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Best Pitcher Money Ever Bought.

May 11, 2010

Old Hoss Radbourn left a salute from here to eternity in this photo. Check out the finger positioning on his left hand. It wasn't the only time he pulled this same stunt, but what's a club to do? Some 59-wins in one season pitchers are simply eccentric on the grumpy side..

In 1884, Old Hoss Radbourn almost singlehandedly pitched the Providence Grays to a 10.5 game edge over the Boston Beaneaters for the National League pennant. He won 59 games for a club that finished 84-28, .750. At a salary of $3,000 per season, plus gaining the balance of Charlie Sweeney’s $2,700 salary after Sweeney was first suspended and then left the club, Radbourn turned out to be the deal on a pitcher that any club owner ever bought.

In 1884, Old Hoss Radbourn finished the year with 73 complete games in 73 starts. He won 59 while losing only 12, and he registered an earned run average of 1.38.

How do you like those apples? Over his career, he produced an orchard of sweet baseball fruit. In eleven seasons of big league ball, Hoss Radbourn won 309 games, lost 195, and had an ERA of 2.67. Deservedly so, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown in 1939.

In the incredible 1884 season, Radbourn was credited with 60 wins for about a hundred years. That figure changed late in the 20th century when it was discovered by researchers that Old Hoss Radbourn had been given credit for a win in one game in which he entered in relief after his club had regained the lead.  That win was returned as credit to starter Cyclone Miller, even though Miller had pitched poorly and Radbourn had retired every man he faced in his three to four innings of work. The reasoning for the change was consistent with the current long-time policy on win assignments, even though Radbourn, like many relievers today, pitched more deservedly than the shaky starter he replaced, he wasn’t in the game when Providence took the lead that they never again surrendered.

Now let’s do the simplest math on the bargain that was Old Hoss Radbourn. When you combine his $3,000 salary with the approximate $2,000 he picked up from defector Sweeney’s salary, that still only a season income of about $5,000. Big by the standards of those times, but barely meal money on a short road trip for today’s big leaguers.

For $5,000, the ownership of the 1884 Providence Grays bought 59 wins at cost of about $84.75 per “W”.

Now there’s a baseball bargain that will never again be matched. Would you agree, Drayton?

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Do The 2010 Astros Have a Miracle Gene in Them?

May 10, 2010

In last place as late as July 18th, the 1914 Boston "Miracle Braves" fought their way into the Hall of Baseball Legends by coming back to win the National League pennant by 10.5 games on their way to sweeping the Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series, 4 games to none.

“It is better to dream than despair.”

Who said that? It may have been every Astro fan who chose to spend Mother’s Day 2010 at Minute Maid Park watching the good guys come back late from a 3-0 deficit to take the  San Diego Padres, 4-3, in the 11th inning yesterday. The victory halted a three-game Astros losing streak and catapulted the club into the double-digit wins territory with a new season record of 10-21. The Astros were the 29th of 30 clubs to reach 10 wins. Only the AL’s Baltimore Orioles now remains twisting in the wind at 9 wins. The Astros are still 3.5 games deep into the National League Central cellar and 9.5 games out of first place, but they did win on Sunday – and in a most gratifying way.

Anytime the heart of the 3-4-5 order (Berkman-Lee-Pence) can go 7 for 14 with 2 homers and 2 doubles, and a pitcher like Roy Oswalt can keep the opposition close, the Astros will have a good chance of winning. – I mean, we all know that, already. It just hasn’t happened until yesterday. For those three guys to start the season in a concurrently running trip;e slump has simply been deadly, especially when starting pitching behind Roy and Brett Myers has been as shallow to boot as the kiddies’ wading pool.

Now we’ll have to see what happens from here. You can take the short-term paper trail and make a case for yesterday’s heart-pumper as little more than an aberration – nothing more than fool’s gold we picked up at the base of Diablo Pass. Or we can track the career records of these players and this franchise and say – “Look out! We’ve found a pulse! Watch out, National League Central! Here we come again!”

Temper the hope or despair to your own taste. Either way, if  the Astros stay close to the bottom for much longer, we are now only about six weeks shy of all the inevitable comparisons that will begin to flow with the plight and incredible flight of the 1914 Boston Braves.

Here’s how Wikipedia pretty neatly summarizes the saga of the 1914 Boston “Miracle Braves”:

“After a dismal 4–18 start, the Braves seemed to be on pace for a last place finish. On July 4, 1914, the Braves lost both games of a doubleheader to the Brooklyn Dodgers. The consecutive losses put their record at 26–40 and the Braves were in last place, 15 games behind the league-leading New York Giants, who had won the previous three league pennants. After a day off, the Braves started to put together a hot streak, and from July 6 through September 5, the Braves went 41–12.[6] On September 7 and 8, the Braves took 2 of 3 from the New York Giants and moved into first place. The Braves tore through September and early October, closing with 25 wins against 6 losses, while the Giants went 16–16.[7] They were the only team, under the old eight-team league format, to win a pennant after being in last place on the Fourth of July. They were in last place as late as July 18, but were close to the pack, moving into fourth on July 21 and second place on August 12.[8]

“Despite their amazing comeback, the Braves entered the World Series as a heavy underdog to Connie Mack‘s Philadelphia A’s. Nevertheless, the Braves swept the Athletics—the first unqualified sweep in the young history of the modern World Series (the 1907 Series had had one tied game)–to win the world championship. Meanwhile, Johnny Evers won the Chalmers Award.”

Here’s what I think was important about the 1914 Miracles Braves. Manager George Stallings’s club had two Roy Oswalt caliber aces working behind a fair offense of timely hitters. Bill James (26-7, 1.90) and Dick Rudolph (26-10, 2.35) were lights out effective once the Braves got rolling – and they also had a pretty fair third starter named Left Tyler (16-13, 2.69) to carry the load of team momentum behind timely hitting moving forward in a way that made team success roll on like the wheels on a juggernaut.

Yesterday the Astros had good pitching and timely hitting. The combo was enough to overcome the combined negativity of bad umpiring and all the “oh well” doubts that begin to spring leak from losing.

The questions now are simpler than the answers: (1) Can Berkman, Lee, and Pence keep it up? If not, we have no chance for an Astros recovery. (2) Can some starter beyond Roy Oswalt step up to the challenge of pitching ace-level quality baseball – or, at least,  be good enough to keep the club in games without the deadly ruin that always comes from the “one bad inning” syndrome? Brett Myers and Felipe Paulino look like candidates to  do it, but Wandy Rodriguez and Bud Norris have been major disappointments, so far. At least two guys beyond Oswalt need to step up and get the job done for the Astros to have  a pennant or playoff chance.

It also wouldn’t hurt for the infield to stabilize on defense and for somebody to settle in as an effective game director at catcher. Beyond those major wishes, I sure can’t fault the efforts of Manager Brad Mills. I think he’s doing a great job of getting the most he can from what he’s got on hand. If we  want him to look smarter, we need to get Mills some infielders who can both hit and field.

As I said in the first place, it is better to dream than despair.

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1906: 1st 35 MM Movie.

May 9, 2010

On April 14, 1906, just four days prior to the Big Earthquake, this first-ever 35 mm film clip was shot on Market Street in San Francisco.

It’s 1906 and the Houston petroleum industry is gushing over the discovery of oil at the Goose Creek Field east of the city. Thirty oil companies and seven banks are now operating in Houston. Out west, the City of San Francisco will just about crumble into dust when a great earthquake strikes the area on April 18, 1906.

A photographer friend, John Wendell Mason, and now living in England, sent me a link to this remarkable film clip overnight. Taken only four days prior to the big San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, it is the first 35 millimeter film ever shot and successfully developed in history. Aside from all else that makes this film special, that historical factor is noteworthy today. It gives all the rest of us the chance to view the mother of all modern films on Mother’s Day!

According to the information I received with the film clip link, the film was taken on Market Street by a camera mounted on the front of a cable car that ran out to the Embarcadero Wharf. The clock tower that we see prominently in the clip at the end of the ride is still there today as one of those rare sturdy survivors of what was about to soon shake the land and the city’s history.

Here’s the link. Just watch and enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGloeX1SpAU

The visual pleasures here are incredible. Check out the dressing styles of both men and women, the numbers of autos, bikes, and horse-drawn carriages, the chaos of traffic movement as people dodge the cable car at the last-minute on foot or simply turn their vehicles to cross the tracks in front of the cable car at the last second. No wonder we have so many street car/gas vehicle collisions today in Houston. Some human behaviors do not change all that much over time.

To me, the enjoyment is watching everything take place in real-time, without the herky-jerky false speed-up of a Charlie Chaplin comedy, a Teddy Roosevelt speech, or a Babe Ruth roach-speed home run trot. The film is the closest we shall ever come to a simulated time-travel arrival in San Francisco on April 14, 1906.

Back in this era, everybody got to inhale dried horse manure. It rook a while for the new gas and electricity driven vehicles to clean up all the city air by replacing all the horses.

This is a good time to reflect also on all that was going on in the Houston area back in 1906. We already know on the baseball front that 1906 was the year that the light-hitting Chicago White Sox (the so-called Hitless Wonders) rose to upset the heavily favored Chicago Cubs in the World Series, but let’s tap into more happenings from Houston in 1906.

On February 10, 1906, the suspicions of many about the artesian purity of the water being provided by the Houston Water Company when a repairman in the fifth ward discovers five catfish swimming in a water main.

On April 1, 1906, members of the new city commission form of government go to work under the new system and right away report on the increased level of efficiency and competence that the system brings to their work. I’m not sure how they measure this result on the first day in motion. Perhaps, they have a light agenda this day or maybe they are truly treating the moment for what it is – April Fool’s Day.

With public reaction to the earlier catfish find stirring them on in May 1906, the city purchases the plant and property of the Houston Water Company. Again, an improvement in water service is reported immediately. In this case, “improvement” may have been measured by the absence of catfish or tad poles in the drinking water.

Also in May 1906, Houston launches its plan for a “War on Mosquitoes.” Starting next week, the city will begin to cover every ditch in the city with a coat of oil. And where is Houston going to get the oil to be used in this treatment? – Get serious.

In August 1906, Houston’s first wireless radio station opens as one of only four that now exist in the state. The station is perceived as a competitive personal communication alternative to the telephone and telegraph. That’s how “wireless” came to be the new medium’s name. The concept of radio as a broadcast medium for general news, entertainment, and advertising was years away in 1906.

On September 3, 1906, work begins on the turning basin for the ship channel. Big ships won’t come to Houston until they have water that’s deep enough to traverse, and a place to turn around once their business is done here.

Also going up in September 1906 are Houston’s first truly named “skyscrapers.” A building that will reach eight-stories in height upon completion is under construction, much to the pride and awe of Houstonians.

The problem of Houston drivers of the new automobiles exceeding the 6 MPH speed limits around town draws the attention of city government in October 1906. Mayor Rice recommends that the city purchase an automobile for use as a police car in the chase and apprehension of speeders.

More National News, 1906: Writer Upton Sinclair publishes his novel, “The Jungle;” the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake kills 3,000 and leaves hundreds of thousands homeless in it’s almost total destruction of the city.

International News, 1906: Roll Royce Limited registers as a maker of fine cars; Mount Vesuvius erupts in Italy, devastating Naples.

When all is said and done, Happy Mother’s Day, Everybody!

 

Market Street Approach to Clock Tower Today, 2010.

Additional San Francisco Film Notes: “This film, originally (was) thought to be from 1905 until David Kiehn with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when it was shot. From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered (he even knows who owned them and when the plates were issued!).. It was filmed only four days before the Great California Earthquake of April 18th 1906, and (it was) shipped by train to NY for processing.” – E-Mail from John W. Mason.

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The Code of the Baseball Cellar.

May 8, 2010

In a vineyard cellar, sweet grapes transform over time into fine wines. In a baseball cellar, bitter whines transform over time into sour grapes.

Fellow SABR member Bob Stevens sent me two interesting links yesterday to new articles on the unwritten codes of baseball. The first of these is a piece by Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.COM; the second is the work of Jason Turbow, who’s also written a new book on the subject that he is calls  “The Baseball Codes.” Both are entertaining and fun. Check ’em out:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=crasnick_jerry&page=starting9/100505

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/The-Code-Ten-unwritten-baseball-rules-you-mig?urn=mlb,238853

These articles have inspired me to write a brief piece on the unwritten codes and truths that govern life for teams on their not-so-merry-ways to that residential place in the season standings we call the cellar. The first of these I’ve already written above as the caption to the vineyard cellar doors photo, but I shall repeat it here for the sake of putting all our storied eggs in one basket.

Ten Truths and Codes that Govern Everyday Life in Any MLB Division Cellar:

1) In a vineyard cellar, sweet grapes transform over time into fine wines. In a baseball cellar, bitter whines transform over time into sour grapes.

(2) Buyer’s Regret is a condition that multiplies exponentially for club owners and general managers of cellar-dwelling teams. If you have somewhere along the way signed a 200-pound outfielder to a multi-year contract to hit .300, but you now find him on the way to weighing 300 pounds, while hitting .200, you’re going to be much more aware of this inversely developing set of facts as a cellar-dweller.

(3) The players on your cellar-dwelling 25-man roster suffer from one of two immediately incurable conditions: They are either too young or two old.

(4) Over time, and it doesn’t take many losing streaks to get there, your cellar-dwelling players stop thinking of ways to win – and they start asking themselves in the field, by the second inning at the latest: “I wonder how we’re going to lose this one? All I can do is try to get my hits and stay out of the way of disaster. If I’m lucky, maybe they’ll trade me to a contender late in the season.”

(5) Your stalwart pitching ace may become disheartened by the absence of support over time and start thinking these kinds of thoughts prior to each start: “OK, I’ve got a chance to win, if I can keep the other team from scoring, if my defense only has to make routine plays, and if I can either pitch a whole game, or else, turn the ball over to the pen with no less than a four-run lead to protect.”

(6) The other clubs above the cellar dwellers all start looking more and more like the ’27 Yankees and you start hearing these kinds of comments off the cuff from some of the guys: “Uh-Oh! The Pirates are coming to town tonight. Hate to see it. They are starting to play us like we’re the eggs and they are the egg-beaters!”

(7) On cellar dwelling clubs, players start talking about post-season hunting and fishing plans by the First of June. Of course, in this instance, except for the Yankees, even the front-running clubs are doing the same thing. In New York, the players are talking more about their international business plans and how playing ball sometimes gets in the way of keeping an eye on their global industries and celebrity girl friends. Cellar dwelling club players don’t have celebrity girl friends – not for long, anyway.

(8) In homage to humility, cellar dwelling managers eventually get around to using something like a table of random numbers as a strategy for making out new lineup combinations. Eventually the goal of coming up with a winning lineup simply mutates into the challenge of finding a different lineup for every game that remains on the schedule from August 1st forward.

(9) By late August, cellar dwellers have figured out that they can finish last without the presence of any high-salaried players who remain on the roster. Anybody whose performance has not totally stunk is then traded as a cost-saving strategy for addressing the big and growing red-dollar deficit on the club’s profit and loss statement.

(10) Cellar dwellers eventually settle in to a nice quiet season play-out with their few remaining loyal fans who still attend games in person. These fans always show up, but they never boo, as was the case long ago with a famous cellar dwelling team we once knew as the St. Louis Browns before they moved to Baltimore and morphed into the Orioles in 1954.

”Our fans never booed us,” said former Browns pitching ace Ned Garver. “They wouldn’t dare boo us,” he added, “we outnumbered ‘em!”

Have a nice weekend, everybody, and stay away from the cellar, unless you’re going down there for some good wine.



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Baseball Loses Robin Roberts.

May 7, 2010

"C'mon, Robin! Give us that great old Whiz Kids smile!" -2001.

The news that we had given up Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts at age 83 yesterday, May 6, 2010, hit me pretty hard. I was only a passing acquaintance of the former Phillies great, but he was really big to me back in the summer of 1950. That was the year that the 23-year old Roberts and his phellow band of Philadelphia Phillie juveniles pulled together to nip the Brooklyn Dodgers on the last day of the season for their city’s first National League pennant in thirty-five years. The Phillies then got swept by the New York Yankees in the 1950 World Series, but they had left their mark for all time upon the hopes of young people everywhere.

Robin Roberts (BR/TR) was born on September 30, 1926 in Springfield, Illinois. Before turning pro, he pitched for Michigan State University as a widely heralded future star, one of those that did not disappoint.

Starting with the 1950 Whiz Kids season, Robin Roberts rang up six consecutive seasons of twenty wins or more (1950-55). His best statistical season turned out to be 1952, when he compiled a 28-7 wins-losses record and an earned run average of 2.59.

Robin Roberts: The way I'll always remember him.

Robin Roberts had a 19-year major league career with the Phillies (1948-61), Orioles (1962-65), Astros 1965-66), and Cubs 1966. He had 45 career shutouts, 2,357 strikeouts, and he pitched 305 complete games. Pitchers worth their salt finished what they started back in Roberts’s day. In the past 25 years, Phillies pitchers have thrown a total of 300 complete games — five fewer than Robin Roberts worked by himself. Roberts made 609 starts, finishing more than half of those he began.

Roberts also gave up more home runs than any other major league pitcher in history. Chalk that one up to his tenacity for challenging the hitters and his ability to locate his pitches in the “I win or you win” zones. Current Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer is on the verge of breaking that mark. Moyer, 47, has given up 498 homers, seven fewer than Robin Roberts at 505.

In his two partial seasons as Astro, Roberts went 5-2 with a 1.89 ERA in 1965 and 3-5 with a 3.82 ERA in 1966. For many of us Astro fans, he was just part of a baseball world that appeared to be headed toward some kind of new perfection. We had the first domed stadium that was big enough to handle major league baseball and we had THE Robin Roberts pitching for our newly rechristened Houston Astros. How right could we expect the world to get from here? What a great feeling that was, while it lasted.

Robin Roberts was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976. He had been a regular annual supporter by his presence at Cooperstown induction ceremonies ever since and a passionate fan in retirement of his old club, the Phillies. It offers some small comfort to this diehard Astros fan to know that Robin Roberts lived to see his old club finally succeed in the World Series, but that’s as far as that kind wish goes. I wish it could have been the Astros, and not the Phillies, that had taken that 1980 playoff series, but that’s a horse of another color on this particular day. The subject today is one of the great right-handers of all time.

I always saw Roberts as one of those rare fastballers who also possessed strong finesse and ball location skills. In a way, as implied earlier, it may have been Robin’s ability to consistently locate his pitches in challenging places that inversely helped hitters to take him deep fairly often. Roberts didn’t seem to care enough to change his style. He still won the balance of his encounters and he did it often enough to make it to the Hall of Fame.

I first met Robin Roberts in 2001 at the reception prior to inductions into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame in Fort Worth. That’s where I took the civilian shot of Roberts that appears in this post. When I asked Robin’s permission to take the photo, he responded willingly, but grimly, until  I posed the the request put forth in caption with the photo. After that photo, it was my pleasure to talk a few minutes with Robin Roberts about that magical 1950 season. That Phillies smile never left him in the process.

I last saw Robin Roberts only last year at the Joe Niekro Knuckle Ball banquet at Minute Maid Park. I remember thinking how well he looked. His passing this week at age 83 just drives home the point one more time: Live today. Never takes tomorrow for granted.

Goodbye, Robin Roberts. We shall miss your smiling presence at our baseball gatherings, but we shall keep you in our baseball memories forever.

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1861: Baseball Comes to Houston.

May 6, 2010

(L>R): 1861 Houston Mayor Will Hutchins. Major Abner Doubleday, Darrell Evans, J.H. Evans, CSA Capt. Dick Dowling, CSA Gen. Robert E. Lee, Glen McCarthy, 1st Houston Base Ball Club Board President F.A. Rice, Ike Clanton, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, & William H. Bonney. (J/K. The rest of the article is for real.)

1861 was a pretty tough, but dynamic year for the 25-year old City of Houston. The town was growing hard and fast as in inland port city and railroad transportation depot. At the same time, the winds of secession and civil war were blowing hard in the face of progress.

Local hero and city namesake Sam Houston stood strong and fast against the idea of Texas seceding from the Union that it fought so hard to join and then defend, but his was a voice of the minority in a struggle that seemed to most Houstonians as a battle between state rights versus federal authority – or more practically – the right of southern and new states to continue building their good fortunes on the backs of slave labor versus the national outcry against the hypocrisy of our American words in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

On the local level, Houston’s interest in the game of base ball kept on growing, in spite of the heavy hand that was about to fall on the future of all America. Houston had been founded by the Allen brothers of New York and it had been attracting settlers from the east coast region that already knew and loved the game before they arrived in Houston.

On April 16, 1861, just four days after the first shot of the Civil War had been fired at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, a core group of Houstonians met in a second-floor room above J.H. Evans’s store on Market Square for the purpose of organizing the first official “Houston Base Ball Club.” Mr. F.A. Rice was elected to serve as the club’s first Board President, but it took a while to actually get things going for actual play. Base Ball’s competition for manpower with the rapidly forming Confederate Army  would effectively delay regular play until after the Civil War’s conclusion in 1865. By then, the influx of new base ball fans from migrating Union soldiers and the return of Confederate military men to Houston had sweetened the pot of local talent.

For quite a few years, the flavor of Civil War sympathies continued to pour through the naming of local area amateur teams. On Texas Independence Day, April 21, 1867, the Houston Stonewalls defeated the Galveston Robert E. Lees in what has to be one of the great lopsided base ball games of all time. The final score was Houston 35 – Galveston 2.

One of our local SABR Chapter research goals is to confirm the exact site of the 1861 J.H. Evans store on Market Square. Regardless of what is there now, the site alone is certainly deserving of a plaque that notes the location as the birthplace of baseball in Houston. It’s time to get the job done now before this quiet, but important Houston historical fact slips through everyone’s fingers from here to eternity.

Note: In case you have not figured it out by now, or simply had no way of knowing, the folks in the gag photo above are really members of the Houston Babies, a reincarnation of the 1888 first professional baseball team in the Bayou City.

Have a nice Thursday, Everybody!

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Ode to The 2010 Astros!

May 5, 2010

Frozen balls don't go far, but that's pretty much where we are.

Ode to The 2010 Astros: A Right and Tight Offense!

(lyrically sing-able to the tune of “White Christmas”)

I’m … dreaming … of a RIGHT … offense,

Just like the ONE we used to know,

Where the bats all GLISTEN,

As fans all LISTEN … to hear …

Three-hits-in-a-row,

… So …

I’m … dreaming … of a TIGHT … offense,

With every lineup card Brad writes.

May our Astros … once more … shine BRIGHT,

And may all our … losing streaks … be SLIGHT.

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My Webshots Hobby

May 4, 2010

Architectural Art at the UH College of Optometry.

Sometimes I take a break from baseball history to pursue some of my other hobbies. Photography tops that list – although it most often only takes me into baseball from a perspective beyond words.

Yesterday I took Norma to the UH campus for some follow-up neurological evaluation on her 2009 brain surgery. She’s doing well, but the time on campus gave me an opportunity to roam around again and do a little freehand shooting of whatever struck me. Although it doesn’t always work out this way, yesterday I couldn’t get past an intriguing sculpture in front of the College of Optometry where my wife’s doctor offices. In the bright clear light of Monday, May 3rd, the lines and shadows of the thing just grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let it go.

I got started with a Brownie box camera like the one in the photo. (As a point of reference, that's Herb Pennock of the '27 Yankees holding the large American flag.)

I don’t why my parents turned me loose with a camera when I was only about ten, but I will be forever grateful that they did. I’ll also forever regret that we “forgot” to get film before going to see that great game at Buff Stadium in April 1951 between the New Yank Yankees and the Houston Buffs. Those pictures I could have taken from our “on the ropes” standing room only position in left center remain in my mind like film I cannot take to Walgreens for development.  With a film-loaded Brownie Box, I could have captured Joe DiMaggio up close in center – and gotten a pretty good distant shot of 18-year old Mickey Mantle in right.

Oh well, the experience taught me a lesson: Never go anywhere without a camera. You never know what opportunities you may miss.

About ten years ago, I started posting all my baseball and other photo albums on Webshots.Com. Now, almost a million hits later, I’m still plugging away at it, although I do not generate as many new albums as I once did because of other time devotions, but I will get around to it a little more often in the near future. Photography is an old habit with me. It will be around for me as long as I’m around to enjoy doing it.

If you would like to check out my Webshots collection, cut and paste the link site here as follows:

http://community.webshots.com/user/houston_buff

Have a nice day, Everybody!

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At UH, It’s Still the Same Old Story, A Fight for Love and Glory.

May 3, 2010

At UH these days, it’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, and maybe on the NCAA sports level, even a case of do or die, as well. The big UH sports question really is: (1) Will UH President/Chancellor Renu Khator and UH Athletic Director Mark Rhoades be able to recognize the historical entrenchment of the obstacles they each face and be able to martial the university’s fairly powerful alumni elders and legislative supporters behind them as they concurrently rally the diverse student body and general population of UH sports fans and ordinary peopled alumni to get behind this latest big push for excellence at the NCAA Division I level? The questions alone is a mouthful. The answers are far more mercurial than they always first seem. An this is not the first UH dance with this problem.

The UH fan support plight has been mentioned fairly often as a challenge in the past, but usually in far less sophisticated terms as a ticket “selling job.” It is that, but more too. We know better now. It comes down to selling tickets, but the job at hand is really so much larger.

In 1979-80, Babe McCurdy served as mascot of the UH Mad Dog Defense.

As a UH alumnus (1960), I dove in for a first hand look at what I might do individually to help sell the team back in 1979. Back then I owned an English Bulldog named Babe, whom I thought would make a great mascot for the UH Mad Dog Defense. I also had a hunch that UH could do something with an authentic football game jersey that no other university or professional team had ever tried. In my proposal, UH would retail the sale of real UH football jerseys to fans. All would bear the digit #1 that currently was in use by UH linebacker Danny Brabham. At the end of the season, we would hold a retirement ceremony for #1, reserving that number of singular sensation fame from there to forever for the exclusive use of fans who bought official jerseys from UH.

As the best laid plans of mice and men so often unfold, things didn’t happen the way I hoped they would. UH ran off an 11-1 season in 1979 that included a 17-14 win over Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl and a #4 finish in the final AP Top 25 Poll, but the university dropped the ball in the way they decided to handle this incredible success: (1) The Retirement of Jersey #1 for the fans never happened. When linebacker Brabham went out with an injury early in the 1979 season, he applied and received permission for another year of eligibility in 1980. The retirement ceremony was postponed, but still never happened because the importance of the event was not communicated to the football coaching staff – who promptly promised the #1 to another recruit. And that was that. (2) Mad Dog Babe had become a darling of the fans, but the presence of the feisty and talented bulldog on the field had aroused some jealousy among members of the Cougar Guard students who took care of Shasta, the live Cougar, on the sidelines. There wasn’t much they could do with Shasta, who came to each game under heavy sedation for the safety of one and all. Meanwhile, the Mad Dog Babe was roaming the sidelines, tearing up jerseys and replicas of the opposition’s mascots and leading the Cougar defense on the field prior to games. As her owner, trainer, and good buddy in ridiculous mayhem, I got to be there with her for every game, even getting to kick a 35 yard field goal in an after midnight half time ceremony in a game with Texas A&M that had to be postponed until later in the evening due to a baseball playoff game between the Astros and Phillies back in 1980. It was simply a wonderful time for the two years (1979-80) that it lasted.

Babe was trained to move the football anytime she heard the Cougar Fight Song.

(3) The worst misunderstanding by former AD Dempsey fell hard upon Cougar Nation in 1980. Instead of grasping and flying with the jersey retirement-fan inclusion plan after that successful 1979 season, Dempsey decided to add a $100 per ticket personal seat license on sales to all UH season ticket holders. The crashing sound that followed was the clatter of UH fans, including yours truly, allowing their season ticket options to fall and hit the pavement. Babe and I were gone from UH after 1980 – and it took another twenty years and former AD Dave Maggard to get me back as a season ticket holder again.

The spirit of Mad Dog Babe is as long as her teeth.

Cedric Dempsey was simply the worst thing that ever happened to UH Athletics. He never really understood UH or the people of Houston. We cannot again afford to have anyone at the helm who either thinks or acts as Dempsey once did.  If UH athletics are to rise again to their SWC football and Phi Slama Jama basketball glory days, the Cougars are going to need (1) an infusion of new blood into the body of season ticket holders. When we remove our Cougar game caps, our current alumni bunch pans out like a field of aging cotton tops;  (2) first class facilities for football and basketball are a must; (3) more season ticket holders who are willing to pay more because they’ve been clearly told what they are paying for; (3) exceptional recruits and better salaries for ket staff that will allow us to keep coaches like the intelligent and classy Kevin Sumlin; and (4) membership in a first tier BCS football conference.

It’s a tall, tall order, but it either has to be done or we Cougars have to stop complaining. It’s put up or shut time at UH.

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Clark Nealon: Houston Sportswriter DeLuxe.

May 2, 2010

Clark Nealon: He wrote what he saw.

The late Clark Nealon was a Houston sportswriter back in the time of honest reporting on the games themselves. He didn’t write to gain his readers’ accolades or ire. He wrote to tell us what he saw – what we would have seen, had we been at the particular game he was covering. The difference between Clark Nealon and today’s “pay attention to me” writers was the proverbial difference between night and day. Clark didn’t hit the pings on his typewriter keys just to get people writing into the editor about his wiseacre commentary. He wrote to give us as accurate and down-to-earth an account as he could about the specific game in progress.

I missed the privilege of ever meeting Clark Nealon in person during his lifetime, but it’s hard to have grown up having breakfast with his writings without feeling as though he were a member of the family, anyway. I grew up going to Buff Stadium as often as possible,  The rest of the time, I got to fill in the blanks from radio accounts by broadcaster Loel Passe and by the game stories in the Houston Post written by Clark Nealon. Those two men talked and wrote their way into the kitchen table conversations of Buff fans all over Houston.

There is a nice exhibit on the late Clark Nealon at the new and revived Houston Sports Museum at Finger Furniture on the Gulf Freeway. Check it out when you visit the place. I’m not for sure by any specific dates when Clark Nealon started, when he retired, or when he passed away. I only know that he did a great job while he was here and that he is sorely missed today. It was fun reading the work of someone who actually knew something about the sport he was covering – and who could write on sports without throwing his ego in the way of everything he did, as is more often the case in today’s fast-food mentality of Internet electronic sports coverage.

We also have Clark Nealon to thank for being the significant mentor to the funniest, most literate and educational  writer to ever cover sports in Houston, the great Mickey Herskowitz. The fact that both men later found honor by admission to the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame comes as no surprise. Both were consummate professionals as everyday beat writers and each is richly deserving of our fondest Houston Buff memories. Today the attention is simply focused on Nealon.

Thank you, Clark Nealon, for teaching me much about baseball – and for making breakfast about yesterday’s sports action an interlocked experience for as long as I can remember.

Addendum: I just discovered at mid-morning that David Barron has written a nice account of the Houston Sports Museum reopening at Finger Furniture on the Gulf freeway for today’s Sunday, May 2, 2010 Houston Chronicle Sports Section. Way to go, David!

Check it out.

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