Philip Spiess

Well!  You never can tell what topic will turnip on this Forum!  First we have Crosley Field, with its specked 'taters and common 'taters, and now we have Collett's 'taters.  What's next?  Hoarse radishes?

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

My newphew, who is a high school teacher in Arizona, posted this. I think he was serious! 

Paul Simons

 Steve your entry and also certain entries from Jerry and the logo on those paddles Ann has shown us have moved me to comment. From where you are in Norway near the rapidly melting Arctic ice to the burning forests of California and Brazil to the overflowing refugee camps of Bangladesh and Greece to the separating glaciers of Antarctica to the good old USA something is wrong. We put men on the moon and put Windows or Mac on every desktop on earth and an iPhone or an Android in every hand more or less and we are the location of the world’s largest number of Covid deaths and the location of total polarization on the backbone of all human progress - science. 

Those are the facts. As far as opinions go, there's an election in about two weeks. Everyone will get to express their opinions then unless they are so impacted by voting restrictions that they cannot cast a ballot.

Second your entry moves me to comment on potatoes. They are not trendy like certain leafy greens or sushi. Not spiritually endowed like brown rice. Not Cincinnati like the items that appear here - Skyline Chili, White Castles, La Rosa’s pizza, Burger Beer. However potatoes mean a steady relationship. Nobody brings home a sack of potatoes if they’re thinking about cheating, breaking up, divorce. Potatoes mean continuity. They just sit there until needed. Simple and uncomplicated, a complement to everything, but requiring heat. Cooking them warms the room and the hearts of those in it..

Now back to those paddles. Using them on kids is now illegal - a crime - in some places. Including Ohio. However Ann's nephew might be able to use his paddles, corporal punishment of children by teachers is still legal in Arizona although most local school boards have banned it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/us/corporal-punishment-school-tennessee.html

Philip Spiess

Ann, I'm sure he was serious.  Not the paddles, Ann, but the sentiments on them, brought back heartfelt memories.  As I've noted before, I taught over thirty-five years in graduate school programs, and that was intellectually fulfilling (maybe occaionally even stimulating), but it was the eight years I taught in Midde School that was heartwarming and cheering, and made me feel that I was doing some good in the world.  The kids were exciting, excited, and really (almost all of them) wanting to learn.  And, of course, I learned a lot from them.

We've read a lot very recently on this Forum about (a butt?) the use of paddles of punishment in our years at Walnut Hills, Mr. Bailey being prominent in this regard.  I was in his Homeroom in (I think it must have been) 8th grade, and his paddles had holes drilled through them to decrease wind resistance as they moved through the air.  I was never a recipient, but I did hear the solid smacks as the Board of Education was applied to the Seat of Knowledge (as the saying went in those days) of some of my fellow classmates (oh, just turn the other cheek!).  Said classmates in my Homeroom reciprocated (albeit only when substitute teachers were present) with the "Grand Moose," originated, I believe, by David M. Schneider -- which consisted of a general and uniform loud heavy "grunting," performed by all when the clock ticked off at a given time, say, 8:27 a.m.  Fun was had by all (except, perhaps, by Mr. Fish, who was really an intellectual and excellent teacher).  Nowadays paddling, of course, is verboten (at least in the North) -- but you can't hug students either, a practice which Middle School students sought out from their friends -- but also their teachers -- in the early years of the 21st century when they were feeling low.

And now to potatoes, which, in every culture, certainly have a peel.  The potato is a permanent staple in the Spiess household, served up a gazillion different ways, depending on our mood.  My wife Kathy, for example, loves her potato slices cooked up in her favorite New England Fish (Cod) Chowder, which luckily I can cook to her satisfaction.  I myself like to indulge in making potato pancakes or my Grandmother's recipe for German Hot Potato Salad, replete with bacon and a heated vinegar sauce (which we used to take to old Coney Island on picnics).  My son Philip loves to make and eat Canadian-style Poutine (a melange of warm French fried potatoes topped with fresh cheese curds and smothered in gravy), which he thinks is part of his mother's ancestral Canadian heritage (she never had it until he introduced it to her; he got it from following ice hockey teams apparently).  Then there are garlic-cheese mashed potatoes; baked potatoes stuffed with butter, sour cream, and chives; hashed brown potatoes with onions; and the German dish Himmel und Erde -- mashed turnips, mashed potatoes, and mashed seasoned apples, all mixed together -- I could go on, but, well, you get the idea! 

Jon Singer

I can confirm Bruce's memory of Crosley days.  We did indeed attend Knothole Day with reduced pricing as long as you had a Knothole card.  I made every game until a Reds employee confiscated my card.  I was the one in his top deck section who rose and sailed the lid from the rather large purchased lemonade.  He got me, but that is unlike my paper airplane flung from the third tier of Music Hall(North Avondale Elementary field trip).  No one knew the origin of that GE engine which made it all the way to the stage.  That memory lead me to construct a poem several years back which I could resurrect in our forum if anyone in the audience requests.  I'll be here all week.

We are talking of the day when a dollar was a dollar, suitable for purchasing 100 Dubble Bubbles.  However, the Sun or Moon Deck seats were normally $.50 . We could safely take a bus down the parkway and walk the rest of the way or if you had 3 others with you, I believe a cab to the ball park was $.25 a head.

Big Klu was a gentle man outside of the game.  Mr. Mayerson somehow knew Klu and Klu spent a few hours at one of Freddie's birthday parties.  He made a muscle stance and let two of us at the same time do chin ups on those arms.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

I posted the paddles only to add to the conversation, and to add bit of humor, not to make a political statement. I can assure everyone that my nephew, and his wife, my middle niece, Melinda, both M. Ed. teachers in the Tolleson Union High School District (a Phoenix suburb) don't use paddles. They BOTH are in special education. He posted the picture to Facebook to get a reaction from his friends and fellow teachers.  So far, the picture doesn't have any "Likes". 

Even though it may be legal in Arizona, no one will be paddling any students for a while. At the present time, teachers in his district will continue to teach remotely. They had planned to return to the classroom on October 6, but due to the Covid19 positivity rate, the date was pushed further to December. 

Paul Simons

The substitute teacher Mr. Fish's name came up a few posts back. I felt bad for him one time, he covered the whole blackboard with math and arrived at the wrong answer - I guess the right one was in the back of the book. He was embarrassed and confused. There was snickering from the class. I knew damn well that it was wrong to go along with mocking Mr. Fish - the "cool" thing to do - and I think I might have kept my mouth shut since I wasn't one of the "cool" kids anyway. A high-school class is a mob. Mobs generally act worse than individuals. Obviously a class at WHHS was nothing like say a group of 30 ISIS members or American white supremacists or a bunch of brownshirts at a beer garden in Munich in 1933. I hope Mr. Fish didn't feel too bad that day.

Philip Spiess

As a Middle School teacher for eight years, I can say that the teacher who "goofs up" in front of his or her class always feels bad and horrified -- no one likes to appear stupid in front of one's students -- but, having substituted in Middle School for one year before I started teaching there, I can say the feeling of horror when one makes a mistake is doubled, because you know the students think you're a loser to begin with (not that I made any mistakes, you understand; I'm just speculating).

Teaching college is different:  having taught undergraduates for several years and graduate students for thirty years, I can say that the typical college professor can always maintain an attitude of superiority to the students (and usually does, whether male or female); if he or she commits a real faux pas (French for "whopper") in class, one always can cover with a superior retort to the challenging student:  "Well, you can always look it up yourself, sir!" (or "ma'am!").

To close, I'll just mention an incident from my graduate days at the University of Delaware.  I was taking a two-semester class in "Colonial American History," a subject which was of minor interest to me (being a Victorian), but which I felt I ought to know.  The professor, well-established at that school and in that department, was nevertheless nervous as he lectured that day, because he was a devoted smoker and the University had just banned smoking in the classrooms, so he was at loose ends.  He paced up and down on the platform as he lectured (he was a good lecturer, by the way, rarely looking at his notes), and you could tell he was just itching for a cigarette.  All of the other graduate students were busy looking down at the notes they were taking in their notebooks -- except me.  I took only mental notes, as that was the only kind I could use on an exam -- so I was staring at the professor as he lectured.  Gradually he realized that I was staring at him and he stopped pacing and started staring back at me.  Then at one point he erroneously referred to the then Duke of York as "the future King Charles II."  He was looking at me as he said it, and I immediately shook my head emphatically "No!"  He looked startled, but promptly corrected himself, saying, "That is, the future King James II."  I do not know what his private thoughts were at the time, but later, at a History Department party, both of us under the cover of heavy drink, he sang, in company with a graduate student (and in French), the "Finale" to Gounod's opera Faust, while I accompanied them, by ear, on the piano.  (Go figure!)

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Time for humor! Laugh!

https://youtu.be//ltjBT_TuUVA

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

You're preaching to the choir Judy! My dog Chief and I, as well as my Facebook avatar all share the same message!! 

Jerry Ochs

On the subject of the Cincinnati Redlegs, when I was young I believed the team was composed of "local boys" who worked at the slaughterhouses and breweries.  Was the home team in most cities back then really composed of local talent or did the professionals jump from team to team as often as they do now?

In La Liga, Spain's pro soccer league, Athletic Bilbao has traditionally fielded only players from Basque Country.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Ann, just LOVE your mask! Did you make it yourself?

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Judy thank you. My stepdaughter Elizabeth made masks for everyone in the family. She knew my preference. 

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

I'm waiting for a mask to come in the mail from the WHHS Alumni Foundation.

Jerry Ochs

The correct way to wear a mask.

Philip Spiess

I suppose we have to keep hounding people to wear their masks.

(Don't forget to wear your mask on Hallowe'en!)

Doug Gordon

I have to add my memories of Crosley Field, which started when my dad took me to my first-ever game on Opening Day when I was in maybe 1st or 2nd grade. It was really exciting since I got a note to get out of class early and meet him in front of the school. We parked on the street downtown and my dad gave a quarter to a local kid who offered to "watch our car" (urban protection racket?). The Reds played the Phillies with Robin Roberts on the mound. They lost that game, but that memory has been brought back every time I enter a major league ballpark and get that first sight of the green, green grass as I come out of the chaotic concourse and approach the seats. Tiger Stadium here in Detroit was of a similar vintage and style, and I miss it for the same reasons; Comerica Park is awful by comparison.

Jon, thanks for making me feel guilty again about the way we often treated Mr. Fish. Even in those days, I sometimes felt bad about it and realized that he had a really tough job to do. At least he tried to actually teach us something even as things got more and more out of control.

And Judy, my brother told me that he's recently been in contact with your brother again. I think Dave's the only once that Colin's kept in touch with over all these years.

Chuck Cole

I wonder if any in any other major league cities students were excused from classes if they had a ticket to the opening game.  I always liked the fact that the first game of the season (for every team) was always played in Cincinnati, in homage to the country's firsst professonal baseball team, the Cincinnati Redlegs.  

Phillip Spiess--does you historical purview extend the Cincinnati Redlegs, later Reds, of the 19th century?

Paul Youngs

I remember vividly all the Reds games I would listen to on the radio. Even today I don't watch much baseball on TV but love listening to the Phillies on the radio while in the car. Ray Jablonsky, Roy McMillan, Johnny Temple, Gus Bell, Andy Seminick, Smokey Burgess, Ed Bailey, Jim Greengrass, Glen Gorbous, Wally Post, and the BIg Klu. I can still remember the day my father told me that he was traded to the White Sox- I was convinced initially that my father was joking. Broke my heart!

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Hi Doug.

Yes, my brother David speaks sometimes about Collin. They were pretty close friends, and he's always very happy to reconnect. Unlike me, my brother sometimes goes back to Ye Olde Countrye to class reunions and comes back all charged up and full of stories.

I don't think I'll be able to leave Israel in 2021 to come back to a reunion if we have one, unless there's a vaccine tested on elderlies....

Gail, what's the latest about 2021? Zoom zoom zoom?

David Buchholz

And speaking of Crosley Field...in 1965 I watched Jim Maloney pitch a no-hitter through nine innings, then lose 1-0 to the Mets on a rookie's home-run in the tenth.  The next day I climbed aboard a TWA flight to San Francisco and was puzzled to see that the plane was full of young men, each holding a drink, chatting, and taking up most of the coach seats.  As we prepared for take-off a man sat down next to me in the middle seat.  I looked at him and asked, "Are you Warren Spahn?"  "Yes," he answered.  "And all the Mets are on the plane?"  I asked.  "Yes," he answered.  "Can I have your autograph?"  I asked, then looked around for paper, a pen, or anything that he could possibly write on.  Frustrated, I found the only paper in front of my seat, and Warren Spahn autorgraphed my vomit bag.  I remembered that Casey Stengel managed the team at that time.  "Is Casey here?" I asked.  "Yes," Spahn answered.  "He's in first class."  Undaunted, I climbed out of my seat, walked through the curtain, found Stengel, turned the vomit bag over, and asked for his autograph, too.

I offered the bag to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  They loved the story but didn't want the bag.  It's on a wall in my office.  Every once in a while I turn it over and change names.

Philip Spiess

Chuck Cole:  Okay, this one came out of left field, but it can be done (but I'll have to brush up on it a bit first).  The team was originally the Cincinnati Red Stockings, 1869, first professional team and first to have night games (and, I believe, first to have air-conditioned dugouts).  The head of the Cincinnati Waterworks, "Boss" Cox's right-hand man, Gary Herrmann, was (I think) the founder of the National League.  As I recall from my last visit a number of years ago to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York (where I lived for several years in the early 1970s), there was a break in the Red Stockings' being a Cincinnati team (towards the end of the 1880s-early 1890s?) -- and, to my astonishment (again, if I recall -- but I'll check this out), there was some connection between the old Cincinnati team and what became the Boston Red Sox.  Some remains of Crosley Field are in Kentucky down what used to be the Dixie Highway.

(And by the way, Dave, the pop-culture statue of Casey Stengel in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution here in Washington, is, to my eye and mind, the most charming portrait in the entire Gallery.)

David Buchholz

And one more from Crosley Field...Scorebook for a game played 84 years ago...

Stephen Collett

Damn,  You baseball guys are incredible. I am gassed by the flip-flop fun of the current World Series. I last watched it with Davie Schneider in his kitchen so late at night that I wanted to give it up, but then we got to talking and by the time we looked again it had completely changed. Which Series was that, David? One of our last reunions. No, not last of course, I meant recent.

Philip Spiess

Histories of baseball and other sports are long and complicated, filled with wins and losses, names of team members, statistics, franchise buyouts and trades, and many other things.  In order to respond to Chuck Cole’s request on the history of the Cincinnati Reds, I am going to dodge most of those things, letting those interested in the arcana of team sports report on those.  But as a lagniappe, or perhaps an appetizer, to my main reporting on the Cincinnati Reds baseball team in the 19th century, I offer the following (in order to buy me a little time to draw together the basics of the historical information requested):

NOTES ON CROSLEY FIELD:  A Time Line

1869:  Union Cricket Grounds (on the site where Cincinnati Union Terminal now stands), at the western end of Lincoln Park, served as the first ballpark for the Cincinnati Red Stockings, America’s first professional baseball team.  (The team's name was shortened to the Cincinnati Reds in 1890.)

1875-1879:  The reorganized baseball team of the Cincinnati Red Stockings played its home games at a ballpark known as Avenue Grounds (also known as Brighton Park and Cincinnati Baseball Park).  Atlases of the period show this park to have been located two short blocks west of Spring Grove Avenue at Alabama Avenue, between the rairoad tracks and the Mill Creek (on a north-south line, between the old Cincinnati Stockyards and the Cincinnati Workhouse).  The park had a grandstand that could seat up to 3,000 people, and was distinguished in baseball history for two events:  (1) it held the first major league Ladies' Day in 1876, and (2) it was the park where the first home run ever was hit in professional baseball.  The park was used through the mid-1890s for various sports, even after the Red Stockings had left in 1879.

1882-1883:  The Bank Street Grounds ballpark, located northwest of the intersection of Bank Street and McLean Avenue (the "foot of Bank Street"), was home to the yet-again reorganized (1882) Cincinnati Red Stockings of the American Association (the current Reds franchise, which moved to the National League in 1890) from 1882 to 1883.  When the new Union Association ball club, the "Cincinnati Unions" (better known as the "Cincinnati Outlaw Reds") team took over the Bank Street Grounds in 1884, the Red Stockings team moved to "Findlay and Western" (see below).  (The Bank Street Grounds was also the home park of the short-lived "Cincinnati Stars" team -- 1880 only -- of the National League.)

                                      *                    *.                   *.                   *.                   *

1884-1901:  “Findlay and Western,” the intersection of Findlay Street (on the south) and Western Avenue (on a northwest angle) in western downtown Cincinnati, east of the Mill Creek and the major railway lines, was the location of three different baseball parks for the Cincinnati Reds from 1884 to 1970.  The first baseball park was League Park.  Mathias “Matty” Schwab served as groundskeeper at the park (and then at Crosley Field) from 1894 until 1963 [!]; thus the park was sometimes called “Schwab’s Field.”  
1902-1911:  The second baseball park at “Findlay and Western” was the Palace of the Fans.
1911-1912:  Between the 1911 and the 1912 seasons, the entire seating area of the Palace of the Fans and the remaining seating from the original League Park were demolished.  
1912-1933:  The third baseball park, Redland Field, featured a new stadium, the third steel-and-concrete stadium built in the National League (Chicago's Wrigley Field and Boston's Fenway Park remain in use today).  Built by Cincinnati architect Harry Hake, Sr., for $225,000, the grandstand was double-decked with single deck pavilions extending outward and bleachers in right field (later known as the “Sun Deck”).  Because the angled covered areas had a distinctive V-shape, the park was nicknamed “The Old Boomerang.”
1934-1970:  Cincinnati businessman Powell Crosley, Jr., buys the struggling (because of many years of being a mediocre team, attendance was usually low) Cincinnati Reds in 1934; the ballpark is renamed Crosley Field in honor of the man who rescued the team.  (Crosley also advertises his Crosley radios and automobiles on the outfield fences.)  Crosley Field was considered among the smallest of the major league baseball parks:  in 1912, its capacity was 25,000 seats; at its peak, it had just above 30,000 seats.
1935:  Because it had long been plagued by low attendance, the Reds convince major league baseball owners to allow night baseball at Crosley Field.  Thus by May 24, 1935, 632 individual lamps on eight stanchions had been installed, the Reds played the Philadelphia Phillies, and President Franklin Roosevelt lit up Crosley Field by pressing a button at the White House.
1936-1937:  Crosley Field, in addition to the Reds, serves as the home of the Negro League’s Cincinnati Tigers baseball team.
1937:  Crosley Field is flooded by the Ohio River flood of 1937, the worst flood in the recorded history of the Ohio River; the field is under twenty feet of water.  The original 1937 Cincinnati Bengals football team plays home games at Crosley Field.
1938:  The Reds host Cincinnati’s first All-Star Game on July 6, 1938 (they hosted a second one in 1953).
1939:  Roofed upper decks are added to the left and right wing pavilions [see above], giving the ballpark the appearance it would have for the rest of its existence.
1940s-1950s:  Events at Crosley Field include:  a political rally for presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie; a Roy Rogers rodeo (the “King of the Cowboys” was born in Cincinnati as Leonard F. Slye); and an Ice Capades show [!].
1961:  Powell Crosley, Jr., dies; Bill DeWitt purchases the Cincinnati Reds.
1966:  The Beatles perform at Crosley Field, August 21, 1966, on their final tour.
1970:  Crosley Field closes on June 24, 1970, as the Cincinnati Reds move to Riverfront Stadium.  Cincinnati mayor Eugene Ruehlmann symbolically takes up home plate at Crosley Field and flies it by helicopter to Riverfront Stadium, installing it in the artificial turf.  (Crosley Field’s small size, lack of adequate parking in the neighborhood, the rise of crime in the area, and planning for a national football franchise in Cincinnati to possibly share a stadium with baseball all contribute to its closing.)  
1972:  Crosley Field, having been bought by the city and used as an auto impound lot, is demolished on April 19, 1972.
1974-1984:  Larry Luebbers builds a replica of Crosley Field on his farm in Union, Kentucky, with memorabilia he had collected from Crosley Field during its demolition.  It includes seats, signage, the ticket booth, and advertising on the fences.  He opened it for the Cincinnati Suds professional softball team (which he owned), but eventually he had to sell off the whole farm to settle his finances.
1988:  Marvin Thomson, then city manager of Blue Ash, Ohio, makes one of the ballfields of the city’s new community sports complex a re-creation of Crosley Field, using collected memorabilia from old Crosley Field (donated by fans), including 400 original seats.  The field is used by various teams at various levels of play, but it is home field of Moeller High School’s varsity baseball team.

[Key books on the Cincinnati Reds and Crosley Field are:  Lee Allen:  The Cincinnati Reds (New York:  G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1948); and Greg Rhodes and John Erardi:  Cincinnati’s Crosley Field:  The Illustrated History of a Classic Ballpark (n.p.p.:  Road West Publishing, 1995).]