conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about DIV>In, Series, England with the genre: Sports & Outdoors, Miscellaneous?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'A Season in the Sun'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Season in the Sun
  The cavalier way in which Wilson has been treated says something about what is supposed to be baseball's fundamental reference work. It says more about the game itself, which prevented Wilson and generations of players like him from qualifying for the encyclopedia for a single and, indeed, malicious reason. Artie Wilson is black.
  When you dig further, the records on Wilson still yield only a fraction of his truth. He played shortstop, second and first with the Giants, and batted.182. Officially Wilson was thirty during his major league season. Some suggest he was four years older. Whatever, his skills had long since been eroded by having to play professional baseball eleven months a year to support himself and his family. Monte Irvin, who was thirty-one himself before he was allowed to begin a splendid eight-year adventure in the majors, says, "Artie was a superstar before the term was invented. In the old Negro leagues we called him The Octopus, because it seemed as though he had eight arms. He had tremendous range, wonderful speed, a superarm. Beside that he was a first-rate punch hitter, always on base, always making trouble for the pitcher. But by the time they let him join us on the Giants, he wasn't the ball player we'd known."
  I found Artie late in June among the damp green silences of Portland, Oregon, where his minister, the Reverend Thomas L. Strayhand, says no racial problems exist. Pastor Strayhand smiles slightly. "That's because there aren't enough of us blacks here for them to notice."
  Wilson sells Chryslers on commission for a company called Gary-Worth, and through three rich days together he managed to mention in his quiet, relaxed way all the merits of a model called the Cordoba. Artie is a hard-working auto salesman and, yes, I would buy a used car from that man. But mostly we talked baseball, which Wilson looks back on with a warmth that others focus on distant, old romances.
  Wilson is a trim, tidy man with a pencil mustache and a soft tenor voice. "I never thought Robinson had a big league shortstop's arm," I said.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He sat in the press box, wearing old slacks and a sports shirt, studying journeymen named Bannister, Johnson and Orta. He sees things quickly, like a good field manager. He smokes constantly. The more serious he is, the more softly he speaks. While a young pitcher named Chris Knapp threw hard, protecting Chicago's one-run lead, I asked about the banks of unsold seats.
  He puffed. "Did I ever tell you I wanted to sign a black in Milwaukee about 1940, six years before they signed Jackie Robinson?"
  In 1943, far from his customary playgrounds, Veeck served as a Marine private on a small Pacific island called Bougainville. He was thirty years old, and already renowned. He could have been an officer, but braid and Bill Veeck are inimical.
  Someone prematurely fired an artillery piece toward unseen battalions of Japanese infantrymen. The cannon recoiled into Veeck's right foot, and cut a ragged gash to the bone. The wound was patched and Veeck rejoined his platoon. A few months later the foot was badly swollen. What he describes as "jungle rot" was attacking the bone that had been bared.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Despite expansion no one in baseball has hired Early Wynn. He continues to be the only Hall-of-Fame boat salesman of my acquaintance.
  Progress on Ciudad Deportiva, the memorial to Roberto Clemente near San Juan, has consumed most of a $667,000 capital fund. Slow as that progress is, Mrs. Vera Clemente talks hopefully of support in Congress for an appropriation to finish the job. "But," she says, "getting everything done will take the next ten years."
  After the White Sox finished last, Bill Veeck began negotiating with the State Department for a trip to Cuba, where he intended to sign talent across the sugar-cane curtain. Veeck's thirty-second operation—this time to relieve pressure on the cervical spine—intervened. Veeck had three phones installed in his room at Illinois Masonic Hospital and honed his biting humor. "Next season," he said, "they have us opening against the Toronto Blue Jays. How's that for a natural rivalry? The White Sox, a charter American League club, at Toronto? But we have a chance to win, if we can get there. If necessary, I intend to lease dog sleds."
  Johnny Bench appeared on the Johnny Carson show, where Shelley Winters seemed to proposition him on camera. Bench was gallant enough to keep his biting humor under control. This was the winter he had looked forward to, a winter of reflecting on triumph and enjoying his ease.
  Roger has forsaken baseball for hockey. One night, wearing the colors of the All Around Travel Agency, a suburban response to Les Canadiens, he scored three goals, and two more the following afternoon. As we approached the rink the next morning, another twelve-year-old asked if he had really turned the hat trick. Roger's response was an impatient "Yup." Baseball still held me. I turned to him and said, "Please. Try to win like Bench, not like Mantle."