"Fame" for Lee Arthur Smith, the big country kid

     To begin -- and paraphrasing John Denver's great song -- thank God for this country boy.
     Do not have a personal connection to Lee Arthur Smith, except one face-to-face interview in 1975 and one phone interview in 1987. Have not talked to him otherwise.
     But we are so proud of and so happy for the big country boy from Castor, Louisiana -- or next-door Jamestown, if you want to extend his home territory.

     Lee Smith's election to the Baseball Hall of Fame, many believe, is long overdue. If they had let me have the only vote, it would have happened years ago.
     But as of Sunday, it is reality, and we had two immediate reactions:
     (1) Love it. He is one of our favorites, he "belongs" to North Louisiana.
     (2) Wonder what Jerome Holtzman would have thought today?
     (Many baseball fans, and almost every baseball writer, know the name Jerome Holtzman. There is a personal story here, centered on Lee Smith. Read on.)
     The tall and then-lanky baseball and basketball star from Castor High School I interviewed for a Sunday sports story in The Shreveport Times (April 20, 1975) grew into an imposing, thick hard-throwing right-handed pitcher -- one of the top relievers/closers in baseball history.
     The Times and Shreveport Journal were always his home-area newspapers, even after he left for fame in Chicago, Boston, St. Louis and other major-league stops. 
     And the personal connection: That part of Bienville Parish is familiar to us. My wife, Beatrice, grew up in Jamestown -- where Lee was born and, in young adulthood, resided in a huge new home.
     Little did I know when I made the visit to Castor in 1975 how connected to that area I soon would be, how many visits to Jamestown were headed. Nor did we know where Lee Smith was headed.
     In The Times story in 1975, a "pullout" quote from Lee read: "I like playing basketball ... more than baseball. But if I get a good enough offer in baseball, I'll sign."      
     Seven weeks after the story ran, Lee Arthur was picked in the second round of the Major League Baseball draft by the Chicago Cubs, the 28th pick overall. The Cubs scout who recommended him -- and soon signed him -- was a baseball legend, Buck O'Neil.
     But he did not give up basketball. The next couple of times I saw him was when he was a member of the Northwestern State University basketball team playing against Centenary (he played some as a reserve 6-foot-5 forward) in the 1976-77 season.
     Saw him again in 1978 and '79 when he came to SPAR Stadium in Shreveport as a pitcher (a starting pitcher, incidentally) for the visiting Midland Cubs (Texas League).
     By 1980, his sixth pro season, Lee made it to the majors.
     For 18 consecutive seasons (16 full seasons), he pitched in the big leagues. So that was 1,022 regular-season games -- only six starts (five in 1982, none thereafter) -- and four postseason games (two with the Cubs in 1984, two with the Red Sox in 1988).
     When he retired -- at age 40 in 1998, after 12 minor-league games -- he was the alltime leader in MLB saves (478). 
      He since has been surpassed, by Mariano Rivera (652) and Trevor Hoffman (601). But, gosh, that's pretty nice company.
      Which is why members of the "Today's Game" Hall of Fame committee selected Lee for the Hall (along with White Sox/Orioles designated hitter Harold Baines, a "marginal" choice in our view).    
      And what's fitting is that next July 21 in Cooperstown, Lee Arthur Smith will be inducted into Baseball's Hall of Fame on the same day as Mariano.
     Although he wound up pitching for eight major-league teams, it is with the Cubs that Lee is most associated. So we borrow from the bleedcubbieblue.com web site: 
     "Lee Smith was a dominant Cubs closer from 1980 until he was traded away after the 1987 season, including three 30-save seasons and being the closer on the Cubs' 1984 
National League East championship team."
     Which bring us to the Jerome Holtzman part of this story.
---
     One December day in 1987, for about five minutes, it was me vs. Jerome Holtzman debating the merits of relief pitcher Lee Arthur Smith.
     He was one of America's greatest sportswriters, baseball writers. Me? A nobody from Shreveport covering major-league baseball winter meetings [for The Times] at the Dallas Anatole.
     It was the only MLB winter meetings I ever covered; Mr. Holtzman probably covered more than 50, and everything important in the sport for that long.
     It was the day Lee Smith was traded from the Chicago Cubs to the Boston Red Sox. Mr. Holtzman was delighted; I was aghast at his delight.
     We were both in the room when the trade was announced. Dammit, I didn't like his reaction, and he came to realize that. As if it mattered, or he cared one little bit.  
     Please don't disparage the big kid from Castor.
     Jerome Holtzman, for five-plus decades, covered the Cubs and White Sox, usually for a half-season each, and here -- from Wikipedia -- is how highly regarded he was:
     "His influence and viewpoints made him something of a legend among newspapermen. Southern humorist Lewis Grizzard, who was sports editor of the [Chicago] Sun-Times for part of Holtzman's career, called him 'the dean of American baseball writers,' and went on to say, 'He never smiled, but he had the keys to Cooperstown. No major leaguer ever got into the Hall of Fame if Holtzman didn't want him there. He had tremendous sources. He was writing about the possibility of a baseball players union and a baseball players strike long before anyone else.' "
     OK, but by December 1987, Mr. Holtzman was not at all a Lee Smith fan. And I was.
      Holtzman never forgave Lee for a large failure in the 1984 National League Championship Series and, what's more, a difficult 1987 season.
      In the 1984 NL Championship Series, the Cubs -- with a 2-1 games lead in the best-of-five series, and one victory from breaking the 1945 curse -- lost Game 4 to San Diego  when Lee gave up a walkoff home run to Steve Garvey. The Padres then won Game 5 and went to the World Series.  
     From bleedcubbieblue.com again:     
     Smith had a rough year in his final year with the Cubs in 1987, with 12 blown saves and at times was booed off the mound. At the end of that season, it was felt that the Cubs needed to move on from him and he was traded to the Red Sox for Al Nipper and Calvin Schiraldi, one of the worst deals in recent Cubs history. Smith would go on to post six more 30-save seasons and three of more than 40, although he pitched in just one more postseason ..." 
     Mr. Holtzman's negative views on Lee, as I remember it, had to do with Lee's blown saves, ballooning weight and sore knees -- items referenced in my column from the '87 winter meetings.
     But when new Cubs director of baseball operations Jim Frey was asked about that, he praised Lee, even after he had traded him (at Lee's request, incidentally).
     "Wait, I've been one of his biggest defenders when some others in Chicago weren't," Frey is quoted in my column. "He almost never refuses the ball, he gets up and throws every day, he can work several days in a row, he's reliable, and he's not an old man. This guy is a horse, and he's been a horse.
     "We know we're giving up one of the premier stoppers. ..."
     My column includes numerous quotes from Lee. I do not remember this, but obviously I talked to him by phone that day. He made it clear that he was ready for a change of scenery from Chicago, and he was upbeat -- as he always was.        
---
      Here is an irony to Jerome Holtzman's view of Lee Smith then: One of Holtzman's greatest contributions to baseball is that he was the creator of the save statistic. He came up with that in 1959, and it was adopted as an official statistic beginning in the 1969 season, the first official new stats category since the RBI (run batted in) in 1920.
     So, maybe Lee Smith owes Mr. Holtzman thanks, no matter what the man thought in 1987.
     And when he retired from newspapers in 1999, Mr. Holtzman was named official history of Major League Baseball, a position he held until his death (stroke) in mid-July 2008.
     But, gosh, I wish he had been easier on Lee that December day in 1987.
---
      After Lee's playing career, he was a minor-league pitching instructor for a long while, including the San Francisco Giants' chain, which put him in Shreveport to work with the Captains during the 1990s.
      So the accompanying photo was taken at Fair Grounds Field. 
       It was fitting because Shreveport was the "big city" for the country boy from Castor (and Jamestown).  
       And now we can say that we were fans of this Baseball Hall of Famer for decades.
---
       Posted this on Facebook today, repeating it here ...
       Many, many stories written about Lee Smith over the years. This is the best story -- July 1987, Shreveport Journal, by Teddy Allen and John James Marshall, a first-place national award-winning story, a great read.
      http://www.designatedwriters.com/classic/lee-arthur-smith/?fbclid=IwAR0AyNyoevMRfex29ojdGrgi5Isys0duqi4ssv0NgIeGklZSZlbm9Ur6Lk8
---

 

Holy Cow, Harry! Cubs are in the World Series!

No one has ever seen a sign like this before ...

       "Write about the Cubs," a friend suggested in a text message late Saturday night. "Wonderful young team."
     The Cubs? C'mon. They never win. Always the Lovable Losers.
     If you know anything about baseball, if you care, you know it ain't so no more. What a great story the 2016 Chicago Cubs are.
     As we begin this Sunday morning, they are headed for the World Series. If you love baseball -- and I love it as much as anything in athletics -- you know how great this is for the game.
     Two Sundays from now, the Cubs might be World Series champions. If not them, then the Cleveland Indians will be. Again, a great story.
     Let's hear it for Ernie Banks ("Mr. Cub) and Ron Santo. Wish they  were still here to see this. They showed Billy Williams watching Saturday night's National League pennant clincher at Wrigley Field; what a magnificent Cubs player he was.
      Somewhere Ferguson Jenkins must be happy. Ryne Sandberg, too (he was at the ballpark last week). And in heaven (or otherwise), Harry Caray is yelling "Holy Cow!" Jack Brickhouse is saying, "Hey, hey." The longtime Cubs' owners -- Mr. Wrigley, Phil or Bill -- would've liked chewing  on this. 


... Or one like this.

     I am happy today for Mark Finley, Roy Lang III, John Dittrich, Dave Olson and even Cubs fan-turned-Rangers fan Keeli Pointer Garza -- my friends, all those long-suffering Cubbies fans.
     Thinking of the media friends with Chicago ties -- Jeff Rude, Joel Bierig and Phil Rogers, who have written about the Cubs (and White Sox) and tried to remain impartial publicly (but privately probably suffered with them, too).
     You are in the World Series. Your dreams have come true.
     If you know baseball, you know this hasn't happened since 1945, so unless you're older than me, not in our lifetime.
     And the Cubs haven't won the World Series since 1908 -- 108 years. Likely not in anyone's lifetime now that they can remember.
     When you consider that the Cleveland Indians haven't won a World Series since 1948 -- when I was 1 -- there's the other half of the great story. 
     For Cleveland, at least there were three American League championships since then (1954, 1995, 1997), followed by heartbreak in the Series.
     But the Cubs have been Team Heartbreak. Most years since 1945, they were terrible. And when they did come close to winning a division or a National League title -- 1969, 1984, 1989 and 2003 -- fate always dealt them a cruel ending.
     (My favorite Cubs player was Lee Smith, the large relief pitcher from Castor, La. -- he lives in Jamestown, my wife's hometown -- who was the Cubs closer for the first eight years of his MLB career. But even Lee was part of the 1984 heartbreak, giving up a crucial playoff home run.)  
       Only the Boston Red Sox were in the Cubs' league for Heartbreak. But we know -- and some of us try to forget -- that the Red Sox ended their "curse" in 2004, then to rub it in, won the World Series again in 2007 and 2013.
       The Red Sox and Cubs, of course, have this in common -- the oldest, most quaint (and, in my opinion, outdated) ballparks in Major League Baseball. OK, I'll give in: There is such charm about Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. 
       Any real baseball fan has to have made a pilgrimage to those places. Mine came in August 1975. 
       Getting to Wrigley isn't all that easy; it's stuck in the middle of an old North Chicago neighborhood -- "Wrigleyville" where finding parking is as big a challenge as, say, the Cubs winning the World Series.
       Best way to go is to ride the "L" (or is it "el) -- the train that stops right behind the right-field bleachers at Wrigley. We did that one day.
       We saw a Cubs-Cardinals single game, then a doubleheader the next day. Doesn't get much better in baseball rivalries (except maybe Yankees-Red Sox, Dodgers-Giants). St. Louis always has lots of fans at Wrigley, and most years the much better team.
       But not now. These Cubs have been built through crafty scouting, drafting and player development, some big-money free-agent signings (well, it's all big money; this is bigger money), and successful trades.
       It's a team with spectacular young talent, and enough seasoned, accomplished veterans for balance, and a daring, upbeat, new-school type baseball manager in Joe Maddon, who keeps it fun for players, fans and the media.
       This is a Cubs team that could be extremely competitive -- champions, perhaps -- for the near future.
       Even Yankees fans like me are a bit jealous of this young talent and this success. We do know what it takes and how it feels to win the World Series ... often.
       This season's mediocre Yankees, at least, can be credited with aiding both the Cubs and Indians, giving up their top relief pitchers in trade-deadline moves (Aroldis Chapman to the Cubs, Andrew Miller to the Indians). Good luck, guys.
       The Indians, too, have a good young team and deserved the AL championship. Most years they'd be the feel-good story.
       But this year, the Cubs are the sentimental favorites. They won 103 regular-season games -- eight more than any other MLB team -- and seven more in the playoffs ... with four to go.
       It was fun to see Roy Lang III -- The Shreveport Times' sports editor and traveling man in search of good stories and events, and the main Cubs' cheerleader on my Facebook news feed -- count down the number of outs they needed to clinch the pennant Saturday night. I have done a lot of those countdowns for my team.
       Part of Wrigley's charm in 1975, and from 1914 when it opened, was that it did not have lights. Only ballpark in the majors without them; the Cubs were the only team to play all its home games in the day. That changed -- for the better, I guess, in August 1988.
        Wrigley looked beautiful in the overhead TV shots Saturday night, and it was packed, and rocking.
         Roy Lang, of course, was there for this one. He's taken up residence there at Wrigley this October, between stops in Shreveport. Good for him.
        Good for the lovable Cubs and their fans. Wave that white flag with the blue "W" proudly. Soon you might have a World Series championship banner to go with it. The one from 1908 is a bit worn.