Crowds Gather Each Week In Wisconsin To Watch Their Teams Play Ball — In Snowshoes
Huge crowds turn up each week to watch a game of baseball on a woodchip field, where the players wear snowshoes.
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Mackenzie Martin/WXPR
Most snowshoes in the United States are probably in storage right now, gathering dust and waiting for temperatures to drop. In the town of Lake Tomahawk in the Northwoods of Wisconsin though, they’re getting a lot of use this summer.
Snowshoe baseball is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a game of baseball played on snowshoes, though it more closely resembles a bizarre game of softball.
Every Monday night in the summer—and on the 4th of July—hundreds of tourists and residents gather to cheer on players who strap on snowshoes and hit a large softball around a field of wood chips. This has been going on since 1961, when then town chairman Ray Sloan came up with the idea to turn the game into a spectator sport capable of entertaining both summer tourists and town residents. An earlier version of the game was played on frozen lakes. Hence, the snowshoes.
Admission is free, but slices of homemade pie cost $2. The pie is a big deal here, too. On any given night you can find 40 different flavors.
Sheila Punches says that “they come for the pie and stay for the game.” She’s been coming to games since the 1970s and she says pie is one way she measures its popularity.
“There was a time when 30 pies was enough,” she says. “Then it was 40, 50, 60, 70 … 100 pies is not too many pies to have. I think somebody said they had 160 pies last week for the 4th of July.”
Pie flavors range from the traditional — Raspberry Rhubarb or Apple — to the more unique: Banana Split, Margarita, and even Sawdust, featuring graham crackers and coconut flakes.
The game starts with a rendition of the national anthem by the local barbershop chorus. Then local commentators Adam Lau and Jimmy Soyck lead the way.
In a recent game, someone takes a swing, misses the ball, and switches bats.
“Oh, it’s the bat,” says Soyck into his microphone.
“It’s always the bat’s fault,” agrees Lau.
Then when the player does hit the ball, he trips right after leaving home plate. The crowd audibly cheers, then sighs.
This hilarious scene is all too common, especially for newer players. Soyck says you can’t run in snowshoes. It’s all in the shuffle.
“You gotta shuffle your feet. You can’t pick them up,” he says. “If you pick them up, you’re going over. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”
The game carries on this way until about the 7th inning, when one lucky batter gets a disguised cantaloupe thrown to him instead of a ball. When the batter makes contact, he immediately scatters the baseball field with pieces of melon.
“When that thing hits, it splatters everywhere,” says Jeff Smith, who coaches the Snow Hawks, the home team. “It’s painted to look pretty much like those balls out there, and the batter isn’t supposed to know until he hits it.”
It’s easy to laugh at the idea of people playing softball on snowshoes in the middle of the summer, but fan Phil Hejtmanek says there are a lot of talented players here.
“The funny thing is these guys are really good,” he says. “You figure ‘oh, the outfielders aren’t going to be able to make any plays,’ but just you wait.”
When you drive into the town of just more than 1,000 residents, a sign reads: “Welcome to Lake Tomahawk: Home of Snowshoe Baseball.” The game is a part of this town’s history, with generations of families coming together each summer to watch the games.
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Coach Jeff Smith says that it takes a lot of work from local volunteers to make each game run smoothly, but that he doesn’t expect the game to ever fade out.
“There’s too much passion amongst the townspeople around Snowshoe Baseball,” he says. “People get pretty serious about their home team winning and playing and they just want to be a part of it.”
Ultimately, this game is a part of this town’s fabric. Residents like Macey Macintyre grew up watching it.
“The whole town comes together just to watch this and you know it’s the whole town because you see everyone week in and week out,” she says. “It makes our town unique and it makes me just love my town and the people in it a lot more.”
So if you’re in Wisconsin’s Northwoods on a Monday night this summer and looking for some entertainment and good company, snowshoe baseball will be happening in Lake Tomahawk. The season ends in late August.
Novak Djokovic Defeats Roger Federer in Record-Breaking Wimbledon Match
Novak Djokovic celebrates after defeating Roger Federer in the men’s singles final match of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London.
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In a stunning nearly five-hour match that broke records and tested new rules, Novak Djokovic defeated Roger Federer in the Wimbledon men’s championship on Sunday, defending his 2018 title.
Clocking in at four hours and 57 minutes, the match was the longest men’s singles final in Wimbledon history, and had it not been for a new rule that requires a tie-breaker if both players score 12-12 in the final set, it could have gone even longer.
Djokovic won the first set, a bad sign for Federer, as his opponent is 63-1 in majors when taking the first set.
The pair went back and forth, Djokovic taking the first set, Federer the second, Djokovic the third, and Federer the fourth. After the 12-12 fifth set, Djokovic took the unprecedented tie-breaker 7-3.
The 32-year-old Serbian won back-to-back titles in 2014 and 2015. Now, he’s repeated the achievement, defending his 2018 title to win his fifth Wimbledon championship. Federer, his Swiss opponent, boasts eight Wimbledon championships and would have been the oldest player to take a Grand Slam title had he not been defeated.
Djokovic commended his opponent, saying “I think that if this is not the most exciting final then it’s definitely in the top two or three of my career against one of the greatest players of all time, Roger, who I respect.”
Federer holds the record for most Wimbledon finals appearances, at 12.
“You take it on your chin, you move on,” Federer told the Telegraph. “You try to forget, try to take the good things out of this match. There’s just tons of it. Similar to ’08 maybe, I will look back at it and think, ‘Well, it’s not that bad after all.'”
Since his first Wimbledon victory against Rafael Nadal in 2011, Djokovic has established a signature tradition of eating grass from the court after each win. This year, he didn’t disappoint, crouching to pluck a bit of the turf into his mouth and grinning at the crowd as he savored his title.
Wimbledon Update
In the men’s final at Wimbledon, Roger Federer is up against defending champion Novak Djokovic.
For Bethany Hamilton, Surfing Is ‘An Escape From All The Chaos On Land’
“Sometimes I just want to hide in my island home back in Hawaii and keep things simple,” says surfer Bethany Hamilton. But she believes her story can be an example of “inspiration and hope” for young people.
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When Bethany Hamilton was 13 years old she lost her arm to a shark while surfing in Hawaii. That event catapulted her into the public spotlight, from talk shows to a Hollywood movie based on her life.
Not only did Hamilton return to the water, but she went on to ride some of the world’s biggest waves. Her story is told in the new documentary Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable.
“I’ve always been drawn to pushing myself into bigger waves …” Hamilton says. “You’re just kind of hanging on for dear life — but also tackling it with all you’ve got.”
Interview Highlights
On what keeps her surfing
Ultimately I’m driven by my passion and love for riding waves. You know, so many people are like, “Why would you get back into the ocean with sharks?” and I’m like, “Well, I just have more fear of losing this love that I have for riding waves.”
It’s like my form of art and creativity and it’s a place … I’m completely immersed in what I’m doing and there’s nothing kind of holding me back or distracting me I’m just enjoying this beautiful ride. …
I realized, too, it’s a place of healing for me. … It’s my place of escape from all the chaos on land. … I can go and be refreshed and come back to my kids and be like, “Hey kids, like, let’s build a Lego tower now.”
Hamilton found out she was pregnant mid-way through filming Unstoppable. She continued to compete while nursing her infant son.
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On pulling her name out of the running after she was nominated for a 2016 ESPY in the “Best Female Athlete with a Disability” category
So, yeah, my thinking was: I really didn’t feel excited to receive the award. I never, like, view myself as disabled. I don’t have a handicap parking space [placard] in my car, and I think that if I viewed myself that way I wouldn’t be where I am today. If only the category had been just “Best Adaptive Athlete” I would have been happy to receive it. I have so much respect for all the people in that category, and who have received that award, but I just– to me, the word “disabled” does not match my life, and who I am, and what I’ve accomplished and the way I go about every single day.
On becoming a mom
After I married my husband we were like, “Well, let’s give it five years … and then we’ll talk about having a family.” … [When] I found out I was pregnant, I just did not feel ready for that, but I knew that, like, God’s plan was better than my own.
On getting back into shape after childbirth
I didn’t know what to expect. … It was even harder than I thought it would be. I tried to give myself grace and patience but, yeah, motherhood is no joke. It challenges you in every aspect — mentally, physically — and you’re just spread in every direction kind of thin. But it’s also the most enriching, joyful, beautiful and empowering experience.
On the World Surf League committing to paying equal prize money to male and female athletes
It’s a beautiful step in the right direction. Women are at the forefront of surfing right now … and I’m super applauding the World Surf League. … It’s exciting to be a part of such an awesome sport that is leading that forefront.
Denise Guerra produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.
Simona Halep Defeats Serena Williams To Win Her First Wimbledon Title
Serena Williams is dejected after losing a point during the women’s singles final match against Romania’s Simona Halep at Wimbledon on July 13, 2019.
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Serena Williams went into the Wimbledon finals on Saturday hoping to secure her 24th Grand Slam singles title — an accomplishment that would have equaled the record set by Margaret Court in the 1970s.
But after losses in two sets — 6-2, 6-2 — she fell to 27 year old Simona Halep, who with the victory became the first Romanian player to win a singles title at Wimbledon.
The win marked Halep’s second major singles title — she previously won the the French Open in 2018.
From the beginning, Halep dominated the match against Williams, controlling the court with her speed, coverage and aggressive ground strokes. When Williams failed to return the final rally that clinched the match, Halep sank to her knees and raised her racket high above her head, closing her eyes and grinning in triumph.
After the match ended, Halep was asked if she’d ever played better.
“Never,” she said. “It was the best match.”
But Halep had kind words for Williams as well.
“Serena has inspired us, so thank you for that,” she said.
Saturday’s match was Williams’ 11th Wimbledon singles final. She’s won the tournament seven times already, most recently in 2016 against Angelique Kerber.
The match was also the third Grand Slam loss in a row for Williams, who hasn’t won a Grand Slam title since the Australian Open in 2017, which she played while pregnant. She lost to Kerber in last year’s Wimbledon final and to Naomi Osaka at the U.S. Open in September.
At 37, Williams is the oldest Grand Slam women’s singles finalist to compete since the start of the Open Era in 1968. But she has struggled to attain her 24th Grand Slam singles title since the birth of her daughter, Olympia, in 2017.
Her daughter’s birth “would have been a perfect moment to walk away, but I wanted more,” she said in an interview last year.
After the match, Williams said playing against Halep made her feel like a “deer in the headlights.”
“When a player plays like that, you just have to take your hat off,” she said.
But Williams said this is far from her last tournament. “I’ve just got to keep fighting, keep trying,” she said. “I love playing the sport.”
Remembering Ball Player Jim Bouton And ‘Ball Four’
Jim Bouton, the baseball player who spilled the dirt on the Major Leagues with his celebrated memoir, Ball Four, died this week at the age of 80.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
I’m 30 years old, and I have these dreams is how Jim Bouton opened his 1970 book “Ball Four,” which a lot of young fans read under the covers by flashlight, laughing instead of sleeping and learning colorful new language. I dream my knuckleball is jumping around like a ping pong ball in the wind, Jim wrote. When the game is over, take a big bow on the mound in Yankee Stadium with 60,000 people cheering wildly, which I think is much like the dream of a lot of young fans.
“Ball Four” became a bestseller, a controversy and ultimately a classic. A lot of baseball people didn’t like Jim Bouton’s diary of daily life playing for the new and now defunct Seattle Pilots, the minor league Vancouver Mounties and then the Houston Astros. They felt he violated the code of the locker room by telling stories about ballplayers pulling pranks, swearing, carousing and joking. But readers, not just baseball fans, found he made the game lively, profane and engaging.
I got to know Jim a little interviewing him and in occasional phone calls. His own family was blessed by adoption, and he encouraged our family. He signed “Ball Four” for our daughters, writing don’t tell your daddy where you learned some bad words. He had a huge sentimental love for baseball in all its ironies, rituals, artistry and even tedium.
A lot of it is foolishness, he wrote – grown men being serious about a boy’s game. He goes on to say, I admit that sometimes I’m troubled by the way I make my living, but I don’t think there’s anything so great about selling real estate or life insurance or mutual funds or a lot of other things that people do with their lives.
When Jim Bouton died this week at the age of 80, I thought of the graceful final words of “Ball Four.” You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball. And in the end, it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.
(SOUNDBITE OF EMANCIPATOR’S “VISION QUEST”)
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Has Your Doctor Talked To You About Climate Change?
Dr. Mary Rice walks with Michael Howard at a Beth Israel Deaconess HealthCare clinic in Chealsea, Mass, as they test his oxygen levels with the addition of oxygen from a portable tank. He has COPD, a progressive lung disease that can be exacerbated by heat and humidity.
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When Michael Howard arrives for a checkup with his lung specialist, he’s worried about how his body will cope with the heat and humidity of a Boston summer.
“I lived in Florida for 14 years and I moved back because the humidity was just too much,” Howard tells pulmonologist Mary Rice, as he settles into an exam room chair at a Beth Israel Deaconess HealthCare clinic.
Howard, who is 57, has COPD, a progressive lung disease that can be exacerbated by heat and humidity. Even inside a comfortable, climate-controlled room, his oxygen levels worry Rice. Howard reluctantly agrees to try using portable oxygen. He’s resigned to wearing the clear plastic tubes looped over his ears and inserted in his nostrils. He assures Rice he has an air conditioner and will stay inside on really hot days. The doctor and patient agree that Howard should take his walks in the evenings to be sure that he gets enough exercise without overheating.
Then Howard turns to Rice with a question she didn’t encounter in medical school: “Can I ask you: Last summer, why was it so hot?”
Rice, who studies air pollution, is ready.
Rice, who studies the health effects of air pollution, talks with Howard about his increased breathing problems and their possible link to the heat waves, increased pollen and longer allergy seasons associated with climate change.
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Jesse Costa/WBUR
“The overall trend of the hotter summers that we’re seeing [is] due to climate change,” Rice says, “and with the overall upward trend, we’ve got the consequences of climate change.”
For Rice, connecting those consequences — heat waves, more pollen, longer allergy seasons — to her patients’ health is becoming routine. She is among a very small but growing number of doctors and nurses who discuss those connections with patients.
In June, the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and American Heart Association were among 70 medical and public health groups that issued a call to action asking the U.S. government, business and leaders to recognize climate change as a health emergency.
“The health, safety and wellbeing of millions of people in the U.S. have already been harmed by human-caused climate change, and health risks in the future are dire without urgent action to fight climate change,” the coalition statement said.
The World Health Organization calls climate change “the greatest health challenge of the 21st century,” and a dozen U.S. medical societies urge action to limit global warming.
Some societies provide patient handouts that explain related health risks. But none have guidelines that explain how providers should talk to patients about climate change. There is no concrete list of “dos” — as in wear a seat belt, use sunscreen, and get exercise — or “don’ts” — as in don’t smoke, don’t drink too much and don’t text while driving.
Climate change is different, says Rice, because an individual patient can’t prevent it. So Rice focuses on steps her patients can take to cope with the consequences of heatwaves, more potent pollen and a longer allergy season.
That’s Mary Heafy’s main complaint. The 64-year-old has asthma that is worse during the allergy season. During her appointment with Rice, Heafy wants to discuss whether she’s on the right medications. But she also wants to know why her eyes and nose are running and her chest is tight for longer periods every year.
“It feels like once [the allergy season] starts in the springtime, it doesn’t end until there’s a killing frost,” Heafy tells Rice, with some exasperation.
Rice checks Mary Heafy’s breathing during a checkup for her asthma at the Beth Israel Deaconess clinic. Climate change does seem to be extending the Boston region’s ragweed season, Rice tells Heafy.
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“Yes,” Rice nods, “because of global warming, the plants are flowering earlier in the spring. After hot summers, the trees are releasing more pollen the following season. And the ragweed — it’s extending longer into the fall.”
So Heafy may need stronger medicines and more air filters, her doctor says, and may spend more days wearing a mask — although the effort of breathing through a mask is hard on her lungs as well.
As she and the doctor finalize a prescription plan, Heafy observes that “physicians talk about things like smoking, but I don’t know that every physician talks about the environmental impact.”
There are many reasons few do. Besides the lack of guidelines, doctors say they don’t have time during a 15- to 20-minute visit to approach something as complicated as climate change.
And the topic can be controversial: While a recent Pew Research Center poll found that 59% of Americans think climate change affects their local community “a great deal or some,” only 31% say it affects them personally, and views vary widely by political party.
We contacted energy-industry trade groups to ask what role — if any — medical providers should have in the climate change conversation, but neither the American Petroleum Institute nor the American Fuel and Petroleum Manufacturers returned calls or email requests for comment.
Some doctors worry about challenging a patient’s beliefs on the sometimes-fraught topic, according to Dr. Nitin Damle, the past president of the American College of Physicians.
“It’s a difficult conversation to have,” says Damle, who practices internal medicine in Wakefield, R. I. . “Many people still think it’s something they’re not going to be affected by, but it’s really not true.”
Damle says he “takes the temperature” of patients, with some general questions about the environment or the weather, before deciding if he’ll suggest that climate change is affecting their health.
Gaurab Basu, a primary care physician at Cambridge Health Alliance, says he’s ready if patients want to talk about climate change, but he doesn’t bring it up. Basu says he must make sure patients feel safe in the exam room. Raising a controversial political issue might erode that feeling. When patients do ask about climate change, it can be “a difficult conversation,” he says.
“I have to be honest about the science and the threat that is there, and it is quite alarming,” Basu says.
So alarming that Basu says he often refers patients to counseling. Psychiatrists concerned about the effects of climate change on mental health say there are no standards of care in their profession yet. They suggest a response must be tailored for each patient, but some common responses are emerging.
“We Are Hungry for Information”
One environmental group isn’t waiting for doctors and nurses to figure how to talk to patients about climate change.
“We’re trying to create a demand for these conversations to get started,” says Molly Rauch, the public health policy director with Moms Clean Air Force, a project of the Environmental Defense Fund.
Rauch urges the group’s more than one million members to ask doctors and nurses for guidance. For example: When should parents keep children indoors because the outdoor air is too dirty?
“This isn’t too scary for us to hear about,” Rauch says. “We are hungry for information about this, we want to know.”
But Rauch says it doesn’t seem like climate change is breaking into the medical community as a health issue. One study found classes about environmental health or global warming at only 20 out of 140 U.S. medical schools.
A few nursing schools are adding climate-related courses to their training, to prepare students for conversations with patients.
“Nurses need to catch up quickly,” says Patrice Nicholas, director of the Center for Climate Change, Climate Justice and Health at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston.
Nicholas attributes the delay, in part, to politics. “Climate change really needs to be reframed as a public health issue,” Nicholas says.
The few doctors and nurses who have started discussing climate change with their patients say they’ve not had much pushback, but that may be because bringing climate change into the exam room is still very new.
This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with WBUR and Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Overhauling Kidney Care
This week, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at improving the care of kidney patients. Nephrologist Amaka Eneanya talks with Scott Simon about some of the new initiatives.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Americans with kidney disease got some encouraging news when President Trump signed an executive order aimed at improving their care.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Those who suffer from kidney disease experience a significant toll on their daily lives.
SIMON: The administration wants to improve detection and diagnosis, increase the number of kidney transplants and move patients away from commercial dialysis centers by encouraging more in-home dialysis. Medicare now spends about $114 billion on kidney care every year, about a third of that on people who need regular dialysis or a transplant.
Dr. Amaka Eneanya is a nephrologist with Penn Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She treats patients with chronic kidney disease. Thanks very much for being with us.
AMAKA ENEANYA: Thank you for having me on, Scott.
SIMON: The scope of kidney illness in this country is enormous, isn’t it?
ENEANYA: That’s correct. So approximately 37 million adults have chronic kidney disease in United States. And the majority of those adults are unaware of their diagnosis, upwards of 90%.
SIMON: One of the proposals, and certainly one that a lot of people noticed, is encouraging patients to have dialysis at home…
ENEANYA: That’s correct.
SIMON: …Which I gather is common in some countries around the world, but not the United States. Why not so far?
ENEANYA: So there’s a few reasons for that. So one, the training for clinicians who actually do provide care for patients with kidney disease is not very robust for home dialysis. Also, the payment incentives, as they are now, really favor doing dialysis in in-center dialysis facilities. Also, education for patients is still evolving for them to learn about home dialysis.
SIMON: How do you do home dialysis?
ENEANYA: Basically, what your kidneys do is to, on a regular, you know, 24/7 basis, clean the body of fluid and waste. And that’s basically what your urine is. And so when you’re doing home dialysis, you have machines that are actually doing this for you. So you’re connecting to this machine, and it’s removing fluid and waste from the body, just as your kidneys would do.
SIMON: And this works overseas?
ENEANYA: This works incredibly well. Countries – Guatemala, Mexico, Hong Kong have the majority of their patients using some type of home dialysis.
SIMON: I noticed some medical sources this week, in response to the president’s plan, said, look; what we have is working now. Why endanger that?
ENEANYA: The question is who is it working for? If it’s working for the patients and we have a resounding response from them that that’s what the case is, then by all means, we should reconsider and look at things very closely. But that’s not what research has shown, and that’s not what my experience has been, and many others, in terms of caring for these patients. It’s quite a burden to do things the way that they have been doing, which is most of the patients going to dialysis or receiving their dialysis in a facility.
SIMON: The administration wants to double the number of kidneys available for transplant. How do you do that?
ENEANYA: Part of what he was describing was incentivizing donors – paying them for lost wages and child care that they may have to use after doing a surgery. I think a lot of the time, there’s a focus on the recipient because they have this chronic disease, and they’re getting a fresh, new kidney, and great for them. But I recently had an experience where I spoke to a altruistic donor, so a person who just decided to donate a kidney out of the goodness of their heart. And she really remarked, you know, tearfully, how difficult the post-operative period was and how she really wasn’t prepared for how long she would be…
SIMON: Yeah.
ENEANYA: …Out of work and, you know, how difficult that was. And so I think actually educating donors and providing these incentives will really make a difference.
SIMON: Do you think the executive order signed this week is going to – has the hope of improving life for kidney patients in a couple of years?
ENEANYA: Absolutely. This was a phenomenal kind of monumental time for the field of nephrology and for patients with kidney disease. If the goal is to have 80% of patients with end-stage kidney disease to be on a home dialysis modality or to receive a transplant, that’s a really big change. And so we know that quality of life will be – will improve. Patients will have kind of more choices in terms of what is best for them. It’s really an exciting time.
SIMON: Dr. Amaka Eneanya, a nephrologist with Penn Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Thanks so much for being with us.
ENEANYA: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Saturday Sports: Wimbledon, NBA Off-Season
Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic renew a great rivalry at Wimbledon, and NBA free agency madness.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
No matter what else is happening in the world, it’s time for sports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIMON: A new name on top at Wimbledon and lots of new jerseys on a lot of NBA free agents. NPR’s Tom Goldman joins us.
Good morning, Tom.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Good morning, Scott. And welcome back.
SIMON: Thank you very much. Good to be back. And a new champion – women’s champion – at Wimbledon, Simona Halep, a great young player from Romania.
GOLDMAN: Wow, 6-2, 6-2 she beat American Serena Williams in less than an hour. And she keeps Williams from tying Margaret Court’s all-time Grand Slam singles title record of 24. You know, Scott, there’d been a lot of talk about whether Serena would be nervous again on the brink of history. She lost two Grand Slam finals last year, and nerves did play a part. But let’s be clear. This was not about Serena being nervous or making a ton of unforced errors. This was all about Simona Halep’s dominance in her first ever Wimbledon final. She won with her speed and her court coverage and aggressive ground strokes. And afterwards, she was asked if she’d ever played better, and she said never.
SIMON: Well, (laughter) I have to take her word for it.
GOLDMAN: There it is.
SIMON: Let me – I understand men are playing, too – the same old names over and over again for 20 years. God bless them.
GOLDMAN: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic again and again and again. And tomorrow’s final, Novak Djokovic against Roger Federer, along with Nadal, who Federer beat in the semifinals – those big three players, all in their 30s, Federer pushing 40 – they continue to have this iron grip on their sport. Including tomorrow, they will have won the last 11 Grand Slam singles title. And as a mid-20s year, Scott, it’s been more like the past 15. But it’s just unprecedented, I think, in all of sport.
SIMON: Yeah.
GOLDMAN: You know, the normal narrative youth comes along and replenishes, but that hasn’t happened yet in men’s tennis.
SIMON: OK, the NBA offseason – unusually active, let’s put it that way. And it’s changed the – changed how we see the NBA at the moment. Just as people were getting excited about the Toronto Raptors, their main guy Kawhi Leonard decides to decamp for the LA Clippers.
GOLDMAN: (Laughter).
SIMON: And then a lot of major stars begin to move. The league looks entirely different in the space of two weeks.
GOLDMAN: Amazing, yeah. Decamping, to put it mildly. It continued late this week, too. Oklahoma City traded guard Russell Westbrook, the 2017 NBA Most Valuable Player, to Houston, where he’ll reunite with guard James Harden, the 2018 MVP. Scott, there were 15 all NBA players named last season. Those are the best of the best. Six of them have changed teams since the NBA finals ended last month. Without question, as you say, the most stunning league-shifting offseason in NBA history.
And it makes me wonder, are the days of dynasties where players still, you know, stay put for a while and grow together and create an unbeatable team – for instance, the Golden State Warriors of the past five years – are those days over?
SIMON: I like dynasties, or dynasties, as you say in your family. I think they make championships worth winning. I mean, beating the Golden State Warriors made the championship worthwhile. Beating the Michael Jordan Bulls, the Bill Russell Celtics – defeating a team that just comes together for a year or two – somehow, it doesn’t mean as much.
GOLDMAN: Yeah, you know, I think it’s a valid concern. A lot of fans are feeling that, you know? The fans in Toronto, as you say, they just cleaned up the confetti from their title celebration. And the question is, how will all this movement affect fans’ connections to players? On the other hand, with more great players spreading throughout the league, more fans can feel as if their team actually has a chance to win. And this can create more excitement. And let me tell you, right now, there’s a phenomenal buzz about next season, which is still more than three months away from starting.
SIMON: NPR’s Tom Goldman, thanks so much.
GOLDMAN: You’re welcome.
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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Remembering Major League Pitcher Jim Bouton, Author Of ‘Ball Four’
Bouton, who died Wednesday, spoke to Fresh Air in 1986 about his 1970 tell-all memoir, in which he drew on his seven years with the New York Yankees to offer an insider’s guide to baseball.
DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Jim Bouton, the former big-league pitcher better known for his prose than his fastball, died Wednesday at his home in Massachusetts. He was 80.
In 1970, Bouton wrote the book “Ball Four,” a raunchy insider’s look at the game that drew heavily on Bouton’s seven seasons with the New York Yankees. He wrote about players getting drunk, peeping through keyholes at women and popping amphetamines like candy. The book enraged players and some sportswriters and drew a rebuke from commissioner Bowie Kuhn, but it was a bestseller.
After a respectable baseball career, Bouton wrote several other books, did some acting and sportscasting and was a George McGovern delegate to the 1972 Democratic convention. Bouton spoke with Terry in 1986 and began with a story from “Ball Four” about Mickey Mantle.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
JIM BOUTON: I think the most controversial story in the book was I told about the time Mickey Mantle hit a home run with a hangover. And it wasn’t really even so much as a put-down of Mickey Mantle as it was a story of what a great athlete he was. I told about the time we were in Minnesota. And we’d been out the night before a game, having a few drinks – about 2 o’clock in the morning, I guess it was. I don’t want to say Mickey was drunk, but he spent about a half an hour trying to make a telephone call from a grandfather’s clock.
So he comes into the ballpark the following morning, and he’s hungover. And the manager says, you know, sleep it off. Most managers were players themselves. They understand you come to the ballpark once in a while with a hangover.
So Mick is sleeping in the trainer’s room. We’re playing the Minnesota Twins. We get – stick somebody else in the outfield. And so the game’s going on, and it gets tie score after nine innings. And in about the 12th inning, the manager says, I hate to do it, but I need a pinch hitter in the 13th. Go in and wake up the Mick.
So we go in the trainer’s room, you know, wake up Mickey Mantle, dress him in his uniform, steer him through the tunnel up into the dugout. Thirteenth inning comes around – he put a bat in Mickey’s hands and point him in the direction of home plate. The Mick staggers up to the plate. Fortunately, he’s a switch hitter – doesn’t matter what side he gets on – steps into the batter’s box.
To show you what a great athlete this guy was – and Mickey was the best ballplayer I ever saw – he takes one practice swing and hits the first pitch into the center field bleachers, a tremendous blast 450 feet away. We win the game. The crowd is going nuts, and the players are going crazy in the dugout. We’re laughing and pointing and screaming and slapping each other on the back. And suddenly, it occurs to us he still has to round those bases.
TERRY GROSS: (Laughter).
BOUTON: There’s a rule in baseball that you must touch the bases in order. Fortunately, he heads off in the right direction. The minute he hits first base, the entire dugout goes, make a left – goes around, touches second, touches third, comes across, misses home plate – we have to send him back for that – comes over to the dugout.
And, of course, the fans are giving him a standing ovation. And as he’s waving to the crowd, he looks at us in the dugout, and he says, those people don’t know how tough that really was. I went over to his locker afterwards, and I said, how did you do that? You couldn’t even see up there. He said, it was very simple. I hit the middle ball.
GROSS: (Laughter).
BOUTON: So if this destroys America’s illusions about baseball or Mickey Mantle, then I don’t know what you do with all the literature that’s come out since then where each player tries to top the next in terms of what he can tell or how far he can go.
GROSS: Pitching careers are subject to more problems than other careers are, I think, because your arm is so vulnerable. And your career depends on your arm, and it’s what you’re abusing all the time.
BOUTON: Sure. And pitching is not a natural motion. Throwing a ball as hard as you can 120 times every four days is not natural.
GROSS: Did you have to change your pitching style because of injuries you were getting?
BOUTON: Well, I had to change my pitching style when I wasn’t able to throw hard anymore. See, what happened was I threw very hard when I first came up. I was a overhand fastball pitcher. And then when I hurt my arm, I wasn’t able to throw hard for a while. And then when I did, it – the ball didn’t have that zip on it anymore. It didn’t have that snap. Even though the ball was traveling as fast, it wasn’t moving.
So it’s like taking a rubber band and stretching it too far, and then it never gets its elasticity back again. And that’s what happened to my arm. So I had to change from being a fastball pitcher to a knuckleball pitcher.
Fortunately, when I was a kid, I threw a knuckleball, which is not a pitch that requires very much strength. It’s a skill pitch. You push it off with your fingertips. The idea is to get the ball to go through the air without any rotation, and then it jumps around all by itself. And so I became a knuckleball pitcher to compensate for the fact that I couldn’t throw hard anymore.
GROSS: How hard are knuckleballs to hit?
BOUTON: They’re almost impossible to hit when you throw a good one. The difficulty is throwing a good one. When you don’t throw a good one, anybody can hit them. That’s the problem with a knuckleball. Nobody can hit a well-thrown knuckleball, and almost anybody can hit a poorly thrown knuckleball.
GROSS: Say it was a full count, and there were a couple of men on base. What would you throw? Would you throw a knuckleball, knowing that if you made one more – one wrong move, it might be a home run ’cause…
BOUTON: Yes.
GROSS: …It’s easier to hit?
BOUTON: I would throw a knuckleball. I would throw a knuckleball because my feeling is I would rather live and die with my best pitch than take a chance with something that wasn’t my best.
GROSS: Did you have any gestures that you had to do before you threw a pitch and, like, rub your hand on your side three times or (laughter)…
BOUTON: Nothing that was superstitious. Sure, I went through the same sort of little rituals before I threw the ball because it’s important to do that. And athletes need to do that and many performers need to do that because those are the little steps that are really part of the process.
Throwing a ball is not just throwing a ball. Part of it starts when you walk out to the mound – how you walk out to the mound, how you feel about yourself and the fans and the batter and the whole – I mean, all of that – the rosin bag in your hand, how the ball feels. And you want to start playing with that ball in your hand so you get that feeling, and you want to recreate the memory – the muscle memory that brings you back to the last time you were really throwing well. And that whole process starts long before you actually throw the ball.
GROSS: Why do pitchers like to chew when they’re on the mound?
BOUTON: Part of it is because of the nervousness and the tension. And it’s sort of – chewing relieves that. But the spitting part is different, OK? Spitting – and also all this crotch grabbing and spitting back and forth that you see in Major League Baseball – there’s a real reason for that. There’s a behavioral reason for that. And that is that what these are is macho displays, OK? It’s a man-to-man challenge out there, the pitcher versus the batter. And it’s very much like two cats squaring off where they both have to sort of urinate on the shrubbery, saying, OK, this is my yard. I own this space. And the other cat’s saying, yeah, but I own my space, and then they’re fighting.
You see, what the batter is is – he steps into the batter’s box and he spits all over the place. He’s saying he’s – that’s his turf. The pitcher is saying, oh, yeah? Well, (imitating spitting) this is my turf out here, and now we’ll see who’s the best. And so that’s why you have that. It’s that mano-a-mano challenge situation, you know? And that’s what they are. They’re animals marking their territory.
GROSS: Jim Bouton, I want to thank you very much.
BOUTON: Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it.
DAVIES: Jim Bouton spoke with Terry Gross in 1986. Bouton died Wednesday at the age of 80. Coming up, we’ll remember actor Rip Torn, best known for his role as Artie on “The Larry Sanders Show.” This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF WES MONTGOMERY’S “FOUR ON SIX”)
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.