Read Online Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? by Jimmy Breslin - Free Book Online Page B

obviously designed to harpoon money away from Joan Payson. She was coming in with millions, and everybody thought it would be smart to grab some of it. Here was a lady coming into baseball for sport. More important, she was coming to stay. She would be an important addition to the game. So what do they do? Why, rob her.
    The excuse offered is, of course, the fact that in this country you’ve got to make it on your own. We don’t have socialism, so in business, expect help from nobody.
    â€œThe league held meetings on the matter, and this was the plan which was voted on,” Warren Giles, an insufferable book man who is National League president, said one day.
    â€œYou and all your people ought to feel proud,” he was told.
    He looked askance. In the lordly sport of baseball one is not supposed to say that owners could be shady or that league presidents or commissioners, such as Ford Frick, are gray-haired jellyfish. But if you have been around other sports, this is the only way you can think. Take, for openers, the afternoon in the living room of the late Bert Bell’s summer home at Margate Beach, New Jersey, when Bert was talking about the shape of his National Football League.
    â€œI think we have Philadelphia, so it is going to be all right now,” he said. “The problem is Green Bay. Hell, they haven’t won a thing in so long it’s pathetic. Their management is in a mess out there. I got to do something about it. Am I going to interfere in their business? You’re damn right I am. Look, this is sports. It’s a business of people. We’re dead without people. So do you think I’m going to let people sit in the stands and year after year have to watch a bad team like Green Bay? We’ll lose those people if we do that. No, I don’t believe in letting things take their course. I do something about it.”
    Then he dragged on a cigarette the doctor said he wasn’t supposed to have. “And I know just what to do with Green Bay.” He smiled. “The Giants got a guy working for them. He’s just what Green Bay needs.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œLombardi.”
    He took Vincent Lombardi and shipped him to Green Bay, and the first year the Packers were at .500. The next season they just did lose the championship game. Since then they have been called the greatest football team ever assembled. Bert Bell died before he could see it happen. He dropped dead in the stands at Franklin Field in Philadelphia in 1960. But I remember enough about the guy to tell you what he would have done if anybody ever brought a Joan Payson around to him. Bert would have had the lady walking on a red carpet the likes of which even the Whitneys don’t often see. The guy, unlike baseball people, had brains.
    Finally, with all the business, good and bad, out of the way, here was February 24, at Miller Huggins Field, St. Petersburg, Florida, and here were the New York Mets standing in their locker room—no spikes on because of the new carpet, Stengel decreed—and they listen as their manager made his first speech of the season.
    Out on the field, Joan Payson strolled. She held a parasol to protect her from the sun, and she was happy because Gil Hodges was on the team. As the dowager walked, Stengel’s pep talk echoed through the dressing room.
    â€œWe got rich owners,” he yelled. “They got plenty of money. If anybody does any good around here, I’ll see to it that we get money off the owners. There’s a lot of money around here. You got to go and get it.”
    Thus started the greatest season in the history of baseball.
    The Mets never even got their signals straight for her. Back from Greece on July 5, she made plans to go to the Polo Grounds the next day. There was, on the newsstands this day, a disturbing column by Dick Young.
    The Mets, too many of them, have grown accustomed to losing,” he wrote. “They have given sickening