Champs

“Huh! That’s nothing.  So do I – American, baseball, and poker!”  George F. Babbitt, responding to praise of a neighbor who spoke three languages, in Sinclair Lewis’ “Babbitt”

In “Babbitt” novelist Sinclair Lewis described how in 1921 residents in cities such as Zenith, Ohio, could track the progress of hometown baseball games on huge newspaper bulletin boards.  One afternoon, Lewis wrote, Babbitt “stood in the thickest and steamiest of the crowd and as the boy on the lofty platform recorded the achievements of Big Bill Bostick, the pitcher, Babbitt remarked to complete strangers, ‘Pretty Nice!” Good work!”  Babbitt also enjoyed silent films at the Chateau, a palatial 3,000-seat theater featuring a 50-piece orchestra.  Babbitt’s favorites were cowboy and cops-and-robbers shoot-em-ups and movies with fat comedians AND bare-legged bathing girls.

In “The Diagnostician and the National Pastime: Baseball as Metaphor in Sinclair Lewis’ ‘Babbitt,” Joe Webb viewed the novelist as an urban  anthropologist who documented why America’s most popular sport was so popular with sedentary businessmen.  Webb wrote: “Baseball ballparks became a symbolic link to the nation’s pastoral past in the midst of the modern, urban, technological city, but the game was symbolic of conquest.”  Babbitt’s Zenith Athletic Club exemplified the ailment of the tired businessman – inactivity: “It is not athletic and not exactly a club, but it is Zenith in its perfection; it is a place for men to gather and talk about the manly, sporting exploits of others.” Babbitt considered baseball one of the society’s pillars, like the Republican Party.  A fellow club member branded Babe Ruth a “noble man” due to his on-field exploits, never mind his less than reputable lifestyle. Speaking to the Zenith Real Estate Board, Babbitt read these lines from shallow pet/ad man Chum Frink:

          All the fellows standing round 

          a-talkin’ always, I’ll be bound

 About baseball players of renown

 That nice guys talk in my home town

The Boston Red Sox are World Series champs for the fourth time in 14 years since breaking the so-called curse of Babe Ruth having been traded to the Yankees a century ago.  I paid little interest in the playoffs after the Cubs were eliminated but did watch parts of Friday’s 18-inning marathon that lasted almost 8 hours, until 3 a.m., the lone Dodger victory. I hardly knew any players on either team except for ex-White Sox Chris Sale, who struck out the side to clinch the final game, and L.A. pitchers Clay Kershaw, Rich Hill (a former Cub), and  Walker Buehler (whose name announcers delighted in mimicking the nerdy economics teacher, played by Ben Stein, in “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off”).  

 Rich Hill in 2006

After game 5 Trump criticized manager Dave Roberts for going to his bullpen prematurely, tweeting: “It is amazing how a manager takes out a pitcher who is loose & dominating through almost 7 innings, Rich Hill of Dodgers, and brings in nervous reliever(s) who get shellacked. 4 run lead gone. Managers do it all the time, big mistake!” Referring to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, Hill responded: “There was a mass shooting yesterday.  The focus, in my opinion, of the president is to be on the country, and not on moves that are made in a World Series game.”

 participant in White House vigil for Pittsburgh synagogue victims; below, Bob and Niki Lane

An anti-Semitic gunman armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle mowed down a dozen Tree of Life worshippers in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill. This just days after a Trump supporter mailed packages containing bombs to a dozen Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as the offices of CNN.  Neither caused our heartless President to cancel campaign appearances.  Instead, he faulted the synagogue for not having armed guards and continues to rant against all critics.   One tweet stated, “The Fake News is doing everything in their power to blame Republicans, Conservatives and me for the division and hatred that has been going on for so long in our Country.” Mayor Bill Peduto called the senseless atrocity the “darkest day of Pittsburgh’s history.”  Nephew Bob Lane, whose brother Dave works just two blocks from Tree of Life synagogue, wrote:

This is not the first time I’ve been affected by gun violence but this is the first time it happened in my childhood neighborhood. To know this happened just two blocks from my childhood home in a place where I had countless dances and celebrations sickens me. I was a paper boy on that corner, grew up there, walked by there a thousand times. Even in our darkest hour, I remember that love is a basic human instinct that will prevail.

Prior to bridge, eight of us dined at Wagner’s, known for having the best ribs in Northwest Indiana.  In 1988, David Wagner purchased a boarded up tavern off the beaten track in Porter and opened the restaurant, which now does a booming business.  Mike and Janet Bayer introduced us to Wagner’s shortly before they moved to Vermont; Alice Bush and Ken Applehans took us there while we were living with them after the 2000 home invasion, where I had my first beer in over a month.  Saturday, for 20 bucks, I ordered a meal with two entries, a half-rack of ribs and steak shish kabob (the latter became Sunday dinner).  Toni and I had the best round of the night, making three game bids in four hands, and she won the 4-dollar first prize.  Eating delicious chocolate cake afterwards, Dick Hagelberg, knowing it came from Jewel, repeated his standard quip that Toni must have spent most of the day baking it.

The reigning Superbowl champion Philadelphia Eagles evened their record at 4-4 with an exciting victory over the Jaguars in England.  The game aired at 8:30 a.m. Chicago time.   Hours earlier, four Jacksonville players were detained by police after refusing to pay a $64,000 bar tab at London Reign nightclub. It’s hard to imagine how they could have incurred such a large bill short of treating the entire house to free drinks or having exotic dancers pleasure them.  Perhaps management was simply stiffing four naïve African-American jocks in a strange environment.  All told, it was a good NFL day, with the Skins, Bears, and Eagles all triumphant. The only sour note  was my Fantasy team, again garnering the second most points but losing to Pittsburgh Dave when Todd Gurley, after a 25-yard run, took a knee rather than cross the goal line, knowing time would expire, giving the Rams the victory, while a TD might conceivably have allowed Green Bay to tie the score in the final minute. What he did crushed many bigtime NFL high-rollers, the Rams being 71/2-point favorites.

Anne Weiss, photos by Jerry Davich

Post-Trib columnist Jerry Davich profiled high school history teacher Anne Weiss, 73, whose Andrean career spans 50 years. Several former students claimed she was their best teacher ever.  Joking about her bossy personality, Weiss remarked: “Some boys find it difficult to deal with a loud woman. Some girls, too.”  Lamenting that there were only two remaining blackboards at Andrean, Weiss joked: “Take me away before you take my beloved blackboard.”  While chair of IUN’s History Department, I observed Anne in the classroom to assess whether the course was worthy of AP (Advanced Placement) status, earning students college credit.  She was very knowledgeable, interacted well with students, but forced them to think, reason, and participate.

 "Merciless" Mary McGee

Brad Miller from Indiana Landmarks requested information on North Gleason Park clubhouse, a 1941 WPA project.  It served a nine-hole golf course that frequently flooded in the spring and was inferior to the whites-only 18-hole course across the Little Calumet River in South Gleason Park. The site became Police Athletic League training quarters for local boxers, and Miller found walls lined with fight posters.  One touted Gary’s own “Merciless” Mary McGee, who began competing professionally in 2005.  Presently unused and suffering from considerable roof damage, the building once contained a restaurant and was, Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy recalled, the site of dances  In “Gary: A Pictorial History” is a photo (below) of visiting celebrity Joe Louis, the heavyweight champ, at a 1948 Par-Makers golf tournament.  

Louis-Schmeling, 1938; two minutes later the German was on the canvas

The most popular black celebrity of his time, Joe Louis Barrow was born in 1914 in east-central Alabama, the seventh child of sharecroppers Monroe and Lillie Barrow.  The family moved to Detroit at age 12 where Joe, a shy kid with a stammer, first observed streetcars, electric lights, and indoor toilets.  One story, probably apocryphal, claims he went by his middle name to avoid his mother discovering that he was using money for violin lessons to learn boxing.  His pugilistic career took off during the Depression under the tutelage of John Roxborough, Detroit’s black rackets   boss.  To drum up fan interest, urban newspapers, including both the Chicago Tribuneand the Chicago Defender, billed the “Brown Bomber” as wholesome and nonthreatening, in contrast tothe previous generation's controversial black champion Jack Johnson.  Under strict orders from handlers to, unlike Johnson, avoid white women, Louis wed comely Marva Trotter in 1935.  Throughout his career, however, he reveled in Gary’s nightclub scene, visiting such Midtown establishments as Mona’s Lounge, Mae’s Louisiana Kitchen, the Wonder Room, and the Playboy Club, whose owners treated him like royalty.

In 1938, when Louis knocked out German Max Schmeling in just 124 seconds to avenge his only previous loss before 70,000 fans in Yankee Stadium and millions more radio listeners, celebrations erupted in African-American neighborhoods across the nation.  In Gary a tragic confrontation erupted when Black celebrants ventured into segregated Glen Park and found themselves engulfed by an angry mob, resulting in the accidental death of a white woman and the murder conviction of civil rights leader Joseph Pitts.  I wrote about Pitts and palpably unfair trial in “Gary’s First Hundred Years.” Here’s David Margolick’s account in “Beyond Glory”:

  Two Gary residents a white woman named Florence Nehring and Joseph Pitts, a black barber, had listened to the fight – she at her home, he at his barbershop.  Each then went out to reconnoiter.  Whites near one commercial strip began pelting the car carrying Pitts and two of his friends with tomatoes and eggs.  Pitts got frightened, opened the door, and brandished a revolver, which went off accidentally.  After ricocheting off a wall, the bullet hit Nehring in the abdomen.  Hundreds of angry whites swarmed around Pitts’s car; cries of “Lynch the nigger!” filled the air.  A policeman pulled him to safety, but whites turned the car over with the other men still inside; one rioter tried puncturing the gas tank with an ice pick and setting the car on fire.  Fearing he’d be lynched – the crowd had swollen to more than two thousand people - authorities took Pitts to a remote jail. 

In 1951, the Par-Makers joined the United Golf Association, a black organization (at the time the PGA restricted its membership to whites only), and sponsored a tournament that Joe Louis agreed to participate in.  Due to the Champ’s promised appearance, parks department administrators were shamed into agreeing to make South Gleason’s course available. That year, a dozen Par-Makers members signed up to play in the annual Post-Tribunecity tournament.  Publisher H.B. Snyder, President of Gary’s Urban League Board, made sure they weren’t turned away.  Even so, the match play flights were rigged against the black entrants.  By the quarterfinals Nolan “Jelly” Jones was the only remaining black golfer.  His semi-final opponent was the tournament favorite.  On one hole Jones witnessed his opponent hit a ball under a tree only to have a spectator kick it back onto the fairway.  Jones won the match anyway.  The following week, black fans parked adjacent to the course to watch Jones compete for the championship.  When he clinched the victory on the sixteenth hole, the tournament director left rather than to acknowledge the new champion.  A week later, according to Par-Makers president Thomas Moxley, a “puny” little trophy arrived at North Gleason clubhouse for Jones, who continued to play the South Gleason course.  As club champ, officials didn’t dare turn him away.  Most Par-Makers, on the other hand, continued to use North Gleason. In 1991, Moxley explained why: “You knew that you were not welcome.”  In 1952 Louis participated in a PGA event, the San Diego Open, as an amateur, paving the way for black professionals to follow in his footsteps.

The Champ’s final years were not happy ones.  Following his retirement and an unsuccessful comeback that ended with a humiliating loss to Rocky Marciano, the IRS continued to hound him for back taxes, He had a short career as a professional wrestler and became a fixture at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, greeting tourists. Many a Gary resident posed for a shot of them with Louis.  Plagued by dependence on drugs and a paranoid fear of plots to kill him, he died of heart failure in 1981.  At President Ronald Reagan’s insistence he was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors; Max Schmeling, who had befriended old rival, served as a pallbearer.  Responding to frequent eulogies that Louis was a credit to his race, New York Postcolumnist Jimmy Cannon wrote: “Yes, Joe Louis was a credit to his race – the human race.”

On a lighter note, this from Jim Spicer:

   Last week a passenger in a taxi heading for Midway airport leaned over to ask the driver a question and gently tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb, and stopped just inches from a large plate glass window. For a few moments everything was silent in the cab. Then, the shaking driver said, “Are you OK? I’m sorry but you scared the daylights out of me.”
    The badly shaken passenger apologized to the driver and said, “I didn’t realize that a mere tap on the shoulder would startle someone so badly.”

    The driver replied, “No, no, I’m the one who is sorry, it’s entirely my fault. Today is my very first day driving a cab. For the past 25 years I’ve been driving a hearse.”

Got my overgrown toenails clipped at L.A. Nails.  A year ago, the cost was seven dollars, and I’d tip the person three.  Last time, the price went to $10, and I left a two-dollar tip. This time the manager wanted $20.  I didn’t leave any tip.  Petty? Perhaps. As I entered our condo, the pungent aroma of Polish golumpkis greeted me.  Toni was watching acid-tongued “Judge Judy,” the best of the many imitators benefitting from the popularity of Judge Joseph Wapner’s “The People’s Court,”  that ran for 12 seasons beginning in 1981.  “Wapner”was a famous Dustin Huffman line in “Rain Man” (1988).  Wapner had been a municipal court judge in Los Angeles, and Judge Judy Sheindlin, 76, whose show debuted in 1996, once was a family court magistrate in Manhattan.  

There were 6 full bridge tables at Chesterton Y due to a sanctioned bridge tournament. We played pre-arranged hands simultaneously used at other Unit 154 sites.  Charlie Halberstadt and I held our own against some of the best Region pairs.  Director Alan Yngve and Joel Charpentier won, with the Carsons and the Tomes tying for second.  I invited Chuck Tomes to IUN’s Homecoming basketball games, and he noted with sadness the death of IUN assistant women’s coach Ken Markfull, 64, five-time Post-Tribunehigh school coach of the year during a 30-year career at Hobart and Andrean, with both Sectional and regional championships on his resumé.  Terry Bauer, reading a Wendell Wilkie biography, couldn’t get over Republicans nominating a longtime Democrat as their 1940 presidential candidate.  Henry Luce of Timemagazine had a big hand in that, I noted.

My best hand  came against stellar opponents Barb Walczak and Trudi McKamey. Holding 17 points and 5 Hearts, I opened a Heart.  When Charlie bid 2 Hearts, indicating a weak hand with 6-8 points but at least 3 Hearts, I jumped to game.  With a 4-I trump split against me and only one clear entry to the board, I was not able to finesse the Heart King twice, which Barb held, along with another trump. With four cards left, three of them trump, including the Ace, I deliberately trumped a good trick on the board and led what Barb assumed was a good Diamond.  When she trumped, I played a higher Heart and then led out my Ace, making the contract for a high board, as nobody else bid and made game.  As we were leaving, Trudi said to me, “I’ll remember that 4-Heart bid.” Like me, she probably broods over hands she scored poorly on rather than the good ones. My biggest regret: against Judy Selund and Don Giedemann, with 4 Hearts out, including the Queen, I had to choose between a finesse and leading  my King and hoping the Queen dropped.  I finessed, and Don took the trick with a bare Queen.

life masters Anna Urick, Charlotte Abernathy, and Trudi McKamey; photo by Barbara Walczak

Ida Sain at her home; Huffington Post photo by Doug McSchooler

An article on Gary’s “hyper-vacancy” crisis (25,000 lots, 6,500 abandoned buildings) appeared in today’s Huffington Post by David Uberti, who interviewed me a couple weeks ago.  Glen Park resident Ida Sain, 75, told him that her parents moved to Gary around 1940 and her father quickly found work at U.S. Steel.  At the time African Americans were restricted to the Midtown area, and most suburban communities were off limits.  “When I was a kid,”Ida recalled, “they didn’t even want to serve you out there.”Uberti wrote:

    Following in her father’s footsteps, Sain landed a job driving trucks at the mill before eventually settling into office work. As a single mother in 1972, she bought her three-bedroom home in the mostly white Glen Park area, where she still lives today. It was an ideal neighborhood to raise her daughter, Marviyann Brown, but the signs of economic collapse had already begun.

    It started as a trickle of upper- and middle-class whites leaving. They took advantage of federally backed home mortgages to buy newer, larger houses in the suburbs connected to downtown by a burgeoning highway system. Many black families were denied such federal aid and were explicitly not welcomed in the suburbs by real estate firms and community groups. After Gary came under black political leadership in the late 1960s, this out-migration exploded into full-on white flight, with major stores and businesses also moving outside city limits.

    To Brown, it was clear that certain kids in the neighborhood were moving away while others weren’t ― or, to be more precise, couldn’t. Brown’s family stayed while her best friend, Julie, a white girl who lived nearby, left with her family. “I always wondered what happened to her,”Brown said.

I had talked with Huffington Postwriter Uberti about the devastating effects to Gary of middle-class black flight to previously all-white suburbs in the past40 years, but he chose not to bring that up.