Editor’s note: Last year, Joe Guzzardi wrote a Saturday column on noteworthy doubleheaders throughout baseball history. With a new season underway, this column makes its return. __________________ Alva Lee “Bobo” Holloman’s St. Louis Browns’ career lasted only three months. On May 6, 1953, pitching in his first start, Holloman tossed a no-hitter against the Philadelphia [...]
Archive for April, 2011
Any player/Any era: Charles Victory Faust
Posted: 28th April 2011 by Graham Womack in Charles Victory FaustWhat he did: Okay, this one’s unconventional. Faust qualifies as a baseball player only in the barest sense of the word, as limited a participant as Eddie Gaedel, a midget who made one plate appearance in 1951 or Aloysius Travers, a seminary student who served as a replacement pitcher during a one-game strike in 1912 [...]
Believe It or Not: Norm Cash Plays an Entire Game at First without Recording a Put Out
Posted: 27th April 2011 by Joe Guzzardi in MLBOf all the statistical oddities in baseball, the rarest occurs when a first baseman plays an entire game without recording a put out. Detroit Tigers’ Norm Cash did exactly that on June 27, 1963. That Thursday afternoon, the Tigers’ 27 outs in the team’s 10-6 loss to the Minnesota Twins, were recorded as follows: six [...]
Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Dale Murphy
Posted: 26th April 2011 by Graham Womack in Dale MurphyClaim to fame: Murphy was a stalwart outfielder, fan favorite, and back-to-back National League Most Valuable Player during the 1980s for the Atlanta Braves. He declined badly near the end of the decade and was an afterthought for the expansion Colorado Rockies by the end of his career in 1993, though Murphy still finished with [...]
Just a quick note to record a cool fact: As of next Sunday, May 1, this Web site will be two years old. No, the title doesn’t refer to a double play. I’m amazed the difference even a year can make. A year ago, this was simply my personal blog that I contributed maybe a [...]
Scouts are the backbone of any successful franchise and without these eyes, major league teams would be unable to build their all important farm systems and find the next major league star. That’s of course stating the obvious. But how does one judge a player possibly still in his late teens and project his ability [...]
I’m picking up where I left off on my last blog. Jackie Robinson Day, originally a fine idea, has outlived its usefulness and should be cancelled. Everybody knows that Robinson was the first African-American to cross Major League Baseball’s color line. Few know more than that. I’ve come up with a better idea than repeating [...]
The Great Friday Link Out: April 22
Posted: 22nd April 2011 by Graham Womack in The Great Friday Link OutJoe Posnanski offers a great look on players who may have put together solid cases for Cooperstown but were Not Famous Enough. I like the idea in general of alternate Hall of Fames, be it the Baseball Reliquary, Hall of Merit or a Hall of limited Fame that I proposed last year. Lots of people, [...]
What he did: I’ve picked up some freelance writing work in recent weeks, and on Tuesday, I was in San Francisco at one of the firms I write for, and we got to talking about the Hall of Fame. I mentioned I’d written a column on Barry Bonds’ future candidacy, which led to us talking [...]
Cancel Jackie Robinson Day, An Insult to A Great American
Posted: 20th April 2011 by Joe Guzzardi in MLBJackie Robinson Day, which started in 2004 as a well intended tribute to a great American, has become a meaningless event that should but will not be cancelled. Many fans celebrated Robinson’s day on April 15th, the actual calendar date in 1947 that he first took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Since the Pirates [...]