Abner & Baseball

Abner Jones shared a name and the love of the game with the man credited with owning both first: Abner Doubleday. Doubleday lived in the 1800's was a general in the Union Army and has been credited with inventing baseball although that is now disputed. Abner Jones was born in in the late 1800's, lived in Akron Ohio and no one disputes his love for the game. "Ab" was a postal supervisor who worked the night shift his whole career so he could listen to the Cleveland Indians radio broadcast in the afternoon via the voices of Jimmy Dudley and Jack Grainey. Ab was my step grandfather but the only one I knew because the genuine articles either absconded or otherwise moved on before I came on the scene.

My first recollection of Ab and the Cleveland Indians comes from my summer visits to Akron each summer starting at about age 7 (1945). We established a bond sitting in his kitchen listening to the Indians while he played Solitaire...he carried that on for the remaining 32 years he lived. Some things changed: he eventually retired and moved to my home town, and the Indians started playing night games but he was still playing Solitaire at the kitchen table and listening to the Indians.

My connection with the Indians deepened in 1948 when the Indians made the World Series which was big news even in my part of rural Ohio. I had also started playing third base on a rag tag team in our town. (Little League did not exist there so we did a bit of "barnstorming" around other small towns playing teams with a wide array of ages). I mention third base because Ab quickly labeled me "Kenny Keltner" who was the Indians third baseman at the time.

I can still name the Indians starting lineup and most of the pitching staff and reserves. They have a stronger presence in my recollections than some aunts, uncles and second cousins. Going beyond the Indian connection, Ab was what we hope a grandfather would be: a fan who attended all my sporting events, offered a good conversation over a coke, a solid friend who passed on to my parents only the good things I did. Considering these two childhood devotions I have decided to do an ethereal like tribute to "Ab"and the 1948 World Series team by reprising the roles key players filled in that season and how they moved on in their lives after baseball. You would have to be an Indians fan to care!

(TV coverage of the 1948 World Series is an interesting sidebar. The 1947 World Series had been televised in the east but there was no coaxial cable among cities outside the eastern seaboard. Westinghouse Broadcasting joined with Martin Aviation (later Lockheed Martin) for the 1948 World Series to create a connection between the east and the midwest region since it matched Cleveland and the Boston Braves. They did so by retrofitting a B-29 with a receiver and re-transmitter flying 20,000 feet above somewhere near Pittsburgh. It was in essence a satellite creating a network of the two regions. It reportedly worked fairly well other than some electronic interference in the Cleveland area.)

Stay tuned!