Author: Lonnie Shalton

Hot Stove #73 – Collusion (Baseball not Russia) – Part Two

Picture of Kirk Gibson of The Tigers
~ Lonnie Shalton

As we left Part One, the players had won free agency status in the Messersmith case, leading to the owners and players entering into a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). One of the key CBA provisions required that free agency be an individual right so that players could not band together for leverage (as Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax had done in their joint holdout in 1966). The owners were likewise to act independently – that is, they were prohibited from colluding to hold down salaries.

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Hot Stove #69 – Rooting for Laundry

~ Lonnie Shalton

In 1995, Jerry Seinfeld did a bit that went like this:

 

“Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify. Because the players are always changing, the team can move to another city, you’re actually rooting for the clothes when you get right down to it. You know what I mean, you are standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city. Fans will be so in love with a player but if he goes to another team, they boo him. This is the same human being in another shirt, they ‘hate’ him now. Boo! Different shirt!! Boo.” [click here to see the video]

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Hot Stove #67 – Danny and the Juniors – At Spring Training, At the Oscars and At the Hop

~ Lonnie Shalton

Rita and I head to Phoenix later this week to visit friends of long standing, Diana and Larry Brewer. Sixty years ago this month (that would be January of 1958), the #1 record that Diana and I and our classmates were dancing to at Van Horn Teen Town was “At the Hop” by Danny and the Juniors. Three years later, I fixed Diana up on a blind date with my college fraternity brother Larry Brewer. They are still dating (and long married). Continue reading →

Hot Stove #66 – Baseball Integration – A Triumph of Journalism (Martin Luther King Jr. Day – 2018)

~ Lonnie Shalton

This message is a combination of my annual MLK message (since 2002) and the newest Hot Stove post.

 

The theme for this message started percolating in 2015 when I saw an exhibit at the Kansas City Public Library. The exhibit honored Lucile Bluford as a civil rights activist and for her influential career as a journalist with Kansas City’s premier African American newspaper, the Call. The exhibit chronicled her “separate but equal” litigation with Missouri University when she was denied admission in 1939. Her case and others seeking fairness in education helped lay the foundation for Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.  Continue reading →