From Andy Strasberg to Jerry Levias

Over the past week I have had the pleasure of touching base with long time San Diego Padre exective Andy Strasberg and former Houston Oiler Jerry Levias.  In neither case are the team associations I just listed signficant.

Strasburg was in Houston to speak to the local Society of American Baseball Research chapter on the occasion of it being 50 years since his good friend Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's single season home run record when he hit 61 in 1961.

Andy was here not to detail the quest of 1961, but rather relate how a hero worshiping teenager and the Yankee slugger developed a close bond and ultimately a friendship that lasted until Roger's death to cancer in 1985 here in Houston at the M.D. Anderson Cancer center.

If you can find a copy of the book, "Baseball Lives" written by Mike Bryan and published by Pantheon in 1989 the story he related to the SABR members is there.  It is a classic tale of how the outfielder who was described as moody and aloof by the New York media struck up a wonderful relationship with a fan that lasted long after Maris left the game. 

On Monday I flew to Dallas and SMU University to be on hand for an airing of the Fox Sports special, "Jerry Levias- A Marked Man" as part of Black History Month.  Patti Smith and I had produced the program several years ago after handed the project upon the departure of Tony Martinez from Fox.  Tony had done or supervised much of the groundwork, but it was our job to turn the raw material into a feature.

Having not grown up in an area of the country where racial bigotry was not as obvious as it had been in the South, as I did research and listened to the interviews deciding which pieces to incorporate into our allotted 44 minute content time I was amazed.  I was amazed at what Jerry Levias had to endure.  He was the first black scholarship athlete in the Southwest Conference a full 20 years after Jackie Robinson had signed his first contract with major league baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers.  I was in college in the North during the same period Levias was being a pioneer in the SWC.  I had been rooting for black athletes for years following Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson with my favorite Cincinnati Reds...and big Walt Bellamy with the Indiana Hoosiers Big 10 basketball team.  In Indiana I had no idea how little things had progessed in Texas or in the neighboring Southeastern Conference.  My high school's football and basketball teams had had plenty of black athletes for years.

So when Patti and I started working on the Levias story we knew we would be educating a whole lot of folks and not just telling a story. 

On Monday when the program was shown to those on hand it was obvious in the question and answer session following that many had been moved.  Many of Jerry's former classmates at SMU only after the viewing admitted they had no idea what Jerry had to endure.  There were death threats.  There were many obscenely offensive letters.  There were many dirty plays on the field. 

But Jerry Levias hung tough.  As years went on problems were reduced.  Jerry won the war after some very tough battles. 

Roger Maris did not have to overcome racial predujice--only the sports followers who did not feel him worthy of challenging the great Babe Ruth.  But he was under the gun in another way just the same.  Levias had to overcome something far worse and when he made it he represented a whole race.  Maris' was a far more simple story.  He was simply a friend.

Both had great stories.  Both stories were hilighted in the last week.  This was a great week to be in my business.