The Cheap Seats: A Note from the Editor

Abstract

The Cheap SeatsA Note from the Editor Willie Steele One of the challenges of writing the introduction for each issue is that what I write isn't going to be read for another nine months or so. Such is the struggle when a journal comes out twice a year. So I sit here now, just a few weeks removed from the Houston Astros winning the World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies, trying to anticipate what might happen in the 2023 season. But I'm having a hard time doing that when I'm still wrapping my head around the Dodgers, who led the majors with 111 wins during the regular season, losing in the National League Divisional Series 3–1 to the San Diego Padres. And then there's the fact that the National League Championship Series was played between a fifth seed (Padres) and a sixth seed (Philadelphia Phillies), the latter of which finished the regular season fourteen games back in the National League East. For all the complaining about what Major League Baseball has gotten wrong, specifically commissioner Rob Manfred, few, if any, can deny the excitement of the 2022 playoffs. Baseball somehow survived the ghost runner rule since it started in 2020, and I suspect it'll survive the bigger bases and banning the shift as well. Much has happened off the field since I last wrote an introduction to NINE. Several years longer than it should have taken, the legendary Buck O'Neil was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, giving him his long overdue place among baseball's greats. Meanwhile, a new generation of fans was introduced to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, thanks to Prime Video's new series, A League of Their Own. And baseball's past will be brought into the present after it was announced that the New Jersey Jackals of the Frontier League will play in historic Hinchliffe Stadium in 2023, bringing baseball back to the stadium that was home for the New York Black Yankees and New York Cubans of the Negro Leagues. [End Page ix] I'm often asked what my favorite part of editing this journal is. That's easy. No matter how much I read about baseball, every time I'm sent a new article for consideration, I realize just how much there is that I don't know. Often, I'm made aware of players like Tom Carroll, who, thanks to Anne Keene, I now know was both a former Yankee and an operative for the CIA. I'm also introduced to obscure teams like the Klein Chocolate Company Baseball Team, who more than held their own against major league talent. Thanks to Gerald Huesken, you'll get to know them in this issue. And thanks to writers like Steve Treder and Mark Cryan, you'll learn about the late California League (blame Rob Manfred) and the ways Major League Baseball gutted the minor league system. The intersection of baseball and popular culture is always fun to read about, and Robert Gorman's article on the game and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is another example of that very thing. Since most baseball fans were introduced to the game at a local level, Woody Eckard's piece on the Natick Nine, an 1880 club from Massachusetts, will appreciate both the local and historical connections to the game. And for those, like me, who sometimes forget that colorful language has been around far longer than we might realize, Larry Gerlach's piece on the 1898 Brush Resolution reminds us that swearing existed long before any of us were around. Finally, this issue's installment of "Loved It/ Loathed It" includes William Ryczek and Paul Hensler taking a closer look at Jim Bouton's classic (and controversial) book Ball Four. Once again, the contributors to NINE demonstrate the impossible task of categorizing baseball by one discipline. The game is personal and communal, historic and current, complex and simple. The pieces in this issue remind me of Yogi Berra's line, "Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too." Enjoy the issue...