Hold My Cutter
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Hold My Cutter
Tracing Threads Through Time: From China to Pittsburgh
When Ted Anthony put pen to paper as a 10-year-old defending Pirates broadcaster Milo Hamilton in the Post-Gazette, little did he know it would launch a lifetime journey through words, baseball, and the stories that connect us all.
In this captivating conversation, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Associated Press journalist traces an extraordinary path from listening to Game 7 of the 1979 World Series on shortwave radio in China to reporting from conflict zones in Afghanistan. Ted shares the deeply human moments that defined his career – photographing an Afghan waiter who had never seen his own image, hearing Pirates broadcaster Greg Brown's voice mysteriously appearing on his phone in North Korea, and witnessing the electric atmosphere of the 2013 Wild Card "blackout" game at PNC Park.
Baseball emerges as the constant thread throughout Ted's life, connecting generations and preserving memory. He recounts bringing his elderly mother, a devoted Bill Robinson fan, back to PNC Park after decades away; his grandfather's correspondence with Mark Twain about cigar bands; and his grandmother's devotion to keeping baseball scorecards for his grandfather. Each story reveals how personal experiences weave into the larger tapestry of community and shared history.
The conversation takes fascinating detours through Ted's book "Chasing the Rising Sun," which traces an iconic American song's journey across continents, and the surprising connections between his son and former Pirate Travis Snider. Throughout it all, Ted's brilliant storytelling reminds us that whether we're listening to a game on the radio, scanning box scores, or passing down Pirates memories, these shared experiences form the beating heart of what makes a place like Pittsburgh special.
Take a journey with Ted Anthony and discover how baseball, journalism, and the power of story can transport us through time and across the world while keeping us firmly rooted in what matters most.
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welcome, welcome to hold my cutter. We're coming your way here, burned by rocky patel and our guest ted anthony oh, you're doing it. Oh, that's if you're watching this, you know what we're doing. Got the flame up, started the stogie, the edge. Uh, great the edge.
Speaker 2:What a great sound.
Speaker 1:That's a great sound. That's a great sound. This is, this is.
Speaker 2:You've been perfecting that for a while, huh.
Speaker 1:I have not. Our guest Ted Anthony has. However.
Speaker 3:I'm telling you, it's your intro.
Speaker 1:It's the new intro. You want to try it Fort. Let me see. Oh, is that?
Speaker 2:good. This that's what I wish. I felt like when I was hitting Sizzling hot Fire.
Speaker 1:Michael McHenry comes to the plate Sizzling hot and, yeah, our guest is Ted Anthony. He has suggested and boy, what a good call the Edge. We've had the Edge previously here at Burned by Rocky Patel, which is just a few blocks down the road. You can see PNC Park just across the way. We see where Michael McHenry aworks most nights Aworks At Sportsnet Pittsburgh aworks.
Speaker 2:Is that right? You're aworking. You're the writer, you're aworking.
Speaker 1:I'm aworking Two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee by the Associated Press. He started with the AP, really started in, I think, 1992, if I'm not mistaken, when the Pirates were winning the third straight National League East title. So it's been a while, but he really got his start. And Ted Anthony writes American culture. International affairs has reported for more than 30 countries, but he really got his start as a 10-year-old.
Speaker 2:Right, wait, wait, wait, boy genius. He is a boy genius, yes, Crank a 10-year-old right.
Speaker 1:Wait, wait, wait, Boy genius. He's a boy genius, yes.
Speaker 3:Cranky 10-year-old. So my first published piece of writing was in the Post-Gazette in 1978, and I was 10, and I was a big fan of the lumber company. I guess by that point it was Lumber and Lightening and Milo Hamilton and Lanny Fr terry were in in your seat and people were not liking milo hamilton. They were hating on milo hamilton a lot, then, and why? Is that I think they felt like he was not well first of all.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was the obvious bob prince he was replacing a legend, bob prince, and people were not so he had.
Speaker 3:He could not fill those shoes someone I forget who it was in one of your episodes said you got to be here five years and then it tips over, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we talked about that.
Speaker 3:And it hadn't happened yet and it never would have happened for Milo Hamilton. But I adored Milo Hamilton. I thought he was great. That makes two of us. He's how I sort of came into my baseball consciousness.
Speaker 1:Same here, right.
Speaker 3:And I still remember him and I heard this recently and it was exactly as I remember him calling Candelaria's no-hitter in 76, you know, against the Dodgers. And so people were writing in this stuff and I was pissed. I was pissed, I was not happy about it.
Speaker 1:We were a newspaper family. We took both papers.
Speaker 3:You know, back then you used the word took to get a paper. You don't get the paper, you take the paper. So we took both papers, yeah, and so I decided I'm going to write in. I had been calling in occasionally to KDKA to things like I don't know if you'll probably remember like Roy Fox and Perry Marshall, all of them.
Speaker 1:Trish Beatty, yeah, trish Beatty. Absolutely Art Palin.
Speaker 3:Art Palin and my mother actually won a contest to write a poem about the Pirates, and Art Palin went to the ball game with her.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. By the way, ted, is this familiar? I have seen so many letters putting Milo, hamilton and Leonard for Terry down, oh boy. One I refer to in particular is a letter sent by John P Engel which appeared in the July 18th Post-Gazette. Let me quote him. If he, hamilton, would shut up long enough to let people who know baseball think it would be a pleasure. End quote. Now, between pitches, hamilton gives listeners tidbits of information about the players because he thinks that they would like to know these statistics. Now, if Mr Eagle I guess it was, I'm sorry, with Mr Angle thinks that this is not worthwhile, then maybe he should turn off the radio between pitches.
Speaker 2:He thought he was an eagle. That's for sure Bad printing. I can't believe you excavated that.
Speaker 1:Allison Park Ted Anthony as a 10-year-old. The date was Wednesday, july 25th. Letters to the sports editor in the Post Gazette defending Milo Hamilton.
Speaker 3:I gotta give you props for excavating such a deep cut man.
Speaker 1:Well, actually, that's incredible. Well, no, what's incredible is he gave us so much nice information. Normally we have to do prep, which we still did. I felt guilty, I didn't have to do enough prep, but I wanted to make sure I did that. So there you are as a 10-year-old defending Lyle Hamilton.
Speaker 3:I never thought it would be published. I was just tilting at windmills, you were 10.
Speaker 2:I was 10. I was playing with the turtles Ninja Turtles. Well, in fairness, my parents were— and GI Joe's, You're writing for a paper.
Speaker 3:They were linguists at Pitt, so I mean, I had a little bit of the word stuff in me. You made a choice, but that was the first of a lot of verbiage that's been expelled. Let's put it that way. But it was, and I think in a way that was like and I, my friends saw people who read that it was like the sports op ed.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:And I had friends in school who read it and I was like, ok, so this is this is pretty cool, this is this could be powerful. You know, this is a you can reach people, and that was the beginning of it, I guess one of the seeds.
Speaker 2:When did the love start? Because I mean you're 10. So you got published at 10. So you had to start at what. Four?
Speaker 3:I don't know if it was that far.
Speaker 2:Look, I, I was on Hooked on Phonics. Yes, that's right. It didn't work for me either, that's incredible to me Ten years old. So when did it start?
Speaker 3:I think. I mean I was always a word person. We played word games at the dinner table. My father was told horrible puns which you know that gets you to start jokes.
Speaker 2:Do you remember a good dad joke?
Speaker 3:Okay, a good dad joke. When we were living in China in 79, we had a tiny little Christmas tree, Because you know, they didn't have Christmas trees in China back then. They didn't have Christmas. And so we get this tiny little tree and it starts slouching and my father says I believe we need a chiropractor. That tree clearly has curvature of the pine. It's also awful, it's great, but it's so good.
Speaker 1:It's awfully good. Please stop, please stop, please stop. You're in China, a Pirates fan in China. How did it all start? Wow All right.
Speaker 3:So my parents, like I said, were linguistics professors at Pitt and my father was running the Asian Studies Department, and we got an invitation. What happened was China had just opened up to Americans on January 1st 79. Carter and Deng Xiaoping normalized relations, and there's this whole rush of people to go teach in China, but they were all in their early 20s and they didn't know how to teach. Their only experience was that they spoke English, and so around about April of that year, they started looking at mid-career linguists, like my parents at Pitt, and Pitt had a good relationship with some educational institutions in China. So we got set to go over and we were going to go over in July. And let me just ask both of you what was starting to happen in July of 1979 over at Three River Stadium.
Speaker 1:A lot of good things. A lot of good things, july of 1979.
Speaker 3:Pirates were the pennant race. I was not happy. Things, a lot of good things, and pirates were the pennant race I was not happy.
Speaker 2:I was not happy they. We had a um, we had a answer. What's that? I was six years pre-spur.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's one way, I was born 85, interesting way to put it okay.
Speaker 3:So anyway, here we go that threw me off my gut, me too um.
Speaker 2:I was just thinking like man 79 I can't, can't imagine, yeah.
Speaker 3:So we had a guy in our neighborhood, dr Connelly, who co-owned a car wash with Phil Garner, so we'd have baseball parties in our neighborhood and you know people like Phil Garner and Candelaria, and later Donnie Robinson, would come and pitch us tennis balls. How cool, and I'm going. Meanwhile I'm at Falk School up at the University of Pittsburgh School, up on the hill by where Pitt Stadium used to be, and went to school with Willie Stargell's kids and Willie Stargell would show up in his leisure suit of 79 with these pointed collars that made Saturday Night Fever look conservative and he'd give out Stargell stars that year.
Speaker 3:So I still have actual, real Stargell stars and my sister gave me back one of them a couple of years ago and I just absolutely treasure it. But so I'm entrenched with the pirates that year and suddenly we're going off to China and I was like you've ruined my life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you don't, it was not cool and I dealt with it. So I get there and you know we're learning Chinese really fast because I get there was no international school really back then. So I went to the one school that had international students and I was going to school with North Koreans and Burmese and Bangladeshis and I went to the like the party when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe at the embassy, stuff like that. But I'm all about baseball at that point and I have my my 20, my 28 inch Louisville Slugger Rod Carew model with me and I'm trying to teach these guys baseball because they've never from all these countries they didn't really know, and there are only a couple other Americans and I'm out there on the playground, you know, with a bat.
Speaker 2:I'm like you on the postgame, show you know holding the bat and swinging it around Always.
Speaker 3:And trying to teach people bong chow, which is what baseball is called in China. Bong chow, which is what baseball is called in China. And so the Pirates are getting better and better. No internet, no nothing. So my grandmother is sending me clips from the St Petersburg Times we hit the playoffs, we do well in the playoffs at the World Series, and I'm like, if they make it to game seven, I have to find a way to listen to this right. So I had a friend, and he was half American, half Chinese. He lived in our compound. His father had been one of Chairman Mao's like confidants during the early part of China. What? And then? No, this is true.
Speaker 2:How old are you at this time?
Speaker 3:At this time I'm 11.
Speaker 2:Right, but I was published. Crazy, I know I know, yes, you're already an adult. Yeah, yeah, that's right, he's smoking a cigar, right yeah?
Speaker 3:Yeah, at 11. Yeah, but it was a black and mild. So he but he was one of Chairman's confidants and then he got like purged and imprisoned and he had just gotten out of prison. He'd come back to the house and he had this shortwave radio and it was. It looked like this thing from I don't know, from like some 1940s army movie, and it was just giant console on his coffee table and I thought, hmm, I could you know voa armed forces radio, maybe I could listen to him. So I asked my friend, my friend asked his father come on, I get invited over, I get invited over to listen to the seventh game of the world series at like seven in the morning. Skip school, my parents, let me skip school.
Speaker 2:That's probably a 12 hour time difference.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's, it's. It's 12 or 13, depending on the daylight savings, so I forget what it was then. But uh, holy, so we're listening to it. And all my friends, of course, took the opportunity to skip school Cause this was a a little event. So we're all gathered around this big console and we're listening to it. Memory it wasn't Milo and Lanny, unfortunately, but it w. It was armed forces radio. But, like when Stargell hits the home runoff of Scotty McGregor, I'm like in heaven. And uh, uh, here are the pirates. When the world series, and you know, for years I was like, okay, this is a better story than having been there.
Speaker 3:So, and I'm still years later I told Willie's daughter, kelly, who I went to school with she's a wonderful person and she loved that story that I was listening to it at seven in the morning skipping school in China, that's incredible.
Speaker 2:Do you speak Chinese? Do you remember it?
Speaker 3:I do, I also was. I worked there for the AP for several years. But when you learn a language my and again this goes back to my parents being linguists when you learn a language, there's up until about nine. You can learn it really easily, but then you forget it when you leave. Anytime after age 12, it's really hard to learn and you can keep it when you learn it, but it's it's hard to learn. But between 9 and 12, there's this window, and so I was going to a Chinese school and stuff was being taught in Chinese, so I had to catch up and that was.
Speaker 2:You're a stone in the fire. What's that? You're a stone in the fire. Right, right, exactly, and it was learn or else, and it was.
Speaker 3:And if you wanted to communicate with all these kids from all these other countries who didn, I love the language. The language is it's musical it's. The characters are fascinating. I miss speaking it every day. You know you can't read the characters. I can't.
Speaker 1:You can read Chinese Was that by?
Speaker 3:11 too. I mean, it's not a question of by 11.
Speaker 1:We were learning like 11-year-old Chinese kids. You know so.
Speaker 3:I read, and when I went back to China for the AP I found that after a while the character knowledge came back. But the problem was I only had the knowledge of a 12 year old. So, like economics, politics, sex, I had to learn all of that stuff because that wasn't part of a 12 year old's vocabulary, right?
Speaker 1:When did you go back to China? So when, first? When did you leave? How old were you when you left? We were just there a year, Just one year.
Speaker 3:But you know when you're 11, a year is like one-tenth of your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like a dog.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, this is so long. So when did you go back, ted?
Speaker 3:I went back in 01 and stayed until 04. And we moved there like seven weeks before 9-11.
Speaker 1:Now this is you and your family. Now this is you and your family.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, it wasn't a family. I had just gotten married and we moved there about seven weeks before 9-11. And so the three years in China was like we thought China was going to be this really cool place that we could just sort of travel around in and write about and stuff. And it turned out I got sent all over the place after 9-11 to cover the aftermath and it was not. I mean, it was fascinating. Fascinating and it was in some ways I realized years later, kind of traumatizing to be in those conflict zones. But it wasn't the China experience remotely that we expected, because we had this whole group of this journalism community in Beijing and who had all come there to cover China, but we were all getting rotated in and out of Pakistan and Afghanistan and then later Iraq, and so it was.
Speaker 3:It was this. It was really interesting. It was like almost like a, a graduating class that keeps in touch, because there was this group of people who they were there when the big thing happened and they had to. They and their spouses had to make their lives around this, right, that's how you really come together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's incredible. You still talk to a lot of them, oh yeah, yeah, and some of them.
Speaker 3:I was in Afghanistan and Iraq with some of them, and so it was what was that?
Speaker 2:like which one Either one Start with Afghanistan.
Speaker 3:Well, so Afghanistan will always be endlessly fascinating to me. My father had spent time there teaching in 51, like long before I was born and he would tell me about it. And there were these things I grew up with in the house, like there was this one fan for the fire that looked like a 16th century executioner's hatchet and there was a tobacco canister and stuff.
Speaker 3:And I these are part of the landscape of my childhood and I didn't think much of them. And then I went back to Afghanistan to cover stuff. And you see this stuff, you know. I mean you look, you, you walk around Pittsburgh and there are things that you would see and pick up on that you wouldn't if you weren't from here, and that's the same thing. I was seeing these things from my house.
Speaker 3:But in the world and but in terms of of covering it, I mean it was scary. There was, um, a lot of potential for things to go south. There was. It's not the talk about the glamour of being a foreign correspondent, I mean there's. It's hugely rewarding. You get to know the culture, you get to understand things, you get a front row seat to history. But it's not like I mean it's scary, and I don't recall a day where I didn't have situational awareness. That was way too much, because I couldn't get rid of it for a lot of years afterwards that was way too much because I couldn't get rid of it for a lot of years.
Speaker 2:Afterwards. Can you share the greatest moment, like one that just gives you chills thinking about it, and then the scariest moment in Afghanistan?
Speaker 3:So I think that's a good question. Okay, the greatest moment is I went to this restaurant in the Sharana neighborhood of Kabul and was talking to this restaurant in the Sharana neighborhood of Kabul and I was talking to this waiter and with my translator and the waiter was really nice and sweet and I had a digital camera around my neck and he said he'd never had a picture taken of him.
Speaker 3:Ever, so I took a picture of him and showed it to him on the back of the early digital camera and he said can I have one? I said I don't have a printer, I can't really give you one. And he was disappointed and I. We parted very friendly, but he was disappointed. Six months later I come back for another assignment there and I, before I came, made sure I got a printout of his, the picture of him, and we went back to the restaurant and found him and I handed him an eight by ten of himself. He'd never seen a picture of himself.
Speaker 2:Wow and wow, I bet he lit up he was.
Speaker 3:He was like which is thank you, and he, he was so moved and I to me that like that, that made the whole thing. It's like you, you make a little different by you.
Speaker 3:That's so cool you make a little difference in someone's life and you know you're thinking about, okay, afghanistan has been. You know, a lot of people feel like they've been occupied for years and years and years, that they're not sure what to think of the united states, and maybe you can build a little bridge in that tiny little way and I love that you know, I think that's amazing and that that was that. I think of that to this day and I still have the picture that is super cool.
Speaker 3:So scariest. I mean, I don't talk about that stuff a lot, but there was. That's why.
Speaker 2:I said if you don't want to. No, no, I've heard a lot of military side and it's very fascinating to me here journalist side.
Speaker 3:And I want to make a really important point this is very, very different from the military. I can leave at any time. Right, right, this is very, very different from the military. I can leave at any time Right, military people can't.
Speaker 2:I love the perspective that you could have, because you do have a 10,000-foot view, yeah, and you go in and out.
Speaker 3:And that is hugely rewarding, but I just want to make sure that we don't no doubt no doubt. So we're going through this sort of mountain pass to this place called the Panjshir Valley, which is where a lot of the battles had taken place over the years, and it was on the way to this to Bagram Air Base, which is where the US was based at that time, and we're stopped at a checkpoint and a guy comes running toward our car, screaming at the top of his lungs and pointing an AK-47 at me.
Speaker 3:And I'm just petrified, and anybody who, who tells you that you, you know, oh, you just, you're not scared, you just suck it up. I mean, maybe they can, but no, every human being.
Speaker 2:You see down a barrel of a gun, you're, you're terrified.
Speaker 3:It turns out that this guy was worried because there had been an accident up ahead and he didn't want us to go and get into a problem. He was. He was helping, oh, but he was a guy who was guarding the checkpoint and had an ak-47, so there was no threat. But I didn't know that until I got the translation.
Speaker 3:So that was one of the more terrifying incidents you have no clue and he's going no ballistic yeah, and and, but he's going ballistic and, in a way, that is on our behalf and uh, that's, and it's also a good lesson, which is that you know you don't know people's intentions, right.
Speaker 2:Truth Well said.
Speaker 1:Ted you talked about OK, you know 79,. You're in China listening to the pirates and then, long stretch of not winning, you bet 92. I think you started the AP.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:And before the AP, I was at the Harrisburg Patriot News, which is, I think, your hometown paper, isn't it? Yes, yes, Originally, that's right. We talked about that previously. I forgot about that, that's right. Yeah, I grew up in central PA and Harrisburg Patriot News was our hometown newspaper. And then later, Pirates get back into the playoffs, 20-some years later and you're on the road again, aren't you Well?
Speaker 3:I did make 2013. Okay, were you at the wild card game? Oh yeah, absolutely Well, that's how we met. I mean, I had done the Pittsburgh Magazine cover story on the Pittsburghers of the year after that season. The Pirates were the.
Speaker 1:Pittsburghers of the year and Ted wrote an unbelievable essay great story. So he's a brilliant, gifted writer.
Speaker 3:As you can tell as you hear him talk, he's incredible, great story. He's on the Blackout, which obviously you know well.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, he's incredible. Is there anything to match that? Everybody that's come on, I believe.
Speaker 1:That's a great question for Ted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you've been all over.
Speaker 3:Everybody says it's their favorite. I have never been to anything like that.
Speaker 1:Explain it, ted it, from your perspective. Where were you where, where was your seat? So?
Speaker 3:are you with our seat? I was with my wife and our two sons, who were very young then, um the one who was already a big travis snyder fan that year and the other one who was a huge russell nights. I used the other one who's a huge russell martin guy and we're up in I. I don't know exactly what the the section was. It must have been like 323. It's that little one that's like the wedge shape in the middle of two in the upper deck on the left field.
Speaker 1:Oh, left field.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a little wedge shape and people were offering my kids beards.
Speaker 1:What a memory for those kids.
Speaker 3:Well, they took it up later.
Speaker 2:As they were smoking their black and mild.
Speaker 3:But it was I mean, and when it got so loud, Cueto dropped the ball and Russell Martin, of course, homered, and it was probably. And I went to Penn State and so I mean I've been to games with 110,000 people. I almost got trampled at one Notre Dame game in 87. But this was I mean, you were there, you were there.
Speaker 1:But not the stands.
Speaker 3:No, but it's a different perspective.
Speaker 2:No, I know, and someone that's covered so much. Your perspective is like priceless.
Speaker 3:You know what I remember the most? My father used to tell me that when he was growing up in Cleveland he would go to League Park and try to look in through the slats and the fences. And I remember looking on the Clemente Bridge and there were people gathered on the Clemente Bridge and they were watching the game. They could only see like maybe a third of it or a half, but they were there and they wanted to. I don't even think they they wanted necessarily to see and process the game as much as they just wanted to be a part of this moment in Pittsburgh. And that was, you know, I, we, we had moved back to Pittsburgh to take care of my parents in 07.
Speaker 3:And that was the moment I really sort of viscerally felt like a Pittsburgher again. Was was when that happened and when everybody was in it for one thing, and you felt like. You know, to be honest, and I'm sure you picked up on this, that kind of crowd can be intimidating and even a little bit menacing. My older son was a little freaked out by it, but he didn't leave. He didn't want to miss anything but the fact that all of that energy was channeled into something that we all had in common. You know that was incredible.
Speaker 1:That tells you about Pittsburgh and sports and the Pirates and the history. And was it not that year you also wrote a great essay about your mom and you brought her back. She was a big Bill Robinson fan. Yeah, she was.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we used to go down. There was a bank. It's now been absorbed 10 times over by PNC. It was called Franklin Federal and they had a thing on the south side and my mother loved Bill Robinson Because when my mother was the most into baseball, it was 76, 77, really, and that was his heyday with the Pirates, right. And so we go down and it's going to be Bill Robinson and Dave Parker and they both sign autographs. They're both perfectly nice and there's huge crowds around Parker, you know, they want to see the Cobra and Robinson had some, but he was, he was. It was less intense. And so after everybody left Robinson's hanging around and he and my mother get into this conversation and they talk and she's like, you know, she's like this is baseball to me. And so when she was about to turn 90 and she was having trouble walking, she said she wished she could see a pirate game again and it was 2013.
Speaker 3:And you were like this is happening it was September and we got some help from so we went in the entrance you go into with the elevators and we got some help to get her up to her seats. We were in a Pittsburgh baseball club seats so that she could go inside if she needed to, to to the indoor part. And I mean I took a picture of her and she has this big grin on her face and it's just. It was incredible.
Speaker 2:And when? When we saw mccutcheon, she's like he is, so down to earth he's. So you know he's the bill robinson of today and I like that.
Speaker 1:I like hearing that. I'm gonna tell him that, yeah, that's really cool, because bill robinson was for older pirate fans he was. He was the, not the superstar. He was. You think about parker and stargell and even omar moreno and those guys. But Robinson was so clutch and I remember Ted listening to games in the Harrisburg area and he was one of my favorites too because he was so clutch and he hit, I think, two home runs one night to win. And afterward they had him on the post-game show and they said what is it about you that you can come up big in these clutch situations? And he quoted the former Dodger Willie Davis, said it's not my wife, it's not my life, so why worry? And he said I think about that every time when I come to the plate in a tough situation.
Speaker 2:Will you say that one more time. I love that.
Speaker 1:It's not my life, it's not my wife, so why worry Wow?
Speaker 3:That's great, it's a game and that's great, it's a game and that's on brand with what he was right.
Speaker 1:Yes, and he was just so clutch. But you bring your mom to that game and what a moment that must have been that you were able to share that moment with her at PNC Park, and she had not been to a game in a long, long time.
Speaker 3:No, both my parents were against the bond issue that created PNC Park. Will you explain that parents?
Speaker 3:were against the bond issue that created PNC Park and then the book was like that Well, basically, as I understand I mean, I you could probably explain it better than me but essentially that they wanted to borrow money to build PNC Park and, as I recall and I'm not, I'm not wire sure, as we say for this uh, but, um, it was rejected. But then they did it anyway, yeah, and my father was like I'm not going to go to a game. My father was this baseball lover since the 20s and he's like this is ridiculous, I'm not going to go to a game. And so, finally, I took him to a game and we walk in and, as we all know, you see the city sprawled out before you and it's magical. And he was won over.
Speaker 3:And same thing with my mother. I was, um, she had not been to pnc park before that game in 2013 and I was worried about the verticality of it because she wasn't walking well and stuff, and I mean, she couldn't, like I said, she couldn't wipe the grin off her face and and just to see that and to see that she was letting in baseball again, you know, baseball I love, and I said this in that that essay, you, which is another deep cut you did your homework Always. I feel like there's so much ink about fathers and sons in baseball and there's less ink about mothers and sons or mothers and daughters.
Speaker 3:Which is wild, and I think that's different in Pittsburgh a little bit. I mean, I know so many more women, both in in my generation and any generation, who are into sports, but I wish there was more literature. I wish there was more, you know, exploration of that, because my mother, I mean she, she, she had this. I'm going to, I'm going to go off script for a second, although I guess there's no script. So that Art Palin thing I was talking about in KDK.
Speaker 3:Yes, she won pirate tickets because you had to come up with a cheer, and so she came up with this cheer that went hang in there, each and every buck. You're in the race to stay, with just a little bit of luck. Where there's a willy, there's a way, wow.
Speaker 1:I love it. That gives me goosebumps.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is so cool and so she won tickets and they went with trish baity. Oh my gosh and art palin to to a ball game and I still. I am so glad that my father was an obsessive taper of things because I still have the, the sound of it and no way, yeah, wow that so cool.
Speaker 2:That's like the pirate star Spangled Banner Right.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right, because he's got the stars, that's right. It's about Willie, that's right. That's beautiful Wow.
Speaker 3:She was. Two days ago was the sixth anniversary of her death, and so I've been thinking about her a lot. Oh, my gosh, and I just love that, me too, and I hope that there's more literature and content and stuff like that about mothers and sons or mothers and daughters.
Speaker 2:My mom was like I call her, dorothy Mantooth. If you've ever seen that movie, she's incredible. She had a really bad life. By every stretch of the imagination, she shouldn't be the woman she is. By every stretch of the imagination she shouldn't be the woman she is. And the fact that she gave me the life I have and now having another son that I didn't know she had, she was forced to give up I mean I would not be the man I am today without my mom.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I think moms are incredible. Well, how big into baseball is your mom Now, of course, how big she was into me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but she'll. She'll watch the pirates now you brought her into baseball yeah, her love for me and her want to be, you know, the person that could elevate me or push me into you know better than what she had, I mean have you written about that? No, you really should. I'm not a very good writer, so maybe we, maybe you can help me out.
Speaker 3:I can absolutely help you out. You're a good talker and that's what makes very good writer, so maybe you can help me out. I can absolutely help you out. You're a good talker and that's what makes a good writer. I appreciate that Good talker. Good thinker equals good writer.
Speaker 1:Well, you got to do that. That's humbling. Yeah, that's humbling coming from you. That's Michael McHenry right there.
Speaker 3:But that's a story that needs to be told and I can guarantee you from stuff I've make a difference it will cut the best of grooves.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm in. You sold me that wasn't very hard, but you sold me, but it is something.
Speaker 1:There are so many stories and you and I have talked about this before, ted so many stories to be told. I mean people that are watching or listening to this right now will be thinking about their mothers and whether it's again, whether they turned you on to baseball or vice versa, is the case with Michael, or the ties to Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania. What makes it so different and so unique? There is that story, those stories to be told.
Speaker 3:I want to tell you a story about what my sister did when my father got Alzheimer's. It's directly related to that. So, as I said, he was a Cleveland Indians fan. Earl Averill from Snohomish Washington was his favorite player, and when he started to lose, I mean, he was an educator and all of his knowledge sort of drained out the back of his head, it's just horrible to watch.
Speaker 3:So she found an autographed Cleveland Indians baseball from the early 30s on eBay. She got that and she compiled this incredible notebook of clips and photos and things that were essentially yeah, it was about baseball, but it was mnemonic devices. It was basically designed to draw out his memories that were in there, as my father put it. Before he lost too much memory, he said you know, it's all in in the hard drive, but there's no icon to click on. Um. And so she did this and for the last few years of his life he had the cleveland indians with him again, which I, I absolutely love, and that's incredible.
Speaker 3:And he uh, we were talking about this earlier, he also he also left behind this my um, my uh that's my grandfather had tickets to the 1920 World Series, cleveland and Brooklyn. So, ted, if you're not watching, you're listening?
Speaker 1:Ted's showing a framed two tickets to the 1920 World Series between Cleveland and Brooklyn, unused.
Speaker 3:And the question is, why didn't he use them? And you know, I mean, you talk about storytelling. That's a better story than having two ripped tickets that he used. Maybe he didn't get to see the game. But here we are, 104 years later, and we're still talking about these tickets. And when you say people are out there thinking about their mothers and stuff, right, people don't realize that their stories matter. They think that, okay, it might matter to the next person at the dinner table, it might matter to the cousin, but that's the patchwork, right? That's the patchwork of Pittsburgh or of any community.
Speaker 1:That story that matters to you matters to others because it matters to them. It's that tie.
Speaker 3:And then when you bring them together and you have a whole cluster of them, all of a sudden you start seeing the texture of a community.
Speaker 1:You mentioned Cleveland, so your dad was from Cleveland.
Speaker 3:My dad Anthony's go back in Cleveland to clear the forest in 1832 west of Cleveland, and so we've done a lot in our family history and Cleveland was very important to them. But then my grandfather, who I just mentioned, was a clerk for the New York Central Railroad, so they moved from Cleveland to Detroit in 37, and so he became a Tigers fan. So the one through line is I was raised to not like the Yankees.
Speaker 2:That's universal in Pittsburgh. Yes, that is universal.
Speaker 1:That is no doubt Opening day, baby. Well so, ted, what's your first? Do you have one? First memory that stands out of the Pittsburgh Pirates? What's your first? Do you have one?
Speaker 3:first memory that stands out of the Pittsburgh Pirates. So there was a thing that they used to do at Three Rivers called Jacket Day, and it had these. They gave out these jackets that were supposed to be pirate jackets, but effectively they were like black and gold hefty bags. Right, yeah, like rain stickers.
Speaker 1:Yes, the things that if it rained in the summer you'd be like drenched.
Speaker 3:And so we went to Jacket Day, and this is actually. This is a pirate story, but not a pirate story. We went to Jacket Day.
Speaker 3:We're seeing, you know, Richie Hebner, Richie Zisk, Frank Tavares, those years you know, and this was before Tanner was made this was the year that Murtaugh was last year, and afterward I go under gate A, which, as you'll recall, is where the players went in and out to get autographs. There were always this phalanx of kids there waiting for autographs. So we're getting autographs, and I had been a baseball fan for all of that summer and for much of the previous year, but I had not really been to a game. And so this guy comes out in a suit. It's Vin Scully. Oh right, and somehow I know it's Vin Scully. So I go up to him and I ask him for an autograph on my scorecard and he smiles at me and he says, son, I don't mean to disappoint you, but I'm not a player. And I said no, I know who you are, mr Scully. Can you sign my? You should ask him if he knew who you were. And I said no, I know who you are, mr Scully.
Speaker 2:Can you sign?
Speaker 3:my. You should ask him if he knew who you were.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. I was published at 11. He gave me an autograph. He gave me an autograph.
Speaker 3:And I loved the fact that, you know, while all these kids were and rightly so going after the players, I loved that this guy, who was one of my earliest memories of baseball, was that day. Isn't that incredible?
Speaker 1:It's funny you say that because I remember, like it was yesterday, when I first met Lanny Frateri as a young kid outside Gate A and similar story. He was just so kind and I was so nervous my knees were shaking because for me that was almost my Willie Stargell and Omar Moreno. It was meeting Lanny Frateri.
Speaker 3:Well, I'll bet and you know it's interesting because I've learned this in journalism, because you know I'm primarily a writer, but we're all multi-format journalists. Now I mean, as you prove, setting up this whole shebang, head help. But there's something, and I mean you know this well, there's something incredibly intimate about the voice. We talked about this when I did that story on umpires' voices.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3:And the person you listen to on NPR or whatever. You're waking up in the morning with them. You might be showering with them. I won't go any further down that road, but I have friends at NPR and it's like I actually know them, so they're personal to me. But the people you hear on the radio, I remember being under my covers at night with this radio and I would pull in because AM radio could pull in from a long way away. I heard Chicago Cubs broadcast when they did night games, I heard KYW in Philadelphia and people like you. This is a good example of it.
Speaker 3:I got the good fortune of going to North Korea a few times in my role as Asian news director and I wasn't there as a journalist. I was there as kind of a suit to push for access for us and at one point they decided to take us out to this national park because we weren't allowed to go outside Pyongyang without escorts and we stopped at some kind of rest stop on the side of the road and I realized that, against all odds because North Korea is very, very locked down I have an international cell phone signal at that moment. So what do you think is the first thing I did? You?
Speaker 2:made a call.
Speaker 3:Nope Took a picture I powered up the MLB app because it was like 9 in the morning.
Speaker 2:Oh, I should have known that.
Speaker 3:It was like 9 in the morning. I thought can I get the Pirates from here? So I have like two bars right, it's middle of North Korea. Suddenly it clicks, it takes and this is an early version of MLB TV and suddenly in the rural fields of North Korea comes the voice of one, greg Brown. No, in North Korea. And so that was.
Speaker 2:Rocket man probably wanted to listen too right.
Speaker 3:But so I'm thinking, of course, what I'm thinking is okay, the tech guys at MLB, you know they're probably tracking the IP addresses. Oh, yeah. One IP address?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you know it popped up what. But I mean untapped market.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's right you have called a game that is available in north korea. How does that make you that?
Speaker 2:it's humbling, humbling your voice carries my friend.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's why that's crazy. Uh, well, now so, but but your uh father and grandfather were both Cleveland fans, right?
Speaker 3:And, I think, my great-grandfather, because when my uncle, john Bradley Anthony, told me before he died that something very vague about how his father, who was my great-grandfather, liked baseball and this was when it was like the Cleveland Spiders or the Cleveland.
Speaker 1:Naps or what have you.
Speaker 3:And after Nap LeJoy. And so it may go back even further than my grandfather, I don't know, but yeah Did you say Naps.
Speaker 1:The Naps, that's a terrible baseball name. It was after Nap LeJoy. Yeah, the player Like Naps, yeah.
Speaker 2:They put you to sleep. Yes, that's what they did Easy right there. Man, that's terrible. Yeah, I can't do better than that. I like spiders, especially if you've got a good pitching staff or a good bullpen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, come out and bite you.
Speaker 2:Just arms coming everywhere.
Speaker 1:Well, so what about the story about your grandfather? And he passed along? Was it a box score? No, no Is told us about it.
Speaker 3:No, there's a cigar band story.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, that's what you might be referring to.
Speaker 3:So my grandfather. When I was growing up I never knew my grandfather. He died in 54. And when I was growing up my father had this in his study this overstuffed couple notebooks of cigar bands from like the early 1900s that my grandfather collected and he ended up selling them.
Speaker 3:It's like the only thing my father ever got rid of of family history. But he ended up selling them to some guy who collected them in the North Hills, and that's what I remember of it. Right, so that 30 years passed, 35 years passed. I get this email out of the blue from a guy who is a Mark Twain biographer and, as you probably know, mark Twain loved cigars and he says are you related to an Edward Mason Anthony from Cleveland, ohio, who was alive, who would have been about 12 years old in 1906? I'm like, as it happens, I am. So it turns out he's compiling a book of letters that were written to Mark Twain from the public and answers to them and my grandfather at age 12 had sent, of course.
Speaker 2:Just know you beat him. Just know you beat him.
Speaker 3:So he wrote to Mark Twain and asked for cigar bands because there was, like this, feature in the Chicago Tribune about Mark Twain's cigars. And so my grandfather wrote to him and said I collect them, I live in Cleveland, Can you send me some of the ones that you have if you're not throwing them away? And he got a nice note back, not from Mark Twain but from Mark Twain's personal secretary, saying Mr Twain thanks you for Mr Clemens. They referred to him as Mr Clemens. Mr Clemens thanks you for your letter and wishes you the best of luck. He has a young person to whom he supplies, and they call them life belts for cigars.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, why did they refer to him as Clemens?
Speaker 3:That was his real name that was his birth name, Mark Twain is like. It means like two fathoms.
Speaker 3:It was his pen name oh wow you know, and so so he sent me a copy of the letter in my 12 year old grandfather's handwriting, which is like the same handwriting he had at 860, and I have a copy of that and I I just I loved that because it was like here's this, this kid out of nowhere who thrusts this thing into the sort of matter stream of history, and then it goes. It comes back at his grandson more than a hundred years later and the cigar bands.
Speaker 2:He's 12. I know it's a different time, but like that's a crazy thing. I don't know. I don't know any 12 year olds collecting cigar bands now right, I don't know any now.
Speaker 3:And he didn't smoke cigars.
Speaker 2:according to my father, he smoked cigarettes, but he was but do you think it was just because of Mark Twain?
Speaker 3:No, because he has all these others in those notebooks. So I mean I think he, I'm sure someone in the family did, because there were like hundreds of them.
Speaker 2:So he probably looked up somebody and then that's kind of how.
Speaker 3:So that's really cool, yeah, but I love that because it's like, yeah, it's so cool, that's one of those stories, these little brushes with history, that you sort of pass in the night right.
Speaker 1:Well, now speaking of your grandfather, he wasn't able to listen to the games when he worked right, so your grandmother helped. How?
Speaker 3:So my, as I said, my grandfather was a clerk for the railroad and he had had when he was about 16 or 15, I think he had had polio, which was a huge thing back in the during World War I and he couldn't fight because of it and um.
Speaker 3:So he had this boot and he walked with a limp and um.
Speaker 3:When they started broadcasting games in the late twenties um, the, the, my grandmother would be at home during the day with my father, who was not yet in school, and she'd listened to the games on the um, on the, the huge radio in their living room that sat on the floor and jack grainy, who was a very famous broadcaster, was calling the games and she would keep score, she would um on on like pulp paper, she would draw grids and she would keep score for my grandfather and then they would go out to the um, to the front stoop and the streetcar at the end of the day would let my grandfather off of the streetcar when he's coming home from work with a bunch of other guys and my father, who was like six or seven, would see which one was his father down the block because of his polio shoe and how he was walking and he'd run down the street holding the score sheet and hand it to my grandfather, so my grandfather could immediately see what the Indians had done.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's like a Hallmark movie. It is, isn't it? Yeah it really is.
Speaker 3:It's veering into Mitch's album territory a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is Wild and that takes us kind of into the early days of the box scores, which your grandmother was basically making her own box score for your grandfather. Yeah, what a great lady by the way, oh, isn't that tremendous.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, so great. Well, she was a fan too, I mean, it wasn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a labor of love.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but we talked about that. What I love about we're so much now. The media industry has been upended. People are consuming media in so many different ways and we're looking for alternative story forms, right Things that will resonate with audiences. And when I teach writing, one of the things I always show I show a box score from like 1885, because the box score in the newspaper is like one of the earliest alternative story forms in journalism. It's got characters, it's got time that you move through, it's got conflict, it's got a very specific and exciting outcome all there in those columns and those numbers and those names. And to me, you know you look at a box score and the whole game opens up to you. I used to be obsessed with box scores when I was a kid.
Speaker 1:Likewise. And you wonder, are those days dwindling? I wonder how many pay attention to that box score. Now the story is told to you on the app. Play-by-play is literally given to you.
Speaker 3:I love the game day part of MLB where you can look at the different things but there is something to deciphering that.
Speaker 3:I have a good friend in journalism. You actually may have met him. His name, dave Jones, used to cover Penn State for years for the Patriot News and he has this idea for a next generation box score and I really want, I'm looking forward to seeing what he does. He just retired and I mean those things. You know, you can, I know we all have. You know we're connected 24 seven. We have our devices but sitting there visualizing a baseball game through its box score, you know it's, it's so cool and that's what I. The reason I teach with that is because people are accustomed to telling stories in certain ways, but there are all kinds of other ways to tell stories that will punch through the static and for people in the 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, box score was punching through the static and people went through those.
Speaker 1:And you used your imagination, you would look at the box score and you would try to figure out and imagine that home run that was hit in the fifth inning with two men on base. What it was, where it was, you know, you can see who hit it, when and off of home, and you can do it.
Speaker 3:You can do it the next day in the paper, or you can do it a hundred years later.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right.
Speaker 3:I mean, I look at these these pirate box scores from the first decade, decade of the 20th century. You know, fred clark, deacon, philippe uh, hannes wagner, obviously all of that you know. And they, they come alive in one line and you, you see the little you see the little uh because the type isn't perfect in early newspapers and you think someone saw this the day that happened and that's so cool ted.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know you're. You're talking about your early days and your first memories as a fan. Does one moment aside from that wild card game stand out? One pirate moment, a win, a home run, something in particular aside from that wild card game?
Speaker 3:I think one moment, god, it's so hard to narrow it down, it's so hard I know it's not really a fair question because so many memories run through you, I think in 82…. Oh, that's great. He starts memories.
Speaker 2:I see that Rolodex going, yeah, I know, 24,
Speaker 3:82. There we go, I'm.
Speaker 1:ADHD and so everything in there is. You two get along great.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, we were doing jumping jacks before we got on.
Speaker 3:It was Stargell Appreciation Day. It was in September of 82. It was his last day. You got a little brochure when you went in that I still have, with a painting of Stargell on the front and I remember because it seemed like all of these things came together my Pittsburgh stuff, my China stuff, falk School and knowing Kelly and Willie Jr, who they called Sun Sun, that's right, no-transcript introduced him and stuff, and so that I know it's not a an in-game moment, but that's, that was a pretty cool.
Speaker 2:But that was your moment. That's cool, I think so did stargell actually visit?
Speaker 3:school yeah he came and he was in that leisure suit and he was that's what he said, I remember one time when he came to see I gotta find it if there's a picture of that oh there are plenty of those. I want to see if I can match that leisure shoot. There's a lot of chest shown oh, yeah, yeah and jones jared jones jared jones.
Speaker 3:Yeah, call that manhood yeah and uh, and we, we had done a school play and I think one of the kids had been in it and I was in it and I remember being there like I don't think I was saying anything at the moment, but I was on the stage and you know, I mean he had an aura, he had charisma. And so he walks in and he's like trying to make himself smaller, which with Willie Stargell was generally not possible and he sat down and he watched the play and when people went up to him and asked him for his autograph afterward he said I'm just a dad today and I thought that was so cool. Albeit he gave out Stargell stars, but he just wanted to be a dad at folk school.
Speaker 2:So the Stargell stars for people that may be listening that aren't from Pittsburgh, don't remember. Explain that because you've mentioned it twice. And obviously the the actual, like BP hats this year had the, the stars on it and I loved it. So explain that a little bit.
Speaker 3:So, um, in roundabout 77 or so, they started wearing these pillbox hats with stripes on them. They would now still buy it 1976.
Speaker 1:Or so they started wearing these pillbox hats with stripes on them. 1976, it was the bicentennial and all National League teams wore the pillbox caps, but the Pirates kept them. The Pirates kept them. Everybody else did it for a year. They didn't like it, the Pirates liked it and kept it.
Speaker 3:And not only that, but after 76, when they were still wearing the earlier uniforms, they switched to the mix and match gold, black and pinstripes, and you never knew what they were going to be wearing it would change during double headers, stuff like that, I love it. And so the pillbox hats, the black ones he would put. First he started putting. They were just little gold stars made of embroidered with a black S on them, and they stuck to the hat and he would give them out.
Speaker 1:I forget why he gave them out, maybe when someone home ordered, it was almost like the star of the game in his mind, and so slowly, gradually, we noticed that all the Pirates players in the dugout and on the field they had various permutations of these stars.
Speaker 3:And by 79, it was the thing, and everybody loved them. But you know you couldn't get them then. This was before they sold all the gear to the public. And so for us, in 79, getting these stargill stars from stargill.
Speaker 1:It was really that's. The only way to get them was willie. Stargill had to give you this star, so the players would have an occasionally how are we not bringing that back? Well, jeff banister did that a few years ago when banny was the bench coach. He tried to bring those back. That's a hard thing to do, it's a hard thing to recreate, that I mean. But they did with the ones that get sold in the store.
Speaker 3:They still, when they have the pillbox hats.
Speaker 1:They have the stars, but they're embroidered right, and they don't have an s on them but it looks like it a little bit right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but um, it was I. I was lucky enough to get two of them. I gave one to my sister, who's also a huge pirate fan, and she kept it for like 35 years and then gave it back to me long after mine was gone. So I have one original one, right now, but it was such a. That's another. You know, we talk about community and what makes you a Pittsburgher? That's one of those things. That was the Pirates' terrible towel.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:So it needs to come back.
Speaker 1:Well, it helps. It helps when you're winning too. We've talked about that before. You can't wait for it. We've talked about that. You've got to be prepared to win. You mentioned meeting Willie Stargell, your son. Eventually did he meet Travis Snyder. He became his favorite player.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, so this is a great story. So, summer of 2013,. Travis Snyder's up to the plate and my son was then what six? And you're calling the game and we're sitting in our living room in the dark and he says bass is alert. He says Travis Snyder is going to hit a grand slam and we're like Wyatt, you always say that and he's like no, this time I mean it Before, I want he's.
Speaker 2:Bob Walk, he's Bob Walk. Yeah, bob Walk is always calling a homer and he's like I'm never wrong. Because when I write, that's all I remember.
Speaker 3:And he's this little guy, and he's under the blanket and he's like no, this time I mean it. I know I've said it before, but this time is different. Boom Next pitch.
Speaker 2:He had a feel Next pitch.
Speaker 3:Boom, come on, and we hear you saying Grand Sal, wow. And so he was so happy and he became obsessed with Travis Snyder and for a while it was a little sort of Rain Man-like. For a while everything was 23. He would draw 23. It was a little bit like Redrum.
Speaker 1:Yes, he was such a stuffer Redrum, Redrum.
Speaker 3:Redrum, everything was 23. I would go and we moved to Thailand and I would go to hotels and go to the 23rd floor and photograph 23 for him, oh, for him, oh and cool, so intentional. I love this, so great. So he drew this picture. I don't know if you remember, but, travis you, I'm sure you do, travis snyder had the pink cheeks. Yeah, and so still does my son. My son did um lunch meat lunchbox lunchbox best steak I've ever had.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, he, and he does it on instagram all the time oh so good.
Speaker 3:So we moved to bangkok and and he draws a picture of Travis Snyder and I tweeted out and tweeted at Travis Snyder who tweets back at him and my son's so excited and I ended up writing a piece about how Travis Snyder was for us, for a six-year-old moving to Bangkok, like I got dragged away in 79. This Travis Snyder focus was his way of holding on to home and to Pittsburgh, and so I wrote this. I put it on. It wasn't for the AP, I just wrote it personally on Medium and, because I know a lot of sports writers, it got circulated around.
Speaker 3:And the PR person for the Orioles because it was written, because he had been traded and why it was so upset that he had been traded to the Orioles. So the PR person for the Orioles picks up on this and her name I don't know if you remember her name is Kristen Hudak. Yes, and she's a Johnstown person, right. And so she arranges for A a care package to get sent to Thailand with Travis Snyder stuff. B Travis Snyder to record a video for Wyatt. And C the pièce de résistance, she invites us to camden yards and we're home for the summer in 2015. So we go both. My kids get to take batting practice under the inside, under the, the stands with uh travis and manny machado, who was with the orioles at the time.
Speaker 2:That wasn't cool at all.
Speaker 3:No, no and um what? Because we knew how much you love food, wyatt brought him a street food book from bangkok oh, it's and travis gave him a bat and a glove and stuff, and they're still in touch, I mean, and Wyatt turns 18 today and they still go back and forth sometimes. And Wyatt follows his Instagram and in fact, my wonderful soon-to-be ex-wife who is the editor of Kidsburg, the website for parents in Pittsburgh, just had him on their new podcast and he he's doing some wonderful work now around emotional health and teenagers and things like that, and he's just.
Speaker 1:He is a solid individual my goodness, incredible so much in his life too.
Speaker 2:That's the thing yeah, you know, and he's giving back ebbs and flows.
Speaker 3:I mean he gets the big leagues super young, but he, he made an impression on our family and you know, I think what I love about it is that you know, with uh no disrespect to people like mccutcheon, they're the stars people love.
Speaker 3:Travis snyder was a great ball player, but he was not the center of attention always and I love that. That wyatt focused on this guy who works his butt off, who is is uh making good and who is is willing to interact, and that's you know. That to me, is a throwback to when people lived here during the offseason. I used to work at Shop and Save and I think Bill Mazeroski was working for some grocery wholesaler for a while and he would stop by when players in the offseason would sort of really interact.
Speaker 2:We talk about that all the time the roots aren't deep enough. I believe that matters so much. Like if you go over right now into the clubhouse I've talked about this on the podcast before but there's no locker that has anything in it. When I was in Colorado, I would walk into their locker room and they would have ropes for Todd Helton, for Matt Holiday, for even when Hop was there. But it was cool because I walk in, I'm like whoa.
Speaker 3:Yeah, holiday, for even when hop was there, but it was cool, because I walk in I'm like, oh yeah, I know that's too long, yeah, absolutely, but you put, you chose to put down roots here. I did. I mean so you're, you're now a part of the community right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a yalzer is what I say. My wife's every time I say that she's like we got a trademark, that I'm like that is so good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah, really good two new things today.
Speaker 3:you got the y, the yalzer, you've got the sound of the lighter at the beginning.
Speaker 1:Well, that leads me to. And now Gustine at the plate. Frankie Gustine, and line drive right for it. And that's going to bug on the rug. That's going to score a couple, frankie Gustine. He's got that restaurant down there in Oakland.
Speaker 3:So Frankie Gustine's restaurant by Forbes Field. He just burnt the mic. Folks. My father took me there all the time to get the turkey Devonshire. I don't know if you've ever heard of turkey Devonshire. I'm sure you have Classic Pittsburgh dish. It's basically toast turkey bacon cheese sauce. Where are you going to go wrong? You can't go wrong.
Speaker 2:Anything with bacon on it. As long as you put mayonnaise near it, it's perfect.
Speaker 3:My older son now cooks bacon in clarified bacon grease that he bought.
Speaker 2:So why aren't we friends? Yes, that's great.
Speaker 3:So we would go there. And somehow in these pre-Ebay, pre-internet days, my father got me a Frankie Gustine card from 49, a Bowman card before tops. And we go in and he says, why don't you ask the bartender if we can get him to sign it? And so I take it up to the bartender. He says, come back next Tuesday. And come back next Tuesday. He hands it back and I have a Frankie Gardena 1949 autographed card that my father got for me.
Speaker 3:Little card, it's fraying, it's all oh my gosh, but it's that he autographed that and he made another one. That made a friend for life, you know. And so years later, because of this, because of the tie with my father, I had a jersey made at pnc park that was gustine 16, and one day I'm walking around by, uh, I guess by the, the rotunda, and these people come up to me and they're like we are frankie gustine's grandkids and we've never seen this before and it made them so happy and I get um, I get the people notice that there's what?
Speaker 3:what's the guy's name? Forgive me, the, the gentleman, uh, baseball uh, joe baseball, joe, yeah and baseball joe um accosted me at a, at a, uh, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And Baseball Joe accosted me at a food stand. He will Did he toss you the?
Speaker 3:ball. No, but he had his keyboard because of his stroke, he still writes me emails. And so he's typing out on the keyboard about how excited he is to see a Frankie Gustine jersey. So these things there are these through? Lines. There are these through, lines that keep going, you know.
Speaker 1:And you know it frustrates us, know it frustrates me, away at the card.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just so great. And uh, this has been up. Uh, this has been up with me for 45 years now.
Speaker 1:I guess 40 years oh my gosh, frankie gustine was such a gentleman. His kids, oh, you knew him, yeah, but toward the end of of his, toward the end of his life. Yeah, I got a chance to just to class act as kids, just as classy, and we talked about how important history is and that's in society and life.
Speaker 3:And how it's passed on through family.
Speaker 1:Yes, but it seems to me, ted, and I think Michael agrees, that too many of us in the game of baseball have kind of lost that, that we forget the importance of history.
Speaker 3:So how do you bring it back? Because I mean this is a game that I would argue and again I'm going to out myself. I am not a huge sports fan. I'm a baseball fan and I mean I watch the Steelers, I watch the Pens, but it's baseball that has stuck with me. But baseball is such a sport of history I mean you do it all the time You're pulling out like Kai Kyler references.
Speaker 1:Well, you got to be careful because some people don't care for that too much. I understand that you don't want to go too far into the history books.
Speaker 3:Maybe they should turn off the radio between pitches. Well, that's an idea, that's a good call.
Speaker 1:Well, hello, Go back to the box scores, Ted. We talked about you as a writer, as a 10-year-old, but you've got to tell us the story, away from sports, about the book you were kind enough to autograph for me and I read, and it's fascinating in that you chased the. I think in fact, the book's title was Chasing the Rising Sun, the Journey of an American Song. Several years ago you wrote this book about an iconic song. That's been well. It's brought back to life in many movies. I think the one that comes to mind for me was Casino. Yes, but your journey into chasing the rising sun, I love that you remember Casino.
Speaker 3:That was an intense scene, oh man.
Speaker 1:So it's 19. There was a man from New Orleans.
Speaker 3:I'm not singing, oh you could, but the lyrics. There is a house in New Orleans they call the rising sun. They call the rising sun, oh yeah great it's been the ruin of many. That's in a ton of great movies.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the animals by the way.
Speaker 3:I guess the animals popularized it. But so I'm sitting in a Thai restaurant in New Hampshire with my then-girlfriend, who would become my wife yeah, you probably get really confused with food, don't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, really, you've been everywhere.
Speaker 3:And so we're listening and there's this background music, elevator music playing, and we're like this sounds familiar, elevator music playing, and we're like this sounds familiar, what is this? And we realize it's House of the Rising Sun. And you know, I don't I say this in the book I don't usually believe in epiphanies. I believe that knowledge is accumulated gradually. But I had this epiphany for once and it's it said that the story of how this song became background music in a Thai restaurant in New England is the story of American music in the 20th century and how it went. You know, something that started local. At that time I thought it started in New Orleans. I would later find it was from Appalachia. But I wanted to know where this song came from and I became obsessed with it. And you can't write a book unless you're obsessed. You really can't. You know, and it goes back to ADHD, as you know, if you have ADHD, you can't focus on anything until you can, and when you can, you focus on nothing else.
Speaker 3:It's that hyper-focus and so I wrote a piece for the AP. I found the 15-year-old girl. Well, the family of the 15-year-old girl who had sung it for this musicologist named Alan Lomax, who was collecting songs in Appalachia in 1937 and basically had this giant recording machine in the back of his, traced it for the AP story. And then it wasn't enough and so I said I want to write a book and I really I spent years tracking and what I realized early on was I tracked this song back as far as I could. It has roots in old Scotch-Irish balladry, but also some mix with some African-American music from Appalachia and a lot of Appalachian hill ballads, and I realized I wasn't going to find its origins. But the book became about where it traveled and that was a lot more of an interesting book. And I found like 90 year old musicians who had been completely forgotten, who had sung early recordings of it in the thirties and stuff like that. And on the flip side of it, I sang it in a karaoke bar in Bangkok and I talked about the diaspora and how it spread around and it was this. It was such a wonderful experience because it was I always.
Speaker 3:My father said to me when I was growing up, you either you can't leave the house until you either learn how to play the piano or learn how to type.
Speaker 3:And I learned how to type and that set my, that set my direction.
Speaker 3:But that moment was when the music was in me and I really loved finding out all of these people in these places and how music evolved and how things go viral long before we were talking about going viral, how things go from tiny towns and mining communities and farming communities to you know this guy, alan Lomax, who was friends with Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly and Pete Seeger, and from them it went to Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk and then the Animals and from there it went everywhere, because it's a public domain song.
Speaker 3:So any musician playing in a bar or cutting their first album, they want to do it because it's this compelling song that it could be about. It's specific and universal. It could be about, you know, a house of ill repute. It can be about a gambling addiction, it can be about drinking, but it has specifics, like new orleans, like one foot on the platform, the other one on the train, and so it's this song that is so compelling to so many people and it's been remixed and redone in hundreds of ways I had to I had to detox after the book.
Speaker 1:I couldn't listen to it. How long did it take you to research it, and you traveled all over the world to track down the history of this song.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and in fact it took up our honeymoon. We drove around the South listening to old music and talking to people, but I mean, how long it took me is kind of a bit illusory because it took me seven years, but that's because 9-11 and having a kid and uh and moving back to life like it exactly but, um, but I would say that totally it probably took me.
Speaker 3:If you compressed all the, all the obsession on the research, it probably took me about three years and uh, took me all these places. I never thought I'd be like rural missouri, where I found a version, low-ststaffed England where the song might have come from, that kind of thing, and it was fun. It was fun. It was like it was an excuse. Somebody once said that the best kind of journalism is being a social anthropologist with a press pass.
Speaker 3:That's good I got to have glimpses into people's lives and they trusted me to tell their stories, not not people, not the people who have an obligation to tell their story, like leaders and politicians and people like that, but people who didn't have that obligation, who could have sent me packing, but instead they invited me into their homes. They told me about their fathers or their grandfathers or their grandmothers, and it was an emotional experience and the end of it I gathered the family of the woman who sang the version that is responsible for us knowing it and they she had died of like emphysema at age 49 in like the sixties. And they had. They she got, they were getting minimal royalty checks, like you know, 75 cents here and there, and I found the recording in the library of congress and I played it for her kids and they hadn't heard her voice oh my gosh because I mean, they were poor and they, they.
Speaker 3:This wasn't like you know.
Speaker 2:You don't have your, your your good for you, that's your, you know.
Speaker 3:Voice recorder on your phone and so they got to hear her singing and that was. That was like an unparalleled moment in my life. I to to you know, I've gotten to do all kinds of cool things, and that is the nub of it. That's what makes it worthwhile.
Speaker 1:Might be the top of the list right there. I think so. Did you meet Eric Burton by the way I did in new Orleans.
Speaker 3:He um he answered the door he answered the door with a Hawaiian shirt wide open, you know. So I got to see a lot of Eric Burden and we sat in the big Lebowski.
Speaker 3:But best story he told me was he was once traveling by himself and he went into some bar to have a drink and they were doing karaoke and he went up and he sang House of the Rising Sun. Nobody knew who he was. And he comes back to the bar and someone says to him son, Nobody knew who he was. And he comes back to the bar and someone says to him no, you're pretty good, that wasn't too bad.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, that really sounds like it. Oh, that's so cool, Ted man. That's amazing, Unbelievable stories and we cannot thank you enough, for we would plead with you to come back and join us on another.
Speaker 2:Hold my Cutter. We've only been through about half the world?
Speaker 3:Yeah, barely touched the surface here, I have been more fortunate than I ever dreamed and it's important for me to always keep that in mind Because, I mean, the Associated Press is an incredible organization.
Speaker 3:It's got people everywhere. We always joke, you know, when you work for the AP, no matter what country you lose your wallet in, you can get help. That's incredible, that is. I mean, there are people who risk their lives every day. There are people we have people in Gaza, we have people in Ukraine, and I don't do that kind of stuff anymore, but we have people who do every day and they are I mean, they're, they continue to be my heroes, and I, every day. My mother, when I, when I started with the Patriot News and finished at Penn State, my mother said every day, for you is going to be an education that you get paid for, and that hasn't changed. And I mean I'm, I am still gratified every time I get to write something, every time I get to talk to someone who, by all rights, has no reason to talk to me but is willing to and you know we live in a polarized time so to be able to meet people and make these little connections, that's what it's all about.
Speaker 1:It really is Now. You settled in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3:Now, right, I mean I split the time between Pittsburgh and New York, but I live in the house that I grew up in. We bought it and there are good things and bad things about living in a multigenerational house. There's a lot of ballast of history, both good and grief. I mean, my parents left a lot behind. I'm still sorting through it after 16 years. But, yeah, pittsburgh is in my veins. The only two towns I've ever felt truly at home in are Pittsburgh and Beijing, and I love this place and I feel like for years I was focused on New York and I didn't. Now I'm on the board of directors of Public Source, which you may have heard of. It's the local digital news organization, and I'm trying to not just skate on the surface but dig in, so I really appreciate your willingness to have me here and to let me be a little bit part of it.
Speaker 1:Our next project. By the way, we talked about this a couple years ago the great minor league nicknames right and the origins.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Remember that we talked about that. That's a cool thought. I would love to do that.
Speaker 3:I wrote about minor league baseball teams and how they brand and stuff a few years back and we got to talking about you know, because that's another thing. It is so community specific and it is so you know you. I love that you can tell the story of a community, in many cases through its minor league baseball team and what you know. What they do have their logo, their, their, their name. It's. It's like this, this community history and postage stamp size right yeah, what some of the best stories are the minor leagues johnstown I mean, yeah, I was.
Speaker 2:I dug in with johnstown this past year. It was remarkable, like what all that city's been through and how baseball is literally at the core of everything there. It gave them hope and you know it's just on a podcast the other day it talked about 79 world series during that time. Sports in general really pulled everybody out of a deep depression. Could have been a great depression, but that's where they went to have solitude, to have, you know, a getaway of some sort, because the the city was losing everything. The steel mills are closing and everything else and I heard that over and over in johnstown. It was remarkable, but the people are really what?
Speaker 3:make it. You're going to get sick of me saying this, but you should write about that folks, I'll be writing. Yeah, you will. I'm not letting you off the hook on this Fair enough.
Speaker 1:I love that In the meantime we'll be listening and watching. Hold my Cutter. Can't thank Ted Anthony enough.
Speaker 3:Thank you for the cigar.
Speaker 1:And I hope you enjoyed the coffee, good coffee, here at Burn by Rocky Sattel Coffee, coffee, coffee here at Burien by Rocks Hotel. Enjoy your coffee and your stogie next time. On Hold my Cutter.
