I’ll keep it short. Not even giving it a number.
Just need to make sure everybody saw the big news from the Royals opener yesterday.
Hot Stove Short – Opening Day and Hamilton
Hot Stove #95 – Spring Training, Team Loyalty, Don Newcombe, Birch Bayh and Selina Meyer
Opening day is six days away.
As spring training winds down, it’s a good time to view this 1984 video of Bill Veeck (two minutes). He somehow starts with the Garden of Eden and ends with the notion that spring training is mostly a “con job” to boost regular season ticket sales. As always, living up to his book title, Veeck As in Wreck.
Hot Stove #94 – Spring Training Prep Movie Notes and a Linda Ronstadt Encore
Opening Day is March 28, just 17 days away.
Spring Training Prep: A good number of Hot Stove readers have been or will be in Arizona to check out the preseason Royals. They are filing reports with Hot Stove, and I will pass along some of their comments and photos in my next post. Click here for the Royals TV and radio schedule for spring training. Below, SI cover from 1960:
Hot Stove #93 – The Oscars – 91st Academy Awards
Hot Stove readers: I promise I will be back to baseball soon, but I need to get these thoughts down while fresh in my mind. SPOILER ALERT (in case you have not seen the movies).
Hot Stove #92 – Spring Training Projected Standings Frank Robinson and Linda Ronstadt
The full squads have now arrived at the spring training camps. Let’s set the mood with an excerpt from a Dan Quisenberry poem (“Spring Training Dream”):
Hot Stove #91 – Random Thoughts Before 2019 Spring Training
As we wait patiently for pitchers and catchers to report…
#42 – Jackie and Mo: This is a big milestone month for two players who wore #42. Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jackie Robinson. And last week, superstar reliever Mariano “Mo” Rivera was elected to the Hall of Fame, becoming the first player to ever receive a unanimous vote of the sportswriters.
Hot Stove #90 – Martin Luther King Jr. Day (2019) – Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles
[When my law firm added Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday in 2002, I began an annual message within the firm about why we celebrate the holiday. The distribution was later expanded outside the firm, and since 2016 the message has been circulated as a Hot Stove post. Below, my 18th annual MLK message.]
One of the best ways to appreciate Martin Luther King Jr. Day is to visit the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Not just for the memorabilia collection – although that is well worth the trip. There is also a compelling civil rights lesson. As one walks through the baseball exhibits, there is a parallel timeline along the lower edge that places Negro Leagues history in context with civil rights milestones.
Senator Thomas Eagleton Baseball Fan
I met Tom Eagleton 50 years ago during his first run for the Senate. I soon became aware that he had a passion for baseball. The short story: He was a St. Louis Cardinals fan. The long story: Below, in two posts from my baseball newsletter, the Hot Stove.
Hot Stove #89 – Fifty Years Ago – The Washington Senators (Part 3 – Tom Eagleton – The Senate Years)
Part 2 of this trilogy took us through 1968, the election of Tom Eagleton to his first term in the Senate. He quickly became a rising star in the Democratic Party, leading to…
1972 – McGovern and Baseball Commissioner: At the Democratic Convention in July of 1972, George McGovern picked Tom Eagleton to be his running mate. That did not go well, but it produced a couple of baseball stories that Tom liked to tell.
Hot Stove #88 – Fifty Years Ago – The Washington Senators (Part 2 – Tom Eagleton – The Early Years)
In the last Hot Stove, I began what has turned into a trilogy. The starting point was my first year in politics, 1968, when I met two “Washington Senators” from Missouri, Stuart Symington and Tom Eagleton. At that time, Symington was serving in his third term in the Senate and Eagleton was running for his first. In the last post, you read about Stuart Symington’s aid to the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals. This post (and the next one) will focus on Tom Eagleton’s baseball passion.