rufralf
Chris Sabo
Retired to beach town Mexico
Posts: 235
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Post by rufralf on May 5, 2014 3:42:27 GMT -5
I was punched by Johnny Temple in the Reds locker room once and was involved in 2 locker room fights with Vada Pinson. Also once traded blows in the locker room with Clay Carroll. I was once kicked out and barred from entering the Reds locker room by then Reds manager Rogers Hornsby. I won a Bronze Star in World War 2. I am a member of the HOF & Museum in Cooperstown, NY. Who is this mystery man?
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Post by dukecrunchybagel on May 6, 2014 8:41:04 GMT -5
It sounds like Billy Martin.
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rufralf
Chris Sabo
Retired to beach town Mexico
Posts: 235
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Post by rufralf on May 6, 2014 9:28:40 GMT -5
Billy Martin is an outstanding guess. However, that is not the mystery man in question.
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Post by psuhistory on May 6, 2014 14:02:16 GMT -5
Joe Nuxhall had a reputation for fighting and played on those teams but isn't the answer. He was too young for the WWII draft and maybe too old for Korea...
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rufralf
Chris Sabo
Retired to beach town Mexico
Posts: 235
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Post by rufralf on May 8, 2014 16:40:51 GMT -5
Shocked that nobody has named this mystery man yet. Several more clues . He was born in 1923 and died in 2003. He wrote a book with great Cincinnati Reds stories in it. You've got to think outside the batters box to figure out this mystery man because he didn't get into the HOF for his hitting or pitching. Answer to be given tomorrow.
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Post by psuhistory on May 9, 2014 15:23:32 GMT -5
Lee Allen wrote about the Reds for the Cincinnati papers and published a book, but I don't think he was a fighter. In any case, he was at the HOF during the Pinson days...
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rufralf
Chris Sabo
Retired to beach town Mexico
Posts: 235
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Post by rufralf on May 10, 2014 5:53:48 GMT -5
Mystery man was Earl Lawson. He was a beat writer who covered the Reds from 1949 until 1984. At that time a beat writer pretty much traveled with the team and even hung with players after the game. For a while Earl was even the official scorekeeper for the Reds. His fight with Temple was over charging him with an error that Temple was irritated by. His fights with Pinson were over articles he had written concerning Vada not bunting more often. Earl actually had Pinson arrested and charged with assault. During his time as a beat writer, Earl had a sidekick named Si Burick who got into several scuffles with Frank Robinson while Earl and Vada were duking it out. Pinson and Robinson were room mates at the time and didn't really care for sports reporters. The scuffle with Clay Carroll was over another article that Earl had published after promising Clay that he wouldn't publish it. Interesting how sports reporting has changed over the years. Earl had a book published that has some great stories concerning the Reds during his 35 year association with them. RIP Earl!
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Post by psuhistory on May 10, 2014 8:22:25 GMT -5
Great question, my parents didn't subscribe to the Post, so I never read his stuff. I don't remember this coming up in Alexander's book on Hornsby either, but maybe I missed it...
For what it's worth, this question got me thinking about Lee Allen's reporting and his history of the Reds. Allen's book is the best available for the Reds during the first half of the twentieth century, but it's also part of a series of histories--mostly by Frank Graham and Fred Lieb--that was published from the early 1940s to the early 1950s by Putnam and ultimately covered all sixteen of the traditional MLB clubs. These have been back in print for awhile now, and they're a great place to start for the history down to the 1950s, all of them very well-written...
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rufralf
Chris Sabo
Retired to beach town Mexico
Posts: 235
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Post by rufralf on May 11, 2014 7:05:24 GMT -5
What's the title of Allen's book? Sounds like a great book.
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Post by psuhistory on May 11, 2014 22:04:30 GMT -5
What's the title of Allen's book? Sounds like a great book. It has the unprepossessing title The Cincinnati Reds, first published in 1948. All the Putnam histories have team name titles except for Lieb's book on the Athletics, which is a (still useful) biography of Connie Mack. Allen was a Cincinnatian, started out as a writer for the Enquirer, then moved to the HOF as archivist sometime in the late 1950s. Interesting guy, some of his later research made it into the first Baseball Encyclopedia project in 1968/1969. His book on the Reds is still the place to start for the first half of the twentieth century, great stuff...
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rufralf
Chris Sabo
Retired to beach town Mexico
Posts: 235
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Post by rufralf on May 16, 2014 22:55:39 GMT -5
Thank you for a lead on a great book. Ordered if from Amazon and looking forward to some great reading.
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