Like Will Rogers, I only know what I read in the papers. So I was pleased to learn that Lynn Martin, a finalist in baseball’s lengthy search for a commissioner, has been a lifelong fan and as a young woman was somewhat of a regular at Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park. If chosen, she would be baseball’s first woman czar.
“I grew up reading about the Gas House Gang and every other baseball book I could find,” she said.
If so, Martin, a former U.S. labor secretary, has better qualifications than the late Gen. William Eckert, who was baseball’s fourth commissioner. Eckert had a three-year reign before he was given the gate in December 1968.
When Eckert was hired as the successor to Ford Frick, he was immediately dubbed “the Unknown Soldier.” Except for the one or two owners who had sponsored him, nobody in baseball, or in any sport, had heard of him.
I have a vivid recollection of his unveiling, which was in Chicago. During his initial press conference, Eckert was asked when he last saw a big-league baseball game. He said he had seen the Los Angeles Dodgers play once or twice during the previous two or three seasons. Under further questioning, it was apparent Eckert was unaware that the Dodgers, before moving to the Pacific Coast, had played in Brooklyn.
So Martin, with her knowledge of the St. Louis Cardinals’ Gas House Gang, has the edge there, and we wish her well. But she should understand that the baseball moguls have not always welcomed females into their society.
The following appeared in the 1911 Reach Guide, then the official baseball guide:
“. . . We hold, and we know, that baseball is not a game for any woman, not even the most masculine of that sex. It’s a strenuous game for even the most vigorous and powerful men, and that fact will soon be borne in upon such women as may attempt it, through the medium of broken fingers, limbs and features.
“The idea of women playing baseball is not inviting from any physical viewpoint, and positively repugnant when viewed in other aspects. In our opinion, in athletics for women, the line should be drawn at tennis. So far as such essentially masculine games as baseball and football are concerned, woman’s only relation thereto should be as spectator.”
Martin, however, should not be discouraged. According to usually reliable sources, the leading contenders are Paul Kirk, the former head of the Democratic Party; Harvey Schiller, executive director of the U.S. Olympic Committee; and Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports, although Ebersol signed a new multiyear contract with the network Monday that may take him out of the running for the commissioner’s post.
More Top Picks Best Lightweight Laptops
Doesn’t sound like a lot of competition, but there has been an indication that a “mystery candidate” will appear at the last instant. If it were me, I’d give the job to Bill Bartholomay, who is chairman of the search committee, or Bud Selig, who is in his second year as the interim commissioner.
FAST TRACK
Congratulations are in order to the players and umpires for speeding up the game. Before the 1993 season, there was considerable discussion, mostly from the top, of the necessity for eliminating dead time, complete with instructions on how pitchers must not dally between serves and how batters must be ready to leap from the on-deck circle to take their cuts.
Happily, there has been progress.
The average time required for nine-inning games in the American League last season was 2 hours 52 minutes, a decrease of one minute from 1992. The National League, not to be outdone, also knocked off a minute, from 2:45 to 2:44.
I never have been an advocate of hurry-up baseball, but duty insists that all opinions be heard. Vincent Bentivenga, a Circuit Court judge sitting in Skokie, offers a proposal I’ve never heard before: Games should be limited to seven innings, not nine, but there should be four outs for each half-inning, not three. The result would be 28 outs for each side, one more than the current procedure.
“The game would be speeded up because the necessity of changing sides in the eighth and ninth innings would be eliminated,” said Bentivenga. “And four outs instead of three would eliminate many of the boring innings. It would mean more men on base and provide for greater excitement.”