In Memory of The Flow

Editor's Note: James Floto, our founder, passed in June 2005 after a long fight with cancer. His many friends have submitted their thoughts and memories.

Gene Carney
Notes from the Shadow of Cooperstown

REQUIEM FOR A DREAMER

The news of the passing of James Floto was not a total shock -- he had been battling cancer for three years. I only met James once, a few days after his first chemo session, in June 2002, when my wife and I were on the island of Maui. It was our last day, but his first of feeling well enough to have visitors, and I was so glad. Months before, anticipating our visit, James had talked of driving us to all the places tourists missed.

I had hoped to see him a few years before, stateside, but his plans to travel cross-country (seeing ball games all along the way) took backseat to his need to care for his mom. James moved from Kaunakakai, on Molokai, to Kihei, where we had a terrific lunch with him and his family.

As best I recall, I met James when NOTES was being born, in March 1993. John Roca of Toledo had seen my ad in the SABR Bulletin, asking for help researching "the Joss Game" -- which evolved into my play Mornings After; when NOTES started up, John shared with me a list of about twenty "fanzines" -- the word was new to me -- and on that list was The Diamond Angle, edited by James Floto, out of Hawaii. Many of the editors I contacted back then, asking them if they wanted to receive NOTES, had already stopped doing their thing. But The Diamond Angle was alive and well, and despite the distance, James and I became friends almost immediately. He understood at once what NOTES was all about.

My record say that James came aboard with Notes #3. The first mention I find of James in NOTES is this:

WE HAVE A DREAM

Most of you reading this have something in common with each other and with me, which a comment on my "Want Ad" (for a P/T job) by Joe Floto (A Diamond Angle) brought to mind: we want more time to write baseball. Joe "would like to join forces with other serious writers to make a new dynamic magazine" ... we could, perhaps, "fill a void in the baseball market."

Walden Let's Play Two is my name for the Shangri La which a colony of baseball writers (artists, film-makers, etc.) would be (after Skinner's Walden Two.) Probably a good short story there. Anybody want to take a swing at this pitch?

James believed strongly that the best baseball writing was not found in the newspapers or mainstream magazines, but in the small publications, produced by "amateurs" like us. We were not making any money, we did it because we loved to do it, period. OK, we were addicted, too, but that was secondary.

That first generation of baseball editors in which James was included was a genuine community. We tossed out topics and shared our stories and gave our opinions. We argued, we complimented each other. Most of all, we encouraged each other to persevere. The Selig Strike of 1994-95 was on the horizon, and took its toll on the fanzines. But NOTES and The Diamond Angle carried on without missing a beat. Here is my next mention of James:

A front page apology to James "the Flow" Floto for misnaming him "Joe" (as in "Joe the Flow") a couple weeks ago. For those of you who don't know, the Flow edits The Diamond Angle, an ecumenical baseball newsletter out of Hawaii, a nice mix of today and yesterday (including the Negro Leagues), columns, photos and artwork -- even crossword puzzles. Subscriptions are $20 a year (10 issues, 30-some pages each, a bargain). Lifetime subscriptions are $150 -- boy, I wish other magazines offered that!

James Floto told me who Hawaiians root for, and I pass along his reply, as it sheds more light on the "Why do folks root for certain teams -- geography aside?" question we've been asking:

Hawaiians lately have rooted for the team of their local boy made good, Sid Fernandez (in his last summer with the Mets?) The transplanted Californians favor the West Coast teams (the Giants are the only team available on radio; Flow says Jose Canseco appealed to the Hawaiian imagination). Stars at the University of H. (Honolulu? Hawaii?) retain followings when they turn pro, as do minor league favorites.

So there are a variety of hooks on which fans are caught, every franchise with its own set of magnets. Every player on every team has a following, which has snowballed from LL on. Maybe there are as many ways of being hooked, as there are fans!

James almost always participated in the "open forum" discussions I conducted for baseball editors in NOTES. From time to time, Paul White (of USA Today's BASEBALL WEEKLY) joined in. When Paul and I organized a mini-conference (as it turned out) for baseball newsletter editors. in March 1994, James was unable to attend, but he send this message:

"Aloha, Fellow Editors and Other Attenders:

"My name is James "the Flow" Floto, publisher of The Diamond Angle, home base, Molokai, Hawaii. I wish I could be there with you and I certainly am there in spirit. ... I wonder if maybe one of these cold winters some of you would like to meet me in Honolulu for a conference.

"Anyway, good luck with a much-needed conference. The growth in baseball newsletters in the five years since I started TDA has been phenomenal. As I see it, our mission is to cover things the big publications can't or won't cover, from a fan's point of view. I predict that within a decade, many of baseball's top columnists and authors will have come from [our] ranks.

"It might even be worthwhile for Paul White to run an article from a different publication once or twice a month in Baseball Weekly. (Don't you just love all the suggestions people give you, Paul? Must be because you look like a 'regular guy'.

"In any case, have fun, God Bless, and keep on publishing no matter how rough it gets. If anyone knows, I know how difficult it is to keep a newsletter going. But it is worth it, my friends, for ourselves, for our readers, and for the entire baseball-reading public. Yours in baseball,"

J. G. "The Flow" Floto, Editor TDA

My visit to Hawaii -- Barb and I were celebrating our 25th anniversary, we go back to before I wrote baseball! -- had many peaks, but certainly one was meeting James and his family. Barb and I arrived on Maui (from honolulu) for a long weekend, and I called James every day. But he only felt up to a visit at the end of our stay. Here is how I recalled it in NOTES:

OK, the trip was not 100% baseball-free. Barb and I spent one weekend on Maui, where we visited the home of James Floto, editor of The Diamond Angle and a supporter of NOTES since it began in 1993. I had never met James in person before -- we used to exchange postcards and letters before e-mail, so this was a reunion of old pen pals. The afternoon we spent with James and his family was one of the highlights of the trip -- even if we didn't talk baseball all the time.

It is hard to talk baseball in Hawaii. I have no idea how James has managed to stay interested enough to edit TDA all these years. There is no pro team based in Hawaii anymore, no winter leagues. There are plenty of diamonds, for school teams or kids. And maybe this is best. With baseball, Hawaii might just be too, too perfect to ever leave.

I have thought back to our visit many times since then. I knew his battle with cancer was not going well. When the e-mail stopped, I feared the worst.

But I think it would give James great pleasure to know that our conversation that day, and his generosity, had a hand in the book that I wrote, Burying the Black Sox.

We were not talking baseball, we were talking family. College, kids, the cost of higher education. I mentioned that when my daughter Mary Ellen was scouting colleges, one that she looked at (and rejected) was Skidmore, in Saratoga, NY.

James stopped me right there. "Saratoga? Rothstein. Have you read Blue Ruin by Brendan Boyd?" James had been working on a book on the 1920 season for years, but knew a few things about 1919, too. In 1919, Arnold Rothstein opened a casino in Saratoga called The Brook, and it was in Saratoga, that August, that the idea of a Fix took shape -- at least, that's what many people said after the scandal broke in 1920.

I left James' home filled with a great meal, uncommon hospitality, and a copy of Blue Ruin. Because it was a book on loan, I wanted to get through it and return it soon, and it was back in the mail that August. But skimming Boyd's novel had raised a question in my mind, one that would not go away very easily. How come Woodward & Bernstein are household names (to my generation) for uncovering Watergate, but no one knows who brought the Black Sox scandal to light?

What happened next, Casey, you could look up, starting with issue #268 of NOTES, and ending with my book.

Right now, I'm reading another old baseball novel. Bang the Drum Slowly. The film is perhaps my favorite baseball movie -- but this is the first time I've read Mark Harris' book. One of the lines from Bang the Drum has always stuck with me: Everybody knows that everyone is dying. That's why they treat them so well.

Of course we all know that death comes to us all, but we do not really keep that on top of our heads. We just don't. Neither do we act like our time is so precious that it is all we have. Like it's not to be wasted, especially not on treating others badly. It's not a complicated idea, it's really very simple.

And so I will always recall James Floto as a dreamer, who reached across an ocean and made friends -- not just with me, but with many, many others.

Distance between friends means nothing. Friends find a way to touch each other, they just do. Postcards, letters, packages. And now e-mail. We have lost all our excuses for not staying in touch. For not thanking friends for small gifts and words at the right time. For not apologizing (like when we misspell a name!) For not encouraging others, and sharing our dream, and maybe helping the dreams of others move along a little toward reality.

I will remember James Floto as much for his dreams, as for his deeds and his word and his Diamond Angles. Aloha, James.