The T206 Collection: The Players & Their Stories

"The T206 Collection: The Players & Their Stories is a tribute to the men featured in the greatest baseball card collection that has ever existed. This book is for baseball fans, hobbyists, and history buffs. The brief biographical narratives along with the personal and professional statistics of each player offer you a peek into the developing world of baseball during the early part of the 20th century. The stories of the amazing array of T206 players from all walks of life with dramatically different skill levels will give you a real sense of how our national pastime was shaped by the events and players of that era. The last chapter discusses the value and grading system of this storied collection and brings the reader full circle. You will learn how a card like Kitty Bransfield’s with the Sweet Caporal back is graded and valued. In addition, elsewhere in the book, you will learn about the 'Bransfield Curse' and what it meant to Pittsburgh Pirates fans."
The T206 Collection: The Players & Their Stories
PSA Card: The Men Of T206
amazon: The T206 Collection: The Players & Their Stories

Mickey Cochrane

Wikipedia - "Gordon Stanley 'Mickey' Cochrane (April 6, 1903 – June 28, 1962) was a professional baseball player and manager. He played in Major League Baseball as a catcher for the Philadelphia Athletics and Detroit Tigers. Cochrane was considered one of the best catchers in baseball history and is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Cochrane was born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts to Northern Irish immigrant John Cochrane, whose father had immigrated to Ulster from Scotland and Scottish immigrant Sadie Campbell. He was also known as 'Black Mike' because of his fiery, competitive nature."
Wikipedia
SABR: Mickey Cochrane
Mickey Cochrane
YouTube: Biographies: Mickey Cochrane

M. T. Corrigan - "Sandlot Dad"

Not to say too much, nor paint those shadows
deeper than they were, his serves just clearing
the drop of the woods, and that line of maples
along Route Two, a deeper green. Greater matters
attach themselves to the sense of things
we learned, like the shockless strokes of triples
scalded down the lines, singeing the Nadeaus'
birch trees: overspin, top hand. What meaning
could one assign to batting practice; who grapples
light enough to comprehend that meadow's
darknesses? He pitched from deepeer shade, peering
in to catch the sign to get me out. No scruples
for the dustbacks that flung me down to dirt:
"Get up, son. Hang in. Baseball doesn't hurt."


Spitball

Inside the Park Home Runs

Arizona Diamondbacks - Ryan Roberts
Wikipedia - "In baseball parlance, an inside-the-park home run, 'leg home run', or 'quadruple', is a play where a batter hits a home run without hitting the ball out of play. To score an inside-the-park home run, the player must touch all four bases (in the order of first, second and third, ending at home plate) before a fielder on the opposing team tags him out. If the defensive team commits an error during the play, it is not scored as a home run, but rather advancing on an error. In the early days of baseball, with outfields more spacious and less uniform from ballpark to ballpark, inside-the-park home runs were common. However, in the modern era, with outfields less spacious, the feat has become increasingly rare, happening only a handful of times each season."
Wikipedia
Baseball Almanac
SABR: Inside the Park Home Runs

What Happened to the Yankees?

"Turning the end of the Yankees' season into a referendum on Alex Rodriguez is reductive. This is a team that suffered multiple major injuries to key players, yet still won 95 games and an AL East title before an ALCS loss to the team with the best pitcher and best hitter on earth.1 Rodriguez was hardly alone in his struggles as the Tigers swept the Yankees out of the playoffs, joining Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson, and Nick Swisher to form a Voltron of playoff incompetence. 2013 and beyond are a different story. When asking, 'What the hell do the Yankees do from here?' the answer starts with, 'What the hell do the Yankees do with A-Rod?'"
Grantland

The Pine Tar Incident

Etsy
Wikipedia - "The Pine Tar Incident (also known as the Pine Tar Game) was a controversial incident during an American League game played between the Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees on July 24, 1983 at Yankee Stadium in New York City. With his team trailing 4–3 in the top half of the ninth inning, George Brett of the Royals hit a 2-run home run to give his team the lead. However, Yankees manager Billy Martin, who had noticed a large amount of pine tar on Brett's bat, requested that the umpires inspect his bat. The umpires ruled that the amount of pine tar on the bat exceeded the amount allowed by rule, nullified Brett's home run, and called him out. As Brett was the third out in the ninth inning with the home team in the lead, the game ended with a Yankees win."
Wikipedia
MLB: BB Moments: The Pine Tar Game (Video)
ESPN - 67: Pine tar nullifies home run, so Brett goes ballistic
NYT: The Pine Tar Home Run By Murray Chass, July 24, 1983
HOMAGE T-Shirt

1973 World Series

Catfish Hunter
Wikipedia - "The 1973 World Series matched the defending champion Oakland A's against the New York Mets with the A's winning in seven games to repeat as World Champions. The New York Mets won the National League East division by 1 1⁄2 games over the St. Louis Cardinals then defeated the Cincinnati Reds, three games to two, in the National League Championship Series. The Oakland A's won the American League West division by six games over the Kansas City Royals then defeated the Baltimore Orioles, three games to two, in the American League Championship Series."
Wikipedia
Baseball Almanac
SI: Mutiny and a Bounty
Oakland A's History: Finley Fires Andrews
Tom Seaver and the '73 World Series
Let's Go to the Videotape: The 1973 World Series (Video)
YouTube: Game 3, Shea Stadium, Tom Seaver vs. Catfish Hunter, Game 3, Shea Stadium, 9th inning, Tug McGraw, Ray Sadecki, Yogi Berra Goes Nuts At Bad Call

Commons and Minor Stars

"I have spent a lot of time the last few days watching baseball and thinking about this baseball card collecting concept -- at least it was a concept when I was younger -- of commons and minor stars. When I was in high school, this would be in the early 1980s, I decided for a time to get serious about collecting baseball cards. This is the sort of thing high school kids do, I think, when they are not getting dates. I had collected baseball cards as a kid, but that was different, more about the social experience, flipping cards, trading cards, putting cards in the spokes of my bicycle and all that. My Mom, following the Mom Handbook of my generation, threw out my card collection one day when I wasn't looking, and I have come to believe those shoeboxes of baseball cards were filled with Mickey Mantle rookie cards, Sandy Koufax rookie cards, Willie Mays rookie cards even though all of these people played years before I was born, much less before I started collecting cards."
Joe Posnanski

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: The Literary Baseball Magazine

Why It's Especially Tough to Root for the Yankees This Postseason

"There were two truly tremendous baseball games in the American League playoffs last night. Two bottom-of-the-ninth comebacks, two walk-off wins. I could almost say that for a Yankees fan, it was fun. Playoff baseball often isn't: For champions of the mind in April, anything short of a World Series title is a failure. A Yankee season is measured not by its sum of achievements but by its distance from the ultimate goal. October in New York brings tension, a lurking sense of something slipping away. For a baseball fan, though, this October has been unquestionably fun. The Baltimore Orioles and Oakland Athletics, two teams widely predicted to finish at the bottom—28th and 29th respectively in the ESPN pre-season power rankings—are playing playoff baseball."
The Atlantic

Big Leagues Monthly

"The October issue of Big Leagues Monthly is live now! Lots of great features, an interview with Mike Ferrin of MLB Radio, prospect notebook, AFL preview, and my cover piece on Max Scherzer's breakout season!"
Big Leagues Monthly
Big Leagues Monthly Blogspot

The 1964 Phillies: The Story of Baseball's Most Memorable Collapse

"In 1964, thousands of Philadelphia baseball fans were caught up in the Phillies’ unexpected run at the National League pennant. Nearly a decade of continuous defeat had earned them little more than the reputation for an unprecedented record of consecutive losses. But in that ’64 season the Phillies shocked the baseball world, taking over the National League in mid–July and holding on to first place for 73 consecutive days. And then, as the team’s first pennant in a generation seemed within reach, the Phillies collapsed in the greatest meltdown in baseball history."
amazon: The 1964 Phillies: The Story of Baseball's Most Memorable Collapse
SABR: Beyond Bunning and Short Rest: An Analysis of Managerial Decisions That Led to the Phillies’ Epic Collapse of 1964
The Legend of Chico Ruiz: Forty Years Later, A City Still Bleeds
Project MUSE: September Swoon: Richie Allen, the '64 Phillies, and Racial Integration (review)
amazon: September Swoon: Richie Allen, the '64 Phillies, and Racial Integration
Google: The 1964 Phillies: The Story of Baseball's Most Memorable Collapse
Chico F***ing Ruiz and the Bonehead Play of the Year
W - 1964 Philadelphia Phillies season

"There Used to Be a Ballpark"

Wikipedia - "'There Used to Be a Ballpark' is a song written by Joe Raposo and recorded by Frank Sinatra for Sinatra's 1973 album, Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back. The song expresses sadness at the loss of a baseball team and its ballpark, which once gave its fans and players joy, along with other childhood delights such as 'rock candy and a great big Fourth of July'. A key phrase in the song is 'Now the children try to find it / And they can't believe their eyes / For the old team just isn't playing / And the new team hardly tries.' The song has often been cited by books and websites that discuss old-time baseball."
Wikipedia
YouTube: "There Used to Be a Ballpark"
SportsLifer

2012 August: Brooklyn Dodgers: Ghosts of Flatbush

John Thorn

"John Thorn, the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, thinks and writes about other subjects, too. Sometimes he writes about football, sometimes about New York history, and sometimes about arts and letters, especially of the nineteenth century. He resides in Catskill, New York."
Wikipedia
Our Game Blog
Thorn Pricks - May 01, 2009
amazon: John Thorn
SABR42 Day Two: John Thorn’s keynote speech
Hardball Times - Interview: John Thorn

2012 September: Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game

The Felice Brothers - "Cooperstown"

The water's wide
It's deep and wide
It's down a long and windy road
And everyone knows that a boy can't swim it

In narrow's church
The white walled church
They're singing that gospel song
“bye and bye, I will see my king”
The clouds will break
And the pews shake
And the choir softly cries
And it's Georgia in the spring of 1905

Ty Cobb
You're dead and gone
You had a game like a war machine
And through the great
Hall of Fame you wander
In Tigers field
A girl in heels

She had a face like a magazine
And through the long metal stands she wandered

The ball soared
The crowd roared
The scoreboard sweetly hummed
And tomorrow you'll surely know whose won

I'm on first
And you're on third
And all the wolves are all between
And everyone's sure that the game is over

The catcher's hard
He's mean mean and hard
And he nips at the batter's heels
And everyone's sure that the game is over

The ball soars
And the crowd roars
And the scoreboard sweetly hums
And tomorrow you'll surely know whose won

The water's wide
It's deep and wide
It's a down a long and windy road
And everyone knows that a boy can't swim it

The clouds break
And the pews shake
And the preacher's feet do pound
As the rain beats the streets of Cooperstown


Lyrics Mania: "Cooperstown"

Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution

"Jackie Robinson's breaking of baseball's color line has long been seen as a singular, unrepeatable moment in American cultural history -- especially because baseball really was the national pastime in 1947. But two new books demonstrate that for race in baseball, as for race in America, Robinson's moment was neither a simple culmination nor a clean slate. Neil Lanctot's Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution is notable for treating its storied subject primarily as a business enterprise. There are few anecdotes about outsized characters such as Satchel Paige, the barnstorming life or even on-field action. But Lanctot's approach lets him tell the story without making integration -- and the apotheosis of Robinson -- the be-all and end-all. He makes you understand thoroughly why Negro League ball -- like black banks, hotels and hospitals -- stood up stoutly in the face of segregation, but couldn't long survive its fall."
Pittsburgh City Paper
Cover the Bases Interview with Neil Lanctot (Video)
NYT: Before You Could Say Jackie Robinson
W - Baseball color line
amazon: Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution
W - Neil Lanctot

The 30, Week 26: Ace in the Hole

"In our final installment of the season, we're interested in how little has changed in six months. Check out the very first installment of this column, before it even adopted its current name: Six of the top 10 teams then are likely to make the playoffs 156 games later, two others are still in the mix, and the Cinderella Orioles were already 3-0. There've been a few changes, with the Braves and Giants shaking off 0-3 starts to crack the postseason, and the A's nearly there now after a rough start of their own. It's Week 26 of The 30. See you in the playoffs."
Grantland