Category Archives: Baseball

Joe DiMaggio’s Comeback 1949

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The Yankee Clipper Gets Ready To Return To Play – June 21, 1949

Many who saw Joe DiMaggio play say he was the greatest all-around ballplayer who ever lived. Everything he did seemed effortless. Of course this is a huge exaggeration. Everything DiMaggio did so well required practice, patience and hard work.

When DiMaggio missed the first three months of the 1949 baseball season with a painful heel injury, many fans, players and sportswriters thought he might never play again.

So it was hush-hush when DiMaggio went to an empty Yankee Stadium to test out his heel in a full workout on June 21, 1949.

Things went well and DiMaggio returned to the Yankee line-up on June 28, 1949 at Fenway Park against the Red Sox to start a three game series. He hit a homerun in the first game which the Yankees won by a score of 5-4. The Yankees swept the series and when DiMaggio left Boston, he had hit four homeruns and driven in nine runs.

The impact of his return cannot be understated. In the 76 games DiMaggio played for the remainder of the year, he batted .346, hit 14 homeruns and drove in 67 runs. His on base percentage was the highest of his career, .459. In 329 plate appearances he struck out only 18 times.

The Yankees ended up edging the Red Sox by one game in the final season standings, propelling the Yankees into the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

DiMaggio would go on to have the worst World Series performance in his storied career, batting just .111. But the Yankees still defeated the Dodgers four games to one, starting their stretch of winning five World Championships in a row.

The No-hitter, Break-up King

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Cesar Tovar

Pitchers who come close to baseball immortality by throwing a one-hitter will always remember the batter who broke up their no-hitter.

Of all the players who have played big league baseball, you’d think some great or pesky contact hitter like Pete Rose, Ty Cobb, Joe Sewell or Lloyd Waner would hold the record for getting the only hit in a game that otherwise would have been a no-hitter.

But the man who set the record for having the only hit in a game, that ended up being a one-hitter is Cesar Tovar.

Tovar, a .278 career hitter, who played from 1965-1976 spoiled five no-hitters, a record now shared with Eddie Milner.

Tovar got the only hit of the game off of:

  1. Barry Moore of the Washington Senators (April 30, 1967)
  2. Dave McNally of the Baltimore Orioles (May 15, 1969)
  3. Mike Cuellar  of the Baltimore Orioles (August 10, 1969)
  4. Dick Bosman of the Washington Senators (August 13, 1970)
  5. Jim “Catfish” Hunter of the Oakland Athletics (May 31, 1975)

The first four times, Tovar was playing for the Minnesota Twins.  The last time versus Hunter, he was with the Texas Rangers. Tovar’s hits against McNally and Cuellar came in the ninth inning.

Tovar is also one of four players to play all nine positions in one major league game.

Cesar Tovar died at the age of 54 on July 14, 1994.

Babe Ruth’s 1920 Uniform Sells For $4.4 Million At Auction

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Babe Ruth, King Of The Sports Memorabilia World

Nearly sixty-four years after his death, Babe Ruth set another record on Sunday May 20, 2012 . His circa 1920 Yankees road jersey sold at SCP auctions for a staggering $4.4 million.

Photo © SCP auctions

This eclipses the previous highest amount paid for a piece of sports memorabilia, a Honus Wagner baseball card, which sold in 2008 for $2.8 million.

To put the amount of the sale price in some perspective, Babe Ruth earned approximately $910,000 during his entire major league baseball playing career from 1914 -1935. This of course does not account for inflation. In modern dollars with inflation Ruth would have earned $15.3 million.

Also Ruth made vast amounts of money during the off-season, barnstorming and doing various product endorsements and personal appearances.

How would Ruth have felt about his uniform selling for more than he made his entire career? I’d like to think Ruth would have had a good laugh at that fact.

Babe Ruth, second from left, with his Yankee teammates, early 1920’s

Here is a photograph of Babe Ruth early in his New York Yankee career during spring training, possibly wearing the multi-million dollar uniform.

On a side note

The Kansas City Royals defeated the New York Yankees last night, May 21 at Yankee Stadium by a score of 6-0.  What made me notice this otherwise unremarkable game was what the New York Times said today in the sports section:

But the clutch-hitting woes of the Yankees — not just their wheezing All-Star first baseman — remained for another game, a 6-0 loss to the Kansas City Royals in front of 39,229 fans.

Anyone attending or watching the game on television knows the announced attendance of 39,229 was a joke. Looking at the mostly empty stadium, there were probably no more than 8,000 people attending the dreary game, which was played under a constant, steady rain.

The idea that baseball attendance is counted not by clicks of the turnstile, but by tickets sold is ridiculous. It’s another slight problem in a laundry list of things that MLB should address before baseball becomes completely irrelevant.

Bill Moose Skowron Dies at 81 – An Appreciation of a Kind Man

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Casey Stengel and Bill “Moose” Skowron

Bill “Moose” Skowron died today, April 27, 2012 of congestive heart failure in Arligton Heights, IL.

In this news photograph above, the caption says, “Bill Moose Skowron reports for his first day, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, September 19.”

The only problem with this is that Moose’s first game was April 13, 1954 and it was not at Comiskey Park.  And the Yankees did not play in Chicago on September 19, 1954.

So what is the answer to this problem? Continue reading →

Walter Alston Managing

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Dodgers Manager Goes Through Various Emotions – 1955

2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the Los Angeles Dodgers playing at Dodgers Stadium. For the first fifteen of those years at Chavez Ravine, the manager was Walter Alston who was most notably retained by the Dodgers management on a series of one year contracts throughout his career.

Alston started managing the Dodgers in 1954 when they were still in Brooklyn and retired after the 1976 season at the age of  64. During that time Alston won seven NL pennants and four world championships.

This news composite photograph shows Alston managing on June 16, 1955 in Brooklyn against the Cincinnati Reds. Alston shouldn’t have worried so much. After the Reds tied the game 4-4 in the top of the ninth, the Dodgers won the game 5-4 in the bottom of the 9th on a Duke Snider solo homerun, his second homer of the game. Clem Labine picked up his 9th win and the attendance was 6,655.

The Brooklyn Dodgers won only one World Series while in Brooklyn.  1955 would see Alston and the Dodgers defeat the hated New York Yankees in seven thrilling World Series games, sending all of Brooklyn into a delirious state of happiness.

Walter Alston was inducted to the Baseball Hall-of Fame in 1983 and died in 1984 at the age of 72.

When Ballplayers Spent Time With The Fans

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Bobby Thomson and A Young Fan

Sure it’s just a posed publicity photo, but there was a time when ballplayers actually did interact with fans.  At the New York Giants’ spring training home in Phoenix, Arizona,  Bobby Thomson demonstrates to a little cowboy, Dennis Filan age five, the proper way to grip a baseball bat on March 6, 1953.

Thomson, who will forever occupy a spot in every Giants fans heart for hitting the most famous homerun in baseball history the  “shot heard ’round the world” in 1951, was typical of  many ballplayers before astronomical salaries became the norm for baseball.  These players spent time among the fans.

Not only that, most players worked other jobs in the off-season to make ends meet. They lived among regular people, who went to the ballgames and had daily interactions with them. In New York and many other major league cities, most players took public transportation or walked to the ballpark from their homes. The players were an integral part of the community they played in.

It’s one of the reasons baseball is so screwed up today. Continue reading →

The New York Mets 50th Anniversary: A Look Back At Casey Stengel

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Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?

Casey Stengel photo © Niels Lauritzen

Writer Jimmy Breslin claimed that “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game,” was Casey Stengel’s lament during Casey’s first year managing the Mets in 1962. Breslin later admitted he made up the quote. But it would have been an apropos summation of the Mets first season. Continue reading →

Yankees Spring Training 1963

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Mickey Mantle Bunting

The opening of the 2012 baseball season is only weeks away. It is a time to practice skills that may be needed during the regular season.

In this photograph from 1963, Mickey Mantle is attempting to bunt against the Cincinnati Reds in a spring training game. Mantle would bunt frequently during the early years of his career, many times to try and beat it out. But as his knees went through wear and tear, he would rarely attempt to bunt for hits in the 1960’s. So a spring training game was a good time to get in some bunting practice.

Here he appears to miss the drag bunt as Elston Howard watches from the on-deck circle.  The Yankees lost this game 4-2.

Marty Springstead Demonstrates How To Eject A Manager

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Marty Springstead, Former American League Umpire, Dies At 74 (January 17, 2012)

Major league baseball umpires are beloved by their families and friends, but are generally not appreciated by the fans. When longtime umpire Marty Springstead died after suffering a heart attack on January 17th in Sarasota Florida, I felt sad that one of the more memorable baseball names that I heard throughout my childhood was gone. As a fan, I appreciated Marty Springstead’s umpiring skills  and not just because he would consistently eject Orioles manager and longtime Yankee nemesis Earl Weaver from ballgames during the 1970’s and 1980’s, but because he was from the old school of umpiring and was not flamboyant.

Springstead umpired in the American League from 1966-1985. He went on to become an executive and supervisor of umpires from 1986-2009. He worked in three All-Star Games and three World Series. He also got to be behind the plate for two no-hitters, but missed the chance for a third. He would have been calling balls and strikes on June 1, 1975 when Nolan Ryan pitched his fourth no-hitter, but he took off to be with his wife who was having a baby.  People who knew Springstead said Marty was funny and a great storyteller.

But managers who got under his skin would not see that side of him while he was on the field. Springstead was a very good umpire who took his job seriously and didn’t take flak from players, coaches or managers.  Twice during his career Springstead led the league in manager ejections.

I was among the 10,670 long suffering Yankee fans who attended the ballgame shown in the photo below.

At Yankee Stadium on Saturday, August 26, 1972, the Kansas City Royals had already scored two unearned runs in the third inning, and were leading two to one. There were two outs and Yankees pitcher Rob Gardner had a 1-2 count on Kansas City Royals slugger John Mayberry with two men on base. It looked like Gardner would get out of the inning. Continue reading →

Classic Hollywood #10 – Gary Cooper & Babe Ruth

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Babe Ruth Shows Gary Cooper The Finer Points of Gripping A Baseball Bat

In the 1942 film The Pride of The Yankees which tells the life story of Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth took his role of playing himself very seriously.  He also wanted to make sure Gary Cooper got it right as well.

Babe shows Cooper where the trademark should be when holding a bat so it won’t shatter should he make contact. Continue reading →