Recently I was asked to update and expand an article I wrote last summer for the Talbot Spy about the Easton Yankees, a Class D baseball team that played its last games in 1949, after playing off and on since the 1920s. This new article will appear in a program for a little league tournament to be held in late July in Easton.
After talking with an Easton resident who was the bat boy during the 1948 season, with this man’s best friend who shagged foul balls only to return them to Federal Park and thus gain free admission to the games and a man whose father had served as the volunteer business manager of the Little Yankees, I suddenly realized that what I was hearing was really about relationships.
Baseball was the glue.
When pro athletes were approachable, unprotected by agents and hangers-on, people in a community could get to know the players as people, particularly on a minor-league level.
Baseball, where people sat only feet away from the action, generated that kind of closeness. You could see, feel and hear the action. You might have known the people tasting success and failure in a sport where job and agony followed closely after each other.
While spectators still sit relatively close to the action in baseball, they understand that relationships are far harder, if not impossible to establish today. The players seem more distant in their demeanor.
In some cases in the past, spectators might have known the players off the field when the salaries were far lower, and players needed second jobs during the off-season. The players seemed more human, less aloof.
When I listened to Bill Parker, once upon the time the 12-year-old bat boy in 1948, tell how Bernie DeFazio, the shortstop on the Easton Yankees, used to visit Bill when he came to Easton see his–in-laws, having married a local woman and moved to Massachusetts, I understood that Class D baseball not only provided entertainment before the introduction of television, but also enabled fans to know the players, to feel a special connection to the men playing for money, though likely not very much at that time, and possibly a road to the major leagues.
As we watch professional sports today, listen to pro athletes interviewed on television (and schooled to do so), we have to make quick decisions whether we like or dislike a highly paid golfer, skier or football or baseball or basketball player. In all likelihood, the man or woman participating in elaborate, expensive sports venues cares little about fan’s likes or dislikes. It’s also unlikely our paths will cross.
When I heard that Easton Yankees manager, Jack Farmer, named his two children, Jack and Joe, the same names as the twin sons of J. Howard Anthony, a volunteer business manager for the teams for a brief time, I again thought about relationships spawned by professional baseball played at a far different, simpler time in history in the small town of Easton.
At the risk of sounding old and judgmental, I often feel compelled to refer to the late 1940s in Easton as the “good old days,” too easy an expression but maybe apt in this instance. Relationships were easier; distractions were fewer.
Federal Field was a focal point, I suppose, for young and old to watch and appreciate baseball, even at the Class D level. Competition was fierce between numerous towns on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia and lower Delaware. Other sports-watching opportunities were fewer.
Now, at the risk of abruptly diverging from my theme of long-ago baseball in Easton and the relationships it spawned, I think also about relationships—authentic, soul-deep—while observing the heartfelt reaction to the death of Beau Biden, the 46-old son of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.
Before you wonder why I lurched so suddenly from baseball to politics, I think that Joe Biden, who seems to feed as a person and politician on relationships, has sparked a wellspring of empathetic emotion because he exudes warmth, the authentic and sincere kind.
Still wondering where I’m going with this column? Loss of a child is catastrophic. It’s unfathomably difficult to understand and accept. What sustains you, besides your family, are your friends. Often derided for his unscripted comments, Joe Biden has developed relationships based on his personal quality and sincerity. He has done so in the often divisive world of politics.
Young Bill Parker and Bernie DeFazio established a relationship based on their mutual love of baseball, as played and practiced in a small, cohesive community.
On a field of combat, called national politics, Joe Biden has developed relationships that override rancor and naked ambition. His son’s tragic death, grieved by his family, has unleashed an outpouring of sympathy driven by friendship for our nation’s vice president.
Our relationships give us enjoyment and support. Their value is immeasurable, in good times and bad.
Columnist Howard Freedlander retired in 2011 as Deputy State Treasurer of the State of Maryland. Previously, he was the executive officer of the Maryland National Guard. He also served as community editor for Chesapeake Publishing, lastly at the Queen Anne’s Record-Observer. In retirement, Howard serves on the boards of several non-profits on the Eastern Shore, Annapolis and Philadelphia. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in political science and journalism and a master of science degree in strategic intelligence from the Joint Military Intelligence College.
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Charles Ludlow says
Strange I would glean more information about Easton Yankees in Freedlander article than during the first 25 years of my life growing up and going to school in Talbot County. I would have been one of their knot hole fans had the team lasted a little longer. Jack and Joe Anthony were fellow Little Leaguers. Sports as a glue for society can not be underestimated. Charlie