Decade of distinction
That ’70s Show: Loss by loss, unique, transformative era in game starts inevitable fade
The affection engulfs Clint Hurdle’s voice as he appraises the list of those recently gone — childhood idols who became teammates and opponents, teammates and opponents who became acquaintances, acquaintances who became dear friends.
The 1970s memories surface fast for the man who has spent his entire adult life in baseball, as player and manager. Bob Watson, whom he first met while serving as a batboy for the Class A Cocoa Astros. Claudell Washington: “We used to just laugh.” Bob Gibson, as nice off the field as he was menacing on it. The distinctive way Joe Morgan pumped his elbow at bat: “I watched him as a kid. I used to try to re-create the chicken wing for hitting.”
All are members of a list disquieting in its length — those from the ranks of 1970s baseball rosters who have died in the last year alone.
The list: Perhaps it’s no longer than any other list of those who were dying at other moments in baseball’s history. But against the last year’s backdrop — of pandemic-inflected grief, of baseball withering and coming back smaller, of a truncated season and crowdless stands — it feels unremitting. Just part of it:
Watson. Washington. Gibson. Morgan. Al Kaline. Lou Brock. Don Sutton. Hank Aaron. Dick Allen. Jay Johnstone. Phil Niekro. Tom Seaver. Biff Pocoroba. Lindy McDaniel. Billy Conigliaro. Tommy Lasorda. And now, three weeks ago, from COVID-19 complications: Grant Jackson, who won the final Major League Baseball game of the decade as the 1979 Pirates took the World Series.
Theirs were the names etched on the Topps cards. The names that crackled from plastic, fruit-colored transistor radios. The names that shouted from the pages of Baseball Digest and hometown newspapers at a moment in the game’s history that can seem like yesterday but, propelled by the past year’s losses, is starting its inexorable fade.
“I like to say, ‘Hey, I grew up in the greatest era of baseball,” ’ Gary Matthews, who played in the big leagues from 1972 to 1987, is saying one recent day. He’s just back from
the funeral of his friend, Henry Aaron, in Atlanta — one of the most towering baseball losses of the last year.
Pete Rose, one of the decade’s most storied players, agrees. “You wanna know the truth? I faced 19 Hall of Fame pitchers in the 1970s and 1980s,” he says.
“I don’t know if guys today are facing 19 Hall of Fame pitchers.”
In the 1970s, baseball opened up and let its hair down. It was an era of the downright idiosyncratic — incandescent uniforms and orange baseballs and orange-striped catcher’s mitts and synthetic fields, Reggie! bars and stick-on Stargell stars and mustache upon carefully cultivated mustache.
It was an era of substantive change, too. The designated hitter took root. The reserve clause ended, free agency began and the players’ union found its voice, setting the table for the high salaries of today. The number of players of color grew as they finally stepped into a full-on spotlight, albeit one still pocked with ugly obstacles.
And though games unfolded in some of the most impersonal stadiums ever, baseball was still — perhaps for a final time — being played at human scale.
“If you stuck a DVD in of a game from the 1970s, I think a 15-year-old would be very surprised,” says Cait Murphy, who chronicled one early 20th-century season in “Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History.”
The players of the 1970s, too, felt more accessible. They’d come home and manage a supermarket or open a beer distributor or sell insurance. For many, this second career wasn’t a choice; baseball’s pay then created a standard of living very different from today’s.
“The younger people who are into this era, they kind of marvel at how MLB players from the ’70s, they look like they could have been your math teacher or the guy working down at the auto-parts shop,” says Dan Epstein, author of “Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ’70s.”
There’s a contradiction there, though. At the same time 1970s players felt more accessible, they felt less so, too. There was no MLB.tv offering every game live, with permanent HD playback. Players didn’t get into real-time back-and-forths with fans — for better and worse — on Twitter. The 1970s were, arguably, the final decade in which the illusion of baseball could thrive largely unchallenged.
“Sure, now you can get tweets directly from the players, but it all seems to be in a very slick context. It doesn’t have that same intimacy of a shoddy broadcast or an off-center card. And I think that was the key. That was part of how we got close to the game,” says Josh Wilker, whose book “Cardboard Gods” examines the lives of 1970s players and his own childhood through the lens of the era’s baseball cards.
The 2020s will mark the 50th anniversary of so many milestones in 1970s baseball. The inevitable retrospectives will reveal a decade still near enough to seem recent, but different enough to feel utterly alien. And the distance grows each time a voice from that decade — a great arm, a formidable bat, a distinctive personality — goes silent.
“It’s kind of like I lost all of my baseball cards again,” says Hurdle, whose rookie year was 1977.
“I was one of those kids who collected every card. And somehow all my cards got lost,” he says. “Well, I was fortunate enough to live and love and play against and meet those people and have dinner and lunch and have a conversation with or get hit by a pitch from or get struck out by them. It was an accumulation of hopes and dreams put into real time, and now they’re being taken away again.”
After the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the annual Big 33 Football Classic in 2020, the Maryland team is hopeful to play this year after its roster was announced Sunday night.
Sixteen players from the Baltimore area have been chosen to play in the annual high school showcase between Maryland and Pennsylvania, set to take place at Landis Field in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, during Memorial Day on May 31. Mike Neubeiser, the former coach at Northwestern High School in Germantown, will coach the team.
Billy Atkins, QB, Mount Saint Joseph Roman Hemby, RB, John Carroll
Jamir Roberts, WR, McDonogh
Ausar Crawley, WR, Mount Saint Joseph T.J. Speight, ATH, Meade
Elijah Jackson, OL, St. Frances
Greg Hollis, DL, Dundalk
Mattheus Carroll, DL, Gilman
Jamon Dumas-Johnson, LB, St. Frances Xavier Shell, LB, Mervo
Tre Jordan III, DB, Calvert Hall DaShawn Jones, DB, Mount Saint Joseph Calvin Harrison, DB, Meade
John England, DB, Hammond
James Fineran, LS, Calvert Hall
Kevin Roberts, K, Fallston
Atkins was closing in on Maryland passing records with 7,112 yards and 91 touchdowns over his four-year varsity career. While he won’t get the opportunity to rewrite the record book, the James Madison signee is champing at the bit to get the play after his 2020 season abruptly ended when the pandemic shut down the modified football season.
“Honestly, it’s an honor to be selected to be in such an honorable game,” Atkins said. “I’m definitely excited to have the chance to play with a team of truly special guys. It should be a fun week and an exciting game. Those guys from Pennsylvania are very talented as well so it should be a great matchup.”
Maryland returned in 2013 to resume as Pennsylvania’s rival in the annual event.
Shell played for a stout Mervo defense that went 11-2 in 2019, the team’s last season before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. After overcoming adversity with his team and by his own measure, earning a Big 33 selection is a culmination of all of the hard work that the Morgan State commit put in.
“To be recognized for my play it feels amazing,” Shell said. “[Just] knowing where I come from and the things that I went through to get where I’m at today — its just amazing to be recognized by the coaches and selected to play in a very competitive game like the Big 33.”
This will be the last opportunity several players will get to play with or against one another. For Jordan, who starred at defensive back for Calvert Hall, the game will be one that he looks back on for the rest of his life.
“This game is very important to me to play in because this is a historic game for Maryland and Pennsylvania,” Jordan said. “[I’m] grateful to be selected and be a part of it. This is the last high school game I can ball out before college. Our season ended up short and we only had 2 games so this game feels like a makeup for all of them. I am very excited to get back out there and ball out one last time.”
The St. Frances boys basketball team visited Loyola Blakefield on Monday night and promptly scored 26 points in the first quarter to take a 15-point lead.
While the Dons made sure the rest of the game wouldn’t come nearly as easy, the Panthers leaned on a balanced effort and strong final kick to hold on for a 65-53 win.
It makes two wins in as many nights for St. Frances, which had three players score in double figures to improve to 3-0 on the season.
The three-time defending Baltimore Catholic League champion Panthers are 3-0 in BCL play and 2-0 in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference. Loyola (1-1) fell to 0-1 in the BCL and 1-1 in the MIAA.
Senior guard Khyrie Staten scored 18 points, sharing game-high honors with Dons junior forward Gavin Floyd, while senior forward Julian Reese added 14 and freshman forward Derik Queen chipped in 13 for St. Frances.
Watching their big lead get cut to 55-51 with 2:51 left, the Panthers went on an 8-0 run to restore order. Reese finished inside off a feed from Jahnathan Lamothe and Queen drove the lane on the next possession to reclaim control.
“I don’t know what it is, but historically if we look over the years, it’s always a tough game at Loyola,” St. Frances coach Nick Myles said. “The [Dons] were primed, they had a good game plan, but my guys made some plays down the stretch and I’m happy to come away with the win.”
The 6-foot-10 Reese and 6-8 Queen will be tough for any team to match up against this season. Add in Staten, Lamothe and the rest of the team’s deep roster, and the margin for error is slim.
While the Panthers jumped out fast — Queen scored nine points in the opening quarter — the Dons were hesitant around the rim on offense and had too many turnovers in falling behind 26-11.
Walsh’s all-around game helped the Dons get back in it, and when senior forward Cam Smith powered his way to the basket to cut the lead to 55-51 with under three minutes to play, the Dons had plans to complete the comeback. The Panthers weren’t having it. Aggressive defense, the extra pass on offense and so many players making big plays proved the difference.
“We know our goal is to win a championship this year and we want to go undefeated and it’s not going to be easy. But we lock in on that goal and use it as motivation,” Reese said.
Take away the slow start and Loyola coach
Josh Davalli was proud of his team’s effort. The quality three closing quarters is something to build on.
“We came out not entirely locked in that first quarter — 26 points in the first quarter, that’s not who we are,” he said. “It’s a shortened season, so it makes it tough to really fine tune some things. But I liked how we played for three quarters, I liked how we competed, I like how we executed. We’re building things here this season and that was a good step for us, generally, especially those last three quarters.”
Both teams will next take to the road Wednesday. St. Frances looks to keep rolling at John Carroll, while the Dons travel to Mount Saint Joseph.
Staten 18, Queen 13, Lamothe 9, Reese 14, Ireland 6, D. Davis 5. 269-1365.
Walsh 18, Smith 8, Dixon 2, Johnson 7, C. Heptig 7, Fischer 5, Galloway 6. Totals: 1910-1453
SF, 33-24
Girls basketball
Mercy 42, Annapolis Area Christian 41, OT: As the overtime clock blinked on the scoreboard, Mercy walked into familiar territory. The Magic went to extra time on Annapolis Area Christian School floor last year.
That one turned out pretty well, too. Sophomore McKenna Carroll battled her way through heavy Eagles coverage in the paint to drain the game-winner and lift the Magic over AACS, 42-41. The win was the Baltimore squad’s first of 2021.
“It feels really good,” Mercy sophomore Olivia Liszt said. “We have a young team again. It’s really nice to have some wins, especially under pressure [in overtime], to go in and execute really well.”
Carroll shot a team-high 15 points in relief behind Lizst, who began the game the way Mercy (1-2) ended it — in control.
Liszt dominated the floor in the first few minutes, rattling off nine of her game 11 points, six from beyond the arc, to push the Magic out from a 4-4 tie to a seven-point lead without interruption.
“They’re both sophomores, which is so exciting for our program,” Mercy coach Mary Ella Marion said of Liszt and Carroll. “Neither one of them shy away from it. They’re seasoned players, even though they’re only sophomores. We just got to work on McKenna, with her positioning. She could’ve had 20.”
— Katherine Fominykh
Football
An Anne Arundel County varsity football team has already paused team activities after a student-athlete tested positive for coronavirus.
The Severna Park High student attended the first day of practice last Tuesday, and the county Department of Health is requiring all coaches and student-athletes to quarantine for 14 days, from Feb. 17 until March 3. The junior varsity team did not practice last Tuesday and is not affected, and practices for other athletic programs can also continue as the county’s protocol disallows teams from sharing spaces.
Severna Park principal Patrick Bathras wrote in a letter to the families on Saturday that this single incident is not expected to prevent the team from having a football season. The first game is scheduled for March 26 at North County.
Bathras also wrote, “We recommend that everyone involved in the February 16, 2021, practice be tested for COVID-19.”
There were nine coronavirus cases among athletic programs at eight different high schools during the three-week period of fall sports practices in October and November. The county confirmed positive cases on the Broadneck High boys soccer and volleyball teams, Glen Burnie football, South River football, Annapolis girls soccer, Old Mill boys soccer, Northeast boys soccer and Arundel High football.
Anne Arundel County Public Schools will have high school students return to school buildings for hybrid learning March 8 with grades 9 and 12, while grades 10 and 11 can resume in-person learning March 22.
On Monday, Maryland’s COVID-19 positivity rate dropped below 4% for the first time since Nov. 2, a week before rising cases caused the in-person athletic practices in the county to end early. The state’s case rate per 100,000 fell to 12.4, its lowest level since Oct. 28, and hospitalizations have fallen below 1,000 for the first time since Nov. 16.