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  Extra Innings

Spitzer: A stamp of approval for Ted Williams

9/18/2012

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The U.S. Postal Service just issued a new Ted Williams stamp that closely lines up with the recent (July 5) 10th anniversary of the baseball slugger’s death. The commemoration of a death can be a sad affair, highlighted by still-lingering grief and “what ifs?” Pondering the death of San Diego native son and Red Sox legend Ted Williams is a lot like that.

Williams’ death is still tinged with a bit of mystery due to the controversial family decision to have the remains of “The Kid” cryo-preserved (read: frozen) instead of, say, brought back to his hometown of San Diego, or sprinkled on the Fenway Park warning track where so many of his home runs passed, meteoric-like, on a destination to their own unpredictable place.

Writer John Updike in his iconic essay printed more than 50 years ago in The New Yorker, described Ted’s last game with literary splendor and forever branded Fenway “a lyric little band box of a ballpark.” Like the “Splendid Splinter,” Updike has passed, but, akin to the Williams’ records, his prose and observations live on. None more noteworthy than this: In his last game on Sept. 28, 1960, even after hitting a home run in his final at-bat, Williams refused to tip his cap to the cheering crowd. “Gods,” said Updike, “do not answer letters.”

No one after that game, and the unceremonious refusal to take a curtain call, could have predicted how much Williams would be seared into our collective consciousness as the preeminent baseball hero. The lens of time can do that, bending, refracting and re-coloring the (high)lights.

The fact is Ted Williams was not as popular in his playing days as he is today. The U.S. Postal Service reported that advance sales of Major League Baseball All-Star Forever stamps of Williams were only beaten in the bottom of the ninth by sales of the Joe DiMaggio stamp after a big push in New York. The four-bagger of baseball stamp introductions also included likenesses of Willie Stargell and Larry Doby.

In the’40s and ’50s Williams was alternately magnanimous and moody, profound and profane. He had the potential to offer up affection and offense in the same sentence. He feuded with friends and fans, and was never embattled with anyone more than the media in a Boston teeming with 10 newspapers, clamoring for controversy and competing for readers’ attention. (Williams may have been the first celebrity to receive paparazzi-like treatment, as we know it today—and his response was positively Alec Baldwin-esque.)

Anger often drove Williams. But whatever his motivation, on the green grass of Fenway, and in American League ballparks all across the land, it worked.

Of course, Williams was a war hero as well, called away twice, perhaps giving up a chance to eclipse even the batting records of Babe Ruth, some speculate. His .406 batting average in 1941 didn’t produce an MVP award, given instead to DiMaggio for “the streak,” but now as the years progress without anyone coming close to the Williams’ record, Ted’s feat looks, arguably, more impressive.

Even in retirement, during his Hall of Fame induction speech, Williams surprised us by advocating for the Negro Leaguers to be inducted into the Hall and, partially erasing the segregation sins of the Red Sox’ past, he lived to see it happen. Moreover, let’s not forget the tireless Jimmy Fund work he did before and after it became the Red Sox’ official charity.

And so, the Williams’ flaws fade with time, and perhaps rightly so. But not so fast that they cannot be viewed in the same context as the records he set. Very few of us will ever reach his exalted status in the profession of our own choosing, but in his struggle to overcome (or ignore) those faults, he was like the rest of us. And, it is that authenticity that makes us admire him all the more 10 years after his death—especially his unique brand of independence.

Ted Williams was a genius, a virtuoso of hitting; and, often, a vortex of controversy. The greatness that goes hand and glove with a single-minded pursuit often comes with a price. Relationships, public and private, suffer. Those of us old enough to remember Williams, and the rest confined to historic accounts, have been the beneficiaries of the man’s extraordinary dedication. 

In his essay, “Hub Fans bid Kid Adieu,” John Updike, using “Hub” as the local colloquialism to describe Boston, couldn’t have foreseen how rare it would become for one player to spend his entire career with one ball club like Williams, DiMaggio, et al.

For this and not a little nostalgia for the game the way it used to be played, despite Williams’ faults and, to a large measure, maybe because of them, today fans of the game happily bid The Kid “bonjour.” And, thanks to cryonics, perhaps one day they may be able to do it in person.

As for the Postal Service? That would not be a problem. It recently changed a long-standing rule that one does not have to be dead to appear (and, presumably, to stay) on a stamp.
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Extra Innings has launched...

4/24/2012

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Wow! What a couple of weeks. I am happy that Extra Innings has launched and it has been well received. It's been exhausting but very exciting. The week before the launch and the week of, we've seen coverage about the novel in more than 800 media outlets worldwide. We're big in Singapore -- who knew? Seriously, it's been a tremendous whirlwind and I am very grateful.We had a fantastic book launch party for friends and fans at the Bleacher Bar in Fenway Park during the 100th Anniversary weekend celebrations for the ancient ball yard. Thanks to everyone who attended. The Joey Fund and Cystic Fibrosis Foundation benefited from book sales. (Keep an eye out for a photo album that will pop up soon on Facebook.)The media attention for Extra Innings included everyone from the websites of local TV stations across the country, to sports bloggers, to business publications. The major hits included a feature in Sports Illustrated Magazine. The novel was also featured on the Thompson-Reuters 23-story electronic billboard in Times Square on launch day!  And another giant sign on the Las Vegas strip featured the novel! (Okay, I'll stop using exclamation points.) There were also features in The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald and dozens of Massachusetts newspapers and Wicked Local websites.Needless to say, I am thrilled and it's only one week after the official launch. Broadcast interviews to come. Despite all of the hoopla, I want to tell everyone that my highest priority remains readers. Reader feedback has been good. Please contact me if you'd like me to speak to your book club and we'll get it on the schedule.Thanks for all of the buzzzzzz.
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Finding Ted Williams' Historic HOF Induction Speech

1/24/2012

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_Someone reminded me that this week is the anniversary of Ted Williams being voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Part of the research that I conducted to write Extra Innings, which imagines Ted Williams returning to life in the future through cryonics, was at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

During his induction speech, among other topics, Ted spoke eloquently and forcefully about the need for the Hall to recognize the old Negro Leaguers--and he lived to see it happen. One of the most interesting aspects of that speech, I discovered, was that it was written -- not quite on the back of the proverbial envelope  -- but on the note paper of a tiny motel he stayed at the night before.

It would have been just like him to eschew the fancy digs at the nearby Otesaga Resort Hotel and go his own modest way. Just think, that little motel he wrote his speech in played a pivotal role in baseball history and I'm guessing not many people know about it. It was a privilege to hold those modest sheets of paper in my hands.
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Larry King, Ted Williams and the Viability of Cryonics

12/8/2011

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_Talk show gabmeister Larry King created a media storm this week when he announced on a CNN TV special with dinner party guests that he wanted to be cryonically preserved when he dies. To his credit, he took a humorous tone in the discussion calling it, in his case, “suspendered” animation.

Humor is always good when you’re talking about something so speculative.

The media jumped on it in a flash, as in flash frozen. Many of them got it wrong by the way, calling the science “cryogenics.” That would be the science or preservation of genetic material or the branch of physics dealing with the production and effects of very low temperatures. The correct reference, cryonics, is whole-body or neural preservation through freezing in the hope that medical science, nanotechnology, and specialized tissue regeneration techniques would someday be able to re-create human life and memory. See clarification here.

There are many people who look at King and others who have been stored in liquid nitrogen at -320 degrees Fahrenheit after they pass as wacky, but my personal belief is why not if you have the money and the desire? Who knows what future science will produce? Read more about my position here.

Of course, I’m biased; otherwise I might not have been able to create my novel “Extra Innings.” featuring baseball legend Ted Williams returning to life through cryonics. At the very least cryonics is certainly good fodder for a novel.

I'm not a doctor or a scientist, but I have done extensive research on the subject to produce “Extra Innings.” Perhaps more importantly, and certainly more interestingly, I've spent five years thinking about and exploring what one's life would be like when suddenly reanimated in the distant future.
 
The thoughts are intriguing:  What bodily and mental functions might work, what might fail? Would you be happy if science could only reproduce you as your former 90-year-old self? How would science overcome this obstacle? Would you be lonely when loved ones are gone and literally another lifetime away? How would you support yourself? What would you do differently? Would you fall into old habits or create a new you? How would the world treat the first person in all of humanity to return from the dead and the only person on earth who knows the answer to the question: Does God, and an afterlife, exist?
 
And, in Ted Williams’ case, did he ask to be placed in cryostasis?

Interestingly, some of the medical advances and science terms I used in the novel were so, well, novel, they popped as a spell-check problem, unrecognizable to the Word software.

How did I answer the legion of questions above and many others as relates to cryonics? At the risk of sounding smug, you’ll have to read the novel to find out!
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The Red Sox and the Media

11/13/2011

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As Ben Cherington, the new GM for the Boston Red Sox, completes interviews with all of the candidates for the new manager’s job, he and the Red Sox ownership cabal are faced with many considerations. The new skipper will have to be a master of numerous disciplines.

In addition to executing Sabermetrics, the manager will need to have the social and motivational skills to ride herd over what can be a very difficult clubhouse, and the baseball experience to gain the respect of said clubhouse. Last, but certainly not least, one of the primary considerations is how much experience the manager possesses managing the media.

When it comes to the media, there are not a lot of towns like Boston. (Not to mention media spread out over six New England states that cover the Red Sox.)

New York, of course, is the media center of the world, but its media and fans do not work themselves up into the fever pitch that always has existed in Boston about the local nine. In Gotham, there are more newspapers, but there are also two baseball teams to cover and other innumerable distractions.

For sheer determination, in the Hub, the white-hot glare of the media is like no other place. There are players and managers here, too numerous to mention, (okay just two—Edgar Renteria and Grady Little) who have simply melted under the pressure.

Ted Williams famously (and rather sarcastically) called the ink-stained wretches that followed the Red Sox “the Knights of the Keyboard.” Today the Monarchs of the Media that he would have to add would be the intrusive Lancelots of the Lens, The Court of 24-Hour Cable, The Royal Radio Pontificators, the Wolseys of the Web, and the Behemoths of the Blogosphere. There may not be the 10 Boston papers Williams had to deal with, all competing viciously, sometimes making things up and, as Ted would have it, carrying on a vendetta against him, but we have our own megawatt monoliths, in all of their modern incarnations.  (Regarding making stuff up:  It may have happened recently; think drinking in the dugout.)

While discussing the cult of celebrity and connotations of Camelot, it’s interesting to note that Williams may have been the first celebrity to get paparazzi-like harsh treatment from the media, ushering in a new era of media scrutiny in the ’40s and ’50s. Why then, if this was already happening, did the press in the early ’60s give JFK the gloves-off treatment that Williams never received? Perhaps there was a double-standard when it came to politicians and sports figures. Or, in Boston anyway, Williams was not the native son, or not yet the fully adopted son.

Today, generally, the fandom and the public do not have much sympathy for modern athletes and, more recently, managers and coaches suffering from media scrutiny. The sentiment may be, if they squirm a little, so be it. It’s a small price to pay for the benefits that modern athletes reap. But do the managers and the coaches deserve it?

Indeed, the pressure can be enormous. You can criticize Terry Francona for losing control of the Red Sox clubhouse but not for mismanaging the press. It sounds cliché, but he built a reputation for telling it like it is, while protecting his players perhaps a little too much, and had the tough skin and right attitude to take it all. (Prime example:  not-so-subtly reminding a young reporter, probably whose knees were shaking, who made a mistake in referring to him, “I’m not the coach, I’m the manager.”) Isn’t it ironic to think that if more often Tito took that tone with his players he might still have a job?

Of course, Francona probably extracted (as in pulling teeth) a few media lessons from the master himself, the wizard of the wayward deflection down on Route 1, the incomparable and incorrigible media savant Bill Belichick. Patriots’ owner Bob Kraft must think that watching Belichick stay on message (or avoid any messages) is worth at least $4 million of the five he pays Belichick annually. For those in the know, it’s a big part of the coach’s skill set and, some might say, his genius.

If you ask the media if they have the same opinion of Belichick you would get a different answer. While there are some that can objectively take a step back and admire his obvious obfuscations, the beat guys and gals can get very frustrated with the Belichickian banter. They have a job to do, and must answer to editors and producers, (and readers, listeners and viewers) who want more information. And Belichick, more often than not, will just not give it to them if it does not suit his purposes.

Woe is the occasional intrepid reporter, often a newcomer who shouts out a follow-up question to a Belichick non-answer, calling him on it, if you will. It can be great theater, usually ending with the curtains going up in flames.

So, as the Red Sox ownerships begins Act Two, and the new manager, whoever he may be, takes center stage, the media considerations are mighty. In Boston, unlike most other places, the spotlight giveth and the spotlight taketh away.

In the immortal words of the Head Coach of the local football eleven, “It is, what it is.”
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Greetings!

11/7/2011

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The great Abraham Lincoln said, “Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.”

For a debut novelist (me) these words are not only axiomatic but a good objective to keep in mind when writing fiction—or a blog post.

Since this is my first post, perhaps introductions are in order:  I am a regular hardworking family guy (who doesn’t look a thing like Stewie, okay, maybe a little like Peter, and I do hang out in Rhode Island a lot!); who happens to have written a novel; and who promises here and now to stop the dreaded overuse of exclamation points in these blog posts!

Oh, and you’ll never see the equally abhorrent letters LOL here. (Sorry if you’re a user but I can recommend a few good detox programs for you.)  Sounds like a future blog post:  “A 12 Step Program for gaining control over your texting, blogging, letters to your mother, and missives to the parole board.”

So, here I am. Blogging. It was Woody Allen who famously said “Eighty percent of success in life is just showing up,” but I am afraid, as in his dubious take on family life, his axiom is incorrect when it comes to writing. I know you must earn your readers respect and, as Lincoln said, be worthy of recognition. Hopefully I’ll earn yours.

When it comes to posts, I’ll be more like Emily (the writing, not the etiquette) and less like mushy breakfast cereal. And more lively than a fence post. Seriously, did you know that thefencepost.com is an actual web site? It features “All you need to know about rural life in Colorado & Nebraska.” Under the category of you can’t make this up:  a recent feature about rodeo sheep riding, otherwise known as “mutton bustin’.”

Okay . . .nuff said.

The experts will tell you that to build a following for your blog you must write consistently about a particular topic. I’m violating that rule: my only goal in future posts – should that be goal posts? – is to write well consistently. But you’ll be the judge of that.

In the future, yes, I’ll write about some of the subject matter in my novel, Extra Innings, but you’ll also see a bunch of other stuff and discussions, ranging from ephemera to Efram Zimbalast Jr. (Bonus points if you’re not escaping to Wikipedia right now.) 

The posts will vary; they’ll be serious and informative, relevant and irreverent. We all need a little humor in our lives.

Perhaps most importantly, I want to receive your comments and questions after any post and will do my best to respond, if appropriate. Of course, I’d be happy to answer your questions here about Extra Innings as well. You can also reach me privately at [email protected]

How’s that? – an entire post without mentioning the word baseball once. (LOL!)

-- Cheers!

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    Author

    Bruce E. Spitzer is the author of Extra Innings, a novel about baseball legend Ted Williams returning to life through the science of cryonics.

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