Three Highly-Paid Hamate Bones Engage In Some Serious Bummerism

Tomorrow we get to watch live baseball games again. Today though we must Google what’s a hamate bone? at least twice and wonder what they’re putting in the water down in Florida and Arizona, all the while speculating as to whether or not Francisco Lindor (Mets), Corbin Carroll (D-backs), and Jackson Holliday (Orioles) will store their newly-removed hamate bones in their respective closets, like Zack Wheeler (Phillies) and his missing rib.

It's my goal to make these posts so baseball-specific that anyone who stumbled onto my website hoping to read a short story or essay or even a book based on my time as a Marine in Iraq will be so dumbstruck that they’ll confuse me for an expert in the field and continue blacklisting me from being awarded a Big Five publishing deal.

“Blacklisted” or “not quite good enough yet.” Your call.

Anyway.

You’ll notice I changed the name of the blog only a day after its inception. Let me explain why.

In 1876, William Hulbert established the National League. In an attempt to make baseball as lame as possible, he outlawed Sunday games, beer, and gambling on the grounds. All this while charging an exorbitant 50 cents per ticket, much to the chagrin of everyone with a job that wouldn’t allow them to leave early on weekdays. Which is to say: most people.

He had a lot of support.

Baseball was drowning in scandals and cheating and drinking and everything else that makes it fun. The affluent crowd had had enough. Like any good capitalist, Hulbert swooped-in and appealed to the side with more money, quickly becoming the oligarch of baseball and ruling with a Puritanical rage that would make John Owen blush.

Something had to be done. In response, German immigrant and snappy-dresser Christopher Von der Ahe stepped-in and created the American Association: a fun-loving group of ball clubs that played on Sundays, sold beer and whiskey on the grounds, and charged only 25 cents a ticket. All this would eventually lead to baseball truly becoming America’s Pastime and not some highfalutin rich people sport like Polo or the Pentathlon.

So have a beer in Von der Ahe’s name and try to ignore all the unsavory details you’ll learn about him if you look him up after reading this, because he’s an unsung hero of the game today.

While all this was going down, Hulbert wrote a famous “Address to Players” that said the National League would not allow “drunkenness or bummerism” from any of its players and I laughed so hard at the latter that I decided to make it the name of the blog. So, there you go.

Just so you know, bummerism is a real word. I’ll let you Google it for an exact definition, right after you get done looking up hamate bone and Pentathlon.

Anyway.

Wrapping up The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence S. Ritter. I also bought Joe Posnanski’s The Baseball 100 and Edward Achorn’s The Summer of Beer and Whiskey. I’ll write a 100-word review for all three when I’m done reading them.

That’s all. Bye.