatted with Scully about leadoff hitter Bo Jackson and his offseason "hobby" as an utterly dominating running back for the Los Angeles Raiders.
Then Jackson took Giants hurler Rick Reuschel deep to centerfield.
Reagan mentioned to Scully that it was “a bit different” being live at the park versus re-creating the games as he had done in the 30s.
The next batter, future Hall of Famer Wade Boggs, worked the count and then smashed one over the head of Reds outfielder Eric Davis, just like Jackson had done in the previous at bat.
“Hey that looks like it's going there, too. There it is!” exclaimed Reagan.
“In re-creations and politics, you had to be an actor,” Reagan later said. “How can I not love baseball? It made me what I am today.”
I don’t know what I would have done without baseball in my life, either. The sport permeates my life.
President Reagan and baseball were as constant as anything in my childhood.
Pat Buchanan, former communications director for the Reagan administration, in the immediate reaction upon the news of the death of the 40th President in 2004, noted:
"Well, I was—I'm very saddened by it. I think we've lost a good man and a great president."
Indeed.
There are rumors afoot about a reboot of the Field of Dreams movie as a television season. Supposedly, they are in production in Iowa. Peacock Network was the last thing I heard.
Now, Ronald Reagan probably doesn't hold a candle to Archibald “Moonlight” Graham in the baseball skills department, but wouldn't it be nice to hear Dutch on the mic, calling play-by-play in those games between the legendary “ghost players?”
The Iowa cornfields owe that to America.
Pretty much all of us would be dead today if it hadn’t been for that erstwhile Cubs broadcaster saving the world from the threat of nuclear annihilation by the Soviets.
Good on ya’ Dutch!
But how did we even get to this era of global brinksmanship where mutual nuclear annihilation was even on the table?
America is a unique country with a unique history, something our children—let's be honest—really don't know much about these days.
Solution: The new Tuttle Twins book by Connor Boyack and Elijah Stanfield—America's History: A Tuttle Twins Series of Stories (1215-1776) recommended for children between age 7-13—is where you turn.
If your goal is to raise a well-rounded child who learns lessons from the past that they can apply to their own life, this book is what you're looking for.
But there's also a bundle of additional content the folks behind the Tuttle Twins are offering in honor of the book’s launch of the that includes the book and several bonuses—all for less than the retail price of the book itself!
the hardcover of America’s History
a 200-page companion curriculum and activity book
over 6 hours of audiobooks that will help the stories “come alive” for children
and over 4 more hours in a set of fun videos where children (and everyone) will learn the powerful ideas that history has to offer.
http://olearyreview.com/twins/
Brian O’Leary