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(More customer reviews)A championship San Francisco baseball team. Those words seem so incongruous. They seem dumb and odd and made-up. Like a self-effacing politician. How can a professional baseball team from San Francisco win a championship? How is that possible?
To ask that question is to see the world from a post-1957 perspective. Before 1958, it was VERY possible. The San Francisco Seals from the old Pacific Coast League (PCL) - a high-level Triple A league - won no fewer than ELEVEN - count `em, ELEVEN - championships - more than any other PCL team.
Granted that a championship under PCL rules was arrived at through more direct routes than the multi-tiered playoff system extant in major league baseball today, there were still ELEVEN occasions when the Seals beat everyone there was to beat! Compare that with the record compiled by the team that has played in The City since 1958. The Seals outdistance that team by a total of ELEVEN! Jesus wept!
As the title indicates, this book is not so much a history of the Seals or a highlight of Seals glory as it is a retrospective of the Seals teams that the author, Brent Kelley, grew up with. This includes a lot of lean years; 1946 through 1957 was not all gravy for the organization, and in fact, it was only by going public in 1954 that the team was able to survive at all. Kelley provides a good overview on the story of the Little Corporation that saved the Seals - for four years.
Some information on the relationship that the Seals had with the major leagues is also provided. During the time frame in question, they had working relationships with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox - and ironically enough, even with the National League team in New York.
Kelly also recapitulates Lefty O'Doul's stature as king of both San Francisco and Japan. The Seals' post-war reconciliation tour to Japan, led by O'Doul, is still remembered on both sides of the Pacific Ocean and it was made at the urging of none other than General MacArthur himself.
The chapters are divided by the years in question, as Kelly interviews surviving players that he found from the teams that played during those years. The interviews themselves are unremarkable and seem to uniformly contain the patterns that one would expect of interviews with retired PCL baseball players: some players I stay in touch with; some I haven't seen in years; some are no longer with us; the money was nothing like the players are making today, but we worked harder and had more fun and I made more money on the Coast than I did (or would have) in the bigs and we didn't have to travel too far from home and we even had Mondays off and I'd do it again.
The uniformity doesn't matter; the names should live forever in the annals of West Coast baseball: Frank Seward, Jeep Trower, Jack Brewer, Roy Nicely, Neill Sheridan, Joe Brovia, Bill Werle, Con Dempsey, Dario Lodigiani, Ed Cereghino, Bill Bradford, Rene Cheso, Nini Tornay, Jerry Zuvela, Jim Westlake, Ted Beard, Chuck Stevens, Bob DiPietro, Don Lenhardt, "Riverboat" Smith, Jack Spring, and Bert Thiel. Young fans once pronounced these names with reverence.
Con Dempsey's story should be of particular interest because it removes some of the luster associated with the name of Branch Rickey. Dempsey's contract was ultimately sold by the Seals to the Pittsburgh Pirates of the major leagues. After he reported to the Pirates, Rickey, the innovative Hall of Fame executive who integrated the major leagues and invented the modern "farm" system for development of minor league players, ruined Dempsey's arm and his career by trying to force him to become an overhand pitcher, in spite of the success that Dempsey had attained by throwing sidearm and three-quarters. Evidently, the corporate mentality is no less prevalent in baseball than elsewhere, even among the best executives.
Kelly also interviewed two players whose names that will be familiar to major league historians: Ferris Fain and Lou Burdette. Both had successful major league careers. I had not known that either of them had a resume that included a stint with the Seals. A credible case is made for Burdette's deserving membership in Baseball's Hall of Fame.
And although they are not interviewed in this book, it is equally interesting to see that the Seals roster also included such familiar-sounding names as Frank Malzone, Ken Aspromonte, and Albie Pearson.
And fans of the baseball team that currently plays in San Francisco (the one with no championships) will be interested to read the interview with ex-Seals shortstop Leo Righetti, father of Dave Righetti, whose major league career includes a stint in San Francisco as both a relief pitcher and a pitching coach. Befitting of an Italian surname, the Righetti family history in San Francisco baseball extends for two generations.
The Seals saga has a bittersweet ending. After a number of years of futility, they win the 1957 PCL championship just before major league expansion from New York to San Francisco chases them out of The City. Most San Franciscans were delighted with the arrival of major league baseball, as can be seen from the tremendous welcome that Willie Mays & Company received when they arrived and from the intense interest displayed after the season started.
But there yet remained a strong minority of PCL fans who mourned the loss of their beloved Seals and regarded the invading strangers from New York as unworthy substitutes - especially the audacious presence of Willie Mays in Seals Stadium's centerfield threatening to appropriate the memory of the great Joe DiMaggio. How provincial those fans must have seemed at the time -- but did they possess some sort of crystal ball that foretold how the usurpers from New York would bring giant heartaches, endless futility --- and no championships?
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San Francisco Seals, 1946-1957: Interviews With 25 Former BaseballersThe San Francisco Seals were members of baseball'sPacific Coast League from 1903 until 1958. Arguably the mostsuccessful minor league franchise ever, the Seals held the minorleague attendance record from 1946 until it was broken by Louisvillein the 1980s, and remained independently owned until 1956. The Sealswere also Joe DiMaggio's first team and many another major league starwas on the team's roster on his climb up the ranks.This work is a collection of oral histories of players who took the field for the Seals from 1946 through 1957, just before the Giants came to San Francisco and when the Seals played their final game. Ferris Fain said of the 1946 Seals, "I just think that that was the best ballclub that I've ever played on, including major league. I mean, as a team." Frank Seward, Don Trower, Jack Brewer, Roy Nicely, Neill Sheridan, Joe Brovia, Bill Werle, Con Dempsey, Dario Lodigiani, Lou Burdette, Ed Cereghino, Bill Bradford, Reno Cheso, Nini Tornay, Jerry Zuvela, Leo Righetti, Jim Westlake, Ted Beard, Chuck Stevens, Bob DiPietro, Don Lenhardt, Riverboat Smith, Jack Spring, and Bert Thiel also reminisce about their careers with the Seals.
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