Baseball's Johnny Appleseed

Someone tells about the umpire whose kid still puts his thumb in his mouth. "He'll outgrow it," the umpire's wife says. "He'd better," the ump retorts, "if he wants to be a pitcher."

"There really aren't any problems to being married to a pro ballplayer," the wife of Modesto Pitcher Mack Sinnott says over a hamburger. "Except moving."

"And maybe like tonight," Sinnott admits. "We were too late to take the team bus, so we drove from Oakland. So what happens? Our car won't shift into third. We drive into Lodi in first and second. I keep fiddling with it—and finally get it into reverse. Naturally, it stays in reverse. We've been driving around the back streets, backwards. Finally I backed into a service station and got it in second. We will now drive back to Oakland in second gear."

OAKLAND. The grass-banked circle of Oakland Stadium looks like the Yale Bowl. Tickets are bought at what are obviously telephone booths and the grim dingy concrete ramps are the underground-garage setting for a gangland murder. But the scene inside—except for those softball uniforms the A's wear—is pure National Pastime. Good-humored vendors in boaters and striped shirts yell, "Hey! Colossal hot dogs!" The crowd is genteel, not the backroom beer drinkers of most Eastern parks.

With two on in the fifth, there is a murmur of apprehension. "That's Big Frank Howard," a father tells his son. Somehow, Big Frank looks too large for the playing field but too mild for his largeness. Almost before the pitcher lets go of his first pitch he is swinging. The ball blurs off his bat, headed in a straight line for the top of the center-field bleachers. He makes it look so easy even the Athletic fans applaud.

Oakland chances and interest fade. A kid stomps on a cup to make it pop. "Hey, fella," an adult yells, "you got that firearm registered?"

SAN FRANCISCO. Here Alexander Cartwright arrived at last on August 10, after five months on the road and a pause in Sacramento. An old newspaper quotes him: "Captain Seely and I turned our attention to mining but after looking over the field we wisely decided that other openings offered greater inducements to men of our class. We proceeded down the Sacramento River to San Francisco."

And so the diary ends. In San Francisco, Cartwright met his brother Alfred, who had made better time sailing around Cape Horn. Alfred wrote his wife, "Alick arrived...in good health after a very long and trying journey. They lost some of their mules and broke their waggons, and were obliged to abandon most of their truck, so that Alick says, 'They had what they had upon their backs, and a cup and a spoon apiece left.' Now where do you think he has gone to? Why, to the Sandwich Islands."

So he had, and for a time he absorbed himself completely in business in Honolulu—ocean trade, ship chandlering and banking. Cartwright became a diplomat for five Hawaiian rulers, from Kamehameha IV to Queen Liliuokalani, and handled the personal financial affairs of the monarchy. He became one of Hawaii's leading figures, founding the Honolulu Fire Department (which he served as chief from 1850 to 1859), Queen's Hospital, the American Seamen's Institute, the Honolulu library, Masonic Lodge 21, Bishop & Co. (now the First National Bank of Hawaii), the Honolulu Rapid Transit Bus Company and the Commercial and Pacific clubs. Before her death, Queen Emma designated her close friend Cartwright—and his "heirs and assigns forever"—executors of her estate.

But all through these years, Alick was also thinking of baseball. His family joined him in 1851 and the next year he and his youngest son measured out by foot in Makiki Park the dimensions of Hawaii's first baseball field. Rebitten by the bug, he organized teams and taught the game all over the islands. By 1900, eight years after his death, a regular baseball school and club teams were in full operation.