Dr. Harvey Frommer On Sports

Harvey Frommer Reviews: Duke vs. Kentucky, Hack Wilson, Summer of '68 & More

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 15:37:00 +0000

Who would have thought about it? The Irish and their impact on the national pastime? I did in my book Old Time Baseball. Now along comes The Emerald Diamond by Charley Rosen (Harper, $25.99, 305 pages). Its subtitle says it all: "How The Irish Transformed America's Greatest Pastime."

Rosen, known for his writings about the NBA, is in top form here dishing out data and passing out anecdotes about many of the known and under-publicized facts and factoids as well as another area of important Irish contributions in sports.

The Last Great Game: Duke vs. Kentucky and the 2.1 Seconds that Changed Basketball by Gene Wojciechowski (Blue Rider Press, $26.95) is a riveting inside look at the legendary game in 1992. The gang's all here and we can all enjoy the flashbacked, riveting read and the talented writing of Gene Wojciechowski. Especially for college hoop fans.

Hack's 191 by Bill Chastain (Globe Pequot Press, $24.95) is a look back to the epic 1930 season of slugger Hack Wilson and his Chicago Cubs team. A good friend of Al Capone, an imbiber of booze and good times, Wilson was one of baseball's most colorful all-time characters. The "Hacker" comes to life in this splendid book, as does his day-by-day RBI record exploding to a still-unbroken 191.

Wheels of Change by Sue Macy (National Geographic, $18.95, only 98 pages) is a slim volume that packs a lot of charm and content. It offers the point of view that before the bicycle in the 1880s, the lives of women were restricted. With "wheels," women became emancipated. They set records cycling and explored the world. Page after page of archival images and apt observations make this tome terrific--HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Tim Wendel's Summer of '68 (DaCapo ($25.00, 272 pages), like the Hack Wilson book and many others, is a look back at one specific baseball season and the events in the culture surrounding it. The year was one of tragedy, broken dreams, horrible events and turning points--rioting in major American cities, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. It was also the "Year of the Pitcher" (Tiant, Gibson, Drysdale, McLain and others). The times today are fraught with peril. Back then, things were even worse, but baseball was a constant support for many. Full disclosure: As the author of Remembering Fenway Park: An Oral and Narrative History of the Home of the Boston Red Sox, I was looking ahead to read Richard A. Johnson's Field of Our Fathers (Triumph, $35.00, 288 pages). It does not disappoint. Whereas my book focuses only on baseball at Fenway, the Johnson tome includes non-baseball events. I leaned heavily on oral history with 140 individuals telling the story of the oldest MLB park. Johnson features clippings, ephemera and mini essays from folks such as Bob Ryan and Glenn Stout.

Wilt, 1962 by Gary M. Pomerantz (Three Rivers Press, $16.00, 267 pages) is a slim tome that slam dunks the story of the much misunderstood and unappreciated Wilt Chamberlain.

BOSOX TRIVIA

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 02:04:00 +0000

TRIVIA

Beginnings of Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park 100 Years Ago

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:31:00 +0000

All kinds of hype and hoopla and ballyhoo will take place this year n the Boston area. The 100th anniversary of the birth of Fenway Park is upon us, whether we are fans of the team or not.

So, let us now celebrate with a flashback to the beginnings at that little ballpark in Beantown.

It was damp and chilly throughout New England for most of the spring of 1912, and in Boston, it took a few attempts before baseball could be played in decent weather.

On April 9, the Red Sox and Harvard's baseball team met in an exhibition game in football weather “with a little snow on the side.” About 3,000 braved it. Boston won, 2-0. Both runs were driven in by their pitcher, Casey Hageman.

The scheduled official Opening Day match on April 12, however, was rained out. Finally on April 20, the weather improved; Fenway's first big league contest: the Sox versus the Yankees (then known as the Highlanders), was on tap on soggy, lumpy grounds and infield grass transplanted from the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds, the team’s former home.

Boston Mayor John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald threw out the ceremonial first ball. The man, whose grandson would become the thirty-fifth president of the United States, was a devoted member of the "Royal Rooters"—a group of Red Sox fans who staged pre-game parades accompanied by the singing of "Tessie" and "Sweet Adeline."

Ordinarily the game would have been the stuff of front-page headlines in New England dailies. But this was no ordinary time. Six days earlier the sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage and the accompanying loss of 1,517 lives eclipsed all other stories.

Nevertheless, it was good news in Boston that the Red Sox finally had a modern ballpark in the Fenway section bordering Brookline Avenue, Jersey Street, Van Ness Street and Lansdowne Street. It would cost $650,000 (approximately $14 million today), and seat 35,000.

An attractive red brick façade, the first electric baseball scoreboard and 18 turnstiles, the most in the majors, were all features being bragged about. Concrete stands went from behind first base around to third; wooden bleachers occupied parts of the outfield. Seats lined the field allowing for excellent views of the game but limiting the size of foul territory. The park was 20 feet above sea level. Barriers and walls broke off at different angles. Center field was 488 feet from home plate; right field was 314 feet away. The 10-foot wooden fence in left field ran straight along Lansdowne Street and was but 320 ½ feet down the line from home plate with a high wall behind it. There was a ten-foot embankment making viewing of games easier for overflow gatherings. A ten-foot high slope in left field posed challenges for outfielders forced to play the entire territory running uphill.

This was the Opening Day Lineup for the 1912 Boston Red Sox.

Harry Hooper	RF
Steve Yerkes	2B
Tris Speaker	CF
Jake Stahl	1B
Larry Gardner	3B
Duffy Lewis	LF
Heinie Wagner	SS
Les Nunamaker	C
Smoky Joe Wood	P

The Sox, with player-manager first baseman Jake Stahl calling the shots, nipped the Yankees, 7-6, in 11 innings. Tris Speaker—who would bat .383, steal 52 bases and stroke eight inside-the-park home runs at Fenway—drove in the winning run. Spitball pitcher Bucky O’Brien got the win in relief of Charles “Sea Lion” Hall. Umpire Tommy Connolly kept the ball used in that historic game, writing “Opening of Fenway Park” and brief details of the game on it.

Hugh Bradley hit the first home run in Red Sox history over the wall on April 26 in the sixth game played at home. “Few of the fans who have been out to Fenway Park believed it was possible,'' the Boston Herald noted. It was not possible the rest of the season—that was Bradley’s only dinger in 1912.

Joe Cashman, long time sportswriter in Boston, liked the “Golden Outfield” of Tris Speaker, Harry Hooper and Duffy Lewis. Hooper wore the first sunglasses used in baseball, bought from Lloyds of Boston.

“Outfielders never played near the wall in those days,” Cashman noted. There was no one Tris Speaker’s equal going back for a ball. He was almost like a fifth outfielder. A base runner on second base would check out the shortstop and second baseman. Tris Speaker would sneak in from center field and pick him off.

BOX

S is for Speaker,
Swift center-field tender,
When the ball saw him coming,
It yelled, "I surrender."

OGDEN NASH, SPORT MAGAZINE, JANUARY 1949

Hooper played in a tough right field, worst in the majors. Left fielder Duffy Lewis never bounced the ball to the infield. Lewis skillfully managed the incline named for him—"Duffy's Cliff."

Before an overflow crowd on May 17, 1912 Fenway Park was formally dedicated, but the home town fans had their day spoiled as the White Sox trimmed the Red Sox, 5-2.

Hall of Fame-hurler-to-be Walter Johnson, on a 16-game winning streak and en route to a 33-win season, was in Boston with his Washington teammates on Sept. 6, 1912. Clark Griffith, the Washington manager said that Red Sox ace “Smoky” Joe Wood would be a coward if he did not face Johnson. No coward was Wood—he was ready on short rest. A 22-year-old from the Kansas plains and the mining towns of Colorado, Wood—it was said—could throw a baseball through a two-by-four.

The Wood-Johnson match up was one of the most dramatic of all time by two top of the tier hurlers. Built up like a championship boxing match in the newspapers, hype and hullabaloo preceded it.

An estimated 30,000 showed for the battle of the superstar pitchers. It was the first and only time fans were allowed to ring Fenway’s infield walls.

“The playing field,” wrote sportswriter Manville E. Webb, Jr., “was surrounded by a triple, even quadruple, rank of humanity, at least 3,000 on the embankment. So thickly were the spectators massed, and so impossible was it for the squadron of police to keep them back, that the players’ pits [dugouts] were abandoned, the contestants bringing their war clubs out almost to the baselines.”

Possessor of a 13-game winning streak, Wood gave up six hits. Johnson allowed five. But the “Big Train,” as he was called, yielded a sixth-inning, two-out ground-rule double to Tris Speaker. Duffy Lewis flared a ball to right that skipped off the glove of the Senators’ right fielder. Speaker scored. Wood won his 14^th straight.

Business in Boston virtually shut down on Sept. 23 as 100‚000 cheered the Red Sox returning from a western trip by train into South Station. So popular and so successful were the Sox that on the Boston Common, Mayor “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald gave the team the keys to the city.

Boston posted its second best home record in history, 57-20, a .740 winning percentage and copped the American League pennant. The Giants of New York would compete against them in the World Series.

The Boston Royal Rooters, Red Sox fanatics , traditionally paraded on the field before games in step with the rhythms of a big brass band. Now, on the eve of Game One of the World Series, having traveled down to New York City, hundreds of them accompanied by two brass bands and led by Mayor Fitzgerald and by “leading man” "Nuff Ced" McGreevey, they marched around Times Square in Manhattan, singing to the tune of Tammany:

Carrigan, Carrigan,

Speaker, Lewis, Wood, and Stahl,

Bradley, English, Pape, and Hall,

Wagner, Gardner, Hooper, too;’

Hit them! Hit them! Hit them! Hit them!

Do boys, do.

The word in the street was that if John J. McGraw’s Giants could beat Joe Wood, they could win the series. Before the opening game, Wood received death threats in letters postmarked "New York." One, written in red ink and containing a drawing of a knife and gun, proclaimed: “You will never live to pitch a game against the Giants in the World Series. We are waiting to get you as soon as you arrive in town.”

But the 22-year-old right-hander who threw “smoke” was not the type to be intimidated. Pitching and prevailing, 4-3, in Game One at the Polo Grounds going the distance, striking out eleven Giants, Wood stood up to all challenges. After the game, he said: "I threw so hard I thought my arm would fly right off my body."

The Royal Rooters followed the team to the Polo Grounds and back to Fenway Park as the series alternated between both venues, singing such songs as “Tessie” and “When I Get You Alone Tonight," angering Giant fans and charming Red Sox partisans.

But on October 15th, as the Royal Rooters prepared to take their seats at Fenway for the seventh game of the World Series, they discovered their usual accommodations had been sold out from under them, a consequence of some box office confusion. Ignoring pleas that they leave the ballpark, their bands blaring “Tessie,” they remained in place until their “stay-in” was resolved by ranks of mounted police who swept across the field, nudging them out of the park. One Royal Rooter, as disoriented as he was disenchanted, tumbled over the right-field fence on his way out and bellowed "To hell with Queen Victoria!"

The “Rooters” fumed and postured outside the park until they were presented with a compromise: view the game from along the left field foul line.

Winner of Games One and Four, Wood was on the mound for Game Seven. Seven of the first nine Giants in the first inning reached base—six of them scored. The Giants romped, 11-4, knotting the series at three games each, one tie.

Game Eight was for the world championship—October 16 at Fenway Park. The Red Sox won the coin flip and were awarded the home field advantage. The riveting finale of the 1912 World Series would be played before a half-capacity crowd as a result of it being scheduled at the last minute as a makeup due to the Game Two tie, as well as the game-fixing rumors that swirled about and the Royal Rooters' rhubarb.

Ace Christy Mathewson of the Giants, winless in this Series, after going the distance in the tie game and dropping Game Five, matched up against Boston’s 22-year-old Hughie Bedient. The game was 1-1- after nine tense innings. Wood took over in the eighth for Bedient.

In the top of the tenth New York scored a run. Boston pinch-hitter Clyde Engle started the 10th inning off hitting a routine fly ball to center field.

"And now the ball settles,” The New York Times reported. “It is full and fair in the pouch of the padded glove of [Fred] Snodgrass. But he is too eager to toss it to Murray and it dribbles to the ground."

Engle reached second base. Harry Hooper was robbed of a hit when Snodgrass made a neat grab of his long drive. Engle moved to third base. Yerkes walked. Speaker singled. Engle scored. The game was tied. Duffy Lewis was walked intentionally, loading the bases. A long poke by Larry Gardner to Josh Devore in right field. Yerkes tagged up and scored.

And the Red Sox had their second world championship. Fred Snodgrass' error would go down in history as "the $30,000 muff."

And Fenway Park was off to a glorious start.

New York Yankees: (Sort Of) Ultimate Quiz for Diehard Fans II

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:31:00 +0000

Some complained the Quiz I was too easy. Others said it was too difficult. Hopefully, Quiz II is just right. For all of you out there who think you know your baseball—especially New York Yankees baseball—this is the quiz for you.

Eighteen questions. Answers follow the questions, so no peeking. A score of nine or more correct makes you a major leaguer. Below that you are in the minors but on your way up.

Have fun.

QUESTIONS

1. What uniform number was retired by the Yankees to honor a player who never was on the team?

A. Jackie Robinson B. Bob Feller C. Dom DiMaggio D. Pee Wee Reese

2. Who remains the only Yankee to hit four home runs in one game?

A. Lou Gehrig B. Reggie Jackson C. Babe Ruth D.Yogi Berra

3. When Babe Ruth retired in 1935 with 714 home runs, only two other players had hit 300 home runs. Who were they? Hint: One played for the Yankees, the other mostly for the St. Louis Cardinals.

4. Who was the last batter Don Larsen faced in the Perfect Game he pitched for the Yankees?

5. Who played the most games for the New York Yankees?

A .Wee Willie Keeler B. Mickey Mantle. C. Joe DiMaggio D. Lou Gehrig

6. Name the four managers who have piloted both the Yankees and the New York Mets

7. In 1977, who nick-named Reggie Jackson "Mr. October"?

A. Willie Randolph B. Thurman Munson C. Goose Gossage D. Mickey Rivers

8. What major league team did Joe Girardi manage before the Yankees?

9. Who was nick-named "Chairman of the Board"?

A. Whitey Ford B. Reggie Jackson C. Yogi Berra D. Frank Howard

10. Where do the Yankees train in the spring?

11. Who is the current Yankee Captain?

12. Who did George Steinbrenner purchase the Yankees from?

13. Who is Mr. Sandman?

14. Who made up the "Core Four"?

16 Who said "Yankee Stadium was a mistake, not mine, but the Giants.”

A. Yogi Berra B. Harry Frazee C. Jake Ruppert D. Babe Ruth

17. When was Yankee Stadium's first World Series game played?

A. 1927 B. 1924 C. 1923 D. 1922

18. What Yankee became the first idol of Japanese fans?

A. Babe Ruth B. Lou Gehrig C. Earl Coombs D. Jake Ruppert

ANSWERS

1. (A) Jackie Robinson, #42, the number was retired on April 15, 1997 on the 50th anniversary of the breaking of baseball's color line. Mariano Rivera is the last Yankee to wear the number.

2. (A) Lou Gehrig

3. Lou Gehrig, 378; Rogers Hornsby, 300.

4. Dale Mitchell

5. Mickey Mantle played more games for the Yankees than any other player, with 2401.

6. Yogi Berra, Casey Stengel, Joe Torre, Dallas Green.

7. B. Thurman Munson

8. Chicago Cubs

9. A. Whitey Ford

10. Tampa, Florida

11. Derek Jeter

12. CBS

13. Mariano Rivera

14. Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte

15. When did the Yankee play at Shea Stadium while Yankee Stadium was being refurbished?

16. C. Jake Ruppert

17 C. 1923

18. A. Babe Ruth

ULTIMATE YANKEE QUIZ (part i)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:46:00 +0000

For all of you out there who think you know your baseball – especially Yankee baseball, this is the quiz for you. Eighteen questions. At the end of this challenging quiz, answers follow questions. No peeking. A score of ten or more correct makes you a major leaguer. Below that you are in the minors but on your way up. Have fun.

1 - Who wore # 7 before Mickey Mantle?
2 - Whose number (and what was it ) was retired by both the Mets and Yankees?
3 - Who caught Dave Righetti's no-hitter on July 4, 1983? A. Butch Wynegar B. Cliff Johnson C. Yogi Berra
4 - Name the four managers who have piloted both the Yankees and the New York Mets
5 - In 1977, who nick-named Reggie Jackson "Mr. October"?A. Willie Randolph B. Thurman Munson C. Goose Gossage D. Mickey Rivers
6. Name the player Derek Jeter replaced in 1996 to become the regular shortstop.A. Andy Fox B. Pat Kelly C. Alvaro Espinoza D. Tony Fernandez
7 What former Yankee was the first pitching coach for the New York Mets in 1962?
A. Joe Page B. Red Ruffing C. Vic Raschi D Johnny Sain
8 Elston Howard was the first black player on the Yankees in 1955. Who was second?
9 Trick question: Which was not a Babe Ruth nick-name?
A. "Bambino" B. "Wali of Wallop" C. "Rajah of Rap" D. "Caliph of Clout"
10 Name the National Football League coaching legend who played briefly for the Yankees.
A. Tom Landry B. George Halas C. Jim Thorpe D. Curly Lambeau
11. First-baseman Wally Pipp has gone down in history for being the player Lou Gehrig replaced. What other distinction belongs to Pipp?
A. was a baseball manager B. came from the same neighborhood Gehrig grew up in. C. was a home-run champ D. made money endorsing aspirin
12. Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in Game Six of the 1977 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers -- each off a different pitcher. What pitcher gave up Jackson's third home run?
A. Burt Hooton B. Charlie Hough C. Elias Sosa D. Don Sutton
13 Whose number was retired by both the Mets and Yankees?
14 Reggie Jackson was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a member of what team?
A. A's B. Orioles C. Yankees D. Angels
15 What Yankee pitcher has the most World Series victories?
A. David Cone B. Allie Reynolds C. Whitey Ford D. Lefty Gomez
16 In defeating the Oakland A's in the 2001 American League Division playoffs, what did the Yankees accomplish that no team ever had done before in a three-of-five game series?
A. limited their opponents to a total of 2 runs B. had a perfect fielding percentage C. won three straight after losing two games at home D. hit at least one home run in every game
17 What Yankee MVP appeared in the fewest games in the year in which he won the award?
18 Easy one: What is Yogi Berra's given name?

ANSWERS

1 Fourteen other Yankees wore the number in their career, the last two being Bob Cerv and Cliff Mapes, who wore the number at times during Mantle's rookie season.
2 Casey Stengel's No. 37 was retired by both the Mets (1965) and Yankees (1966).
3 A
.4 Yogi Berra, Casey Stengel,Joe Torre, Dallas Green.
5 B.
6 D.
7 B.
8 Harry Simpson 1957
9 Sorry about that. We said it is a trick question - all of the choices were nick-names for the Babe.
10 (B) George "Papa Bear" Halas got into six games for the 1919 Yankees.
11 (C) Pipp was an American League home run champion in 1916 and .
12 (B) Charlie Hough
13 No. 37, Casey Stengel's number
14 (C) Yankees
15 (C) Whitey Ford, 10. He started 22 World Series games
16 (C) They won three straight after losing two games at home
17 Pitcher Spud Chandler appeared in 30 games when he won the American League award in 1943.
18 Lawrence Peter

Odd and Interesting Old Yankee Stadium Facts for Hot Stove League Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:38:00 +0000

Odd and Interesting Old Yankee Stadium Facts

This time of year baseball and to my mind Yankee fans get especially restless for the season or at least spring training to get underway. Not a substitute but at least a quick reading fix for your reading pleasure--Strange, Odd and Interesting Yankee Stadium Facts.

1. Some wanted the brand new Yankee Stadium in 1923 to be called "Ruth Stadium." Owner Jake Ruppert wanted Ruppert Stadium. They settled for the nickname "the House That Ruth Built."

2. It took 500 workers 185 days to build the original Yankee Stadium.

3. At the start, names of Yankee players were imprinted in white chalk near the top of their lockers.

4. The practice of selling more tickets than existing seats lasted until a 1929 stampede in the right field bleachers left two dead and 62 injured.

5. Negro League teams who played at the Stadium when the Yanks were on the road were barred from using the Yankee dressing rooms. Instead, they were obliged to use the visitors' dressing room.

6. "Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day" was staged before 61,808 on July 4, 1939. His uniform number four was the first in baseball history to be retired.

7. In 1941, Yankee president Ed Barrow offered Civil Defense the use of Yankee Stadium as a bomb shelter in case of attack. He thought the area under the stands could provide a safe haven.

8. On August 16, 1948, Babe Ruth died of throat cancer at age 53. His body lay in state at Yankee Stadium and was viewed by more than 100,000 fans.

9. The last home run at the original Yankee Stadium on September 30, 1973 was hit by Duke Sims in his seventh day as a Yankee. A coin toss that day tabbed him to play. It was not until much later that Sims realized the significance of his home-run shot.

10. The film "61" was filmed in Detroit, not at Yankee Stadium. Billy Crystal explained the Motor City ballpark architecture was better able to be made to resemble that of the Yankee Stadium of 1961.

11. Sal Durante, the guy who caught the ball Roger Maris hit for his 61st homer, snagged tickets the day of the game at a less-than-sold- out Yankee Stadium.

12. Mickey Mantle originally wore number six, but equipment manager Pete Sheehy switched him to seven after Mantle was recalled from Kansas City.

13. 20,000 letters that Mickey Mantle never answered were not bid on in the old Yankee Stadium fire sale in 1974.

14. There was widespread and indiscriminate disposal of valuable items during demolition of much of the Stadium in the mid-1970s.

15. Among the items sold in the refurbishment "fire sale" at Yankee Stadium were player jockstraps, which had names on them for identification when they came back from the laundry. The selling of these jockstraps was stopped because of sanitary reasons.

16. In 1976, a homer by Chris Chambliss gave the Yankees the American League pennant. Such a mob crowded the plate that Chambliss was taken back a few minutes after hitting the homer, and he finally touched home plate.

17. All kinds of crazy things went on in the bullpens--some of them outlandish and some of them sexy--lots having to do with food.

18. In 1988, behind a wall that was closed off for decades, a scorecard, a program and what was supposedly the bases for the 1936 team were unearthed.

19. The less-than-capable 1990 Yankees had but one starting pitcher who won more than seven games, nine-game winner Tim Leary--but he also lost 19.

20. On September 11, 2001, within 90 minutes of the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center, Yankee Stadium was evacuated.

21. Ron Guidry, a good drummer, once kept a trap set at Yankee Stadium and also played in a post-game concert with the Beach Boys.

22. Joe Torre was witness to all three perfect games in Yankee Stadium history: He saw Don Larsen's beauty as a 16-year-old fan, and the gems of David Wells and David Cone from the dugout as Yankee manager.

23. Bob Sheppard holds the record for seeing the most games at Yankee Stadium.

Check it out

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:19:00 +0000

http://sopastrike.com/strike/

Faux NBA: Caveat Emptor, Got Game? Or Gotcha?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:58:00 +0000

What was to be a Christmas gift for all pro hoops fans happened on December 25th. Like Santa Claus, the NBA returned to town. But unlike Santa Claus, this Faux NBA was not as gifted and gift-giving as the real NBA.
The lockout produced a truncated, compressed National Basketball Association schedule that at times seems as it was thrown together without any concerns about game quality, player's health, fan's remorse. Perhaps Chicago's Derek Rose says it best: "Every game now seems to be like "a back-to-back game."
Back to back to back to back is one of the themes of this sorry season. Other themes include mental fatigue, tired legs, weary bones, a bunch of even more injured players than ever and ejected and dejected coaches and a schedule from hell.
Players nowadays decline more than ever to speak to the media after games. Shooting percentages, minutes played, enthusiasm, spirit, verve, excellence, effort - -all seem to have belonged to the other NBA, not this Faux NBA.
Players reported late, out of shape. Trades were made. Guys have struggled in many instances to fit in for some there is doubt they ever will. A lack of any kind of a true training camp contributed to all of this. Players bonding, chemistry coming together, that was then.
Today malaise rules most teams. Energy baskets most of the time are reminders of times past not highlight reel stuff for today. Players are "out," "day to day," "uncertain for tonight's game." On the bench players are in expensive suits, scowling, smiling, subdued but not "having game."
According to Washington coach Flip Saunders, "Too many summer exhibition games bred "many bad habits. Those summer nights made it seem "a lot of things are going to be very easy," Saunders continued, "and turned out not to be."
Boston's Kevin Garnett is the poster child commentator.
"It's where we are -- we'll continue to work at this thing and get it better," he said. "It's not something that we're just going to hope and pray and wish, and all the good things like that. It's something that we're going to have to continue to work on. This is not easy. If we made it look easy in the past, it's not easy so far."
Coaches are castigating players for lack of toughness, for being out of shape, for playing with an attitude to stay out of harm's way. All await the time when the Faux NBA becomes the real National Basketball Association.
In the meantime there is "maintenance day," massage, and cold whirlpool baths. More treatment for sore muscles. And swelled heads.
Quite frankly, I am tired of hearing about it all. Quite frankly, there should have been some control over a game that got away from us but still costs the same amount of money (sometimes more) to attend.
Quite frankly, maybe some refunds are in order.

Best Baseball Team Ever: 1927 New York Yankees

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:59:00 +0000

The talk of the town usually at year’s end and new year’s beginnings usually gets down in many sports quarters to rankings of the best of the best. Agreement is sometimes a hard fought but not often achieved goal. I, however, have a no-brainer for all - -hands down or up as the case may be - -the best of the best baseball teams is the ’27 Yanks.

The club was so consistent in every way that its roster was not ever changed that glorious season. The team began with ten pitchers, three catchers, seven infielders, five outfielders, and ended that way.

There was no shuttling of players up and down from the minors. The 25 guys who began the season remained on the big league roster all season long, tying a record for fewest players used by a major league team. On that legendary squad was an ex- teacher, a railroad fireman, a bartender, a former full-time boilermaker, a seaman, a logger, a cardsharp, a guy who had studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood, one whose youth was spent climbing tenement stairs in New York City delivering laundry, another who swam in the Hudson River and made the rounds of local pool halls. Possessed of an almost royal aura, another player had attended the finest prep schools and sported thousand dollar diamond rings. The ’27 Yankee ranks also included a meat cutter and an ex-vaudevillian, a talented painter, artist, writer and singer, a skilled piano (jazz and classical) player. There were some former farm boys and farmers. And there were a few who had never known anything but playing baseball. Average age of the all-white team was 27.6.They came from diverse backgrounds, had very different personalities, backgrounds, educations, interests, skills, avocations. Baseball boned them together.
The total payroll for that 1927 team was an estimated $250,000. Average salary was $10,000 as compared to $2,699.292 for the 2006 Yankees. Salaries ranged from Julie Wera's $2,400 to Babe Ruth's $70,000. That 1927 Yankee team had a pronounced German- American flavor from its owner beer baron Jacob Ruppert to Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Mark Koenig, Bob Meusel, George Pipgras, Dutch Ruether and half Germans Waite Hoyt and Earle Combs. Although Some of tha 1927 bunch lacked a true formal education, a collegiate flavor permeated the roster: Lou Gehrig (Columbia), Miller Huggins (University of Cincinnati), Joe Dugan (Holy Cross), Benny Bengough (Niagara University), Earle Combs (Eastern Kentucky State Teachers College), Mike Gazella (Lafayette), Ray Morehart (Stephen Austin College, Texas), Myles Thomas (Penn State), Bob Shawkey (Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania), Ben Paschal (University of Alabama), Dutch Ruether (St. Ignatius College, now San Francisco University) One player (Babe Ruth) was educated at St. Mary's Industrial School. Another had been in an out of one room schoolhouses in cotton county locales. Mark Koenig, Joe Grabowski, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri and Julie Wera were the only 1927 Yankees born in the 20th century.

The shortest players were catcher Benny Bengough and utility man Mike Gazella. Bob Meusel was the tallest Yankee at 6' 3" and Babe Ruth was the next tallest at 6' 2". Other six footers included pitchers Wilcy Moore, Herb Pennock, George Pipgras, Dutch Ruether, infielders Lou Gehrig and Mark Koenig, and centerfielder Earl Combs. Only Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig weighed more than 200 pounds.

Only Lou Gehrig would start every game (155) at first base.Second baseman Tony Lazzeri appeared in 113 games. Mark Koenig got into 122 games at shortstop, Joe Dugan 111 at third base. Earl Combs started all but three games.

The final statistics on Ruth and Meusel would be misleading. The Babe would start 95 times in right field and "Silent Bob" 83 times in left field. But they flip-flopped starts at Yankee Stadium and in a few parks on the road. Six men accounted for almost 90% of the innings pitched.

There was an almost grotesque quality to the team collectively as well as individually. One player was only able to sleep sitting up. He had a heart condition that he kept secret from his teammates. Another seemingly unfriendly, at times very quiet, was an epileptic. Tony Lazzeri’s health condition was never mentioned by the press. One was taciturn, some would say miserable, a drinker, a scowler who looked at the world about him with annoyance and anger. One worked off-season as a mortician. Another (Lou Gehrig) was a "mama's boy," reportedly a virgin,very uncomfortable in the presence of women. He enjoyed fishing by himself for eels and living in an apartment with his parents.

There was one (Babe Ruth) whose hearty belches sometimes rattled bats stacked in the dugout, who slugged down great quantities of beer, ate prodigiously. His prowess with women was the talk throughout baseball.

Another was an uneducated dirt farmer, aged 30, or was it 40. There was also a Kentuckian, a church goer, a non-smoker, non-drinker, a man who never cursed and read his Bible on the road in hotel rooms. This terrific, talented team had it all including a four game sweep of the Pirates to roll to the world championship. It was a group of men who totally dominated baseball. It was a group led by Babe Ruth a free swinger in a free swinging time. Babe Ruth was the king. The 1927 New York Yankees were the royalty of baseball.

And if you loved the Yankees, it was the best of times.

NBA Team Nicknames, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:55:00 +0000

The NBA is back and so is Dr Harvey Frommer!

Back in the day as some are apt to say, I was interviewing and writing Red on Red. It was the autobiography of the legendary coach of the New York Knickerbockers Red Holzman. He is still the only coach to ever win an NBA title with the Knicks, in fact he won two.
Red was a walking history book when it came to pro basketball. He was especially informed about league trivia. He also knew had to spin a tale.
Before his days as Knick coach, Holzman plied his trade as a pretty good scout for the team. "I was scouting a kid from Czechoslovakia," Red said. "We decided to give him a vision test. I got hold of an eye chart and told the kid, 'All right. Let's hear you read the bottom line.' "'Read the bottom line?' he asked, 'I know him.'"
But back to the subject at hand - -NBA team nicknames.

There are all kinds of team names and nicknames in the world of the National Basketball Association, and even more interesting explanations of how these came to be. And although some clubs have moved from city to city, they kept the original nicknames they began with which makes for some odd combinations.
The Knicks and the Celtics are the only teams still playing in the NBA in their original cities. The name Knickerbockers dates back to when New York was New Amsterdam, and the city's Dutch settlers wore trousers bunched up at the knee known as "knickers." The name Celtics was given to Boston in 1946 by Walter Brown, the founder of the franchise.
"We'll call them the Boston Celtics," he said. "The name has a great basketball tradition, especially when you think of the original 'Celtics' team. Boston is full of Irishmen; so we'll put the players in green uniforms and call them the Boston Celtics after their Celtic ancestors."
The Atlanta Hawks were once the St. Louis Hawks, and before that they were the Milwaukee Hawks. Even before that in 1948, they were the Tri-Cities Blackhawks. The three cities referred to Moline, Illinois; Rock Island, Illinois; and Davenport, Iowa. Way back in 1831, the Blackhawk War was fought in that tri-cities area, and that's how the original Blackhawk's nickname, later shortened to Hawks, came to be.
The Rochester Royals played in the NBA for nine seasons and then transferred to Cincinnati. The name Royals was kept. In 1972, the franchise moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and the name was dropped to avoid confusion in the Kansas City area as the Kansas City and the Omaha baseball teams both used the name Royals. The new name for the NBA basketball franchise became the Kansas City-Omaha Kings and, in 1975, simply the Kansas City Kings. A decade later, when the team moved to California, they became the Sacramento Kings.
Not many people realize that the Denver Nuggets were charter members of the NBA. But that team only lasted one season. When the Denver Rockets of the American Basketball Association came into the NBA, they had to change their name because the Houston Rockets already existed. So the Denver franchise took the "Nuggets" name of the original franchise, which was appropriate for an area with a history of gold and silver mining of nuggets.
Charlotte, Miami, Minnesota and Orlando are among the newer teams in the NBA. All have interesting "name" stories. Originally, the Charlotte team was named the Spirit, but that didn't go over too well. It was soon dropped, and a contest was launched among fans to come up with a new name. Runner-up names included: the Charlotte Gold, the Charlotte Knights, and incredibly the original name - the Charlotte Spirit.
As every NBA fan knows; the winner was the Charlotte Hornets. Miami also held a name-the-team contest and received more than 5,000 entries. Some of the names that didn't make it included such choices as Palm Trees, Beaches, Suntan, and Shade.
Heat beat them all out. As one clever official explained, "When you think of Miami, heat is what comes to mind."
Over 6,000 entries were submitted for the Minnesota team name. The choice came down to Timberwolves vs. Polars. Timberwolves easily won. That animal is native to Minnesota, and no other professional sports team ever thought to use the name.
The "Orlando Sentinel" sponsored a name-the-team contest in that Florida city. As with Minnesota, the competition came down to two names: Magic and Juice. Orlando general manager Pat Williams explained why Magic won out: "Magic is synonymous with the Orlando area. We have the Magic Kingdom in Disneyworld, and the tourism slogan here is 'Come to the Magic.'"

Some claim that the Chicago Bulls got their name from stockyards in that windy city. It was actually the franchise's first owner Richard Klein who came up with name in 1966. The rookie mogul liked "bulls" because of their power and toughnees. And his wish was to have team sporting those ahaving a team that had that quality.
The Pistons came into being early on in NBA history - back in 1948. They were known then as the Ft. Wayne Zollner Pistons. It was a case of an owner naming a team for himself and the business that he ran. Fred Zollner owned a huge piston-manufacturing company. In 1957, the team moved to Detroit, and Pistons moved right along with it.
Way back in 1925, there was a Philadelphia Warriors team in the American Basketball League. In 1946, when Philadelphia joined the NBA, it took its nickname from that old team. Many years and many miles later, the Golden State Warriors are a descendant of the old Philadelphia Warriors. They've gone through a couple of geographical shifts. Philly became the San Francisco Warriors, San Francisco became the Oakland Warriors and Oakland became the Golden State Warriors.
A few years back a newspaper guy came up with the idea of teams trading names. The suggestion had some merit, but it was no dice. What the guys thought was that the Utah Jazz become the Utah Lakers and the Los Angeles Lakers become the Los Angeles Jazz.
Actually, both Utah and Los Angeles have names from cities both franchises vacated. Utah came into being in 1979, when the New Orleans Jazz moved there. That New Orleans basketball team is only a memory, but the Utah Jazz kept their name and team colors. The Minneapolis Lakers made the move to L.A. before the 1960 season and took with it its nickname that comes from the state of Minnesota's motto: "the land of 10,000 lakes". There aren't many lakes in L.A. or that much jazz in Salt Lake City - so maybe that newspaper guy had a good idea after all.
Here's how the three Texas NBA teams got their names. The Houston Rockets were once the San Diego Rockets. The name has worked well for both franchises - linked to space programs and industries. The San Antonio Spurs got their short name in a public naming contest - a name that makes you think of Texas, and the same is true of the Dallas Mavericks who came into being in 1980. A Dallas radio station sorted out many suggested names in a "name-the-team" contest and picked Mavericks thinking it had Texas flavor.
In 1963, the old Syracuse Nats were sold and became the Philadelphia 76ers. Anybody who knows anything about American history, knows how Philly got its name.
In 1968, the new Phoenix franchise offered a cash prize and a couple of season tickets to the winner of a "name-the-team" contest. "Suns" was the winning name, but runner-ups included Scorpions, Rattlers, and Dust Devils.
Two years later, in another "name-the-team" contest in Portland, nearly 200 people contributed for a new franchise name - Trail Blazers.
The New Jersey Nets began life in the American Basketball Association and were known as the New Jersey Americans. In 1968, the team left New Jersey and moved to Commack, Long Island and were re-named the New York Nets.
The reasoning was that since the New York metropolitan area had the football Jets and the baseball Mets, why not the basketball Nets? Just before the 1977-78 season, the franchise moved back across the Hudson River to New Jersey. There were some who thought the original name -New Jersey Americans - should be brought back, but the name Nets moved right along with the team.

What's in an NBA Name? Part III
A guy named R.D.Treblicox of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin got himself a brand new car for coming up with the name Bucks back in 1968 for Milwaukee's NBA team.
His pick beat out names like Stags, Skunks, and Stallions. R.D. said, "Bucks are spirited, good jumpers, fast and agile."
Treblicox knew both his bucks and his basketball. Alliteration was probably one of the reasons for the name Cavaliers winning out in a Cleveland newspaper competition back in 1970. But that name in recent years has been de-emphasized in favor of "Cavs."
I guess some of the media and a lot of the fans think that Cleveland's former name was a bit too ritzy for an NBA club. When the Indiana franchise came into existence in 1967 in the American Basketball Association, the owners said they named the team Pacers because they intended to set the pace in professional basketball. And when Indiana joined the NBA in 1976, the name Pacers went along.
The present Washington team began life as the Chicago Packers in 1961, and was named by its owner after his packing company. A year later, the name was Zephyrs. In 1963, the team was in Baltimore and was renamed the Bullets after the city's first basketball franchise that got started in 1946.
That club picked up its Bullets' name because it played its games near a foundry that made ammunition during World War II. In the 1973-74 season, a new name surfaced - Capitol Bullets. The name was never politically correct until Washington owner Abe Pollin finally changed the name to the Wizards in 1997.
The location of a huge Boeing aircraft plant in Seattle was the inspiration for Howard E. Schmidt's suggestion of SuperSonics as a name back in 1967 for the Seattle NBA franchise. Mr. Schmidt was rewarded with a free trip to Palm Springs, California and season tickets for Seattle's first basketball season. And the franchise got itself a nice space-age name.
Toronto, the NBA's 28th team and its first expansion franchise outside of the United States, picked up its Raptors name in a "Name the Team" contest. Its Canadian partner in Vancouver dubbed itself "Grizzlies", because Grizzly bears are part of the scene in British Columbia. The animal is also part of the mythology of the area.
One of the oddest name situations involves the Los Angeles Clippers who, in another life, were the Buffalo Braves. (Caution: you may have to read this explanation twice).
In 1971, the City of San Diego lost its NBA franchise when its team moved to Houston and became the Rockets. Seven years later, the Buffalo Braves moved to San Diego. The owners weren't too thrilled with San Diego Braves as a name. So one of those name-the-team contests was staged, and the winning entry was, you guessed it, Clippers. That was because, once upon a time, lots of beautiful clipper ships passed through the great harbor of San Diego.
There probably were never clipper ships in Los Angeles, but in 1984 when the franchise moved there from San Diego, the name Clippers came along.

And that's a slam dunk!

LISTEN TO HARVEY

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:31:00 +0000

HEAR HARVEY TALK REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK, ORAL HISTORY, SPORTS

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Harvey Frommer's Sports Book Reviews: "Howard Cosell," "Shaq Uncut" and more

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:38:00 +0000

Way back when I was interviewing for my Ph.D. in sports, culture and media at New York University, one of my professors suggested I check out Howell Cosell. The bombastic broadcaster was at the top of his game then.
I got to his office in Manhattan having arranged the interview with someone at ABC. "What is this all about?" I explained quickly, sensing that he was rushed.
"Why the hell do you want to do something like that?" he snapped. "Why not do work on racism in sports, something important."
I explained that I was too far along. All I wanted from him as a "designer voice" was a few paragraphs to put into the thesis to satisfy the powers-that-be over me.
"For crying out loud," he smiled, "why didn't you say so in the first place?"
Howard Cosell intelligently and quickly gave me what I needed, and he even spent some time chatting with me about sports. And that was that.
But I never forgot that meeting.
Now there is "Howard Cosell" by Mark Ribowsky (Norton, $29.95, 477 pages), a book that its subject would have enjoyed.
We are there with the man some called "the mouth" from the middle 1950s into the 1980s. Cosell was medium, message, massage. He was front stage, back stage, off stage a lawyer transformed into a broadcaster, a force.
Ribowsky has produced a mighty epic here, a loving, loathing, lingering portrait of Cosell. It is a book that reveals what drove a master media showman, what devils possessed him, and how he transformed sports and media at the same time.
Sections dealing with his relationship with Ali, with Monday Night Football, with his growing up years are especially insightful.
As Cosell said of himself: "Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, and verbose, a show-off, I have been all of these. Of course, I am." He was all of these, and he was something special. A HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READ
In the same vein, sort of, as "Howard Cosell," there is also "Shaq Uncut" by Shaquille O'Neal with Jackie Macmullan (Grand Central Publishing, $27.99, 290 pages). It's a slam dunk of a book. The gang's all here in this tome sub-titled "My Story" - -Kobe, Phil Jackson, DWade, LeBron, Jerry West and Pat Riley, family members, friends and enemies. This is a page turned filled with honest and not so honest observations, filled with true confessions, filled with humor and even philosophy. The man called "Superman," "Diesel," "The Real Deal" and "The Big Shamrock" and lots of others things, has his say here. MOST ENJOYABLE.
"John Feinstein's "One on One" (Little Brown, $27.99, 533 pages) is a Niagara of a book focused on a memoir of just some of the author's inside sports (locker rooms, dugouts, clubhouses, etc.). Feinstein has been there, done , that, seen and heard it all, and he takes great pride in telling you about his times with Tiger Woods, Jim Valvano, Larry Brown, Dean Smith, Tony LaRussa and dozens and dozens more. Unabashed in its approaches, prideful in its approach, "One on One" is part gossip, part star gazing, part sports history - -all John Feinstein. And all lively and riveting reading.
"A Team for America" by Randy Roberts (HMH, $26.00, 268 pages) is truly about one of the terrific sagas in sports. Its focus the Army-Navy football game in 1944. The contest united a nation locked in a deadly war. Thorough, engrossing, this tome is a winner.
"The Greatest Game" by Todd Denault (McClelland & Stewart, $19.95, 336 pages, trade paperback) is also about a momentous sports contest the Montreal Canadiens versus the team of the Red Army on December 31, 1975. For hockey fans - a must.

YANKEES BY THE NICK-NAMES (I)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:28:00 +0000

With the hot stove baseball season in full swing, fans are eagerly awaiting the next one still many months away. Some have moved over to follow other sports. Some Yankee fans scour the news for free agent and trade rumors and moves. Others read Yankee books. Still others soak up what they can of Yankee history, trivia, oddities. For the "still others," this partial list of New York Yankee nick-names is for you.
Babe Ruth leads the pack in the number of nick-names attached to him. First called "Babe" by teammates on the Baltimore Orioles, his first professional team because of his youth, G.H.Ruth was also called "Jidge" by Yankee teammates, short for George. Opponents referred to him negatively as "The Big Monk" and "Monkey." He was also called "Two Head" negative nick-name used by opponents to describe the size of his head which seemed very huge to some.
Sports writers glamorizing the big guy came up with these monikers: "The Bambino", "the Wali of Wallop", "the Rajah of Rap", "the Caliph of Clout", "the Wazir of Wham", and "the Sultan of Swat", The Colossus of Clout, Maharajah of Mash, The Behemoth of Bust, "The King of Clout."
Other Yankee nick-names, expressions, bon mots that caught on through the decades include:
"Root" Owner Jake Ruppert's mispronunciation of Babe Ruth's name.
"Babe Ruth's Legs" - Sammy Byrd, used was employed as pinch runner for Ruth.
"Bam-Bam" - Hensley Meulens could speak about five languages. His name was challenging to pronounce.
"Biscuit Pants" - A reference to the way Lou Gehrig filled out trousers.
"Billyball" - the aggressive style of play favored by Billy Martin.
"Blind Ryne" - Ryne Duren's vision, uncorrected -20/70 and 20/200.
"Bob the Gob" - Bob Shawkey in 1918 served in the Navy as a yeoman petty officer.
"Brooklyn Schoolboy" - Waite Hoyt had starred at Brooklyn's Erasmus High School.
"Bulldog" - Jim Bouton was dogged.
Bye-Bye"- Steve Balboni, the primary DH of the 1990 Yankees, 17 homers but .192 BA.
"Chairman of the Board" - Elston Howard coined it for Whitey Ford and his commanding and take charge manner on the mound.
"Commerce Comet" - Mickey Mantle, out of Commerce, Oklahoma.
"Georgia Catfish" - Jim Hunter, name given to him by Oakland owner Charles Finley, shortened to just "Catfish."
""the CAT-a-lyst" - Mickey Rivers given this name by Howard Cosell.
"The Count" - Sparky Lyle, handlebar mustache and lordly ways "The Crow" - Frank Crosetti loud voice and chirpy ways.
"Daddy Longlegs" - Dave Winfield, for his size and long legs.
"Death Valley" - the old deep centerfield in Yankee Stadium.
"Dial-a-Deal - Gabe Paul, for his telephone trading habits.
"Donnie Baseball" - Don Mattingly was the only player in any sport to have a nickname with the actual name of his or her sport in it.
"Ellie" - affectionate abbreviation of Elston Howard's first name
"Father of the Emory Ball" - Rookie right-hander Russ Ford posted a 26-6 record with 8 shutouts, 1910, using that pitch.
Flash" - Joe Gordon was fast, slick fielding and hit line drives.
Four hour manager" - Bucky Harris, who put his time in at the game and was finished.
"Fordham Johnny" - for the college Johnny Murphy attended.
"Gator" - Ron Guidry came from Louisiana alligator country.
"Gay Reliever" - Joe Page for his night owl activity.
"Goofy" or "El Goofo" - earned by Lefty Gomez for his wild antics "The Great Agitator" - for Billy Martin, self explanatory.
"Horse Nose" - Pat Collins via Babe Ruth, a reference to a facial feature.
"Home Run Twins" (also "M & M Boys") - Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, phrase coined in 1961.
"Iron Horse" - Lou Gehrig, for his power and steadiness.
"Joltin' Joe" - Joe DiMaggio, for the jolting shots he hit.
"Jumping Joe" - Joe Dugan, for being AWOL from his first big league club as a youngster.
"Junk Man" - Eddie Lopat, for frustrating hitters and keeping them off stride with an assortment of slow breaking pitches thrown with cunning and accuracy.
"Kentucky Colonel" - Earl Combs, for his Kentucky roots.
"The King and the Crown Prince" - Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, self evident.
"King Kong" - Charlie Keller, for his muscular body type and black, bushy brows.
"Knight of Kennett Square" - Herb Pennock, for his raising of thoroughbreds and hosting of fox hunts in his home town of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
"Knucksie" - Phil Niekro, for his knuckleball.
"Lonesome George" - George Weiss, for his aloof ways.
"Lou'siana Lightnin'" - Ron Guidry, for his fastball and the state he came from.
"Mail Carrier "- Earle Combs, for his speed and base stealing skills.
"Major" - Ralph Houk, for rank held in the Armed Forces and demeanor.
"Man of a Thousand Curves" for Johnny Sain and his assortment of curve balls.
"Marse Joe" - Joe McCarthy, for his commanding style.
"Master Builder in Baseball" - Jacob Ruppert, and that he was.
"The Merry Mortician" -Waite Hoyt, for his cheery soul and off-season mortician work.
"Man in the Iron Hat" - Captain Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Hutson, for the same squashed derby hat he wore over and over again.
"Man nobody knows" - Bill Dickey, for his blandness.
"Mighty Mite" - Miller Huggins, for his size and power.
"Milkman" - Jim Turner, for an off-season job delivering milk.
"Mr. Automatic" - Mariano Rivera, for his virtually unflappable behavior and special skills as a Yankee stopper.
"Mr. May" - George Steinbrenner's sarcastic jibe at Dave Winfield because of his postseason struggles as compared to Reggie Jackson's successes and Mr. October nick-name.
"Mr. November" - Derek Jeter, for his World Series home run, the first of November, 2001.
"Mr. October" - In Game Five of the 1977 ALCS Billy Martin benched Reggie Jackson. In a comeback win against Kansas City Jackson returned to slap a single. Thurman Munson sarcastically called Jackson "Mr. October."
"Moose" - Bill Skowron's, grandfather called him Mussolini because of a resemblance to Mussolini. As the story goes, the family shortened the nickname to "Moose."
"Murderer's Row" - Yankee lineup boasting powerful batters: standard version was the meat of the 1927 lineup of Tony Lazzeri, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Earl Combs and Bob Meusel. Backup version was the 1919 entry of Ping Bodie, Roger Peckinpaugh, Duffy Lewis and Home Run Baker.
"My writers" - Casey Stengel's phrase for journalists he was close to.
"Nightrider" - Don Larsen called himself that because it reminded him of comic books heroes he read about and it fit with his late-night bar wanderings.
"Old Reliable" - Mel Allen gave Tommy Henrich that nickname after a train that made its way from Cincinnati through Allen's home state of Alabama and was always on time and could be depended on. Henrich was also called "The Great Debater" for his sometimes loquacious and argumentative ways.
"Ole Perfessor" - Casey Stengel, for the time in 1914 when he had a spring training baseball coaching stint at the University of Mississippi.
"The Peerless Leader" - Frank Chance, for his keen baseball mind.
"Poosh 'em up, Tony" - Tony Lazzeri was a magnet for Italian fans at Yankee Stadium who would scream out this phrase urging him to hit home runs.
"Prince Hal" - Hal Chase, for his charismatic, elegant, royal quality. "The Principal Owner" - George Steinbrenner, no doubt here.
"Push Button Manager" - Joe McCarthy, for his by the book ways.
"Ragin' Cajun" - Ron Guidry, for his Louisiana roots and fire.
"Rags" - Dave Righetti, abbreviation of his name "Ruppert Rifles" - The Yankees, during Jake Ruppert's tenure.
"Sailor Bob" - Bob Shawkey, for his time spent mostly in 1918 in the Navy as a yeoman petty officer aboard the battleship Arkansas.
"Schoolboy" and "Schoolboy Wonder" - Waite Hoyt, for his major league debut in 1918 when he was a teen ager.
"Scooter"- Nick-name for Phil Rizzuto coined by Mel Allen. "When Mel saw me run, he said: 'Man, you are not running, you're scootin'. "And from scootin' I got "Scooter."
"Second Place Joe" - Joe McCarthy's three straight second-place finishes prompted this tag in the three seasons before the Yanks won four consecutive world championships, 1936-39. The name was also used when he was manager of the Cubs and had some disappointing second place finishes.
"Silent Bob" - Bob Meusel, for his aloofness.
"Silent One" - Chris Chambliss, for his taciturn manner, name given by Howard Cosell.
"Solid citizens"- Name Joe McCarthy gave to players he relied on.
"Slick" - Whitey Ford used a spitter to strike out Willie Mays in the 1964 All-Star Game. That was just one of the reasons for the Yankee star's nick-name.
"Slow" - Joe Doyle, for his time consuming pace.
"Smash" - Gil McDougald, for the verve of his personality.
"Springfield Rifle" - Vic Raschi, after his arm and his birthplace in Springfield, Massachusetts.
"Spud" - Spurgeon Ferdinand Chandler was called that,easier for everyone.
"Squire (or Knight) of Kennett Square" - Herb Pennock came from historic Kennett Square, PA an area of horsemen and fox hunters. Pennock himself was an expert rider and a master of hounds.
"Steady Eddie" - Eddie Lopat, for his consistency year after year as a Yankee pitcher, nick-name originated with Mel Allen.
"Stick" - Gene Michael, for his lean and long appearance.
"Superchief" Allie Reynolds, for his one-quarter Creek Indian ancestry and winning ways on the mound.
"Supersub" - Johnny Blanchard, home run hitter as a pinch hitter,. extraordinaire.
"The Switcher" - Mickey Mantle, for switch-hitting par excellence.
"T.J." - Tommy John.
"Tanglefoot Lou" - For Lou Gehrig, early days and fielding trials as a player.
"The Tabasco Kid" - Norman Arthur Elberfeld, for his liking of the stuff and his personality.
"Three Million Dollar Man" - Nick-name placed on Catfish Hunter when he signed with the Yankees as a free agent for that sum in 1974.
"Twinkletoes" - George Selkirk, for his running with his weight on the balls of his feet.
"The Unholy Trio" - Billy Martin, Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, for their devilish ways.
"The Weatherman" - Mickey Rivers, for his knack for predicting weather.
"The Warrior" - Paul O'Neill, name pinned on him by George Steinbrenner for the outfielder's pugnacious ways.
"The White Gorilla" - Goose Gossage, for the way he looked.
"Whitey" - Whitey Ford, for the tow head blonde hair he sported as a 50s hurler.
"Window breakers" - Name given to the 1936 Yankees for their slugging power.
"Winny" - Dave Winfield, affectionate shortening of his name.
"The Yankee Clipper" - for Joe DiMaggio for the way he glided about centerfield at Yankee Stadium.
"The Yankee Clipper" - A slap at George Steinbrenner who longed to see his players clean-shaven.
"The Yankee Empire Builder" - Ed Barrow was all of that.

All About Baseball's Greatest team - - the New York Yankees

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 01:08:00 +0000

With the hot stove season in full swing and baseball news about free agents and trades dominating the headlines, for fans of baseball's greatest franchise, the Yankees, there is also a treasure trove of history to appreciate. So enjoy:

Yankee Stadium Factoids and Oddities

The original Yankee Stadium had 36 ticket booths and 40 turnstiles that ticked like clocks tallying up the gate. F.C. Lane, in a 1923 issue of The Literary Digest, called it "the last word in ball parks." Egotistical baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis arrived at the first game there via the subway. He was caught up in the swarm of bodies outside the gates and had to be rescued by the police.

Despite claims to the contrary, the outfield wall at Yankee stadium has actually always been uniform height. The ground beneath sloped, and at the original Stadium, a sharp pitch to the outfield grass went uphill to the fence that was just three feet high.

Former star hurler Ron Guidry was a good drummer; he once kept a trap set at Yankee Stadium, and even had a gig in a post-game concert with the Beach Boys.

In 1988, a wall that was closed off for decades was unearthed. Among the findings; scorecard, a program and what was supposedly the bases used in 1936.

The shooting of the Billy Crystal film "61" took place in Detroit, not Yankee Stadium. Crystal maintained that the architecture there was able to more closely approximate that of Yankee Stadium in 1961.

The late and great public address announcer Bob Sheppard's favorite stadium moments; Don Larsen's perfect game, Roger Maris belting his then-record 61st regular-season home run in 1961, the Yankees' Chris Chambliss blasting a homer leading off the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 5 of the 1976 ALCS against Kansas City that gave the Yankees their first AL pennant in 12 years and the Yankees' Reggie Jackson's three home runs against the Dodgers on three consecutive pitches in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series. Roger Clemens always patted the Babe Ruth monument for good luck before coming in to pitch.

Started in 1965, Bat Day has bragging rights to the longest running promotion.

By the Numbers

0002: After Allie Reynolds pitched his second no-hitter for the Yankees in 1951, Manhattan's Hotel Edison, where he along with some teammates lived, changed his room number from 2019 to 0002

1 1/2: This was the uniform number worn by opera star Robert Merrill, the man who for many years sang the national anthem at Yankee Stadium.

3: All three perfect games in Yankee Stadium history were witnessed by Joe Torre; Larsen's in 1956 as a 16-year-old fan, and the gems spun by David Wells and David Cone from the dugout as Yankee manager.

14: Yogi Berra stayed away from Yankee Stadium for 14 years, unhappy with the treatment he had received from George Steinbrenner.

$15.00: Bob Sheppard's per game earning in 1951 when he began working for the Yankees.

18: Joe DiMaggio's original uniform, number given to him by equipment manager Pete Sheehy and later changed to 5 for historical significance reasons. Ruth wore number 3 and Gehrig 4.

No. 42, which has been retired from Major League Baseball in honor of Jackie Robinson. A "grandfather clause" permits Mariano Rivera to wear this number. When he retires, the Yankees will probably honor both Robinson and Rivera with the official retirement of the number.

56: Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak included 56 singles and runs scored. It covered 53 day games three night games, 29 at Yankee Stadium and 27 road games.

58: The original number of Mariano Rivera.

148: On May 12, 1959, Yogi Berra's errorless streak of 148 games came to an end when he committed an error on his 34th birthday.

185: Number of working days it took for the original Yankee Stadium to be built.

$400: This was the amount Mickey Mantle was paid in 1949 to finish out a minor league season.

413: Smallest Yankee home attendance for a game, September 25, 1966

454 2/3: This was the number of innings Jack Chesbro pitched for Highlanders in 1904.

457: Babe Ruth is the all time season leader in total bases. He reached this record in 1921 with 101 singles, 44 doubles, 16 triples and 59 home runs.

.471: Joe Torre's career winning percentage as a manager prior to coming to the Yankees in 1996.

1903: For the first time since 1903, two teams played two games in different stadiums he same day, July 8, 2000. The first game was at Shea Stadium and the second game was at Yankee Stadium.

$5,000: The reward promised to the one who caught the 61st home run ball of Roger Maris.

Roger Maris with Sal Durante, the young man who recovered
Maris' record-breaking 61st home run in 1961.

$6,000: The amount of money Don Larsen received for being on Bob Hope's TV show after he pitched his perfect game in 1956.

20,000: The number of letters Mickey Mantle never answered which were not bid on in the old Yankee Stadium fire sale in 1974.

Book Review "West by West," "100 Yards of Glory" and more . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 15:53:00 +0000

All matter of sports books keep on coming out with all kinds of subject matters for all kinds of tastes. On the market now are quite a few of interest for even the most informed of readers.

"West by West" by Jerry West and Jonathan Coleman (Little Brown, $27.99, 352 pages) is a moving autobiography of one of the greatest basketball players of all time. The NBA logo has long featured his silhouette. West came out of a little West Virginia mining town, was an All American at West Virginia University, co-captained the 1960 USA Gold Medal winning basketball team and moved on to the Los Angeles Lakers and a Hall of Fame NBA career as player, coach and general manager.

All was not a rags to riches story as West recounts in moving detail. The sub-title of the book refers to "my charmed, tormented life." That it has has been. From the heights of great success to the downers of depressions, self doubt and abusive childhood. Unflinching, eye opening, riveting--the man (warts and all) behind the legend emerges page after page. Highly recommended.

"100 Yards of Glory" by Joe Garner with a DVD narration from Bob Costas (HMH, $35.00, 320 pages) is a coffee table slice of pigskin heaven for the fans of the National Football League. The best of the Super Bowls, runs, catches, quarterbacks, coaches. etc. forms the subject matter of this worthy piece. We are there for a survey of such moments as Roger Staubach's Hail Mary, the '67 Green Bay Ice Bowl, David Tyree and his immaculate reception in Super Bowl XLII. Archival images adorn these pages and add to the total package.

"The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach (Little Brown, $25.99, 512 pages) is the kind of novel you will return to again and again.This first novel reminds me a lot of "Bang the Drum Slowly," one of my favorite sporting reads ever. It is baseball fiction but much more than that. It is also the kind of book about a bunch of young players, their insular college world and the national pastime and why it has the hold on so many of us. Grand slam.

From STC publishers comes "The Mets" by Andy Martino and Anthony McCarron ($40.00, 320 pages). Pegged to the franchise's 50th anniversary, the tome is a blend of words and 250 images. All the usual suspects are here as well as the oft told tales.

Rich Marazzi, a writer for USA Today Sports Weekly and Baseball Digest, is writing a first person oral history book on the subject of Yale Football to help commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Yale Bowl in 2014. He is looking for amusing anecdotes and interesting stories (on and off the field) surrounding Yale Football and the Bowl. His e-mail address is: rtmarazzi@aol.com and his mailing address is: 105 Pulaski Highway, Ansonia, CT 06401

Shoeless Joe Jackson Belongs in the Hall of Fame!

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:45:00 +0000

With one of the most exciting World Series ever played now truly “one for the books,” the memory of another long ago Fall Classic surfaces. It was the 1919 contest between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds. It was the one that saw eight players ultimately and unjustly banned from baseball for life. It was the one that made “Shoeless Joe Jackson” into a scapegoat, victim and story that just won’t go away.
On July 16, 1889, Joseph Jefferson Wofford Jackson was born into a poor family in Greenville, South Carolina. He never learned to read or write. By the time he was six years old, he worked as a cleanup boy in the cotton mills.
By age 13, he labored amidst the din and dust a dozen hours a day along with his father and brother. It was hard and back-breaking employment. Playing baseball on grassy field was his way of escape. It was there where Joe’s natural ability stood out. Baseball was his game, and he loved it. The youth had such passion and skill that he was recruited to play for the mill team organized by the company.
One humid and hot summer day, Jackson was playing the outfield. His shoes pinched. He removed them and played in his stocking feet. An enterprising sportswriter gave him the nick-name: "Shoeless Joe." Even though it was reported that was the only time Jackson ever played that way in a game - the “Shoeless” moniker stuck. He hated the name, feeling it cruelly referenced the fact that he could not or write.
From the mill team, Jackson moved on to play with the Greenville, South Carolina Spinners. It was there in 1908 that a scout recommended him to Philadelphia Athletics owner/manager Connie Mack who purchased his contract for $325.
The youngster made his Major League Baseball debut on August 25, 1908. The more he played the more his potential impressed everyone. An article in the The Evening Times noted: “He has justified early predictions of his abilities. With experience and the coaching of Manager Mack, he should turn out to be…the find of the season.”
Sadly, Jackson was unable to read what the Philadelphia newspaper wrote about him. He could not even read menus. In restaurants he usually ordered what another player did. Sadly, he did not fit in with his teammates or the big city. Homesick, he jumped the team and took a train back home.
Mack sent Jackson down to a minor league team in Georgia in 1909 where he won the batting title. In 1910, Mack called him up to the big league team but decided that Jackson lacked the disposition to play in a big city like Philly. In one of the worst trades in baseball history, the six foot one, 190 pound Jackson was shipped to Cleveland for a player named Bris Lord (Bristol Robotham Lord , nick-named the (The Human Eyeball) and $6,000.
Shoeless Joe fit in quite nicely in Cleveland where he batted .408 in 1911. In mid-season of 1915, after compiling a .375 career batting average with the Ohio team, Jackson was traded after mid season for three players and $15,000 to the White Sox.
It was in Chicago that Jackson made a point of wearing alligator and patent-leather shoes -- the more expensive the better. It was as if he were announcing to the world, "I am not a Shoeless Joe. I do wear shoes. And they cost a lot of money!"
With the White Sox, Jackson became one of baseball’s storied stars. His defensive play was at such a remarkable level that his glove was called "the place where triples go to die."
On offense, he was one of the most feared hitters of his time. Babe Ruth copied his swing claiming Jackson was the greatest hitter he ever saw.
Then Along came 1919!
The 1919 Chicago White Sox were one of the greatest teams of their era. Paced by Jackson who batted .351, they won the American League pennant. They were 3-1 favorites to win the World Series as they prepared to face off against the Cincinnati Reds.
Prior to the series betting odds started to shift to even money. The word on the street was that New York gambler Arnold Rothstein was behind the swing, that the series was fixed.
Hearing the rumor, the 31-year-old Jackson asked Chicago manager Kid Gleason and owner Charles Comiskey to bench him. But they insisted he play. They would have been crazy to put down their best player.
During the series, Jackson hit the only home run. He posted the highest batting average. He committed no errors. He established a new World Series record with 12 hits. Nevertheless, the Reds won the Fall Classic.
Edd Rousch, who played for the Reds, insisted that charges that the series was fixed was nonsense. "We were just the better team," he said.
"Maybe I'm a dope but everything seemed okay to me," said umpire Billy Evans who worked the series.
But the rumor of a fix persisted as the 1920 season got underway. The White Sox were driving hard to their second straight pennant when a petty gambler in Philadelphia broke the news that a Cubs-Phillies game had been fixed in 1919.
That led to a gambling investigation - its focus the 1919 World Series. With only a couple of days left in the 1920 season, a Grand Jury was called to determine whether eight White Sox players should stand trial for allegedly throwing the 1919 World Series. Jackson was one of the eight players.
It took the jury a single ballot to acquit all eight accused players. Incredibly, the very next day, baseball's first commissioner - Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who came to power in the fall of 1920 with a lifetime contract and a mandate to clean up the game using whatever methods he saw fit - banned all eight players from baseball for life. The bigoted Landis was brought into organized baseball with a reputation of being a vindictive judge, a hanging judge. He was all of that.
Was there a plan to throw the World Series in 1919?
Was a plan carried out?
If so, which games were dumped?
What role did each banned player have?
Why was there a total banning of the players?
Buck Weaver was banned not for dumping but for allegedly having guilty knowledge that there was a plot.
Fred McMullen was banned though he came to bat twice and got one hit.
And Joe Jackson was banned although his performance exceeded his own standards.
Most importantly, the eight players were found not guilty in a court of law.
Yet, they were found guilty by a brand new Baseball Commissioner.
At the trial, Joe Jackson was asked under oath:
"Did you do anything to throw those games?"
"No sir," was his response.
"Any game in the series?"
"Not a one," was Jackson’s response. "I didn't have an error or make no misplay."
With the banning from baseball for life of "Shoeless Joe" Jackson and the seven other White Sox players, it seemed the sport was saying - now we are clean. Now we have purged ourselves of the dishonest ways of the past in the national pastime. And if Jackson in the prime of his baseball career and the others were sacrificed, that was the way it had to be.
Shoeless Joe Jackson maintained that he had played all out in that World Series of 1919. Nevertheless, Major League Baseball was done with Jackson and his seven teammates. It was a miscarriage of justice, a field day for slander on parade. Powerless players were punished, scapegoated.
For a couple of decades Jackson attempted to play the game that he loved, the game that he had learned so well back in the days of his youth. He made an effort to play with outlaw barnstormers, mill teams, semi-pro outfits. Aliases and disguises did him not much good; his unmistakable talent brought the spotlight to be bear on him. Relentless, unforgiving, prejudiced Judge Landis, to keep Jackson from playing, threatened baseball team owners and league officials.
In 1932, Jackson applied for permission to manage a minor league team in his home town of Greenville, South Carolina. Landis denied the application.
In 1951, Joseph Jefferson Jackson died of a massive heart attack a week before he was to appear on the Ed Sullivan television show. He was scheduled to receive a trophy honoring him for being inducted into the Cleveland Indians Baseball Hall of Fame.
It is an old story
The roster of hall of Famers includes personalities with much shabbier credentials and far more soiled reputations. Attempts to get Joe Jackson into the Baseball Hall of Fame failed during and after his lifetime. Yet, Jackson's shoes are at Cooperstown. Yet, his life-sized photograph is there. So is a baseball bat he used, along with the jersey he wore in the 1919 World Series. So is the last Major League Baseball contract he signed.
Prominent attorneys like Alan Dershowitz and F. Lee Bailey have argued that Jackson should go into the Hall. There have been petitions, Congressional motions, letters sent to baseball Commissioners through the years - all to no avail.
Commissioner Bart Giammatti said:"I do not wish to play God with history. The Jackson case is best left to historical debate and analysis. I am not for reinstatement."
Commissioner Faye Vincent said, "I can't uncipher or decipher what took place back then. I have no intention of taking formal action."
Commissioner Bud Selig has not stood up for Joe Jackson even though he met with Ted Williams who pushed for Jackson's admission to the Hall of Fame.
Four times Jackson batted over .370. His lifetime batting average was .356, topped only by Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby. Ruth, Cobb, and Casey Stengel all placed him on their all-time, all star team.
Vilified through the decades by many who never knew or didn’t care to know the full story—his is a story that just will not go away.

CASEY STENGEL REMEMBERED

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:22:00 +0000

The rambling, shifting, stream-of-consciousness syntax of Casey Stengel has filled thousands of newspaper and magazine pages with anecdotes amusing and wise, droll and banal, sometimes vulgar.
More than a million references to Number 37 exist on Google and Yahoo. He was on the cover of Time Magazine twice. And there are quite a books about him and his New York Yankees of the mid 20th century.
Like former president Harry S. Truman, Stengel hailed from Missouri and wandered in the wilderness before finally hitting his peak. Born July 30, 1890, he got a nickname a well earned nickname early on - - "King of the Grumblers."

In 1946, Stengel managed the Pacific Coast League Oakland Oaks to a second-place finish. In 1948, Casey and his "Nine Old Men" won the pennant. Del Webb, one of the three New York Yankee owners, offered the manager job to him on the recommendation of dour and businesslike General Manager George Weiss. Their friendship went back decades.
Stengel had a rap sheet going back to times with the Dodgers, Pirates, Phillies, Braves and Giants. It seemed he had been around baseball forever.
On October 12, 1948, six days after Yankee manager Bucky Harris was fired, the man whose greatest ambition once had been to be a left-handed dentist, was introduced as the new skipper of the Yankees. He presided over a crowded press conference and lavish luncheon at the posh 21 Club in Manhattan.
"Because I can make people laugh, some of you think I'm a damn fool," Casey told the assembled crowd. "But as player, coach and manager I have been around baseball for some thirty-five years. (He'd played in or managed over 5,000 games). I've watched some successful managers as John McGraw and Uncle Robbie work. I've learned a lot and picked up a few ideas of my own.
"I didn't get the job through friendship. The Yankees represent an investment of millions of dollars. They don't hand out jobs like this just because they like your company. I got the job because the people here think I can produce for them."
Heading back to California on the train after settling all his Yankee business, Casey told famed sports writer Grantland Rice: "I wonder how things will be next season, where I'll be a year from now."
"Casey Stengel," Hall of Fame broadcaster Curt Gowdy said, "was one of the funniest guys I ever met. Funny without trying to be funny. My first year broadcasting the Yankees was his first year as manager. I'll never forget, we went to a bar after a night game in Cleveland. He ordered a draft beer and knocked it down in one gulp. I said, 'Jeezus, Casey, why do you drink your beer so fast?' And Stengel said, 'I drink it like that ever since the accident.' I said, 'You were in an accident?' He said, 'Yeah, somebody knocked over my beer.'"
In spring training of 1949 Stengel told his Yankees: "I know nothing about the American League. You guys are big league ball players, and this year you will be on your own. I'm not even going to give you signs. You just play. This is my year to observe and find out what the American League is all about."
"It was a shock," Yankee star hurler Eddie Lopat said. "We thought we got us a clown. He never said too much of anything to anyone. It was a treat for him to be with us after all the donkey clubs he had. He didn't need notes. He knew what every hitter or pinch hitter could do against certain pitchers. He could make the moves."
"There was the Casey Stengel of the huge ego," Tony Kubek, who played for him, said. "There was the Casey Stengel of the public relations image. There was the Casey Stengel who could talk for hours on the long thirty six hours of train trips to Kansas City. There was the sensitive Casey Stengel. There was the Casey Stengel of the Yankee pride."
That rookie season for Stengel saw the Yankees devastated by injuries. The famous Charlie Keller-Joe DiMaggio-Tommy Henrich outfield was never in place. Keller missed the whole season. DiMaggio had a banged up heel and did not play until June 28. Little star shortstop Phil Rizzuto was out a lot.
Stengel coped. Stengel planned. Relying on players like Cliff Mapes, Dick Kryhoski, and Fenton Mole and other non-prime time performers, juggling, mixing and matching, patching game by game, Casey managed to manage it all.
The Yankees of Casey Stengel marched to the first of five straight world championships in 1949. Savoring the moment and the 5-3 pennant- clinching triumph, Casey screamed out in the locker room: "Fellas, I want to thank you all for going to all the trouble to do this for me. I want to thank all for giving me the greatest thrill of my life, And to think they pay me for managing so great a bunch of guys."
That first season Casey Stengel put his stamp on everything Yankees. There had been a Yankee culture before. Now it was a Casey Stengel Yankee culture. It would be part of the franchise in 1949 and through Casey's tenure as manager. It would also be part of the Yankee tradition for decades to come.
The "Ol' Perfessor" with the gravelly voice became a Yankee institution. He was as famous, perhaps more famous than any of his stars. He became a national figure, a mixture of Santa Claus and Jimmy Durante and Groucho Marx, duck-walking his way on the baseball stage of his era. "When we won the World Series in 1949 and came to spring training the next year," Eddie Lopat recalled, "Stengel told us: 'Last year is past history. We never look back. We gotta go back and beat 'em again this year.'"
Stengel inherited a Yankee team many thought of as a powerhouse. Within three years he had re-tooled it creating a totally different type of club. Instead of featuring superstars at most positions, Casey structured his team around the trio of Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford. The rest of the team was mainly role-players. Stengel pitted them against each other for playing time. "The fella I got on third is hitting pretty good," Stengel explained, " and I know he can make that throw, and if he don't make it that other fella I got coming up has shown me a lot, and if he can't, I have my guy and I know what he can do."
"We had guys on the bench who could play as good as the starters," said Eddie Lopat. "They hated to get on the bench because they knew they might not get back for three or four weeks or ever. "When we played the other teams," Lopat continued,"we never under-estimated them or ourselves. We played the Giants in the 1951 World Series. We were told by the newspapermen that the Giants would run us off the field, that they were hot and they had won all those games down the stretch. Casey's attitude was our attitude. They would have to run us off the field, but not in the newspapers.
"In 1949," Lopat continued, "we played the Dodgers in the Series. We knew they were young fellows without that much experience and we could beat them. In 1952, however, we knew they were now a tough club, but we were prepared."
"Case," former slugger Bill Skowron mused, "would leave us alone to get in shape in spring training. But when those last ten days of spring training came around you knew you had to be better ready to play."
Stengelisms abounded: "I was the best manager I ever saw, but I tell people that to shut them up quickly and because I also believe it. But John McGraw was an enjoyable man, too."
"Make 'em pay. Make 'em pay you a thousand dollars. Don't go help those people with their shows for coffee-and-cake money. You're the Yankees--the best. Make 'em pay you high." -Casey Stengel In the dozen years he managed the Yanks when the team was home, Stengel lived with his wife Edna at the swanky Essex House in Manhattan. The love of his life, Edna was a former silent screen star, a high-fashion dresser who picked out her husband's clothes. The tips Stengel gave at the Essex House were over the top because as Casey said:"I got so much money I don't know what to do with it."
Off season, the big house in Glendale, California was the site of happening times for Edna's nieces and nephews and -- since Casey and Edna had no children of their own -- for Yankee players and their wives and children. At times there were 50 to 75 children "It was real Yankee family back then," Yogi Berra said. "Casey and Edna were like a father and mother to us all."
The talent just gushed to the Yankees in those Stengel years from the farm system or through trades: Jerry Coleman and Gene Woodling in 1949, Whitey Ford and Billy Martin in 1950, Tom Morgan, Gil McDougald, Bob Cerv and Mickey Mantle in 1951, Andy Carey and Ewell Blackwell in 1952, Bill Skowron, Enos Slaughter and Bob Grim in 1954, Johnny Kucks, Elston Howard. Don Larsen, Bob Turley, Bobby Richardson, Elston Howard and Tom Sturdivant in 1955. Ralph Terry came in 1956 and Tony Kubek came along in 1957. In 1958, Ryne Duren, Clete Boyer in 1959 and Roger Maris in 1960.
"I was astonished at the atmosphere on the team when I joined the Yankees in 1957 along with Bobby Richardson," Tony Kubek said. "Jerry Coleman and Gil McDougald went out of their way to help us and we were to ultimately take their jobs. It was typical of everyone helping the helping the team, the atmosphere that Casey Stengel put in place."
Stengel stoked the fierce competition for jobs. Players were trained not to be complacent, to do whatever Casey asked for the good of the team. Loyalty to the organization, pride in being a New York Yankee were part of the package. The almost annual certainty of a postseason check was also something very nice to count on - -a sort of bonus for being one of Casey Stengel's Yankees. Left-handed hitting Gene Woodling and right-handed hitting Hank Bauer shared outfield duties. "We didn't like it," Bauer said. "But you couldn't complain too much - - we walked into the bank every October."
When Elston Howard became a Yankee in 1955, Casey joked: "When I finally get me a nigger, I got one who can't run." It was a reference to Howard's slow foot speed and how long it took the team to have a black player eight years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color line. Casey and Robinson got into quite a few verbal altercations over the Yankee tardiness in integrating their roster. The two did not like each other. But the old man had a genuine affection for the stolid, reserved, and talented Howard.
In vintage Stengelese the skipper paid tribute to Howard: "He deserves credit and where would I be without him? Phew! He can give me a job in the outfield and he can catch, too. Good kid, too. He's good."
For most big league teams, the rhythm of the rotation was sacred. For Stengel, it was his call. The Big Four: Whitey Ford, Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds, and Ed Lopat, were all used in relief if there was a need or if Casey felt it was the right thing to do.
"Sure he wasn't that young," Skowron said. "But he knew and we knew what we had to do. He'd leave us alone when we were winning. He'd holler 'butcher boy' and 'don't swing too hard at ground balls' and 'don't beat yourselves.' But when he saw us making mistakes, he'd get excited and do some yelling."
The Yankees took the 1958 pennant by ten games. The l959 Yankees finished in third place - their low point in Stengel's time as manager. There were some who thought it was the beginning of the end. Nearing 70, impatient, Casey made moves in games that seemed highly unorthodox even for him.
But in l960 in a tough pennant race, the Ol'' Professor rallied the Yankees to another flag. But Bill Mazeroski's walk off homer gave the world championship to Pittsburgh.
Yankee owners Dan Topping and Del Webb, who had wanted to get rid of Stengel for several years, used the loss to the Pirates as an excuse. Casey was fired. Actually, he was forced out as manager by a mandatory retirement age of 65 - -just for him.
"I'm just sorry Casey isn't fifty years old .... It's best for the future to make a change," Topping said. "Casey's writers," members of the New York Baseball Writers Association passed around a petition exhorting him not to retire.
"It was wonderful of them," the outgoing manager said," but I've been here twelve years and when a feller stays too long in one place he gets a lot of people mad at him and gets mad at a lot of people when they blame him for blowing tight games."
Later, in a sarcastic and stinging voice, he told dozens of reporters: "I commenced winning pennants when I got here. But I didn't commence getting any younger. They told me that my services were no longer desired because they wanted to put in a youth movement as an advance way of keeping the club going. The trick is growing up without growing old. Most guys are dead at the present time anyway and you could look it up. I'll never make the mistake of being seventy years old again."
Between the many hirings (as most know he surfaced again as pilot of the hapless Mets) and the firings, there is the amazing, amusing, arresting story of Charles Dillon Stengel, a man never at a loss for words.
"I was too old when I began," the crazy as a fox Stengel said, "I began playing in 1910 in some league that didn't even last out the season. I told Mickey Mantle one time how I used to do something. He looked at me like I was crazy and asked me if I played. What the hell do you think, I said, that I was born here on this bench as an old manager?
I started managing in 1925 and quit in 1965. I guess I know about managers and managing. What the hell is it but telling the umpire who is gonna play and then watching them play. The best thing to do is to have players who can hit right-handed and left-handed and hit farther one way and father sometimes the other way and run like the wind.
The dozen years Casey ran the Yankees saw the team cop 10 pennants and seven World Series. It was the greatest run by any manager in the history of the national pastime. Only once in his dozen seasons did his teams win fewer than 90 games; his Yankee career managing record was 1,149-696, a winning percentage of .623.
"There comes a time in every man's life," Casey said," and I've had plenty of them." He died on September 29, 1975 in Glendale, California.

Remembering Joe DiMaggio's 56-Game Hitting Streak, 1941

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 02:12:00 +0000

By Dr Harvey Frommer

The 1941 Yankees were a loaded team. They would win 101 games, the American League pennant and the world championship. It was a team of stars--solid outfielders Charlie Keller and Tommy Henrich, rookie shortstop Phil Rizzuto, top second baseman Joe Gordon, rounded out by talented pitchers like Rud Ruffing and Lefty Gomez. But the star of stars was the man they called "the Yankee Clipper," age 26, in his sixth season with the Bronx Bombers.

Joseph Paul DiMaggio was one of nine children of a fisherman father who had emigrated from Sicily. It was all planned for Joe to become a fisherman like his father, but Joe could not abide the smell of fish and he often got seasick.

His real passion was playing baseball. He played the game with an almost poetical grace. He played when he was fatigued, when he was hurt, when it mattered a great deal and when it didn't matter at all.

He played in the "house that Ruth built," but it was his park now. Yankee Stadium was the first triple-decked structure of its kind--oval-shaped, a dull green, cathedral-like edifice where autumn's afternoon sun created strange mosaic designs on the center field grass where Joe DiMaggio held forth.

It was a park of pigeons, vast numbers of them, fat from the popcorn and peanuts. They lodged in the beams and rafters and fluttered about when the huge crowd rose to its feet cheering a big hit or a spectacular play. They had cheered countless times for Joseph Paul DiMaggio, their favorite.

That 1941 season, however, the Yankee did not get off to a quick start. Some even claimed he was slumping.

On May 15, a day when the United States was on the brink of war and people were startled to see newspaper photos of a London under siege by Nazi Luftwaffe bombers, Joe DiMaggio managed a single in four at-bats off stubby southpaw Eddie Smith of Chicago.

The hit was little noticed. What was noticed was the 13-1 pounding the White Sox gave the Yankees. The mighty Bronx bombers had now lost eight of their last 10 games and were six-and-a-half games behind league-leaders Cleveland.

Then on May 24 in his final at-bat against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium, DiMaggio singled in two runs. By then he had a modest 10-game hitting streak.

On May 30 DiMaggio made three errors in the second game of a double header. That was bad news for the sure-handed center fielder. The good news was his fifth inning fly ball to right field was lost in the sun by Boston outfielder Pete Fox. The streak reached 16. DiMag was credited with a hit.

Singles in both games of a road doubleheader on June 1 against Al Milnar and then Mel Harder of the Indians moved the streak to 18. It was at 19 the next day, the day Lou Gehrig died. It was a sad day for the New York Yankees.

The American League record set by George Sisler of the St. Louis Browns of 41 straight seemed unreachable. But there were beginnings of speculation in the newspapers and on the radio. "That's when I became conscious of the streak," he later told friends, "although I didn't think too much about it."

Newspaper and radio coverage began to dramatize what Joe was doing. Most games back then were played in the afternoon, and radio announcers would routinely interrupt programs with the news of the Yankee Clipper's progress. "The streak is alive! The streak is alive!" announcers shouted.

Day and night radio disc jockeys played the Les Brown and his Band of Renown's recording of "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio."

"Who started baseball's famous streak...that's got us all aglow...he's just a man and not a freak...Jolting Joe DiMaggio...Joe, Joe, DiMaggio...we want you on our side...from coast to coast, that's all you hear...of Joe the one-man show...he's glorified the horsehide sphere...we want you on our side...he'll live in baseball's Hall of Fame...he got there blow-by-blow...our kids will tell their kids his name..."

He would step into the batter's box and stub his right toe into the dirt in back of his left heel. It was almost a dance step. His feet were spaced approximately four feet apart, with the weight of his frame on his left leg. Erect, almost in a military position, Joe Dee would hold his bat at the end and poise it on his right shoulder--a rifle at the ready. He would look at the pitcher from deep in the batter's box and assume a stance that almost crowded the plate. He was ready.

On June 17 at Yankee Stadium official scorer Dan Daniel of the New York World-Telegram, a buddy of the Yankee Clipper, credited DiMaggio with a hit when his grounder bounced up and hit Chicago shortstop Luke Appling on the shoulder. There were those who claimed the White Sox infielder could have been charged with an error. Several times during the streak there were questioned of rulings of official scorers. But the streak continued. With DiMaggio having hit in 30 straight games, the George Sisler American League record of 41 now seemed tantalizingly within reach. And so did the "Wee Willie" Keeler major league mark of 44.

The 1941 season moved on. War news was everywhere. So was the drama of Joe DiMaggio's relentless march to the record. At Yankee Stadium, at Comiskey Park, at Briggs Stadium, at all the ballparks in the eight team American League circuit that Joe knew so well, the Yankee Clipper kept it going.

Dom DiMaggio: "Despite their own personal rivalry Ted Williams rooted for my brother Joe. They had great admiration for each other. As a great hitter Ted could appreciate what Joe was doing. It was Ted, playing left field for our team at Fenway Park, who would receive info from the scoreboard operator about the streak. And we would yell out to me in center "Joe's got another hit."

It was Yankees vs. Senators on the 29th of June. A DiMaggio single off Washington knuckle-baller Dutch Leonard in the first game of a doubleheader moved the streak to 41. A seventh-inning single off Walt Masterson in the second game set a new record: 42.

Armed with the new record, the taciturn DiMaggio had become America's most famous athlete. Fame's relentless glare was solidly focused on him. Pestered by the media, ogled by fans, respected even more by teammates and opponents, he tried to take it all in stride, although at times it was painful for the reserved star.

The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, ancient rivals, were at it again on a cloudy July 1 doubleheader at the Stadium before 52,832. DiMag paced a Yankee doubleheader sweep. In the first game he stroked two hits off Mike Ryba.

The first hit was questionable--a grounder in the fourth to Jim Tabor. The third baseman feeling the pressure of the consecutive game hitting streak on the line, rushed his throw to first base and DiMaggio wound up on second base. A hit? An error? Dan Daniel in the crowded stadium press box raised his right arm, signaling "hit." The huge and partisan crowd roared and applauded.

The second game was called because of rain after five innings, but DiMaggio got on the board again stroking a first-inning single, tying Keeler's 43-year-old major league mark of 44.

There were 8,682 in attendance at the Stadium the next day sweltering in the 95 degree heat and horrible humidity. They were there to see their beloved DiMag set the major league record of hitting in the most consecutive games. The starting pitcher for the Red Sox was supposed to have been veteran star Lefty Grove. He was on record as determined to end the streak. The oppressive heat, however, made Boston decide to start talented rookie Heber (Dick) Newsome.

Before the game started the head of American League umpires Tom Connolly met with DiMaggio near the Yankee clubhouse. The lively Irishman had known "Wee Willie" Keeler. "Boy, Joe, I hope you do it," he said. "If you do you will be breaking the record of the finest fellow who ever walked and who never said a mean thing about anyone in his life. Good luck to you."

The smell of cigarette smoke, the sounds of pigeons fluttering their wings scurrying for leftover food, and the hawking cries of vendors were backdrop for DiMaggio's quest that New York summer day at the Stadium.

DiMaggio's first at-bat resulted in a long drive that was run down by outfielder Stan Spence who made a leaping catch. The crowd groaned.

In his second at bat, DiMag got all of the ball, slugging it to deep center field. Off with the crack of his brother's bat, bespectacled Dom DiMaggio racing at top speed snared the ball and robbed his brother of an extra base hit.

"It was a great catch, "Joe recalled after the game. "It was one of the best Dom ever made, but at that moment the only thing on my mind was the temptation to withdraw the dinner invitation I had extended to my brother."

Knowing he could take no chances, Joe stepped into the batter's box for his third at bat. Two Yankee runners were on base. The count 2-1. The pitch. Home run--the 15th of the streak, into the seats in lower left field. Yankee Stadium rocked. Screaming fans yelled his name. Even guys in the press box applauded. Joe savored the moment and the record--hitting in 45 straight baseball games.

It seemed that he took even longer, loping strides longer than usual as he ran out the home run, tipping his cap to cheering fans. He touched home plate and bounded into the dugout where he was swallowed up by swarming teammates, happy for him, realizing they, too, were part of baseball history.

The Yankees won the game, 8-4; Lefty Gomez moved his record to 6-3 and recorded his fifth save. The man of the hour, some would say of the season, sat in front of his locker, sipping a beer, smoking a cigarette. He was sometimes moody, sometimes testy. Now he was relaxed as reporters gathered around.

"I don't know how far I can go," DiMaggio said, "but I'm not going to worry about it now. I'm glad it's over. It got to be quite a strain over the last 10 days. Now I can go back to swinging at good balls. I was swinging at some bad pitches so I wouldn't be walked. The pressure has been tough off the field as on it."

"It was a great tribute to me, and I appreciated it but it had its drawbacks, too. I got so much fan mail. There was some kind of good luck charm in every letter that I had to turn it over to the Yankee front office."

That night the brothers DiMaggio dined on steak and spaghetti.

Dom DiMaggio: "I told him, you know Joe, I could not have gone another inch for the ball you hit that I caught. But I am glad you have the record"

The streak continued when DiMag singled on July 5, making it 46 straight. The next day the honed in Yank racked up six hits in a doubleheader. Forty-eight!

A week later on July 8th, the All-Star Game was played at Detroit's Briggs Stadium. DiMag batted third in the powerful American League lineup ahead of Ted Williams. The Yankee Clipper's bat still had magic in it. "I doubled," he smiled remembering the time, "and (brother) Dom drove me in with a single."

The streak moved to mid-July. Many baseball fans stayed up past their regular bed times to learn if the elegant Yankee was still streaking. Radio announcers described to a sometimes unbelieving audience how Hitler's armies moved deeper and deeper into Russia. They also described the drama of how the great DiMaggio managed to keep the consecutive game hits moving forward.

The 16th of July saw the Yankees in Cleveland for the start of a series with the Indians at League Park II that seated 30,000. This day only 15,000 fans were on hand. Stroking a first-inning single off Al Milnar and two more hits later in the game, Joe Di moved the streak to 56. The sparse partisan Cleveland crowd gave him a thunderous ovation.

The management of the Indians had decided to schedule the next game at night at Municipal Stadium, a mammoth facility that could seat accommodate more than 78,000.

That Thursday July 17, 1941, DiMag and his buddy Lefty Gomez, scheduled to start for the Yankees, headed in a cab to the vast park for the night game. They stopped at a traffic light. The cabby had recognized DiMaggio and turned around: "I've got a feeling that if you don't get a hit your first time up tonight, they're going to stop you," he said.

"Who the hell are you?" an enraged Gomez snapped at the cabby. "What are you trying to do, jinx him?" DiMaggio said nothing.

In the streets outside the Stadium there was a carnival-like atmosphere, a lot of hustle and bustle, hawking of souvenirs. Sidewalks were clogged with Cleveland and Yankees fans anxious for the game to start. A large part of the gigantic crowd of 67,463, the largest night game attendance to that point in time, began filing in to the 10-year-old Stadium. Forty thousand had purchased their tickets long in advance. The bleacher seats were occupied very early. They majority of the huge throng had come see if "Joltin' Joe" could work his magic again.

It had rained earlier in the day. At game time a mist rolled in from Lake Erie. Walking the field, the Yankee star knew that with the ground still wet it might be a tougher run down the first base line. Mud stuck to his spikes.

Wearing his baggy road grays, DiMag stepped into the batter's box for his first at bat against veteran southpaw Al Smith. One man out. The Yankees led 10. Tommy Henrich was on second base. The first pitch was a fastball, high and away. The Yankee slugger slashed the next pitch hard past the third base bag. Playing deep, protecting the line, backhanding the ball, Ken Keltner fired to first. Out on a close play. DiMaggio showed no emotion.

In the fourth inning Smith walked DiMaggio with a curveball that broke inside. The huge crowd booed, displeased.

Honed in, the Yankee star came to bat in the seventh, lusting to extend his streak. Almost deafening was the continuous roar in the huge ballpark. Yet, the shouts of "C'mon, Joe!" and "You can do it!" could be heard over the bedlam. DiMaggio, perhaps over-anxious, lashed out at the first pitch curveball. Another shot to Keltner at third. Another backhanded play. Another close play at first base. Again, Joe showed no emotion.

With one out and the Yankees leading, 4-1, a spent Smith walked Tommy Henrich to load the bases. DiMaggio was next. Smith was done. Right-hander Jim Bagby Jr. took over. He ran the count to two balls, one strike. Some said DiMag swung at ball three, a low fastball. A grounder to shortstop Lou Boudreau that seemed to hit something in the grass and jumped up. Boudreau did not panic. Gloving the ball, he shuffled it to second baseman Ray Mack. The step on second, the throw to first. Double play.

The graceful DiMaggio passed first base and continued his run into shallow center field. In full stride, he bent down, lifted his glove off the grass. Then he calmly assumed his fielding position for the top of the eighth inning. The game still had to be played out.

Joe DiMaggio had faced types of pitchers during the streak. All hungered to be the one to stop him. He faced many top-draw hurlers including four future Hall of Famers: Bob Feller of Cleveland, Hal Newhouser of Detroit, Ted Lyons of the White Sox and Lefty Grove of the Red Sox.

"You'll start another one tomorrow," said Yankee Manager Joe McCarthy, his arm around the center fielder in the visitors' clubhouse.

At game's end Ken Keltner was escorted by police out of the ballpark for his own safety. Joe Di and Phil Rizzuto waited for the crowd to thin out before they walked through the mist back to the Cleveland Hotel. The Yankee shortstop headed to his room. The Yankee Clipper wound up in the bar.

It was remarkable--a hit every game for two months, from May 15 through July 16, 1941 in Yankee wins and defeats, in games played in the daytime and at night. Single games, doubleheaders, unimportant games and ones that counted--Joe DiMaggio was locked in for 56 straight.

Then incredibly, with the streak over, DiMaggio began a new one.

He hit in 16 consecutive games--giving him the distinction of having hit safely in 72 of 73 games that 1941 season.

Joseph Paul DiMaggio would play on until 1951, his 13th seasons as a proud Yankee. He never came close to the record streak again.

There are many who say it is the one baseball record that will never be broken.

Sports Bookshelf – Five for the fall -- “The Big Show,” “Fenway 1912,” and More . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 13:38:00 +0000

The variety and quality of books on sports keeps on coming. Some are sac flies, others are bunt singles, and still others could be considered double, triples or home runs. You pay your money and make your choice as to how you might classify the following lineup of books for fall 2011.

With the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park looming in 2012, all manner of books will be on the market to commemorate the occasion. (Full disclosure) Mine is already out there, Remembering Fenway Park: An Oral and Narrative History of the Home of Red Sox Nation. Now on the shelves is Glen Stout’s Fenway 1912 (HMH, $26.00, 391 pages). Stout’s work traces as its sub-title proclaims: “the Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway’s Remarkable First Year.” For Sox fans, for baseball fans and also history buffs - - this terrific tome is a keeper. We are there amidst the construction, in the dugout, in the dog days of a long ago Boston summer, in the chill of autumn and the glory of brand new Fenway experiencing its first world championship.

Another work that celebrates baseball’s storied past is “The Big Show” by Charles M. Conlon and Constance McCabe, (Abrams, $35.00, 198 pages). The book contains the stunning photography of the famed Charles M. Conlon who was behind the camera from 1904 to 1942. Prolific, driven, a baseball aficionado, he concentrated his remarkable talents in the main creating revealing photographic portraits of figures from that time. We are there with Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, Connie Mack, Joe DiMaggio and so many others, the famous and the not well known. The book is graced by an
eloquent and insightful foreword from the great Roger Kahn.

For those of a certain age “the shot heard round the world” still stays. It certainly stays with Ralph Branca who in his eighth big league seasons as a Dodger pitcher on October 3, 1951 served up the pitch that Bobby Thomson hammered. It resulted in doom and gloom in Brooklyn. It gave the Giants the National League pennant. For fans of the team that played at the old Polo Grounds, that was one of their most memorable baseball moments. It is an oft told story, one with many angles. A Moment in Time by Branca with David Ritz (Scribner, $25.00, 233 pages) possesses no new baseball revelations, but it is told in a sincere manner replaying what Brooklyn Dodgers fans called: “Dat Day.” Branca does reveal that his mother (who had 17 children) was born Jewish. She converted to Catholicism. Now 85, Branca claims he only recently learned this. “She never mentioned this to us,” he writes, “but it may explain my extraordinarily deep love of Jewish people.”
The busy Stout also is the Series Editor of “The Best American Sports Stories” (HMH, $14.95, 350 pages, paper). Selected by Jane Leavy, the book features fiction and nonfiction pieces from a variety of sources. This issue includes Selena Roberts, David Dobbs, Sally Jenkins and others.

The Orvis Guide to Small Stream Fishing by Tom Rosenbauer (Universe, Rizzoli, $35.00, 208 pages) is a work aimed at a large but select readership audience. Nevertheless, it also will appeal to the general public for the wealth of information imparted by the author on fly fishing in small streams. At once a guide, a beautiful picture book, a primer on the art and science of small stream fishing, this is the kind of book to savor. Categories like “Reading the Water,” “Care and Ethics,” “A Philosophy of Small-Stream Casting” and others are instructional as well as aesthetic.

So there you have it – “Five for the fall.”

"Sandman" Mariano Rivera & the "Save Rule"

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:18:00 +0000

By Harvey Frommer

"Enter Sandman" blared again over the Yankee Stadium speakers. Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees tipped his cap to the crowd and beamed. The Yankee "stopper" had set a new major league record - 602 career saves. Needing just 13 pitches, the storied hurler notched a shutdown ninth inning on September 19th, locking up the Yankee 6-4 win over Minnesota. He got Trevor Plouffe, Michael Cuddyer and Chris Parmelee in order.
On May 23, 1995, the slender 25-year-old rookie Mariano Rivera, in his major league debut, lasted but 3 1/3 innings, yielding 8 hits and 5 runs. The Yankees lost, 10-0, to the Angels at Anaheim Stadium. That season the son of a Panamanian fisherman started ten games, allowed eight homers and 35 runs in 50 innings and was demoted to the bullpen,
On May 17, 1996 at the old Yankee Stadium against the Angels, Rivera recorded his first career save, the first of five that season. He was primarily John Wetteland's setup man then. In 1997, he became the closer for the Yanks. His money pitch, a sizzling cut fastball, was and is his mighty, some would say, his only weapon. Year after year opposing players have known it was coming, but they have done very little against it.
Throughout the baseball season of 2011 especially in New York City there was much hype and hoopla over the 12-time All Star's quest to set the all- time saves record. And there has been much celebration, exaltation and lauding of the feat now accomplished.
Stats galore have been trotted out in tribute to the magnificence of the gentlemanly Rivera's career achievements. Mo has a record 15 straight seasons of 25 or more saves, a stunning record 89% save percentage and the lowest career ERA (2.22) since the 1920s. In his 17-season Yankee career, Rivera has gone 75-57 with 602 saves recorded in 674 opportunities.
And many have labeled the gentlemanly Yankee the greatest pitcher of his era. Others have gone further calling him one of the greatest pitchers of all time. There are those who refer to Rivera as the greatest closer in baseball history. On the other hand, however, there are some who claim that he ranks as the most overrated player in baseball history.
Bill Plaschke of the, LA Times notes: Rivera has recorded an average of barely more than three outs, with 1,209 innings pitched in 1,039 games. How can he be considered among the game's greatest pitchers if he works one-sixth of the time? How can he be considered among the game's greatest players if he plays one-ninth of a full game?"
And legendary sports expert Len Berman adds: " For someone to amass so many saves he not only needs longevity, he needs to play on winning teams for a great number of years. That's why all saves aren't created equal. You can hit homers, or have a high batting average against
anyone. But to get saves, you really do need a 'little help from your
friends' (The Yankees)."
These insightful comments notwithstanding, it is not Mariano Rivera under fire in the "saves" controversy. It is really the "save stat" and the whole culture connected to it.
The "save rule" was created by respected Chicago baseball scribe Jerome Holtzman in 1960. "At that time,"as Holzman explained, "there were only two stats to measure the effectiveness of a reliever: earned run average and the win-loss record." What Holzman had concocted was baseball's first new major statistic since the RBI in 1920. "The save" was officially adopted by Major League Baseball in 1969.
Rule 10.20 in the Official Rule Book states:
Credit a pitcher with a save when he meets all three of the following conditions:
(1) He is the finishing pitcher in a game won by his club; and
(2) He is not the winning pitcher; and
(3) He qualifies under one of the following conditions:
- (a) He enters the game with a lead of no more than three runs and pitches for at least one inning; or
- (b) He enters the game, regardless of the count, with the potential tying run either on base, or at bat, or on deck (that is, the potential tying run is either already on base or is one of the first two batsmen he faces; or
- (c) He pitches effectively for at least three innings. No more than one save may be credited in each game.
What Holzman had wrought became an over-blown, over-hyped, over-used stat that revolutionized the game. "Firemen" back in the day generally toiled multiple innings in a game. They also generally returned to pitch again the next day. From the time the save rule became an official stat through 1985, one inning saves composed only 21% of all saves. Then things began to change.
Today's stoppers have a much reduced workload, mostly one inning of work and generally no work the next day. Many hurlers would not have had the success they had had they been starters. Suddenly they became superstar stoppers and wealthy men as a result of the "save rule." Pitchers today make millions a season working almost solely ninth innings of games when their team is ahead.
This is the culture of the "save" and one that for better or worse Mariano Rivera has been part of that culture.
Red Sox broadcaster and Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley, beneficiary of all the "save" had to offer is, quite frank: "The save is overrated."
All of this, however, has nothing to do with Mariano Rivera. His grace under pressure, his machine-like efficiency, his piling up all these saves is a one of a kind, top of the hill accomplishment. The rules were not made by the great Rivera. He simply did his job year after year in the time of the one-inning closer. His greatness is not to be questioned.
However, the rules governing the "save" deserve some thorough questioning and perhaps some tinkering.

Harvey Frommer is in his 36th year of writing books. A noted oral historian and sports journalist, the author of 41 sports books including the classics: "New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," his acclaimed REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM was published in 2008 and his REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK: AN ORAL AND NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THE HOME OF RED SOX NATION was published to acclaim in 2011.

His work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, USA Today, Men's Heath, The Sporting News, among other publications.

FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.
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Dr. Frommer is the Official Book Reviewer of Behind the Bombers Online
*Autographed copies of Frommer books are available .

Sad Days at Fenway Park in the 1960s

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:33:00 +0000

(Excerpt from Remembering Fenway Park: An Oral and Narrative History of the Home of the Boston Red Sox/Abrams 2011 - - now available in stores, on-line and direct from the author)
By Harvey Frommer
The joy and passion and full houses (breaking the 700 straight sellout mark and counting) and winning ways now on parade at Fenway Park all are a sharp contrast to the way things once were at the little ballpark in most of the 1960s.
There are still those around who recall that time, some with mixed emotions.
SAM MELE: I came into Fenway a lot when I managed Minnesota from 1961 to 1967. My home was still in Quincy, Mass. So I slept in my own bed. It was funny. I was managing against the team that I loved.
In 1965, we beat Boston 17 out of 18 times, 8 out of the 9 at Fenway. It actually hurt me, to beat them. I felt sorry because in my heart I was a Red Sox fan. I had played for them, I had scouted for them. Tom Yawkey would come in my office. And we would talk a lot. Oh yeah, geez, he had me in his will.
The losing, the miserable attendance, the doom and gloom that pervaded Fenway was on parade big time on the 16th of September. The tiniest crowd of the season made its way into Fenway Park - - just 1,247 paid and 1,123 in on passes. Dave Morehead opposed Luis Tiant of the Cleveland Indians.
Fenway was a ghost town of a ball park in 1965 when the team drew but 652,201, an average of 8,052 a game . The worst came late in the season. On September 28th against California only 461 showed to watch the sad Sox. The next day was even worse against the same team just 409 in the house. Finishing 9th in the ten-team American League, the Sox lost 100 games and won 62. The nadir had been breached.
Managers kept coming and going. Top prospects somehow never made it for one reason or another. Billy Herman was in place as the 1966 season started. Early on Dave Morehead, just 24, regarded as a brilliant future star, suffered an injury to his arm and was never the same. Posting a 1-2 record in a dozen appearances, he symbolized the Red Sox of that era - promise but pathos.
In 1966, the Sox lost 90 games and finished ninth. Attendance at Fenway Park was 811,172, an average attendance per game of 10, 095. It was pitiful.
JIM LONBORG: The 1967 season started off as a typical Red Sox season. There were 8,324 fans on a cold and dreary April 12th, Opening Day. We beat the White Sox 5-4. Petrocelli hit a three-run homer. And I got the win.
The next day there were only 3,607 at the ballpark. And then we went on a road trip. We came back having won 10 straight games. And when our plane landed there were thousands of fans waiting at the airport. That moment was the start of the great relationship between the fans and the players.
BOB SULLIVAN: I went to Dartmouth, and we used to road trip down to Fenway and get standing room without any trouble. It was eight dollars for grandstand seats. But so many seats were empty. You would flip an usher a quarter and you could move down into the seats. Then it changed. What happened was '67.
A noted oral historian and sports journalist, cited in the Congressional Record and the New York State Legislature, Harvey Frommer has written forty one sports books. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, USA Today, Men's Heath, The Sporting News, among other publications.
Dr. Frommer, dubbed "Dartmouth's own Mr. Baseball" by the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, received his Ph.D. from New York University. Professor Emeritus, City University of New York, he has been a professor in the MALS program at Dartmouth College since 1992, where he has taught courses in oral history and culture and sports journalism.

New York Yankee September Pasts (from the Vault)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:58:00 +0000

Whenever the month of September comes around, thoughts turn to BUCKY DENT'S HOME RUN October 2, 1978 and THE BOSTON MASSACRE, September 7, 1978. But there have been other marker moments that linger in memory. A brief list follows: .
SAM JONES, NO HITTER, SEPTEMBER 4, 1923
His major league career began with the Cleveland Indians in 1914, continued with the Red Sox from 1916-21, with the Yankees (1922-26), the Browns (1927), the Senators (1928-31), and the White Sox (1932-35). Twice a 20-game winner, Samuel Pond Jones won 229 games and lost 217 in 22 seasons pitching in the American League.
A stylish right-hander, one of the first major leaguers to wear eyeglasses on the field, Jones had his ups and downs. Like most pitchers of his time, he relieved and started. His eight saves in 1922 were tops in the league.. In 1923, he won 21 games, but lost a league-high 21 in 1925 as the Yanks dropped to seventh place
Jones won 67 games as a Yankee in five seasons. No game was more dramatic for him than his September 4, 1923 no-hitter, a 2-0 gem against the Athletics. It capped his career year, a time he was the Yankee ace, hurling New York to its first World Championship.

JIM ABBOTT NO HITTER, September 4, 1993
The Yankees traded for him on December 6, 1992. He was born without a right hand, but he persevered, more than persevered. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Jim Abbott carried the United States flag during the opening ceremonies at the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis and pitched for the 1988 U.S. Olympic team.
In 1989, he went directly from the University of Michigan to the Angels' starting rotation. A solidly built southpaw, the intense Abbott won a dozen games and posted a 3.92 ERA in his rookie season. On the mound, he wore a right-hander's fielder's glove over the stump at the end of his right arm. After delivering a pitch and when completing his follow-through, he adroitly switched the glove to his left hand to be in a position to handle any balls batted back to him.
In 1991 he looked like one of the best young left-handers in the game after winning 18 games for the Angels while posting a 2.89 ERA. The Yankees traded their best prospect first baseman J.T. Snow and pitchers Russ Springer and Jerry Nielsen to California for Abbott. The media spotlight in New York City seemed to be on him daily. Abbott said he wanted to be like Nolan Ryan and not like Pete Gray, the one handed pitcher.
With the Yankees, Abbott had his ups and downs in two seasons in the Bronx. His record was 20-22. But he did have one especially shining moment. It came just six days after he had been touched for ten hits and seven runs in only three and a third innings against Cleveland. Facing Cleveland again, in the in the heat of the pennant race, Abbott tossed a 4-0 no-hitter against the Indians. "I remember it was a cloudy day. A day game, the kind of game I like to throw."

CAL RIPKEN: LAST YANKEE STADIUM GAME, SEPTEMBER 30, 2001
The day was drizzly and cold. The Yankees played against the Orioles for 15 innings, and the game was called finally because of rain. There were 55,351 fans around at the start and much less at the finish.
Many in the crowd had come out to see Cal Ripken, Jr. in his 126th game at Yankee Stadium, the most by an opposing player. His first game there was June 18, 1982.
There was an orange No. 8 painted on third base, as well as the Orioles' on-deck circle. Ripken was given the honor of throwing out the first pitch to Derek Jeter. Gifts presented to Ripken included a sterling silver press pin from Don Mattingly, a watch, an enlarged and framed copy of the commemorative ticket each fan was given reading "Farewell Cal Ripken.'' Black-and-white pictures of Ripken and Gehrig were on the tickets.
Ripken's pregame speech near home plate was staged near where Lou Gehrig, dying, said goodbye. "I know there will be many things that I'll miss about baseball, but coming to New York and playing in Yankee Stadium will always be at the top....

"I remember Graig Nettles making diving catches. I remember Louisiana Lightning I didn't like facing him that much. . . Willie Randolph and Dave Winfield. One of my all-time favorites at first base, Don Mattingly. It's really been a great run," Ripken said. "Let's get to the game."
The game was in Ripken's words: "Eerie. The weather, the gray sky, the wind, the rain. I was punched out four times and went 0-for-7, but I still had a lot of fun competing."

" A Talk in the Park" "Clubhouse Confidential," Greatest Game Ever Pitched"

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:44:00 +0000

It never fails to amaze one to see the volume and variety of sports books - -terrible economy or not - -that keep being published. It is a testament to the scope and hold our games have on us and the "acts of faith" by publishers and writers to serve up these tomes - - some of top quality and others middling in many ways. None of the volumes reviewed below fit into the latter category - -all belong on your sports bookshelf.

"A Talk in the Park" by Curt Smith (Potomac Books, $27.50, 308 pages) is a worthy work focused as it is as its sub-title proclaims on "nine decades of baseball tales from the broadcast booth." Active and retired "voices" participate, 116 in all, in compelling oral history story-telling.
There is Pat Hughes recalling Harry Caray broadcasting with a tea bag dangling from his ear, Bob Wolff and the longest ever wild pitch, Lou Piniella exposed in all his varied poses - -lovable and excitable and clothes and unclothed. Ranging, riveting, really great stuff, "A Talk in the Park" is baseball history as well as very up close and personal memories of changing times in broadcast booth by those who lived it. NOTABLE

"The Greatest Game Ever Pitched" by Jim Kaplan (Triumph, $24.95, 241 pages) is billed the pitching duel of century - -Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn. Its focus is a summer night in 1963 before almost 16,000 plus, a game that went 16 innings and way past midnight. Kaplan meticulously, marvelously brings back the time. TERRIFIC READ

"Clubhouse Confidential" by Luis "Squeegee" Castillo with William Kane (St. Martin's, $25,99, 293 pages) is a behind the scenes and no holds barred looked at the New York Yankees for whom he worked for as a bat boy and clubhouse attendant from 1998 to 2005. A star in his own rights, a guy who had the Bleacher Creatures calling his name, Castillo lays it all out - -wild nights and days, gambling, an inside look at the privacy of the Yankee clubhouse, what it was like to know and work with Bernie Williams, David Cone, Joe Torre, Don Zimmer, Derek Jeter, Roger Clemens, etc. "Clubhouse Confidential" is a bit self-serving, but I guess that's the nature of the genre. Tighter editing would have improved the read but for Yankee fans this is the real deal.
"A Glove of Their Own" by Debbie Moldovan, Keri Conkling and Lisa Funari-Willever (Franklin Mason Press, $15.95, illustrated by Lauren Lambiase) is a beautifully executed and carefull conceived tome. Reading it one is taken back to early days of playing the game - mine were on the "mean streets" of Brooklyn, stickball, and I did not have a glove of my own or a bat either. The book begins "In our town there's a park, with an oak tree so tall. We meet there each day, so we can play ball. The spot is home plate for our everyday game. Sticks are the bases; they work just the same." And from that beginning, the reader is swept away . . .HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

EXCELLENT E-BOOKS: For the casual fan or the totally involved, "Ballpark E-Guides" overseed by Kurt Smith http://www.ballparkeguides.com/index.html is well worth your attention. The price is right, too, just five dollars each to download with PayPal or major credit card.

Just a couple of examples that stand out for their content and execution are Yankee Stadium E-Guide http://www.ballparkeguides.com/fenway-park.html and Fenway Park E-Guide http://www.ballparkeguides.com/yankee-stadium.html. The e-guides are attractive and accesible and offer such features as All About Baseball Tickets, Parking, Food, best way to get to the Park, what to eat when you get to the game. "Tightwad Tips" is worth the price of admisison.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
　

2011 marks Harvey Frommer's 36th consecutive year of writing sports books. A noted oral historian and sports journalist, the author of 41 sports books including the classics: "New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball." His acclaimed REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM, an oral/narrative history was published in 2008. Frommer's newest work is REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK: AN ORAL AND NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THE HOME OF RED SOX NATION (Abrams).
He is available for speaking engagements and interview. FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.
FOLLOW Harvey on Twitter: http://twitter.com/south2nd.
FOLLOW Harvey on Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?locale=en_US.

DR. HARVEY FROMMER ON SPORTS

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:10:00 +0000

" A Talk in the Park" "Clubhouse Confidential," Greatest Game Ever Pitched"
It never fails to amaze one to see the volume and variety of sports books - -terrible economy or not - -that keep being published. It is a testament to the scope and hold our games have on us and the "acts of faith" by publishers and writers to serve up these tomes - - some of top quality and others middling in many ways. None of the volumes reviewed below fit into the latter category - -all belong on your sports bookshelf.

"A Talk in the Park" by Curt Smith (Potomac Books, $27.50, 308 pages) is a worthy work focused as it is as its sub-title proclaims on "nine decades of baseball tales from the broadcast booth." Active and retired "voices" participate, 116 in all, in compelling oral history story-telling.

There is Pat Hughes recalling Harry Caray broadcasting with a tea bag dangling from his ear, Bob Wolff and the longest ever wild pitch, Lou Piniella exposed in all his varied poses - -lovable and excitable and clothes and unclothed. Ranging, riveting, really great stuff, "A Talk in the Park" is baseball history as well as very up close and personal memories of changing times in broadcast booth by those who lived it. NOTABLE

"The Greatest Game Ever Pitched" by Jim Kaplan (Triumph, $24.95, 241 pages) is billed the pitching duel of century - -Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn. Its focus is a summer night in 1963 before almost 16,000 plus, a game that went 16 innings and way past midnight. Kaplan meticulously, marvelously brings back the time. TERRIFIC READ

"Clubhouse Confidential" by Luis "Squeegee" Castillo with William Kane (St. Martin's, $25,99, 293 pages) is a behind the scenes and no holds barred looked at the New York Yankees for whom he worked for as a bat boy and clubhouse attendant from 1998 to 2005. A star in his own rights, a guy who had the Bleacher Creatures calling his name, Castillo lays it all out - -wild nights and days, gambling, an inside look at the privacy of the Yankee clubhouse, what it was like to know and work with Bernie Williams, David Cone, Joe Torre, Don Zimmer, Derek Jeter, Roger Clemens, etc. "Clubhouse Confidential" is a bit self-serving, but I guess that's the nature of the genre. Tighter editing would have improved the read but for Yankee fans this is the real deal.

Pine Tar Game July 24, August 18, 1983 (From Vault)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Harvey Frommer) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:23:00 +0000

The 1983 season was an up and down one for the Yankees. But on July 24, things were on the upside. They were positioned to take over first place as they prepared to play the Royals of Kansas City at Yankee Stadium.

The game that was played that day was fairly ordinary. As it moved to the top of the ninth inning, the Yankees had a 4-3 lead. The Royals came to bat in the top of the ninth. No one could have forecast what would come next.

There were two outs. Goose Gossage was one out away from the wrap up of the Yankee victory. George Brett had other ideas. Home run, into the stands in right field!

The Royal superstar ran out the homer that had apparently given his team a 5-4 lead. But just seconds after crossing the plate and going into his dugout, Brett saw Yankee manager Billy Martin approach home plate rookie umpire Tim McClelland.

"I was feeling pretty good about myself after hitting the homer," Brett said. "I was sitting in the dugout. Somebody said they were checking the pine tar, and I said, 'If they call me out for using too much pine tar, I'm going to kill one of those SOBs.'"
McClelland called to the Royal dugout and asked to see Brett's bat. Then he conferred with his umpiring crew. Martin watched from a few feet away. Brett looked out from the bench. Then McClelland thrust his arm in the air. It was the signal that indicated George Brett was out - - excessive use of pine tar on his bat.

McClelland had brought forth rule 1.10(b): "a bat may not be covered by such a substance more than 18 inches from the tip of the handle." The umpire ruled that Brett's bat had "heavy pine tar" 19 to 20 inches from the tip of the handle and lighter pine tar for another three or four inches.

The home run was disallowed. The game was over. The Yankees were declared 4-3 winners. Brett, enraged, raced out of the dugout. Then mayhem and fury took center stage. Brett, not your calmest player, lost it.

At one point, umpire Joe Brinkman had Brett in a choke hold. That was the easy part for the Royal superstar. The next thing that happened to him was that he was ejected from the game and went berserk. Others did, too.

Royals pitcher Gaylord Perry grabbed the bat from McClelland who tossed it to Hal McRae who passed it on to pitcher Steve Renko who was halfway up the tunnel to the team clubhouse. Then Yankee Stadium security guards grabbed him and grabbed the bat which was then impounded.

The Royals lodged a protest of the Yankee victory. The Yankees went off to Texas where they won three games and took over first place for the first time that season.
The almost comical mess was debated by baseball fans all over the nation. The media couldn't get enough of it. "Why a .356 hitter like George Brett," Time Magazine commented would lumber along with a Marv Throneberry Model (lifetime .237) is the sort of paradox that, scientists say, has trees talking to themselves."

Eventually American League president Lee McPhail over-turned McClelland's decision. Acknowledging that Brett had pine tar too high on the bat, McPhail explained that it was the league's belief that "game's should be won and lost on the playing field-not through technicalities of the rules."

Yankee owner George Steinbrenner was miffed. "I wouldn't want to be Lee MacPhail living in New York!" he snapped.

The Brett home run was re-instated. The Royals' protest was upheld. The contest was declared "suspended." Both teams were told to find a mutually agreeable time, continue playing the game and conclude it.

The date was August 18th. Play was resumed for the last four outs of a game that had begun on July 24th. The Yankees, strangely anxious to make a few more bucks, announced they would charge regular admission for the game's continuation. There were fan mumblings of protest. The Yankees quietly changed the charging admission idea. It was too late and to no avail. Only 1,200 fans showed up.

The atmosphere was bizarre. To show their rage and annoyance at the whole turn of events, the Yankees for the final out of the top of the ninth played pitcher Ron Guidry in centerfield and outfielder Don Mattingly (a lefthander) at second base. Guidry played center field because the Yankees had traded away Jerry Mumphrey, who had come into the game for defensive purposes. New York's George Frazier struck out McRae for the third out. In the bottom of the ninth Royals' reliever Dan Quisenberry was able to retire the Yankees in order.

The "Pine tar Game(s)" belonged to history.

2011 marks Harvey Frommer's 36th consecutive year of writing sports books. A noted oral historian and sports journalist, the author of 41 sports books including the classics: "New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," his acclaimed REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM, an oral/narrative history was published in 2008. Frommer's newest work is REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK - (http://harveyfrommersports.com/remembering_fenway/)

FOLLOW Harveyon Twitter: http://twitter.com/south2nd. on Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?locale=en_US on the Web: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~frommer

Get autographed, discounted copies of books directly from the author @ harveyfrommersports.com. He is available for speaking engagements. FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.