When It Comes to Love for the Game, He’s Batting 1.000

We’re at the top of the stairs inside Joe L. Brown’s home when, suddenly, much of the history of baseball engulfs me. It is almost jolting in its impact. Row after row of framed and autographed pictures of ballplayers jump off the walls.

Ruth . . . Williams . . . Gehrig . . . Musial . . . DiMaggio . . . Aaron . . .

“This is Mazeroski’s homer,” Brown says, pointing to a photo showing the Pittsburgh Pirate second baseman still in the batter’s box but having already connected with the fateful pitch that ended up over the left field wall in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 that won the 1960 World Series for the Pirates. “The ball is up there someplace,” Brown says, pointing toward the left field wall in one of the photos. . . . “Yogi Berra is playing left field.”

The photo is one of several he has of Mazeroski’s moment of baseball history, with the others showing Mazeroski, cap in hand, careening wildly and joyfully around the bases as he grasps what he has done.

With another baseball season upon us, I had come over to Brown’s Dana Point home to talk some baseball. Now 75 and with 43 years in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization behind him, including more than 20 years as general manager, Brown is one of those “baseball men” who has seen the game close up. He celebrated two World Series while Pirates general manager. All he got to do the rest of the time was watch players like Clemente and Mays and Aaron and Snider and Koufax. “I fell in love with baseball when I was about 9 years old,” he says. “I fell in love with the players, actually. The players were my heroes, I just loved them.”

The son of famed comic actor Joe E. Brown, young Joe’s first exposure was with the San Francisco Missions minor-league team, run by a friend of his father. When the Missions came to Southern California, where the Browns lived, young Joe would dress up in uniform, sit on the bench and soak up baseball. Other times, he would take train trips with the team up and down the Pacific Coast.

In 1935, when he hurt his arm throwing, his father sent him to a doctor in St. Louis. “I spent the whole summer living in a hotel room that adjoined Pat and Dizzy Dean’s. I was 16 years old. You think that wasn’t something? Dad said to Pat and Dizzy, ‘Now, I want you to look after my son.’ After Dad left, Pat said to me, “I’ve got two kids to look after now--you and Diz.”

I asked Brown why baseball fans are so nostalgic. “It’s a game of nostalgia,” he says. “It’s a game of, ‘Do you remember?’ It’s built upon memories. It’s built upon Cobb and Grover Cleveland Alexander striking out Tony Lazzeri in the ’26 World Series with the bases loaded and Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente. And you go out there and you compare, and you say, ‘These guys today aren’t nearly as good.’ And yet, 20 years from now, people will say, ‘Geez, do you remember Van Slyke and Bonds and, remember Piazza, and how about Griffey and weren’t those great days?’ ”

Brown was Pirates general manager from the 1956 season through the 1976 season. The organization called him back from California for a brief stint in 1985. But during his heyday, he saw what many consider to be one of baseball’s brightest era of stars.

“I didn’t see anything special about it at the time, other than they were great players, but I think baseball has always had great players,” Brown says. “The only period when it didn’t was during the war.

“Hell, you look at Frank Thomas and Griffey. . . . Piazza has a chance to be a Hall of Famer; he’s a great talent and there are a lot of great talents. Nobody played like Clemente when he was playing. He had a different aura about him. Nobody played like Mays. They played differently, but nobody plays with any more zest than Andy Van Slyke.”

I asked if he still gets excited about Opening Day. “I’m just glad it’s finally here. I like football and basketball and hockey, but let’s get on with it. Let’s get baseball here as soon as we can. I enjoy watching tennis and golf. I just enjoy watching people who do things well and who are competitive. I just happen to think baseball is the best game ever invented.”

We talked about the passion the game generates. “Every day you win or you lose,” he says. “That isn’t true in many other businesses. Obviously, you have good days and bad days in business. But at the end, nobody’s keeping score. You can make up in one day in business for a whole month of bad business. You can’t do that in baseball.

“When I was in Pittsburgh and even in the minor leagues, every time the team won I was exhilarated. When the team lost, I was somewhat depressed. But it wasn’t a lasting thing, because there’s always tomorrow in baseball, always another year. When you don’t do well and you know it’s not going to be a good year, you start thinking about the following year.”

Brown is not one of those old-schoolers who thinks baseball has been ruined today. He wants a salary cap to equalize competition and hates artificial turf, but he doesn’t decry the modern game.

As we talked for a while, I subtly asked if he has always been sentimental about the grand old game.

“I didn’t know I was sentimental,” he says wryly. “Do you feel I am?”

Well, I couldn’t help but notice him dabbing at his eyes as he reflected. But it is by no means weepy sentimentality. I construed it as a love for the game, not because it paid his bills but because it shaped his life. I took it as Brown’s unspoken knowledge that being a baseball man makes him part of something much larger than himself.

“I’m a defender of baseball,” he says. “I recognize the weaknesses, but I think there are an awful lot of strengths to the game. I think a lot of times people who don’t know what they’re talking about criticize the game, or there are people who are just looking for something to be critical about.”

I envy Joe Brown for the life he’s had, for the people he’s met, for the thrills he’s had. In a way that only sports fans can appreciate, his life has been one of passion and burnished memories.

He had one last story for me. Some years ago, he says, he was in a lounge at Cooperstown, N.Y., site of baseball’s Hall of Fame, and flanked by Hall of Famers Stan Musial and Joe DiMaggio.

“Y’know,” he said in his best deadpan to Musial and DiMaggio, “we have three of the greatest hitters in the game sitting right here.”

Joe Brown, the comedian’s kid.

Joe Brown, the 9-year-old kid who loved baseball. The 16-year-old kid who lived next door to Dizzy Dean. The middle-aged man who went nuts when Mazeroski won the World Series.

The 75-year-old kid who still loves the game and dabs at his eyes as he ponders its beauty.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.