| Blackie Sherrod: Erudition erupts where some least expect it 04/05/2001 By Blackie Sherrod / The Dallas Morning News Bless Eddie Barker's heart, is all I wish to say. We have discovered another common bond, heretofore hidden beneath a stack of common newsgathering labor.
Mr. Barker, for you fuzzcheeks, is a former radio and television newsman around these parts, somewhat of an electronic pioneer who rose to national prominence in the Kennedy assassination. We have that experience in common also, although only one of us rose to national prominence, dang it.
Eddie Barker now is ensconced in an East Texas cave, from which he occasionally emerges to lay in supplies and issue righteous growls at civilization. Or to mail enlightening messages to old pals. Such as the one that arrived here recently, exposing the commonality of two old goats.
There was a recent occasion in this space to review the delights of old-time baseball spring training and the Candide approach of its chroniclers – the traditional discovery of springtime rookies destined to set the baseball world ablaze, or maybe not.
There was a bungling attempt here to recall lines from a favorite but forgotten poem by a forgotten pressbox poet. Mr. Barker is another who glories in the old rhymers, and, with many a cheery grunt, he plunged into his treasured files and came up with the entire poem, plus its author.
Mind you, this work dates from the era when pressboxers, even in Florida spring training, wore suits and vests and bow ties and straw katys. In other words, about the time of the Piltdown Man.
•
Mr. Barker identified the poet as John Kieran, and he is somewhat of a story in himself. Mr. Kieran was a New York scribe, several cuts above public perception of same. He had an hour's commuter ride from his home to the City each morning and used the time to further his education, on everything from foreign languages to ornithology.
Late in his quiet career, the slight, gray, bucktoothed fellow became a regular on the radio and early television show Information Please, a delightful production with Clifton Fadiman fronting the likes of Mr. Kieran, Oscar Levant and Franklin P. Adams answering questions sent in by listeners, anything from Hamlet's soliloquy to the mating habits of the sphenisciformes. To illustrate how long ago, there was nary a four-letter word allowed.
•
At any rate, Mr. Barker forwarded John Kieran's entire poem in its correct form:
Blooming Rookies
They have gathered in the training camps – the rookies blithe and gay –
From the far Pacific border, from the edge of Baffin's Bay,
From the tank towns of Missouri, from the mountain and the plain,
From the cotton fields of Texas and the logging camps of Maine.
For a brief but joyous season they will fill the sporting page
As the "marvels of the diamonds" and "the wonders of the age,"
And in every camp in Dixie – it is safe to lay a bet –
There'll be Speakers by the dozen; there'll be Hornsbys by the set.
For the morning glories blossom just as springtime hits the trail,
But when April melts in Maytime they begin to fade and fail,
And the lad who "looked like Heilmann" meets the guy who "hit like Cobb"
On the way to Niles, Ohio, and his former plumbing job.
They will scatter from the training camps – the rookies (not so gay),
With a ticket to the minor leagues at very minor pay,
And the bird who "looked like Rube Waddell in all his golden prime"
Will be riding on a reaper in the Good Old Summer Time.
•
My favorite Kieran story: Once, before he gained television prominence, John was somehow invited to give the baccalaureate address at an exalted Ivy League university, thereby causing a near revolt by some seniors. The very idea! A lowly sports writer, the dregs of journalism, occupying the hallowed podium before proud products of such higher learning! A disgrace! An insult to the graduates!
Aware of the protests, Mr. Kieran nevertheless accepted, made the trip and quietly delivered the address. In Latin.
Blackie Sherrod is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News.
|
