Some Random Thoughts on Baseball

At age eighty I now have a lot of memories, which come and go at times. Having played baseball as a Little Leaguer and then in what I vaguely recall as Pony League, at least I had experiences on the field. I was a second baseman, which usually translates to good glove, medium arm strength, and weak bat. Later in Pony League and through the fog of years when I was fifteen years old or thereabouts, I had developed a curve ball and did some pitching. My fast ball was anything but fast, but the curve had a looping arc, and it could get batters out. You see, second basemen are usually those with quick hands and fleet of foot, while pitchers are long and lean and crafty and with mean streaks at times. Pitching with a curve ball extended my Little League "career" a bit, although I didn't know how to throw it properly which resulted in an irritation in my shoulder which continues to this day. When I was unable to make my high school baseball team, cut after the final downsizing, dreams of a more extensive baseball career ended then and there.

Yet the appeal of baseball is complex, has staying power. The game moves slowly with multiple elements of Kabuki-style tradition, then explodes into drama in many ways: home runs, double plays, pickoffs, showdowns between pitcher and batter, amazing defensive plays, heart-breaking errors, and so on. Having played it a bit gives me some sort of "having been there" feeling.

Several little baseball tidbits have shown up recently in newspapers and they bring back memories ...  pull me back in. So please stay with me a bit more while I bare my soul to some extent. The first little reminder was Parade Magazine's recent cover story on their previous baseball cover pages. One was from May 1950 when Ted Williams and a player named Vern Stephens were featured as "potential Ruth killers," in terms of the Babe's American League record of sixty home runs. (Note that Aaron Judge of the Yankees just broke that record with sixty-one!) Williams also was featured recently in a magazine issued by the Texas Co-Op electrical system with a flash-back to when he managed the Texas Rangers. The old Senators team had moved from Washington DC in 1972 and Williams headed the new Rangers for three years. His record as manager was 273 wins - 364 losses so his managing acumen was less stellar than his on-field abilities.

Over and above my hero worship of Mr. Williams, fate previously had brought us together in a most unusual way. Back "in the day" I had worked in the labyrinths of the ITT corporation for a few years as a young engineer in their semiconductor organization. The facility was in West Palm Beach, Florida, and I was tapped to head up a small business unit that developed and manufactured RF Power transistors. Those heady days saw RF Power transistors starting to displace the venerable vacuum tubes for transmitters up to several hundred watts of power. Little did I know that the brain-trust in Harold Geneen's financial number-crunchers had concluded that semiconductors in general and especially RF Power transistors were not to be part of their future; within a year after my big promotion, we were sold - kit and kaboodle - to an "investor group." The complex "clean room" equipment that facilitated diffusion and photoresist and other complex processing steps of the silicon as well as the wire bonders and assembly gear and the final testers and burn-in equipment ... all were moved from ITT's West Palm Beach factory to a new company named Kertron, named after the principal investor. The plant, a simple 20,000 square foot building on a plain-dirt lot in a brand-new business park was bare bones: no cafeteria, no nothing really but a front door and some simple offices and a large "clean room" that was not very clean since to save money, the "investors" had skimped (to put it mildly) on any real air filtration to screen out microscopic particulates that would ruin those transistors. In the rear of the plant, "wire bonders" to connect the semiconductor-chip portions to the outside world, and other assembly equipment were arrayed along with a test area for the high-power transistors. I learned later that the whole operation was bundled together on the cheap once ITT decided to exit the business. We gave it a go and maintained operations for a year, but it became clear that the "business plan" was to buy an on-going operation and run it dry selling off inventory and continuing to run production as needed. In addition to daily operations, my other job was to meet with our sales reps in the US and Europe, so lots of frequent-flier miles were racked up. One day, I was told to come in early on a Sunday morning to "meet a prospective buyer" for the business. By this time, it was clear to me that the way the operation was going, we were headed downhill and fast. The plant was not operational on most weekends, and certainly not Sundays, so I drove over early and was in my office when the owners came in followed by a tall, impressive man who not only looked like Ted Williams, but was the Splendid Splinter himself! He was physically impressive: tall and broad-shouldered, ruggedly handsome, then in his forties or so. I was introduced to Mr. Williams and told he was considering investing in the business. For the next two hours I led him around and explained our development labs (minimum) and production facilities (adequate but clearly basic). The discussion was all business; the famous man had few questions, probably because he could see this was not something in which he should "invest". In a month or so I left, and always will have a very fond part in my heart for Pat Lynch, the man who was my mentor at Motorola in Phoenix, who took me back as an errant young person who had strayed but now was back home. It is a personal debt I can never properly repay.

That's the main part of my baseball blog, but one additional news item stands out. A recent item in the weekend Wall Street Journal included a small jewel announcing the passing of Vin Scully, the Voice of the Dodgers. I have been a Dodgers fan ever since Little League days back in West Virginia. Later, when my wife and I lived in the Phoenix area, I listened to Mr. Scully do play-by-play on KTAR AM in Phoenix. At the time Phoenix was yet to secure a major league baseball team so we got every Dodger (and every San Francisco Giant) game. Scully had joined the Dodgers' broadcasting team in New York in 1950 working with the famed Red Barber. Until his retirement after the season ended in 2016, he was a voice, and then *the* voice of the now Los Angeles Dodgers... sixty-seven summers of baseball! Scully did his best to "slow the game down," according to the obituary, and if you understand baseball, you will know this is the highest compliment.

Comments are welcome and will be published, pro and con. Make your observations below or send them to me via email at n3bb@mindspring.com. Email commenters will not be identified unless requested.

Enjoy life; it's the only one we will get.

J.K. (Jim) George

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