Clearing The Bases - Issue 042
July 11, 2025
Hello and welcome to Issue 042 of Clearing The Bases, an email newsletter in conjunction with the My Baseball History podcast hosted by Dan Wallach.
While there won’t be new episodes of the podcast until Season 5 starts up in October, that doesn’t mean things aren’t happening. I already have three interviews recorded for the new season, and agreements for a few more that we just need to find time to schedule. As you know, I record all of my interviews in person, and these upcoming subjects don’t live in the same city as me, so it’s going to take some coordinating. But in the meantime, there’s a lot to talk about here.
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, my mom and I took a road trip from Cleveland down to the 53rd SABR Convention in Texas. I briefly covered the first half of the trip in the LAST ISSUE of the newsletter, but we were still at SABR when that one came out, so I didn’t really write too much about the presentations or anything that was actually going on. I’ve been going to SABR events since 2018, but this was my mom’s first convention. It was a week packed full of activities, from the panels and presentations, to baseball games, to late-night hangs at the bar or at Denny’s with a bunch of the attendees.
To everyone I already knew, it was great to see you. To everyone new, it was great to meet you. To everyone who came to hang out at my vendor table and/or bought something from me, thank you. And to everyone who made my mom feel so welcome, we both appreciate you. Since I was at my table so much, I didn’t have the opportunity to attend the full session of as many presentations as I have in years past, but I’m starting to work my way through them now that they’re on the SABR website, and you can, too.
I helped to record the talks in the smaller room, and Jacob Pomrenke recorded the ones in the larger ball room. Now, whether you’re a SABR member or not, you can listen to the audio and follow along with the slideshows of every presentation from SABR 53 by CLICKING HERE. Like I said, I haven’t had a chance to get through them all yet, but a couple of the first ones I wanted to check out that have been great were Adam Darowski, Scott Simkus, and Von Spalding’s presentation “Julio, Ichiro, Miñoso, and … Carrillo? Professional Baseball’s 4,000 Hit Club,” and Mark Armour’s presentation “How Many Games Did Satchel Paige Pitch?” but there are so many others I’m excited to be able to listen to since I wasn’t able to catch them live.
Part of each SABR convention, regardless of what city it’s in, is going to a local baseball game (or two). This year, attendees had the opportunity to go to the Frisco Rough Riders minor league game against the Tulsa Drillers at Riders Field one night, and the chance to go to Globe Life Field in Arlington to watch the Texas Rangers play the Seattle Mariners the following night. My mom and I did both. Globe Life Field became the 22nd stadium where I’ve seen a Major League game, and while I was certainly impressed with the engineering and its enormity, the experience of actually watching the game left a lot to be desired for me.
The roof was closed and the air conditioning was on, which made the temperature bearable, but it also enclosed the sound and made the acoustics echoey and displeasing. There were hundreds of seats with obstructed views thanks to the gigantically wide foul poles, which (I have a sneaking suspicion) were probably only made to be so wide to accommodate the size of an advertisement for Chick-fil-A which must have been agreed to prior to erecting them. There was one insanely large video board above the right field seats, and another smaller video board above the left field seats, but both were hung so high that unless you were in the first 10-15 rows of a section, your view of them was obstructed by the overhanging section above you.
The experience and views from the lower level were much better than those on the higher levels, but you needed a specific ticket to get down there. Unfortunately, while walking around the concourse of the lower level to get to your seats, there were almost no points when you could actually see the field. It felt like you were walking through a fancy shopping mall food court, and every once in a while there would be a long hallway you could walk down to get to the field. It’s an engineering marvel, and I’m glad I was able to check it off my list, but I’m also glad it’s not my home stadium.
My mom and I saw the minor league game and the Rangers game in Texas, then made a stop at Bosse Field in Evansville, Indiana on our way back to Cleveland to see a minor league game there. Bosse Field was one of the filming locations for the movie A League Of Their Own, acting as the home field for the Racine Belles. There were also scenes filmed at League Stadium in Huntingburg, Indiana, which is also still in use, but there was no game being played there the day we were passing through, so we’ll have to make it back there another time.
Bosse Field was really cool, and you could tell it was something very special in its heyday. They’ve kept up a handful of decorative painted signs from the movie to remind people that it happened there, but if you’re going to plan a trip there thinking it’s a shrine to the movie, that’s not what it is. We were lucky enough to have been there on July 3rd, which meant there were fireworks after the game, and the largest crowd at the stadium in years, so it was a great atmosphere.
We capped off our trip with one final game back in Cleveland on July 5, which is Larry Doby Day for Cleveland fans since that is the anniversary of the date in 1947 when LARRY DOBY broke the American League color barrier and became the second Black player in the modern Major Leagues 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson became the first. It was my mom’s first time at Progressive Field, so we got there early to walk around Heritage Park to see all of the statues and plaques, including the Ray Chapman plaque which originally hung at League Park after his passing. Another game with fireworks after meant my mom was happy, albeit maybe a bit exhausted by baseball after having seen a total of 4 games at 4 different stadiums in 3 different states over the course of 10 days. I’ll talk more about the rest of the road trip in future newsletters and podcast episodes.
In case you missed it, friend of the show GRAIG KREINDLER has made his painting The Main Attraction available as a signed, numbered, time-limited edition of giclée prints this week. The edition will only be available until 7:59 AM ET on Monday, July 14th, and is limited by the number of prints sold during this one-week period, and never reprinted. The original painting is based on a Detroit News photograph of Leroy “Satchel” Paige with the Kansas City Monarchs taken on September 8, 1941. The image depicts Paige sitting in the dirt against the Briggs Stadium dugout wall, part of a number of shots taken to drum up interest for a big doubleheader in Detroit against the Chicago American Giants on the 14th. A percentage of the proceeds will benefit the estate of Satchel Paige and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. You can BUY ONE HERE.
I will also have a pretty big announcement of my own in the next newsletter, so stay tuned for that…
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Until next time, I’m Dan Wallach, and this is My Baseball History.
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