Larry Miggins: A Man for All Seasons

May 18, 2018

Larry and Kathleen Miggins
St. Patrick’s Day 2017

 

During the early 1940s, our very own Houston SABR baseball treasure was a student at Fordham Prep in New York City, where excelled in baseball, basketball, and football — eventually earning a football scholarship as a tight end, offense and defense in those days, of course, to play for the University of Pittsburgh.

Larry also played baseball at Pitt, but passed on basketball because of the conflict it presented to his scholarship time on the gridiron. And this was in the days in which a young man of 6’4″ in height was considered tall enough to be a dominant force.

Basketball Force? Miggins could shoot too — once totaling 38 points in a single game. And in baseball, Miggins played third base in those days, taking infield grounders and playing catch with one of the Pitt voluntary coaches — a fellow named Honus Wagner.

Well, this winter, the For Prep football people decided it was a high time they recognized Mr. Miggins for all he did in behalf of their good name on the gridiron back in 1943. They selected 92-year old Larry Miggins for induction into the Fordham Prep Football Hall of Fame.

In his usual humble way, Larry Miggins shared this news with us in Houston at the SABR April 2018 meeting. Fordham wanted Larry and his wife Kathleen to come to NYC for the induction at the annual banquet of their Gridiron Club on May 5, 2018.

As things turned out, Larry wasn’t up to the travel requirement this time, but he did appear on video to deliver this very charming and honest acceptance speech to the offer of this honor.

Do yourselves a favor. Pick out a ten minutes time span you may listen in peace. Then turn on the sound to your video replay equipment in advance and click the link below to watch and listen to Larry Miggins accepting this deserved honor in digital person.

Once you click the link and reach the site’s home page, simply click the middle bar — the one noted as “Larry Miggins ’43 Gridiron Hall of Fame Induction Speech” — to see and hear Larry talk it through from the heart — as he does everything else.

Then, when that’s done, do yourselves another favor and read the eloquently thorough article that David E. Skelton wrote on Larry Miggins in behalf of the SABR biography project in 2015.

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/f925ea43

Larry Miggins turns 93 on August 20, 2018.

God Bless You, Larry! — And May God Bless us for the time He has given us with you!

You are very, very loved — and my own love for you started back in my Pecan Park Eagle days. From that ancient personal time, I am still able to run mental images of you walking to the plate at Buff Stadium, bashing line drives over the left field wall. I just never dreamed back then that you would still be in my life seventy years later.

What a wonderful world this has turned out to be.

Thanks, old friend and hero. From the bottom to the top of our shared Irish being-ness, I thank you too — for being you.

 

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Bill McCurdy

Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Pecan Park Eagle

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The Tommy John World We Live In

May 17, 2018

Tommy-John-2

 

“When they operated, I told them to add in a Koufax fastball.

They did, but unfortunately it was Mrs. Koufax’s.”

– Tommy John, N.Y. Yankees, recalling his 1974 arm surgery

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Can you imagine what it must have been like for Tommy John? Or still may be? He went into baseball as a pretty fair pitching prospect, but a common career-ending injury to his arm transported him to a medical doctor who performed a radical surgery on John that not only saved his place as an MLB pitcher for a while longer, It also forever set up his name — “Tommy John” — to become more the identity of this particular surgery than it ever was as the name of the first pitcher who saved his career because of it.

When we hear today that arm injury to a current big league pitcher is going to cause him to miss the rest of this season and possibly most or all of next year because of “Tommy John”, we all know what that means. There is no time wasted blaming the former pitcher named “Tommy John” for the ballplayer’s bad news.

“Tommy John” is surgery first — a ballplayer barely. But it works in our minds and that’s apparently what counts.

At any rate, the “Tommy John” human expression of humor, about coming back to the game with the fastball speed of “Mrs. Koufax”, did pull me back to all the other human beings who have lost their identities to other matters in life, and we’re not talking anything possible in a single column. It would require more of a book, or a book series, to cover all the streets, airports, and cities in America alone that take their identities directly from adopted or applied human names.

JFK and LaGuardia airports in NYC are great examples. But how about the City of Houston?

Texas History teaches us that Texan Army General Sam Houston won the Battle of San Jacinto in eighteen minutes over General Santa Anna and the Mexican Army on April 21, 1836 at a site just east of present day Pasadena. Today that win is celebrated as Texas Independence Day.

The Irony of San Jacinto probably is the fact that the previously described battle was both the first and last time that anyone got anything done anywhere near “Houston” in eighteen minutes. Today, in 2018, I can’t even drive from home to my office in eighteen minutes, — and I live only five miles away.

Houston street names are often the result of names put forth by elected officials who just happened to think of a name from their own histories that was different enough to stand out among the other nearby street names. Gessner Road on the west side, for example, was a name supplied decades ago when that north-south passage was little more than a two-lane passage through a still fairly agricultural part of the county and not the “new downtown” Houston it is becoming.

Harris County Commissioner Squatty Lyons suggested “Gessner” when he recalled having a classmate by that name at then Reagan High School years earlier. There was no other distinguishing reason beyond the fact that Lyons remembered the name and that it fit the name distinction needs during a year in which that sort of thing was declared as important.

We do have a baseball byway in Houston. The Nolan Ryan Expressway, a north-south artery on the southeast side of town, has proved an apt name for the several miles long section of State Highway 288 that runs near to Minute Maid Park, the home of the Houston Astros, but it certainly hasn’t “Tommy Johned” the old Alvin Strikeout King’s primary ownership of that identity.

Personally, I would like to see the Katy Freeway, from downtown Columbus, Texas, given back its local bullet train parallel track, – all the way to downtown Houston with three strategic stops along the way in Sealy, Katy, and Gessner for passengers prepared to travel at bullet-train speed over short distances. Call it the Larry Dierker49Fastball Line and make it so workable that consumers will reference themselves as being “Dierkered to the office for a special meeting with the boss.”

Then just watch the suburbs between here and Columbus continue to grow at an even faster rate.

Along those same lines —

Maybe, if they can get sign-off approval from former Astros great Jimmy Wynn, they could christen that bullet train’s Houston to Dallas ride as The Toy Cannon. Sounds pretty strong and fast to me. What do you think? Of course, if we could get the Dallas people to sign off on the other side, this would be a great place for a railed extension of The Nolan Ryan Expressway as the north to south version of the trip. After all, Nolie and Son did sort of come back to Houston when all was said and done. Did they not?

Lou Gehrig’s Disease comes to mind far easier for what it is in reality. We doubt that many people know it’s scientific name, — or likely would there be many of us shouting out the answer to this question: “What is a more common name for a disease catalogued as “Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis”?

That’s it for now from our side, but we would love your help in further Tommy Johning the world with the individual name identities that are more associated with the action or event itself than the formal name that goes with whatever it may have been called in scientific or legal language.

Have a hope-floating night, Astro friends, as we slide toward the weekend home series with the Indians. If we could simply “Justin Verlander” all our Astro starters into pitching the kind of game that the original “JV” threw against the Angels on the wings of a 2-0 complete game shutout on Wednesday night —  and get the same results — where do you suppose we might be this coming November 1st?

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Bill McCurdy

Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Pecan Park Eagle

 

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Drew Blake’s Entry: Greatest HR Ever!

May 16, 2018

And Drew Blake didn’t even have to call the shot he hit to his own dad in his last collegiate game.

 

Infielder Drew Blake Hits HR to His Dad in Lasr College Game

By Matt Monagan @MattMono11 May 15, 2018 at 11:16pm: “One last game of catch at home with my dad,” is a pretty cool way to describe it.” You can see Blake pointing to his father as he’s rounding first base in the (screenshot contained in the attached link). The infielder told MLB.com it was, “the coolest moment in my sports career.” Blake finished the day 2-for-3 with two RBIs and the Stags beat the Minutemen, 8-4. ~ Matt Monagan writes at night for Cut4. In his spare time, he travels and searches Twitter for Wily Mo Pena news.

 

https://www.mlb.com/cut4/in-the-final-home-game-of-his-career-this-college-senior-hit-a-hr-right-into-his-dads-arms/c-276897800

Note: Just another example of why baseball mythology sticks so hard, so fast. — It’s because even the real stories of baseball, like this one, are so often incredible to the nth degree.

 

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Bill McCurdy

Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Pecan Park Eagle

 

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Maxwell Kates: Greatest Play I Ever Saw

May 15, 2018

While in Montreal over the Mother’s Day weekend, author Kates had a chance to visit with two other historically inclined friends, historical researchers Mike and Anne Vance of Houston.

Perhaps, Maxwell Kates will spare some space for a future article and do a piece on Mike Vance’s Greatest Play, which, of course, will always be the lovely and brainy Anne Vance.

 

THE GREATEST PLAY I EVER SAW

By Maxwell Kates

Author Maxwell Kates

We live in apologetic times.

It seems that every time you open a newspaper, somebody is apologizing for their own transgressions or those of their fore bearers. Today it is my turn. Most of the subscribers to the Pecan Park Eagle live in the Houston area and naturally support the Astros. I realize that in one of my earlier columns this year, I violated a sacrosanct axiom while discussing baseball in Houston. I wrote a laudatory article about Jim Edmonds.

Yes, I watched Game 6 of the 2004 National League Championship Series the same way all of you did. I should have known better. And although the Astros did come back to defeat those same St. Louis Cardinals the following year on their way to the World Series, it still does not erase the sting. I can empathize.

You see, the National League team I followed growing up was the Montreal Expos. They too had their dreams shattered by a home run in the National League Championship Series, 1981 to be precise. Imagine for a moment that a freelance writer from Los Angeles, let’s call him Stan Mauch (né Stanley Moskowitz from Brooklyn) wrote an article praising the player who sunk the Expos with that home run. Here is how it goes:

April 25, 1976, Rick Monday Wins Capture the Flag.

The greatest play I ever saw was on April 25, 1976 at Dodger Stadium. I remember it well; my son Jeremy was eight years old and it was his first baseball game in person. The Cubs had taken a 1-0 lead when in the bottom of the 4th, he elbowed me and asked “Dad, why are those people trying to burn the flag?” I looked on the field in horror and indeed, two men looked like they were about to incinerate Old Glory. Ted Sizemore popped out to Manny Trillo and out of nowhere, there sprinted Rick Monday to save the flag. A raucous ovation followed when Monday came to bat in the top half of the 5th. The Dodgers won the game 5-4 in the bottom of the 10th but all anyone could remember was Rick Monday’s dramatic play. You can imagine how thrilled Jeremy became that winter when the Cubs traded Rick Monday to the Dodgers. Now he has three boys of his own and they all refer to the stars and stripes as “Rick Monday’s flag.”

Stan Mauch

Los Angeles, California

Rick Monday and His Flag

Now imagine for a moment there existed a baseball nostalgia newspaper in Montreal called the Poutine Park Pigeon. The paper is edited by the eminent psychologist Dr. Guillaume Lecourdis (rhymes with “McCurdy”), who decided to pick up Stan’s article about Rick Monday. Now imagine my reaction when I read Stan Mauch’s article. Some of you know that I like to write letters to the editor. Therefore, here is my rebuttal to the Rick Monday article:

Dear Mr. Mauch:

I read your article entitled “The Greatest Play I Ever Saw” with great interest. That being said, it would appear that your knowledge of baseball in Montreal is a little general. You see, Rick Monday is hated in Montreal. Even though the Expos have been gone for fourteen years, Monday continues to be vilified amongst their fans.

This is Gene Mauch — the Little General

In the 9th inning of the deciding Game 5 of the 1981 NLCS, Monday a hit solo home run to put the Dodgers ahead of the Expos, a lead they never relinquished. As Gary Carter said years later, “we were going to watch the World Series on television.” Of course there were other factors at play. The Expos merely tied, not led, when Monday hit the home run. Montreal put two baserunners on in the bottom of the 9th, only to leave them stranded. Steve Rogers, who gave up the home run, was the ace of the starting rotation but may never have pitched in short relief in his life. Closing the deciding game of a playoff series was most definitely an unfamiliar experience.

The fact remains that in sports, as in life, perception is reality. To the casual baseball fan in Montreal, Rick Monday is the reason the Expos were denied their most likely opportunity at a World Series appearance. They never made another postseason after the Rick Monday home run.

October 19, 1981: The Rick Monday Pitch

When the Dodgers returned to Montreal in 1982, Rick Monday and Steve Yeager went to a bar. The owner insisted that they leave because six patrons wanted to pulverize Monday. He was frequently hassled while clearing customs at Dorval Airport, and when he returned to Montreal as a broadcaster for the Dodgers nearly fifteen years later, a fan recognized him and said “You ruined our franchise!”   No, I was not that fan. Almost forty years after the fact, Game 5 of the NLCS continues to live in infamy in Montreal as “Blue Monday.”

Sincerely,

Maxwell I. Kates

1981 Montreal Expos Reunion

In conclusion, this article was written to signify that Jim Edmonds stinks. What really happened during that SABR game in 2004, Edmonds went back to right field to catch the ball but some fan in the stands yelled “Yo la tengo!” This distracted Edmonds, forcing him to drop the horsehide, which he then booted towards second base. Meanwhile, Jason LaRue circled the bases happily and ultimately crossed the plate. He was credited with a double and two errors by Edmonds. The debable in right field rattled St. Louis reliever Jason Isringhausen to the point that he beaned Jacob Cruz. Pinch hitter John VanderWal was then able to add to his already generous collection of pinch home runs, this one a walk off. Reds 8, Cardinals 7. Talk about revisionist history!

 

POSTSCRIPT

If you’d like to learn more, Danny Gallagher is writing a book called “Blue Monday” about the monumental game in Expos history. Danny has also contributed the Montreal Expos essay to the anthology on baseball’s expansion teams co-edited by the author and Bill Nowlin. Look for both volumes to be completed before 2018 draws to a close.

Vive Le Baseball!

 

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Bill McCurdy

Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Pecan Park Eagle

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2018 Astro Starters are “Houston Hellacious”

May 15, 2018

The Houston Astros
2018 Starting Rotation

Our apologies, but other life matters are drawing upon our energies these days. And don’t give up. We never do. We’ll be back soon enough. Clicking fire on 7.2 units of our full 8 original cylinders.

In the meanwhile, your patience and prayers are appreciated. As I hope most of you know by now, beyond my sweet wife, Sweet Norma, my great thinker son, Casey, and other close family and friends, I live for the success and greater glory of UH, baseball, now with the Houston Astros, but earlier — with my memory of those special days in the Houston east end with the Pecan Park Eagles and Houston Buffs — reading, history, and the importance of life as a full slate of lessons in spiritual growth. (That ought to be enough for now, don’t you think?)

Tonight we are simply taking an up-to-the-moment snapshot look at the results of our Houston Astros five-man starting rotation. Personally, I wouldn’t trade this bunch for any other aggregate group in the 2018 big league camp.

Look at what these guys are doing. going into the games of Monday, May 14, 2018:

Astros Starter Results Through Games of Sunday, May 13, 2018

ASTRO STARTERS G/GS CG W L IP ER H HR W K ERA
Justin Verlander 9/9 0 4 2 59.2 8 30 4 13 77 1.21
Gerit Cole 8/8 1 4 1 56.2 9 30 3 12 86 1.43
Charlie Morton 8/8 0 5 0 48.2 11 30 6 17 62 2.03
Dallas Keuchel 9/9 0 3 5 51.0 20 49 8 15 45 3.10
Lance McCullers 8/8 0 5 1 46.0 19 39 3 19 52 3.17

Our top three ERA guys are also 1, 2, and 3 in the AL – and maybe in the whole MLB too. Interesting too, these Top 3 Earned Run Prophylaxis specialists all have given up exactly 30 hits.

Morton and McCullers both started as our #4 and #5 guys, but each is now tied at “5” with the most wins each.

If the World Series were only the best two out of three — and, if you could only carry two starters — my no-brainer picks would be Verlander 77K and Cole 86K. Those two could find the strike zone on a mosquito if you handed the buzzing varmint a tooth pick and sent him up to the plate to hit rather than bite against these giant baseball hummers.

Go Astros! Let’s De-Wing the Angels on the Coast tonight!

Note. Are you old enough to remember when newspaper sports pages used to carry daily, easy to read stat reports on hitting and pitching? As a kid, I used to wake up on the nourishment of changes in the numbers from one day to the next. Now I’m lucky if I can find the current up-to-date game box score and the magnifying glass I will need to read the tiny print they use in rag print row these less imaginative newspaper days.

The Pecan Park Eagle
1st Gooney Bird “It Makes No Sense” Award
To The Houston Chronicle Sports Page Management

 

We’re going to have to present our first Pecan Park Eagle Gooney Bird “It Makes No Sense” Award to the publishers of sports in the Houston Chronicle. Why publish anything for money that is going to leave readers asking themselves “why did I just waste my time trying to read that crappy presentation when all I walked away with was a sense of being cheated out of both time and money? – This time it’s on you, Houston Chronicle. Next time, it’s my fault for giving you an undeserved 2nd chance.”

 

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Bill McCurdy

Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Pecan Park Eagle

 

 

 

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Jim Umbricht’s “Stuff” @ Auction til May 18

May 11, 2018

We normally avoid sites, but our Maryland-based SABR friend and historic Cubs fan — Bill Hickman — sent me the following heads up this morning about an auction going on right now for some possessions of the legendary Colt .45 pitcher Jim Umbricht, who died of cancer in April 1964, six months after his last appearance and retirement by the club.

Two items are involved in this online bidding at Heritage Auctions:

Jim Umbricht’s
1962 Houston Colt .45
Western-cut Travel Suit

(1) The Umbricht western-cut travel suit that 1962 Colt .45s were required to wear on road trip travel flights;

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball/early-1960-s-jim-umbricht-worn-houston-colt-45-s-traveling-suit/a/50002-50356.s

and,

Jim Umbricht’s
1963 Colt .45 Teammate-signed
Classic Home Jersey

(2) Umbricht’s 1963 Colt .45 jersey, signed by all his teammates.

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball/1963-jim-umbricht-game-worn-houston-colt-45-s-jersey-signed-by-the-entire-team/a/50002-50357.s

AUCTION DEADLINE! Today is May 11, 2018. The auction ends in six days.

We have no stake in how you use this information beyond historical interest and bemusement, but, thank you, anyway, Bill Hickman for helping those of us from Houston to feel that we’ve now been in the big leagues long enough to see some of our historical player dress and equipment items be treated at auction as though they had been exhumed from a recently discovered ballpark parking lot tomb.

 

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Bill McCurdy

Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Pecan Park Eagle

 

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Jackie Price Now on YouTube

May 10, 2018

Jackie Price
How hard does bunting have to be?

Jackie Price is not a new subject for me. I’ve done a couple of columns on him in the past/ covering his awesome abilities to throw, catch, and hit a baseball from sighted and blindfolded situations from positions that were sometimes alternately awkward, mobile, and multiply demanding upon the central nervous system’s capacity for correctly transmitting all of the execution signals that would be essential to getting the variously purposed plan to work. And, of yes, some of those thing had to be done while Price was riding solo in a open-bodied jeep that he was also driving.

I got to seem him perform as a kid at Buff Stadium. Then I looked forward for a lifetime of seeing him do these rare things again on the ballpark field, but that wasn’t meant to be; As I trust you recall, Jackie Price committed suicide by hanging himself on October 2, 1967 as a result of a long bout with clinical depression that went untreated – for whatever reason, with the biggest reason always being the one that 98% of us got as kids. — We were simply supposed to “get over it.”

Try telling that to the families and friends of people who die blindly from cancer or heart disease and see what happens. “If only we had known, we would have done all we could do to get him or her into treatment. — Yet, had it been depression leading to one hanging themselves, the same people will say something like “wish we had known he was that troubled; he had no good reason to kill himself.”

There are no good reasons to kill oneself beyond enormous pain on top of no hope == and that’s the only brew that clinical depression serves up over time.

All of us have lost great performing figures like Jackie Price or Robyn Williams to depression-generated suicide. And some of us know the sting closer to home and heart. I’d like to think that our enlightenment would have improved by now, but, for me, nearly sixty years after my earliest entry into the mental health field following my graduation from UH in 1960, I am sad to say it seems to have not improved at all, based upon national suicide figures.

Culprit #1, of course, is the human ego. Admitting you are depressed requires the courage to speak up to a deadly false fear that admitting to depression is a sign of weakness. It is not a weakness — but it can kill you — if you try to treat it as a head cold.

First, here’s the link to our earlier column on Jackie Price and depression:

Jackie Price: Fatal Sadness of a Baseball Clown

Then, by all means, please enjoy this video that’s now on YouTube. It pretty much covers that same show I got to see in person at Buff Stadium back in the time-around-1950 era.

Diamond Demon: Jackie Price

 

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Baseball Reliquary Inducts John, Staub, and Faust

May 8, 2018
At the close of this column, please read the linked material from The Baseball Reliquary in the Los Angeles area and ask yourselves: Don’t people like Astrodome originator Judge Roy Hofheinz, — baseball pitcher, broadcaster, columnist, author, and highly successful major league manager Larry Dierker, — and early female baseball writer and broadcaster Anita Martini also do a pretty good job qualifying as culture-clanging shapers of the world we now inhabit in 2018 as a result of their original energy forays into the game of baseball?Come on, everybody! Our brothers and sisters on the west coast are doing everything they can to stir the pot of attention to the powerful two-way impact that baseball and the creative surrounding cultures are having upon each other for the sake of a more interesting life, but we cannot expect them to have lived close enough to all the epicenters of lifestyle impact to have made note of them all.

Some of them have happened in Houston — and other places too.

Judge Roy Hofheinz
Father of the Astrodome
Baseball’s P.T. Barnum

The late Judge Roy Hofheinz did not invent them, but he put domed stadiums on the map in a way that has changed everything about the once-called (and by Hofheinz himself) “eighth wonder of the world” view of stadium construction.

Larry Dierker’sPost-Game  18th Birthday Party
September 22, 1964
The day Dierker broke into baseball by striking out Willie Mays.

Larry Dierker celebrated his 18th birthday by striking out the great Willie Mays in his major league start, going on from there during his career to rack up a 20-win season, a no-hitter, and the second greatest number of pitching wins in the history of a largely losing Houston Astros team, before graduating to both the broadcast booth and print media columns — and then — just when it seemed the dust had settled on career change — being pulled into service as Astros manager and leading the club into the playoffs in four of his five seasons at the helm — recovering from brain surgery during his managerial tour to write a book about the scary experience — and then — off once more to some other subjects, including another book on baseball and a never-produced musical based on Damn Yankees. And deep in his heart is another book — a fictional book on Cuban Baseball back in the Pre-Castro days. The man has a mind that sweeps the landscape of social relationships with the intuition of the same guy who took his club to the money rounds in four of his five season shots.

CC'd FG 040707 Perc.

Anita Martini (Artwork by Opie Otterstad.) She knew baseball as well as any man I’ve ever met. 

The late Anita Martini was a gift to baseball and way ahead of her time as a female reporter and writer. In September 1974, she may also have been the first female reporter allowed into an MLB clubhouse when, at a division-clinching win in Houston, she gained the help of Dodger center fielder Jimmy Wynn and manager Walter Alston — and was allowed into the clubhouse as the first ever female reporter to cover the Dodgers under these circumstances.

Very Important! Consider joining The Baseball Reliquary so you too can become a voting member on the candidates. It would also be great to see any of you nominate any of the three people suggested here as your first act too — or anyone else for that matter, once you’re clear on how voting for these nominees differs from the straight field performance factor vote on players for the Hall of Fame.

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New Hall of Eternals Inductee and longtime Chicago White Sox organist Nancy Faust pauses long enough to say the following: “Please pay attention to these last two sections. They say exactly as possible how one gets inducted into the Hall of Eternals and how you may easily join The Baseball Reliquary and help us expand the search for future picks.”

Shrine of the Eternals

 The highest honor afforded an individual by the Baseball Reliquary is election to the Shrine of the Eternals. Similar in concept to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Shrine of the Eternals differs philosophically in that statistical accomplishment is not the principal criterion for election. It is believed that the election of individuals on merits other than statistics and playing ability will offer the opportunity for a deeper understanding and appreciation of baseball than has heretofore been provided by “Halls of Fame” in the more traditional and conservative institutions.

Criteria for election shall be: the distinctiveness of play (good or bad); the uniqueness of character and personality; and the imprint that the individual has made on the baseball landscape. Electees, both on and off the diamond, shall have been responsible for developing baseball in one or more of the following ways: through athletic and/or business achievements; in terms of its larger cultural and sociological impact as a mass entertainment; and as an arena for the human imagination.

Anyone associated with baseball, past or present, is eligible for election, including players, managers and coaches, umpires, executives and administrators, broadcasters and writers, fans, and those who have interpreted the game through artistic and cultural mediums. Fictional characters from the realms of literature, drama, motion pictures, etc., may also be considered.

By authorization of the Board of Directors of the Baseball Reliquary, three individuals will be elected to the Shrine of the Eternals on an annual basis by the organization’s membership. All members in good standing, including honorary members, shall be eligible to vote. A screening committee will be appointed by the Board of Directors to prepare a ballot, listing in alphabetical order candidates for election to the Shrine of the Eternals. The ballot will be mailed to the membership, and the three candidates receiving the most votes in any year will be elected.

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New Inductee Announcement

Friends & Reliquarians:

The Board of Directors of the Baseball Reliquary is pleased to announce the 20th class of electees to the Shrine of the Eternals.

Tommy John, Rusty Staub, and Nancy Faust were elected upon receiving the highest number of votes in balloting conducted during the month of April 2018 by the membership of the Baseball Reliquary.  The three electees will be formally inducted into the Shrine of the Eternals in a public ceremony on Sunday, July 22, 2018 at the Donald R. Wright Auditorium in the Pasadena Central Library, Pasadena, California.

We are pleased to attach the official news release, which can also be viewed online at the Baseball Reliquary Web site:

http://www.baseballreliquary.org/2018/05/shrine-of-the-eternals-class-of-2018/

Congratulations to the Class of 2018!

Please advise if we can provide any further information.

Sincerely,
Terry Cannon
Executive Director
The Baseball Reliquary

Home

e-mail: terymar@earthlink.net
phone: (626) 791-7647

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Bill McCurdy

Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Pecan Park Eagle

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Good Pitching and Club Spirit Won for Buffs

May 6, 2018

(This article was produced by Associated Press nearly 70 years ago. Here’s how it appeared in the Corpus Christi Times, on Page 19, on September 25, 1947, the day following the last Texas League Playoff game for the Houston Buffs on their way to the Texas League pennant and in readiness for yet another victory over Mobile for the Dixie Series Championship.)

____________________

EPSON MFP image

Johnny Keane ~ Field Manager ~ 1947 Houston Buffs

Good Pitching and Club Spirit Won for Buffs

Houston, Sept. 25 (AP) — In the words of Johnny Keane: “I’ve never seen anything like this ball club.”

He was speaking of his Houston Buffaloes who last night defeated the defending champion Dallas Rebels, 1-0, to take the 1947 Texas League pennant and the right to represent the circuit in the Dixie Series, opening here Friday night, with Mobile’s Bears, the champions of the Southern Association.

The Buffs have had Keane, fans, and sports writers guessing all season. for, despite a noticeable absence of heavy hitters, a siege of injuries and only three “frontline” hurlers, they monopolized first place throughout most of the league’s regular schedule, defeated Tulsa four straight in the first round of of the playoff, and overcame terrific odds in the Dallas round.

But repeated analysis had indicated two things: The Buffs hit when hits count and they are firm believers in the old adage that the game is not over until the last out is recorded.

The first point is illustrated with Houston’s ranking fifth during most of the season in club batting but first in runs batted in.

And Tuesday night’s game at Dallas is proof of the second point, for it was then the Buffs, trailing by six runs and held hitless for six innings, broke loose for eight runs and 11 hits in the last three innings to take an 8-6 decision that placed them in the driver’s seat in the Rebel Series.

Only two of Keane’s crew (Hal Epps and Johnny Hernandez) finished above .300 in batting but every man in the lineup has been at one time or another a hero by knocking in winning runs.

Clarence Beers, who began his baseball career as a catcher, is the mainstay of the pitching staff, having recorded his 28th victory as against eight defeats. The only other steady winner is knuckleballer Al Papai, who finished with a 23-11 record.

The third hurler is Jack Creel (15-11), who, nursing an arm ailment, has his on and off nights.

As relief men, Keane has two right handers, Roman Brunswick (12-8) and Charlie Sproull (6-5) and two southpaws, Pete Mazar (5-6) and veteran Herb Moore (5-2).

Houston’s starting lineup, with final batting averages for the regular season, normally includes:

Solly Hemus (.277) at second, Billy Costa (.232) at short, Eddie Knoblauch (.275) at left, Johnny Hernandez (.301) at first base, Hal Epps (.302) at center, Vaughn Hazen (.280) or Stan Benjamin (.280) at right, Tommy Glaviano (.245) at third, and Gerald Burmeister (.210) catching.

The all-around utility man who has done everything except catch and pitch is Jack Angle (.251), while the reserve catchers are Doc Greene (.217) and Joe Niedson (.212).

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TPPE Note: Note some of the stats, especially for pitchers, are slightly at variance from the data that Baseball Reference.Com now carries for the t947 Houston Buffs.. This appears to be because the data reported in this article included playoff game data with regular season data. That may explain why Buffs pitcher Clarence Beers is credited here with 28 season wins against 8 defeats – and BBREF.com records Beers with three less wins and a 25-8 record at Houston in 1947. Further study of the discrepancy is needed.

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Bill McCurdy

Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Pecan Park Eagle

 

 

 

 

 

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Yankees Win Series Attitude War

May 4, 2018

Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros and Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees ~ in a lighter moment back in 2017.

The New York Yankees rode into town this first time in 2018 and played ball like cold-blooded killer squad they are. They play with purpose and intent, talent and intelligence, size and power, and with an almost sublime sense of knowing when to shoot, when to strangle, and when to flat-out clobber.

They had a little trouble with those killer starters who pitch for the Astros, but the Houston pen was back on its heels and broadly unable to keep the Astros hopes alive in close games – once the stars in our Texas night – were no longer fresh and bright. In fact, we could not refrain from wonder. – Why doesn’t Harris also punch himself out on the way to the dugout as he concludes his walk to the dugout in the 9th of Game 4? – He didn’t do it as dramatically as Giles did in Game 3, but he had one of those nights in which all three of the missing “Yankees-Win” runs had now either reached base or scored.

If Giles really deserved to scourge himself so cruelly for human error, shouldn’t the same penalty fall to all others who have a bad day on the job. – For that matter, when is the last time you punched yourself out at 5:00 PM for showing up for work at 9:00 AM that same day and then causing your company certain profits because of your failed performance? – And did the story of your bad day make the evening TV news or the next day’s newspaper?

And then there was the matter of that missing Astros offense – the one that gathered to bedevil the Red Sox, Yankees and Dodgers in the 2017 Playoffs and World Series in a  stream of confidence and dynamic leadership and hitting. – It was then an everyday thing that now only blinks – and then disappears again – in 2018.

And it’s not just one thing. It’s several:

(1) There’s been a Major Shift, from Hope in 2017 to Expectation in 2018. Jose Altuve is no longer the baseball “small wonder man.” He now bears the burden of his new contract. – Now we all expect big things of him – and these great expectations are on the level of those that probably afflicted Moses a long time ago.

Example: Imaginary Monologue, God to Moses, After Moses started hitting on Ramses for Jewish Liberty from Egypt, but before he had scared the Pharaoh enough to get his way:

God: “Hear me loud and clear. Don’t waste your worries on the wrong issue. You have nothing at all to fear from the Egyptian Pharaoh. I have an offer in mind now that he will not be able to refuse. It is an offer that will change even the feelings of the Israelites toward you. – Right now you possess the power of novelty in their eyes. – You are a man who can actually get an audience with the king in the name of their freedom. – It is an attitude toward you that will continue to grow among the people until you (with a little help from Me) get the people what they want from your next certain-to-be-accepted offer.

“Once that offer is delivered, the people’s expectations of you shall change. You will no longer simply be the miracle man who gets them out of Egypt, you will become the man who leads the people to the dessert with that great expectation now firmly bowed to your neck as — the man that God sent to lead them to The Promised Land. — And no achievement short of that goal ever shall be considered acceptable.”

Altuve’s task covers arguably smaller spiritual ground, but its dynamic change feature is the same. Until the Astros dramatically won the 2017 World Series behind the mojo generated by Altuve and Company, they were the fans’ great hope. And like it or not, the fans of 2018 now expect results that the fans of 2017 merely hoped to see.

(2) The hungry dynamic of offensive play needs to return. Let’s hope that much of its’ current absence is due to celebratory hangover from the party that never has stopped since the night of November 1, 2017. How could it? The TV games still show the stream of George Springer shouting into the ear of Josh Reddick on the street in Houston during the day of the November victory party. – The 2018 Yankees don’t play like a team that expects to win by showing up. The 2018 Yankees show up to crush whatever’s in their way.

(3) The bottom three hitters in the 2018 Astros lineup, plus Evan Gattis batting in a higher up spot, are now showing up as a weakness that an intelligent foe can again use to pitch around the potentially more dangerous batters in the Astros game plan. Maybe we will see the younger Mr. Tucker up here sooner rather than later. The hitting has to come around soon. Great starters, week relievers, and no hitting on the level we’re seeing now could sink the ship of a repeat title, if we are still seeing these same patterns by the All Star break.

 

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Bill McCurdy

Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Pecan Park Eagle

 

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