Blog #5

Steve Hamilton was a pitcher debuted in 1961 for the Cleveland Indians. From the very beginning of the interview in Studs Terkel “Working”, the idea of the interview was to capture and reveal the conditions of the lifestyle of a baseball player in the 1960’s as well as somewhat evaluating how the baseball environment effected his personality. The interview reviews how Steve Hamilton truly see’s himself in the baseball game as an average baseball player due to the other big name superstars he had played with such as Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Willie Mays. When he would walk down the streets and people would recognize him, he had a sense of joy and proud because it is part of the game Hamilton explains. In the game of baseball talent and age comes hand in hand. When he was being scout, he lied about his age saying he was 21 when in fact he was 23 “if you’ve got two prospects of equal ability one kid’s twenty and I’m twenty-three, they’ve ganna take the bow that’s twenty (Terkel 267)”. In order to be given a professional contract or even consideration, one must have developed the reputation before hitting 25 years of age. Lucky for Hamilton, he was able to think on his feet by given himself an opportunity to live his dream by lying. The 1960’s carried a lot of history such as the Cuban missile crises, John F. Kennedy elected president in 1961, and Martin Luther King gives his “I have a dream” speech in 1963.