Misc. Bull$h!t

On June 26, 1955, Hector Lopez hit a home run in the fifth inning, at Memorial Stadium, off Baltimore Orioles righty Don Johnson, making The Panama Clipper the first player from Panama to hit a Major League home run…

Roger Maris was also victimized by unconscionable deception on the part of the Yankees' front office, which is why he was so bitter toward the organization for so many years.  In 1965 Maris, sliding into home plate, sustained a hand injury which he believed was a dislocated finger.  Maris played the game as hard as anybody who ever wore the pinstripes -- almost recklessly in some respects the way he went into second base to break up double plays or slid into catchers at the plate or dove into the stands to catch the ball.  So when he said his hand was hurting and he couldn't grip the bat, you have to think he wasn't just looking for some time off.  The Yanks had their medical staff take X-rays, but said they showed nothing was broken and that there was no reason Maris couldn't play.  He tried to play through it, but it didn't improve.  Finally after the 65 season a friend had him see a doctor with no connection to the Yankees, and this doctor saw immediately that Maris had a broken hamate.  When Maris told Ralph Houk, who by then was back to being manager after firing Johnny Keane, Houk said he would level with him and that the front office knew he needed an operation.

This understandably did not sit well with Maris, who proceeded to have an operation which did ease his pain but did not restore his power stroke.  The Yankee brass had pretty well insinuated -- and the New York sports media dutifully repeated -- that Maris was just dogging it, and many of the fans bought into it.  They really let him have it.  After the 1966 season, Maris told GM Lee MacPhail that he was thinking about retiring.  MacPhail assured him the Yanks wanted him back.  Maris asked that if the team was going to trade him to any place other than Kansas City, which was near his home, to let him know so he could file his retirement papers.  MacPhail said the Yanks had no such plans.

Three weeks later he was traded to St. Louis for journeyman IFer Charlie Smith.  Maris found out when he came home one afternoon and saw reporters and photographers waiting for him in front of his house.  But the Cardinals were smart.  They had new GM Stan Musial get in touch with him and they hit it off instantly.  The Man told Roger that not only would he get a salary increase, but that there would be no pressure on him to hit HRs or do anything other than show up and do his best.  Manager Red Schoendienst got into the act too, and later players like Orlando Cepeda reached out to him -- Cepeda got a bit of the Maris treatment in San Francisco for not being Willie Mays -- and eventually all the players from Gibson on down were won over by his team-oriented attitude.  He played decently for the Cardinals and was an important part of two pennant-winning teams in 67 and 68 before retiring and getting his fondest wish -- a beer distributorship from owner August Busch that he ran with his brother Rudy.

Their treatment of Roger Maris was one of the real low points of Yankee front office chicanery, with an indifferent ownership at CBS and dishonesty from Ralph Houk, Lee MacPhail and quack corporate team doctor Sidney Gaynor.  Houk, who did so many good things, not just in baseball but as a genuine hero in World War II when he was awarded a Silver Star, did not have his finest moments as Yankee GM or in his second tenure as manager.  He had many noble qualities, but at times he had some serious failings.

Yep, you could win a few bar bets on that one.  Norm Siebern was a fine ballplayer -- he would have been ROY in 1958, when he had a .300/.388/.454 slash line, an OPS+ of 136 and a Gold Glove, but he had barely enough previous Games Played and ABs to not qualify as a rookie.  But he had one horrific inning in Game Four of the 1958 World Series, when he lost two balls in the late afternoon sun playing LF in Yankee Stadium that helped the Braves take a 3-1 series lead (although the Yanks came back to win the series in seven.)  I remember that very well -- it was his Clint Frazier against Boston moment, except it was happening on the biggest stage.  The fans never forgave him and booed him mercilessly thereafter.  Casey Stengel, who could be very tough on young players and seemed to particularly dislike the sensitive Siebern, did not let him get back into any of the last three games.

It became almost a singsong event for the New York media.  I remember them taking the song "Pennies From Heaven" and changing the lyric to "Every time it rains it rains, fly balls on Siebern."  He was a quiet, serious type who couldn't really shrug it off.  He played one more season for the Yanks -- another pretty decent one -- before they traded him after the 1959 season along with Hank Bauer and Don Larsen to Kansas City for Roger Maris and a few throw-ins.  While that deal is often held up as yet another example of the Yanks using the Athletics as their personal farm team, and while Siebern did not by any means have the high ceiling of Maris, he had four very good seasons with the A's -- .289/.381/.463 for an OPS+ of 126 -- before being traded to Baltimore for Jim Gentile, where he made his third and final All Star team.

I know we discussed Hector Lopez last fall after he passed away at age 93.  He was such an important versatile player on so many Yankee pennant winners.  He was a guy who never complained about his always uncertain role, who loved being a Yankee and who had a reputation as a sharp dresser.  He was almost certainly the last Yankee player who could walk a few blocks to the Stadium from his apartment on the Grand Concourse.

He had a decent bat, and while in KC he twice led the AL in Errors while a 3B and again once after they moved him to 2nd. So the Yankees moved him to the outfield. Problem solved… He had a crappy season in ‘61, but somebody on that team had to let up…

You can see her aston, but you can’t quite see her martin…