Article:Grover Cleveland and me.

I had a very lucky childhood being raised when and where I was in the hills of Virginia and Tenn and by the greatest grandparents a boy could ever want. My family was not the richest in the area but they made a good living and because of my grandfather and fathers many friends it was fun to grow up especially when you can say that most of the oldtimers of the teens, 20's and 30's spend as much of their time with you on the family during the fishing and hunting seasons. I had my favorites, some of which included Christy Mathewson, until he died in 1930 just after Miller Huggins passed away the year before. Rodgers Hornsby, Babe, Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Mel Ott and others that I have to try and remember for later. But my best friend and the person who taught me most about baseball and life and living was the greatest right hand pitcher in history,  Grover Cleveland Alexander, he taught me to pitch and swing a bat starting in the summer of 1924 after defeating the Yankees and Ruth. I sit here writing this and the tears come to my eyes just thinking about what was said that winter after the series. A lot of things have been said about Alexander and his drinking and sometimes strange behavior, but I for one can only tell you he was one of the kindest individuals I have ever met. He started to tell stories one night on the back yard swing as we were sitting there looking up at the million stars in the sky. Sometimes he would talk to me about things that happened during the season, some games that he either won or should have won and what would be happening in dugout between players and what the other players use to say about each other even their teammates. It was late that winter that he took me out into the big barn to start to play caught. Here I was a 6 year boy playing caught with the best pitcher in baseball then. I never saw him drinking and can never ever remember him being drunk on the farm and he didn't stop coming to the farm until just before the war. What I loved about him was he made it easly to pitch. Just lay back and throw from your stomach he would say and then he would throw at a target on the wall of the barn and still to this day almost 80 years ago the target is hanging there waiting for someone to throw at it. Ever year from then on he would come up to the farm to either with my grandfather and father and me or just me and he loved to hunt in the early morning for whatever he saw. I was an sniper and navy frogman during the second world war and during vietnam I was part of UDT/SpecialOps divisions, but listening to Grover talk about fishing and hunting were always the highlights of my winters and early spring. As he got older the hunting stop and the fishing became almost the only activity he did on the farm aside from just hanging around with my father and grandfather and I.

I don't know if you could call him a story teller or not it was something that almost all of the players did. Rodgers Hornsby was a great hunter and fisherman and a class number one story teller. If the two of them got together at night by the bon fire in back I wouldn't get to bed until the wee hours of the morning and sometimes not even then. I asked him and Grover what they both thought of a lot of the players, sometimes they would just say that they are really good players and then sometimes they could talk for hours about what to do iin different situations. It wasn't until many years later that Grover told me that they had played together on the St. Louis team and were good friends. One end of season huge party, I got Grover to talk about Babe and Gehrig and Cobb and it was one of the greatest story nights of my then young life. Not everyone hated Cobb, but even his teammates didn't like him and Rodgers use to say it didn't make any difference to Cobb if you liked hiim or not. Use said that with the exception of Shoeless Joe, another player that always was around me, Cobb was one of the best hitters he ever had seen. I always got the impression that he really didn't like Cobb at all and Grover use to say he loved pitchiing to him because it was one of his biggest challenges. Alexander feared one man and that rubbed off on me for years because I have always taken what they all gave me to the end degree. I got to learn to hit with Rodgers Hornsby and Shoeless Joe Jackson as my hitting coaches and learned to throw the ball with Grover Cleveland Alexander. I always laugh when I think about that because Ruth use to say  "Son, you are either born to hit or not. There is nothing in between." The Babe was great to just be around, I can't even relate what it was like with him in a room. He was funny, sometimes a real jerk, did things that weren't proper and at times seem like he didn't care but that was so far from the truth that it isn't even funny. His greatest dream besides standing at the plate hitting was becoming a major league manager and no story about him since has been able to really get that across. The Babe was the Babe. He was bigger than life and in a small way really bigger than the game. Today we have no one in any sport that is even near what power the Babe had and everyone around him. He pissed off alot of owners, his own in particular, and lots of the people running baseball at the time didn't want to have to deal with him in any way. My father made a comment that Grover completely agreed with that baseball cut him out as soon as he got old and didn't have any valve to them. And that was when my father stopped going to any major league game for years. He hated Landis as much as all the players and even some owners and it would take years for my dad to final go back to baseball games in personal. His last game was in 1936 and the next one wasn't until after the Korean War when Ted Williams came over to fish with us did he finally agree to go back to a baseball game in July of 1954. The Boston Red Sox and Ted against the New York Yankees in Fenway. I was at sea in the Pacific and I didn't get to go but my mother wrote me what had happened and later that day I called Williams at his Boston home to thank him because I knew my father missed going to the games.

Oh crap, I did it against got off the subject. So back to Grover and Rodgers and all the things I learned from them. Rodgers always use to tell me to wait on the ball and just remember to keep my eye on the ball and watch the pitchers hands and where he places his foot on the mound. Inside or outside on the mounds sometimes gives away where he wanted to put the ball. In my day in college, UCLA, baseball was just fun and there really wasn't a lot of interest in playing or watching unless you had friends on the team. Grover always told me that pitchers will give away their intentions with movements with their feet and sometimes shoulders and hands depending on who was on the mound. He loved to watch Lefty Grove pitch and later on Bob Feller. Until the year he died in 1950 I tried to always keep in touch with him by mail or phone and I remember he never had anything bad to say about anyone in regards to baseball. What I learned from him and Rodgers and Joe when with me even today. I know I can't do what I did even last year but I have raised a lot of children the oldest now almost 60 years old and they all learned from me what I learned from some of the greatest baseball players to walk on the field. My son, didn't play major league ball, but he could have if he hadn't followed me into the military and 6 or 7 of my grandsons also had the talent but none had the desire to do what players like the Babe and Ted did but that's ok by me I am proud of all my children from my oldest to my youngest 4 months old and god willing in 3 or 4 years I will be teaching him how to throw and hit a baseball.