"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
He walked slowly, perhaps a remnant of those aching ankles and knees that marred his career. And as he walked, the fans cheered.
They stood, their ovation carrying him from the outfield through the infield to the mound, where he acknowledged them and clapped. They stood after that, still cheering, as he looked around, as he readied himself, as he threw a strike to Evans at home plate.
"I've probably never almost been in tears for somebody else on the baseball field," said Kevin Youkilis, who made a point to shake Buckner's hand. "I think that was just the most unbelievable thing. It shows how great of a man Bill Buckner is.
"There's not too many people that can do what he did today and face thousands of people that booed him, threatened his life. For a man to step out there on the field, it shows how much of a man he is.
"I tip my cap. I just wanted to shake his hand. Because that's a true man in life."
TS O'Rama recalls an uncle who had a cup of coffee with the 1927 Phillies:
He played three days in May; later he was managing a Class A minor league team.
What would it have been like to walk into the past, only the past wasn't the past? To feel the dust of the little band box in Philly whipping up on that May day?
The day after he left town part of Baker Field collapsed:
"...parts of two sections of the lower deck extension along the right field line collapsed due to rotted shoring timbers, again triggered by an oversized gathering of people, who were seeking shelter from the rain. Miraculously, no one died during the collapse, but one individual did die from heart failure in the subsequent stampede that injured 50.
When Baker Bowl was first opened, it was praised as the finest baseball palace in America. By the time it was abandoned, it had been a joke for years.
The park was nicknamed the Hump, the Cigar Box and the Band Box.
The right-field wall was only 280 feet from home plate and topped by a screen that reached 60 feet high:
Eventually a layer of tin was laid over the entire structure except for the upper part of the screen. The wall dominated the stadium in much the same way as the Green Monster does, only some 30 feet closer to the diamond; and because of its material, it made a distinctive sound when balls ricocheted off it, as happened frequently.
* * *
The perennially woeful Phillies left the Baker Bowl in 1938 for Shibe Park, where their hard luck continued:
Thomas Boswell noted that the Phillies occupied [Shibe] park for thirty-two years without winning a world's championship. The field (and two of its predecessors) had long been torn down before the franchise produced a champion. "You measure failure," Boswell wrote, "not in seasons, but in buildings crumbled under the weight of defeat, parks that lasted longer than the lives of men and now are gone."
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