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Post by psuhistory on Feb 13, 2016 12:09:57 GMT -5
Useful report of 2015 Minor League attendance data... Baseball Attendance Reportsnumbertamer.com/baseball_reports.html2015 Major League Baseball Preliminary Attendance Report This report has 2015 attendance notes for Major League Baseball. It includes highlights, plus attendance for each team for 2015, with a comparison with 2014 attendance. Download it here: 2015 Major League Baseball Attendance Highlights The full 2015 Minor League Attendance Analysis has been posted, and can be found by scrolling down this page. The 2015 Major League Attendance Analysis is expected to be posted by May, 2016. 2009 through 2015 Baseball Attendance Analysis Reports The Number Tamer Baseball Attendance Analysis reports for 2009 through 2015 can be downloaded from this page. There are two separate reports each year, one for Major League Baseball, while the other covers Minor League Baseball, including all independent leagues. To read them, just click on the respective PDF link, on this page, below each report's description. The raw figures in these reports come from leagues and teams. But the data analysis was done by me. Much of this information cannot be found anywhere else. 2014 NUMBER TAMER MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL ATTENDANCE ANALYSIS This 198 page report (about 8 MB) is an extensive overview of 2014 and historical Major League Baseball attendance. It includes: Expanded 2014 and historical attendance notes for every team. Major League attendance statistics going back to 1900. Attendance in multi-team cities. Yearly total and average attendance per date for each league (1900-2014). Season, game, and sellout attendance records, plus recent attendance trends for baseball and other sports. This section has been updated with 2015 figures. Changes in attendance since the 1994-95 strike. How new ballparks and championship teams affect attendance. All-Star Game and Post-Season attendance. Largest increases and decreases in team attendance in Major League history. Yearly listing of teams with the best and worst attendance in each league from 1900 through 2014. Number of times each team had the best and worst attendance in its league. Big gains and losses by teams a year after they played in the World Series. Total attendance at current Major League ballparks. History of 1930's and 1940's night games. Download it here: 2015 MAJOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis - coming in May 2014 MAJOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2013 MAJOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2012 MAJOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2011 MAJOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2010 MAJOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2009 MAJOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2015 NUMBER TAMER MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL ATTENDANCE ANALYSISMinor League Baseball is more popular than ever. Total attendance is up about five fold since the early 1970's. This 123 page report features 2015 attendance highlights and statistics for all Major League affiliated and independent Minor Leagues. There is a section about Minor League teams that play in the same TV markets as Major League Baseball or NFL, NBA, or NHL teams, along with an analysis of the growth in Minor League attendance in recent decades. Each current league's and team's record-high attendance is provided. Historical features include: A yearly listing of total Minor League attendance, along with a list of individual team attendance leaders going back to 1940; A look back at 1949, when Minor League attendance established a record high attendance that lasted until 1999; A look back at 1961 and 1962, when Minor League attendance reached a low point; A section about Minor League markets that later joined the Major Leagues; Comparison of attendance growth for Minor League Baseball with other team sports; Teams that drew at least 500,000 in a season. Download it here: 2015 MINOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2014 MINOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2013 MINOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2012 MINOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2011 MINOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2010 MINOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis 2009 MINOR League Baseball Attendance Analysis Reports from earlier years are available upon request. NOTE TO SPORTS TEAMS, LEAGUES, WEBSITES, AND MEDIA:These baseball reports are available for your use totally free of charge. You may copy, distribute, and publish any of this material, including statistical tables. Credit to numbertamer.com, or to David Kronheim, would be appreciated, and if my data appears in your publication or on your Website, I'd love to see it. Please feel free to contact me with any questions. I have an extensive database of Major League and Minor League attendance data that I'm glad to share with everyone, for free. Comments, corrections, and suggestions are always welcome. Please note that all of these reports are copyrighted.
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Post by Lark11 on Feb 13, 2016 13:03:36 GMT -5
Thorn often lets listing stand in for analysis, but this has some useful information about the history of player discipline in the professional leagues. For example, I think it was more than seventy years after the formation of the first pro league in 1871 before anything like a majority of club owners actually gave a damn about the "league" as an interest even comparable to the interest of their individual clubs. This history of building up the league as a common interest has obvious implications for the meanings of the "bans" that have existed since the 1860s... Baseball’s Bans and Blacklistsby John Thorn, Our Game, 2/8/2016 ourgame.mlblogs.com/2016/02/08/baseballs-bans-and-blacklists/Players, managers, umpires, and executives have been banned from baseball ever since the first game-fixing incident in 1865. Prior to the onset of the Commissioner system in 1920, major league players were banned for a variety of offenses. The threat of blacklist was used as a cudgel to suppress player movement, to tamp down salary demands, and to punish players for drunkenness, insubordination, abuse of umpires, game fixing, obscenity, and unsavory associations. The first game fixing scandal and ensuing permanent expulsion (ultimately lifted in the case of each of the three New York Mutuals players banned: Ed Duffy, William Wansley, and Thomas Devyr) date to 1865, eleven years before the launch of what we today term Major League Baseball. Allegations of game fixing were rampant in the so-called amateur era and in the National Association, the professional circuit that in 1871–1875 preceded the National League. Bill Craver, later to be banished by the National League, was expelled by his Troy club for throwing games in 1871; however, he was signed by Baltimore. In 1874 John Radcliffe was expelled by the Philadelphia Athletics but nonetheless was picked up by the notoriously corrupt New York Mutuals. Two other players expelled in this year, Bill Boyd and Bill Stearns, were likewise “rehabilitated” for play with other clubs. This scenario played itself out similarly in the cases of candlestick Higham, George Zettlein, and Fred Treacey in 1875, as each player was booted from one club only to land on his feet with another. In short, club suspensions or bans held no force in a climate of weak league control. The first National League player (and thus the first in MLB history) to be expelled was George Bechtel in 1876; banned by Louisville for game fixing, he too continued as an active player with the New York Mutuals for a few games until the NL stepped in. A game-fixing scandal in the following year nearly spelled the demise of the league and resulted in four players expelled for life not only by their club but by the league (Jim Devlin, George Hall, Bill Craver, and Al Nichols, all of Louisville). NL President William Hulbert declared the ban and never lifted it despite appeals for reinstatement by some of the players and their supporters. These men were compelled to play in leagues not connected with the NL, sometimes under false names (a pattern continued by banned players in the 20th century). In the years that followed many players were blacklisted or suspended indefinitely, either by their clubs or by a committee of the league’s owners. In 1881–1882 the NL blacklisted ten players for a variety of offenses (mostly “lushing”) yet when a new rival major league, the American Association, declined to honor the NL bans and proceeded to woo the affected players, the blacklist was removed. In March 1882, the AA set a maximum penalty for drunkenness, insubordination, dishonorable or disreputable conduct: suspension for the balance of the season, plus the entire following season. Other offenses, however, might result in permanent ineligibility. A full list of players banned in the period before 1920 may not be possible but the list compiled for this study (below) represents the most complete effort to date. In the years leading up to the introduction of the Commissioner System in 1920 with the appointment of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, indefinite suspensions, overt and covert blacklists, and definitive expulsions were common—more so in the years before the peace agreement of 1903 (the “National Agreement”) than before. In that year baseball established a three-person National Commission (American League president, National League president, and a chairperson) to deal with issues affecting both major leagues, including the enactment and enforcement of fines and suspensions. Ban Johnson represented the AL during this time, while five NL presidents served. Garry Herrmann, president of the Cincinnati Reds and a lifelong friend of Johnson, was the chairperson for all 17 years of the National Commission’s operation; critics thus accused Johnson of undue control over the game. Johnson’s failure to prevail in the Carl Mays case, in which the New York Yankees overturned his ruling in the courts, spelled the end of the National Commission. Also beset by troubling rumors concerning the 1919 World Series, the owners, seeking a single firm hand to guide the game through a rough patch, disbanded the National Commission and hired Landis, a seated Federal judge. The men receiving lifetime bans during Judge Landis’s reign and afterward are listed below, with brief discussion of each case. The phrase “permanently ineligible” may have had its origin in a Landis ruling of 1926 in the Cobb-Speaker-Wood case, in which pitcher Hub Leonard had accused the three of conspiring to fix a regular-season series between Boston and Detroit in late 1919. Landis offered these guidelines for punishments going forward, clearly looking to disassociate his term in office from the myriad messes of yore. Much of this language is reflected in MLB’s current Rule 21. One—A statute of limitations with respect to alleged baseball offenses, as in our state and national statutes with regard to criminal offenses. Two—Ineligibility for one year for offering or giving any gift or reward by the players or management of one club to the players or management of another club for services rendered or supposed to be have been rendered, in defeating a competing club. Three—Ineligibility for one year for betting any sum whatsoever upon any ball game in connection with which the bettor had no duty to perform. Four—Permanent ineligibility for betting any sum whatsoever upon any ball game in connection with which the bettor has any duty to perform. As stated, the great majority of baseball’s miscreants were expelled from the game long before the Baseball Hall of Fame opened its doors. The past twenty-five years, however, have produced a conflation of Major League Baseball’s need to assure the integrity of the game with the Hall’s wish to insure the sanctity of its induction process. Notably with the case of Pete Rose, but also to a lesser degree Joe Jackson and other “Black Sox,” the baseball public has come to believe that MLB enforces its verdicts on players even after their death while the Hall merely follows in step. MLB, however, derives no practical benefit from maintaining deceased players on an ineligible list. On February 8, 1991, the board of directors of the Hall of Fame, in an attempt to preempt the baseball writers from even considering Rose’s induction, voted 12-0 to amend the institution’s by-laws so that anyone deemed ineligible to work in Major League Baseball would be similarly ineligible for the Hall of Fame. All the same, in 1992 Rose received 41 write-in votes. These votes were thrown out. After he received 14 votes in 1993 and 19 in 1994, his name was formally excluded from the balloting process. Interestingly, in the very first Hall of Fame balloting, in 1936—long before a linkage between MLB’s ineligibility list and Hall of Fame policy–Joe Jackson received two votes. This low total reflected the electors’ perception that he had disqualified himself through his actions. (Perhaps the electors might once again be trusted to vote sensibly, without special instructions.) Jackson also received two votes in 1946; besides Rose, the only other banned player to receive votes was Hal Chase, with 11 in 1936 and 18 in the following year. The two lists below point up the history of permanent banishments, their frequent commutations, and their sometimes whimsical enforcement. The list of banished players prior to the appointment of Judge Landis is long indeed; it has never appeared in print or on the web, and may help to form the “permanently ineligible list” that, despite its citation in MLB Rule 21, may have existed only as a figure of speech. LIFETIME BANS SINCE 1920Joe Jackson (“Black Sox”; this story is too well known to bear repetition here) Buck Weaver (“Black Sox”) Eddie Cicotte (“Black Sox”) Lefty Williams (“Black Sox”) Happy Felsch (“Black Sox”) Fred McMullin (“Black Sox”) Swede Risberg (“Black Sox”) Chick Gandil (“Black Sox”) Joe Gedeon Second baseman of the St. Louis Browns who, like Weaver, sat in on a meeting with gamblers, had “guilty knowledge,” and failed to share it with authorities. Gene Paulette, banished by Landis for his association with St. Louis gamblers in 1919, even though he had played a complete 1920 season. Benny Kauff, arrested for auto theft but acquitted at trial, was banned anyway as, in Landis’s words, “no longer a fit companion for other ballplayers.” Lee Magee had been released by Chicago, then—after questioning at a trial over his disputed back salary elicited evidence of his gambling involvements—banned by Landis Heinie Zimmerman was banned in 1921 for encouraging his teammates to fix games; he had been blacklisted since 1919. As with Hal Chase (see section below on pre-Landis bans), Landis’s declaration after the Black Sox trial is seen as formalizing Zimmerman’s blacklist as a permanent banishment. Heinie Groh was banned after rejecting Cincinnati’s salary offer; Landis’s condition for reinstatement was that he could return to play for the Reds only; two days after the ban, Groh did. Ray Fisher declined a Reds’ pay cut, and sat out the season until hired by the University of Michigan to coach its baseball team. Landis banned him from Organized Baseball for violating the reserve clause but Fisher never returned. The ban was overturned by Bowie Kuhn in 1980. Dickie Kerr, a “Clean Sox” hero of the 1919 World Series, was banned after he played in an outlaw league in 1922 rather than accept the Chisox pay offer. Thus violating the reserve clause, Kerr was banned. Landis reinstated him in 1925, and he pitched for Chicago again. Jim “Hippo” Vaughn played a semipro game under an assumed name while under contract to the Cubs in 1921. His case was referred to Landis, who banned Vaughn for the rest of the season. When he signed a three-year contract with the Beloit Fairies, a semipro team out of Beloit, Wisconsin (backed by the Fairbanks-Morse Company), his status as a contract jumper was solidified. Although Landis permitted his reinstatement in 1931, Vaughn failed in his attempt to make the Cubs’ squad. Shufflin’ Phil Douglas of the Giants, angry with John McGraw, got drunk and sent a letter to a friend on the Cardinals suggesting that he would “disappear” when the club came to St. Louis. Landis banned him for life. Jimmy O’Connell, a second-year player with the Giants in 1924, offered a bribe to Heinie Sand of the Phils; perhaps he was the naive victim of a joke perpetrated by Giants coach Cozy Dolan. Landis banned both. John McGraw’s involvement has long been surmised but never proven. Cletus Elwood “Boots” Poffenberger was suspended by Landis at the request of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939, after he declined to report to Montreal. He then was reinstated at Brooklyn’s request in early 1940 so that his contract could be sold to Nashville of the Southern Association, for whom he won 26 games. He pitched for several other clubs in the minors but never returned to the majors. William Cox, Phils’ owner, was banned for betting on baseball games and forced to sell his franchise. Occurring in 1943, this was Landis’s last banishment. (In 1953, St. Louis owner Fred Saigh was forced to divest his control of the Cardinals when he began a fifteen-month sentence for tax evasion; that paved the way for Saigh’s sale of the team to Anheuser-Busch. Saigh was not formally banned, however.) Sal Maglie, Max Lanier, Ace Adams, Danny Gardella, Luis Olmo, and others were banned for five years after jumping to the Mexican League in 1946. Happy Chandler rescinded many of these bans, however, in settlement of lawsuits. Ferguson Jenkins, after being arrested in Toronto for possessing cocaine in August 1980, was banned two weeks later by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn. An arbitrator overturned the ban in September. Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were banned by Kuhn in 1983 because they worked as greeters at an Atlantic City casino. Commissioner Peter Ueberroth reinstated both in 1985. Pete Rose was banned by Commissioner Bart Giamatti in 1989. Several appeals have been unsuccessful, most recently in 2015. George Steinbrenner was banned by Commissioner Fay Vincent in 1990, who reinstated him two years later. Steve Howe, after six prior drug suspensions, was banned on the same day that Vincent reinstated Steinbrenner. The ban was overturned by an arbitrator in November 1992. Marge Schott, Cincinnati Reds owner, was banned by Bud Selig in 1996 for bringing Major League Baseball into disrepute by repeatedly uttering racial, ethnic, and homophobic slurs. She was reinstated in 1998. Jenrry Mejia, Mets pitcher, received a permanent suspension from Organized Baseball on February 12, 2016, following a third failed drug test. BANNED PROFESSIONAL LEAGUE PLAYERS (1871-1920)Not that many of these bans or indefinite suspensions, for a variety of offenses, were later lifted by club or league resolve. Bans by minor leagues are not included, nor are suspensions levied for stated durations. Bans not marked as "[permanent]" below were ultimately truncated or rescinded, but when they were levied, an affected player would not when or if he might return to good graces. Some players were subject to “lifetime” bans more than once; several Hall of Famers are on this list. AA = American AssociationUA = Union AssociationPL = Players’ League Bill Craver, 1871 Scott Hastings, 1872 George Hall, 1872 Candy Cummings, 1873 Bill Boyd, 1874 Bill Stearns, 1874 John Radcliffe, 1874 candlestick Higham, 1875 George Zettlein, 1875 Fred Treacey, 1875 George Latham, 1875 Billy Geer, 1875 Henry Luff, 1875 George Bechtel, 1876 [permanent] Tommy Bond, 1876 Joe Battin, 1877 [permanent] Joe Blong, 1877 [permanent] Jim Devlin, 1877 [permanent] Bill Craver, 1877 [permanent] George Hall, 1877 [permanent] Al Nichols, 1877 [permanent] Lew Brown, 1880 Charley Jones, 1880 Mike Dorgan, 1881 Lipman Pike, 1881 Sadie Houck‚ 1881 Lou Dickerson‚ 1881 Mike Dorgan‚ 1881 Bill Crowley‚ 1881 John Fox‚ 1881 Emil Gross‚ 1881 Ed “The Only” Nolan‚ 1881 Ed Caskins, 1881 John Clapp, 1881 Morrie Critchley, 1882 [permanent] Hoss Radbourn, 1882 [expelled from AA only] Sam Wise [expelled from AA only] Bill Holbert [expelled from AA only] Jerry Denny, 1882 [expelled from AA only] Art Whitney, 1882 [expelled from AA only] Pud Galvin, 1882 [expelled from AA only] Charlie Bennett, 1882 [expelled from AA only] John Bergh, 1882 [expelled from AA only] Ned Williamson, 1882 [expelled from AA only] Fred Lewis, 1882 Herman Doscher, 1882 [permanent] candlestick Higham, umpire, 1882 [permanent] Phil Baker, 1883 Joe Gerhardt, 1883 Frank “Gid” Gardner, 1883 Tom Deasley, 1883 Jack Leary, 1883 John Milligan, 1883 Billy Taylor‚ 1883 John Sweeney, 1883 [permanent] Frank Larkin, 1883 J.J. Smith, 1883 Harry Luff, 1883 Mike Mansell‚ 1883 George Creamer, 1883 Al Atkinson, 1883 Joe Sommer, 1883 Bill Traffley, 1883 Phil Powers, 1883 Charles Sweeney, 1884 Tommy Bond, 1884 Frank Gardner, 1884 Tony Mullane, 1884 Jack Brennan, umpire, 1884 Lew Dickerson, 1884 Chappy Lane, 1884 Tom Gunning, 1884 [expelled from UA only] Ed Colgan, 1884 [expelled from UA only] Frank Meinke, 1884 [expelled from UA only] Steve Behel, 1884 [expelled from UA only] James Hillery, 1884 [expelled from UA only] P.F. Sullivan, 1884 [expelled from UA only] Jack Farrell, 1885 Dave Rowe, 1885 George Gore, 1885 Jim Mutrie, 1885 [expelled from AA only] Sam Barkley, 1886 Pete Browning, 1886 Jack Gleason, 1886 Jerry Denny, 1886 Toad Ramsey, 1887 Chief Roseman, 1887 Toad Ramsey, 1888 John “Phenomenal” Smith, 1888 Lady Baldwin, 1888 Yank Robinson, 1889 Jack Glasscock, 1889 [expelled from PL only] Jack Clements, 1889 [expelled from PL only] John Clarkson, 1889 [expelled from PL only] Marr Phillips, 1890 Denny Lyons, 1890 Denny Lyons, 1891 Jack Stivetts, 1891 Bones Ely, 1891 John Dolan, 1891 [expelled from AA only] Bert Inks, 1891 [expelled from AA only] Frank Knauss, 1891 [expelled from AA only] John Reilly, 1891 [expelled from AA only] Silver King, 1891 [expelled from AA only] Hoss Radbourn, 1891 [expelled from AA only] Rowdy Jack O’Connor, 1891 Al Buckenberger (manager), 1891 Bill Barnie (manager), 1891 Fred Pfeffer (manager), 1891 Red Ehret, 1891 [expelled from AA only] Harry Raymond, 1891 [expelled from AA only] Jocko Halligan, 1892 Patsy Tebeau, 1896 Fred Pfeffer, 1896 Jack Taylor, 1897 Ducky Holmes, 1898 Jack Taylor, 1899 Burt Hart, 1901 Hugh Duffy, 1901 Jimmy Jones, 1902 Joseph Creamer, trainer, 1908 Jack O’Connor and Harry Howell, manager and coach of the St. Louis Browns, were banned in 1910 for attempting to fix the outcome of the 1910 American League batting title for the beloved Nap Lajoie against the reviled Ty Cobb. O’Connor gave his third baseman, Red Corriden, an odd order: to go stand in shallow left field whenever Lajoie came up to bat. With no one covering third base, Lajoie got seven hits in the day’s doubleheader, six of them bunts, and slipped past Cobb for the batting title. Horace Fogel, club owner, 1912 Joe “Moon” Harris of the Cleveland Indians was banned for life in 1920 (before Landis’s appointment) for violating the reserve clause in his contract, after he chose to play for an independent team rather than the Cleveland Indians. He was reinstated by Landis in 1922 due, in part, to his creditable service during World War I. Hal Chase, never formally banned but blacklisted in February 1920 from the National League after hearings showed evidence of game fixing with Cincinnati in 1916 and, certainly, before and after; his crowning swindle was to bring gamblers and fixers together to throw the 1919 World Series. Today, Landis’s declaration after the Black Sox trial that no one who bet on baseball would ever be allowed to play is recognized as formalizing Chase’s blacklisting. He continued to play in outlaw leagues in the West. Hmmmm. Is it common knowledge that Hal Chase brought "gamblers and fixers together to throw the 1919 Word Series?" I've read a book on Chase and a book on the Black Sox scandal and I don't recall any mention in either of Chase being a central figure in the Black Sox scandal. Granted I read both awhile ago, so maybe I'm just not remembering, but that seems like the kind of thing that would stick in my memory.
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Post by psuhistory on Feb 13, 2016 15:00:35 GMT -5
Is it common knowledge that Hal Chase brought "gamblers and fixers together to throw the 1919 Word Series?" Eliot Asinof described Chase as a connection between Abe Attell (part of Arnold Rothstein's network, a gambler) and Bill Burns (the link to the players, a fixer), so his role is more or less common knowledge, to that extent. But Thorn does make it sound like Chase was a moving force behind the Fix, where Asinof presents him as an enthusiastic supporter of a project that was already formed and in motion...
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Post by psuhistory on Feb 13, 2016 15:19:00 GMT -5
The NABBP had major problems enforcing the standards of amateur competition and game integrity. In 1865, Devyr, Duffy, and Wansley of the Mutuals were investigated and banned by their own club for "hippodroming" or game-selling, with the Association merely informed of the results, and the club then reinstated all three of them, Devyr as early as 1867...
With Boss Tweed on the board of directors, it wasn't easy for a bunch of ballplayers at the Association Convention to tell him that he couldn't have his shortstop back...
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Post by psuhistory on Feb 16, 2016 18:06:37 GMT -5
Interesting article about the building of a baseball infrastructure in Indiana to compete with basketball and football, emphasizing Scott Rolen's investment and leadership... Concerted Baseball Effort Pays Big in Hoosier Stateby Joe Lemire, USA Today, 2/16/2016 www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/mlb/2016/02/16/concerted-baseball-effort-pays-big-indiana/80423562/WESTFIELD, Ind. — Abutting the nation’s largest youth sports complex are several as-yet undeveloped lots, a few houses and a nursing home but mostly wide expanses of corn stalks and soybean plants. This Midwestern farmland encloses 31 all-purpose fields for soccer and lacrosse and a 26-ballfield sprawl of Little League and high school diamonds. The latter seems suited for major league spring training but whose primary tenant is instead the Indiana Bulls, an elite travel team that attracted 100 pro scouts and college coaches for a showcase last summer. “The whole thing feels pretty ‘Field of Dreams-ish,’” Butler University baseball coach Steve Farley said. Indeed, Indiana has a new bumper crop: big league ballplayers. While fieldhouses around the state are warmed by crowds gearing up for the 106th state basketball tournament - pairings are released Sunday - more than two dozen of the state’s favorite sons are finding their way to Arizona and Florida for spring training as camps open this week. In 2015, 24 Indiana natives appeared in a major league game, including St. Louis Cardinals starter Lance Lynn, new Blue Jays reliever Drew Storen, Minnesota Twins pitching prospect Alex Meyer and new Seattle Mariners first baseman Adam Lind; two first-round draft picks were born and raised there, too. Indiana is the 16th most populous state, but is punching above its weight with more major leaguers than the states ranked sixth, ninth and 11th-through-15th in size: Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia, Washington, Massachusetts and even warm-weather Arizona, which had only 13 in MLB — barely half Indiana’s haul, thanks to the Bulls and other leading in-state travel ball programs such as the Prospects and Mustangs. That Indiana has become an unexpected hotbed of baseball prospects owes to a sporting culture, provincial youth sports, travel teams developing and exposing latent talent and the example set by a few Hoosier pioneers. The Bulls, in particular, are leading the way. On their three 18-year-old teams, 33 of their 45 players have already committed to a college baseball program. The provenance of much of the Bulls’ funding, executive director and stature can be traced back to a single origin: Jasper native and charter Bulls player Scott Rolen, who since has been an ambassador, benefactor, recruiter and instructor for Indiana baseball. “Without him,” Bulls co-founder Dave Taylor said, “we would have really struggled.” *** In the beginningThe Indiana entrant in the 1991 AAU under-16 Junior Olympics took a detour from its bus trip south to the tournament in Tallahassee to play an exhibition game against an 18-year-old American Legion team in Jasper, Ind. “This kid comes up and hits a ball over the fence, over two school buses and into a parking lot,” recalled Taylor, who coached that Junior Olympic team, “and I’m like, ‘Where’s that guy going to college?’ (The other coach) said, ‘He’s only a sophomore.’ “It was Scott Rolen.” Taylor, who played baseball at Wabash College, said he had only seen a swing like that once before: Evansville native Don Mattingly, against whom Taylor competed in high school. Rolen would homer in his second at bat, too, and Taylor — a litigator by trade who’s used to persuasive arguments — convinced the young player’s parents that he should join the team on the Florida-bound bus the next morning. With Rolen and a future Mississippi State shortstop, Indiana finished eighth out of 48, even beating teams from Georgia and Texas. California won the tournament, and its coach told Taylor his team had been playing together for six years with more than 150 games per year. “Well, that might make a difference,” said Taylor, understating the realization. On the drive back, Taylor and the other coaches began concocting what would become the Indiana Bulls. The inaugural club had two future big leaguers — Rolen, the seven-time All-Star and eight-time Gold Glover, and six-year center fielder Todd Dunwoody — and has had 121 drafted players in 25 years. Statewide, in the nine seasons since 2007, 31 Indiana natives have made their big league debut compared to only 29 debuts in the previous 12 years, 1995-2006. Also since 2007, the Bulls have developed seven first- or second-round draft choices — Terre Haute North catcher T.J. Collett could be the eighth this June — while the rest of the state has also produced seven in that time. Current pros such as Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart, free-agent pitcher Tommy Hunter (with the Cubs in 2015) and Storen all spoke glowingly of Rolen’s example and support. Rolen began giving back to the Bulls long before signing an eight-year, $90-million contract — and even before winning the 1997 NL Rookie of the Year. According to Taylor, Rolen began financially supporting the Bulls even as a minor leaguer, in the early days donating as much as a quarter of the Bulls’ annual budget and covering overruns. As importantly, Rolen would return as a guest instructor — which he still does — and advise the non-profit’s board of directors. He’s also been known to show up unannounced wearing flip flops in the Bulls dugout, as he did at a tournament in Georgia years ago. Many former players regularly visit the current Bulls. “It definitely gives me inspiration that guys from Indiana can go that far and make a difference in young kids’ dreams and lives,” said Batesville High junior catcher Zach Britton, a Louisville commit. *** An uptick in qualityIndiana is home to the Indy 500, the NFL’s Colts and Notre Dame football, but its culture-defining sports has always been basketball, from red-sweatered Bobby Knight as Indiana coach to Larry Bird’s garage-hung hoop in French Lick to Reggie Miller’s far-flung marksmanship with the Pacers to Jimmy Chitwood’s hardwood heroics in Hoosiers. Clint Barmes, a 13-year big league shortstop who played for the Padres in 2015, grew up in Vicennes where everyone idolized high school basketball players — including Rolen, four years older and a star at rival Jasper High. Those games took place in packed gymnasiums, compared to the scene at high school ballfields. “There were probably 20-to-25 fans in the stands, and the majority of them, if not all of them, were parents,” Barmes said. Around the same time that the Rolen-led Indiana team notched its top-10 finish at the AAU junior nationals, however, a 12-year-old team from small-town Vincennes featuring a young Clint Barmes reached the national Bambino World Series. In 1999, Brownsburg won the first of three straight Little League state titles and made two trips to Williamsport, Pa., for the Little League World Series. Many of those three Brownsburg Little League teams — including Lynn and Storen — formed the nucleus of a 2005 Brownsburg High team that became Indiana’s second undefeated state champion, joining a Mattingly-led Reitz Memorial (Evansville) team in 1978. Incidentally, during one five-year span, overlapping at Brownsburg with Lynn and Storen were Barnhart; Gordon Hayward, a forward on the NBA’s Utah Jazz; Chris Jones, a defensive tackle for the NFL’s New England Patriots; Chris Estridge, an All-American soccer player at Indiana who briefly played in the North American Soccer League; and Mark Titus, a walk-on Ohio State basketball player later hired to write at Grantland after the success of his popular writing at Club Trillion. All high school sports — and especially basketball — are of great community importance in Indiana. Most towns have only one high school; this, Titus theorizes, rallies community support and motivates young athletes. “Playing basketball for Brownsburg was the one thing I wanted to do in my life,” he said. “I didn’t think beyond that.” That’s not to say he didn’t play other sports, too. He was the starting quarterback of the high school football team and was a standout Little League player, about which he self-deprecatingly notes, “I was good at baseball insofar as I hit puberty before everyone else.” But he wasn’t ready for the next level. “The culture of the Indiana Bulls and how good Brownsburg was at baseball just terrified me, because those guys were really good,” Titus said. “They take this really seriously.” Given the increased specialization among youth, few play multiple sports by their later years of high school. The Bulls began indoor baseball practice earlier this month. Brian O’Connor, coach of defending College World Series champion Virginia, previously was an assistant coach at South Bend’s Notre Dame and has seen the changes firsthand. Last year, he recruited the first player from Indiana in U.Va. program history: a right-handed pitcher, Grant Sloan, who previously played for the Bulls and more recently for Illinois-based Prairie Gravel. “Clearly, there has been — I think in the last 10 to 15 years — a big uptick in the quality of play and the depth of the play in the state,” O’Connor said. Sloan is the grandson of Jerry Sloan, the longtime coach of the NBA’s Utah Jazz, and the son of Brian Sloan, who won a national title playing for Knight at IU. O’Connor notes that, at 6-5, Grant Sloan would have to be an expert shooter to have a professional future in hoops, whereas “in baseball he looks like a pretty physical, impressive looking pitcher.” “Now that kid is getting opportunities in baseball whereas, 20 years ago, that player in the state of Indiana in the summer wasn’t playing travel baseball, he was working out with all his buddies playing hoops the whole time,” O’Connor said. The Bulls have a 6-3 lefty, Carmel High junior Tommy Sommer, who didn’t allow a single run in 45 innings of elite competition last summer. He committed to Indiana last fall after considering Arizona State, Miami, Ole Miss and Notre Dame. His father, Juergen Sommer, competed in two World Cups as a backup goalkeeper for the U.S. “Basketball will probably always rule the state, just because of the history that it has, but a lot of kids are starting to pick up baseball,” Tommy Sommer said, “and the Bulls, the Prospects and a lot of these programs are really bringing along some really good talent.” *** They built it, now others comeIndiana travel teams now routinely participate in national tournaments in Florida, Georgia, Ohio and beyond. “When we started in ’91, being from Indiana and being a baseball player, you might as well be from Alaska,” Taylor said. “You had no chance to be seen.” An August 2004 showcase in Arlington, Texas, was loaded with national top-100 prospects, yet the Indiana Bulls more than held their own against powerhouse travel clubs from Florida and Texas. “Everyone on those teams was wondering, ‘How is this team from Indiana winning these games?’” recalled Mark Storen, Drew’s father. “And we as parents were trying to figure out, ‘How are we winning these games?’” Little did anyone know then that the pitchers in the Bulls’ starting rotation — Storen, Lynn, Hunter and Josh Lindblom — were all future big leaguers. Now, many elite teams come to Indiana. Orange construction cones are ubiquitous north of Indianapolis, where the suburban communities are seeing significant growth. About seven years ago, Westfield mayor Andy Cook spearheaded a push for his town to join the boom with its own industry. “Westfield was a sprawling residential bedroom on the growth edge of Indianapolis,” Cook said. “Not much identity, nothing really to center around.” In order to build community, support the burgeoning youth sports scene and develop an economic plan, he pushed for the $45-million development of Grand Park to take advantage of the $7-billion youth sports industry. (It’s such a massive facility that it never would be trusted to the Parks & Rec department of fictional Pawnee, Ind.) Cook said that the park, in its second year, received 1.6 million visits, which poured an estimated $50 million into the local economy; the park's budget broke even, too. Three hotels are ready to break ground, as are restaurants, shops and a medical-care facility. A 370,000-square-foot indoor sports complex and event center is scheduled to open in July while a privately-built eight-court basketball complex opened nearby in January. Once again, youth sports have proven a vital part of life in Indiana. “It’s a part of our heritage, almost,” Cook said. The Bulls became stakeholders and operators of the baseball and softball fields, which they use and also rent out for tournaments and college teams looking to practice on the artificial fields early in the spring. (Cook is the uncle of former Bull and current Cleveland Indians reliever Joe Thatcher.) “The whole basis for the Indiana Bulls is to give kids a platform to showcase their abilities,” executive director Dan Held said. That platform consists of both better development and better visibility. One begets the other for young players to take advantage of the opportunities at increasingly essential recruiting showcases. Held played nine years of minor league and independent ball, including three as Rolen’s teammate in the Phillies system. While Held peaked in Class AAA, Rolen went on to play 17 big league seasons, winning eight Gold Gloves, reaching seven All-Star teams, smacking 2,077 hits and retiring in 2012 at the end of a career that could earn him election to the Baseball Hall of Fame after he’s eligible in 2017. The two best friends reunited with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2003 — Rolen as their third baseman, Held as a bullpen assistant coach — and won the 2006 World Series. After the 2007 season, however, Held was looking to settle down with his family; Rolen referred him to the Bulls, who were looking to hire an executive director. (Rolen did not respond to interview requests made through intermediaries.) Held brought professional coaching experience to supplement what the players receive in the short high school season and, in his tenure, the program more than tripled from seven teams to 23, including a junior level. The Bulls attracted a corporate sponsor in LIDS, an Indiana-based company known for its hats and caps. “They’ve given us more money than you could ever justify because they love kids and they love the game, and they’re based here,” Taylor said. The Bulls’ bylaws stipulate that only Indiana residents can participate, which may seem extraneous until one realizes the increasingly cutthroat world of travel ball that’s mimicking sneaker-sponsored AAU basketball programs that play a national schedule with a national roster. White Sox Midwest crosschecker Mike Shirley, who is based in Indiana and runs a private baseball training facility there, has seen baseball become more of a priority; its conversion into a year-round sport has helped these players develop the necessary tools and instincts at an earlier age. Many Indiana big leaguers, particularly at the beginning of this wave, still needed stints in college ball to further refine their games, but the gap between high school players in the South and the Midwest is lessening. “The skill set has drastically changed over the last few years,” Shirley said. “These kids get out and they play against the best competition now. It has become more of a global game, including the Midwest kids and Indiana. “It has helped these kids find their place in the game and realize, ‘You know what, I can be a major leaguer.’”
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Post by psuhistory on Feb 20, 2016 9:04:58 GMT -5
SABR biography of Reds HOF outfielder Wally Post, an Ohio native who has family connections around here... Wally Postby Charles F. Faber, SABR Baseball Biography Project, 2/19/2016 sabr.org/bioproj/person/31c3d44dHe never played a game of baseball until he was a freshman in high school, but his skills blossomed so quickly that he signed a professional contract after his junior year. Only 16, Wally Post started a baseball career that lasted 18 years and saw him transform from a pitcher-first baseman to a hard-hitting, superb fielding outfielder. Walter Charles Post was born in West Central Ohio in Granville Township, Mercer County, on July 9, 1929. Mercer County is on the Ohio-Indiana state line, about midway between Cincinnati and the Michigan state line. Most reference books give the unincorporated community of Wendelin as Wally’s birthplace, but Wally considered the nearby village of St. Henry as his home town. He was the sixth of the nine children of Mary Brunswick and Frank B. Post, a farmer. As a child Wally attended a one-room school in Wendelin and played softball. Not until he started high school at St. Henry did he play hardball. His high school coach, Charles Karcher, told about the first home run that Wally hit as a high school freshman. “We were playing in Houston, Ohio, about 25 miles from St. Henry. There was an embankment in left field that led to the highway. Nobody ever hit a ball out there. Wally did…He got all of it. It went about 400 feet.”1 Wally and his older brother Eddie were stars for the St. Henry High School baseball team, taking turns on the mound. When Wally was pitching, Eddie played first base. When Eddie was pitching, Wally was the first baseman. “Wally was a shy boy, pleasant, quick smile,“ Karcher recalled. “Unassuming, the kind of kid you want to know and be around. He was a little chubby when he first came out for the team – about 5’9” and 165 pounds – but by the time he was a junior, he was 5’11” and 190 pounds. He was so good the Reds signed him after his junior year; he couldn’t play as a senior.”2 The Post brothers led St. Henry to the finals of the 1945 Division III state high school tournament. In the championship game the St. Henry Redskins lost to Plainville, 9-8. Wally did his best for the Redskins. He hit two home runs in the game. His teammate, Pete Stammen, said, “There weren’t any fences, so you had to run ‘em all out – and on one of them, the left fielder was still running as Wally came around third base.”3 Before the 1946 season the Cincinnati Reds signed 16-year-old Wally Post to a professional contract. They assigned him to Middletown of the Class D Ohio State League. He lost his only pitching decision that year. The next year he was moved to the Muncie Reds in the same league, and he fared much better. He had a 17-7 (.708) record with a 3.33 ERA. Wally’s brother Eddie was on the same club, the only time the siblings were teammates as professionals. Eddie outdid his kid brother with a 19-8 .704 record and a sparkling 2.02 ERA. Unfortunately, Eddie hurt his arm and never made it to the major leagues. Another teammate on the Muncie squad was Joe Nuxhall, who was known as the youngest player ever to play in a MLB game and later gained fame as a Cincinnati pitcher and even more acclaim as a color commentator on telecasts of Reds games. Both brothers outperformed Nuxhall in 1947, as the future star broke even at seven wins and seven losses. In 1948 Post moved up to the Columbia (South Carolina) Reds in the Class A South Atlantic League and was converted into an outfielder. His future was to be in hitting, not pitching. On January 29, 1949, Post married Dorothy Jean Beckman of St. Henry in her home town. She was the daughter of Lorine Stammen and Luke Beckman, the co-founder and manager of a vegetable canning factory, the Beckman-Gast Company, later known as Minster Canning Company. The marriage lasted until Dorothy’s death on January 18, 1980. Post started the 1949 season in South Carolina, but before the season was over he was transferred to the Charleston Senators in the Class A Central League. After only six games in the West Virginia capital, he was called up to the big leagues. Wally Post made his major-league debut at the age of 20 on September 18, 1949. He entered the game at Crosley Field in the bottom of the ninth inning of a tie game against the Boston Braves. With one out first baseman Ted Kluszewski hit a two-bagger. Danny Litwhiler was intentionally walked. Post was brought in as a pinch runner. He was on base when Virgil Stallcup drove Klu in with the winning run. Wally shuttled back and forth between the majors and the minors for the next three years. Tulsa in 1950, Buffalo and Cincinnati in 1951, Milwaukee and Cincinnati in 1952, Indianapolis and Cincinnati in 1953. In 1954 he started a ten-year stint in the majors, with no demotions to the bushes. In 1956 he hit 36 four-baggers to contribute to Cincinnati’s 221 homers, which tied the record for the most home runs ever hit by a one club in a season. In 1957 Post was one of eight Cincinnati Reds voted by fans as starters in the All-Star Game. Citing voting irregularities, Commissioner Ford Frick removed three of those Reds, including Post, from the team, replacing them with Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Stan Musial. In 1955 Post had one of his best seasons with 40 home runs, 109 RBIs, and a batting average of .309. Not only was he hitting lots of home runs, but many of them were of prodigious length. He was described as the “best-dressed Red” because of all the free suits he acquired by his long home runs that hit the “Hit Sign Win Suit” billboard on top of a laundry across the street from Crosley Field’s left field wall.4 (Years later his son John said, “Dad must have been the best-dressed guy on the road because he never wore those suits in St. Henry – or to Crosley Field. He preferred golf shirts. He didn’t wear a tie very often. But my guess is he had the best-dressed closet in Mercer County.”5) Post’s notable long balls were not confined to those that hit the sign on the laundry. In 1957 during batting practice, he sent a ball through the new scoreboard at Crosley Field just as the scoreboard designer was telling Reds general manager Gabe Paul that the scoreboard was indestructible.6 In 1961, he smashed a ball off the scoreboard clock at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. It was estimated that the ball would have traveled 569 feet had its flight not been interrupted by the clock.7 Although his long-distance clouting got the most attention, Post was an excellent fielder. In 1954 and again in 1959 he led the National League right fielders in assists; he led in putouts in 1955. He ranked among the top three in assists sixth consecutive years and was among the leading five in putouts in five of those six seasons. On December 16, 1957, the Reds traded Post to the Philadelphia Phillies for Harvey Haddix. But after two and a fraction seasons in the City of Brotherly Love, he was back in Cincinnati again. On June 15,1960, he was traded along with minor leaguer Fred Hopke to the Reds in exchange for Tony Gonzalez and Lee Walls. Post must have been thrilled to escape the cellar-dwelling Phillies and return to his home state. Post was back in the Queen City in time to help the Reds win the 1961 National League pennant, their first flag since 1940. That autumn he played in the only World Series of his long professional career. Post appeared in all five games as the Reds lost the Series to the New York Yankees. But he did his part in the losing effort, collecting six hits in 18 times at bat for a .333 average. He hit one home run, batted in two, and scored three. In 1962 Post played in 109 games for the Reds, hitting .263 and clubbing 17 home runs. It was his last productive season. On May 16, 1963, he was sold to the Minnesota Twins, but appeared in only 21 games for the Twins, who released him on October 25. The Cleveland Indians signed him as a free agent on November 15, 1963. In 1964 Post appeared in five games for Cleveland before his major-league career came to an end. His final game came on May 9, 1964, at the age of 34. In the bottom of the sixth inning of a game against the New York Yankees at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, Post pinch-hit for Pedro Ramos. Yankee pitcher Whitey Ford induced him to fly out to right field. One week later the Indians released him, and that was the end of a stellar big-league career. After Cleveland let him go, Post played 27 games for the Syracuse Chiefs, Detroit’s affiliate in the Class AAA International League, but his heralded power was no longer evident. His days as a professional baseball player were over. Wally Post returned to St. Henry. He accepted a position as an officer in his father-in-law’s Minster Canning Company. In 1965 he was inducted into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame. A new high school has been built in St. Henry. The gym and sports fields are called “The Wally Post Sports Complex.” He remained in touch with his best friend from his baseball days, Joe Nuxhall. “He was just an easy-going regular guy,” Nuxhall said. “There’d be winter baseball banquets in Cincinnati, and Wally’d drive all the way down from St. Henry and he and his wife would stay at our house. We’d pick up Gus Bell and his wife, and Klu and his wife would be there. And I’d drive up to St. Henry and go to dances and play charity basketball games [in the] school gym on Sunday afternoons.”8 For several years there was a Wally Post golf outing to benefit the local cancer society. Until he died, Nuxhall usually emceed the post-round banquet.9 Dorothy Jean Beckman Post died in St. Henry on January 18, 1980. Wally remarried on November 21 in Mercer County to Pat Hauer Cahill. In late 1981, Wally was in and out of hospitals for treatment of cancer. On January 6, 1982, Walter Charles Post died at the home of a son in St. Henry. He was 52 years old – a good man, gone too soon. According to his obituary he was survived by his second wife, four daughters, three sons, and nine grandchildren.10 Some of the survivors very likely were stepchildren. There is a great deal of confusion in accounts of his life, as his first wife was nicknamed Pat, the same as his second wife. Wally is buried in St. Henry Catholic Church Cemetery. He shares a tombstone with his first wife. The inscriptions read: POST
WALTER C. DOROTHY J.
(WALLY) (PAT)
1929-1982 1929-1980 Notes1 Cincinnati Enquirer, June 22, 2003. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Cincinnati.reds.mlb.com. 5 Cincinnati Enquirer, June 22, 2003. 6 Cincinnati.reds.mlb.com. 7 Ibid. 8 Cincinnati Enquirer, June 22, 2003. 9 Ibid. 10 Thedeadballera.com.
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Post by psuhistory on Mar 26, 2016 8:31:51 GMT -5
Interesting question about the future of Cuba's baseball infrastructure... Barack Obama, MLB and the Worrisome Future of Beisbol en CubaBy Adrian Burgos Jr., Sporting News, 3/22/2016 www.sportingnews.com/mlb-news/4699325-barack-obama-cuba-rays-havana-major-league-baseball-mlbThis week’s visit of President Barack Obama to Cuba is a historic moment in U.S.-Cuban relations. Americans of all backgrounds and political persuasions are curious observers of something not seen for nearly 90 years, a U.S. president stepping onto Cuban soil and interacting with the Cuban people in addition to meeting with Cuban government officials. Baseball aficionados throughout the Americas are among those closely watching the events unfolding in Cuba, and it’s not really because the Rays are set to play an exhibition Tuesday vs. the Cuban national team in Havana, or that Obama is expected to attend the game. Rather, it is the future of Cuban baseball that is drawing the attention of fans, even as the shared baseball past between the U.S. and Cuba is being invoked throughout the trip. The different paths created for Cuban baseball players by the two countries’ complicated past will be on display during the ceremonial first pitch: Cuban-born Luis Tiant, who starred for years in the majors, will be joined by Pedro Luis Lazo, a pitching star who never left Cuba. Some of Obama’s companions on Air Force One represent the significance of the occasion, not just politically, but also for professional baseball in the Americas, today and historically. Accompanying the first African-American to serve as U.S. president were Rachel Robinson and Sharon Robinson, the widow and daughter of Jackie Robinson. The Robinsons joining the first U.S. president to step foot on Cuban soil since 1928 marked another historical return visit to Cuba. Nearly 70 years ago, Jackie Robinson and fellow African-Americans Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and Roy Partlow spent spring training in Havana along with the members of the minor league Montreal Royals and their parent club, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Cuba provided a refuge for the quartet. While the country had its own racial fault lines, it kept the group beyond the reach of Jim Crow laws that dictated how spring training was conducted in Florida. Robinson thus had a better opportunity to impress general manager Branch Rickey and show other front-office people he was ready to break the majors’ color line. The 1947 spring training in Cuba, as well as the Dodgers’ visit to Panama that spring and the Dominican Republic the following spring, inspired a generation of black Latinos including Felipe Alou that they, too, could one day pursue a career en las grandes ligas. Today, Major League Baseball and the U.S. government are initiating changes that could create a safer passage for Cuban players to the United States. Recreating the Cuban talent pipeline? From the 1910s through the 1950s, Cuba was the majors’ largest source of foreign-born talent. It was the era of Adolfo Luque, Miguel Angel “Mike” González, Armando Marsans and Napoleon Reyes, among others. Had there not been a color line in place barring blacks from participating in organized baseball, the presence of Cubans would have been even greater. The majority of Cubans who ventured to the United States to play in the era before Robinson’s breaking of that barrier starred in the Negro leagues. That was the era of José Mendez, Cristobal Torriente, Luis “Lefty” Tiant (Luis’ father) and Martin Dihigo. The era closed with Cuban players like Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso, Edmundo “Sandy” Amoros and others departing from the Negro leagues to become part of the generation that pioneered integration in the majors. In the 1950s, Cuba was a playground for American tourists and the main source of foreign-born talent to the major leagues. The break in U.S.-Cuban diplomatic relations following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the initiation of the U.S. trade embargo left Cuban players with a difficult choice: go north to pursue a major league career and leave the country of their birth behind; or stay with their family and friends in revolutionary Cuba, a place where professional baseball had an uncertain future (but where baseball was the unparalleled favorite sport of the Cuban people). That was the choice a young Luis Tiant faced. His father starred in the Negro leagues during the 1930s and ‘40s. The elder Tiant’s experience encountering racial hostility and discrimination in the United States left its mark to the point he actively tried to dissuade his son from pursuing a professional baseball career en los estados unidos. For the younger Tiant, the end of U.S.-Cuban relations meant the pathway to the big leagues would necessarily go through a third country, in his case Mexico. In the decades to follow, the talent pipeline that had produced all-star talents Tiant, Tany “Tony” Pérez, Camilo Pascual and Miguel “Mike” Cuellar slowed to a trickle and then no flow at all. Baseball began to look elsewhere in the Caribbean for talent. First it turned to Puerto Rico in the 1960s and 1970s, then to the Dominican Republic in the 1980s. Scouts looked for prospects they could sign cheaply. Cuban talent remained cut off to the majors until the early 1990s when Rene Arocha and others began to brave the barriers that had been placed between them and their baseball aspirations. Defection attempts ran the gamut in the 1990s and 2000s, ranging from seemingly desperate, slapdash efforts to sophisticated plans coordinated by a multinational network of agents, confidants and friends. Many are familiar with the tales of those who took to the seas off the Cuban coast hoping to guide their vessels to the Bahamas or elsewhere in the Caribbean. Countless never made it: they were detained by Cuban police or military officials, their vessels capsized before reaching their destination, or they were captured by U.S. authorities on the open seas and returned. The attempts have taken an even more perilous turn over the past decade as the payoff for success has grown ever larger. Yasiel Puig’s tale of being smuggled out of Cuba and held by his smugglers while negotiating his contract shed light on the dangers (and dangerous people) involved. His case and others revealed the increasing involvement of narco-traffickers who possess the means of transport, financial wherewithal and knowledge of nautical routes to spirit players out of Cuba to points in Latin and Central America. There, the player is held while a signing agreement is secured. Exposés in the international press about what was happening to these prospects and their families raised concerns that what had evolved was tantamount to human trafficking. They placed pressure on authorities in the United States, Cuba and Mexico as well as MLB officials to address the problem. Déjà vu all over again (the Dominican model transplanted?) Last week’s announcement by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control of amendments to the Cuban sanctions set in motion the potential dislodging of the middle men involved in the smuggling of Cuban players. The changes allowing for the direct payment of Cuban citizens such as ballplayers in pursuit of professional employment in the United States clears one hurdle (among several) that major league organizations have long faced in their pursuit of Cuban talent. Until this change, players opted to set up residency in a third country in order to expedite their becoming eligible to sign with an organization. The announced change is welcomed news for those who have grown wary that U.S. regulations, in conjunction with the large contracts offered by MLB teams to Cuban defectors, were creating an incentive structure for not just defections but for trafficking. The new rules also raise the question of how this might impact the relationship between Major League Baseball and Cuban baseball. For certain, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is working the goodwill angle in arranging for the Rays to play a game in Havana just a month after a tour of major leaguers organized by the players association and the commissioner’s office, a trip that included return of Cubans Puig, José Abreu and Alexei Ramirez to their native land. Cubans love their baseball, and they also enjoy seeing their native sons achieve success in the major leagues; however, there remains a concern that MLB aspires to create a talent development system in Cuba along the lines of that in the Dominican Republic, where teams have established baseball academies throughout the island. The potential of MLB supplanting the Cuban system of baseball talent development through its national institute of sport and recreation (INDER) is worrisome on multiple levels. For starters, the Cuban system develops not just players but also coaches, trainers and team managers while also providing others with practical experience in sports. These individuals move through the ranks of INDER and become the next generation of coaches, managers and officials. Second, a talent drain on the Cuban league might diminish the quality of the league, but even more concerning is that it could lead to the dismantling of the baseball development infrastructure in Cuba. This would be akin to what transpired with the Negro leagues and black baseball in the U.S. after the majors launched integration. Organizations took players it deemed the most talented or with the potential to develop into major leaguers from the Negro leagues and, for the most part, failed to integrate those who had developed expertise as coaches, managers, business managers or team executives. The lack of opportunities for African-Americans in baseball beyond the playing field until the mid-1970s meant that these men could not fulfill their desires for a longer career in organized baseball and they would have to apply their sporting expertise elsewhere. So while the scenes of President Obama walking though Havana streets greeting the Cuban people is truly historic, and while the return of Rachel Robinson, Luis Tiant and José Cardenal reminds observers of the complicated past shared by Cubans and the major leagues, it is MLB’s design for a role in Cuba that will likely have an enduring impact on the future of Cuban baseball and, by extension, the effectiveness of baseball diplomacy.
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Post by psuhistory on Mar 26, 2016 8:46:51 GMT -5
Important research establishing that Rafael Julian de la Rúa of Matanzas became the first Cuban to compete at the highest level of American baseball when he pitched for the Troy Haymakers of the NABBP in 1868. Esteban Bellan, an infielder for the Troy Haymakers of the NAPBBP in 1871, remains the first Cuban known to have played professionally in the US... Cuba, the U.S., and Baseball: A Long If Interrupted Romanceby John Thorn, Our Game, 3/21/2016 ourgame.mlblogs.com/2016/03/21/cuba-the-u-s-and-baseball-a-long-if-interrupted-romance/Before there was a United States, beginning in 1776, there was baseball. And before there was a Cuban Republic, beginning in 1868, there was baseball. Today, even after decades of diplomatic hostility—never shared by the two peoples—the game older than either nation continues to be the tie that binds. Until the Revolution of 1959, Cuba sent the most players to the Major Leagues and the Negro Leagues. Its tournaments attracted players from both the U.S. and the Caribbean Basin. Four Cuban-born players are in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (Martín Dihigo, José Mendez, Tony Pérez, and Cristóbal Torriente); others are stars of the first magnitude today; and then there is Minnie Miñoso, about whom this entire essay might be written. Many of the modern tales of Cuban-American baseball relations have been accompanied by misery—defection, human trafficking, fractured families, broken bonds with a national heritage. This is a story amply documented in today’s news outlets, so there is little point in my summarizing it here. Instead, let’s look back to how baseball began in this island nation, the role that the U.S. has played, and some alternative views of Cuba’s baseball paternity. Friendliness between the nations began with the sugar business and the counting houses that lined Manhattan’s waterfront, mercantile establishments that typically had offices in Havana and Matanzas. The counting houses forged links between Cuba and New York that went beyond the realm of commerce, facilitating not only the exchange of goods and money, but also of people and culture. By the mid-nineteenth century, boys and young men from wealthy Cuban families were sent to New York for an education or for work experience, and the counting houses had a direct role in bringing them from Cuba. As Lisandro Pérez notes, “The New York merchants would make arrangements for the sons of their Cuban clients to be enrolled in boarding schools in the New York area, meeting them at the dock, buying their winter clothing and other necessities, paying for tuition and board, and even disbursing periodic allowances.” This rite of passage was common practice among middle-class Cuban families at the time not only because of vital trading relations but also because the Cuban independence movement had prompted a violent crackdown by Spanish authorities, making Cuba a dangerous place for the impressionable young. Esteban Bellán was one such Cuban boy sent from Havana to New York at age thirteen with his brother Domingo to be educated at the preparatory school of St. John’s College (today’s Fordham University). There he played ball for the Rose Hill club, and upon his graduation in 1868 went on to play for the powerful Union of Morrisania club; for nearly 150 years thereafter, he would be regarded as the first Cuban-born player to perform at the top level of the game, the National Association of Base Ball Players. Bellán (1849-1932) went on to play in baseball’s first professional league, with the Troy Haymakers and the New York Mutuals in 1871-1873. In the winter of the latter year he returned to Cuba and started up the Club Habana baseball team. He played in the first organized baseball game ever played in Cuba, on December 27, 1874, at Palmar del Junco Field. Club Habana beat Club Matanzas by 51-9. For this reason he is regarded in the U.S. as the “Father of Cuban Baseball.” Cubans, however, might put forward another candidate. Also playing for Club Habana in the aforementioned game are two other early giants of Cuban baseball: the patriot Emilio Sabourín and the little-known (in the U.S.) Ernesto Guilló. Sabourin was elected to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in 1941; Guillo’s brother Nemesio in 1948; and Bellán not until 1984, in a ceremony held in Miami. Nemesio Guilló Romaguera (1847-1931) was sent to the U.S., like Bellán, by a father who was in the sugar trade. Along with his brother and Enrique Porto, he was sent to Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama—a private, Roman Catholic school founded in 1830—in 1858. Many other Cuban boys joined them there over the next two years. From the newspaper Diario de la Marina in 1924: In 1864, seven years later, they returned to Cuba on a ship as grown men with strong necks, broad chests, athletic and ready to support in any way the rights of men, so unknown to the colony of those days. One of the three lads had in his trunk a bat and ball, completely unknown objects in Cuba, scarcely known in the United States itself, where “town ball,” which later would be called baseball, was in its beginnings. Nemesio, the younger of the two Guilló brothers, brought the precious gadgets. Having spent the day in La Machina, the three boys were already playing with the bat and the ball in El Vedado. What was likely the first ballgame in Cuba with local participation occurred in June 1866, when sailors of a U.S. ship taking on sugar invited Cuban longshoremen to play. While Ernesto did not continue as a player, Nemesio did, playing with Havana in 1879-1880 and in 1882-1883 with the Ultimatum club, for whom he served as “right shortstop,” a position between first and second base. Following the suggestion of Henry Chadwick, rejected in the U.S., Cuban baseball in this period was played with ten men to the side. In recent years I discovered, with help from Peter Morris and César González, another candidate for a “father of baseball” that might be celebrated in both Cuba and the U.S: the previously unnoted Rafael Julian de la Rúa of Matanzas (see: goo.gl/wgsnkR). In 1860, at the age of twelve, he is listed in the U.S. census, living in Newton, Massachusetts, a student at R.B. Blaisdell’s school in Newton. A classmate of Bellán’s at Fordham from 1864-1867 (it is unclear whether he played ball with the Rose Hills), he transferred to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) for 1868, and in that year joined the Troy Haymakers, a first-class National Association club, pitching in twelve games. A lefthander with a peculiar screwball pitch, Rúa was so effective against the New York Mutuals on August 4 that the Troy Times observed, “Rúa’s pitching was the acme of perfection—not too swift to be unreliable, and with just enough of the ‘twist’ to prevent the Mutuals from making their heaviest batting.”Because Rúa played in National Association games before Bellán left Fordham to join the Unions of Morrisania, it may be said that he and not Bellán was the first Cuban national to play high-level ball in the States. Rúa did not graduate from RPI, nor did he continue to play ball after 1868. He was naturalized as an American citizen in 1874, while living in New York City. He traveled to Cuba on separate trips in 1874 and 1875, but there his trail goes cold. Looking back at the stories of Bellán, Guilló, and Rúa, it becomes evident that American colleges were the most important agents in the proliferation of the game in Latin America, even more than the military and its multiple occupations, as we had long supposed. By 1879 American players from the National League were playing winter ball in Cuba. By 1886, El Sport, a Havana weekly, declared: “Baseball is today, without distinction of classes, age and sex, the preferred diversion of all [Cubans].” And so has it ever been.
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Post by Lark11 on Apr 25, 2016 8:33:50 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/sports/baseball/founding-rules-of-baseball-sell-for-3-million-in-auction.html?smid=tw-nytsports&smtyp=curFounding Rules of ‘Base Ball’ Sell for $3.26 Million in Auction By RICHARD SANDOMIRAPRIL 24, 2016 A group of documents from 1857 that set down some of the fundamental rules of baseball was acquired at auction Sunday by an unidentified buyer for $3.26 million, making it one of the highest-priced pieces of sports memorabilia. “Laws of Base Ball” was put up for online bidding this month by SCP Auctions; the price paid was the most ever for a baseball document but below the $4.3 million paid in 2010 for James Naismith’s original 13 rules of basketball. The most expensive piece of sports memorabilia is a Babe Ruth jersey from 1920 that sold for $4.4 million in 2012. “Laws,” which was written by Daniel Adams, who was known as Doc, established rules such as nine men on a side, 90-foot base paths and nine innings to a game. Adams played for the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, where he pioneered the shortstop position, and later became its president as baseball’s popularity increased. He referred to batters as “strikers,” balks as “baulks” and runs as “aces.” The laws were written when Adams presided over a gathering of 14 New York-area teams to revise the sport’s rules. Adams’s draft was transferred to more than a dozen separate pages in flowing script by William H. Grenelle, another Knickerbocker club official. Grenelle’s version reads like a scorecard of the convention debates, with pencil marks crossing out words and recording changes to Adams’s proposals. “Laws” was auctioned once before in 1999, by Sotheby’s, and sold for $12,650.
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Post by psuhistory on Apr 25, 2016 10:52:10 GMT -5
Daniel Adams is in the middle of the bottom row in the photo, chomping a stogie, and, along with William Wheaton, on the right in the top row, was one of the best athletes in New York during the 1840s. Adams was a Harvard graduate and medical doctor, Wheaton a successful lawyer...
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Post by psuhistory on May 2, 2016 7:05:27 GMT -5
An Electronic Umpire? Baseball Tried It (In the 1950s!)By Richard Sandomir, NY Times, 5/1/2016 www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/sports/baseball/more-machine-than-man-an-electric-umpires-call-of-the-future.htmlOne day in March 1950, a batting cage at the Brooklyn Dodgers’ spring training camp in Vero Beach, Fla., became the setting for an event that looked as if it came out of the future: strikes being called not by a man in a mask, peaked cap and chest protector, but by a machine. “This was really high-tech stuff,” said pitcher Carl Erskine, recalling the sight of the device during a telephone interview from his Indiana home. The so-called “cross-eyed electronic umpire” introduced that day used mirrors, lenses and photoelectric cells beneath home plate that would, after detecting a strike through three slots around the plate, emit electric impulses that illuminated what The Brooklyn Eagle called a “saucy red eye” in a nearby cabinet. Popular Science declared, “Here’s an umpire even a Dodger can’t talk back to.” The noted British journalist Alistair Cooke, then a foreign correspondent for The Manchester Guardian, weighed in wryly with the “alarming news” that the Dodgers would “try out an electronic umpire in the hope that he will call a decision even the Yankees will not be able to challenge.” It was the atomic age, but sports were not known for being technologically advanced. Still, the coming decades saw much more: instant replay, slow motion, the virtual first-down line, real-time score boxes in the corner of television screens, the glowing puck, tennis-ball trackers, video review and baseball’s Pitch f/x and Statcast systems. Chris Marinak, Major League Baseball’s senior vice president for league economics and strategy, said that sharp advances in camera and computer technology had accelerated innovation. Statcast, for instance, uses radar and ultra-high-resolution cameras to track what would have been unimaginable in 1950: pitch velocity, spin rate, the exit velocity of home runs and the time between a ball being contacted by a bat and the fielder’s first step toward it. Mike Jakob, the president of Sportvision, a leader in developing sports technology, said the electronic umpire “would have been ahead of its time.” “It was definitely a novel use of existing technology, using a photoelectric cell to size the strike zone,” he said. “But,” he added, “it couldn’t be used for night games.” The machine was championed by Branch Rickey, the Dodgers’ president and part owner, and built during the previous year by a General Electric Company engineering team in Syracuse led by Richard Shea. A 1924 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shea specialized in semiconductors, did the initial circuit design work for the company’s first transistors and also worked at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory. One account of the genesis of the electronic umpire was that Charles Lare, a Dodgers farmhand who spent the 1948 and 1949 seasons with the Class AAA Montreal Royals, suggested a machine that could record strikes. Throughout his baseball career, Rickey was an innovator. While running the St. Louis Cardinals, he developed a chain of minor-league teams that became the modern farm system. He also pioneered a variety of teaching tools, including a set of strings to define the strike zone. Most important, of course, his signing of Jackie Robinson ended segregation in the majors in 1947. Lee Lowenfish, the author of “Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman,” was unaware of the electronic umpire as a part of Rickey’s résumé. “Anything about innovation I can believe about Rickey,” he said in an email. “He made the batting helmets mandatory in Pittsburgh. He innovated the batting cages and pitching strings before World War I while coaching at the University of Michigan.” The Dodgers went to Vero Beach after a 1949 season in which they won 97 games but lost to the Yankees in the World Series. In addition to testing the electronic umpire, they were using somewhat more practical tools like batting tees and mechanical pitching machines. “I feel that if I can make all our Dodger pitchers stand up there at the pitching machines by the hour, I will make better bunters out of them,” Rickey told The Sporting News. “That could win or lose the pennant.” And Rickey — who was pushed out of the Dodgers after the 1950 season — said he had no intention of replacing human umpires with the electronic version. He saw it only as a teaching tool. “I’m greatly interested in it,” he was quoted as saying in an article in The Washington Post, “because I’m sure it will be of great aid in making both young hitters and pitchers more conscious of the strike zone.” Sports Newsletter Get the big sports news, highlights and analysis from Times journalists, with distinctive takes on games and some behind-the-scenes surprises, delivered to your inbox every week. Pee Wee Reese, the Dodgers’ shortstop, was the first to test the electronic umpire. Facing him from across home plate were Rickey, Robinson, Duke Snider, Manager Burt Shotton, the umpire Bill Stewart (who wore a Dodgers uniform that day) and Shea. Fans watched from behind a fence. The slots along the width of the plate that allowed the system to see a strike were clearly visible. But Reese was not impressed with the judgment of the machine, according to The Post. Indeed, the article said, he “was on the verge of indignation when the gadget ‘called’ a strike on a pitch that passed over the plate several inches below his knees.” Stewart said, “I guess you can see that we’re not so bad all the time.” Erskine, now 89, recalled that a main purpose of the electronic umpire was to help Snider, his roommate. “Duke had trouble with the high fastball — he couldn’t lay off it and he couldn’t hit it,” Erskine said. “So Mr. Rickey would have Duke get in the batting cage and not swing at pitches and let the machine register them. And Duke actually began to learn the strike zone, and he began to hit the high pitches better and lay off the ones he couldn’t hit.” Erskine does not remember the electronic umpire lasting long at Vero Beach. “I think it was a very brief experience,” he said. The concept of the electronic umpire was revisited last July during two games between the independent San Rafael Pacifics and the Vallejo Admirals as part of a fund-raiser organized by Eric Byrnes, a former major league outfielder. Instead of the home plate umpire calling balls and strikes, Sportvision’s Pitch f/x system did the work. “It captured the balls and strikes consistently,” Jakob said. “We had a system in the press box that registered the balls and strikes, and Byrnes called them out.” Branch Rickey would have enjoyed that.
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Post by psuhistory on Jun 12, 2016 11:11:14 GMT -5
Annals of an earlier last place Reds team from the SABR Games Project... September 12, 1934: Stengel's Dodgers Squeak by Reds with Help from Mickey Mouseby Stephen V. Rice sabr.org/gamesproj/game/september-12-1934-stengels-dodgers-squeak-reds-help-mickey-mouseBrooklyn Dodgers manager Casey Stengel released 34-year-old Hack Wilson in August 1934, and picked a surprising replacement: 21-year-old rookie outfielder Nick Tremark, a left-handed batter, of Italian ancestry, from Yonkers, New York.1 What distinguished Tremark from other ballplayers was his diminutive stature – he stood 5 feet 4¾ inches.2 “Because he is a little fellow he is going to be difficult to pitch to,” said Stengel. “There isn’t much space between his knees and shoulders.”3 Stengel added: “He hits a ball far for such a little guy. He put several baseballs over the right-field wall [in practice].”4 Umpire Bill Klem said, “I think he’ll be a good ballplayer. ... I know they’ll say that he’s too small, but they said that about Rabbit Maranville more than 20 years ago.”5 In September 1934 the last-place Cincinnati Reds came to Brooklyn for a five-game series with the sixth-place Dodgers at Ebbets Field. The Dodgers won three of the first four games. The final game, on Wednesday, September 12, was attended by only a few hundred fans.6 Tremark, nicknamed Mickey Mouse by his teammates,7 did not start but made an impact when he entered the game in the sixth inning. The umpires were Cy Pfirman behind home plate and Bill Klem at first base. With singles by Mark Koenig, Jim Bottomley, and Harlin Pool, the Reds scored twice in the top of the first inning facing Brooklyn pitcher Owen Carroll. Leading off the bottom half, Glenn Chapman smacked a double off Cincinnati pitcher Ted Kleinhans; center fielder Chick Hafey fielded the ball and threw to Koenig at third base, but Koenig missed the throw and the ball bounded into the dugout, allowing Chapman to score. Reds manager Chuck Dressen then removed Kleinhans from the game – perhaps as punishment for failing to back up the play – and replaced him with Paul Derringer. The Dodgers loaded the bases in the second inning, but Derringer escaped by fanning Carroll and Chapman. An inning later, Brooklyn’s Lonny Frey singled, stole second base, and scored on Danny Taylor’s single to right field. Singles by Koenig, Hafey, Pool, and Ernie Lombardi gave the Reds two more runs in the top of the fifth, as Carroll was knocked out of the game and relieved by Johnny Babich. In the bottom of the fifth, Frey doubled to right field and scored on Len Koenecke’s single to center. Trailing by a run in the sixth inning, the Dodgers had runners on first and second when Tremark stepped to the plate, pinch-hitting for Babich. Sportswriter Tommy Holmes of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described the at-bat: “Big Ernie Lombardi, Cincinnati catcher, patronizingly smiled down from his great height and big Paul Derringer, who was pitching, laughed indulgently as Tremark, dead serious, prepared to level on the first pitch. He literally blasted the ball. Jaws dropped all over the ball park as the terrific line drive Tremark hit sped to the far corner in left center. Two runs galloped across the plate. A crestfallen Derringer was taken out of the game.”8 Derringer was replaced by southpaw Beryl Richmond, who quashed the Brooklyn rally. Tremark stayed in the game as the left fielder, and 38-year-old Tom Zachary took the mound for the Dodgers. Zachary is perhaps best known for allowing Babe Ruth’s 60th home run in 1927. Chick Hafey did his best impression of Ruth by homering off Zachary in the top of the seventh to tie the score, but the Dodgers scored a run in the bottom half to retake the lead, 6-5. Stengel then put Walter Beck in to pitch for the Dodgers. “Boom-Boom” Beck had a miserable start to the 1934 season, with a 0-6 record and a 9.20 ERA, when he was demoted to the Albany (New York) Senators in July. He fared little better in Albany, with a 2-6 record and a 7.62 ERA, before he was recalled by the Dodgers. Holmes said Beck needed more on the ball than “a fervent hope,”9 but Stengel trusted him here to hold the Brooklyn lead. In the top of the eighth Beck retired Lombardi on a foul pop, walked Adam Comorosky, and induced rookie Frank McCormick to ground into a double play. The Dodgers added an insurance run in the bottom of the inning. With a 7-5 lead, Beck needed to get three outs in the top of the ninth to secure the Brooklyn victory. Sparky Adams led off and grounded out. Gordon Slade drew a walk, and Koenig flied out. Thinking the game was in hand, Brooklyn fans headed for the exits as Jim Bottomley came to bat with two outs and a man on first. The slugger launched a “booming homer far over the tall screen in right field,”10 and the fans groaned. “This blow supplied the reason why the fans call him ‘Boom-Boom’ Beck,” noted the Cincinnati Enquirer.11 The Dodgers failed to score in the bottom of the ninth, and the game went to extra innings deadlocked at 7-7. Beck retired the Reds in order in the top of the 10th with help from Mickey Mouse. Lombardi lashed “a fearfully hard hit low liner” to left field, where Tremark made “a remarkable lunging catch.”12 Brooklyn’s Buzz Boyle tripled off Cincinnati’s Si Johnson to lead off the bottom of the 10th. To set up a force play at the plate, Johnson intentionally walked the next two batters. Stengel then sent in a left-handed pinch-hitter, Sam Leslie, to face the right-handed hurler. Dressen countered by replacing Johnson with Junie Barnes, a 22-year-old southpaw making his major-league debut in a precarious situation. With the bases loaded and no outs, the nervous lad walked Leslie to force in the winning run. The final score was Brooklyn 8, Cincinnati 7. Beck was the winning pitcher, earning his first major-league victory of 1934. Johnson took the loss, dropping his season record to 7-19; his 19 losses led the major leagues. Both managers made liberal substitutions throughout the game. In all, 34 players participated – 15 for the Reds and 19 for the Dodgers. Holmes joked that “expert accountants were required to aid in the compilation of the box score.”13 Tremark batted .333 in 1935 and .379 in 1936 for the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Brooks of the Class A New York-Pennsylvania League. In each season he was called up to Stengel’s Dodgers in September. Notes1 1920 US Census; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 9, 1934. 2 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 13, 1934. 3 Poughkeepsie (New York) Eagle-News, August 14, 1934. 4 Ibid. 5 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 17, 1934. Hall of Famer Rabbit Maranville stood 5-feet-5. 6 Cincinnati Enquirer, September 13, 1934. 7 Ibid. 8 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 13, 1934. 9 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 30, 1934. 10 Cincinnati Enquirer, September 13, 1934. 11 Ibid. 12 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 13, 1934. 13 Ibid.
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Post by psuhistory on Jun 12, 2016 11:35:27 GMT -5
Vander Meer's Paradox: consecutive no-hitters in 1938, AP award as Biggest Flop in 1939... Johnny Vander Meer's Back-to-Back No-Nos and the Art of Almost Losing ItBy Steven Goldman, Vice Sports, 6/9/2016 sports.vice.com/en_us/article/johnny-vander-meer-back-to-back-no-no-hitters-throwback-thursdayThis week in 1938, Cincinnati Reds left-hander Johnny Vander Meer was 23 years old and on one hell of a roll. On June 11, he took the mound at Crosley Field against a strongly mediocre Boston Bees team and pitched a no-hitter. His next start, on June 15 at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field, was the first night game in Dodgers history. Vander Meer, confronted by another weak ball club, walked eight but again allowed no hits. He was a rookie, although by today's service-time standards he'd be a sophomore. No pitcher had ever thrown consecutive no-hitters before, and no pitcher has done it since. Even Vander Meer didn't recall the first no-hitter as having much drama; it was the Dodgers game that was memorable, both because it was unprecedented and because he nearly blew it. An overflow crowd showed up to see the first game played under the lights in Brooklyn. They were also treated to two fife and drum corps, a band, and a pregame 100-yard race with Jessie Owens; Dodgers outfielder Ernie "Chief" Koy (if you had any Native American heritage at that time, you were sure to have a nickname like that hung on you) was given a ten-yard handicap, and won. Vander Meer's parents, immigrants from Holland, had come over from his hometown of Midland Park, New Jersey. Aware of the no-hitter in the ninth, Vander Meer told himself, "I've got 30 good pumps left in me. I still have my good stuff, and boy, they're going to have to hit the very best I've got." Suitably fired up, he promptly began overthrowing. With one out, he walked the bases loaded on 18 pitches. His manager, Bill McKechnie, came out to calm him down. "Listen," McKechnie said. "Those hitters are more scared than you are. Just pour that ball in there." Vander Meer listened, and went back to pitching instead of throwing. The speedy Koy hit the ball to third baseman Lew Riggs, but Riggs didn't think he could turn the double play and threw home for the force. Catcher Ernie Lombardi considered throwing to first for the 5-2-3 double play, but he couldn't get an angle as Koy was running inside the line. There was still one more out to get. The next batter up was Leo Durocher. He was not much of a hitter—his former teammate Babe Ruth called him "The All-American Out"—but he was tenacious and mean. "Just imagine Durocher ruining a performance like that," John Kieran, of the New York Times, later wrote, "which was just what everybody in the park was imagining."
Vander Meer got two strikes on him and then hit the outside corner. Umpire Bill Stewart called it a ball. Stewart missed it, and admitted as much after the game. Durocher got one more swing but wasted it, popping out to center field on the next pitch.
"It's fortunate that Vander Meer proved he can pitch no-hitters in the daytime," Dodgers president Larry MacPhail said, "or everybody would be blaming it on the lights."
Obviously, a great deal of attention was focused on Vander Meer's next start. He drew the Bees again on June 19, this time at their home stadium, the Beehive. Feel free to groan at the forcible adherence to pollinated imagery; the Bees were and are the Braves, but the brand had been poisoned by a stretch of mostly miserable teams going back almost to their 1914 "miracle" World Series winners, and particularly by a 38-115 (.248) finish in 1935. Renaming the team "Bees" was new ownership's way of saying, "New and improved!" They weren't.
Vander Meer faced a lineup full of players who, while far from Hall of Famers, carved out distinctive oddball lives in the game. Each an unduplicated original, they're more than a footnote to Vander Meer's record. Bees first baseman and leadoff hitter Elbie Fletcher, 22, reached the majors at 18, and though he didn't have a lot of pop for a first baseman, he had one of the best batting eyes of his day and would later lead the National League in on-base percentage three times. His stats look a bit like Joe Mauer's do now, but at his best (.288/.421/.457 in 1941) Fletcher was better.
Right fielder Johnny Cooney, 37, had come up as a pitcher and wasn't bad at it, but ended up going back to the minors and becoming a position player. As a hitter, he could bat out singles all day long and rarely struck out, but he also had no power and no patience. In September 1939, he homered in back-to-back games against the then New York Giants. They were the only home runs he hit in a nearly 1,200-game career that kept him in the majors until he was 43.
Third baseman Debs Garms will probably remain the greatest player in history named after a famous socialist until Mike Trout's son Bernie wins the 2037 MVP award (get busy, Mike). Anticipating later Red Sox utility great Billy Goodman, as well as players like Tony Phillips and Ben Zobrist, Garms could play all over the field while still providing offense. In 1940, he won a controversial batting title, leading the NL at .355 but without the then requisite 400 at-bats.
Between playing and coaching, second baseman Tony Cuccinello had a career that spanned most of the years from 1930 through 1969. As a player, he was a good glove and gave teams a little bit of everything on offense—some batting average, some walks, some pop, though not always in the same year. One of Cuccinello's biggest moments as a player was also his last. Due to the World War II manpower shortage, Cuccinello was pressed into an everyday role as the Chicago White Sox third baseman in 1945. He got off to a hot start, hung on to hit .308 on the season, and lost the batting title on the final day when a questionable decision by an official scorer gave the Yankees' Snuffy Stirnweiss the edge by .000087.
Then there was the center fielder, Vince—though he was the least talented of the DiMaggio brothers, there has never been a better Vince. He possessed Joe and Dom's ball-hawking talents but couldn't hit like them. He had power, but with six strikeout titles in only eight seasons as a regular at a time when whiffing carried a huge stigma, he was looked upon as highly flawed. It bothered his contemporaries that it didn't seem to bother Vince DiMaggio when he struck out. "Vince is the only player I ever saw who could strike out three times in one game and not be embarrassed," said Bees manager Casey Stengel. "He'd walk into the clubhouse whistling. Everybody would be feeling sorry for him, but Vince always thought he was doing good."
And he was, which we would realize today because we are aware of a few things that baseball didn't know then. The Beehive, by any name, was a pitcher's park, with distant fences and a constant cold wind coming in off the Charles. It was knowingly designed to produce triples, not home runs, and homers were the one thing DiMaggio could hit at an above-average rate. The other park where he spent most of his time, Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, had a left-field line of 365 feet and drifted out to over 400 feet in the left-field power alley. Instead of blaming DiMaggio for failing to make contact, we would understand he was operating under a handicap. We would also know enough to see that a player who fielded like a DiMaggio and hit like the Milwaukee Brewers' Chris Carter is quite valuable.
Instead, Joe DiMaggio had a couple of hit songs written about him, married Marilyn Monroe, became Mr. Coffee, and went into the Hall of Fame in 1955. Dom DiMaggio became a millionaire businessman and was a founding partner of the New England Patriots; though he never made the Hall of Fame, there have always been some who said he should have gone. Vince DiMaggio became a door-to-door brush salesman. No wonder he whistled after striking out: he had to drown out the reality of having been deselected by fate, and the struggle of being a low-contact Cain in a family with two Abels.
"I remember taking Joe over to meet the owner of the San Francisco Seals. I had been playing for them, and I told them about my kid brother," Vince told Edward Kiersh in the where-are-they-now book that would bear his name, Where Have You Gone, Vince DiMaggio? "They needed a shortstop, so I got Joe the tryout the last day of the season.... It's funny how all this began. Maybe if I had kept my mouth shut, I'd be remembered as the greatest DiMaggio."
As it happened, the third-greatest DiMaggio could not touch Vander Meer on June 19, and neither could any of his teammates. Vander Meer was always free with the walks, so a couple batters, including the selective Fletcher and a Bees reliever—the Reds knocked out Boston's starter with two outs in the first—reached that way. After three, the kid lefty was one-third of the way to his third consecutive no-hit game.
As the sides changed after the top of the fourth and Vander Meer loosened up, Stengel detoured to the mound on his way to the third-base coaching box. "John, we're not trying to beat you," he said quietly. "We're just trying to get a base hit."
Cooney grounded out to short to open the inning, but the next batter, Garms, hit a single to center. Score one for socialism, in which the hits are shared out equally. After 21.2 innings, Vander Meer's no-hit streak was over. Maybe Stengel had psyched him out, but Vander Meer didn't care. He was grateful.
"The pressure had become too much and I was glad to get out from under it," he said. "I think if I'd have had a $10 bill in my baseball pants I'd have gone over to first base and handed it to Garms." The Reds went on to win 14-1. "I only wish the first man up could have hit and ended the strain," Vander Meer said.
There isn't much to say about a no-hitter, really. For some pitchers, like Nolan Ryan, a no-hitter is evidence of his unhittable stuff. For many others, it's God playing dice with the universe; two no-hitters in a row is the big guy making 54 straight passes in a celestial craps championship. That's not to say that Vander Meer wasn't a very good pitcher. He was, at times, though in 1939, the year after the no-hitters, he regressed enough that the Reds sent him back to the minors, à la early-career Roy Halladay. "To regain my confidence," Vander Meer said. It was never easy. Vander Meer had injured his shoulder, been ill, and had had a small tumor removed from his ear even before the 1938 season had ended.
Whatever the cause, the demotion worked, and Vander Meer led the NL in strikeouts for three straight seasons after his return in September 1940. Still, you could staff a starting rotation entirely with pitchers who have thrown no-hitters, surround them with an average offense, and lose over 100 games. Try it: Philip Humber, Matt Garza, Edwin Jackson, Jonathan Sanchez, Bud Smith. Or better: Bobo Holloman, Ernie Koob, Bob Groom, and Earl Hamilton. Those were all Browns, and they don't even remember them in St. Louis.
Vander Meer appears to have known this—that as much luck as skill made him "The Dutch Master" instead of a Vince. Asked about his greatest games, he pointed not to the no-hitters but to two more anonymous performances: September 18, 1940, after his return from the minors, when Bill McKechnie trusted him to clinch the pennant—which he did, pitching 12 innings and scoring the winning run— and September 11, 1946, once again at Brooklyn. Vander Meer got a no-decision in that one, but he had reason to be proud: 15 scoreless innings, seven hits, two walks, 14 strikeouts.
Perhaps he remembered that when he struggled in the year after the no-hitters—after Babe Ruth put his arm around his shoulders and said, "Nice going, kid"; after he won nine straight games and became the first rookie in NL history to start an All-Star Game; after the Reds front office started charging orphanages for his autograph and made newspapers pay to interview him—an Associated Press poll of sportswriters named him "The Biggest Flop of 1939." Vander Meer was "little more than a fifth wheel on the Reds' 1939 mound staff," they said.
That's why the best part of the story isn't the twin no-hitters. Those are, relatively speaking, easy. The part of the story that matters is the rest of it: the presence of Vince, unrecognized except for his surname; Jesse Owens having to make a living losing races to reserve outfielders (and sometimes horses); Stengel saying don't let us win, just let us survive professionally. As Vander Meer well knew, baseball is often less about winning than it is about just holding onto your dignity as tight as you can, because you're always this close to losing it.
Sources include: The Cincinnati Reds, Lee Allen; My Greatest Day in Baseball, John P. Carmichael; Forging Genius, Steven Goldman; Baseball Between the Lines, Donald Honig; Diamond Greats, Rich Westcott; For the Love of the Game, Cynthia J. Wilber; the wonderful SABR Bio Project, and a great many musty old newspapers.
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Post by Lark11 on Jul 24, 2016 1:24:53 GMT -5
Walter "Big Train" Johnson:
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Post by Lark11 on Aug 14, 2016 22:40:20 GMT -5
Birmingham Black Barons starring a 17-year-old Willie Mays after winning the 1948 Negro American League championship.
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