Last Sunday I went to see Play Ball: Baseball in America and the Lehigh Valley, on at the Lehigh County Historical Society Heritage Museum, shown above. It's a small show but packed with all kinds of baseball artifacts from the Lehigh Valley and beyond. Area baseball included sections on Limeport Stadium and local women in baseball. The umps got their due as well, thanks to George 'Jim' Honochick, Pennsylvania native and esteemed American League umpire, who died in Allentown in 1994. Honochik was the home plate umpire for Game 7 of the 1955 World Series, when the Brooklyn Dodgers finally beat the NY Yankees.
Professional baseball got its start in 1869, with the Cincinnati Red Stockings. The exhibit led off with a ball, bat, and glove from those days. The tiny brown ball looked like a beanie ball and the glove, used only by catchers, was smaller than one of my gardening gloves. The Philadelphia Phillies and old Philadelphia A's were of course liberally represented. One of the coolest pieces was a grouping of framed baseball cards, looking quite vintage but in fact from the current Phillies' team.
I missed the Babe Ruth and Roberto Clemente caps, which had already been returned to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. But there was a 'Bob' Clemente poster, from the days when baseball was trying to Americanize Clemente. There was also a great selection of baseball cards from the Negro Leagues.
My favorite perhaps was the case devoted to Curt Simmons, who was born in Whitehall, in the Lehigh Valley. A pitcher for the Phillies, he was part of the 1950 Whiz Kids. That year he won 17 of his 25 starts but missed playing in the 1950 World Series because he was called to active military service that September and sent to Korea. What blew me away were the baseballs painted by battery mate Stan Lopata after Simmons' starts. Each was different, as the photos above show. The one shown at top, of a game played at Forbes Field, reads: Curt pitches six hit ball to win his tenth game of the year. Does not walk a man and strikes out four. Has one hit and steals a base and then scores the first run of the game.
Play Ball is on till December 31. I hope to get back again before then.
