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Post by inger on Mar 25, 2023 15:45:33 GMT -5
Skowron was offered a scholarship to play football at Perdue, but he didn’t like chicken. Wait. It was Purdue University. But he chose to sign with the Yankees instead…
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Post by inger on Mar 25, 2023 17:03:48 GMT -5
So hard to find much of anything about Yogi Berra we haven’t known for a long time:
"He (Yogi Berra) isn't much to look at, and he looks like he's doing everything wrong, but he can hit. He got a couple of hits off us on wild pitches." - Hall of Famer Mel Ott …
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Post by inger on Mar 25, 2023 17:06:59 GMT -5
Yogi was the first catcher in Major League history to win back-to-back Most Valuable Player Awards (1954-1955). When Yogi and Roy Campanella won in 1951, it was the first year a catcher took the MVP from each league in the same year and when they both won again in 1955, they became the first set of catchers in their respective leagues to win three Most Valuable Player Awards…
(how we doing so far?) 🤓
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Post by inger on Mar 25, 2023 17:08:57 GMT -5
117 - Yogi Berra caught both games of a doubleheader one-hundred seventeen times in his career and at least one-hundred games across ten separate seasons...
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Post by kaybli on Mar 25, 2023 18:14:23 GMT -5
Yogi was the first catcher in Major League history to win back-to-back Most Valuable Player Awards (1954-1955). When Yogi and Roy Campanella won in 1951, it was the first year a catcher took the MVP from each league in the same year and when they both won again in 1955, they became the first set of catchers in their respective leagues to win three Most Valuable Player Awards… (how we doing so far?) 🤓 Always a treat inger! |
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Post by BillyBones on Mar 25, 2023 18:37:39 GMT -5
On October 15, 1964, during Game 7 of the 1964 World Series, Clete Boyer hit a home run off Bob Gibson in the 9th inning. The Yankees were trailing the Cardinals 3-7 and the homer helped, but Ken Boyer had already homered in the 7th inning, off Steve Hamilton, to help put the game out of reach. The brothers were the first in history to hit home runs in the same World Series game... Sadly, I can remember that game much more vividly than any game of the most recent Yankee World Series. A rookie Mel Stottlemyre and veteran Bob Gibson were matched up in games 2,5 and 7. Mel had about seven weeks of big league experience at that point and started three games in the series. Whitey Ford had started Game One, but he had arm problems and was finished for the duration. Gibson had had to pitch the final game of the regular season to win a tight NL pennant race, so he wasn't available for Game One. Both Stottlemyre and Gibson were pitching on two days' rest in Game Seven. Mel worked the first four innings, allowed three runs, and was gassed. Al Downing came in for the fifth and had nothing -- three batters, three runs scored. The Yanks were behind 6-0 going into the sixth inning against Bob Gibson. Prospects were dim. But even Gibson could get tired, and in the sixth inning Mickey Mantle hit a three-run homer to make it 6-3. As you noted Ken Boyer hit one out in the seventh to make it 7-3. It was clear Gibson was laboring -- it was unthinkable that he would be removed. In that ninth inning he was like a marathon runner nearing the finish line. With one out, Clete hit the home run you mentioned, making it 7-4. Then pinch hitter Johnny Blanchard went down, making it two outs. But Phil Linz, starting at SS in the series because of a wrist injury to Tony Kubek, hit a rare home run to make it 7-5. Bobby Richardson, who had had another great series -- in fact set a record with 13 hits -- was up next against an obviously exhausted Gibson. Maris and Mantle were on deck, so if Bobby reached base there was genuine hope. But it was not to be. He popped up weakly, causing me severe anguish and ushering in ten years of frustrating baseball. That was another winnable series -- don't get me started on Game Four -- and it was the last hurrah of the Mantle-Ford-Berra-Maris-Richardson-Kubek-Boyer-Howard era. I believe I have the WS correct, and I'm thinking it was 1964, and I remember an egregious bad call against the Yankees in which Joe Pepitone was called out at first in a key situation, and he was clearly safe. That call would have been overturned today by cameras, but, alas, not then. I don't remember details, except it was rather late in the game, the Yankees were rallying, and it was a terrible call. Does anyone remember that play? |
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Post by pippsheadache on Mar 25, 2023 19:02:03 GMT -5
Sadly, I can remember that game much more vividly than any game of the most recent Yankee World Series. A rookie Mel Stottlemyre and veteran Bob Gibson were matched up in games 2,5 and 7. Mel had about seven weeks of big league experience at that point and started three games in the series. Whitey Ford had started Game One, but he had arm problems and was finished for the duration. Gibson had had to pitch the final game of the regular season to win a tight NL pennant race, so he wasn't available for Game One. Both Stottlemyre and Gibson were pitching on two days' rest in Game Seven. Mel worked the first four innings, allowed three runs, and was gassed. Al Downing came in for the fifth and had nothing -- three batters, three runs scored. The Yanks were behind 6-0 going into the sixth inning against Bob Gibson. Prospects were dim. But even Gibson could get tired, and in the sixth inning Mickey Mantle hit a three-run homer to make it 6-3. As you noted Ken Boyer hit one out in the seventh to make it 7-3. It was clear Gibson was laboring -- it was unthinkable that he would be removed. In that ninth inning he was like a marathon runner nearing the finish line. With one out, Clete hit the home run you mentioned, making it 7-4. Then pinch hitter Johnny Blanchard went down, making it two outs. But Phil Linz, starting at SS in the series because of a wrist injury to Tony Kubek, hit a rare home run to make it 7-5. Bobby Richardson, who had had another great series -- in fact set a record with 13 hits -- was up next against an obviously exhausted Gibson. Maris and Mantle were on deck, so if Bobby reached base there was genuine hope. But it was not to be. He popped up weakly, causing me severe anguish and ushering in ten years of frustrating baseball. That was another winnable series -- don't get me started on Game Four -- and it was the last hurrah of the Mantle-Ford-Berra-Maris-Richardson-Kubek-Boyer-Howard era. I believe I have the WS correct, and I'm thinking it was 1964, and I remember an egregious bad call against the Yankees in which Joe Pepitone was called out at first in a key situation, and he was clearly safe. That call would have been overturned today by cameras, but, alas, not then. I don't remember details, except it was rather late in the game, the Yankees were rallying, and it was a terrible call. Does anyone remember that play? Hey BillyBones, just checked my phone at one of my watering holes and had to do a quick reply. Yes, for sure, just like the Yanks should have won Game Four, they also should have won Game Five (Pepitone game.) Ninth inning one man on Yankee Stadium Yanks down 2-0 against Gibson. Pepi hit a smash off Gibson's leg. Gibson quick as always runs halfway to the third base line and heaves it to first. Pepitone was clearly safe but was called out. Two out one on. Next man up Tom Tresh hit a long HR to tie it. Had Pepi been called safe, Yanks win 3-2. Tresh got an enormous ovation when he returned to LF. What a thrill. Then in the tenth McCarver hit a 3-run HR (I think off Mikkelsen but not sure) and St. Louis won 5-2. Grrr, I had buried that one. Gotta run but had to respond to that. Back later. |
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Post by inger on Mar 25, 2023 20:10:22 GMT -5
Yogi Berra, who won the league's MVP award three times (1951, 1954 and 1955), received Most Valuable Player Award votes in fifteen consecutive seasons, tied with Barry Bonds* and second only to Hank Aaron's nineteen straight seasons.
* a cheater that doesn’t really count…
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Post by rizzuto on Mar 25, 2023 21:36:04 GMT -5
Please watch this video everyone. My father died of complications of Alzheimer's disease. New data and trials are revealing that the disease is reversible. Dr. Bredesen believes that we will be the last generation to worry about this type of cognitive decline. This is the tip of the iceberg for me in terms of study, but I wanted to share with you all.
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Post by kaybli on Mar 25, 2023 22:29:20 GMT -5
Please watch this video everyone. My father died of complications of Alzheimer's disease. New data and trials are revealing that the disease is reversible. Dr. Bredesen believes that we will be the last generation to worry about this type of cognitive decline. This is the tip of the iceberg for me in terms of study, but I wanted to share with you all. Sorry about your father rizz. My grandfather also had it. Truly an awful disease. But things like these give me hope for the future. Thanks for sharing. |
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Post by desousa on Mar 26, 2023 8:08:26 GMT -5
On FB I'm friends with the daughter of Earl Torgeson. We grew up in the same town, but I didn't really know her as she was a few years ahead of me. I was friends with her late brother. She loves to post old pictures of her dad and other players, which is really fascinating. She was also Miss Florida in 1966. I once said it must of been cool for her dad to play on that 61' with Mantle, Berra, Ford, etc and she replied, it must have been cool for them to play with her dad. I liked that. I have a question for pipps and bearman if he's around. I was wondering if you have any recollections of Torgeson as a player? That is great stuff Matt. You've done a bit of getting around. Miss Florida of 1966 still gets you coolness points. She obviously got her looks from her mother, based on my remembrance of Earl Torgeson as a chubby-faced bespectacled guy. I do remember him mainly with the White Sox as a first baseman who was normally backing up somebody, whether an old Ray Boone or Ted Kluszewski or a young Norm Cash. I remember him being on the 59 Go-Go Sox AL champions and playing in the World Series. I know I had his baseball card that year. His best years were with the Boston Braves before I was following baseball. He is one of the least-remembered players on the 1961 Yankees -- the Yanks picked him up at mid-season after he was released by the White Sox to have another lefty bat on the bench, but he didn't play very much and they cut him from the roster before September 1 and made him a coach because Ralph Houk valued his experience and knowledge and the fact that his sense of humor made him popular with the players. That team recycled several veterans as depth pieces who today are barely recalled as being Yankees -- Torgeson, Joe DeMaestri, Bob Hale, Billy Gardner -- but they all chipped in. Ralph Houk recalled all of them fondly in the book "Season Of Glory" written by Robert Creamer (who wrote the best Babe Ruth biography.) Before I kicked myself off of Facebook and all social media a few years ago, I was friends with a few people who I did not actually know in real life but got into online chats with because of common interests. One was Dee Dee Sperling of the singing duo Dick and Dee Dee who nobody remembers today (we had a connection at See's Candy in LA and I bought her very interesting book on rock and roll touring in the 60s) and the other was the daughter of two members of the even less remembered one-hit wonder group Shades of Blue ("Oh How Happy" was their big hit in 1966) who saw a YouTube comment I had made and was happy I could direct her to a record dealer who had some hard-to-find copies of songs her parents had made. It was all fun and I loved the stories they had about the music industry at that time. Thanks pipps! The 61 team was my first as a fan. I was only 5, I don't remember him being on the team. I would recite the Yankee line up in bed at night before I went to sleep, but don't remember his name being in it. I used to get up in the morning and grab the The St. Petersburg Times to look to see if Mantle or Maris had hit home runs. If they played a night game, I'd have to wait for our afternoon paper, a rag called The Bradenton Herald, to see the whole box score and story. I remember watching the WS for the first time and how happy I was when they beat the Reds. |
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Post by inger on Mar 26, 2023 10:08:01 GMT -5
"During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at-bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball." - Mantle, Mickey. Mickey…
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Post by inger on Mar 26, 2023 10:10:54 GMT -5
- Mickey Mantle finished his career with a .421 on-base percentage, the Major League record for highest on-base percentage by a switch hitter in a career. In 1957, Mantle had a career high .521 OBP, the Major League record for highest on-base percentage by a switch hitter in a single season...
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Post by inger on Mar 26, 2023 10:11:07 GMT -5
Mickey Mantle finished his career with a .557 slugging average, the Major League record for highest slugging average by a switch hitter in a career. In 1956, Mantle had a career high .705 slugging average, the Major League record for highest slugging average by a switch hitter in a single season...
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Post by inger on Mar 26, 2023 10:12:47 GMT -5
Mickey Mantle was not just incredibly strong, but he was also incredibly fast. In 1958, The Mick hit an inside the park home run on May 9, 1958, another on May 20, 1958, and a third on June 5, 1958. Not one Yankee player since Mantle, has hit three inside the park home runs in the same season…
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