The Pecan Park Eagle

The MLB Gentle Gender Surname All Stars

November 19, 2014

“Hi! My NAME’S BARBARA AND I LIVE OVER IN NEARBY MIDTOWN! ~ DO YOU THINK I CAN MAKE THE HOUSTON ASTROS’ GENTLE GENDER TEAM?

We’re not sure about the answer to Barbara’s question, but here’s what we came up with as our Pecan Park Eagle “MLB Gentle Gender Surname All Star team.” By gentle, we mean no implications of soft and easy. Some (at least one, anyway) of the “BABES” on this team possess the power to knock the socks off any male pitcher they ever faced. By “gentle gender” we simply mean “female smart” – possessing the kind of wiley intelligence under fire that we males often lack in our efforts to win by strength and force and might alone. Tony Larussa would get what we are talking about here. Tony knew how to play those “cat and mouse” managerial games. Earl Weaver probably would not get it – or accept it. Earl pretty much liked to load ’em up and let Boog or Robbie bash out their foes’ brains by hitting one out of the yard.

Whatever, here’s “THE MLB GENTLE GENDER SURNAME ALL STAR TEAM” ~

Pitcher – (A 4-Girlie-Name Man Staff): Satchel PAIGE (1948-1965); Domingo JEAN (1993); Dean ANNA (2014); Byung-Hyun KIM (1999-2007)

Catcher – Pop JOY (1884) *

First Base – Mule SHIRLEY (1924-1925)

Second Base – Lyle JUDY (1935)

Third Base – Bill JOYCE (1890-1898)

Shortstop – Joe MARTINA (1924)

Left Field – Carlos PAULA (1954-1956)

Center Field – Billy ASHLEY (1992-1998)

Right Field – Babe RUTH (1914-1935)

Utility Position Player – Harry MARNIE (1940-1942) (Thank you, Alfred Hitchcock!)

Manager – Tony LARUSSA (HOF) (There must be a female out there somewhere whose first name is “Larussa”!)

* Pop JOY never played catcher in professional baseball, but he/she can sure learn the position, if she/he wants to make this team.

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Minor Miracle at Miggins Manor

November 18, 2014

The Larry Miggins Caricature
by Amadee
St. Louis Post Dispatch
March 18, 1951

Yesterday I received an afternoon call from my dear old friend, former Houston Buff and St. Louis Cardinal outfielder Larry Miggins. 89-year old Larry called to let me know that he would not be free to attend our monthly SABR with me due to a family birthday celebration that had slipped his mind.

“That’s OK,” I told Larry, “we all know the priority lineup at Miggins Manor. – God and Family are the only considerations that always land ahead of baseball – as they should.

Larry did ask me to stop by the house on my way to the SABR meeting anyway. He and Kathleen had accidentally found a cartoon from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by the famous St. Louis cartoonist of that era, a fellow named Amadee, who so beautifully characterized the young Cardinal outfielder as an up and coming prospect for the Cardinal lineup. Larry and Kathleen were especially elated to find it because of its 63-year submergence among items that they both thought had been totally destroyed with everything else during their tragic house fire of many years ago. It was a fire that took away all of Larry’s most treasured artifacts from his early baseball career – along with the house and that “once gone, always lost” sense of security about home that belongs to all of us who have never had to survive a house fire.

Larry and Kathleen wanted me to have an autographed copy of the Amadee creation and I couldn’t wait to see it. So, I stopped by their house on the way to SABR to visit and pick up my copy. As per always, my brief visit with Larry and Kathleen was another golden moment of sheer uplifted spirit for me. And the cartoon is wonderful.

Today’s column IS the cartoon – first as a whole piece that will be hard to see in the small photo frames available to us here at The Pecan Eagle. Then by a much easier display of its carious components as individually excerpted pictures.

Enjoy! And thank God, or whomever or whatever else you use to express gratitude, for the presence of people like Miggins family in our lives. If it weren’t for former players like 89-year old Larry Miggins, 72-year old Jimmy Wynn, and another dear friend, the late Jerry Witte, I don’t where my peace of mind with humanity would be today, but it sure wouldn’t be the place it now resides – because of them and a few others that must go unmentioned here in the name of time and space.

Thanks for this wonderful signed cartoon, Miggins family! – It’s time its resurrection is now shared with everyone!

IT READS: "COCO-NOTES by AMADEE ... At Cardinal Training Camp, St. Petersburg, Florida ...Larry MIGGIND ... Strapping Son of Erin from the Sidewalks of New York ... Celebrated St. Pat's Day in St Pete by Singing Ballads on the Streets.

IT READS: “COCO-NOTES by AMADEE… AT CARDINAL TRAINING CAMP…ST. PETERSBURG…FLORIDA…STRAPPING SON OF ERIN FROM THE SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK CELEBRATED ST. PAT’S DAY BY SINGING IRISH BALLADS ON THE STREETS”

IT SAYS: …A FEW YEARS BACK “MIGG” STOOPED TRAFFIC ON THE DOWNTOWN STREETS…
LARRY MIGGINS SINGS: “MAVOURNEEN…MAVOURNEEN…”

CARDINAL TEAMMATE ASKS: “WHAT’S ON THE HIT PARADE?”
MIGGINS ANSWERS:”HOW ABOUT A HOMER TWO TRIPLE?”
(92 RBI’S AND 18 HOMERS ARE INSCRIBED ON HIS BATS)
…COLLECTOR OF RECORDS…HAD A GOOD RUNS-BATTED-IN RECORD LAST YEAR…

HITTER MIGGINS SAYS: “GROOVY…LIKE A TWENTY CENT MOVIE!!”
RHETORICAL COMMENT: ” …(MIGGINS) … TALKS BE-BOP…”
…GOOD HIT AND RUN MAN…
…HANDY WITH THE LEATHER…
COULD GIVE CARDS THAT NEEDED RIGHT-HAND BATTING POWER”
…AND OUTFIELD WITH GOOD THROWING ARM…
…DOUBLE PLAY MAN…
IN A NUTSHELL: “IS MIGG IN??”

LONG LIVE LARRY MIGGINS ~ THE MOST HONEST MAN IN THE HISTORY OF BASEBALL!! – JUST ASK SOLLY HEMUS ABOUT THAT JUDGMENT. – SOLLY AND LARRY WERE TEAMMATES ON THE COLUMBUS REDBIRDS BACK IN 1950. TOGETHER THEY PROBABLY HAVE FORGOTTEN MORE BASEBALL THAN MOST PEOPLE EVER KNOW.

It reads: “To Bill McCurdy – My biographer has to have a copy of this piece which we found after 63 years. – Larry Miggins.”

Thanks, Larry! I am so honored by your words and this wonderful gift. I can still see movies in my mind from 1951, when I sometimes got to make a Sunday home game at Buff Stadium with my dad. We sat on the first base side whenever Dad came with me. He liked to watch the many right handed batters and point things out to me as the game played on. Of course, I remember you and Jerry Witte more than all the others.

Jerry Witte hit 38 of those Ruthian blows over the double decker wall in left – and with the kind of force that quickly converted a Bob Turley fastball into a a tiny, climbing white missle dot in the heavens of blue that lay somewhere short of forever in the skies up, up, and way north of Houston. And you would hit those blistering line drives that clothes lined their way over the same wall or into the boards for extra bases on the sound vibrations of a bomb that had just exploded against the fence. You had 27 or 28 homers yourself for the’51 Buffs, depending upon which stat head one cares to believe. As hitters, you guys, Witte and Miggins, were the right handed Ruth and Gehrig of the 1951 Houston Buffs.

The neat things about all of our memories from the early mythical periods of sandlot hope is that these vivid movies almost always seem to be ready for us, anytime we cared to run them in our heads. I think the truth is that the good times memories I hold of both you and Jerry Witte are always playing at the 24/7 movie theater of my mind. All I do for a pleasant baseball feeling is simply to open that section of the memory and watch the film that is already showing. – And I’m not the only one, by far, that has a 24/7 baseball memory movie going. I think most people who read The Pecan Park Eagle know exactly what I’m talking about. – Anyway, Larry, thanks for being one of the major stars of my real life baseball movie productions of the mind. Now, thanks to Amadee, we have a cartoon caricature to show between features.

AND THANK YOU AGAIN, AMADEE WOHLSCHLAEGER, FOR MAKING THIS SPECIAL COLUMN POSSIBLE.

When Amadee Wohlschlaeger died in St. Louis at the age of 102 on June 24, 2014, he left this world as a renowned artist, illustrator and cartoonist of St. Louis history, with much special notice to baseball and weather for over 70 years, from the Cardinals of the Gas House gang to the rookies like Larry Miggins to the old Browns of Satchel Paige and Ned Garver to the great Cardinal clubs of Whitey Herzog. In deference to his rather long and hard to pronounce and spell surname, “Amadee” alone became his solitary signature on works like this ironically found treatment of a young Larry Miggins in the same year as Amadee’s departure from this life.

Thanks for doing something with your art that now raises our spirits in Houston once more, Amadee. – Your caricature sequence of Larry Miggins had been lost among the Miggins family’s stored materials like a sadly missed soul for 63 years – but now – it has been found and resurrected for the pleasure of family, friends, and fans of baseball who never laid eyed upon it in the past – not since it’s birth in 1951 – and not since its accidental internment in the wrong storage box back in 1961.

As providence often works, we are incorrect to assess that the caricature of Miggins was inadvertently stored in the wrong place. Had it not been placed exactly where it was placed, it might well have perished too in the very awful home fire that destroyed almost all of the other memorabilia from the early playing days of Larry Miggins’ early baseball career.

The Minor Miracle at Miggins Manor is a smiling thing today!

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The Crayon Box All Stars

November 16, 2014

The Crayon Box All Stars

Pitcher – Vida Blue (1969-1986)

Catcher – Johnny Peacock (1937-1945)

1st Base – Bill White (1956-1969)

2nd Base – Pumpsie Green (1959-1963)

3rd Base – Bobby Brown (1946-1954)

Shortstop – Bob Black (1884)

Left Field – Pete Gray (1945)

Center Field – Gregor Blanco (2008-2014)

Right Field – Chief Yellow Horse (1921-1922) *

*Even though Chief Yellow Horse was really a pitcher, we could not resist putting that colorful two-worded, un-hyphenated surname into the outfield lineup. Add to that fact the rationale that the absence of pure Orange, Yellow, Indigo, and Violet surnames sort of forced our hand on making certain accommodations. We could have placed Alvin Dark at shortstop and found a “Black” who had played the outfield, but “Dark” really isn’t a color, is it? It’s a condition of relative light.

Johnny Peacock is a member of the team for reasons that should be implicitly obvious. For any who may not understand how Gregor Blanco made the club, please consult a Spanish to English language website and check out the Spanish word for “white.”

Our other rule here was to avoid using the same literal name for a color twice. “White” and “Blanco” were both the different language versions for the visual light condition that we English-speaking people call “white.” Technically, neither black nor white are considered colors. Remember the name ROY G BIV from high school physics? That acronym for the color spectrum of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet are technically the only base colors that exist. Even “purple” is not a base spectrum color. “Purple” is a combination of “red” and “blue.”

If you can think of any other color-name players that don’t repeat the colors we’ve already located and positioned, please offer them up as comments at the end of this column.

Come on. The more the merrier.

And enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

~ The Pecan Park Eagle

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Our Favorite Baseball Truisms

November 15, 2014

The debate over Ruth’s alleged “called shot” will rage forever. The fiction is too fanciful to rebuke in the minds of some.

OUR PECAN PARK EAGLE FAVORITE BASEBALL TRUISMS

1) Hope springs eternal in the spring.

2) Players often look better or worse than they actually are in spring training.

3) Somewhere along the way, some writer will note that baseball is a long season.

4) Many players will come to explain a disappointing loss or performance as “just one of those things that we have to put behind us and move on to the next game.”

5) Ibid, the “take it one game at a time” expressed wisdom will always come into play.

6) Some good player in a contract year will hit like the resurrection of Ty Cobb..

7) Some player in the first year of a six-year, $100 million dollar deal will hit like the resurrection of Ray Oyler.

8) In most years, at least one manager for some disappointing club will be fired during the season “because you can’t fire the team.”

9) Some MLB teams will explain their failures (and they probably will be right) on a lousy bullpen.

10) An outstanding rookie will be described as the kind of player with talent that only comes around once in a generation of play.

11) About the seventh game of the World Series, some media person will pass the remark that winning is now imperative because “there’s no tomorrow.”

12) Some utility player will be described as “a good man to have in the dugout.” (As opposed to what, having him in the lineup?)

13) NL fans will describe the AL as “not real baseball” because that league uses the DH.

14) AL fans will quietly pull their punches and simply enjoy not watching the pitcher bat.

15) Someone eventually will write another tired article in support of their belief that Babe Ruth actually “called his shot” in Chicago during the 1932 World Series. (Babe well may have called his shot in Chicago that time, but if he did, it was in a bar – and the called shot was, “Bourbon. straight up!”)

16) Another eventual writer again will come out in support of the idea that Joe Jackson was a pure-as-the-driven-snow victim in the famous 1919 Black Sox scandal.

17) When bad radio/tv broadcasters are remembered, some talking head will always recall how Harry Caray’s difficulty in pronouncing certain hard-to-say names got worse with each new beer he took into the 7th inning of play-by-play work.

18) Some manager will be proclaimed a “genius” for leading a $300 million dollar payroll club to a World Series championship in New York, Boston, or Los Angeles.

19) During one of those Cardinal home games in which the network commentator describes St. Louis fans as “very smart”, the stadium crowd cameras will catch one of those high IQ Cardinal fans falling down drunk with a Budweiser in his hand.

20) No sane writer will ever start the season predicting that this is the year in which the Chicago Cubs win their first World Series since 1908.

REGARDLESS OF YOUR SUPPORT FOR ALL THE ITEMS ON OUR LIST, WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE BASEBALL TRUISMS?

If you have any offerings, please place your list in the comment section that follows this piece in The Pecan Park Eagle.

Thank you – and have a great weekend!

Tags: Our Baseball Truisms List
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Marc Pawelec: Neccia’s Next Game Also Awesome

November 14, 2014

Ron Necciai (L) & Ken Barbao
Two Mon Valley Guys
Donora Historical Society, 2014

Marc Pawelec is a contributing writer here to both the ongoing story of Ron Necciai and the Donora (PA) Historical Society. As you readers probably recognize, Donora, PA is the birthplace of Stan Musial, Ken Griffey, Sr. and Ken Griffey, Jr. the famous hard ball heart country that beats with the stories of baseball players who have hailed from Pennsylvania’s Monongahela Valley for as long as these place have existed over time. The passion for the game in that area of the country remains high in 2014, as it was in the regal days of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers and their “Steel Curtain” brand of baseball fan distraction. In The Valley today, it is our understanding that fans are just as likely, if not more so, to recall and ruminate over the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates “We Are Familee” club – or even more so the image of a long fly ball to left at Forbes Field off the bat of one Bill Mazeroski – or even the Pirates of yore that came marked for Mo Valley memory as “Big” and “Little” Poisons.

Pawelec notes that Ron Neccia followed his 27k no-hitter for Bristol on 5/13/52 with another incredible outing in his very next start. Here he comments briefly on what Ron Necciai next did – and then he offers much more on the heartbeat of baseball in Donora and the Monongahela Valley.

Thanks for writing, Marc! ~ The Pecan Park Eagle.

And our apologies to the readers that most of Marc’s references to people in the background photos will be impossible to see in the small size of the largest photo copy that we can produce here.

Neccia’s Next Game Also Awesome

By Marc Pawelec

As The Pecan Park Eagle described his performance yesterday, Ron Necciai’s 27ks in a nine-inning no-hitter game for the the Bristol (TN) Twins on May 13, 1952 was quite awesome. While striking out 27 batters is very impressive, what’s equally impressive in my opinion is that he followed that up with 24 K’s in his next start. 51 K’s in back-to-back starts is nothing short of awesome, even if it did happen to a young man pitching at the time in a Class D baseball league.

Please check out the two men in the photo at the top of this article page.

In June, 2014, Gallatin (PA) native and local baseball legend Ron Necciai (left), along with Donora native and accomplished baseball player in his own rite – Ken Barbao (right), stopped by the (Donora Historical Society) Smog Museum to share their experiences of growing up in the Mon Valley and playing professional baseball. Necciai is best remembered for the unique feat of striking out 27 batters in a nine-inning game which he accomplished in the Class-D Appalachian League on May 13, 1952 while pitching a no-hitter. He is the only pitcher to do so in a nine-inning professional-league game. The baseball used in that game is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Necciai also played for the hometown Pittsburgh Pirates in 1952. Barbao and Necciai started in the minor leagues together and once pitched and won games in the same doubleheader. Barbao also once roomed in the minors with a young future Pirate Bill Mazeroski, and his father, Joe Barbao (seen in some of the Dreisbach photos to the far right), was an early baseball mentor to Stan Musial.

In the framed panoramic picture in the above picture features Donora’s first baseball who played for the Brooklyn Superbas – Bob Coulson, The photo is from 1912 and is opening day against the Boston Braves. Below that picture is memorabilia of the Griffey’s – Ken Sr. and Ken Jr.

What’s interesting about Joe Barbao is that he immigrated from Spain with his family and then became a good baseball player. Spaniards immigrated to Donora because they were experts in the zinc process used at the local mill. Joe was good enough to teach a young Stan Musial about the game.

The Donora Historical Society, along with Donora native and writer Wayne Stewart, will be presenting Stan “The Man” Musial at the Heinz History Center on June 13, 2015 as part of their Saturday speaker series.

For more information on the Donora Historical Society, the Smog Museum, and how it got its name, please check out the group’s website:

https://www.sites.google.com/site/donorahistoricalsociety/gallery

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Ron Necciai Inducted into Penn Sports HOF

November 13, 2014

Pictured are (left to right) Steve Russell, Mid Mon Valley chapter general chairman, Necciai, and Dr. Steve George, president of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame. PHOTO COMPLIMENTS OF RON PAGLIA

Pictured are (left to right) Steve Russell, Mid Mon Valley chapter general chairman, Ron Necciai, and Dr. Steve George, president of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.
PHOTO COMPLIMENTS OF RON PAGLIA

Congratulations, Ron Necciai! Your 27K game as a pitcher for the Bristol Twins against the Welch Miners back on May 13, 1952 certainly ought to have been enough to qualify you for the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame. All you did that day was something that no pitcher in baseball history has done previously or since – get all the recorded outs in a regulation nine inning game victory by strikeout – and while you were at it – you threw a no-hitter too! Great going, Ron, and thank you, Pennsylvania induction officials, for waking up to the obvious and getting Ron Necciai where’s he’s always belonged – at the place of your state’s greatest honor for sports accomplishment.

Ron Necciai was inducted with several others that are included in this following group photo, also supplied by a friend and local Monongahela Valley writer, Ron Paglia:

2014 inductees seated: Elizabeth Cope for deceased father Myron, Bob Milkvy, Gerald Karver, Debbie Black, and Ron Necciai. Standing: Joseph Bressi, Kane Kalas for deceased father Harry, John McDonald, Lance Rautzhan, John Cartwright and Robert Donato. ~ Phot0 Compliments of Ron Paglia

2014 PENN SPORTS HOF inductees seated: Elizabeth Cope for deceased father Myron, Bob Milkvy, Gerald Karver, Debbie Black, and Ron Necciai. Standing: Joseph Bressi, Kane Kalas for deceased father Harry, John McDonald, Lance Rautzhan, John Cartwright and Robert Donato.
~ PHOTO COMPLIMENTS OF RON PAGLIA

One other name on the above list should be familiar to Houston baseball fans. The posthumous induction of the great play-by-play man, Harry Kalas, honors the Phillies broadcaster who got his MLB start in Houston during the salad days of the Astrodome. He made famous the appropriate home run call for homers in the dome by excitedly declaring its every happening with these wordS: “… AND THAT BALL IS IN ASTRO-ORBIT!” – Congratulations to you too, Harry Kalas, for a most fitting cap on your great career!

The induction event was held at the Woodlands Inn and Resort in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania on November 8, 2014 Thank you too, Ron Paglia, for making so much worthwhile information available to us here at The Pecan Park Eagle. We fly with this kind of sports news.

How does a pitcher get 27 K's in one game when he goes into the 9th with only 26 K's in the can? It's easy. Check out this picture from the lsing Bristol club's 9th. Neccia struck out 4 in the 9th when one K reached base because the Bristol catcher dropped strike three.

How does a pitcher get 27 K’s in one game when he goes into the 9th with only 23 K’s in the can? It’s easy. Check out this picture from the losing Welch club’s 9th. Ron Neccia struck out 4 in the 9th when one K batter reached base because the Bristol catcher dropped strike three.

By coincidence yesterday, I received a gift in the mail that I will treasure forever. My childhood pitching hero and role model, and now new member of the Penn Sports Hall of Fame, Ron Necciai, sent me a blown up copy of the actual scorecard that recorded his 27K, 7-0, no hit victory for the Class D Bristol Twins in an Appalachian League home game he pitched against the Welch Miners on May 13, 1952. As you probably know, it was the first and only time in baseball history that any pitcher ever recorded all 27 outs of a normal nine inning game by the strikeout route. And, to boot, he also mastered a non-hitter out of the deal.

May 13, 1952	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	~	R	H	E
Welch Miners	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	~	0	0	6
Bristol Twins	1	1	0	1	1	2	1	0	X	~	7	6	3

Did Ron Necciai know what he was doing – while he was doing it? Make your own call, but here’s what he said to Kevin Czerwinski of MLB.com for an article that appeared on the Internet back on August 23, 2006:

“At the time, I didn’t know what I had done,” Necciai said of his history making effort. “I didn’t realize it, and didn’t know until after the game was over, in the clubhouse, when the manager said, ‘You struck out 27 batters.’ I just looked at him and said, ‘So what? They’ve been playing this game for 100 years, and I’m sure someone else has done it before me.’ But no one did.

“I didn’t realize it was a no-hitter, either. It wasn’t like 27 guys walked up there and struck out. They had a few walks, I hit a guy, and we had a few errors. Otherwise, the game doesn’t stand out in any way.”

Ron Necciai
1952

Regardless of his actual wisdom of this event’s enormity as he was committing the act, the future looked like a wide open heaven to Ron Necciai that day in 1952 as the baseball world struggled to recover sufficiently to map out the things that the 19-year old phenom might likely do next. The parent Pittsburgh Pirates were especially happy since they totally controlled the young man’s future services back in those days of the reserve clause. They even called him all the way to Pittsburgh during that same 1952 season, but Ron wasn’t ready and most probably was also pushed too hard to keep from hurting his arm and rewriting history for a young man who then finished the season with a torn rotator cuff from working out too hard at Forbes Field one day. Necciai effectively was finished with baseball at a time when there was no surgical cure for his injury. He also had suffered severe stomach ulcer pain during his time with the Pirates, finishing his brief big league career with an MLB record of 1-6 and an ERA of 7.08.

After three more years of knocking around the minors, trying to build a career with his injured arm, Ron Necciai hung it up after 1955. It was the reasonable thing to do. When Ron Necciai left organized baseball after his meteoric rise and fall, he then did quite nicely for himself in the sporting goods business. Today he remains active and healthy as a man who gave much to baseball – and also much to life.

Stay ready, Mr. Necciai. – You never know when those same old Pirates may call you back for one more run with gun. And thank you so much for that nifty scorecard of “the game.” It really helps bring to life one of the most incredible days in baseball history.

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The Hall: A 75th Anniversary Marvel Book

November 12, 2014

It's the 610 page 75th anniversary book on the total membership of the Baseball Hall of Fame through 2014.

It’s the 612 page 75th anniversary book on the total membership of the Baseball Hall of Fame through 2014.

This new 612-pages hardback book with sleeve jacket work on all members of the Baseball Hall of Fame through 2014, indeed, is a marvel. And the first marvel that awaits each of us as a matter of personal discovery is: Do you have the strength to lift this book for long, if at all? It weighs eight pounds, twice the weight of our recent Houston SABR work, “Houston Baseball: The Early Years, 1861-1961.” And it’s slightly longer and wider too. Question Number Two on the purely physical level is: If you can lift this book, are you able to find a positioning plan for how you set up the book for readings beyond five minutes? “The Hall” possibly may be the first best-selling baseball book about which no enthused reader ever says, “I couldn’t put it down.”

Couldn’t put it down? To read the hard cover version. you first have to find a way to pick it up.

All kidding aside, the book is available at variable prices and more convenient formats through Amazon – and probably at Barnes & Noble too:

http://www.amazon.com/Hall-Celebration-Baseballs-Complete-Inductees/dp/0316213020/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415802210&sr=1-1&keywords=the+hall:

There is another way to get the book by giving. Through 12/31/14, while supplies last, you may choose to acquire “The Hall” as one of two gift incentives with your minimum contribution of $250.00 to the Hall of Fame:

https://community.baseballhall.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=603

The other gift that comes with The Hall donation option is that Baseball Hall of Fame Uncirculated Clad Half-Dollar First Curved Coin in U.S. Mint History.

The Hall includes a forward by Tom Brokaw, two full pages (0ne of text, one of picture) on each member of The Hall from the 1939 opening through this year, 2014. It also includes 35 essays on various subjects by the likes Tommy Lasorda, George Brett, and Joe Morgan. My copy only reached me yesterday, but it looms as veritable feast for our never tiring baseball story eyes. Even if we know many of the biographical facts the book presents, most of us cannot possibly know them all, with the exception of those few who behave as though they do. – No names are necessary here. – You “baseball know-it-alls” know who you are. If you didn’t admit to same, you would have to turn in your know-it-all badge at the door.

Grover Cleveland Alexander

Here’s an example of a fact about the great Grover Cleveland Alexander that many of you may already know. Did you know that when Alexander broke into baseball as a hurler for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1911 that his 28 wins that season set a modern rookie record for the most wins ever registered by a first year pitcher in his initial season? That’s “for true.” You can look it up.

As soon as I resolve a book positioning plan, I’m looking forward to reading this whole big book from cover to cover.

The Pecan Park Eagle chooses to close with a suggestion to the Hall of Fame: For the sake of manageability and continuity of the great idea placed in motion here by “The Hall”, why not convert this same book data in 2015 to a series of smaller hard covered books that are easier to handle – and then follow up every five to ten years with the same format on the new members that come in next. For example, a book in 2020 that covered all new inductees from 2014 to 2020 would be smaller, but it would be the HOF’s signature on the continuity plan for making this information useful and completely to collectors who wish to build their own always growing home libraries on The Hall in complete updated form.

In the meanwhile, this big book version of “The Hall” is cool. You will never have to worry about some street punk snatching it out of your hands. In the first place you are not likely to be carrying it around with you and, if you are, and a thief does grab it from you, he won’t get far. He’s bound to drop “The Hall” in the first 25 running-away steps that he desperately takes away from you.

Tags: The Hall - a new book on all the members of the Baseball Hall of Fame through 2014.
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Baseball’s 100 Most Important People

November 11, 2014

Stan Musial, Babe Ruth, and Walter Johnson are three of the few greats that I would have paid $60.00 to see play in an otherwise W/L meaningless spring training game.

Stan Musial, Babe Ruth, and Satchel Paige are three of the few greats that I would have paid $60.00 to see play in an otherwise W/L meaningless spring training game. (photo: Musial & me, St. Louis, 1996)

John Thorn: Baseball’s 100 Most Important People

The Pecan Park Eagle simply wants to alert of all of you to the refreshing treatment that great historian John Thorn pays to this subject on his current website. The way Thorn handles the matter needs no amplification from anyone, although, as he owns from the start, the establishment of a list n any order of the 100 most important people in baseball history is in itself an invitation to much subjective disagreement and arbitrary exclusion of 18,000 or so other legitimately deserving candidates.

Who would you pick as the most important person in baseball history? Would it be Babe Ruth? Jackie Robinson? Or someone else?

Would your list really include Abner Doubleday, a man whose connection to early kid baseball was now dubious, at best?

Please check it out and leave your comments in the space below this connecting article:

http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2014/11/10/baseballs-100-most-important-people/

And Thank you, Bob Dorrill, for tipping me off to the presence of this new material. It is something we all should review in relation to the variability of standards applied, the credibility problems encountered with rank ordering anything to this extent on a list of 100 people, and the immeasurably difficulties any decision-maker shall encounter in traveling too far down this list.

Thank you, Bob Dorrill, for pointing me to the current “Our Game” reflections of the estimable John Thorn.

______________________________

Astros Are Raising the Cost of Florida Spring Training Game Tickets from $20.00 to $60.00 each:

Play Ball! In our minds. It’s that time of year that we all sit staring out the window, waiting for spring, except for those of you going to see the Astros in spring training in Florida prior to the 2015 season, we will not see any big league baseball until the regular season starts next April. Also, another little bird told me today that the Astros are raising their ticket prices for spring games in Florida from $20.00 to $60.00 a ticket. So, if you plan to go down there, you had better take a bigger wallet, or else, find something else to do. We hear that ocean cruises are nice in late winter and early spring.

Tags: John Thorn's 100 Most Important People in Baseball
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Kaelin Clay: The Next Wrong Way Riegels

November 10, 2014

Kaelin Clay of Utah drops the ball on the one-yard line, negating a TD run and setting up a 100 yard Oregon return of the fumble for the TD that ties the game at 7-7.

Kaelin Clay, a wide receiver for the Utah Utes, will now take his place forever alongside Wrong Way Corrigan for committing one of the most unforgettable mistakes in the history of college football in an important game his university played last Saturday night against the now 4th-ranked-in-the-coaches poll Oregon Ducks. The upset-minded Utes already had a 7-0 lead early in the second quarter hen Clay caught a wide-open pass that he quickly converted into a runaway waltz into the end zone for a 79-yard play that should have made the score 14-0, Utes, with the momentum for an upset digging its way in.

There was just one problem. As Clay almost slow-pranced his way into the end zone, he had also taken the additional cool step of simply dropping the ball in the end zone as if to say, “nothing to it.” As his Utes teammates finally caught up with Clay near the back of the end zone to physically congratulate him in boundless joy, a couple of Ducks stopped short at the goal line to stare at the now motionless ball. They each had notice something about Clay’s deposit in their pursuit of him.

Kaelin Clay had not crossed the plane of the goal line when he casually let go of the “touchdown” ball. He had dropped it somewhere near the one-yard line by geometric miscalculation and, even though it now rested a good yard inside the end zone, it had to roll to get there.

The two ball-studious Ducks soon had company around the ball as one Ute player also then arrived, apparently harboring his own frightful apprehensions. A brief two on one scramble ensued before Joe Walker of the Ducks won out for another ambulatory speed journey in the opposite field direction. A platoon of Oregon defenders gathered up field in front of Walker’s almost totally clear path chase to the goal line of quacking Duck aspirations. The protection force knocked out one last poor “Oh No!” Ute defender around mid-field and Walker took it on his own run from there as an all-the-way 99 yard fumble turnover touchdown that produced a swing of 14 points and a 7-7 tie.

From there, the Oregon Ducks added momentum to their already superior talent and rolled to a 51-27 victory in the Salt Lake City home of the #17 Utah Utes.

Roy Riegels takes off on a 69-yard wrong-way run in the 1929 Rose Bowl.

Roy “Wrong Way” Riegels of the California Golden Bears once got twisted in a gang tackle during the January 1, 1929 Rose Bowl and ran the wrong way to score a 69-yard safety for the opposing Georgia Tech Yellow jackets. Riegels was tackled on his own team’s one-yard line by his own teammates, but when California tried to punt out of that terrible location, the punt was blocked for a safety that gave Tech a 2-0 lead. That tw0-point safety would later prove the difference that gave Georgia Tech an 8-7 victory and the 1928 National College Football Championship. Riegels never lived it down from that much higher stakes game, but this one from 2014 is likely to follow Kaelin Clay, as well.

For those of you interested in more on the story of Wrong Way Riegels, check out this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Riegels

We haven’t seen any quotes as of this writing, but young Kaelin Clay has to be totally stunned by his now permanent association with one of the biggest bonehead plays in college football history. We have to wonder if yet realizes that this was not a common house mouse error that people will forget by the next games. No Sir. And No, Maam. It’s much more lasting – as in forevermore.

Unfortunately, whatever the young man does next in life, whether it’s on the field or someplace down the line in his professional life, he’s going to be remembered for this one dumb moment beyond anything else he does. Kaelin Clay will have to get used to people he meets over the years who hear his name and then launch immediately into questions that begin with something like: “Say, aren’t you the former Utah Ute player who once dropped the ball on the one after a long TD pass catch and run? – And didn’t the other team pick it up and run it back for a 100-yard TD run of their own?”

Here’s one of numerous short clips already showing on You Tube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUx69EzR8XA

The Fate of Kaelin Clay which follows is most humbly dedicated to the young man who made this memory possible:

Kaelin Clay – had his say:

“Shall I act to leave – or stay?”

Will you think of me someday?

Now we will! – In what a way!

It’s quite a toll you now must pay!

Nothing tops complete dismay!

In your opinion, who created the most egregious football error? Roy Reigels in 1929? Or Kaelin Clay in 2014? Please leave your yote as a comment in the section that follows.

Tags: Kaelin Clay's Bad Day at The Office
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TDECU Stadium: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

November 9, 2014

~ THE GOOD ~
TDECU OFFERS A GREAT VIEW OF DOWNTOWN HOUSTON!

~ THE BAD ~ ~ INSIDE TDECU, A BAD TULANE TEAM TAKES A LEAD OVER A MEDIOCRE UH CLUB THAT THEY WILL NEVER SURRENDER.

~ THE BAD ~
~ INSIDE TDECU, A BAD TULANE TEAM TAKES A LEAD OVER A MEDIOCRE UH CLUB THAT THE GREEN WAVE WILL NEVER SURRENDER.

~ THE UGLY ~ CHECK OUT THE CONCRETE BACKGROUND WALLS THAT KEEP SHOWING THEIR UGLY FACE OF TEDECU ON TV. - TOO BAD OUR UH CONSTRUCTION BUDGET DID NOT INCLUDE FUNDS FOR SOME FOR SOME KIND OF ALL WEATHER PAINT.

~ THE UGLY ~
CHECK OUT THE CONCRETE BACKGROUND WALLS THAT KEEP SHOWING THEIR UGLY FACE ON TV. – TOO BAD OUR UH TDECU CONSTRUCTION BUDGET DID NOT INCLUDE FUNDS FOR ALL WEATHER PAINT.

Tags: AND THE UGLY, TDECU STADIUM: THE GOOD, THE BAD
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