The Pecan Park Eagle

Lefty Gomez was one of the brightest, funniest characters to ever help invent the game of baseball. We could use more people like him today.

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Unlike the mass coming together moments in football and basketball, where it is often not possible, especially for the untrained observer fans, to see what is going on individually in the crowd, baseball probably makes it easier for all to see “who done it” on both sides of the great plays and errors in the field.

Although, even in baseball – what we see often is not the whole story – even in the painful case of Bill Buckner‘s croquet-wicket moment in the 1986 World Series. It soon came out after the historic misplay that the fall guy Buckner was playing with a leg injury that could limit his mobility on the playing of ground balls – and that this information was arguably known by his Boston Red Sox manager, John McNamara. If that were the case, who was to blame for Buckner even being in the game at that critical moment in the World Series?

We find the story of Lefty Gomez’s answer to that job interview question (“Why did you leave that employment [of ‘pitching baseball’] to be extremely honest and refreshing. He quit, Gomez says, because he “couldn’t get the other side out.”

Now Gomez was ready to try something else.

That’s the baseball life for pitchers. If you can’t get anybody out, you gotta quit and do something else. Don’t go to some other club and try to smoke-and-mirrors the truth into a lie for the same kind of job elsewhere. Don’t do it, unless you’re one of those guys who just needs the door slammed hard in your ace before you ever try it again. Don’t do it, especially, if you do already know what they are going to find out after you pitch only a few innings to a few batters. It’s not worth the insanity and waste of everyone’s time.

Can you imagine a down-and-out car salesman answering those same questions that were first put to Lefty Gomez in another car sales job interview at the local Ford dealer in the following way – about why he quit his job at the Volvo dealer?

“I couldn’t sell Volvos to Swedish-American customers if my life depended upon it!”

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FOOTNOTE: Another “Hail and Thank You” again to Aunt Minnie’s Scrapbook” by A.K. (“Rosey”) Rowswell. Today’s excerpt features a big reason we love sports, and for many of us, baseball in particular.

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 Bill McCurdy

Publisher, Editor, Writer

The Pecan Park Eagle

Houston, Texas