Dear Abby and Ann, Dr. Crane, Hal, Gordon, and the Grandstand Managers

Abigail Van Buren, noted advice columnist, died a couple days ago.  Her passing stirred memories of other advice-givers and answer-men from the newspapers of my youth.




The afternoon paper (remember those?) was the Mansfield News Journal.  They carried the well-known "Dear Abby" column, and another one called
"Dr. Crane's Worry Clinic".  Crane's column usually dealt with marital
difficulties, and his standard advice boiled down to:  1. Go to church, and 2. Tell your wife you love her, but it took him about 700 words to come to the point.

The morning paper was the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which ran the other big-name advice columnist, Abby's twin sister Ann Landers.  But my preference in the P.D. was for "Ask Hal The Ref", in which sportswriter Hal Lebovitz would provide detailed and often humorous answers to readers questions about the infield fly rule, the onside kick, lane violations, and other such sports minutiae.   


Which suddenly reminds me of something else from the Plain Dealer of my youth.  It wasn't a column, it was more of a promotion directed at kids of all ages, and my little buddies and I thought it was the best thing in the world.

The paper called it "Grandstand Managers".  It was a vestige of the old Bill Veeck days in Cleveland.  In the spring, around the start of the baseball season, the sportswriters would invite their readers to answer The Big Question regarding this year's Cleveland Indians, like "Should the starting catcher be John Romano or Jose Azcue?" or "Should the Tribe move the outfield fences in 20 feet, or leave them as they are?"

The Question was accompanied by a ballot.  You'd cut it out, cast your vote and mail it to the Plain Dealer.  The paper would, in turn, submit all the ballots to the Indians front office -- Our 10-year old voices would be heard!  Our parents didn't listen to us but Gabe Paul just might -- and would send each voter one free ticket to a late summer home game, designated as "Grandstand Managers Night", along with a membership card.


This was how it went:  Each of us in our group of five or six neighborhood kids would agree to mail in our ballots and to attend the game together.  We'd stay on each other -- "You mail yours yet?" -- to make sure everyone sent it in by the postmark deadline.  Then we'd wait for the P.D. to mail us our tickets.  "Hey, I got my ticket today!  Did you get yours?"  The game was months away, but we Grandstand Managers were special -- we got our tickets in advance, and they gave 'em to us for free, 'cause we had valuable opinions.  We'd show off with our tickets, waving them in the faces of our un-special friends who did not possess such tickets, and would not be going to the game with we special few.  And when game day came at last, someone's dad would pile us all into one of the enormous cars of the era and we'd make the pilgrimage to Municipal Stadium.  There, in our reserved section, we would commune with our fellow Grandstand Managers, have our presence announced on the scoreboard and the PA system, and generally wallow in our specialness. 

One summer, I got into an argument with my little sister about some long-forgotten silliness.  Young girls don't have many tools to fix a mean big brother, but in an inspired fit of pique, my little sis hit me where it hurt -- she snatched my Grandstand Managers ticket and tore it into pieces.

Shock!  Horror!  Outrage!  Hissy fit!  "MOM!!!!  Look . . . what . . . she . . . DID!   What am I gonna do?  The game's in a couple weeks!  I can't get another ticket now!  Waaaaa!!!!"

Mom certainly felt my pain but, realistically, the options were iffy.  My parents could cover me for the price of another ticket, but this was well before the days of TicketMaster and StubHub.  I'd have to ride up with the rest of the gang, buy a ticket at the window, then try to talk my way into the Grandstand Managers section.  If I failed, I'd be sitting solo among strangers, which would be no fun at all.  Even worse, what if I went all the way up there and it was a sell-out?  Highly unlikely with the mid-60's Indians, but ya never know.  A sell-out would be a problem for all of us.

Mom decided we should throw ourselves upon the mercy of the court.  My sister had to write a letter to the sports editor, Gordon Cobbledick, to explain:  She got mad at her brother and tore up his ticket to Grandstand Managers Night and she was very sorry and was there any way her brother could get another ticket please please please?  Mom mailed it off, along with the remaining bits of my shredded ticket.

A few days later, on the front page of the Plain Dealer -- there was a picture of my little sister's letter, in all of its cute 6-year old scribble-print, probably in crayon.  Cobbledick wrote a short sweet article about it, with a headline on the order of "It's OK, Jan.  We're Sending A Ticket."  It was a minor sensation in Mansfield, Ohio and we were semi-famous for a day or two.

True to his word, good old Gordon Cobbledick sent me a replacement ticket and I went to the game with the rest of the kids and all was right the the world.

And so it went in the days of Dear Abby and Ann and Dr. Crane and Hal and Gordon and the Grandstand Managers.

Let's wrap it up with John Prine doing his classic "Dear Abby" song: