The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

Every Douglas Addams aficionado knows what the title means: In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 is that (cryptic) answer.  And any baseball fan knows that 42 is perhaps the most important number in a sport unequaled in its love of stats and numerics.

I’m 42.  I have loved baseball for as long as I can remember.  I was a pretty good 3^rd baseman and without a doubt the worst hitter our league had likely ever seen.  Our local team the Padres were hopeless cellar dwellers for most of my time living in San Diego.  But I didn’t care.  I collected the cards, followed the standings, fill out box scores at home watching televised games on Saturday afternoons.  A game that’s often mocked for its more boring attributes was one I found simple and meditative and beautiful.

Jackie Robinson was probably the first black person I ever read about, and likely the window into American racial politics for this middle-class kid in a lily-white suburb.  And it’s a tremendous story of bravery through stoicism, conviction, and alliance building, a model of living by example in the face of unthinkable pressure.

So while I’m not sure if the recently-released movie 42 (Helgeland) is great cinema, it is great baseball and, to these eyes, the best biopic of the sport ever made.  Fans might quickly jump to The Pride of the Yankees (1942, Wood) a film that, at every turn, tries to avoid baseball as much as possible.  Never for a second do I believe Lou Gehrig as a cornpone Mr. Deeds clone as Gary Cooper portrays him.  He talks about his love for the game the same way he does his love for his mother—in a way that reeks of Americana clichés but has no appreciation for the sport itself (the film rarely shows on-field action except in redundant montages).  Instead, the film concentrates on the marriage of the Gehrigs, reducing his story to that of a nice guy who gets very sick who happened to wear a Yankee uniform.

 I have a knee-jerk revulsion of films that treat historical anecdote as drama (Argo being the most recent well-lauded example).  Just because something “happened” doesn’t mean it’s inherently dramatic.  Drama at its best is not just suspenseful proceedings; it should shine a window into the human condition.  Yes, the last 3 minutes of The Pride of the Yankees are moving, but that can't erase the 2 hours of tedium and sentimentality that precedes it.  The film never tells us why Gehrig was great; it just assumes as much and is content to tell us its sad story.  True, in 1942, the sting of his death (only 4 years earlier) was still fresh and no doubt informed the praise it got at the time.  But the ongoing devotion the film has now is perplexing to me, because it’s not particularly good drama and it’s not good baseball.  Plus, it suffers from what I call “Chungking Express syndrome”—when a film plays a single song so incessantly, you hope you never hear it again as long as you live (in this case, Irving Berlin’s otherwise lovely “Always”).

42 has baseball chops and can be forgiven its hokier moments by convincingly portraying why Robinson mattered.  More than anyone, all baseball history can be divided into pre-and post-Jackie eras.  He is the sport’s emotional and moral pivot point, and the film is successful in not making him a saint nor diminishing his very substantial contribution either.  The cast is uniformly fine, with Chadwick Boseman and Nicole Beharie acquitting themselves very well in the thankless roles of the Robinsons.  Lucas Black makes a touching Pee Wee Reese, and his simple act of comraderie with Robinson in front of a stadium full of his fellow southerners is even more powerful than I had imagined it to be when reading about it 35 years ago.

But the real surprises are against-type portraits by Alan Tudyek and Harrison Ford.  This is Ford’s first big excursion into character actor territory, and he’s quite good, immersing himself into the unlikely role of Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey, conveying both his practical savvy and passionate sensibility when it came to changing a game that he loved too much to see compromised by racism.  It would have been easy for the film to opaquely suggest the myriad of ways that Robinson was taunted and vilified by fans and players alike, but the showdown with Tudyek’s Ben Chapman (Philadelphia Phillies manager) pulls absolutely no punches.  It’s a horrifying, virulent scene of verbal abuse, painful to watch, especially when you remember that in baseball, you step up to the plate hundreds of times in a season.  Up until then, it’s a well-done but fairly standard film, but that scene conveys the emotional stakes of the story in stark relief, and the emotional toll it took on Robinson in a very real, unrelenting way.

Of course, this isn’t the first film about Robinson.  The Jackie Robinson Story (Green, 1950) told it previously, with Robinson himself in the lead.  It’s a low-budget affair, more thematically on-the-nose, leapfrogging from one incident to another, but it covers some territory 42 doesn’t (especially with his minor league vs. major league career) and is worth seeking out, if only for the curiosity factor of seeing a biopic with its star also its subject.  But 42 is more visceral, and more appreciative of the larger historical context conveyed.  

Because ultimately, 42 is not just a biopic about Robinson.  It’s a treatise on the sport itself, and the change one person can make.  I’ve never been to the MLB Hall of Fame, though I hope to one day.  But I have been to the Negro League Hall of Fame in Kansas City, and I found it a beautiful experience, in the memorializing of a separate, unequal institution and the personalities who excelled in it because they loved the game.  I have a hard time believing Cooperstown will be as moving.

When I was married, I had a falling away from baseball.  She had been a sports widow in her previous marriage, and there were some things that mattered more to me than indulging in a game, no matter how good-natured she might be about it.  I wanted her happy.  But now that I’m alone, I find myself back at the park again, when my Padres play the Giants.  I have no idea who any of the players are these days, and I don’t follow the standings or the careers the way I used to.  But I still love watching a game—its mechanics and its poetry.  It’s something I didn’t realize I’d missed so much.  And 42 came at the perfect time to remind me of that affection.

My Top 10 narrative team sport movies
1. Bull Durham (Shelton, 1988)
2. The Bad News Bears (Ritchie, 1976)
3. Slap Shot (Hill, 1977)
4. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (Gowariker, 2001)
5. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings (Badham, 1976)
6. Moneyball (Miller, 2011)
7. Friday Night Lights (Berg, 2004)
8. Miracle (O'Connor, 2004)
9. He Got Game (Lee, 1998)
10. A League of Their Own (Marshall, 1992)

Honorable mention: The football games in the last reel each of The Freshman (Newmeyer/Taylor, 1925), Horse Feathers (McLeod, 1932), and MASH (Altman, 1970)

This is flagged with a Bad Postmark label because you'll notice that the card at the top doesn't have one at all!  When the USPS issues a new stamp, you can either have a First-Day-of-Issue premade cover sent to you (a mass-produced envelope, typically), or you can create something yourself and send it in to have it hand-stamped--my M.O.  However, these two are often at completely different addresses!  So with the Take Me Out to the Ballgame issue (Scott #4341), I had the card ready to go, but sent it to the wrong Postmaster--so they sent everything back to me umarked.  By then, the deadline to resubmit them to the right location had passed, so now I have a lot of baseball postcards like the Ebbets Field card, waiting for another chance (and another stamp) but otherwise pristine and idle.

The Jackie Robinson stamp is #2013, while Lou Gehrig is #2417.  The Ebbets Field and Yankee Stadium stamps are Scott #3510 & 3513 respectively.  Gary Cooper is #4421 and Han Solo is #4143l.  The flag that constitutes the final FDC on the page is #4228. 

Overkill

Now here’s an example of the bad postmark being 100% my fault.  You may remember the Toy Story card I had discussed earlier.  I really loved this assembly, since the Gene Autry stamp and the earlier science fiction stamp matched Woody and Buzz Lightyear perfectly.

I was incredibly surprised when the USPS issued two sets of Pixar stamps, though.  And when the first set came out with a set of 5 that included Buzz but not Woody, I knew Woody would be in the subsequent year’s issue.  So, now was an opportunity to get both on the face of the postcard, too!

Big Mistake.  As you can see, what was previously a wonderful looking postcard now is now an ugly, cluttered mess.  Part of the reason is the trend of the USPS of having their illustrated postmarks be much wider and denser with the ink.  

But the larger failing was mine.  The card would’ve been much better with the two separate Pixar cancellations on the back of the card, but the thought of having them both on the front was too irresistible, and what resulted in the long run is a big old garbled mess.  You can still make the images out, but the impact of the first combo of stamps is now mostly lost.

Here’s an example of one issue that I did right.

When the Quilts of Gee’s Bend issue came out, this stamp worked uncannily well.  Using it was a no-brainer.  So when Sinatra came out two years later, where should I put it?  Logic dictated the front but I couldn’t think of anywhere it could go without losing the effect from the previous stamp.  So I did this instead:

Putting the Sinatra stamp on the back meant I could add the drug abuse stamp without it cluttering things up further (Otto Preminger’s 1955 film was one of the first major Hollywood productions to deal with the subject).  Later, when the Jazz stamp came out, I added it to the reverse, too.  
 
I’ve made other similar judgment calls on both sides, but while I’m glad I have a scan of what it looked like before, the Toy Story example is the one I still regret the most.  

Buzz and Woody are Scott #s  4555 and 4680 respectively.  Sinatra is Scott # 4265, the Prevent Drug Abuse stamp is # 1428, and the Jazz stamp # 4503.

Here Comes the Smudge

You already know about my first encounter with the USPS and first-day-of-issue postmarks.  But the cover I scanned in that post was one I bought onsite.  However, on that day, I also brought some classic film star postcards myself to get my own postmarks—the first time I’d ever tried this.

Note all the black ink smudges on the left side of each card.  As you can see, this was not such a great idea. 

That day, the postal employees with the cancellation stamp were in the lobby of San Francisco’s magnificent Castro theater, and as I gave them the postcards, they stamped each one individually.  However, the ink on the cancellations didn’t have a chance to dry before they handed the cards back to me in a stack, ready to move on to to the next customer.  As a result, ink from the back of one postcard (where the postage stamp was) ended up partially defacing the front of another postcard (with the image) in the stack.  If I had known better, I would’ve put the postage stamp on the front, with the image, so even though the cancellation might still get a little smudged, it would only end up marking up the back of the next postcard, which nobody would see. 

I don’t know how the Postmaster stations handle it now, with the large volumes of covers and cards they must receive for each new issue, but I’ve never had a problem with the cards smudging merely from touching each other (and believe me, on some issues, I’ve given them an enormous amount of cards to stamp).  Sometimes, I imagine some sad little postal worker at a small table in a windowless room, holding a cancellation stamp, inking it, and then pressing down on one mass-produced envelope after another.  And another.  And another.  I know my postcards are unique in this respect, since they’re created by hand, different from anything else this employee would encounter.  Do they represent a welcome change of pace to this lonely worker?  Do they enjoy my attempts at creativity in assembling the cards?  Or is it just another part of the job they look forward to putting behind them?

Yes, I actually wonder about these things.

Harold Lloyd is Scott #2825 and Rudolph Valentino # 2819.

Smudge Dread

Unlike the last installment on bad postmarks, sometimes they aren’t anyone’s fault, but just a byproduct of the materials you’re working with.  Above are two postmarks that went very bad, for obvious reasons.

Long before I began my First-Day-of-Issue efforts, I had hundreds upon hundreds of postcards of movie posters and one-sheets.  These were typically on regular card stock.  However, once I started adding additional cards, buying them specifically in anticipation of certain stamps scheduled to come out, I started to run into this problem:

These postcards were picked up at tourist locations rather than stationary stores or postcard shops, so they have glossier finishes, making the postmark stamp unworkable.  This isn’t true of all such postcards, though, and some that appear to have a glossy finish work just fine, so it’s always a calculated risk.

Sometimes, I solve the problem by doing this:

However, this can get a bit pricey so I don’t resort to it too often—only when I think a postcard’s finish might otherwise get me into trouble. 

Stamp of Disapproval

Sometimes, things don’t always go as planned when it comes to getting the postmarks back from the USPS—whether through a mistake on their end or lack of planning on mine.

For the James Dean issue back in 1996, it never occurred to me that I needed to ask for a special postmark.  I didn’t for the Marilyn issue the year before and they all came out uniform, clean, and sharp-looking.  But lo-and-behold, when I got them back, a majority of them looked like the one above: no special design and no indication that it’s even a First-Day-of-Issue.  As generic and undistinctive a postmark as you can imagine.

Curiously, a few of them were given a different postmark, as you can see below.  This design looks great.  Unfortunately, none of the ones with the stamp on the front of the postcard with the image were given this nice postmark.

So clearly, since both postmarks were applied to my shipment, it was the choice of the person in the Postmaster’s office to use the crappy stamp for most of my cards, perhaps thinking it didn’t matter.

Now, every single time I send in a collection to be stamped, I include the following message on a post-it on every single rubber-banded bundle of cards:

Please Apply Illustrated First-Day-of-Issue Postmark on EACH card.  Thank You.

Of course, with many of these James Dean cards, the damage is done, so they sit together in a box, of negligible interest or value, testament to a lesson learned.