The World Series

Boo and Bubble,

You guys are growing up in an amazing world when it comes to sporting events.  Through the power of the television, you can witness football, golf, tennis, soccer, basketball, baseball, even poker – sometimes all at once and all over again with the magic of the DVR.  You can monitor scores on your IPhone, get updates to your IPad and watch live streaming on your computer through WiFi.  Sometimes I think all of this access to sports diminishes the fervor with which we celebrate our teams.  There are so many teams out there now, if one isn’t doing well, we just jump on the bandwagon of another.

I want to tell you a little bit about how it used to be when I was your age.  You may not know it, but the sport of baseball has historically been dubbed “America’s Pastime.”  I’m not sure if that still holds true today, what with all the choices out there, but for the purpose of nostalgia, I’ll say it does.

Today there are 30 professional baseball teams.  They dot the map of the US like measles and have markets ranging from small to mega-big.  It’s not always been the case.  In 1950, there were only 16 teams -three in New York, two in Chicago, two in Philadelphia and the rest located somewhere in the right-hand, upper quarter of the US north of D.C. and east of Missouri.  The national championship for professional baseball became known as the World Series, a title which implied quite a significant status in the sphere of sports.  Before Super Bowls, NBA Playoffs and Ryder Cups, the only event that could come close to the World Series was either a winter or summer Olympics.  Every October, late in the month, across our nation, households would stop whatever they were doing and listen to the radio or TV broadcasts of the World Series. 

In 1936, the New York Yankees started an ascendancy of dominance in the sport that lasted for two decades.  Between 1936 and 1956, they won the World Series 13 times.  Of the seven times they appeared in the Series from 1949 to 1956, they won six times.  Their opponent five of those years was cross-town rival, the Brooklyn Dodgers. 

Sometime in the early 50’s, your great granddaddy Schaefer came up with what he thought was a brilliant idea.  He decided that our family needed to have a bet during the World Series.  He and your great-uncle Bryant would be a team and your great grandmother Mary and I would be another. The losers would have to take the winners out to dinner at the S&S Cafeteria on Main Street in downtown Greenville.  There were a couple of points to be made here – the concept of winning and losing; and that if you bet on something, losing had consequences.  The fact that dad would be paying for the dinner at the S&S regardless didn’t dawn on us until we were much older. 

Somehow, Dad and Bryant took the Yankees every year.  It couldn’t have been fair, no coin toss or anything like that.  I think Dad followed sports and knew what was going on.  He probably declared at the beginning of every season that he and Bryant would put the Yankees up against anybody.  That left Mom and me with 15 other options which sounded pretty reasonable at the time.  Hah!  What did we know?

The strategy worked great in 1950 through 1953.  The Yankees didn’t make it to the series in 1954 so we didn’t have the bet.  In 1955, though, our fortunes reversed.   

It was truly a magic time for baseball.  The Yankees had players like Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Marv Throneberry and Enos Slaughter.  On the Dodger’s roster were Tommy LaSorda, Sandy Koufax, Roy Camponella, Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson who broke the racial barrier of professional baseball and was the first black player to ever play at that level.

The 1955 series went down to the wire.  The Yankees and Dodgers traded wins until they both had three.  The night of the deciding seventh game, we gathered at the kitchen table in front of the TV.  Mom and I sat on one side, Bryant and Dad on the other.  The atmosphere tensed considerably inning to inning.  Finally, the Dodgers prevailed to capture their first championship in franchise history.  It would be the only Series the Dodgers won in Brooklyn.  The team relocated to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.

Mom and I were elated.  We had never won the bet before.  But I found out in the experience just how competitive Bryant truly was.  We went to the S&S cafeteria the next week.  I made my way down the line and selected my traditional favorites – trout almondine, mashed potatoes, green beans and a bowl of red Jello.  Bryant followed along behind me.

At the end of the line, we came to the cashier where Dad waited to make sure she included all our meals on the ticket.  He looked at Bryant’s tray….on it was a glass of water and utensils wrapped in a napkin.  A sad, solemn expression covered Bryant’s face.  It was the raw agony of defeat. 

Of course, Dad sent him back to get some food and we ended up having a fun evening.

That was our last World Series contest, though.  Dad decided that if Bryant would rather go hungry than pay up, maybe the lessons learned had gone a little too far.