Cieradkowski - The league of outsider baseball : an illustrated history of baseballs forgotten heroes

Touchstone

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New York, NY 10020

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Copyright 2015 by Gary Joseph Cieradkowski

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Touchstone hardcover edition May 2015

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Interior design by Gary Joseph Cieradkowski

Jacket design and illustration by Gary Joseph Cieradkowski

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4767-7523-4

ISBN 978-1-4767-7525-8 (ebook)

Within these pages you will find a league of ballplayers stocked with some of the most interesting men and women to have played the game of baseball.

The idea behind The Outsider Baseball League starts with my dad. When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, I was a Mets fan; it was predestined that I wind up that way. My fathers father was a die-hard Brooklyn Dodgers fan and having a Cieradkowski root for the Yankees was out of the question. So all I had was the Mets. This was the 1970snot the giddy, pennant-winning Mets of the early 1970s, but the stinky, bottom-of-the-barrel Metropolitans of the late 1970s. Because my team was so awful, talking about them just wound up turning into angry complaining sessions. Because of a lack of quality Mets topics to discuss, talks with my dad often turned into me asking the Old Man about baseball when he was my age, kindling my interest in baseball history.

When I went away to art school, my dad and I enjoyed a long-distance friendship that revolved around the game of baseball. Just as we had tossed a ball back and forth many years before, as adults we tossed bits of baseball trivia at each other. This eventually evolved into a spirited trivia showdown that had no winners, losers, or end, just pure fun.

No matter where my career as a graphic artist took meBaltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Boulder, Hollywoodthree or five times a week would find my dad and me on the phone trading stories of obscure baseball players. And not just famous players, we liked the ones who played outsider baseballa phrase coined by baseball historian Scott Simkus to describe the game played beyond the parameters of organized ballNegro Leagues, town teams, foreign leagues, the low minors, and so onthe stuff you rarely hear or read about. For many years it was great fun learning from and teaching my dad about players we found.

And then, just like that, he was gone.

A brain aneurysm took him from me just before the start of the 2009 World Series. Besides losing my dad, I lost my baseball pal. For the first time since I was a kid, I had no one to discuss baseball history with. It was my way of dealing with that loss that began the journey leading to the book you now hold in your hands.

In the winter of 2009 I drew a small baseball cardstyle illustration of Negro Leagues great Leon Day and posted it on a blog I had started. I wasnt then and am still not a tech-savvy blogger; it was just myself alone, missing my dad, looking for an outlet.

As an artist, I have always drawn ballplayers, but not until then did I seriously start illustrating them with any purpose. I had no goal in mind, only to continue the conversations I used to have with my dad about interesting and forgotten ballplayers.

Within weeks my blog had attracted hundreds of visitors through word of mouth. To my surprise, many others interested in the same obscure corners of baseball had been looking for exactly what I was trying to do. Before long I was receiving a constant flow of fan letters giving me encouragement and suggesting their own favorite obscure players. Within a month of starting my blog I had found a semblance of what I once shared with my dad, only it was with hundreds of strangers Id never met!

When I first started, I wanted to create a style that would be visually striking yet fairly easy for me to execute. I chose to avoid the 2 1/2-inch by 3 1/2-inch trading card size that has become standard since the 1950s. Instead, I wanted to pay homage to the beautiful old tobacco cards that were manufactured at the turn of the century. These narrow pieces of cardboard had always fascinated me since I first laid eyes on them as a kid, and to me they represented a mythical time when the game and the world seemed to be a whole lot simpler. As an artist, I always enjoyed the cards that used illustrations rather than photographs because they seemed more creative; instead of simply documenting what a player looked like, as in a photo, an illustration seemed to portray what you wanted a player to look like. That is exactly what I wanted my drawings to be.

Instead of simply copying an existing photograph, I decided to put to use all the knowledge I had accumulated over the years regarding a players batting stance or pitching motion. This makes my illustrations one-of-a-kind original poses, which is especially important when it comes to some of the more obscure players of whom few photographs were taken. How many times do you see the same pose of Satchel Paige? The League of Outsider Baseball portrays these forgotten players as they should be, rendered with the same care and respect as would befit Ted Williams or Babe Ruth.

The main reason for this books existence is fun. I wanted to share that great joy the game of baseball and its history have given my father and me over the years. Today its easy to get distracted by the petty controversies, salary disputes, and silly correctness that sometimes take precedence over the game itself. Writing these stories and drawing the illustrations make me remember what the game was all about for me and my dad.

When you read this book I hope, at least for a little while, you can get that feeling again of what its like to throw the ball around with your dad, recall once more the sounds and smells of your first time at a ballpark and that feeling of zipping down a country road with the windows open, listening to the broadcast of a faraway baseball game.

But for now, the batting cage is being wheeled away and the players are beginning to take the field. The League of Outsider Baseball is about to start.

Everyone starts somewhere.

Since the earliest days of organized baseball there has been a hierarchy of leagues, organized by their level of talent, all leading up to the major leagues. Today there is a very rigid and regulated system and each big league club has an allotted number of teams at each level that they can have control over.