Baseball History

[67RedSox]

It was on this date in 1993 the Rockies sign Free Agent Howard Johnson to a 1 year contract. Despite the hitter-friendly atmosphere of Mile High Stadium, he wound up hitting more home runs on the road finishing with only ten overall. In the crowded left field position, he split time with Mike Kingery and Eric Young but was mostly pinch hitting by August when the 1994 Major League Baseball strike ended the season. His .211 average was the worst of his career to that point and he was not re-signed.

Do you have any interest in the Pacific Coast League? If you do here’s an old film which lay dormant until recently rediscovered. It was originally produced by the Pacific Coast League at the beginning of the 1946 season to promote the post-war resurgence of the league. It contains an introduction by league president Clarence H. "Pants" Rowland and some of the only known color footage still in existence showing each of the teams in the league working out at their spring training camps. Close-ups of the managers and players of the Oakland Oaks, San Francisco Seals, Sacramento Solons, Los Angeles Angels, Hollywood Stars, San Diego Padres, Portland Beavers, and Seattle Rainiers in action and in colour.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPv41VZ68yE]The Old Pacific Coast League: 1946 Promotional Film. - YouTube[/ame]

Take your pick…Los Angeles, Anaheim or California. The Angels have been called by all three. On this date in 1996 the California Angels became the Anaheim Angels. Rumour has it they will be called The Angels of Gene Autry Way next season.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=la+a...ronto-blue-jays-vs-los-angeles.html;1280;1024

Like so many other players WWII interrupted their plans on playing ML Baseball. That was true for Hank Bauer who, at age 19, was just getting his feet wet at the D Ball level in the Wisconsin State League in 1941. One month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Bauer enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. While serving in the Pacific Theater, Bauer contracted malaria on Guadalcanal, but he recovered from that well enough to earn 11 campaign ribbons, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts (for being wounded in action) in 32 months of combat. Bauer was wounded his second time during the Battle of Okinawa, when he was a lieutenant in command of a platoon of 64 Marines. Only six of the 64 Marines survived the Japanese counterattack, and Bauer was wounded by shrapnel in his thigh. His wounds were severe enough to send him all the way back to the United States to recuperate. After the War a scout for the New York Yankees, decided to sign him for a tryout with the Yankees' farm team in Quincy, Illinois. The terms of the contract were $175 a month, with a $25 per month increase if he made the team and a $250 bonus. Despite losing 4 years to the War he climbed the ladder to the Majors in short order. Late in the 1948 season, at age 26, he made his ML debut at Yankee Stadium in a game against the Philadelphia Athletics and went 3 for 5. It was for a cup of coffee only…he would have to wait for the 1949 to show if he was good enough to stay with the Yankees and manned RF for the Yankees for the next 11 seasons until Roger Maris came along. In his first 5 seasons the Yankees won 5 straight World Series. Not a bad start…5 seasons, 5 Rings. He would win two more Rings before he was traded to the KC Athletics in the deal the Yankees made to get Maris.
Bauer had ML Manager written all over him and in KC he became their player-manager in mid 1961. He remained as Manager until the end of the 1962 season when he was fired. Baltimore quickly gobbled him up as their 1B coach for the 1963 season and on this date in 1963 he was named as their Manager. It was a good choice as he would lead them to a Pennant and World Series Championship in 1966.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=hank...auer-9-Baseball-Card-Value-Prices.htm;270;386

Bobby Tolan was born on this date in 1945. Tolan made his debut in the Majors as a teenager back in 1965 with the Cardinals. He played on two World Series teams with the Cardinals in 1967 when the Cardinals defeated the Red Sox and again the following year when they lost to the Tigers. The day after the loss to the Tigers Tolan was traded to Cincinnati for one of the games most underrated players of all time, Vada Pinson. It was good timing for Tolan as he got in on the ground floor of Big Red Machine and played on two more World Series teams. Usually hitting in the 2 slot behind Pete Rose and in front of Alex Johnson in the Reds lineup Tolan blossomed as a hitter and a base stealer. In 1970 he led the NL in steals with 57. He shares a birthday with a couple of players who were among the best of their times. Roy Campanella was born on this date in 1921 and Everett Scott was born on this date in 1892. Campanella we know about but Scott, a leader on 5 World Series teams in a 9 year span is largely forgotten. Although he was never seriously considered for Baseball’s Hall of Fame, Scott was considered to be the finest shortstop of his time and his time stradled the Dead Ball and Live Ball Eras. Scott was the steady infield leader of championship Red Sox and Yankee teams of the 1910s and 1920s. Beginning June 20, 1916, and ending May 6, 1925, he played in 1,307 consecutive games, which was the Major League record until Lou Gehrig and then Cal Ripken broke it. After playing in 3 World Series with the Red Sox he was traded to the NY Yankees after the 1921 season. He immediately became the Captain of the Yankees and remained so in his time in New York and played in 2 more World Series with the Yankees.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=bobb...om%2F2013%2F04%2F535-bobby-tolan.html;697;493

https://www.google.ca/search?q=roy+...lex_belth%2F03%2F17%2Fbooks.review%2F;298;415

https://www.google.ca/search?q=ever...2Fpictures%2Fitem%2Fggb2005020166%2F;1024;737

Here’s some trivial stuff:

- Sandy Koufax struck out 12 consecutive times in 1955, the record for a hitter
- Forbes Field, considered a ‘Pitcher’s Park’ never held a no-hitter in its 61 years of use
- Carlos Lee is the only player to play at least 14 seasons in the Major Leagues and have at least 75 RBI in every season
- Ted Lyons is the only pitcher in the modern era to complete the last 25 games he started in his career
- Ted Williams reaching base in 84 consecutive games…a record no one knows
- Neither Stan Musial nor Ted Williams hit below .310 in each of their first 17 seasons…now that is mind boggling (at least for my little mind )
- In 2013 Jason became the oldest player to reach 2,000 basehits at 42 years, 8 months
- Eddie Murray, Carl Yastrzemski, Ricky Henderson, Dave Winfield and Cap Anson are the only players in the 3,000 Hit Club not to collect 200 in a season

 

[67RedSox]

It was on this date in 1997 that Andres Galarraga’s 5 year run in Colorado ends when he signs a three-year $24.8 million contract as a free agent with the Braves. He helped put the Rockies on the map as he batted .316 with 172 home runs and 579 RBI with the Rockies, including consecutive RBI crowns in 1996-1997.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=andr...2F%2Fwww.crwflags.com%2Fpage0457.html;255;300

There was a clip in yesterday’s Post about the Pacific Coast League. Just in case you’re interest here’s a research paper that was done by Michael Lomax on the PCL’s efforts to become a Major League. Appears it didn’t stand a chance because it required the approval of the AL and NL owners who weren’t about to give up the lucrative West Coast. One thing I found interesting was how the plight of the St. Louis Browns was one of the triggers for the PCL to seek ML status. A good read even if the PCL isn’t your cup of tea.

http://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&context=nepca

On this date in 1884 the NL agrees to allow overhand pitching‚ but rules that pitchers must keep both feet on the ground throughout their pitching motion in order to reduce the velocity of their pitches. They still must throw the ball at the height requested by the batter. In addition‚ teams are now required to supply a separate bench for each club at their park to limit inter-team fraternization.

On this date in 1934 17-year old Eiji Sawamura gives up one hit, a home run to Lou Gehrig, as the touring American All-Stars win in Japan, 1-0. At one point Sawamura strikes out four future Hall of Famers in a row: Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, and Gehrig. The All-Stars easily win the other 15 games against high school and post-college players. College players in Japan are prohibited from playing against foreigners.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=eiji...g%2Fwiki%2FFile%3AEiji_Sawamura_2.jpg;523;649

It was on this date in 1952 that Hank Sauer, one of Baseball’s good guys won the NL’s MVP Award. It was a controversial vote naming the Cubs slugger as MVP. The Cubs finished in 5th place‚ despite Sauer's 37 HRs and 121 RBIs. "Yeah‚ I'm surprised‚ says Hank. But I can tell you this‚ I'm sure tickled pink. I thought maybe the other guy‚ Roberts‚ would win it." Sauer has 226 points in the voting‚ while Robin Roberts is 2nd with 211‚ and Joe Black is 3rd with 208. Everyman’s ballplayer, Sauer worked to overcome the challenges he faced in life and baseball. Even though he lost two years to World War II, spent eight years in the minors, became a regular major leaguer when he was past thirty, adjusted and readjusted his hitting style, and came back from many injuries, the big Pennsylvania native persevered and won recognition as a two-time National League All-Star, the senior circuit’s 1952 MVP as well as home run and RBI champion, and a longtime Cubs fan favorite.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=hank...2Ffg.cgi%3FGRid%3D5861199%26page%3Dgr;350;458

It was on this date in 1958 Jackie Jensen is named as the surprise winner of the AL’s MVP Award. A surprise as he played for the mediocre and non-contending Red Sox. A surprise perhaps but make no mistake he was deserving and he was among the best of all players in the 1950’s. His first two+ seasons in the Majors were with the Yankees, mostly sitting on the bench. Once he ‘escaped’ New York his light began to shine. Over the balance of his career he would average 100 RBIs a season, leading the League three times in that category as well as Triples and Stolen bases not to mention a Gold Glove for his outfield play.
Winning the MVP isn’t what he’s best remembered for. Nor is he best remembered for being one of the country’s best College Football players, playing in the 1949 Rose Bowl or being in the College Football Hall of Fame. He won’t be remembered for spurning MLB in favour of the PCL…Jensen had been scouted by several ML teams, including the New York Yankees, who reportedly offered him a $75,000 bonus. The Oakland Oaks matched the bid, and Jack decided that the Oaks offered a higher level of competition than the lower Minor League berth the Yankees had suggested he would get. Jensen hit .261 in his first professional season, after which he was sold (along with Billy Martin and others) to the Yankees. He isn’t going to be remembered either for his 1,500 guest wedding to Olympic silver medalist Zoe Ann Olsen attended by dozens of reporters and television cameras. What he will be remembered for is his mid-career decision to leave Baseball because he could not bear to fly in an airplane which he could handle only with tranquilizers and sleeping pills. In fact, Jensen often drove from city to city rather than fly with the team, something more manageable before the league expanded to the West Coast. For Jensen, flying had become not only terrifying but also humiliating—his medication made him appear drunk and more than once he had to be helped on and off a plane while onlookers gazed. One year after his MVP win he retired.
After a year off minding his restaurant and considering other investment options, Jensen returned to the Red Sox for the 1961 season. His flying dilemma had grown worse because the American League had a new team in Los Angeles that season, necessitating the addition of two long round-trip plane rides to the old schedule.
At the end of April, hitting .130, Jensen left the team in Detroit and took a train to Reno. Zoe Ann reportedly burst into tears when she saw her husband’s defeated face. The two drove to Las Vegas to see a noted nightclub hypnotist, a last resort. After several days of treatment, Jensen joined the Red Sox in Los Angeles, and hit his first home run of the year on his return. Over the next four months (May through August) he hit .287 with 12 home runs, not terribly below his previous standards, but faded in September. His off-field struggles continued – failing to show at Boston’s Logan Airport for a flight to Cleveland, he instead drove the 850 miles himself and got to the game on time. With the Red Sox scheduled to make a second trip to Los Angeles in August, Jensen told the Red Sox he could not go, and instead joined the team in Kansas City, their next stop. After the season, he retired again, this time for good.
His post career life was a struggle. He lost most of his money through bad investments, he and his wife divorced, re-married and divorced again. He married again. He coached at the College level and did some TV work. He suffered a couple of heart attacks attributed to anxiety and 2-3 packs of cigarettes a day. He died at age 55.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=jack...ards%2F1961_Topps_Baseball_Cards.html;732;536

If you’re old enough to remember Ball Four you’ll remember Joe Schultz who was fired on this date in 1969 as the Seattle Pilot’s Manager.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=joe+...ttp%3A%2F%2F1969topps.blogspot.com%2F;487;690

On this date in 1989 Robin Yount wins the AL’s MVP Award becoming the Junior Circuit’s first winner from a sub .500 team. The Milwaukee CF’er, who also won the award in 1982 as a SS, joins Hank Greenberg and Stan Musial as the third person to win the MVP twice playing different positions.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq2K5WKH8IM]Robin Yount - Baseball Hall of Fame Biographies - YouTube[/ame]

 

[67RedSox]

In his first full season this future HOF’er won the Home Run title in 1929 with 43 setting the NL record. He became the first baseball player to be named to the All-Star Game as a member of two different teams. Along with his batting prowess, he was also a superb defensive right fielder who still holds the single-season mark with 44 assists in 1930. In 1932, he led the NL in both home runs and stolen bases. No player since has led the League in both categories in the same year. On July 10, 1936, he became the first NL player to slug four home runs in a game in the 20th century. If you thought Chuck Klein of the Philadelphia Phillies… you’re right.
In 1933 Klein did it all by winning the NL’s Triple Crown (.368, 28, 120). But Klein’s team stunk and it was almost broke. The Great Depression hit the city hard, and as unemployment climbed, fans stopped coming to baseball games. Attendance at Baker Bowl dropped from 299,000 in 1930 to 156,000 in 1933. The Phillies were on the verge of bankruptcy. Team owner Gerald Nugent had no choice but to unload his most valuable player to help satisfy the club’s debts. And so on this date in 1933, the Phillies traded Klein to the Chicago Cubs for shortstop Mark Koenig, outfielder Harvey Kendrick, pitcher Ted Kleinhans, and $65,000 in cash.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=chuc...bowl-photos-on-the-internet-part-2%2F;900;619

.340, .341 and .398 were his batting averages his final three seasons for the SF Seals of the Pacific Coast League. In two of those seasons Joe DiMaggio had 259 and 270 basehits. Is it any wonder that on this date in 1934 the Yankees bought him from the Seals. DiMaggio rookie season in the Majors was 1936 when he went .323-29-125 with 132 Runs and 206 hits. His salary that season was $8,500.00 or equal to $144,000.00 today.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=joe+...2F2009-Superior-Card-Co.-Minor-League;252;349

There’s a couple of HOF’ers who were born on November 21st. Unfortunately the Baseball World lost one of them earlier this year, Stan Musial. Stan the Man was born on this date in 1920. I like Vin Scully’s description of Musial… "How good was Stan Musial? He was good enough to take your breath away."

Preacher Roe, the supremely underrated pitcher for the Dodgers in the late 1940’s and 1950’s was asked how he tried to get Musial out, he replied… "I throw him four wide ones then try to pick him off first base."

How gracious was Musial…the following quote answers that and also explains why everyone liked the guy:

"There was never a day when I was as good as Joe DiMaggio at his best. Joe was the best, the very best I ever saw."

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-MkfzSy4p8]Here and Now: Stan Musial's Final Time At The Plate - YouTube[/ame]

The other Hall of Famer born on this date in 1905 was Freddie Lindstrom, star NY Giant of the 1920’s and into the 1930’s. Someone once wrote that his rise to fame was meteoric, and like a meteor his flame burned out quickly. Certainly his rise was rapid. At 16 he was playing in the highest classification of Minor League baseball. Two years later he became the youngest player ever to appear in the World Series, a distinction he still holds. He was known as the “Boy Wonder” of the Major Leagues. At the age of 23, Lindstrom hit .358 for the Giants and was named The Sporting News Major League All Star team’s third baseman ahead of Pittsburgh’s Harold “Pie” Traynor. Two years later, he repeated the honor while scoring 127 runs and batting .379, second only to Rogers Hornsby among right-handed batters in National League history. For several years his star shined brightly in the National League. When his stardom faded, the afterglow was strong enough to secure the election of Freddie Lindstrom to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, despite the objections of his detractors.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=fred...LotDetail.aspx%3Finventoryid%3D97581;800;1027

Sandwiched in between the birthdays of Lindstrom and Musial was one of Baseball’s more interesting personalities whose ML career from player to Manager to President of Baseball Operations lasted 50 years. Paul Richards was born on this date in 1908. He was never more than a platoon player in all of his 8 seasons as a player, averaging 177 At-Bats, but he made the most of his time and at his last ML stop in Detroit during WWII he twice received MVP votes ( 1944 and 1945 ). The Tigers won the AL Pennant in 1945 and as their back-up catcher Richards started 70 games behind the plate and got 234 At-bats but was good handling a pitching staff and ended up 10th in the MVP voting. In the World Series he played in all 7 games. The Tigers and their World Series opponents, the Cubs, were so depleted by the War that Chicago writer Warren Brown quipped, “I don’t think either of them can win it.” Richards enjoyed the highlight of his ML career in Game 7. His bases-loaded double in the first inning drove home three runs as Newhouser beat the Cubs for the Championship.
Paul Richards was one of the most celebrated Managers who never won a pennant. He took on seemingly hopeless building jobs in Chicago, Baltimore, and Houston and succeeded every time in laying a foundation for the club’s future success.
He developed young stars, including Brooks Robinson, Joe Morgan, Rusty Staub, Billy Pierce, Nellie Fox, and Minnie Minoso. Some of his innovations were decades ahead of his peers. He calculated on-base percentages before that statistic had a name (he called it “batting average with bases on balls”), was the first manager to enforce pitch counts to protect young arms, and invented a huge catcher’s mitt to handle knuckleball pitchers.
In eleven seasons as a ML Manager he was ejected more frequently than anyone else in history, once in every 23 games. Bobby Cox, Earl Weaver, Billy Martin and Ralph Houk had nothing on him when it came to riding an umpire. In the Minors he gained a reputation as a ferocious intimidator of umpires; one year he was ejected fourteen times and sportswriters nicknamed him “Ol’ Rant and Rave.” In the Majors one umpire said he had “the foulest mouth in the Major Leagues,” but he taught Sunday school in the Baptist church in the off-seasons. He was a seven-handicap golfer—some people thought golf, not baseball, was his favorite sport—but he was a habitual cheater, so flagrant that some friends refused to play with him.
Richards’ baseball career spanned seven decades, from Ty Cobb and John McGraw to Tony La Russa and Joe Torre. Sixteen of his players became big league managers. Some, such as Dick Williams, credited him as an important teacher; others, including Torre, despised him. Earl Weaver, who began managing in the Orioles’ farm system when Richards was GM, said Richards taught him the nuances of base running and cutoff plays. Weaver was acclaimed as an innovator for keeping detailed statistics on his players, just as Richards had done.
On May 4, 1986, Richards finished his daily round of golf, then returned to the thirteenth hole to replay a shot he had botched. He often did that; he would say there is no such thing as too much practice on the fundamentals. Other golfers found him slumped in his cart alongside the fairway, dead of an apparent heart attack at 77.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=paul...ques.com%2Fsports%2Fsportmagazine.htm;479;606

 

[67RedSox]

Mickey Mantle was my favourite player growing up. He gave me my greatest Baseball ‘moment’ when he took Barney Schultz deep on the first pitch of the bottom of the 9th inning in Game of the 1964 World Series for a walk-off HR before that term had even been coined. He was a three-time MVP and many will argue he should have been only a two-time MVP’er. Ted Williams was a two-time MVP (1946 and 1949) and most would agree he should have been at least a four-time winner and possibly a five, six or seven-time winner if you want to throw 1941, 1942, 1947, 1951 and 1957 into the mix. In my humble opinion, based upon numbers and what I’ve read I belong in the camp that says he should be a five-time winner…1941, 1942, 1946, 1947 and 1949. I don’t think he was deserving in 1951. I’ve discussed before how Williams was denied by baseball writers ( if they even deserve that title ) of MVP Awards simply because they didn’t like him and wouldn’t vote for him. It was on this date in 1957 in a controversial vote, Yankee outfielder Mantle edges out Williams to win the American League MVP. In spite of the 'Splendid Splinter' leading the league with a .388 average and 38 home runs, as well as a stunning .731 slugging average, two Chicago writers still list him in the ninth and tenth places on their ballots. This is the one season I just don’t know what to think. Wish I had been old enough to follow the game that season then I could make a decision one way or the other.

1957 Awards Voting - Baseball-Reference.com

It was on this date in 1952 that Harry Byrd of the Philadelphia Athletics is named the AL’s Rookie of the Year. The Athletics would finish above .500 that season, not a common thing for them, as their pitching was pretty good. Bobby Shantz won 24 games and took home the MVP Award and Byrd a Righthander won 15 games…just enough to win him the Rookie Award in a tight three man race. It would end up being his best of seven ML seasons.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=harr...Athletics-Excellent%2Fdp%2FB00BLBR9YC;211;300

Pete Browning was a genuine ML star in both the 1880s and 1890s. He was a lifelong resident of Louisville and when Louisville went Major League again in 1882, as a charter member of the fledgling American Association, the National League's first great rival, he was playing for them. His skills honed to a fine edge, Browning ran away with the American Association's inaugural batting race, posting a .378 average. Thirty-six points better than that of his nearest rival.
During the course of his 13 Major League seasons, from 1882 through 1894, the bulk of that with Louisville teams, Browning compiled a .341 lifetime batting average. Tied on the all-time list with Cooperstown enshrinees Wee Willie Keeler and Bill Terry, the .341 mark ranks today as the fourth-best among the game's right-handed batsmen. Only Hall of Famers Rogers Hornsby (.358), Ed Delahanty (.346) and Harry Heilmann (.342) have ever done better work from that side of the plate.
The work included one .400 season, and a trio of batting titles in two separate leagues. The latter makes Browning one of four 19th-century players to have won batting titles in two different leagues. Ross Barnes, Deacon White, and Dan Brouthers are the others.
Deaf and illiterate, the six-foot, 180-pound Browning was eccentric as well. He refused to slide; played defense standing on one leg to prevent anyone running into him; stared into the sun to improve his "lamps" (eyes); treasured his "active" bats because of the hits they still contained; was constantly on the prowl for the next, new "magical" stick with hits in it; reportedly favored bats that were 37 inches in length and 48 ounces in weight; maintained a warehouse of "retired" bats in his home -- all of them named, many after Biblical figures; kept his batting statistics on his shirt cuffs; and when traveling over the circuit, frequently alighted from trains and introduced himself as the champion batter of the American Association.
All of this is interesting but my favourite story about him has to do with him being the original “Louisville Slugger”. The 130-year history of the Louisville Slugger baseball bat began in the talented hands of 17-year-old John A. "Bud" Hillerich. Bud's father, J. F. Hillerich, owned a growing woodworking shop in Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1880s when Bud began working for him. Legend has it that Bud, who played baseball himself, slipped away from work one afternoon in 1884 to watch Louisville's Major League team, the Louisville Eclipse. The team's star, Pete Browning, mired in a hitting slump, broke his bat. Bud invited Browning over to his father's shop to make him a new one. With Browning at his side giving advice, Bud hand-crafted a new bat from a long slab of wood. Browning got three hits with it the next day. Browning told his teammates, which began a surge of professional ball players to the Hillerich shop. Yet J. F. Hillerich had little interest in making bats; he saw the company future in stair railings, porch columns and swinging butter churns. For a brief time in the 1880s, he even turned away ball players. Bud persisted; he saw the future in bats. His father, pleased with his son's enthusiasm, relented. The rest is baseball history.
In 1894, with Bud Hillerich taking over from his father, the name "Louisville Slugger" was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. In the early 1900s, the growing company pioneered a sports marketing concept by paying Hall of Fame hitter Honus Wagner to use his name on a bat-a practice continued with Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and so many other professional athletes in virtually all sports today. By 1923, Louisville Slugger was selling more bats than any other bat maker in the country. Baseball was the nation's most popular sport, and legends like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Lou Gehrig all swung Louisville Sluggers.
130 years have passed since Bud Hillerich crafted that very first bat for Pete Browning. During that time, Louisville Slugger has sold more than 100,000,000 bats, making it without question the most popular bat brand in baseball history.
Life and his health was not kind to him after his baseball career. His heavy drinking, his longstanding fondness for prostitutes (syphilis) and poor medical treatment all contributed to his early death at age 44.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=pete...abr.org%2Fbioproj%2Fperson%2Fb4fdac3f;250;260

 

[67RedSox]

I don’t know a lot about Chuck Dressen but it was on this date in 1953 Walter O’Malley announces he’s finished as the Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. In his three seasons managing the Dodgers 1951, 1952 and 1953 he won NL Pennants 1953 and 1952 and lost the 1951 Pennant in a playoff…a record of 298-166 for a Winning % of .642. So, why was Dressen out as the Dodger’s Manager? Well, the decision was Dressen’s. Fresh from winning the 1953 Pennant with 105 victories, Dressen decided to publicly demand a three-year contract from O’Malley instead of the customary one-year deal the Dodgers then offered their Managers. But O'Malley didn't yield and Dressen resigned as Dodgers Manager. O'Malley replaced Dressen with Triple-A Montreal Royals Manager Walter Alston — a veteran Minor Leaguer. Alston would go on to sign 23 one-year contracts with O'Malley, while winning seven NL pennants, four World Series, and a berth in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Dressen returned to Oakland to manage the PCL Oaks in 1954 and in 1955 was hired to manage the hapless Washington Senators, who had finished sixth in the eight-team AL in 1954. Dressen inherited a second division team with a poor farm system. Nevertheless, baseball observers predicted that he would rouse the Senators from their doldrums with his managerial acumen. The 1955 Senators finished eighth and last, the 1956 edition finished seventh, and the '57 team was 4–16 (and last again) on May 7, 1957, when Dressen was fired. His Senators won only 116 of 328 games — a winning percentage of .354.
After leaving Washington, Dressen rejoined the newly relocated Los Angeles Dodgers to serve as a coach under Alston in 1958–1959. When the '59 Dodgers won the World Series, Dressen was in demand as a Manager once again, and the Milwaukee Braves, who had lost a pennant playoff to Los Angeles at the end of the 1959 season, named him their field boss for 1960. Milwaukee was only 3 victories short (two in 1956 and one in 1959) of four National League Pennants in four seasons, and still boasted Hall of Famers Henry Aaron, Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn, but the players around them had begun to fall off in production and the Brave farm system could not keep up. Dressen was not able to reverse the Braves' slow decline to the middle of the NL pack. They again finished second in 1960, but a full seven games behind, and were 71–58 and in fourth place late in 1961, when Dressen was replaced by Birdie Tebbetts.
In 1962, Dressen managed the Toronto Maple Leafs of the Triple-A International League to 91 victories and in 1963, Dressen was out of uniform, scouting for the Dodgers, when his final managing opportunity presented itself. After the Detroit Tigers won only 24 of their first 60 games under Bob Scheffing, Dressen was hired on June 18th to take over the team. He rallied the Tigers to a 55–47 record for the remainder of 1963, a first division finish in 1964, and slowly was mentoring much of the talent (Denny McLain, Willie Horton, Mickey Lolich and others) that would win Detroit the 1968 world championship. By now, however, Dressen's health began to fail. A heart attack sidelined him during 1965 spring training and didn't return as Tigers Manager until the end of May. Then he suffered a second coronary early on in the 1966 campaign. He was recovering from the heart attack when he was stricken with a kidney infection, and died of cardiac arrest at age 67 in a Detroit hospital on August 10, 1966.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=chuc...elame.com%2FPages%2FBaseballAtoD.aspx;443;597

It was on this date in 1964, one of Baseball’s good guys, Ken Boyer, is named as the NL’s MVP. It’s a one-man race as Boyer receives 14 of the 20 1st Place votes. I've said it before...for some reason, beyond my little mind’s ability to comprehend, Boyer is not in the Hall of Fame. A number of 3rd Basemen of his time were ignored by those voting. I’m not saying Boyer was an automatic for the Hall but less than 1 out of 20 voters filled in his name on their ballots as he received less than 5% of the vote in his first 5 years on the ballot and therefore got the boot off the ballot ( he was later restored ). Eddie Mathews who clubbed over 500 HRs received less than 1 out of 3 votes (32%) in his first year of eligibility although he eventually got in. Ron Santo, like Boyer, was virtually ignored by the voters. The Hall of Fame currently has 15 3rd Basemen, three of whom are from the ***** Leagues. “Home Run” Baker, Wade Boggs, George Brett, Jimmy Collins, George Kell, Freddie Lindstrom, Eddie Mathews, Brooks Robinson, Mike Schmidt, Pie Traynor, Deacon White and Ron Santo are the ML’ers. Ray Dandridge, Judy Johnson and Jud Wilson are the ***** League members.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn_aMHrAG_w]Ken Boyer Highlight Video - YouTube[/ame]

HOF’er Joe Medwick was born on this date in 1911. Ten times he was named to the NL All-Star team; he won the circuit’s Most Valuable Player Award in 1937; and in that same year he became the League’s last batter to win the Triple Crown. Yet perhaps Joe Medwick is better remembered for being banished from a World Series game by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis than for his exploits on the field.
It was the seventh and deciding game of the 1934 World Series in Detroit between the St. Louis Cardinals and the hometown Tigers. Behind the stellar pitching of Dizzy Dean, who with some justification proclaimed himself the greatest pitcher in the world, the Gas House Gang led 7-0 in the sixth inning. But they wanted more. Pepper Martin led off the top of the frame with a single to left and made it to second base on Goose Goslin’s misplay of the ball. Jack Rothrock and Frankie Frisch both flied out. Up came Medwick with Martin on second and two out. Joe slashed a long hit against the right-field bleachers, knocking in Martin. As Medwick slid into third base, Marvin Owen, the Tiger third sacker, dug his foot into Joe’s leg. The hot-tempered Cardinal, still lying on the ground after the slide, retaliated by kicking Owen in the stomach with both spiked shoes. For a moment it appeared that a fight would break out, but players and umpires quickly separated the potential combatants and the game continued. Ripper Collins batted Medwick home. The half-inning ended when Bill Delancey was thrown out at first base after he and catcher Mickey Cochrane both missed strike three.
When Medwick took the field in the bottom of the sixth, Detroit fandom greeted him with resounding boos and a barrage of missiles hurled into left field. Mostly apples, oranges, and grapefruit, but also a few pop bottles were thrown onto the playing field. No bottles hit a player. Medwick and his fellow outfielders, Ernie Orsatti and Jack Rothrock, started playing catch with some of the fruit on the field, further incensing the crowd. That Medwick seemed to be not at all intimidated by the barrage made the crowd even more upset. The umpires halted play, and sent workers out with burlap bags to pick up the debris. Three times the umpires and Detroit manager Cochrane called for order to no effect. Each time Medwick attempted to take the field the assault began anew. When it appeared that all the fruit and vegetables in the stands had already been thrown, someone discovered that hot dog buns and folded-up newspapers could be used as missiles and the assault began anew. The booing had continued unabated the whole while. After a delay of 17 minutes, Commissioner Landis called Owen, Medwick and the two managers to his box and held court. Landis asked the outfielder if he had any reason to kick Owen. When Medwick replied in the negative, Landis asked why he had done it. Joe replied, “Well, you know a lot of things happen when you slide into third.” Landis immediately thumbed Medwick out, and the player was escorted from the field by five policemen. The commissioner defended his actions: “I saw what Medwick did and I couldn’t blame the Detroit crowd for what it did. I did the proper thing.” He said he took the action “to protect the player from injury and permit the game to proceed.” There's some old footage below of the incident:

Joe Medwick game footage on Vimeo

 

[67RedSox]

Jim McCormick was a RH pitcher in the early days of the National League. He pitched for 10 seasons, from 1878 to 1887. He pitched in both the underhand ( prior to 1884 ) and overhand eras and had success in both. In his 10 seasons he was a 20 Game winner in 8 of them and among those he Won 30 twice and 40 twice. In 1880 he went 45-28, starting 74 games and completing 72 of them for a total of 657.2 innings pitched. He is among MLB’s single-season leaders in Wins - 45 (12th highest, leader is at 59), Complete Games – 72 (3rd highest, leader is at 75), Innings Pitched – 657.2 (4th highest, leader is at 680) and Batters Faced in a Season – 2,669 (4th highest, leader is at 2,906).
McCormick was born in Glasgow, Scotland and was first ballplayer born in Scotland to appear in a Major League game. Another distinction that he holds that will not likely be topped is at age 23 he is the youngest Manager in the history of ML Baseball. He was a player-manager in 1879 (also in 1880 and 1882) for the Cleveland Blues. It was on this date in 1941, replacing Roger Peckinpaugh, who is moved up to the Front Office, Lou Boudreau, with only three years of ML experience, is named as the Indians' new Manager. The 24-year old shortstop is the youngest skipper, Post-1900, but a year older than Jim McCormick.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=jim+...seball%2Fitem%2F1577-21-jim-mccormick;337;450

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxJOt1eeZ_E]Lou Boudreau - Baseball Hall of Fame Biographies - YouTube[/ame]

On this date in 1944 Baseball's first Commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, dies at the age of 74. The former Federal Judge served in Baseball's top post for 24 years.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=kene...otDetail.aspx%3Finventoryid%3D40792;1410;1704

On this date in 1972 the Gold Glove winners are announced. Two of the winners, Pirates OF Roberto Clemente who wins his 12th straight‚ and Dodgers 1B Wes Parker who wins his 6th in a row will never play another game in the Majors. Clemente, of course dies tragically in the off-season and Parker moved to the broadcast booth working as a television colour analyst for the Cincinnati Reds in 1973, then played in Japan in 1974.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=robe...ews%2Fstory%3Fpage%3DClemente_Roberto;500;365

https://www.google.ca/search?q=wes+...Fsportsnation%2Fchat%2F_%2Fid%2F16957;195;262

On this date in 1949 Ted Williams, who lost the Triple Crown when his batting average was .0002 below that of George Kell‚ wins the MVP vote in a landslide‚ 272 points to 175. The favorite Phil Rizzuto‚ and Joe Page‚ finish 2nd and 3rd in the voting. In several days‚ Ken Smith‚ the executive secretary of the BBWAA will announce a change in policy‚ made at the request of Ford Frick‚ NL prexy. No longer will the newspapers be given the results of the MVP voting a week ahead of the announcement. Dan Daniels‚ writing in a front page article in The Sporting News‚ will accuse a number of sports writers of using the advance knowledge to place bets. He says in NYC‚ nearly $500‚000 was bet on the results‚ with some bookies refusing to pay when they learned of the papers' early notice.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=ted+...085-100-years-of-fenway-park%2Fpage-2;717;750

On this date in 1947 Sam Breadon sells the Cardinals empire to Postmaster General Robert Hannegan and Fred Saigh. The price is in excess of $4 million with the new owners getting the Cardinals players‚ physical assets‚ 16 minor league franchises‚ $2.1 million in reserve funds and payment on a new ballpark site‚ 4 minor league parks‚ and the lease on Sportsman's Park. Breadon first acquired an interest in the Cardinals in 1917 and bought control in 1920 for an investment of $350‚000. $4M today gets you the services of an average ballplayer for six months work.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=sam+...2Fhall-of-fame-nominee-sam-breadon%2F;310;386

Blame it on the long season. On this date in 1904 during a 6-4 loss to Los Angeles‚ Seattle SS Russ Hall, who had played in the Majors with Cleveland and the St. Louis Browns commits 2 errors‚ his 118th and 119th of the year‚ a PCL record for most errors at any position. That’s 57 more errors than Troy Tulowitzki has made in 8 seasons.

I understand a former Yankee by the name of Joltin Joe DiMaggio was born on this date in 1914. He must have played before our time.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=jolt...2F%2Fwww.mishalov.com%2FDiMaggio.html;350;304

 

[67RedSox]

If one could time travel and watch players from yesteryears one of the guys on my list would be Hack Wilson. In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s this 5’6” fireplug rivaled the great Babe Ruth. His 1930 season with the Cubs is widely considered one of the most memorable individual single-season hitting performances in Baseball history. Highlights included 56 home runs, the NL record for 68 years; and 191 RBIs, a mark yet to be surpassed. A couple of other things he did that have probably not been surpassed in MLB annals is fight and drink, both of which he could do to excess. His drinking and fighting undoubtedly contributed to a premature end to his Baseball career and, ultimately, his premature death at age 48. He played 9 full seasons in the Majors and parts of three other seasons so he did have enough time to qualify for the Hall of Fame and he was inducted into Cooperstown in 1979, 31 years after his death.
On October 4, 1948 Wilson was discovered unconscious after a fall in his home. Though the accident did not appear serious at first, pneumonia and other complications developed and he died of internal hemorrhaging on November 23, 1948 at the age of 48. Wilson — once the highest-paid player in the NL died penniless; his son, Robert, refused to claim his remains. It was on this date in 1948 NL President Ford Frick steps in and pays $350 for funeral services, including the cost of a coffin, for the unclaimed body of Hack Wilson.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=hack...cooperstown-chronicles-hack-wilson%2F;286;365

If you remember Wally Moon you’ll remember that he was a left-handed hitting Outfielder who the then ‘Los Angeles’ Dodgers traded for December 1958. He was a decent hitter but was coming off a sub .238 batting season in St. Louis. The Dodgers were still playing in the Coliseum then and Moon was initially concerned about batting in the converted-for-baseball Coliseum. Right field was 440 feet away, making it difficult for a left-handed batter. However, the left field seats were only 251 feet away, protected by a 42-foot high screen. After consulting with friend and mentor Stan Musial, Moon adjusted his batting stance to emphasize hitting to left. The results were very successful. In his first season with the Dodgers, team went from seventh place to the World Championship. Moon provided support in the lineup for Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and Don Demeter. He gained quick public acclaim in 1959 for the "Moon shots" that he hit over the high left field screen. Moon hit a home run in the sixth and final game of that World Series, which the Dodgers won over the Chicago White Sox. He also caught Luis Aparicio's fly ball for the final out of the Series.
Well, the Dodgers and Moon may have been paying attention to what the Boston and Pete Runnels had done on the opposite coast in 1958. Runnels was a decent hitting left-handed hitter coming off a .230 season in Washington when the Red Sox acquired him. Just as Moon had a pretty good hitter in Musial to consult with Runnels had Ted Williams and under Ted's tutelage, Pete waited for better pitches and started hitting to the opposite field, off the Green Monster in left. The results spoke for themselves over the five years he wore the Red Sox uniform. In 1958 he hit .322 and lost the AL Batting Crown to Williams on the last day of the season. He wasn’t to be denied though and won two Batting Crowns with Boston in 1960 and 1962. It was on this date in 1962 that the Red Sox trade Batting champ Runnels to the expansion Colt .45s for outfielder Roman Mejias. It wasn’t so bad for Runnels, in fact a bit of a favour, as his hometown was close to Houston and he was going home to close out his Big league career.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=pete...aspx%3Fm%3D279%26s%3D33119%26Page%3D4;700;400

1975 was a good year. It could have finished a bit better had Game 7 of the World Series gone differently than it did but you can’t have everything. One player though, by the name of Fred Lynn, did get everything that year. It was on this date in 1975 that he is named the American League’s MVP. Getting 22 of the 24 first place votes, Fred Lynn easily outdistances Royals' first baseman/DH John Mayberry for the American League honour. The 22-year old Red Sox flycatcher becomes the first player in Baseball history to win the MVP after being named Rookie of the Year in the same season.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=fred....net%2Ffred-lynn-career-statistics%2F;495;353

It was on this date in 1960 the Minnesota ‘Twins’ is the appropriate new name chosen for the club transplanted from Washington to Minnesota's Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Photos of their first ballpark, Metropolitan Stadium, before they arrived and after they left follow:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=fred....net%2Ffred-lynn-career-statistics%2F;495;353

https://www.google.ca/search?q=minn...dium-some-views-1955-1961-part-i.html;578;429

Who knew…I didn’t. On this date in 1961 the Professional Baseball Rules Committee votes 8-1 against legalizing the spitball. Only National League supervisor of umpires Cal Hubbard votes in favour. The return of the spitball might have been interesting.

It was on this date in 1868 the first enclosed Baseball grounds in San Francisco is opened‚ called Recreation Grounds‚ at the corner of 25th and Folsom streets. Recreation Grounds operated until May 1884. Located at the terminus of a railcar line in San Francisco's heavily Irish Mission District, at the present day Garfield Square. The opening day ceremonies included the second game of the California baseball championship series between the Oakland Wide Awakes and the San Francisco Eagles who won by the score of 37-23. The festivities included an operatic concert and footraces and attended by a crowd of 4,000 people.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=recr...iscos_baseball_stadiums_in_photos.php;528;400

To be a Hall of Famer by itself means you have achieved significant status. Even among that select group there are some who stand out above the others. Two of those HOF’ers were born on this date. The first is considered by many to be the greatest pitcher in the history of the game…Lefty Grove was born on this date in 1900. Grove, if not the best pitcher was certainly its most dominant. No one matched his nine ERA titles, and his .680 winning percentage (300-141) is the highest among 300 game winners. After winning 111 games in a Minor-League career that delayed his ML debut until he was 25, Grove led the AL in strikeouts his first seven years, pitched effectively in hitter’s’ parks (Shibe Park, Fenway Park) and starred in three World Series. Few if any pitchers threw tantrums on a par with the 6’3”, 190-pound Lefty, who did everything big. He even led all pitchers by striking out 593 times as a batter.
The second is Hugh Duffy who was born on this date in 1866. He holds the single-season record for highest batting average, .440. Playing in Boston from 1891 through 1900, Duffy knocked in 100 runs or more eight times. In 1894 Duffy had one of the greatest seasons in Baseball history, a Triple Crown winner, he led the League with 18 home runs, 145 RBIs and a .440 batting average.

Boston Fan Favorites

https://www.google.ca/search?q=hugh...-sox-1895-audreen-gieger-hawkins.html;604;900

 

[67RedSox]

I messed up one of the two photos of Metropolitan Stadium in the above Post. Here's those photos of the before and after...Sorry about that, Chief:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=minn...dium-some-views-1955-1961-part-i.html;578;429

https://www.google.ca/search?q=minn...dium-some-views-1955-1961-part-i.html;578;429

 

[67RedSox]

Something happened 56 years ago today in the Baseball world that is worth mentioning and that is the death of a Major League player, Charlie Peete, who despite having played only 23 games with 52 ABs at the ML level made a significant contribution to the Game.
If you’re old enough you might remember looking on the backs of baseball cards and looking at player stats that included their Minor League seasons. You would see the team and the league they played for whether it was the International League, American Association, Pacific Coast League, Texas League, Sally League and others. One you would occasionally see was the Piedmont League, a long-standing Minor League based in the Piedmont Plateau area betweem the Appalachian Mountains to the West and the Atlantic Coast Plain to the East. It stretches from about New Jersey to Alabama but many of the Piedmont League teams were based in the Carolinas and Virginia, in cities like Raleigh, Durham, Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Richmond, Portsmouth, Norfolk, Newport News and Roanoke. The Piedmont League operated from 1920 to 1955, not even stopping for World War II when many Minor Leagues closed up shop. The widespread death of Minor Leagues in the 1950s (the dark ages of baseball) ended the Piedmont's long run. It was a 4th-tier Class B league for much of its existence (1932-1955), after being a Class D league for its first year and Class C for ten years after that (1921-1931). It was home to many up-and-coming players over the decades. Hall of Famers, who played in the Piedmont League were…Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Tony Lazzeri, Heinie Manush, Johnny Mize, Phil Rizzuto, Brooks Robinson, Red Schoendienst, Duke Snider, and Early Wynn.
Not long before he was honourably discharged from the service in 1953, Charlie Peete learned that—half a dozen years after Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier in the Major Leagues—owners in the Piedmont League were contemplating integrating that League. Some cities, like Birmingham, Alabama, still had laws on the books making it illegal for African-American players to compete on the same team as white players, and even in Portsmouth, the Minor League team had not allowed African-American fans to sit in the bleachers with white fans until 1952. Other cities in the League were less open to African-American fans. Even into 1953, they had to wait at a special entrance to get into the ballpark at Norfolk, sometimes not gaining admittance until as late as the fourth inning. In fact, the prospect of integrating the League was such news that The Sporting News (remember when the Sporting News at 50 cents was the Holy Grail of baseball reading ) followed the story in its pages during the months before the season began, and reported in early March that Portsmouth had set a precedent when it signed not one but several African-American players, three of whom lasted into the season, including Peete. Charlie Peete had an impact nearly immediately. Getting into the tenth game of the season as a pinch-hitter, he hit a grand slam. From then on, he was a favourite, especially of the African-American fans. Peete ended the season hitting .275, with four home runs and 56 RBI. The next season, at Lynchburg (also in the Piedmont League), he improved to .311 with 17 home runs and 79 RBI, led the League with 170 hits, and made the League all-star team. Beyond his hitting, he also showed ability as a fielder.
Fast forward to the autumn of 1956, slightly more than three years after his Minor League debut helped break the colour barrier in the Piedmont League, Charlie Peete’s life seemed full of promise. He had won the American Association batting crown for the just-completed season, hitting .350 for Omaha. Beyond that, his parent club, the St. Louis Cardinals, had added him to the Major League roster in advance of the 1957 season, despite Peete’s poor performance during a month in the Majors that summer. Johnny Keane, Peete’s manager at Omaha, was so impressed with him that he compared him favorably to future Hall of Famer Hack Wilson; Peete and Wilson were built similarly, between 5’6” and 5’9” and 180 to 200 pounds.
On this date in 1957 however, Peete, his wife, Nettie, and their three young children (Ken, Karen, and Deborah) were on a plane to Caracas, Venezuela, where Peete planned to join the Valencia team for a season of Winter ball. Less than two miles from the airport, in a heavy rainstorm, the plane hit a mountain peak obscured by clouds. Peete, his family, and everyone on board died.
As happens when you start yakking about one topic it leads into another and another after that. Speaking of Peete and the Piedmont League brings up the topic of the demise of the Minor Leagues as they once existed and a lot of the death of Minor League Baseball took place in the 1950’s. In fact the 1950’s was not a quiet decade for Baseball as many might think…it was a decade of fairly significant change in the Game and I want to comment on that and since Posts are limited in length on this site I’ll have to do a separate Post on that topic so I give you fair warning…I’m going to do a second Post today. As Captain Hastings would say…”Good Lord” but that’s the way it’s going to be so, fair warning, you can run for the hills now and avoid two Posts on the same day if you have any sense at all.

 

[67RedSox]

I warned you in the above Post...still time to flee


The Piedmont League was a vibrant Minor League for over 30 years. I suppose it was as important to Baseball fans of that region as the PCL was to the West Coast baseball fan. Its demise came in 1955…it wasn’t the only League to disappear in that decade. I was born in the 1950s however I was too young to remember anything of ML Baseball in that decade except for a catch either Jim Landis or Al Smith of the White Sox made in the 1959 World Series because a photo of it ended up on the front page of the local newspaper. I suspect if anyone reads this Post chances are you too either missed the 1950s just or by a long shot. There have been a lot of changes in the game since the National League, the first of the ‘Majors’, was formed in 1876 and the 1950s probably saw more change than any other decade and that change happened both on the field and off. Steve Treder did a very good article on this about 10 years ago and here’s some highlights of just how much change did go on.
Charlie Peete integrated the Piedmont League in 1953. Ask most fans when Baseball became integrated, and they'll say "1947"! That's technically true, of course, but comprehensively false. 1947, with Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby coming on the ML scene, was just the beginning of a long process. The vast majority of the wrenching and inspiring events of Baseball's integration took place in the 1950s. In 1949, just three franchises (the Dodgers, Indians, and Giants) employed players of colour: the remaining 13 of 16 teams integrated in the '50s. In 1950, among regular ML’ers (defined as batters with at least 50 games, and pitchers with at least 50 innings), there were nine players of colour (2.6%). By 1960 the total had become 52 (14.4%). It was an era of bold challenge of long-held norms and assumptions about race in Baseball… Minnie Minoso, Willie Mays, Joe Black, Jim Gilliam, Ernie Banks, Sam Jones, Vic Power, Hank Aaron, Elston Howard, Connie Johnson, Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson, Orlando Cepeda - all these fascinating careers and many more - all are, to a great extent, tales of the enormous changes that took place in the 1950s.
Entering the 1950s, no Major League franchise had been moved in half a century. The geographic configuration of teams was fixed, a given, essentially permanent. Major league baseball was almost entirely a Northeast and Midwest institution.
Before the decade was over, nearly a third of Big League franchises would move. Five new Major League cities would be established, including two on the Pacific Coast, rendering MLB a nationwide entity for the first time. No geographic realignment of the sport since can begin to compare with the significance of that which took place in the 1950s, in boldness or in scale.
And one of the 1950s moves - that of the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles - must certainly be regarded as the single most controversial and culturally meaningful franchise shift in U.S. sports history.
It was a technological innovation that made MLB's move to California feasible: fast, reliable, and cost-effective jet air transportation. Even for short road trips, the conversion of team travel from trains to planes became nearly universal in the 1950s.
This change had an impact beyond just in-season road trips. Train travel had facilitated a traditional practice of whistle-stop barnstorming at the end of spring training, as teams would often make several stops along the way home from Florida or Arizona, playing additional exhibition games and/or making publicity appearances. Plane travel helped phase out this custom in the 1950s.
Another technological change was in the ballparks themselves: the installation of lights for night baseball became universal everywhere in Baseball (except Wrigley Field) in the 1950s. Night games were still fairly rare in the 1940s, but in the '50s they became a standard offering, with nearly every team playing several night games a week. This had implications - few of them positive - for the neighborhoods surrounding inner-city ballparks, and new ways in which teams began to assess ease-of-access considerations for customers.
Speaking of access, in the 1950s most fans began traveling to the ballpark by car. This also had far-reaching implications, as the difficulty of finding safe and easy parking nearby inner-city ballparks was a huge factor in the desire of owners to find new facilities, in the suburbs and/or in new cities.
But certainly, the biggest of the many technological revolutions of the 1950s was television. TV was a novelty in the 1940s, but in the '50s it suddenly became ubiquitous. Major League Baseball became a televised event on a large scale. The implications of this can hardly be overstated in terms of revenue generation and marketing opportunities for the sport, and in many other ways as well.
Perhaps none of the many impacts of TV on Baseball was bigger than what it meant for the Minor Leagues and semi-pro baseball. In 1950 there were 58 Minor Leagues in organized baseball, and countless more semi-pro operations. By 1960 there were only 22 Minor Leagues, and semi-pro baseball had largely become extinct.
In the early 1950s, many Minor League teams were operating independently or semi-independently; they weren't "farm teams" for the Majors, but autonomous for-profit business ventures. By 1960 nearly all of the remaining Minor League teams were strictly affiliated major league farms.
There were a number of reasons for this dramatic transformation, but probably the most meaningful was the TV boom. With Major League Baseball (and, of course, many other amusements) freely available on TV, the choice of fans to spend evenings and weekends at local Minor League or semi-pro ballgames became a far less easy one to make.
Among the many ways television transformed small town American life in the 1950s was the shift away from communal gatherings at events such as Minor League and semi-pro baseball games, and the resulting greater primacy of the Major Leagues as "the show" in baseball.
Popular baseball mythology holds that white baseball in the 1940s was staid and slow. Then, the legend goes, Jackie Robinson and the other players of colour burst on the scene and shook this all up, re-introducing daring baserunning, particularly the stolen base.
It's a great myth. All it lacks is that pesky little element of being factual. Stolen base rates remained low and flat over the decade of the 1950s. More bases were stolen in Major League Baseball in any season through 1946 than in any season of the 1950s. The most stolen bases in any year in the '50s occurred in 1951 (when there were still very few black players in the Majors), and only three seasons ('50, '51, and '59) deviated more than 10% above or below the average for the decade. Whatever things black players did for Major League Baseball, stimulating an immediate revival of the stolen base was not among them.
Yet in nearly every other regard, the style of Major League Baseball changed utterly in the 1950s, as dramatically as any decade in history other than the 1920s. Consider these facts:
- Home runs per game increased by 32% from 1949 to 1959.
- Triples per game declined by 29%.
- Walks declined by 22%.
- Strikeouts increased by 41%.
- In the entire history of MLB prior to 1950, a batter had a season of hitting less than .250 while hitting 20 or more home runs a total of seven times. In the 1950s this happened 27 times.
In short, the way players and teams approached the task of manufacturing runs, and the acceptable cost/benefit tradeoffs batters assumed in swinging for the fences, were completely transformed in the 1950s.
There are many causes of this revolution, both practical and cultural. The point is that the style of play in Baseball changed enormously in the 1950s, but not in the way that's often assumed: the game didn't become more oriented around base stealing. Instead the 1950s was the decade in which Baseball became completely enamored with the home run - a development with obvious reverberations to this day.

 

[67RedSox]

It was on this date in 1963 that Walt Weiss was born. Happy 50th.

In 1944 the AL had only two 20 Game winners. One of those was Dizzy Trout of the Detroit Tigers who had 27 Wins. He also won the ERA Crown with a mark of 2.12 and led the League in Starts with 40, Complete Games with 33, Innings Pitched with 352 and Shutouts with 7. On this date in 1944 the AL League MVP is announced but it isn’t Trout but his pitching teammate Hal Newhouser who had 29 Wins. Two pitchers with 56 combined Wins and finishing 1-2 in the MVP race…not bad.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWAXw8QueYU]Hal Newhouser - Baseball Hall of Fame Biographies - YouTube[/ame]

https://www.google.ca/search?q=dizz...est.com%2Fpin%2F400961173044592497%2F;736;931

Managers are hired to be fired they say and that even applies to successful ones as on this date in 1978 the Reds fire Manager Sparky Anderson after nine years, during which the club averaged 96 wins per season and won five divisional titles, four National League pennants, and two World Championships.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-PwWHDUDbk]Sparky Anderson - Baseball Hall of Fame Biographies - YouTube[/ame]

By the time he was 25 years old, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Austin McHenry was considered one of Baseball’s best outfielders and hitters, especially after enjoying a 1921 season that saw him finish with a .350 batting average, second only to teammate and future Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby. McHenry also finished second to Hornsby in slugging at .531, placed among the top five National League hitters in doubles, home runs, RBIs, total bases, and extra-base hits, and was one of only six N.L. hitters with 200 hits that season. Combined with a strong arm and an easy gait that was sometimes mistaken for indifference, McHenry was considered not only one of baseball’s best outfielders and hitters after his remarkable 1921 campaign, but one of the ten best left fielders of all time to that point in baseball history. The following season, 1922 his hitting fell off and so did his fielding. McHenry was concerned he might be losing his vision…it was worse…a brain tumour and on this date in 1922 he passed away.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=aust...84046-gambo-t_wil1-photopack-342.html;600;900

If I mention the names Daisy Davis, Roxey Roach and Molly Craft and would you think I was mentioning three Major League Baseball players who were born on this date in 1858, 1882 and 1895 respectively. If you answered, yes…you would be correct. As to their names I’m thinking it’s best we don’t go there.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=dais...tus.com%2Fcard%2Fcard.php%3Fid%3D20979;90;135

https://www.google.ca/search?q=roxy...%2F155954-gambo-t_wil1-photo-344.html;273;403

https://www.google.ca/search?q=moll...84046-gambo-t_wil1-photopack-200.html;250;500

Ben Revere went homerless again this season, his first with the Phillies after coming over from the Twins. He has now gone 1,304 ML At-bats without hitting a HR. He did hit .305 this season and is a whiz in the field and on the bases. He’s young (25) and has a ways to go yet before he’ll be close to the records for HR futility set in the 1920s and 1930s by Eddie Foster who holds the AL record of 3,278 consecutive At-bats without hitting a HR and Tommy Thevenow who holds the NL and ML record at 3,347.
Eddie Foster was a 13 year veteran of the Majors and played most of his career as the Washington Senators 3rd Baseman in the Walter Johnson years. Although he lacked power he was considered the best hit-and-run batter in his time. In 1913 Foster had a good-bad experience. The bad…Just a few games into the season he contracted typhoid fever and was hospitalized at Georgetown University Hospital. He recovered. The good… a nurse who cared for him there became his bride. Although he earned his living from April to October as a Baseball player he though equally of himself as a mechanic and welder which is what he did in the off-season and after his playing career. He was very religious and was often referred to as the ‘Evangelist’ during his playing days. He died mysteriously at the age of 49. . He was found by the side of the road at around 2 a.m. on the rainy morning of January 7, 1937, about a half-mile from his car – which had crashed through a billboard about 20 feet off the Washington-Baltimore road. The family initially theorized that he might have been robbed by a hitchhiker (he often gave rides to hitchhikers); his billfold was found empty and he had suffered a blow to the head. He was in a coma and died of a fractured skull on the 15th at Casualty Hospital in Washington. Police later concluded that the master of the hit-and-run play had died of injuries suffered in a hit-and-run motor vehicle accident. His New York Times obituary said that Walter Johnson “attributed much of his pitching success to Foster’s clever fielding of bunts.”
Tommy Thevenow epitomized the good-fielding / weak-hitting shortstops that prevailed in the era and after. If you remember guys like Dal Maxvill, Eddie Brinkman and Mark Belanger he came from that mold. In his 15 year career (1924-1938) he hit two home runs in 1926, both inside-the-park home runs, within 5 days of each other, then never hit another HR in his next 12 seasons, setting the ML record of those 3,347 consecutive at bats without a home run.

Y! SPORTS

https://www.google.ca/search?q=eddi....real-fans.de%2FWallpaper%2FFoster%2F;400;300

https://www.google.ca/search?q=tomm...ow.com%2Fpage2ThevenowBaseball.html;2386;1889

 

[67RedSox]

In 1960 and 1961 Tommy Davis was just warming up. In 1962 and 1963 he won back-to-back Batting Crowns in the National League and maybe, just maybe was on his way to Cooperstown but On May 1, 1965 that possibility was shattered in an instant…along with his ankle. The Giants were in town, Davis was going from first to second on a grounder to Orlando Cepeda. Cepeda flipped to Gaylord Perry for the out at first. Tommy, not knowing whether there would be a play on him, made an awkward slide and snapped his ankle. “I was running on the inside of the baseline expecting Cepeda to throw to Pagan,” Davis said slowly. “As I approached the bag I did a crossover step with my left leg and the back spike of my right leg caught in the clay and turned my foot completely around. Perry dove to tag me and I never felt it. I was in shock. Wayne Anderson (a Dodger trainer) came on the field and snapped my foot back in place right on the base path.” The leg was placed in a balloon cast in the clubhouse. “At that point I was feeling pretty good and was thinking maybe it’s not broken. Then Dr. Kerlan came to see me, popped off the cast and said it felt like a bag of walnuts in my ankle. I said, ‘Oh man, don’t tell me that.’ ” He was done for the season with a break and a dislocation. The Dodgers caught a break when Tommy’s replacement, Lou Johnson, had a career year. His HR in Game7 against the Twins was the decisive blow. “To this day when I see Lou he gives me a hug and thanks me for breaking my ankle and making his career,” Davis says now with a laugh.
Davis made the Dodgers out of spring training in 1960. He earned his first career start, in CF, in the season’s 3rd game, and collected his first ML hit. It was an infield single off Ron Kline. Davis saw the most action of anyone in center field for the 1960 team, starting 57 games there. One foggy night, he made a Willie Mays-type over-the-shoulder grab in front of the Los Angeles Coliseum’s centerfield wall, 425 feet from home plate. It was a foggy night, so only the handful of fans sitting in the bleachers saw it. The umpire called the batter out based on their wild cheering after Tommy made the grab.
Davis started in all three outfield positions again in 1961, but the position he played the most was3rd Base. Alston seemed determined to make Tommy into an infielder and worked him out there all spring. The experiment ended after the Dodgers acquired journeyman Daryl Spencer to play the hot corner. “They never really explained to me how you had to short-arm the ball at third,” Davis explained 50 years later. “I was throwing it like an outfielder and the ball was sailing over Hodges’s head.”
Davis’ accomplishments in 1962 ( 230 Hits, 153 RBIs and a .346 BA – which not only led the NL but the Majors, and easily ) were over-shadowed by Maury Wills stealing a then record 104 bases which was a mere 72 ahead of the runner-up.
Davis took the field in 1966 aiming to prove he could play at his previous high level. His batting stroke was still there, but the power was gone. He batted .313 to lead the club by 25 points, but had only 15 extra-base hits and only three home runs in 313 at bats. It was just enough to help the Dodgers repeat as pennant-winners, edging the Giants and Pirates on the final weekend. The Dodgers were solid favorites against the precocious Baltimore Orioles in the 1966 World Series. Incredibly, L.A. never led during the series, losing Game One 5–2 and getting shut out in the final three contests. Tommy started two games and appeared as a pinch-hitter in the other two.
His Dodger career, and any chance of getting to Cooperstown ended with the 1966 World Series. It was on this date in 1966 he was traded to the Mets and in the seasons 1967-1970 he played with 6 different ML teams.
He did play 18 seasons in the Majors and collected over 2,100 but like so many it was a career that could have been so different had he not ran into a devastating injury. He garnered 1.2% of the vote in his first season of HOF voting. Because it was under the 5% minimum to stay on the ballot he was gone.

Video: Dodgers Legends: Tommy Davis' phone call from Jackie | MLB.com

On this date in 1926 Tris Speaker resigns as Indians manager. Stories of a thrown game and betting on games by Ty Cobb and Speaker gain momentum when Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis holds a secret hearing with the 2 stars and former P-OF Joe Wood. The story and testimony will not be released until December 21st. Former Tigers P Dutch Leonard wrote to Harry Heilmann that he had turned over letters written to him by Joe Wood and Ty Cobb to AL president Ban Johnson‚ implicating Wood and Cobb in betting on a Tiger-Cleveland game played in Detroit‚ September 25‚ 1919. He charged that Cobb and Speaker conspired to let Detroit win to help them gain 3rd-place money. At a secret meeting of AL directors‚ it was decided to let Cobb and Speaker resign with no publicity. But‚ as rumors spread‚ Judge Landis takes charge of the matter and holds the hearings‚ at which Leonard refuses to appear. Cobb and Wood admit to the letters‚ but say it was a horse racing bet‚ and contend Leonard is angry for having been released to the Pacific Coast League by Cobb. Speaker‚ not named in the letters‚ denies everything. Public sympathy is with the stars‚ but the matter will remain unresolved until January… Commissioner Landis cleared both Speaker and Cobb of any wrongdoing.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=tris...Fwww.bandkgreen.net%2Fgoldenpress.htm;773;538

Happy 88th to Minnie Minoso…he was born on this date in 1925. He was born Saturnino Orestes Arrieta Minoso Arrieta in El Perico, Cuba, a town near Havana. Arrieta was his mother's maiden name, while his father's name was Carlos Lopez. Both labored in the sugar cane fields outside of the big city.

Trailblazer Minnie Minoso exudes passion for life, baseball | MLB.com: News

Jim Derrington was born on this date in 1939. What’s unique about Derrington isn’t that he only played part of two seasons in the Majors but that he played his last game in the Majors at the ripe old age of 17. His MLB career was over before his High School graduation took place. Derrington was a 6 ft 3 in, 190 lb left-hander who signed with the White Sox when he was 16 years of age on September 12, 1956. As a bonus player, he was kept on Chicago's 1956 ML roster and made his AL debut on September 30 at 16 years and 10 months of age as the starting pitcher against the Kansas City Athletics at Municipal Stadium. Derrington lasted six innings, surrendering nine hits and five earned runs. He was the losing pitcher in a 7-6 contest on the closing day of the 1956 White Sox season. The following year, Derrington appeared in 20 games played and 37 innings, going winless with one defeat and posting a 4.86 earned run average. He made his final appearance of his MLB career at age 17 and 10 months.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=jim+...lb-players-to-debut-since-world-war-i;274;400

Happy Birthday to Mariano Rivera who was born on this date in 1969…he’s 44 today. I believe he was the last player born in the 1960’s to be playing in the Majors. Seems odd that someone with 44 Saves, an ERA of 2.11 and a K/BB ratio of 6:1 retires but he’s been a class act all along and should go on top. I think Darren Oliver might now be the oldest active ML’er at 43.

Mariano Rivera Removed By Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte In Final Appearance At Yankee Stadium (VIDEO)

 

[67RedSox]

There are some players from the past who we need no introduction to. Fans of the Grand Old Game can easily rattle off information in great about players like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig or Cy Young in great detail even though their careers may have ended 50 years before they were born. Sometimes a player’s name isn’t even necessary... the mere mention of a nickname like Joltin’ Joe , Hammerin’ Hank , Mr. Cub or Stan the Man is enough to begin a initiate a long conversation. Then there are players whose names are legendary, you’ve heard the name a thousand times, players who have etched out perhaps a Hall of Fame career yet someone we really know very little about…other than name. There are dozens of players like that for me and one is Rube Waddell. My guess is it’s either a name most fans are not familiar with or if they are they really don’t know much beyond the name and the fact he played a long time ago and is in the Hall of Fame.
Rube Waddell entered this world on Friday the 13th and exited on April Fools Day. In the 37 intervening years, Rube Waddell struck out more batters, frustrated more Managers and attracted more fans than any pitcher of his era. An imposing physical specimen for his day, the 6'1", 196-pound Waddell possessed the intellectual and emotional maturity of a child. His career stats were 193–143, 2,316 strikeouts, and a 2.16 earned run average, with 50 shutouts and 261 complete games in 2961 innings pitched.
In his prime, Waddell was the game's premier power pitcher, with 302 strikeouts in 1903, 115 more than runner-up (Bill Donovan), and followed that up with 349 strikeouts in 1904, 110 more than the runner-up (Jack Chesbro). No other pitcher would compile consecutive 300-strikeout seasons until Sandy Koufax in 1965 and 1966.
Waddell's 349 strikeouts was the modern-era season record for more than 60 years, and remains sixth on the modern list. (In 1946, it was initially believed that Bob Feller's 348 strikeouts had broken Rube's single-season mark, but research into his 1904 season box scores revealed uncounted strikeouts that lifted him back above Feller.) He still holds the American League single season strikeout record by a left-handed pitcher.
Waddell was born in the small, farming community of Bradford, Pennsylvania on October 13, 1876. He died of either pneumonia, tuberculosis, or (depending on your sources) the cumulative effects of lifelong alcoholism on April 1, 1914. In the 37 years, he achieved immortality as America's greatest southpaw pitcher, alligator wrestler, firetruck chaser, actor, bigamist, obsessive fisherman, rugby player, baton-twirling parade leader, Herculean drinker and philanthropic live-saving hero. Perhaps the flakiest, and most undependable ML star of all time, "The Rube" was known to show up drunk for games regularly. His teams would usually play the soused Waddell anyway; with Rube generally pitching brilliantly, but fielding horribly. His penchant for holding marathon marbles sessions with street urchins caused him to be continually late for games. Stories of him running out of the stadium in pursuit of passing fire engines are exaggerated but I’m sure he would have liked to. He would often disappear for weeks at a time (once, at the height of the 1905 pennant race), only to reappear with offerings of catfish for his irate Managers. Of his loopy star, legendary manager Connie Mack is on record as having once said: "The Rube has a two million dollar body and a two cent head." Papers of the time regularly attributed Waddell’s bizarre behavior to either an emotional immaturity, drunkenness, mental retardation, or some strange combination of the three. Recent writers, such as Bill James, have suggested that Waddell may have suffered from a developmental disability, mental retardation, autism, or attention deficit disorder (ADD). Not much was known about these mental conditions, or their diagnoses, at that time. Though eccentric and childlike, Waddell was not illiterate as some have suggested.
Waddell got his nickname while a teen-age star in the Minor Leagues. There he built his reputation as a good-natured, but fairly simple-minded hick, earning first the nickname "Hayseed," and then "The Rube." After a couple of cups of coffee in the NL with the Louisville Colonels in 1897 and 1899 Waddell arrived in the Majors to stay in 1900 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Prior to the start of the 1900 season, the Louisville franchise was contracted from the National League, but Colonels' owner Barney Dreyfuss purchased a half-interest in the Pirates and arranged for the "trade" of 10 of his players to Pittsburgh, including Waddell. Pitching for Pittsburgh, Waddell paced National League pitchers in 1900 in ERA (2.37) and was second in strikeouts (130) but his erratic behavior led Manager, Fred Clarke, to suspend him. Wearing out his welcome in Pittsburgh he ended up with Chicago in 1901 but met the same fate there and ended up signing with the Californa League’s Los Angeles Looloos for the 1902 season.
Connie Mack, managing the Philadelphia Athletics, enticed him to leave California to bolster the A's depleted pitching staff. Waddell agreed, and Mack sent a pair of Pinkerton escorts to ensure Waddell made it east. Only 87 games remained on the A's schedule when Waddell pitched his first game on June 26, yet the left-hander finished the season with a 24-7 record. Rube also led the league with 210 strikeouts, 50 more than runner-up Cy Young, who pitched 108 1/3 more innings. The Athletics, only two games above .500 when Rube entered the fray, finished 30 games above the break-even mark and won their first American League pennant. In little more than half a season Waddell had established himself as one of the game's premier pitchers and Philadelphia's most bankable star. The Athletics' attendance doubled from the previous year to a league-leading 420,000. Cigars, soap and liquor were among the products named after Waddell.
Waddell's pitching repertoire usually consisted of only two pitches: one of the fastest fastballs in the League and a hard curve. But he had command of many more pitches, including slow curves, fadeaways ( now called screwballs ) and even a "flutterball". Mack once said that Waddell's curve was even better than his fastball and the fastest and deepest curve I've ever seen.
Waddell spent 6 seasons with the Athletics averaging 22 Wins a season with an ERA of 1.98 and leading the AL in strikeouts each season.
In the "interest of team harmony," Mack sold Waddell to the St. Louis Browns on February 7, 1908. After 2 and a bit seasons with the St. Louis Browns Waddell’s ML career came to an end in 1910 at the age of 33. After his ML career was over, Waddell pitched for parts of three more years in the Minor Leagues. In 1911, Waddell won 20 games for Joe Cantillon's Minneapolis Millers, helping the Millers to another American Association championship. The following winter, Waddell lived with Cantillon at the Manager's farm in Hickman, Kentucky, a small village situated on a bend of the Mississippi River. When flood waters threatened to swallow the town, Rube stood in icy water for hours helping stack sandbags for the levee. As a result, he contracted a severe case of pneumonia. His system weakened, Waddell soon became a victim of tuberculosis. He pitched one more season for Minneapolis and a part of another with two teams in the Northern League but by November of 1913 his health had reached the critical stage. Cantillon paid Waddell's way to a sanitarium in San Antonio to be close to his parents, who had moved in with Rube's younger sister in nearby Boerne, Texas. Connie Mack and Athletics' partner Ben Shibe paid for Waddell's medical care, with orders that "Waddell should have the best of medical attention and nursing, and that no expenses should be spared to either help the once mighty Rube regain his health, or to ease his sufferings if his battle is to be a losing one." The once powerful Waddell, now down to 130 pounds, passed away on April 1, 1914, a few months shy of his 38th birthday.
Waddell was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946 by a Veterans' Committee that looked to enshrine a number of players from his era and the previous century who had contributed to the growth of the game. One of Waddell's contributions was that he was perhaps the greatest drawing card in the first decade of the century, a man whose unique talents and personality drew baseball fans around the country to ball parks.
In 1981, Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig included him in their book The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time. Under what they called "the Smoky Joe Wood Syndrome," they argued in favor of including players of truly exceptional talent whose career was curtailed by injury (or, in Waddell's case, substance abuse), despite not having had career statistics that would quantitatively rank them with the all-time greats.

YouRememberThat.Com - Taking You Back In Time... - Rube Waddell Baseballs Oddest Player

 

[67RedSox]

It was on this date in 1927 the Detroit Tigers made one of their worst trades in team history. Neither the St. Louis Browns nor Washington Senators minded however because for the next 8 seasons they would enjoy the services of one of the Games best hitters and future Hall of Famer in the person of Heinie Manush who had won the AL Batting Crown in 1926 with a mark of .378. More on Manush later, first a little something on some of the other players named “Heinie”.
Prior to WWII the name, Heinie, ( more a nickname than a given name ) was one that was not uncommon in MLB. At least 22 players went by the name but none since WWII. That’s because the name fell out of favour, likely because the name became a bit derogatory referring to either a German soldier during the War or slang for the buttocks.
There have been some pretty good ballplayers with that handle…Heinie Groh for example who was a very good 3B with the Reds and Giants from 1912-1927 who led the NL in Basehits in 1917 and one of the highest On-Base % guys of his time.
Heinie Mueller played in the Cardinals outfield in the 1920’s and twice hit over .340
Heinie Zimmerman rose to prominence with the Chicago Cubs starting in 1908 as a lovable eccentric whose aggressive batting style won the loyalty of fans and the respect of opposing pitchers. But the lifetime .295 hitter never fulfilled his immense potential, instead becoming one of the Deadball Era's best examples of wasted talent. In 1912 he came within a whisker of winning the NL’s Triple Crown by taking the HR title with 14, the Batting Crown with a .372 BA and narrowly missing the RBI, 102 to his 99 only because of a late season slump. At the time he was considered one of the greatest natural ball players who ever wore a uniform but in the end was driven from the Game in disgrace.
For years Zimmerman's inconsistency had fueled suspicion among some members of the press that he was a dishonest player, but prior to 1919 the accusations never rose above the level of vague insinuation. Words like "erratic," "episodic," and "problematic" left unspoken the fear shared by many that Zimmerman might have been selling ballgames.
The events of 1919, however, removed all doubt. Before the season the Giants acquired the most notorious game-thrower of them all, Hal Chase, from the Cincinnati Reds. McGraw believed that he could reform the corrupt Chase, but instead of turning over a new leaf, Prince Hal repaid McGraw's kindness by shifting his game-fixing operations to a new city, recruiting Zimmerman as his new sidekick. For the second consecutive year Zimmerman performed below expectations, but this time the root cause may have been something other than frustration or distraction. As the Giants limped through another disappointing campaign, Zimmerman and Chase became inseparable friends, often hanging out with gamblers in bars and restaurants. In such an environment, what happened next was probably inevitable. On September 11, Zimmerman approached pitcher Fred Toney after the first inning of a game in Chicago and informed him that "it would be worth his while" not to bear down on the Cubs. One inning later, Toney asked to be removed from the game, but Zimmerman didn't stop there. That same evening, Chase and Cubs infielder Buck Herzog informed Benton that he could "make some easy money" by letting Chicago win. When Benton beat the Cubs anyway the following afternoon, Zimmerman approached him in the hotel lobby after the game and said, "You poor fish, don't you know there was $400 waiting for you to lose that game today?"
There was more. A few days later in St. Louis, Chase and Zimmerman offered Kauff $125 per game to help them throw games. By that time, word of the pair's activities had reached McGraw, who promptly suspended Zimmerman from the team. (Chase remained with the team for two more weeks.) At the time, McGraw's public explanation for Zimmerman's suspension was that he had broken curfew, but shortly thereafter McGraw and Giants owner Charles Stoneham got Zimmerman to confess to his real offenses. It was the end of his ML career.
Back to Heinie Manush…Mastering the art of the line drive but unable to master his own temper, Heinie Manush burst onto the ML scene with the Detroit Tigers and quickly became one of the fiercest and most feared hitters in the game. In his first season in St. Louis after the trade, Manush batted .378 and led the League in hits (241), doubles (47), and singles (161).[2] He would also finish second in voting for the American League MVP to catcher Mickey Cochrane. After another fine season in 1929 (in which he hit .355 and again led the League in doubles), the Browns traded Manush with pitcher Alvin Crowder to the Senators on June 13, 1930 in exchange for left fielder Goose Goslin.
Manush played six seasons in Washington. He finished third in MVP voting in back-to-back seasons and was voted to the All-Star Game in 1934, the season in which he set a Major League record, which still stands, for the fastest player to reach 100 hits. Manush recorded his 100th hit of the season in his 60th game. In 1933, he had a 33-game hitting streak which led to his fourth and final 200-plus hit season, while leading the League in Basehits and helping the Senators win the AL pennant.
It was a thrill to be in the World Series, but Manush was terribly disappointed in his performance. During the Series, he took it out on the umpires. In Game 3, the Senators had the tying run on second with two out in the sixth inning, when Manush hit a ball past a diving Bill Terry that Howie Critz somehow grabbed and flipped to Hubbell to nip Manush -- that is, according to umpire Charlie Moran. It was an extremely close play, and an enraged Senators outfielder and his infuriated manager hotly debated the call! The home plate umpire finally broke up the fierce confrontation by ordering Cronin and Manush to take their positions in the field. While Cronin reluctantly sauntered out to shortstop, Manush gave Moran one more verbal blast on his way out to right field and was tossed from the game. It took all of Cronin’s strength to restrain his right fielder from attacking Moran. After being dragged off the field, Manush had to be physically restrained from throwing things at the first-base umpire. Washington fans showed their displeasure at the call by heaving hundreds of soda bottles in the umpire’s direction. Manush recalled the play years later. “It actually was more than an argument,” he said. “Moran had every right to chase me when I tell you what I did. I was too smart to lay a hand on Moran when I was arguing the call. But when he bellied up to me and asked me what I wanted to make of it, there was a temptation that was too great. Moran, like the other umps in those days, was wearing a black bow tie, the kind that comes with an elastic band. What I did was grab the tie and let it snap back into Moran’s neck. That’s when he gave it to me.”
Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was at the game, disagreed with the umpire’s decision to kick Manush out, and ruled from then on that no player in the World Series could be thrown out without first getting the commissioner’s almighty permission.
Heinie’s final career numbers are often overlooked, but he was one of the most dominating hitters of his time. He slapped 200 hits four times, 40 doubles five times, and finished his 2,009-game career with a .330 batting average, 2,524 hits, 491 doubles, 1,287 runs scored and 1,183 runs batted in. In 1964 he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=hein...in%2Ffg.cgi%3Fpage%3Dgr%26GRid%3D5961;250;326

https://www.google.ca/search?q=hein...tent%2Fheinie-groh-and-his-bottle-bat;245;300

https://www.google.ca/search?q=hein...ncollection.com%2Fheinie-mueller.html;640;800

https://www.google.ca/search?q=hein...100-worst-no-100-heinie-zimmerman.php;400;292

On this date in 1957 the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League moves to Salt Lake City‚ the Los Angeles team moves to Spokane and the San Francisco Seals transfer to Phoenix‚ all fallout of the Dodgers and Giants move West.

On this date in 1916 under pressure from the Players' Fraternity‚ the National Commission orders that injured players shall get full pay for the duration of their contracts. The injury clause previously let clubs suspend players after 15 days pay.

 

[67RedSox]

The Major League Baseball team now known as the Baltimore Orioles originated in Milwaukee as the Milwaukee Brewers, and on this date in 1901 at the League meeting, the Milwaukee franchise is officially dropped from the AL and is replaced and moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where they played for more than 50 years, where they were known as the St. Louis Browns. The team moved again to Baltimore after the 1953 season.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=1901...rest.com%2Fpin%2F78742693457424954%2F;359;545

Now, we go to Chicago. It was on this date in 1926, 87 years ago, the 12 year old baseball stadium located in Chicago’s North Side is christened, Wrigley Field reflecting the ownership of the club by William Wrigley, Jr. The story of Wrigley Field goes back to its beginnings as a ballpark for a MLB team that belonged neither to the American League nor the National League. However, two guys who wore the uniforms of Chicago’s 3rd Baseball team, the Chicago Whales, are in the Hall of Fame…Joe Tinker and Modecai “Three Finger” Brown. In fairness, their contributions to the Game while donning a Whales uniform had nothing to do with their ticket to Cooperstown.
The Chicago Whales were a Major League Baseball franchise that played in the Federal League during its two years of existence, 1914 and 1915. They originally lacked a formal nickname, and were known simply as the "Chicago Federals" (or "Chi-Feds") to distinguish them from the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox. I have to admit that I have never been to the city of Chicago so I’m no expert on the City or its history. What connection there is to Chicago and whales I have no idea about, and even if there was a connection, why would a Baseball team choose that as its nickname?
The team was founded by Charles Weeghman. They came in second in the Federal League rankings in 1914 and won the League Championship in 1915. Weeghman built a stadium for the team, called Weeghman Park, designed by Zachary Taylor Davis, who had previously designed Comiskey Park. In their second season they adopted the nickname Whales, and included the logo of a whale inside a large "C" on their uniform shirts. When Kenesaw Mountain Landis brokered a deal between the Federal League, American League and National League that ended the Federal League's existence, Weeghman was allowed to buy controlling interest in the Cubs. He then merged the Whales with the Cubs and moved the Cubs from West Side Park into his new steel-and-concrete structure. While Weeghman himself was forced out within four years due to financial troubles, the Cubs still play in the park he built to this day, the only Federal League Park still in use. It was renamed Cubs Park in 1920 when Weeghman left the team and, as mentioned above, acquired its present name, Wrigley Field, in 1926.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=chic...cagos-original-north-side-ballclub%2F;432;239

https://www.google.ca/search?q=1926...llaturicum.com%2Fzachary%2Findex.html;479;390

It was on this date in 1936 that the Brooklyn Dodgers completed a deal that saw them acquire Tom Winsett, who in the opinion of the Dodger’s General Manager, Branch Rickey was the next coming of Babe Ruth. I guess he was of that opinion as in 1936 Winsett hit 50 HRs for the Minor League Columbus Red Birds. Winsett didn’t quite ring up Ruth like numbers…his 8 career HRs fell 706 short of Ruth’s numbers but he did accomplish a couple of things. He is among the 114 players to hit a HR in their first ML At-bat and on April 25, 1938, he was the first Baseball player to be featured on the cover of LIFE Magazine, with an inside caption which read: "The rubber-legged batter on the cover is John Thomas Winsett, of McKenzie, Tenn. one of the most curious players on the most curious team in the Major Leagues. He plays right field for the Brooklyn National League Baseball Club, better known as the 'Daffy Dodgers' because of the way they play.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=tom+...Fplayer_biographies%2Fwinsett_tom.htm;302;400

Cozy Dolan who spent all but 27 games of his 9 year ML career playing the Outfield in the National League between 1985 and 1906 was born on this date in 1872. . He also pitched in the Majors winning as many as 11 games one season. During Spring Training in 1907 he fell ill and died in Louisville, Kentucky of Typhoid Fever soon afterwards, one of a number of MLB players to have died of that disease.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=cozy...ardinals_post_card-239745508283339319;512;512

Sometimes you’re just in the right place at the right time and that’s true for 1B Joe Collins who was born on this date in 1922. After 15 ABs with the Yankees in 1948 and 1949 he came up to stay with New York in the 1950 season. He stayed 8 years and in 7 of those years the Yankees went to the World Series and won 5 of them. Like Yogi Berra he probably paid for his house with his World Series winnings.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=joe+...mber-3-happy-birthday-joe-collins%2F;1115;731

 

[67RedSox]

It was on this date in 1879 that NL owners again vote to retain the 50¢ minimum admission charge despite opposition from Troy and Buffalo and the following rule changes are made:
-the number of balls for a walk is reduced from 9 to 8.
-the catcher must catch the 3rd strike on the fly to put the batter out (the first bounce no longer counting).
-the final outs of the last half inning need no longer be completed if the team batting last is already ahead.

Gerald Nugent, who was born in Philadelphia and died in Philadelphia was the owner of the Philadelphia Phillies from 1931 through 1942. He was a leather goods and shoe merchant who cared more about winning than making money. Despite his income from his other businesses, he didn't have the financial means to get the Phillies out of the NL basement. He was forced to trade what little talent the team had to make ends meet and had to use some creative financial methods to be able to even field a team at all. The one highlight of his ownership was a 78-76 record in 1932, the only time that the Phillies finished with a winning record between 1918 and 1948.
Nugent finally reached the end of his rope in 1942. A year after posting a 43-111 record, the worst in franchise history, the Phillies needed an advance from the league just to be able to take part in Spring Training. Realizing that there was no way he could operate the team in 1943, he reached an agreement in principle that February to sell the team to Bill Veeck ( as in Wreck ), who planned to bring in ***** League stars in an effort to turn the moribund franchise around. However, when Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, an intractable opponent of integration, got wind of it, he pressured National League President Ford Frick to quash the deal and take over the team. A week later, the league sold the Phillies to lumber broker William D. Cox.
At the time Cox took over, the Phillies had been the dregs of the National League for a quarter century. Cox, however, was not afraid to spend what it took to get the Phillies out of the cellar. He significantly increased the team's payroll and devoted significant resources to player development (including the farm system) for the first time in the history of the franchise. He also hired Bucky Harris, who had won two pennants and one World Series with the Washington Senators, as Manager.
Cox was a very hands-on owner. He'd played baseball at Yale, and still thought of himself as a star athlete. Cox even suited up for workouts, and frequently showed up at the clubhouse before and after games. All of this grated on Harris, and when he protested against Cox's interference, Cox fired him on July 27, 1943 at a press conference, without bothering to inform Harris. The players threatened to go on strike in protest, but Harris urged them to drop those plans after Cox threatened legal action.
The day after he was fired Bucky Harris dropped a bombshell at his hotel room in Philadelphia: he had evidence that Cox was betting on his own team. When Landis got wind of Harris' charges, he launched an immediate investigation. Initially, Cox denied any wrongdoing, but conceded that some of his business associates bet on the Phillies. As the investigation progressed, Cox changed his story and admitted making some "sentimental" bets on the Phillies, and he claimed that he didn't know it was against the rules. This made no difference to Landis, who suspended Cox indefinitely on November 23. Cox immediately resigned as team president, but appealed Landis' ruling 11 days later. At the December 4 hearing, Harris testified that he'd heard Cox's secretary asking about the odds for a game between the Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers; when Harris asked, "Do you mean to tell me Mr. Cox is betting on baseball?" the secretary replied that it was common knowledge in the Phillies office. On the basis of this and other evidence, Landis ordered that Cox be suspended for life on this date in 1943, thus making Cox the first non-player to be banned from baseball by Landis; he is the last owner to be banned for life as of this moment.

» Phillies Owner William Cox?Suspended for Life Philly Sports History

I remember Gino Cimoli, an Outfielder…pick any one Right, Centre or Left, in the American League in the 1960’s. I must admit I had no idea he was a regular in the Dodger outfield their last year in Brooklyn and their first in Los Angeles and stuff like that just blows my little mind. It was on this date in 1958 the Dodgers trade Gino Cimoli to the Cardinals in exchange for former Rookie of the Year Wally Moon and right-hander Phil Paine. The club's new outfielder will quickly become known for his 'Moon Shots', 250+ foot high fly balls to left field at the LA's Memorial Coliseum which clear the 40-foot-high screen for home runs. I’ve talked about Moon before. He is still alive, now 83 years old. He did an interview about 4 years ago talking about his being traded to the Dodgers and trying to figure out why the Dodgers traded for him, particularly as he hit left-handed and Right Field and Right-Centre Field in the Coliseum was death to left-handed hitters. He also talks about developing the ability to hit those ‘Moon Shots’. It’s a most interesting 2 minutes and it’s attached below and worth the 2 minutes. I believe I’ve referred to this clip before but it’s worth a second look even if it’s something you’ve already seen.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=gino...2F2010%2F06%2F03%2F26-gino-cimoli%2F;1158;812

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7l-As7c5hM]Moonshots - YouTube[/ame]

On this date in 1976 Aurelio Rodriguez of the Tigers wins the Gold Glove at 3B in the American League. It marks the first time since the 1950’s that someone other than Brooks Robinson did that.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=aure...-greatest-tigers-68-aurelio-rodriguez;245;350

 

[67RedSox]

It was on this date in 1893 Joe Gedeon was born. In 1920 Gedeon led the AL with 713 Plate Appearances but he would never play in another ML game. Even the most casual baseball fan is familiar with Eight Men Out, the book (and the movie) that tells the story of the eight members of the Chicago White Sox who were forever banished from organized baseball for fixing the 1919 World Series.
Joe Gedeon was the "ninth man out." The regular second baseman of the St. Louis Browns, he was permanently barred from organized baseball by Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, for his minor part in the scandal. After the Browns ended the 1919 season in sixth place, Gedeon decided to stick around and take in the World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds before heading back to the West Coast. Gedeon was friends with some of the conspirators on the White Sox. Unfortunately, Joe seemed to have a knack for getting in with the wrong crowd. He was friendly with certain representatives of the St. Louis gambling community. Not surprisingly he got wind of the fix and put down a few bets. Gedeon claimed to have pocketed between $600 and $700 from his bets. When asked to explain his relatively paltry winnings, he said his conscience started to bother him after his initial enthusiasm to make a killing had passed. But his belated addition that he also didn't have much seed money may have been a greater factor. After his appearance before the Grand Jury, it was announced that Gedeon was exonerated from complicity in the throwing of games in the Series, but had materially strengthened the case against some of the men already indicted.
Outside the courtroom, Gedeon told reporters that he feared he was through with Baseball. He was right. The Browns had summarily dropped him from their roster immediately after his grand jury appearance. On November 3, 1921, according to a brief notation in the 1922 Reach Guide, Commissioner Landis officially and permanently disqualified Joe Gedeon for having guilty knowledge of the conspiracy.
Gedeon preceded all of the banished Sox to the grave. He suffered from cirrhosis of the liver and died from bronchial pneumonia on May 19, 1941, he was but 47 years old.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=joe+...%2F155954-gambo-t_wil1-photo-324.html;251;365

This date in 1950 was a sad day for MLB, the National League in particular and specifically for the NY Giants because for the first time since April 26, 1926 the massively popular Mel Ott was no longer employed by the Giants or any other ML organization. I bet even the staunchest of Brooklyn Dodgers fans would have stood in line to shake his hand and say…” thanks for your contribution to the game “.
Although in 1946 he had 78 At-bats and in 1947 he had 4 At-bats he really last played in 1945. In 1942 he became a player-manager for the Giants and was a regular in the Giants outfield through 1945 but at the age of 36 after the 1945 season he felt it was time to step aside and focus on just managing. He did that until 75 games into the 1948 season when he resigned as the Manager. On July 16, 1948, with the Giants in fourth place and playing uninspired .500 ball, Ott stepped down to be replaced by Manager Leo Durocher of the arch-rival Dodgers. To the consternation of Giants fans, their long-time idol was replaced by a man they heartily despised. Still under contract to the Giants through the 1950 season, Mel assisted his old friend Carl Hubbell in running the Giants' farm system but he resigned on this date in 1950 to manage the Oakland Oaks in the PCL in 1951 and 1952 which he did without notable success.
I wasn’t born when Ott left the Giants in December of 1950 and therefore was not around when he was an active player. I doubt any of us were around or old enough to remember him as a player and because of that it’s doubtful we can even begin to imagine how popular he was. When Ott retired as a player, he had 511 career home runs, over 200 more than any other National Leaguer, and a total exceeded only by Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx. Mel held National League career records in runs batted in, runs scored and bases on balls, all of them later surpassed. He also was considered the best National League right fielder for most of his career. The only thing that surpassed his statistics was his poularity. In 1944, he was selected as the most popular sports hero of all time, beating out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Christy Mathewson, Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey.
After baseball he went into broadcasting. In 1955 he joined the Mutual Network's "Game of the Day" re-creating games on radio. He moved to a broadcasting job more to his liking in 1956, announcing Detroit Tigers games on radio and television with Van Patrick. Mel was a natural for the job with his keen knowledge of the game and his warm, friendly, down-to-earth style and soft-spoken Southern accent. He had moved into a new baseball career and was successful at it.
Ott returned home to Metairie, Louisiana, after the 1958 season. The Otts were building a cottage in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, a few hours from Metairie. They were heading home on November 14 after inspecting the progress of construction and stopped for dinner to wait out a dense fog. The fog was still heavy when Mel continued the trip, piloting his station wagon slowly. Suddenly the Otts' car was hit head-on by a car whose driver lost track of the middle of the road. Both Mel and his wife Mildred were seriously injured. Mel died a week later at age 49.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=mel+...nces-in-major-league-baseball-history;238;400

It was on this date in 1973 that Ron Santo becomes the first ML player to invoke the new 10 and 5 Rule. The team wanted to send their 33-year old infielder to the Angels for two pitchers, but his 10+ years in the Majors with 5+ being in Chicago gave him the right to veto the deal.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=ron+...red%2F2010%2F12%2Fron_santo_1940-.php;244;339

On this date in 1975 Yogi Berra returns to the Yankees as a coach after an 11-year absence. The hiring of the team's former all-star catcher and skipper to be Billy Martin’s bench coach marks the first time in the history of the game that such a designation has been given to a member of the coaching staff.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=yogi...%2FList_of_New_York_Yankees_coaches;1350;1318

 

[67RedSox]

When you talk of the great Yankee teams of the 1920s and 1930s you think of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and rightly so, however there are some who considered the most important member of those teams to be their 2B, HOF’er Tony Lazzeri, who was born on this date in 1903 in San Francisco to Italian born parents. His father was a boilermaker.
Lazzeri grew up in what was then a tough neighbourhood of San Francisco, Cow Hollow. The land was used for cow grazing (as its name would imply) and a settlement for fishermen (the coast line was much closer to this area than it is now). Today, Cow Hollow is a generally affluent neighbourhood and the main shopping thoroughfare is Union Street, known for its restaurants, boutique shopping, health spas and wellness centers.
Growing up in Cow Hollow, Tony Lazzeri often got into fights. "I guess I was a pretty tough kid," recalled Lazzeri. "The neighborhood wasn't one in which a boy was likely to grow up a sissy, for it was always fight or get licked, and I never got licked." Having no interest in his schoolwork, Lazzeri spent most of the time boxing (he dreamed of becoming a prizefighter) and playing baseball on the Jackson Playground at the bottom of the hill at 17th and Kansas Streets. In 1918, Tony was expelled from school at the age of 15. Glad to be finished, Lazzeri told his father that he wanted to go to work. Told to pack a lunch for the next morning, Lazzeri accompanied his father to the Maine Iron Works, where the elder Lazzeri worked as a boilermaker. Tony started as a helper, heating rivets and tossing them to the riveters. The job gave him extraordinary strength in his shoulders and forearms. With black hair and brown eyes, the young man developed into a lean, hard, 5 foot, 11 inch, 160-pounder. Lazzeri was soon earning $4.50 a day at the iron works.
Lazzeri also made a little money playing shortstop for a semi-professional baseball team. Later, while he was training as a boxer, Lazzeri became the shortstop of the Golden Gate Native Police Department, a good semi-pro team. He continued working at the iron works and playing for the Golden Gate Natives until 1922. At that time, as he was just about to become a full-fledged boilermaker, a friend of his named Tim Harrington convinced Duffy Lewis, Manager of the Salt Lake City Bees baseball club of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), to give Lazzeri a tryout. After a couple of mediocre seasons Lazzeri blossomed in 1925 when he had a sensational season playing in 192 games (in those days the PCL played a 197-game schedule). He batted .355 with 252 hits, 52 doubles, 14 triples, 222 RBIs, and 60 home runs, the most ever hit in professional baseball. Lazzeri also scored 202 runs and stole 39 bases.
Scouts from all the ML teams were watching Lazzeri. Most felt that the altitude in Salt Lake City helped Lazzeri's batting average. They were wary of signing him, knowing other recent players with impressive numbers playing in that altitude had not succeeded. But there was another reason the scouts shied away: Lazzeri was an epileptic. Epilepsy, as it would turn out, might have been a factor in his death at merely 42 years of age in 1946 but this was 1925 and at that time the Salt Lake City club had a working arrangement with the Chicago Cubs. Knowing that Lazzeri had epileptic episodes off the field, the Cubs were afraid to buy him. The Cincinnati Reds also passed him up, and Garry Hermann, owner of the Reds, wrote to Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert and told him why his club had not bought Lazzeri. Ruppert sent GM Ed Barrow to investigate and when he finished doing so he felt there was no reason not to sign him… "As long as he doesn't take fits between three and six in the afternoon, that's good enough for me," said Barrow. As it turned out, Lazzeri's epilepsy never affected him on the playing field. The public never knew he had the disorder.
Ed Barrow purchased Lazzeri's contract from Salt Lake City in the fall of 1925 for players Frank Zoeller and Mack Hillis and $50,000, a considerable amount of money at that time. Subsequently, Lazzeri signed a contract with the Yankees for $5,000 on March 30, 1926, and reported to Spring Training at St. Petersburg, Florida. Lazzeri was 22 years old.
For the next 11 seasons Lazzeri’s name was pencilled in the NY Yankees starting line-up just about every day. He had a unique nickname… "Poosh-'Em Up Tony," According to Lazzeri, the nickname, which remained with him always, was given to him while he was playing at Salt Lake City by Italian-speaking fans, from a mistranslation of an Italian phrase meaning to "hit it out" (hit a home run).
Popular with his teammates and respected by his opponents, Lazzeri was a leader, cool under pressure, quick thinking, and considered by many as one of the smartest men in the game. Even Miller Huggins acknowledged him to be the brains of the Yankee infield. Lazzeri took charge when events called for steady nerves. Lazzeri was an excellent fielder, and for a smaller man compared to the likes of Ruth, Gehrig, and Meusel, he could hit the ball exceptionally far. He also had the knack of hitting with men on base, becoming one of the best "clutch" hitters in baseball.
Lazzeri died at age 42 from a fall caused, according to the coroner, by a heart attack in his Millbrae, California, home. His wife found him slumped over on a landing on her return home. Many believe Lazzeri's fall was actually caused by an epileptic seizure rather than a heart attack.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991 by the Veteran's Committee almost 50 years after his death.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=tony...rs_Row%2FMR1%2FTony_Lazzeri%2F2293171;760;540

The New York Yankee's Tony Lazzeri smiles... Stock Footage & Video Clips | NBCUniversal Archives

Tony Lazzeri was very quiet…perhaps boring might be a good word to describe. Sportswriters found him difficult to interview. "Interviewing that guy," one reporter complained, "is like mining coal with a nail file." The same can’t be said for another of Baseball’s HOF, Jocko Conlan who was born on this date in 1899.
Conlan had a brief playing career…two years in the Chicago White Sox outfield in 1934 and 1935. He gained entry to the HOFas umpire who worked in the National League from 1941 to 1965. He umpired in 5 World Series (1945, 1950, 1954, 1957 and 1961) and six All-Star Games (1943, 1947, 1950, 1953, 1958 and the first 1962 contest). He also umpired in the playoff series to decide the NL's regular-season champions in 1951, 1959 and 1962. He was the home plate umpire when Gil Hodges hit four home runs on August 31, 1950; he also umpired in the April 30, 1961 game in which Willie Mays hit four home runs. He retired after the 1964 season, but returned to work as a substitute umpire for 17 games in 1965.[3]
Conlan was known for several trademarks: Instead of a regular dress tie like most umpires of the day wore, Conlan sometimes wore a natty bow tie for his career. Conlan was also known for making "out" calls with his left hand, instead of his right. He was also known for his unforgettable arguments with Leo Durocher. Finally, Conlan was the last NL umpire allowed to wear the outside chest protector, instead of the inside protector that all other NL umpires were using by then. Conlan was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1974. He was the fourth umpire chosen, and the first NL umpire since Bill Klem in 1953. He died in 1989 at the age of 89 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=jock...-Jocko-Conlan-Argue-Original-Negative;800;603

 

[67RedSox]

It was on this date in 1937 the Red Sox acquire the contract of 19-year-old Ted Williams from San Diego of the Pacific Coast League, but he will not report to Boston until 1939.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=ted+...y-odoul-satchel-paige-ted-williams%2F;800;514

It was on this date in 1939 Lou Gehrig, who played in his last ML game on June 30th that season, is unanimously elected to the Hall of Fame. The five-year waiting rule is waived because of the Yankees first baseman's diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

https://www.google.ca/search?q=lou+...me.net%2Fstory_pages%2Frecall_gw.html;530;297

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkviK4to-Xw]Babe Dahlgren talks about the day he replaced Lou Gehrig - YouTube[/ame]

1957 was the year Frank Malzone of the Boston Red Sox got the shaft. If you don’t know Malzone he was a standout and a fixture in the Red Sox infield at 3B for 9 years, 1957 to 1965. He was as good a 3rd Baseman as there was except for some guy named Brooks Robinson. The first three years Gold Gloves were awarded it was Malzone who won it in the AL at 3B and then Robinson took over for the next 16 years.
Malzone was born and raised in the Bronx not too far from Yankee Stadium. His older brother and sister, Mary ( Malzone describes her as a line-drive hitter with no power ) taught him to play baseball. After High School he was studying to become an electrician, but he started thinking about playing baseball. A tryout for the New York Giants was discouraging. “You’re too small, better forget it” is what he was told. But he’d seen Phil Rizzuto play, and knew stature alone was no obstacle. Not one team scouted Malzone, but bird dog Cy Phillips spotted him. Phillips knew the Red Sox farm director, wrote him several times, until they sent a scout to sign Malzone. Boston’s talent evaluators didn’t consider him a true prospect but decided to keep him “just to fill the roster.”
His first year, 1948 in D ball he hit over .300 and they moved him up to C ball in 1949 and he hit even better at .329 so in 1950 he started the season playing A ball in Scranton and suffered a setback. In the season’s second game, he broke his leg near the ankle sliding into second base ( his foot was reportedly – “turned completely around” ) and was lost for the full campaign. His Manager, Jack Burns, later told The Sporting News, “I didn’t think he’d ever play ball again. The doctors thought he was through with baseball when we took him to the hospital.” It was, Frank explained in a 2009 interview, “the worst thing you can have – a dislocated ankle with pulled ligaments. The doctor told me at the time that a break would have been a lot simpler. He told me, ‘It looks like you’ll be able to walk, no problem. But I don’t know about baseball.’”
Malzone did come back and played in Scranton in 1951 and like so many others the Military got a hold of him and he ended up playing baseball in Hawaii on his way to Korea. After missing a couple of years he was back playing ball at the Triple A level. In both 1955 ( 6 games ) and 1956 ( 103 At-bats ) he had a cup of coffee with the Red Sox. In 1957 he was a rookie and made the team coming out of Florida. He had a tremendous season…on July 4, he was the first AL’er to reach 100 hits. Orioles third baseman George Kell, selected to start the All-Star Game, declared, “I don’t deserve it. … This Red Sox kid is great, really great. He should have gotten it.” American League Manager, Casey Stengel, named Frank as a reserve, and he spelled Kell at third. Both players were 0-for-2 in the game. In his first full season, Frank Malzone was an All-Star. By season’s end, he ranked 10th among all American Leaguers with his .292 average. His hitting was productive; his 103 RBIs ranked third in the AL. Malzone led the American League in total games, and led third basemen in chances, assists, and double plays. It was no surprise that he was named the Major Leagues’ Gold Glove winner at 3B. Starting in 1958, each League awarded a Gold Glove – and Malzone won again in both 1958 and 1959.
In 1957 he was not selected as Rookie of the Year however. The voting followed a month-long controversy over what the criteria should be and although eligible at the start of the season the rule was changed and he became ineligible. It was on this date in 1957 that Tony Kubek (.297, 3, 39) was selected ahead of Malzone (.292, 15, 103, plus Gold Glove). Except for his final season in 1966 when he played 82 games for the Angels Malzone, 83 and now retired has been on the payroll of the Red Sox since 1947. Not bad to have 65 years in with one employer.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=fran...malzone-post-canadian-baseball-58%2F;1024;774

Birthday Greetings go out to a couple of HOF’ers…Johnny Bench was born on this date in 1947 and 100 years earlier Deacon White was born on this date in 1847. Despite being 100 years older than Bench and the very first player ever to come to bat in a Major league game, Deacon White (2013) made it to Cooperstown 24 years after Bench (1989).

https://www.google.ca/search?q=john...www.posters.ws%2F14594%2Fjohnny_bench;360;450

https://www.google.ca/search?q=deac...sed-this-hof-committee-selections%2F;736;1040

 

[67RedSox]

It was on this date in 1955 that Roy Campanella in the NL and Yogi Berra in the AL are named as MVPs. It’s the last time both Leagues had catchers named MVPs in the same season.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=camp...rse-2-Signature-Card%2FCategories.bok;299;400

In the history of the grand old Game December 8th hasn’t been an overwhelmingly (is that a word?) busy day for MLB. Oh, there’s been several free-agent deals consummated on this date but I consider those Wall Street transactions not Baseball transactions. Also, since most of those signings end up as disasters I’m sure Baseball ( not the players ) would like to forget about them anyway. I was reading today about a bunch of No-Hitters thrown in the Game that really weren’t No-Hitters and saw something in common with so many of the free-agent signings. That something in common is that just as so many of today’s free-agent deals turn into disasters the results of so many of today’s baseball games are decided by disasters…those disasters being in the form of the modern day umpire. On the list of Baseball’s Top Ten least deserving No-Hitters is the one Johann Santana tossed for the Mets last year:
It was June 1, 2012 and with Santana pitching it was an historic night for the New York Mets. Fifty years and 8,019 games, many of them pitched by some of the game’s greats, and not a single No-Hitter—until Santana, the veteran lefty with two Cy Young Awards in his back pocket, took the mound and finally gave the Mets a taste of no-hit nirvana against the St. Louis Cardinals…only thing was… it shouldn’t have counted.
In the sixth inning Carlos Beltran curled a line drive around the third base bag that hit the left-field line behind it—but incredibly 3B umpire Adrian Johnson called it foul despite the ball hitting the line 10 feet in front of him to the contradiction of television replays that clearly showed a dent on the chalk where the ball struck. Beltran went on to ground out to preserve the No-Hitter. That wasn’t the only umpire mis-adventure of the night…with one out in the eighth, St. Louis pinch-hitter Shane Robinson was hit on the hand with a pitch—but home plate umpire Gary Cederstrom disagreed, and Robinson went on to become one of Santana’s eight strikeout victims. When you give pitchers undeserved Outs I would think that enhances their chances to toss No-Hitters. Maybe what Johnson and Cederstrom were trying to do was even things out for the pitchers. After all, wasn’t it one of their own who denied Armando Galarraga not only a No-Hitter but a Perfect Game.
Santana’s getting credit for a No-Hitter he didn’t deserve wasn’t all bad. The reaction in the press in the United States largest city meant MLB could not ignore the horrible state of the Game’s umpires. It was one of the games which triggered MLB to alter their stance on video review and we’ll see some of that change in the coming season.
The story doesn’t end there because in addition to Santana’s undeserved No-Hitter being one of the triggers to deeper video review it ensured the free agent contract Santana signed with the Mets would end up being a disaster. In the long run, the no-no probably cost Santana and the Mets as well; the complete-game gem, padded with five walks, took the Venezuelan native 134 pitches to complete—20 more than what Mets manager Terry Collins normally would have allowed. Santana was erratic in the outings to follow, then just plain awful; he missed the final eight weeks of the season and the entire 2013 campaign as recurring shoulder issues got the best of him. That means the Mets have had to cough up almost $40M in salary for nothing in return and this doesn’t include the $25M owing for 2014.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT95ssdbuFk]Santana No hitter, Beltran foul ball - YouTube[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atjBncxqoGY]Johan Santana's Illegitimate No-Hitter - YouTube[/ame]