Civility completely evaporating at ballparks is a modern travesty

Maybe you know this story already.If you don’t, it’s a terrific reminder of the way things could be in sports, because this is the way things once were in sports. Let’s go back to June 23, 1946.

The Dodgers and the Cardinals were already engaged in a tight pennant race and were the two best teams in the National League.There were 27,538 folks on hand at Ebbets Field, a nice Sunday afternoon crowd in that first summer after World War II.

Those in the stands who hadn’t been among the 64,000-plus who’d crammed the old yard the previous two days had no doubt followed along with Red Barber on the radio, or read Jimmy Cannon and Dick Young in the papers. So they were aware that the Dodgers were being killed — absolutely murdered — by the Cardinals’ best player, a 25-year-old first baseman named Stanley Frank Musial.In the first two games of the series, Musial had gone 7-for-10 with two doubles, a triple and three RBIs.

The Dodgers could not get him out. And sure enough, that Sunday, Musial drew a first-inning walk against Brooklyn pitcher Joe Hatten.In the third, he ripped a single up the middle off Hatten.

And in the fifth, Hatten walked him again.By the eighth, Hatten was guarding a 3-1 lead but had to face the teeth of the St.

Louis order: Musial, Enos Slaughter and Whitey Kurowski — Hall of Famer, Hall of Famer, four-time All-Star.The crowd stirred.

And then a few voices were heard chanting.And joined by a few more.

And a few hundred more.And then a few thousand more. Here! Comes! That! Man! Again! Up in the press box, Bob Broeg of the St.

Louis Post-Dispatch — who 33 years later would himself be honored in the writer’s wing of the Hall of Fame — heard the chants.And in his game story the next day — retelling an eventual 4-2 Dodgers win; Musial popped up to catcher that last at-bat — Broeg identified the Cardinals first baseman thusly: Stan the Man. It stuck, of course, and remains one of the most famous nicknames in baseba...