Dodgers Diaries

I had the opportunity over the weekend to take in Rare Films From The Baseball Hall of Fame , Dave Filipelli’s excellent compilation of obscure clips, commercials, and interviews from days gone by. Filipelli is film curator at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, where he shows each year’s compilation one night per year. He also takes the show on the road to Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art in Evanston, Ill. for one night only.

It’s not the kind of thing to plan a vacation around, especially since it’s rarely announced very far in advance. But if you’re in Chicago and don’t know about this, mark you calendar for early June 2011. There is a trailer at the bottom of this post.

The 2010 edition was Ohio-heavy (not surprising given the editor’s origins), but a nonetheless fascinating look back at baseball. Best of all was perhaps Mike Wallace’s interview with a recently retired Bob Feller. I hadn’t realized that Feller was among the first players to lash out against the reserve clause, though I did recall he was the first leader of the Players’ Association. Wallace grills him like Feller was some kind of lying corporate executive, asking him to name names (this was in 1957, just two years removed from Joe McCarthy’s downfall, remember) of fellow players who would join Feller in his opposition to the reserve clause.

And of course this being the 1950s, the show was heavily sponsored by Philip Morris, with Wallace exhorting viewers to smoke their “man’s” cigarettes. Interesting to note that the average major league salary in 1957 was $18,000: a princely sum in those days, but hardly on par with what major leaguers would come to earn in the free agent era.

Gone too are the days when the baseball encyclopedia was small enough to be given away free with every pack of ten Gillette razors. Gillette, a baseball sponsor since 1910, did TV ads throughout the 50s featuring active players and managers like Roy Campanella, Casey Stengel, Pee Wee Reese, Jerry Coleman and Whitey Ford badly reading their lines into the camera. In an era where the media tried to downplay the origins of Latino players (Roberto Clemente was constantly called Bobby to his dismay) Luis Aparicio recites his lines in Spanish.

There’s also an uncomfortable moment where Vin Scully appears alongside Willie Mays -- uncomfortable not because of Giants-Dodgers rivalry, but because Scully says “That’s my boy,” to Willie. There probably wasn’t anything racist about it at the time, but the modern viewer will still cringe a little bit.

Ted Williams yawns in the middle of an interview with broadcaster Bob Wolff, but also shows a side I hadn’t seen before: A guy who was comfortable, even amiable with a member of the media, but who did not pull any punches about those who misquoted him or told untruths. You get an impression of a man who was victimized by a few unscrupulous sportswriters, rather than one who hated the fans, which is how Williams is so often portrayed.

The 1969 season preview of the Montreal Expos is a hilarious (in retrospect) look back at the summer of love and Montreal’s infatuation with having a major league baseball team (how that would fade in just three decades). Ted Kluszewski pitches Gillete razors in his trademark sleeveless vest. Razors and a pack of 10 blades cost $1 (I still can’t bring myself to buy the 24 pack of Mach 3s for $50 at Costco), but Right Guard was 79 cents, almost as much as it is today.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL