A Little (True) Christmas Story

Christmas can be stressful, and even more so when you’re a toddler not quite three years old and it’s the first Christmas you can really anticipate, full of Santas and stockings and reindeer and angels. We usually have Claire, my granddaughter, a couple days a week and this week she’s been too excited to take a nap, so at the end of the day, when we meet her Mom after she gets off work halfway, Claire’s exhausted.

Yesterday was no different. I left a little early to go to the grocery store with Claire, trips we both enjoy, even with the bout of projectile vomiting we had in the frozen food aisle last month.

Anyway, I’d barely pulled out of the driveway yesterday when I realized that, of course, NOW she’d fallen asleep. I drove the rest of the way knowing that when I woke her up, the transition from sleeping to waking would probably result in a flood of disoriented tears and if not quite a shopping trip from hell, at least one from the darker side of heck.

So I pulled into the lot and waited a few minutes to give her a few more minutes of sleep, but I didn’t have much time and it was cold, so I got out of the car, grabbed a cart, swallowed hard, steeled myself and woke her up.

As expected she didn’t want to be awake, wasn’t sure where she was and really, really didn’t want to get in the cart. She wasn’t crying hard, not yet, but it wasn’t far off.

So far her experiences with Santa have been, well, pretty suspicious. She likes to look at him, but not up close and certainly not in his lap. That photo-op is still a year or two away.

So I’m pushing her through the parking lot as she’s BARELY holding back tears. Then just ahead, between us and the door to the store, I spot a guy wearing dungarees held up by suspenders, boots, and a bright red shirt. He also has gray hair, a long white beard that I could tell was real… and he’s wearing a Santa hat.

“Look,” I say to her pointing, “Santa Claus is going into the store.”

Her head spins around. Her tears stop mid-cheek. Her eyes go wide.

“Santa” hears us. He turns around, then stops as we approach and catches my eye, smiling.

“Look, Claire,” I say, It’s Santa!”

He wasn’t some mall Santa stopping at the store after work, not that I could tell, but just a stocky old guy maybe a few years older than me who apparently gets a kick from wearing a red shirt and a Santa hat paired with his white beard at Christmas.

We pull up alongside him, and suddenly she’s closer to Santa than she’s ever been. He leans over with a gentle smile and goes, not too loud or scary, “Ho-Ho-Ho, Merry Christmas!” She grins and wiggles and shakes her legs, tears forgotten, looks up in wonder and says back to him, “Merry Christmas, Santa!”

It only lasts a few seconds, but that’s enough to make a memory. We go into the store and “Santa” follows and she waves and says “Hi, Santa,” and he waves back and we start shopping and then he starts shopping and I tell her that I’m really, really old but that I have never, never ever, seen Santa Claus at the grocery store before and that he’s probably getting food for the reindeer and the elves and she's really lucky and that makes sense to her.

And for the next twenty minutes we keep seeing Santa down this aisle and that one and, well, she forgot all about crying.

Santa was real.

THE YEARS' BEST SPORTS WRITING

A couple things about The Years’ Best Sports Writing, the new annual collection of sports writing. For one, I’m thrilled that a collection of sports writing will continue, following The Best Sports Stories series, which appeared from 1945 thru 1991, and The Best American Sports Writing from 1991 thru 2020, meaning that the first edition of The Years’ Best Sports Writing will mark the 76th year such a collection has appeared. I thank everyone at Triumph for their faith in the concept, and for reaching out after the demise of BASW. It is not “my” book, and never has been. Although I will serve as editor of this inaugural edition – until this year – I have never made a selection of a single story for the collection, and in subsequent years a new editor will be chose by the Publisher each year. There will be no “Series Editor,” the role I filled for The Best American Sports Writing. An eight-member Editorial Board made up of both staffer and freelancers covering the full spectrum of contemporary sports writing will make recommendations to the Annual Editor each year and we will ask that Editor to take a much more active role throughout the year in the selection process. This, I think, will ensure the Series will not only be sustainable but will include as many diverse viewpoints and styles as possible. I’ll stay on in only an advisory capacity for the next few years to make sure the train keeps running. Then I’ll step away. The book belongs to its readers and the writers who make such a collection possible. More than anything, I thank the many, many readers whose enthusiasm for these books has meant so much – I’ve lost track of the number who have sent me photos of their collections of the earlier two series. I leave the collection in the hands of the writers whose work will be responsible for its success.

WRITING TIGER GIRL

You're researching another book, a long time ago. You come across a headline, two headlines, ten, a hundred. And two names: Tiger Girl and Candy Kid. They work their way in slow at first, first just tapping at your brain's back door, then start hitting like a hammer.

Who are these people?

You finish that other book, then dive in and get sucked down to the bottom. Margaret and Richard. Two kids, Lovers. Who had nothing and shot for the moon, the only way they knew how, the only way they knew. You don't ask; you take. And you don't let anyone or anything get in the way, cops or crooks.

You get to know them, and get to know their time. Denizens of the Jazz Age, two tickets to a time and a place and two people who together tell a story Fitzgerald missed. You put together a proposal. It goes around. Everybody wants it. Then the 2008 recession hits like a punch to the heart; Nobody wants it.

Forget about it.

You try to set it aside. Filing cabinet, bottom drawer. It keeps floating to the top. You write other things but you keep thinking about Margaret and Richard, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid. You see their pictures when you go to sleep. They start to whisper in your ear. You keep learning more, scrolling through mountains of microfilm, brushing off the dust of a century, and listen close. You tell your friends and they keep asking questions you know only you the answers to. They tell you it should be a movie. You've already watched it a million times. Their story starts talking to you while you're reading, watching TV, driving long distances alone or staring in the dark while the clock keeps ticking.

But people tell you not to bother, not to pitch a book everybody already passed on. It NEVER works.

Forget about it.

But it’s already too late. You're all in, over your head and way too deep. And you wait. And wait. Times change, and so do the people who say yes or no.

Besides, by now you know who Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid really are; what the tabloids told you and what they didn't. What they ate and what they drank. How they talked and how they walked.

How they lived and how they died.

...So now you take your shot, a long one, the longest one of your life, this book or nothing...

Bullseye. Your 100th book.

Roll the credits.You're researching another book, a long time ago. You come across a headline, two headlines, ten, a hundred. And two names: Tiger Girl and Candy Kid. They work their way in slow at first, first just tapping at your brain's back door, then start hitting like a hammer.

Who are these people?

You finish that other book, then dive in and get sucked down to the bottom. Margaret and Richard. Two kids, Lovers. Who had nothing and shot for the moon, the only way they knew how, the only way they knew. You don't ask; you take. And you don't let anyone or anything get in the way, cops or crooks.

You get to know them, and get to know their time. Denizens of the Jazz Age, two tickets to a time and a place and two people who together tell a story Fitzgerald missed. You put together a proposal. It goes around. Everybody wants it. Then the 2008 recession hits like a punch to the heart; Nobody wants it.

Forget about it.

You try to set it aside. Filing cabinet, bottom drawer. It keeps floating to the top. You write other things but you keep thinking about Margaret and Richard, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid. You see their pictures when you go to sleep. They start to whisper in your ear. You keep learning more, scrolling through mountains of microfilm, brushing off the dust of a century, and listen close. You tell your friends and they keep asking questions you know only you the answers to. They tell you it should be a movie. You've already watched it a million times. Their story starts talking to you while you're reading, watching TV, driving long distances alone or staring in the dark while the clock keeps ticking.

But people tell you not to bother, not to pitch a book everybody already passed on. It NEVER works.

Forget about it.

But it’s already too late. You're all in, over your head and way too deep. And you wait. And wait. Times change, and so do the people who say yes or no.

Besides, by now you know who Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid really are; what the tabloids told you and what they didn't. What they ate and what they drank. How they talked and how they walked.

How they lived and how they died.

...So now you take your shot, a long one, the longest one of your life, this book or nothing...

Bullseye. Your 100th book.

Roll the credits.

Here's what they’re saying about it:

"Straight out of Ben Hecht by way of Damon Runyon, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid are the Adam and Eve of jazz-mad flappers and mad-dog killers. Avid and dynamic, this is Glenn Stout at his storytelling best, delivering a meticulous history with a kick like bathtub gin: Of a man and a woman fallen at the founding of modern America - that revved-up white-hot electric-chair America of sensational tabloid crime and smash-and-grab capitalism, of sudden money and sex and excess, reckless ambition and lies and violence, all of it spinning a blur - and woven now into the perfect book for our own roaring moment." —Jeff MacGregor, Smithsonian Magazine

"Reported with a historian's careful research and written with a novelist's mastery of character and scene, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid is a true-crime thriller embedded with a love story, set in the intoxicating glamour of the Roaring Twenties. A fast-paced, exhilarating read, the story unfolds like cinematic noir. This book deserves a place on the shelf next to Devil in the White City as a gem of true-crime narrative nonfiction."—Kim Cross, New York Times best-selling author of What Stands in a Storm

“Compared to Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid, Bonnie and Clyde were pikers. The original gangster couple was more ruthless, more captivating, and far more clever, the inspiration for the gangster movies made in their wake. As you read Stout’s deeply researched, fast-moving account – covering a multi-year crime spree, courtroom dramas, and an unexpected denouement -- you’ll keep asking yourself: why hadn’t I heard of them before? If Tiger Girl and Candy Kid doesn’t become a blockbuster movie, Hollywood is broken.”—John U. Bacon, bestselling author of The Great Halifax Explosion

"It’s strange what we forget. Margaret and Richard Whittemore were Jazz Age icons, their gang’s jewel heists and bank robberies the stuff of bandit legend. Chased down by detectives and time, their love-and-crime story was lost to all but the Underworld—until Glenn Stout brought their exploits back to vivid life in this shining, meticulous book. In a way, Stout’s fine-eyed attention is one last score for Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid. Nobody knew better the value of a professional."—Chris Jones, author of Out of Orbit

"Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid brings the Roaring Twenties to life. With his meticulous research and vivid writing, Glenn Stout captures the era’s perverse version of the American Dream, in all of its excesses and envy. Stout imbues century-old jewelry robberies with heart-stopping suspense. Beyond that, he shows how his protagonists birthed the archetypes of the bad boy gangster and the gun moll, and how the breathless coverage of their crimes created the true crime genre."—Greg Hanlon, People

"This is a get-away car of a book -- you dive in and hold on tight and trust the driver as the tires burn, the police sirens wail in the distance, and all that 1920s Americana rushes by outside."—Ben Montgomery, author of Grandma Gatewood's Walk and A Shot in the Moonlight

"[A] rollicking true crime tale...Stout colorfully evokes the era’s political issues and cultural trends, and describes how Prohibition increased disrespect for the law across American society. This snappy page-turner informs and delights."—Publishers Weekly

Rip-roaring account of the Jazz Age’s most-feared gangster couple. Before infamous criminal lovebirds Bonnie and Clyde, there were Richard “Candy Kid” and Margaret (“Tiger Girl” Whittemore, whose big-city jewel heists and bank robberies made the Barrow Gang’s stickups look like candy snatching in comparison. In his latest, journalist and sportswriter Stout raises his game a notch, transitioning from quaint sports history books to this true-crime barn burner, set against the backdrop of a post–World War I America rolling in wealth and prosperity. “Bank vaults were full and brimming over,” writes the author, “and all the businesses that catered to this newfound wealth—the jewelers and furriers and night clubs and jazz joints and new car lots—were raking it in by the fistful.” Both brought up in Baltimore with virtually no economic prospects, Richard and Margaret married young and faced uncertain futures, with Richard engaging in petty thefts that saw him in and out of prison with not much to show for it. However, it wasn’t long before he began making powerful contacts in the criminal underworld and attempting more formidable crime sprees—with his wife by his side. The couple moved from Baltimore to more cosmopolitan climes like Philadelphia and New York, working within a criminal syndicate robbing banks or staging jewelry heists. As they found further success in the criminal game, they enjoyed a glamorous lifestyle of all-night parties, luxury apartments, and fast cars. However, Richard’s inevitable downfall came at the age of 25, when an informant turned him in. Stout’s fast-paced prose has a Mickey Spillane–like cadence to it that fits his subject matter perfectly. The narrative is unrelenting to the bitter end, when Richard had to confront the kind of forced early retirement that guys in his profession almost invariably faced. A compulsively readable criminal biography as well as a vivid cultural snapshot of early Prohibition-era America. - Kirkus Reviews

Cousin Johannes

(This column first appeared in the July edition of Boston Baseball)

My older brother wasn’t much of a ballplayer, which I guess is really a nice way of saying he really didn’t like baseball at all. It’s understandable - he was left-handed and for some reason grew up trying to throw and bat right-handed. I was not much older than a toddler and remember watching him in Mosquito League wearing the old wrap-around earmuff batting helmets. When he didn’t want to play the next season, my parents, who weren’t big fans, were fine with that. Besides, somewhat inexplicably, by then I was crazy about the game and sucked up all the baseball oxygen in the house.

Yet he’s always recognized my baseball obsession, something I’ve grown to appreciate. He spent his career as a graphic artist and if something interesting and baseball-related passed his way, he always made sure I heard about it.

Since retirement he’s kept himself busy diving into the rabbit hole of our family genealogy so deeply that, well, if he’d have put that effort into baseball, he’d be in the Hall of Fame – I tell him he should become a professional genealogist. He gets lost in history and that’s where we intersect. When we talk, most of the conversations are about some arcane relative he’s just discovered which opens up some obscure fact about what was happening elsewhere in the world four or five hundred years ago.

Over the years he’s had some surprising finds, such as the fact that my high school band director, who I didn’t much care for and who I don’t think thought much of me, was something like my third cousin.  And he’s discovered other remote ancestral connections to people as diverse as Maria Shriver, the actor George C. Scott, Chicago’s Mrs. Catherine O’Leary (whose cow was blamed for starting the great Chicago fire), one of murderer Whitey Bulger’s victims, a turn-of the century congressman, and two former major league ballplayers. Clyde Shoun, winner of 73 games (including a no-hitter) as a pitcher with the Cubs, Cards, Reds, Braves and White Sox from 1937 to 1949, is a not too distant cousin. Through marriage I’m also related to Denny Galehouse, notable in Red Sox history for pitching, and losing, that 1948 playoff game to the Cleveland Indians. In 1988, long before I knew this, I interviewed Galehouse and was surprised when he told me I was the first writer to interview him about that game in forty years.

A few weeks ago my brother came up with the mother lode.  He identified my 8^th great grandparents as Johan Peter Wagner, (1677-1742), and Eva Marie Heinz, (1677-1751), from the town of Dirmingen, in the Saarland, southwestern Germany. They had several children and daughter Ana’s lineage, after an immigration to the U.S. in 1837, leads directly down to my father, and hence to my brother and I.

He generally cross checks with other genealogies, and was surprised when he came across another very thorough and apparently accurate genealogy that included the same two names. Turns out they also had a son, John Valentin Wagner.

Here’s where it gets interesting. In 1866 his direct descendent, Johannes Peter Wagner (1838 –1913), also immigrated to U.S. His son, also named Johannes Peter Wagner, was born in 1874 in the borough of Chartiers, in what is now Carnegie, Pennsylvania. According to genealogists, that makes Johannes my 5^th cousin, four times removed, sharing a tiny shred of the same DNA.

 

But you don’t know him as Johannes.  If you know any baseball history you know him as “Honus” Wagner, the shortstop for the NL Louisville Colonels from 1897-1899 and the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1900-1917. He figures prominently into Red Sox history because in 1903, the Sox and Pirates played in the first World Series, Boston winning in eight games when Nuf Ced McGreevey’s Royal Rooters (who I’ve written about at length) famously re-wrote the words to the song “Tessie,” mocking cousin Honus and his teammates without mercy.

Wagner recovered from the lass to win a total of eight batting titles and become a charter member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, one of the first five men selected in 1936. He is considered the game’s greatest shortstop and his 1909-11 T206 baseball card is the most valuable card of all time. In 2016 one sold for $3.12 million dollars.

Apart from that twisted little strand of deoxyribonucleic acid and an outsized love of the game, I’m afraid that’s all I share with my esteemed cousin. While I must have inherited whatever remained of the baseball gene in the family, the closest I got to Cooperstown was a few visits to the Hall and an afternoon playing at Doubleday Field with my old over-30 team. Maybe I should have batted with my hands apart, like cousin Honus, and earned my way inside.

But if anyone wants to leave me a T206 Honus Wagner baseball card, I promise I’ll keep it in the family.

 

Glenn Stout recently assisted Red Sox groundskeeper David Mellor with his memoir One Base at a Time: How I Survived PTSD and Found My Field of Dreams.

One Word at a Time

 (from Boston baseball, June 2019)

 

 

You’ve seen him at the ballpark, an hour or two or three or four before the games in khaki shorts and a polo shirt, sometimes carrying a rake or dragging a hose, walking across the field. You’ve likely seen Drago, his almost supernaturally well-behaved German Shepherd service dog, too, either at his side or not very far away, ready whenever he is needed.

 

I’m talking about David Mellor, Fenway’s Superintendent of Grounds, aka the groundskeeper. He and his staff have been responsible for maintaining Fenway’s field since 2001, and he’s also behind the designs you see mowed and rolled into the outfield grass that make Fenway’s field the most distinctive in the major leagues. He also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD.

I met David a few years ago to help him with a book project, and in our first conversation we realized we had more than a few things in common. Like David, I grew up in small Ohio town and as a kid was all about baseball. Like David, I was a high school pitcher dreaming of the majors, at least until I blew out my shoulder. But there’s more. Twenty years later I played for an over-30 team in East Douglas, Massachusetts. David told me his grandfather, Big Bill Mellor, who played first base for the 1902 American League Baltimore Orioles, later coached Douglas team in the semi-pro Blackstone Valley League. I played on the same field as his team, and Dave and I discovered we both had a copy of the same team photo, one that not only included his grandfather, but also a nineteen-year-old Hank Greenberg, and Will Jackman, the Satchel Paige of New England.

David was a better pitcher than I was and had a chance to play in college after high school, hoping to one day take the mound with his favorite team, the Red Sox. Then one summer evening he was walking across the parking lot of McDonald’s and a car roared into him, ripping up his knee and pinning him up against the restaurant wall. That began a long and often tortuous journey that would one day bring him to his current role with the Red Sox, where he’s probably spent more time on the field than any player on the roster. I won’t give away the rest of his story, but the next twenty-nine years of his life were dominated by nightmares, anxiety attacks, and flashbacks and other symptoms. He didn’t know why, suffering in silence even as he experienced even more traumas, including, remarkably, being struck by another car in the outfield of Milwaukee’s County Stadium.

It took David twenty-nine years before he realized he had PTSD. Once he did, he sought the help that has changed his life. David wanted to write about his experience to help others understand that PTSD isn’t just something that afflicts veterans of combat, but by a variety of traumas, physical and emotional. More importantly, David wanted readers to understand that a PTSD diagnosis isn’t hopeless, that it’s never too late to get help and seek treatment. His book, One Base at a Time, comes out this month.

But I’m here to tell you that his story is about more than PTSD, and that you need not suffer from PTSD or have been hit by a car and have your dreams crushed in order to benefit from reading the book. You see, in the process of helping David, which entailed hours of extensive interviews and conversations as David entrusted me with his story, I experienced these benefits first hand. I’ve been pretty lucky in my life and am fortunate not have experienced David’s kind of pain and trauma, but life hasn’t always been as smooth as the infield dirt at Fenway Park, either. When I helping David shape his words into a book, I wasn’t in a very good place either, deep in a hole I wasn’t sure I’d ever escape, feeling as vulnerable and alone as I ever have. But, one word at a time, in David’s story I found little parts of my own, and in David’s journey toward healing I found the confidence and strength that I, too, would one day find my way back out. I eventually did, and I think readers of this book, in their own way, may have a similar experience. Inspiration can be very powerful.

I also learned that David is one of the nicest guys on the planet. Every time we speak or email each other, without fail, he thanks me over and over and over again for helping him out. Well, I don’t think I ever really told David that that as much as he thinks I was helping him, for much of that time it was really the other way around. By trusting me to help share his life with others, he was really helping me recover mine. Today, David is proud to call himself a PTSD survivor, and as the very first reader of his book, I am proud to call him my friend and brother, and prouder still to have been fortunate enough to be the first person One Base at a Time helped find healing.

So buddy, this time it’s my turn: Thank you, David. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

David Mellor will be signing copies on June 11 @ 5:30 p.m.at the Red Sox team store at Fenway.. Glenn Stout’s most recent book is the New York Times bestseller The Pats.  His last baseball title, The Selling of the Babe, winner of SABR’s Larry Ritter Award, provided the definitive account of the sale of Babe Ruth and its impact on the game. www.glennstout.net

SWINGING, SINGING TONY C

 

This story first appeared in the May issue of Boston Baseball

There was more to it than “Little Red Scooter.”

While it once appeared that Tony Conigliaro would take his place along alongside Foxx, Williams and Yaz in the pantheon of Boston sluggers, for a brief period of time it seemed as likely he’d be on Billboard’s “Hot 100” as in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

At the end of the 1964 season, his rookie year, Conigliaro, only nineteen and never particularly shy, jumped on stage with the band at the Escape Lounge, a Hopkinton nightclub, and started to sing. A rep from Mercury Records heard him, and before long former Boston DJ turned promotor Ed Penney partnered up with the budding young heartthrob. Just before Christmas, swinging Tony C was singing in a recording studio in New York.  

Penney was serious and didn’t skimp. Over the course of two days, Tony C, backed by session musicians, cut four songs. The two A-sides, baseball-themed “Playing the Field” and “Little Red Scooter,” were penned by Ernie Campagna, an East Boston native who later went on to a long career as an executive in the recording industry. Only nineteen himself, Campagna was already the musical director of WMEX.  He’d been enamored with music since he inherited his grandmother’s piano, which had to be hoisted into a third-floor window of the family’s East Boston triple-decker. Penney had already Selected, “Little Red Scooter,” a song Campagna wrote while in high school. But Campagna also knew Tony C as a ballplayer. He had played Pony League baseball against Conigliaro and remembers him arriving for a game behind the wheel of a white convertible. Tony’s father was in the car too, but Campagna recalls “He was already Tony C,” a kid who already had a “man body,” handsome, charismatic and already ticketed for the big leagues. When he learned Penney was recording Tony C, in just a few days he wrote the baseball pun-filled tune “Playing the Field” which he refers to today, jokingly, as “My Rhapsody in Blue.” Due to his role at WMEX, however, Campagna wrote under the pseudonym, “Ernie Camp.”

Tony C’s burgeoning music career was no joke and Penney pulled out all the stops for the session, making use of some of the industry’s top talent. Producer Al Kasha was a veteran Brill Building songwriter/producer who later won Academy Awards for co-writing the themes to the films The Poseidon Adventure (“The Morning After”) and The Towering Inferno (“We May Never Love Like this Again”). The arranger was another well respected figure, Charlie Calello, the bassist for The Four Seasons. Calello eventually worked on over 100 Billboard chart records, including Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.” And the B-Sides on those first two releases were no less impressive. “Why Don’t They Understand” penned by Joe Henderson and Jack Fishman, had been a hit in 1957 for George Hamilton IV, and “I Can’t Get Over You,” was credited to Edna Lewis and Ernest Salters – she also wrote the Connie Francis hit “Lipstick on my Collar.”

Penney thought the recording industry was eager for “a real All-American boy.” Penney found contemporary rock and roll “sickening,” saying of Tony C that “unlike so many Rock ‘n Roll singers, he isn’t a bad singer,” adding that even “The Beatles look mild now. There are the Zombies, the Detergents and lately The Pretty Things and the Fairies.” Kasha compared Tony’s voice to Ricky Nelson’s and predicted “Why Don’t They Understand,” might sell 100,000 copies.

Penney and Tony C created their own label “Penn Tone” and a short time later released “Playing the Field” in the Boston market. The girls went ga-ga, and within six weeks it sold upwards of 15,000 copies, earning far more than the cost of the session and pressings.

Those numbers got the attention of RCA records. The Beatles had invaded and every record label in the country was looking for young talent. Tony C had it all, and they signed him a four-year contract with a $25,000 guarantee, greater than his $17,500 salary with the Red Sox, big money at a time when rookies were lucky to earn $5,000 and the major league average was  only about $15,000. The contract was structured so that Tony C’s musical responsibilities were confined to the time period between the World Series and spring training, because, as Tony explained “You never know what can happen in baseball.” Those words, sadly, would prove prophetic.

For a while, it looked as if RCA had cashed in. In 1966 “Little Red Scooter” was another local hit and Tony C headed back to the studio to cut a third single. The A-side, “When You Take More Than You Give,” was written by one-time teen crooner Jimmy Curtiss, who later penned both the cult classic "Psychedelic Situation," and King Harvest’s 1973 hit “Dancing in the Moonlight.” The B-side, “I Was There,” was no throwaway. Written by Brill Building legends Gerry Goffin and Carole King, it was also recorded by Lenny Welch, Paul Anka and Johnny Mathis.

But musical tastes were changing, and soon all the shaggy-haired groups Penney found “sickening,” were selling way more records than guys who crooned like Tony C. Despite appearing on The Merv Griffin Show and Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, the record flopped outside the Boston market and RCA cut Tony C loose.

It was back to baseball – mostly. Tony C had led the AL in home runs with 32 in 1965 and became the youngest hitter ever to hit one hundred home runs. He cut one more record before the 1967 season, backed by The All-Night Workers, a Syracuse University garage band that had recently relocated to Boston. But before they did, in 1965, they had recorded a song written by Lou Reed and John Cale, later of the Velvet Underground (Reed had attended Syracuse University and friends with the band). The song, “Why Don’t You Smile,” allegedly featured Cale on guitar.

 “Limited Man,” the A-side, was written by Bill Carr, who also co-wrote the Monkees’ “Hold On Girl,” and Joan Meltzer, who later became a pioneering female DJ. The B-side featured Carr’s “Please Play Our Song.”

The 45 was released just as the “Impossible Dream” was coming into focus, only a few weeks before the August beaning that changed Tony C’s life, and reached number one locally. But after the beaning, sales of “Limited Man,” which included the haunting line “I don’t wanna life my life as limited man,” fell flat – after the beaning, Tony C was a “limited man,” his baseball career at risk. As Tony C sat out the 1968 season he briefly tried to restart his musical career, appearing on Merv Griffin again with The All-Night Workers, covering The Rascal’s “I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore.”  

By then, clean-cut swinging Tony C was an anomaly in the music world. He returned to the Red Sox, was traded to California, retired in 1971, made a brief comeback with the Red Sox in 1975 and then, after recurring vision issues, retired from baseball for good. He cut one final demo, by Ellison Chase and Bill Haberman, (who among other sings also penned Ram Jam’s “Black Betty”), “Poetry” backed by the instrumental “Midnight in Boston.” But Tony C’s time on stage was nearing the end. Hits of any kind were no longer in his future.

After becoming a San Francisco sportscaster, Tony C’s heart was still in Boston. He returned in 1982 to audition as a Red Sox broadcaster only to suffer a heart attack that put him into a coma and resulted in brain damage. Two more previously recorded songs were released privately under the direction of Dionne Warwick for a 1983 fundraiser at Symphony Hall. Both were written by Michael Gately, who recorded two albums himself, and Robert John, who later wrote and recorded “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and in 1979 scored a number one hit with “Sad Eyes.” One was a cover of the Whispers’ “You Fill My Life with Music,” the other “We Can Make the World A Whole Lot Brighter,” previously recorded by television’s “The Brady Bunch.”

By then, swinging, singing Tony C’s world had grown dim. He passed away in 1990.

Recordings of many of Tony C’s songs can be found on YouTube, and Glenn Stout’s 1990 profile of Tony C, “Summers of Love,” can be found online at thestacksreader.com. Glenn is the author of The New York Times’ bestseller The Pats. www.glennstout.net

OUCH!!! or Baseball Hurts

By Glenn Stout

And they say football is dangerous.

Now that I’m entering the later innings, let me tell you, the injuries have added up. Each morning every little ache and pain and scar is like looking at an old box score of my body. These days I generally start at my feet and work my way up the roster.

Right heel #1, 1970, age 11. Missed part of a season with a bone bruise. Those Converse All-Stars looked cool, but they were hell on the feet.

Right heel #2, 1996, age 38. While playing Men’s Senior League Baseball, my right Achilles started bothering me - like “bring me to tears” bothering me. Kept playing and developed a calcium deposit on the back of my heel, and now my right foot is a half-inch longer than my left. Makes shoe buying fun.

Left ankle, 1972, age 13.The first year I was allowed to wear genuine metal spikes. I’d read all about Ty Cobb and was a terror. Then, while sliding into third, I foolishly did not try to spike the third baseman. He jumped for a high throw and landed on my ankle, leaving two lovely diagonal puncture wounds. Since I’m allergic to tetanus shots, this was almost life threatening. Note to enemies: If you want to kill me, just stab me with a rusty nail.

Right knee, 1967, age 8. I’d slide into the three maple tree in the backyard that served as bases. You might notice that in the big leagues they don’t use trees as bases, probably because when you slide into trees, THEY DO NOT MOVE. This explains the small bend in my right leg.

Right hip, 1971, age 12. I liked to slide. A lot. In my last year of Little League I had a seeping open wound on my hip all season, and now a lovely circular scar.

Left hand, 1969, age 10. Went a whole season with a black and swollen left hand because I was a catcher and Jay Greiner threw harder than Sam McDowell. Our Little League coach finally gave me a falsie to put in my mitt, which didn’t really help, but inspired puberty and caused me to look at Jay’s sister. A lot.

Right elbow, 1970, age 11. My first year pitching, and my elbow would swell up like Sandy Koufax’s. But I was a gamer and Mom swathed it in ice after every game. Hitting other kids with pitches that caused them to quit baseball forever made it all worthwhile.

Right side, circa 1998, age 39. Got hit with a pitch in Senior League.  Shook it off.  Went home and almost threw up. It didn’t hurt, but the bruise on my right side was as big as a dinner plate and the color of concord grapes. Over the next few weeks it turned many other colors.

Left side and left elbow, 2001, age 41. My reflexes were starting to slip, and a one-hopper right back at me came off the baked earth like a howitzer. I pinned it between my elbow and my side, and threw the guy out, but it felt like I’d been folded in half. The stitches on the ball left a bruise on the inside of my elbow that dovetailed seamlessly into a bruise with more stitches on my ribs. Very attractive.

Right elbow, 2002, age 42. A broken limb on a tree in my backyard hung down like a guillotine. I put an eyelet in a ball, tied a rope to it, and threw it into the tree until it wrapped around the limb and I pulled it down. But that took about 200 throws. I strained my ulnar ligament and lost my curve ball.

Right shoulder, 1975, age 17. The Big One. After a summer in Australia as a foreign exchange student before my senior year, I played in a fall league, threw too hard too fast, and got a sore shoulder. I stole some leftover Percocet my brother had after his wisdom teeth were pulled and kept pitching. After a few games like this, after the pills wore off, I wanted to amputate my arm. The result? A Class-4 rotator tear.  Didn’t play baseball for the next 17 years, but did learn to comb my hair left-handed. Also started writing. See, IT’S ALL BASEBALL’S FAULT!!!

Right temple, 1966, age 8. First year of T-Ball.  We went undefeated, usually destroying the opposition by scores of 37-12, but before one practice some idiot discarded chunks of concrete block all over the field and we had to clear it off. As soon as our coach said “Don’t try to throw a chunk of concrete over the backstop,” Dave Mayer, our Aaron Judge, did just that. That chunk landed on my right temple and I went down like a cartoon character. I ended up with a concussion, a half-dozen stitches and a scar I’ve since used to track my receding hairline.

I’d do it all again. Except for the Percocet.

 

First published in Boston Baseball. Glenn Stout’s most recent book, with Richard Johnson, is the New York Times and Boston Globe best seller, The Pats.