Recalling the Death of Tim Crews and Steve Olin in 1993 Spring Training

A few years ago I looked back at the Cleveland Indians’ speedboat wreck in Florida on March 22, 1993, that killed Steve Olin and Tim Crews, and nearly killed Bob Ojeda. The 20th anniversary of the tragedy is this week. If any in the Seamheads audience remember the tragedy and your reaction to it, I’d [...]

Taking a Look at Rick Reuschel

A few days ago I saw an article on High Heat Stats making one sabermetric case for Rick Reuschel as a viable Hall of Famer. So, I revisited a post I’d done on Reuschel a few years ago, and here is a reworking of the post. In July 1985, Sports Illustrated wrote: When the Yankees [...]

Thoughts on the 1950 Movie, The Jackie Robinson Story

I recently happened to catch some of Jackie Robinson playing himself in The Jackie Robinson Story, a 1950 movie that, from what I saw, spends most of its 77 minutes showing Jackie signing with the Dodgers and beginning his career with the team, first in spring training, with their Montreal Royals farm team, and then [...]

Eleven Standouts in the Career Sub-70 Home Run Ranks

This set of 11 retired players who were active after the dead ball era ended is not exactly a sequel to my earlier list of players with under 400 career homers, but it works on the similar idea that less is more for some hitters. It enforces Mark McGwire’s 70-homer season in ’98 as the [...]

Some of the Best Players After the Dead Ball Era With Under 400 Career Homers

The players who are in the 500-home run club used to be guaranteed a place in the Hall of Fame. The offensive boom of the last two decades cheapened membership some, but they’re still guaranteed either fame or notoriety, and sometimes both. This list of retired players who hit mostly or entirely after the dead [...]

A Glimpse of Eddie Mathews in 1989

In a 1991 book called Stolen Season, journalist David Lamb describes his solo journey by RV through the U.S. on a tour of the minor leagues in 1989. Lamb, a devoted fan of the Milwaukee Braves in the late ’50s as a boy in Boston, which the Braves had left a few years earlier, caught [...]

Which MLB franchise do you most respect?

By most respect, I don’t mean the franchise you most want to win, or the one with the most wins and losses, or the one with the most World Series titles, but the franchise that you think is the best overall model for the other 29 franchises to follow. Maybe you respect the Yankees, not [...]

April 20, 1912: The First Game at Fenway Park

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park, here is a look at how the Boston Globe of April 21, 1912 described the first game at Fenway, played the day previously. Of course it was a Red Sox-Yankees affair, with perhaps Boston’s best team ever winning 7-6 on a run in the 11th. (The Yankees, [...]

Thinking About Jamie Moyer at 49

Jamie Moyer is old enough to have helped prompt the Chicago Cubs to trade Dennis Eckersley to the Oakland A’s in the spring of 1987, when Moyer was a rising prospect displacing Eckersley as a starter, and to have been traded along with Rafael Palmeiro to the Texas Rangers for Mitch Williams before the 1989 [...]

A Best Of Collection of Favorite Obscure Baseball Players

A year ago I started a project on my blog of asking people to name their favorite obscure baseball figure from the past: not exclusively players, but anyone employed by the game. The volume of responses (many came from the now-defunct Baseball-Reference blog) surprised me, and led me to start the project up again this [...]

Talking About the Dynamics and Emotions of Spring Training With Jack Perconte

The surface rituals of spring training are well known to fans, but camp presents unique challenges to players whether they’re established starters, prospects or trying to make sure they hold onto their big league jobs. Baseball instructor Jack Perconte, who now coaches players privately in Illinois, was in spring training most years in the ’80s, [...]

How Would You Reconstruct MLB From Scratch?

Here’s a hypothetical question: If you could restart MLB from scratch, how many teams would you have, and where would you put them? I mean, would you maintain all 30 teams, in each of the 30 places they currently call home, or would you construct a 28-team league, a 26-team league, a 32-team league? Would [...]

Picking Your Favorite Obscure Baseball Figure

Last year I started a project on my blog of asking fans to send in their picks for their favorite obscure baseball figure from the past. As the word “figure” indicates, the person didn’t have to be a player; it can be anyone employed within the game itself, by a team or by a league, [...]

The Birth of the Cool Papa Bell Legend

Here is Buck Leonard, about five years before he died, relating to Wilt Browning of the Greensboro News & Record the story of the birth of the legend that Cool Papa Bell was fast enough to turn out the light and get in bed before the room got dark: “Cool and I roomed together for [...]

Looking Back at Alex Rodriguez, the Young Seattle Mariner: 1993 Through 1995

I recently looked through the news archives for information about Alex Rodriguez’s introduction to Seattle as a 1993 draftee from Miami, then as a minor leaguer, a rookie in 1994, and a backup in 1995, to see what foreshadowings of his future controversies and successes were present when he was still a teenager. Rodriguez’s seasonal [...]

Gambling on the 1917 White Sox-Giants World Series

The recent New York Times article about speculation that the Cubs threw the 1918 World Series to the Red Sox brings up the broader issue of how deeply major league baseball was corrupted by gambling and a money culture in the 1910s. A while ago I looked up how the Chicago Tribune covered the end [...]

“Pitchers of Beer: The Story of the Seattle Rainiers” by Dan Raley

WELL-DONE HISTORY OF BYGONE SEATTLE BASEBALL ERA As someone who used to literally sit at my grandfather’s knee listening to his stories of the old Seattle Rainiers and the Pacific Coast League, I became quite familiar with names of people who built baseball in Seattle in the years from 1938 onward.  Grandpa was the head [...]

Rob Nelson on the Future (and Could-Have Been Past) of Pro Baseball in Portland

I recently talked with Rob Nelson, the co-creator of Big League Chew shredded bubble gum, Portland Mavericks pitcher (and pitching coach) in the mid-1970s, and all-around fixture of Portland’s baseball scene. Our conversation centered on Big League Chew and the Mavs, but we also eventually got around to the plight of pro baseball in Portland [...]

The Status of the Sendai-Based Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of Nippon Professional Baseball

Here’s some of a story from the Daily Yomiuri on what’s happening with the Eagles following the massive damage to Sendai and the rest of Miyagi Prefecture in Friday’s earthquake and tsunami: After holding meetings on Sunday morning at their hotel, the Eagles held a somber workout at the Yomiuri Giants’ minor league facility in [...]

A Composite Portrait of Barry Bonds Before He Reached the Majors

These items are pulled together from various articles in newspapers from 1974 to early 1986. They’re presented here to shed some light on Bonds’ early personality and the talent and power he displayed before reaching the majors, many years before the steroids talk began. In 1974, Barry Bonds’ father, Bobby, left the Giants for the [...]

Part II of the Rob Nelson Interview: Playing for the Portland Mavericks, a Game Called Boku, Et Cetera

I earlier posted the portion of my talk with Rob Nelson in which he talks about co-creating Big League Chew and his 30 years managing one of the legendary bubble gums. In this part, Rob Nelson describes how he came to be a Portland Maverick, what it was like to be on the team, and [...]

Talking With Rob Nelson About Big League Chew

The story of the creation of Big League Chew in the Portland Mavericks’ bullpen in 1977 is told in shorthand on the back of every package of “the ballplayers’ bubble gum,” and Rob Nelson, the co-creator, along with Jim Bouton, has told the longhand story on a few occasions. I talked with Nelson recently about [...]

Some Background Information About the Mookie Wilson Grounder to Bill Buckner in October 1986

We all know about Buckner and game 6 of the 1986 World Series. But on October 14, 1986, a profile of Buckner by Ross Newhan noted that in 1985 he had “set a big league record for assists by a first baseman with 184.” But, Newhan also noted the long-term impact from “April 18, 1975, [...]

One Short Argument for the Hall of Fame Candidacy of Designated Hitters

The debate over whether Edgar Martinez should be a Hall of Famer has typically swung on the question of the value of a designated hitter, and whether Martinez’s level of offensive production outweighs the loss of value from him not being available to play defense for the majority of his career. A point in the [...]

Bob Feller, Phil Cavarretta, and the End of the Pre-World War II Generation of Major Leaguers

Earlier this year I used Wikipedia’s list of former major league players age 90 and up to put together an all-star lineup of such players. In the following half year, Bob Feller, Ralph Houk, Phil Cavarretta, and George Binks have all left that lineup. Feller and Houk were both well known for their time serving [...]

Bob Feller in His Own Words

A few months ago I went through newspaper archives from the past 30 years or so to gather up some of Bob Feller’s remarks on his life, his baseball career, and many other topics. Feller was one of the last surviving stars who’d played major league baseball before the U.S. entered World War II. Besides [...]

Thinking About Jamie Moyer at 48

Jamie Moyer is old enough to have helped prompt the Chicago Cubs to trade Dennis Eckersley to the Oakland A’s in the spring of 1987, when Moyer was a rising prospect displacing Eckersley as a starter, and to have been traded along with Rafael Palmeiro to the Texas Rangers for Mitch Williams before the 1989 [...]

Noticing a Few Similarities Between Ken Griffey Jr. and Willie Mays

Ken Griffey Jr. turns 41 tomorrow, November 21. I recently read through the authorized Willie Mays biography by James S. Hirsch, and although I’d known of a few loose analogies between the careers of Griffey and Mays, I was struck by the sense that the two great center fielders had several key points in common, [...]

Vada Pinson and the Question of Character and the Hall of Fame

About a year ago, while looking for something else, I came across a couple newspaper articles on the death of Vada Pinson on October 21, 1995. I’d heard of Pinson, vaguely, as one of the best center fielders of the 1960s, for a long time the man with the most hits (2757) who wasn’t in [...]

Scenes and Quotes From San Francisco and the Giants Clubhouse After Winning the 1962 Playoff

A while ago I hunted down the San Francisco Chronicle from the day after the Giants beat the Dodgers to win the 1962 N.L. pennant. It’s been overlooked by the World Series that followed, but the race was a thriller that nearly matched 1951′s, and was the start of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry in California. To [...]

Remember the Northwest League Seattle Rainiers, 1972-1976?

A couple months ago I saw a comment on a post I’d done about the infamous Portland Mavericks. I came to learn that the commenter, Bruce Baskin, remembered the Mavs because he’d grown up cheering on the Seattle Rainiers, the Mavs’ counterpart in the Northwest League, playing from 1972 through 1976. Bruce acknowledged that “people didn’t [...]

Talking With Jack Perconte About Comiskey Park, Municipal Stadium, and the Kingdome

Last year I looked up the story of the first game at the original Comiskey Park on July 1, 1910. Months later I talked with Jack Perconte about his time playing for the Mariners in the mid-’80s to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Kingdome’s implosion this March. I realized that Jack closed his career [...]

An All-Star Team of ex-Major Leaguers in Their 90s

A recent quick visit to Wikipedia produced a list of the ex-major leaguers who are 90 and up, and from there it was an easy process to put together an All-Star lineup for these guys, practically all of whom starred in the ’40s. I’m offering it for consideration and debate: Catcher: Mike Sandlock, who spent [...]

Babe Ruth Talking About His Called Shot

Some time ago I picked up an early ’90 vhs of classic baseball plays, and partway through, there was Babe Ruth, hitting and then talking about his called shot in the 1932 World Series vs. the Cubs. The less-than-perfect audio (with music in the background) is on Archive.org. I’ve written out the most relevant part of what [...]

The Rapid Emergence of Stephen Strasburg in 2007

Last year, after I looked up some stories about Dwight Gooden as a teenage phenom, I started wondering about Stephen Strasburg’s early pitching performance. Was he touted as a future star in high school before graduating in 2006? The answer’s no. The San Diego Union-Tribune hardly mentioned Strasburg when he was at West Hills High [...]

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