i was pleased to read quentin's invitation to the chesapeake tournament in maryland, and just as pleased to see rob's note that one of the better fields in the tournament is named after shirley povich. (it's also, i discovered, the home field for the georgetown hoyas.)

i'm guessing that not a lot of ballplayers today know about povich, so, to help players through cold winters when they can still read his writings on line, a quick introduction:

for one thing, shirley was a man. i don't know where his name comes from; his parents were eastern european immigrants and very likely it was an americanized name. it didn't hurt him as a sportswriter. the thin, short fellow with a rapid mind and quick fingers that flew across an old typewriter he lugged around for years wrote for the washington post for 75 years, mostly about baseball,. he interviewed players from ty cobb and babe ruth (with whom he was a golfing buddy) to ted williams, cal ripken and tony gwynn. he died in 1998 at 92. one of his sons is maury povich, the tv talk show host.

for the extended force of a full sports column, i enjoyed red smith's writing more but shirley could write nonpareil ledes ( journalism lingo for the beginning of story) and he had some marvelous descriptions of ballplayers. so if you have time on a cold, snowy january day, google shirley's (and for that matter, red's) writings. they'll warm things for you.

here are three samples:

ON BABE RUTH: (2/5/95)

"Five score years ago, the wife of a fat Baltimore saloon keeper brought forth upon this earth the infant man-child born to captivate our nation with each swish of his baseball bat. Tomorrow, his birth will have occurred exactly one century ago.

He was baptized George Herman Ruth, his full name that would later disappear as if annulled. From early manhood he would be known as Babe, the big man who electrified America by breaking the records, by bashing a home run every eighth time at bat (for accuracy make that 8.5) and by swatting pitches for distances never known before.

All this with his 54-ounce bat, the biggest carried by any major league player, yet manipulated like a toy in his hands.

When there was a question whether his latter-day challengers, the likes of Jimmie Foxx and Lou Gehrig and Hank Greenberg, were hitting the ball as far as Ruth, I put the matter to the great pitcher, Walter Johnson.

I accepted Johnson's answer as conclusive, for he said: "Let me put it this way. Those balls Ruth hit got smaller quicker than anybody else's."

ON LOU GEHRIG'S FAREWELL AT YANKEE STADIUM (7/4/39):

"I saw strong men weep this afternoon, expressionless umpires swallow hard, and emotion pump the hearts and glaze the eyes of 61,000 baseball fans in Yankee Stadium. Yes, and hard-boiled news photographers clicked their shutters with fingers that trembled a bit."


ON DON LARSEN'S PERFECT GAME (10/8/56):

"The million-to-one shot came in. Hell froze over. A month of Sundays hit the calendar. Don Larsen today pitched a no-hit, no-run, no-man-reach-first game in a World Series."

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p.s. some may wonder about povich's reference to ruth's 54-ounce bat. he is said to have started with that, a piece of hickory, but by 1927, when he hit 60 homers, the big fella was "down" to a 40-ounce piece of lumber.

i found the following online, written by a physics professor, and apparent baseball fan, daniel a. russell. di maggio's bat weight surprised me. and the essay made me wonder if we could use victrola needles today - and if they'd work?

"Baseball's "king of swat" Babe Ruth reportedly began his hitting career using a 54-ounce (1.5 kg) hickory bat, and is known to have used a 40oz bat in 1927 when he hit his 60 home runs.[1] Ty Cobb and Joe Di Maggio both played with 42oz bats and Rogers Hornsby used a 50oz piece of lumber. George Sisler, playing for the St. Louis Browns in the 1920's, made his bat heavier by hammering Victrola needles into the barrel of his bat.[2] In the 1950's Cincinnati Reds' Ted Kluszeski hammered tenpenny nails into his bat to make it heavier. Other great hitters including Ted Williams, Rod Carew and Stan Musial used much lighter bats: 31-33oz.[1] Roger Maris used a 33oz bat to hit his 61 home runs in 1961."