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Baseball Almanac Features College Ball Section

January 7, 2014

Bill Henry
UH Cougars
Cincinnati Reds

Baseball Almanac now runs a college baseball section in which they list the names of all the players as a group from their various alma maters who then went on to play major league baseball. My first stop in this section, as you may have guessed, was to see how they handled the list from my own undergraduate alma mater, The University of Houston. Like all things new in this crazy old world, the UH list was not perfectly complete. They left pitcher Brad Lincoln’s name off their Internet-published list. We added Lincoln’s name to the box shown here, but did not know how to make his name search-active for his career stats and first box score features as are the others.

By my count, there are 24 former UH Cougars who have gone forward to play major league baseball since the UH baseball started in 1947. Bill Henry was the earliest recognizable star as one of the early relief specialists in the post World War II era. Former Pirate, Astro, and Cy Young winner Doug Drabek is undoubtedly the most accomplished listed player. Michael Bourn stands out as a former Astro and current star center fielder for the Cleveland Indians and Jesse Crain represents represents a UH homeboy coming back to town as a possible relief staff boost to the 2014 Astros.

University of Houston “Cougars” Major League Baseball Player Alumnus
Name [Click for M.L. Stats]	Dates Played	Debut / Box
Bill Henry	1947 – 1947	04-17-1952
Glenn Vaughan	1962 – 1963	09-20-1963
Tom Paciorek	1966 – 1968	09-12-1970
Gary Weiss	1977 – 1978	09-13-1980
Doug Drabek	1981 – 1983	05-30-1986
Steve Cummings	1985 – 1986	06-24-1989
Steve Decker^{(Lewis-Clark)}	1985 – 1985	09-18-1990
Jeff Banister	1986 – 1986	07-23-1991
Anthony Young	1986 – 1987	08-05-1991
Mike Walker	1984 – 1986	06-16-1992
Woody Williams	1987 – 1988	05-14-1993
Vaughn Eshelman	1990 – 1991	05-02-1995
Chris Tremie	1989 – 1992	07-01-1995
Matt Beech	1993 – 1994	08-08-1996
Scott Sheldon	1988 – 1991	05-18-1997
Jason McDonald	1993 – 1993	06-05-1997
Ben Weber	1989 – 1991	04-03-2000
Shane Nance	1997 – 2000	08-24-2002
Ryan Wagner	2002 – 2003	07-19-2003
Jesse Crain	2002 – 2002	08-05-2004
Chris Snyder	2000 – 2002	08-21-2004
Michael Bourn	2001 – 2003	07-30-2006
Brad Lincoln	2010-2013	06-09-2010
Donnie Joseph	2007 – 2009	07-11-2013
Name [Click for M.L. Stats]	Dates Played	Debut / Box
University of Houston M.L.B. Player Alumnus

Eight former UH players have played in at least one game for the Houston MLB club. Their names include: Bill Henry, Glenn Vaughan, Doug Drabek, Anthony Young, Woody Williams, Chris Tremie, Chris Snyder, and Michael Bourn.

Steve Clark is noted above for having played college ball earlier for Lewis-Clark prior to his active playing time at UH.

Also, be sure to let Baseball Almanac of any errors or omissions you discover in your own searches of this material. None of us are perfect and name identification mistakes and oversights are two of the easiest mistakes we all sometimes make.

We need to help each other out on the way to building a more complete and accurate baseball history.

Get up next to the hot stove on one of those cracker barrels, baseball friends. – It’s cold outside – and a much better day for thinking about baseball than it is income tax return preparation. 🙂

Tags:Baseball Almanac, College Ball Section
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George Carlin on Baseball and Football

November 19, 2013

As Tom Hunter so accurately pointed out in his comment on yesterday’s column, the late and great comedian George Carlin once wrote and performed the funniest routine ever to explain the differences between baseball and football. Now, courtesy of its re-print in BASEBALL ALMANAC.COM. here it is again:

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml

Baseball and Football

George Carlin

by George Carlin

Baseball is different from any other sport, very different. For instance, in most sports you score points or goals; in baseball you score runs. In most sports the ball, or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he’s out; sometimes unintentionally, he’s out. Also: in football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball, you score with the ball and in baseball the ball prevents you from scoring. In most sports, the team is run by a coach; in baseball the team is run by a manager. And only in baseball does the manager or coach wear the same clothing the players do. If you’d ever seen John Madden in his Oakland Raiders uniform, you’d know the reason for this custom. Now, I’ve mentioned football. Baseball & football are the two most popular spectator sports in this country. And as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something about ourselves and our values .I enjoy comparing baseball and football:Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park!
Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything’s dying.

In football you wear a helmet.
In baseball you wear a cap.

Football is concerned with downs – what down is it?
Baseball is concerned with ups – who’s up?

In football you receive a penalty.
In baseball you make an error.

In football the specialist comes in to kick.
In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.

Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness.
Baseball has the sacrifice.

Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog…
In baseball, if it rains, we don’t go out to play.

Baseball has the seventh inning stretch.
Football has the two minute warning.

Baseball has no time limit: we don’t know when it’s gonna end – might have extra innings.
Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we’ve got to go to sudden death.

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there’s kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there’s not too much unpleasantness.
In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you’re capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:

In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy’s defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! – I hope I’ll be safe at home!

Tags:Baseball Almanac, Baseball and Football, George Carlin
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