All right, for a change of pace let’s put us in a good mood with a nice story.
I was reading an article the other day at sportsbroadcastingjournal.com by David A. Halberstam celebrating the 100th anniversary of Chuck Thompson’s birth.
Thompson was the fabulous, long-time voice of the Baltimore Orioles who died in 2005.
In 1993, Thompson won the Ford Frick Award given by the Baseball Hall of Fame and he shared a baseball story during his acceptance speech.
He talked about how one night, famed manager Casey Stengel had a few nightcaps in the Yankees’ hotel bar. Afterward, Casey hopped on to the elevator to go back to his room. In those days, elevators were run manually by an elevator operator who took guests to their desired floor using a crank to start and stop the elevator.
When Stengel got into the elevator, he handed the operator a baseball and told him that he wanted to give it to an underprivileged boy, autographed by as many players as he could. So Stengel asked the operator to have each of the players who’d walk into the elevator later that night autograph the ball. When Stengel arrived for breakfast the next morning, the elevator man had just finished his overnight shift and gave him the baseball back. Casey looked at it and saw four signatures from Yankees players.
Stengel wrote the names down on a napkin and proceeded to fine each one of them $50 for breaking curfew.