A Personal Memory From Wrigley Field
PLUS: SPRING TRAINING CELEBRATES 100 YEARS IN FORT MYERS
Readers React
OLD BALLPARKS
“As a Chicago native and winter Arizona resident, I'm writing to disagree with last week’s column on the White Sox and D’backs ballparks.
First, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Rate Field. This is Jerry Reinsdorf trying to leverage money out of the state of Illinois and city of Chicago as he did in 1987. The thing is, it's 38 years later and neither the state nor the city has the money or the interest in doing that.
If the Sox want to threaten to move out of town (Nashville has been rumored), the state and city should call the White Sox’ bluff.
Chase Field is not "in disrepair" and is not "soon-to-be-abandoned." Again, this stadium is generally in perfectly fine shape, there are some upgrades needed, but "disrepair" is just plain wrong.
Further, just this week the state of Arizona is advancing a bill to fund repairs:
The D-backs aren't going anywhere. MLB wouldn't abandon the 12th largest US TV market.
Thought you'd like to know.”
— Al Yellon, Chicago
WASHINGTON’S WAYS
“The Nats signed Josh Bell to be the primary DH, not to play first. The news probably broke too late on Kyle Finnegan re-signing with Washington for you to note it.”
— Andrew Sharp, Las Vegas
Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
The cracked rib suffered by veteran catcher Sean Murphy opens the door wide for heralded rookie receiver Drake Baldwin, a left-handed contact hitter who provides power plus defense as the top prospect for the Braves . . .
Reigning AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil of the Yankees has been shut down with right shoulder discomfort. After 29 starts and a deep playoff run, Gil reached 159 2/3 innings last season after missing most of 2023 with an elbow injury. The Yankees' rotation is relatively thin, so if Gil misses significant time, prospect Will Warren (more to come) could be an option to replace him unless the Yankees sign Lance Lynn or Kyle Gibson . . .
To prove exhibition games don’t always adhere to the rules, Braves manager Brian Snitker removed starting pitcher Bryce Elder in the second inning and put him back into the game at the start of the third . . .
He made the same maneuver several days later with AJ Smith-Shawver . . .
Miami manager Clayton McCullough wears No. 86, the highest number worn by any manager this spring . . .
McCullough and Brian Snitker give the NL East two managers who went from minot-league catchers to major-league managers without ever playing in the bigs . . .
McCullough, Will Venable (White Sox), and Dan Wilson (Mariners) are all starting their first seasons as major-league managers . . .
MLB is testing a new electronic monitoring system called ABS (Automatic Balls and Strikes), inviting frequent challenges during spring games . . .
With Jazz Chisholm, Jr. seemingly anchored at second base after trying third and center field in recent seasons, the Yankees are still searching for a better third baseman than fading veteran DJ LeMahieu . . .
New York also needs a DH now that Giancarlo Stanton has double tennis elbow — an injury aggravated by swinging the bat . . .
Free agent J.D. Martinez, who played for the Mets last year, could stay in New York as Stanton’s replacement.
Leading Off
“Charlie Grimm, a Glove, a Park, and Many Generations of Baseball Love”
By Dan Freedman
Today would be my late wife’s 54th birthday. In addition to giving me nine wonderful years of marriage and three beautiful children, she gave me her dad, Marty.
Marty was an interesting man. He never met an illness he didn’t have or couldn’t diagnose (with the help of the Physicians’ Desk Reference that he kept handy), or a line he couldn’t beat. He grew up in Chicago as a Cubs fan, and then joined the Army. Shipped off to Germany during the Korean War, he never saw military action. Rather, he whiled away his time playing baseball with his fellow recruits. Marty loved baseball.
His passion for the game was fueled by his father, Irwin, who also grew up in Chicago, and was even closer to baseball. Irwin was a concessionaire at Wrigley Field. Sometimes he sold sodas and hot dogs, other times he took tickets. But regardless of the job, the Friendly Confines were his home away from home, and his workplace.
One day in the late 1920s, Irwin was leaving the ballpark after another afternoon game on the North Side (they were all afternoon games then, as Major League Baseball’s first night game didn’t take place until May 24, 1935, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati; and the Cubs’ first night game didn’t happen until 53 years later, in 1988). As he was about to step onto Addison Street, Irwin heard a voice behind him. “Hey [in the retelling of the story, it is unknown if he was called by his name], “hang on a minute.” Jogging towards the Wrigley Field employee and not yet father of two was Cubs’ first baseman Charlie Grimm. Grimm must have seen Irwin tossing peanuts with his left hand, or handing out sodas with his “southpaw,” or maybe he just had an inkling – lefties tend to be able to spot each other in the wild. When Grimm caught up to Irwin, he handed the man his first baseman’s mitt, telling him not to worry, he had others.
Irwin brought that glove home and put it away. Maybe, one day, he could share it with a son. A few years later, his wish was granted. Marty was born in 1933, and when he was old enough to fit the glove on his hand, Irwin bestowed the mitt upon his boy. As a youngster, Marty used that glove in the street and on ballfields all over Chicago. He eventually moved on to a Spalding, which he brought with him to Europe in his duffel bag along with his shaving kit and dog tags.
Marty held onto Grimm’s old mitt, first leaving it in his childhood closet, then in the home he shared with his wife (my mother-in-law), and then in his apartment as he crested into old age. Marty, like his father, had wished for a boy to play catch with. However, he was blessed with two girls.
Of his girls, one couldn’t tell an inside pitch from a soccer pitch, and had no interest in sports. The other, whom I would eventually marry, liked sports just fine, but never those played with a ball and glove. So Marty would play tennis and shoot the occasional hoop with his daughter, but he had no one to play ball with.
And then he met me. My then-girlfriend and her father weren’t especially close, but she did introduce me to him shortly after we started dating. One time, early in our courtship, we visited him at his apartment.
After a perfunctory greeting, he said to me, “Wait here.” After a few minutes and the sound of boxes and papers shuffling in the other room, he appeared with an old baseball mitt. It was in horrible shape. Dried out and stiff, with an aged Spalding ball in the pocket. He immediately said, “Let’s play catch.” I didn’t have a glove, but wasn’t too worried about his velocity hurting my bare hand, so we went to the parking lot to toss that old ball into that old glove.
While flipping that actual horsehide back and forth, we were chatting, as two are wont to do. That day he told me the story of Charlie Grimm and his father and Wrigley Field and how he had always wanted to pass the glove down to his own son. He spoke nearly as lovingly about “Jolly Cholly” as he did his own dad.
While it was clear to me that I had won this man over (the same was not yet true of his daughter), he most certainly didn’t offer the glove to me.
Over the years Marty and I would share our love of baseball, watching on television and comparing players and eras. I took him to a handful of Angels games (he lived in Orange County and rooted for his new hometown team). He was always good for a story or two and a beer or three. We truly enjoyed each other’s company.
Time passed, his daughter and I got married and had a boy of our own. And then Marty got sick. Truth be told, with so much going on in that stage of our lives, I had completed forgotten about the glove.
A few weeks before our son turned three, Marty passed away. My wife was a busy litigation attorney, and I was between jobs, so it was my responsibility to clean out his apartment. Marty was a pack rat. I found yellowed newspapers decades old; and cups that McDonalds gave away as part of Happy Meals in the ‘70s.
Marty smoked and didn’t like the cool air, so the apartment had a must that was hard to bear. But I worked quickly, trying to make sure I grabbed anything and everything that had meaning. I found a cache of photographic slides (kids, ask your grandparents) from his time in Europe during the war, and an old jewelry box with some incredible heirlooms. There were Cubs and Bulls jerseys, and his letterman jacket.
I stumbled across some old scrapbooks and pictures from his childhood. And just when I thought I had gotten everything of value, everything I could fit in his trunk and mine, I gave the apartment one more look over. I went to his closet and pushed over a pile of clothes. And laying in the corner, abandoned and forgotten (first my him, and then almost by me), was Charlie Grimm’s first baseman’s glove, with that Spalding still in the pocket.
In that moment, I knew why people go to flea markets or thrift stores, why people stop at antique shops on the side of the road or wake up early to attend estate sales. You simply never know what you might find.
I grabbed the glove and put it on the front seat of my car. This was a special find, and it would get the appropriate treatment. I took it home and oiled her up. When the first cycle still left the glove dry, I did it again. And then I took the ball and glove to a local trophy store and asked them to make a special case and nameplate for both.
This treasure went from Charlie Grimm to Irwin Osheroff to Marty Osheroff to me. And it was not going to be lost or mistreated while I cared for it before passing it on to my son. The watchmaker Patek Philippe has a slogan: “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.” This baseball mitt was my Patek Philippe.
As luck would have it, my son loves baseball as much as his grandfather (both of his grandfathers, actually). And it turns out that my son, like his father and his maternal grandfather, throws from the left side. As the years went on, I became an even bigger fan of baseball, and then a baseball writer. My fandom and my travels have allowed me to visit every major league ballpark. Call it coincidence, chance, fortune, or fate, but my favorite of all, in fact, my favorite place to be, is Wrigley Field. It is my happy place.
Wrigley Field is where I dragged my family on our first trip to Chicago; my girls on the next; my youngest daughter on Father’s Day a few years ago because, well, it was Father’s Day. The Friendly Confines is where I took my stepson and his father as the former was recovering from cancer treatment, as there is nothing like a Sunday in the North Side sun to brighten your spirits. It is where I took my father (and son and daughter) on a blustery day in 2023 just so we could truly experience the winds off Lake Michigan.
One night a few summers ago I forwent the game at the ballpark, and had dinner right on Clark Street so I could experience the sounds of the game smack in the heart of Wrigleyville. Wrigley Field calls to me like Charlie Grimm called to Irwin Osheroff; I am drawn there, time and time again.
Does my love of Chicago, and that park, trace back to Charlie Grimm? Did his beneficence to my grand father-in-law eventually, somehow, trickle down to me. Is my ardor an (in)direct result of some cosmic event that none of us are smart enough to understand? Who’s to say?
What I do know is that my late wife introduced me to her father, who told me the story of his father, and the kindness of an average big league first baseman who went out of his way to give a gift that has passed through generations, with yet more to go.
So, thank you “Jolly Cholly,” you had no way of knowing the long-term impact your small gesture would have on multiple families; thank you Irwin, for being the type of person upon whom Charlie Grimm felt compelled to bestow such a special gift; thank you Marty, for indirectly bequeathing your birthright to me; and thank you Samantha, for giving me the son to whom this beautiful piece of leather will eventually pass. And, also, Happy Birthday!
PLAY BALL!!
Dan Freedman is an Executive Vice President of Business & Legal Affairs at Lionsgate Films. His writing about baseball stems from his unique (?) perspective on the game, his desire for people to love it as much as he does, and how baseball often relates to life. His musings can be found at www.baseballcraziness.com as well as Forbes.com where he is a contributor. Follow him on X/Twitter @dffreedman or write to him @ dan.f.freedman@gmail.com.
Cleaning Up
Fort Myers Museum Marks Spring Training Centennial
By Dan Schlossberg
Spring training started in style for residents and tourists in Fort Myers.
The winter home of the Boston Red Sox and Minnesota Twins unveiled an extensive exhibit marking the centennial of spring training on Feb. 20.
Called “Fanatics: Thomas Edison, Connie Mack, and Spring Training in Fort Myers,” the exhibit featured baseball trivia, family-friendly activities, and artifacts from both of the local teams.
The Red Sox showcase, sponsored by L.L. Bean, includes artifacts, food trucks, plus a free drawing for tickets and other baseball souvenirs.
But the exhibit features the Athletics, who are now stateless while awaiting completion of their new facility in Las Vegas. They called Philadelphia whom when Connie Mack brought them in Southwest Florida and put sleepy Fort Myers on the map.
By that time, Edison and Ford were fast friends, local fixtures, and American heroes.
The exhibit tells that story in videos, photographs, artifacts, and extensive displays.
It began on Feb. 20 when Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson proclaimed “Spring Training Day in Fort Myers” and appeared to make an in-person presentation and speech.
Mack’s Philadelphia A’s, the first team to train in Fort Myers, arrived in the area 100 years ago. Two years later, when Ty Cobb was in his first year with the A’s after a long tenure with the Detroit Tigers, he worked out with Edison, a great fan of baseball. There’s an article about that one-of-a-kind event in the exhibit.
The Red Sox play in jetBlue Park, a much-smaller replica of Fenway Park, while the Twins work and play in Hammond Stadium, the most Victorian current spring training facility.
Teams that trained in Ft. Myers previously include the Athletics, Cleveland Guardians (nee Indians), Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals. The A’s, now a lame-duck team set to play this year in Sacramento, were the first to arrive.
The baseball exhibit is not far from various Ford and Edison inventions — from Model T’s to electric lights and phonographs. The original winter homes of the inventors, plus cultivated gardens, are also on site.
The Edison & Ford Winter Estates are at 2350 McGregor Blvd., Fort Myers, FL 33901.
Extra Innings
Things that surfaced at spring training:
Marquis Grissom, Jr. is a promising pitcher working his way up in the Washington Nationals organization . . .
Lanky lefty reliever Chasen Shreve has pitched for eight teams in 11 seasons but has returned to his first, the Atlanta Braves, on a minor-league contract . . .
Former Yankees closer Dave Righetti, long-time pitching coach for San Francisco, has seen five pitchers win their 300th game (Gaylord Perry, Tom Seaver, Phil Niekro, Greg Maddux, and Randy Johnson) and could add a sixth if Justin Verlander, just signed by the Giants, joins them in several years . . .
Juan Soto and Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. are younger than reigning AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil of the Yankees . . .
Gil will miss several months with a strained lat.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles the Monday issue with Dan Freedman [dfreedman@lionsgate.com] editing Tuesday and Jeff Kallman [easyace1955@outlook.com] at the helm Wednesday and Thursday. Original editor Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com], does the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Former editor Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] is now co-director [with Benjamin Chase and Jonathan Becker] of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, which publishes this newsletter and the annual ACTA book of the same name. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HtP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.