Missing Baseball, Part II

Part II

There was another player, Steve Bilko, who captured our fancy not so much by his skill, which was considerable, but by his size and power.  According to Warren Corbett,  “Baseball encyclopedias list him at 6-foot-1 and 230 pounds, the greatest tonnage that baseball allowed in print in the 1950s until the mammoth Frank Howard came along. When anyone asked Bilko how much he weighed, as so many did, he’d say between 200 and 300. Years later he told writer Gaylon White that his best playing weight was 254, but he sometimes topped 270.” [3]

Bilko was up to the majors, and down, for all of his fourteen-year career.  He had three great years with the Los Angeles (PCL) Angels from 1955-57, winning the Triple Crown in 1956.  Consulting Baseball Reference, I see that he went up to the Majors with two teams in 1958.  There is no record of his playing for Portland, and I wonder why he sticks in my memory so.  It must have been his reputation, which he carried around with his magnificent belly.  When I did see him, it must have been when he went back down to the PCL with the Spokane Indians in 1959.

Whenever Bilko came up to the plate, I do remember, a murmur of anticipation rose from the crowd.  From his years with the Angels, and in the majors, everyone knew what he was capable of.  Even Beavers’ fans, rooting against his team, longed to see him get hold of one. He was a creature of mythical dimension, a Hercules of the diamond.

But alas, he was only a man, and one with adult problems, which at my age I could not understand.  My dad was a big man, too, at times close to 300 pounds, so I thought it was normal.  Only now, as I write this, can I appreciate the arduousness of Steve Bilko’s life and career, and how blessed he was to be able to hit a baseball so hard and so far.  He died early at age 49.  

Bilko with Betty White in L.A. during his heyday,

I remember a few other opposing players as well.  Most notably, Willie McCovey, who played with the Phoenix Giants in ’58 and ’59, (and the Tacoma Giants in ’60), and went on to a 22-year career in the Major Leagues and soon after into the Hall of Fame.  My dad took me to  night game once.  McCovey hit a ball so hard and so far to straight-away center—it simply disappeared over the fence and beyond the lights, and into the soft summer night.  It landed somewhere in downtown Portland.  Gee, I thought, maybe it’s going into outer space.  (This may have been the year after the Russians launched Sputnik into orbit.) [4]  I remember the soft, amazed murmur of the crowd as he casually circled the bases: (Holy Jesus…I never seen a ball clear the fence that high!) 

Of course, my dad couldn’t take me to every single home game. In 1959 (I think), he got a job as a sales rep with Rainier Beer, who sent him on the road every other week.  I started listening to Beavers’ games on the radio.  

One of the announcers was a guy named Bob Blackburn.  He was the first “voice of baseball” I remember, and a great one at that.  The Beavers job was an early stage of his career.  Not long later (it seemed like ages to me at the time), he went on to announce the nascent Seattle Supersonics, starting in 1967, two years before I moved to Seattle to go to school at the UW.) [5]

Bob Blackburn; photo from

https://www.stumptownblogger.com/2017/07/the-great-bob-blackburn.html

Somehow, through the Beavers’ affiliation with their sponsor Rainier, my dad knew Blackburn.  He introduced him to me one fine afternoon at the ballpark among the box seats.  I met Bob Blackburn!  My dad must have told him, “Yeah, he listens to all your games.”  

 It wasn’t easy to brag about to my friends at school because as far as I knew, I was the only one who listened to Beavers’ games on the radio.  “Bob Blackburn?  Who’s he?”  I remember wondering, as Blackburn socialized in the boxes that day, who was doing the radio broadcast?  My dad (or Blackburn himself) explained that it was his partner, Rollie Truitt.  

In those days, neither the team nor the sponsor could afford to send the announcers on the road with the team.  This conundrum was solved, rather early in the days of radio-baseball, by something called the re-creation broadcast.  The announcer would sit in his hometown radio studio, and receive an abbreviated play-by-play by teletype, something like, “Jones up. Strike. ground to third. out. Smith up. Ball. Strike. Strike . . .”  The broadcaster would then tell the story of the game, adding details, and when the ball was hit, foul ball or fair, strike a piece of wood with a bat.  If he had enough equipment in the studio, he or his engineer would add appropriate taped sound effects, like cheers, boos, or murmurs.  According to Bob Mason, “He wasn’t just announcing, he was re-enacting; no, more than this, he was recreating, or actually creating a new representation of the game, in a newly created dimension of reality, all the while passing it off to his audience as the traditional game itself, the old ball game.” [7]

My first year or two listening, though I could tell the away-games sounded somehow different, it was as if Bob or Rollie were at the game, calling the plays exactly as they saw them, live.  I cannot remember when my dad told me that they were “re-created.”  Even today, I’m amazed at the skill and love for the game the broadcasters had.  There was a reason why Blackburn was hired for the Supersonics job, from 110 applicants.  He was that good at what he did.  I can almost hear his voice as I type this.

Sometimes the Beavers gave away promotional knick-knacks at the games.  I remember getting a handful of decals, the kind you’d stick on your car windshield, with Beaver batter twirling his bat.  (See picture above.)  I stuck them on the fenders of my black Schwinn Tornado bike, three on the front and four on back.  

I followed Major League baseball, too, thanks mainly to that wonderful invention that came of age in the fifties—television.  Every Saturday afternoon there was the Game of the Week on CBS.  (1955-65).  The two announcers I remember best were Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese, two respected and beloved former big leaguers.  

Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese.(Getty Images).

Dean was notorious for his colorful use (some said abuse) of the English language, as in, “He slud into third.”  The equally amiable Reese has earned a place in baseball lore not only for his play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, but for his ready acceptance as a teammate and love for Jackie Robinson.  Not long afterwards, NBC started broadcasting games, and I watched when I could.

I must have started reading the sports pages of the local paper, too, the Oregonian, for news and to check on the standings.  I learned, with my dad’s help, to read box scores.