Whitey Ford

Wikipedia - "Edward Charles 'Whitey' Ford (born October 21, 1928) is an American former Major League Baseball pitcher who spent his entire 16-year career with the New York Yankees. He was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. Ford was a native of the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, located in New York City. By the Triborough Bridge, it was a few miles from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Ford graduated from Aviation High School in nearby Sunnyside, Queens. Ford was signed by the New York Yankees as an amateur free agent in 1947, and played his entire career with them. He was nicknamed 'Whitey' while in the minor leagues for his light blond hair."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference
SI: July 24, 1961, Whitey Throws For 30
Whitey Ford
Baseball Card Hall of Fame</>

Sam Crawford

Wikipedia - "Samuel Earl Crawford (April 18, 1880 – June 15, 1968), nicknamed 'Wahoo Sam', was a Major League Baseball player who played outfield for the Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1957. Crawford batted and threw left-handed, stood 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) tall and weighed 190 pounds. He was one of the greatest sluggers of the dead-ball era and still holds the Major League's records for triples in a career (309) and inside-the-park home runs in a season (12). He has the second best all-time record for most inside-the-park home runs in a career (51)."
Wikipedia, Baseball-reference
SABR: Sam Crawford
Any player/Any era: Sam Crawford
Wahoo Sam was one of greatest stars in early days of Navin Field
Late Innings
YouTube: Baseball Hall of Fame - Biographies: Sam Crawford

Tony La Russa: Great Manager, Terrible Memoirist

"As longtime season-ticket holders for the St. Louis Cardinals, my father and I spent unseemly portions of the past 15 years bickering from our seats along the first-base line about Tony La Russa's unorthodox managerial style. As a La Russa skeptic, I continually second-guessed the manager's incessant lineup tinkering. My father, ever the optimist, assured me that his in-game moves were all grounded in meticulous preparation and statistical analysis."
The Atlantic

Louis Phillips - "The Curve"

Life throws you a curve,
Breaking so sharply,
That just before it crosses the plate,
You flinch, bend back.
You still have two strikes to go.
Next a change up or a slider.
Perhaps followed by high heat.
A 100 mph fastball.
Even if you know what pitch is coming,
You still can’t hit it out of the park.
Soon you are not allowed
Any more pitches. 3 strikes.
Return to the bench.
No sense hanging around.
You’re out. That’s it.


Spitball Magazine

The 30, Week 25: Brewers Hoping for an Octoberfest

"Work got you down? Wife and kids hate your guts? Life kicking you in the head? Jon Miller, Gangnam Style. You're welcome. This week, we're only covering the teams that have a realistic shot at making the playoffs. Don't worry, we'll have plenty of coverage of the non-contending teams in the coming weeks. It's Week 25 of The 30."
Grantland

The Numbers Game - Alan Schwarz

"Most fans, players and even team executives assume that baseball's infatuation with statistics is simply a byproduct of the information age, a phenomenon that blossomed only after the arrival of Bill James and computers in the 1980s. They couldn't be more wrong. Alan Schwarz, the senior writer of Baseball America and a weekly contributor to ESPN.com, will forever change that misperception with his new book, The Numbers Game, just published by St. Martin's Press."
ESPN: Darwins of the Diamond by Alan Schwarz
amazon: The Numbers Game
W - Alan Schwarz

Paul & Lloyd Waner

Wikipedia - "Paul Glee Waner (April 16, 1903 – August 29, 1965), nicknamed 'Big Poison', was a German-American Major League Baseball right fielder. He, along with his brother Lloyd, starred in the Pittsburgh Pirates' outfield in the 1920s and 1930s."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference
SABR: Paul Waner
Great Pirates In History: Paul Waner

Wikipedia - "Lloyd James Waner (March 16, 1906 – July 22, 1982), nicknamed 'Little Poison', was a Major League Baseball center fielder. His small stature at 5 ft 9 in (1.75 m) and 132 lb (68 kg) made him one of the smallest players of his era. Along with his brother, Paul Waner, he anchored the Pittsburgh Pirates outfield throughout the 1920s and 1930s."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference
Lloyd “Little Poison” Waner
amazon: Big and Little Poison: Paul and Lloyd Waner, Baseball Brothers
YouTube: Paul and Lloyd Waner, Baseball Hall of Famers

The 30, Week 24: Return of the Freak

"With the regular season now in the home stretch, it's time to focus on those teams still in contention. Here, then, are our all-contender rankings. It's Week 24 of The 30. 1. Texas Rangers, 87-59 (746 RS, 623 RA) (last week: 2). The mockery started almost immediately after the trade was consummated. Ryan Dempster's career year was about to burst into flames, what with a move to the American League and to the AL's toughest ballpark for pitchers to navigate. In his first start with the Rangers, Dempster got creamed for eight runs on nine hits (including two homers), the Angels knocking him out after 4⅔ innings."
Grantland

A National Mistake

Illustration by Niv Bavarsky
"Let's start by making one thing clear: Everyone wants what's best for Stephen Strasburg. He is the greatest collegiate pitcher of all time, and in his short major league career, Strasburg has averaged more strikeouts per nine innings than Randy Johnson. No matter where you stand on The Strasburg Rules, everyone wants to see him pitch for 20 seasons, strike out 5,000 batters, and make a pretty speech in upstate New York in the summer of 2039. It's worth stating the obvious, because to hear some of the rhetoric, you'd think that there are only two positions on the subject — those who believe the Nationals are correct to shut down Strasburg and those who think it's fine to sacrifice Strasburg's arm on the altar of October baseball."
Grantland - Sep 12
The Atlantic: The Faulty Logic Behind the Decision to Shut Down Stephen Strasburg By Adam Felder - Aug 23
The Atlantic: Why the Nationals Are Right to Shut Down Stephen Strasburg - Aug 22
Bloomberg: Stephen Strasburg’s Season Didn’t Have to End This Way - Sep 8
PBS: Washington Nationals' Star Pitcher Stephen Strasburg Benched For Rest of Season - Sep 10 (Video)
YouTube: Stephen Strasburg Highlights - Jan 2012, 103 MPH fastball....Baseball's Next Big Thing - May 2009

Larry Eickstaedt - "Babe Ruth"

Ted Williams was my idol.
Ruthie and I were always the Boston Red Sox
for our farmyard baseball games
but I paid grudging respect
to Joe DiMaggio and the Yankees –
my brother's team.

Stories our dad told about the greats
like Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson,
provided an historical feel for the game.

More important than school lessons –
lifetime batting averages, most runs,
most hits, most stolen bases –
were committed to memory.

And
At the top of the list, records
held by the most famous of Yankees,
the Babe –
most home runs in a season,
most in a lifetime –
were sacred.

In the afternoon of August 16, 1948,
a wave of silence,
like a sharp line drive,
swept the family when Mom
came out to the yard and announced
to Dad, my brother, sister, and me,
Babe Ruth died today!

That's all she said.
As though in a trance,
stunned by the news,
she slowly went back inside.

Time was suspended
like one of his towering home runs
and tears were near as I struggled
with unsettling feelings
like striking out with the bases loaded
in the bottom of the ninth.


Spitball Magazine

1963 World Series

Wikipedia - "The 1963 World Series matched the two-time defending champion New York Yankees against the Los Angeles Dodgers, with the Dodgers sweeping the Series in four games to capture their second title in five years, and their third in franchise history. This was the first time that the New York Yankees were swept in a World Series in four games (the 1922 World Series had one tie). Of the Los Angeles Dodgers four World Series championships since the opening of Dodger Stadium, this was the only one won at Dodger Stadium. Also, of the six championships from the Dodgers franchise, it remains the only one won at home. Starting pitchers Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Johnny Podres and ace reliever Ron Perranoski combined to give up only four runs in four games."
Wikipedia
Baseball Almanac
SI: Koo-Foo the Killer
YouTube: 1963 part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

The Long, Strange Trip of Dock Ellis

"'Get to the f---ing stadium. I got to pitch.' Decades later, Dock Ellis remembered it like this: sitting in a taxi outside the San Diego airport, running late for work, tripping on acid. So yeah, maybe the words aren't verbatim. It was a Friday. That much is certain. June 12, 1970. Three years after psychedelic Pied Piper Timothy Leary invited America to 'Turn on, tune in and drop out.' Four years before Richard Nixon's resignation marked an inglorious denouement to the counterculture era. The middle of things. A purple haze. The perfect moment for the first and only known no-hitter in major league history pitched under the influence of lysergic acid diethylamide, thrown by the first and only player in major league history to inspire both a biography penned by a future American poet laureate and a seminal article in High Times."
ESPN
Dock Ellis and the LSD No No (Video)
amazon: Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball
ESPN: Ex-pitcher Ellis dies of liver disease
Snopes - True

2010 June: Dock Ellis

Walk-off home run

Wikipedia - "In baseball, a walk-off home run is a home run that ends the game. It must be a home run that gives the home team the lead (and consequently, the win) in the bottom of the final inning of the game—either the ninth inning, or any extra inning, or any other regularly scheduled final inning. It is called a 'walk-off' home run because both teams walk off the field immediately afterward, rather than finishing the inning, though it originally was directed to the pitcher, who had to 'walk off' the field alone as the other team celebrated."
Wikipedia
MLB Notebook: Thome is king of walk-off homers
YouTube: Scott Hatteberg Walk Off Home Run (Clinches the Oakland A's 20th Consecutive Victory, Featuring both "Moneyball")

Hilldale Daisies

Wikipedia - "The Hilldale Athletic Club (also known as Hilldale Daisies, Darby Daisies) was an African American professional baseball team based in Darby, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia. Established as a boys team in 1910, the Hilldales were developed by their early manager, then owner Ed Bolden to be one of the powerhouse Negro League baseball teams. They won the first three Eastern Colored League pennants beginning 1923 and in 1925 won the second Colored World Series. Hall of Fame player Judy Johnson was a Hilldale regular for most its professional era with twelve seasons in fifteen years 1918–1932. Pitcher Phil Cockrell played for Hilldale throughout those years. Oscar Charleston, Biz Mackey, Louis Santop, Chaney White, Jud Wilson, and Jesse 'Nip' Winters all were team members for shorter terms."
Wikipedia
eMuseum: Hilldale Daisies
agate type: Hilldale Club
amazon: Fair Dealing and Clean Playing: The Hilldale Club and the Development of Black Professional Baseball, 1910-1932
African American Baseball in Philadelphia Historical Marker
Hilldale Eastern Colored League (c. 1920’s)

W.P. Kinsella

Wikipedia - "William Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC (born May 25, 1935) is a Canadian novelist and short story writer who is well known for his novel Shoeless Joe (1982), which was adapted into the movie Field of Dreams in 1989. His work has often concerned baseball, First Nations people, and other Canadian issues."
Wikipedia
Guide to Baseball Fiction: W. P. Kinsella
amazon: W.P. Kinsella
SI: State of Dreams
“The Iowa Baseball Confederacy” by W. P. Kinsella

The 30, Week 23: Halos Are Born Again

"For the rest of the stretch run, we'll be dividing teams into two categories: Contenders and Also-Rans. The idea is simple: We want to focus on 2012 trends for contending teams, while looking at 2013 and beyond for those ballclubs whose seasons are more or less over. These are judgment calls, with some chance for error. Here's hoping we don't whiff this badly. It's Week 23 of The 30."
Grantland

The History of How We Follow Baseball

1912, Boston Red Sox, New York Giants
"... He's just lucky he lives in this century. Its a luxury of modern sports that you can bring the game with you. Santorum was watching football on a small tablet; he could as easily have been streaming a ballgame over an iPhone, or watching a constantly-updated gamecast. Should he have had more discretion, he could at a minimum have peeked at scores over the web. A hundred years ago, sports fans -- read: baseball fans -- were not so lucky. In 1912, the Red Sox played the New York Giants in the World Series. Here's how people in Washington watched that game..."
The Atlantic, Oct. 2011 (Video)
SABR - Action Jackson: Watching Baseball Remotely, Before TV
Baseball Games Re-Created in Radio Studios

2010 September: Baseball scorekeeping
2010 December: 1919 World Series - Black Sox Scandal
2011 September: Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series
2011 May: The Black Sox Trial - 1921
2012 June: Kenesaw Mountain Landis

Larry Rogers - "For Andy Who Signed with the San Francisco Giants in 1972 Written after Finding His First Bubble Gum Contract in the Smokehouse"

He wanted his ashes spread
over a pasture in Logan County
that decades earlier had been
a ball field on which the Dean brothers,
Dizzy and Daffy, had played
when they were boys.
When he was a boy
he would go there
and commune with
their carefree spirits
when he wanted to
get away from the worries
of this world.

Accommodating him
one bright, April morning
I did not hear the pop
of a fastball shooting
into the heart of the catcher's mitt,
or early 20th century
infield chatter,
only my own unsteady voice
giving the barefooted Diz
a glowing scouting report
on another local boy.


Spitball Magazine

Herb Score

Wikipedia - "Herbert Jude Score (June 7, 1933 – November 11, 2008) was a Major League Baseball pitcher and announcer. ... In 1956, Score improved on his rookie campaign, going 20–9 with a 2.53 ERA and 263 strikeouts, while reducing the number of walks from 154 to 129, and allowed only 5.85 hits/9 innings, which would stand as a franchise record until it was broken by Luis Tiant's 5.30 in 1968. On May 7, 1957, against the New York Yankees at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, Score was struck in the face by a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald, breaking numerous bones in his face and leaving him bloodied. McDougald reportedly vowed to retire if Score was blinded as a result, but Score eventually recovered his 20/20 vision, though he missed the rest of the season. Score returned late in the 1958 season."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference
SABR: Herb Score
Herb Score Being Hit by a Liner in 1957
SI: How Herb Score changed my life
Herb and Rocky - The Curse of Rocky Colavito by Terry Pluto
#88 Herb Score and #359 Gil McDougald
NYT: Herb Score, 75, Indians Pitcher Derailed by Line Drive, Dies
A Closer Look: The greatness of Herb Score
YouTube: Herb Score Tribute

Dodgers–Giants rivalry

Pitcher Juan Marichal, catcher John Roseboro, Candlestick Park, Aug. 22, 1965
Wikipedia - "The Dodgers–Giants rivalry is regarded as one of the greatest, most competitive, and longest-standing rivalries in American baseball. The feud between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants began in the late 19th century when both clubs were based in New York City, with the Dodgers playing in Brooklyn and the Giants playing at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. After the 1957 season, Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley decided to move the team to Los Angeles for financial and other reasons. Along the way, he managed to convince Giants owner Horace Stoneham ... to preserve the rivalry by bringing his team to California as well. New York baseball fans were stunned and heartbroken by the move. Given that the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco have long been competitors in economic, cultural, and political arenas, the new venue in California became fertile ground for its transplantation."
Wikipedia
Dodgers-Giants: Baseball's Greatest Rivalry
Bleacher Report: Los Angeles Dodgers-San Francisco Giants Rivalry Entering a New Golden Age
SI: Dodgers-Giants once again year's best rivalry and best race
ESPN: Giants-Dodgers Rivalry
amazon: The Giants and the Dodgers: Four Cities, Two Teams, One Rivalry, After Many a Summer: The Passing of the Giants and Dodgers and a Golden Age in New York Baseball, The Dodgers - Giants Rivalry 1900 - 1957
YouTube: Dodgers Giants Rivalry Origins, Dodgers-Giants Rivalry, SF Giants vs LA Dodgers Fight 08-22-1965

The 30, Week 22: Oakland's Tunnel Vision

"Hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend. This is how you spend it if you're a crazy person like me. It's Week 22 of The 30. ... 1. Cincinnati Reds, 82-54 (594 RS, 510 RA) (last week: 3). By the time you read this, Joey Votto will likely have come off the disabled list and joined the Reds' lineup for the first time since July 15. We've already talked about the numbers-game issues Cincinnati will have once Votto's back, with Todd Frazier and his potent bat in danger of losing a lot of playing time."
Grantland

1925 World Series

Griffith Stadium
Wikipedia - "In the 1925 World Series, the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the defending champion Washington Senators in seven games. In a reversal of fortune on all counts from the previous 1924 World Series, when Washington's Walter Johnson had come back from two losses to win the seventh and deciding game, Johnson dominated in Games 1 and 4, but lost Game 7. The Senators built up a 3–1 Series lead. After Pittsburgh won the next two games, Johnson again took the mound for Game 7, and carried a 6–4 lead into the bottom of the seventh inning. But errors by shortstop Roger Peckinpaugh in both the seventh and eighth innings led to four unearned runs, and the Pirates become the first team in a best-of-seven Series to overcome a 3–1 Series deficit to win the championship."
Wikipedia
Baseball Almanac
1925 World Series: Pittsburgh Pirates over Washington Senators four games to three
1925 World Series: A great story worth retelling
Did Sam Rice reveal a World Series secret in a letter opened after his death?
YouTube: World Series 1925, Walter Johnson Pitching Footage

Wild Bill Hagy

Wikipedia - "William 'Wild Bill' Hagy (June 17, 1939 – August 20, 2007) was an American baseball fan and cab driver from Dundalk, Maryland who led famous 'O-R-I-O-L-E-S' chants during the late 1970s and early '80s from section 34 in the upper deck at Memorial Stadium. Hagy's chants and persona developed him into an icon associated with the Baltimore Orioles for years. While leading cheers from 'The Roar from 34' at Memorial Stadium, Wild Bill became a Baltimore institution. Standing at six foot two inches tall with what most would describe as a 'beer belly', Hagy was an easily recognized figure at the ball park, always adorned in sun glasses and a straw cowboy-styled hat."
Wikipedia
He embodied Orioles Magic
YouTube: Wild Bill Hagy

Walt Alston - "Smokey"

Sandwiched between Durocher/Dressen and
Lasorda like a thick slab of Havarti aged
twenty-three years

Proving that sometimes

doing nothing
gets the job
done

But did the W's ever erase the rancid
moldy aftertaste of your solitary

K


Cooperstown Verses: Poems About Each Hall of Famer

Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game - John Thorn

"Among the many books that have educated us about the birth and infancy of baseball, John Thorn’s extraordinarily detailed and well-documented 'Baseball in the Garden of Eden' is the advanced seminar, the one that begins by telling you that everything you thought you knew is wrong. Its premise is that when it comes to baseball, what is generally thought to be history is myth, and the two most prominent myths — the one that Abner Doubleday invented the game in Coopers­town, N.Y., in 1839, and the other that the responsible party was a New Yorker, Alexander Cartwright, who formalized the game’s rules in 1845 — were promulgated by men with ulterior motives."
NYT: The Prehistory of Baseball
npr: The 'Secret History' Of Baseball's Earliest Days (Video)
Seamheads
Our Game Blog
amazon
YouTube: John Thorn The Secret History of the Early Game Book Interview