Rockford Peaches. The Splendid Splinter. Newark Eagles. Satchel. Cobb.

•October 10, 2011 • 3 Comments

Such a cool photo from 1944 of the Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. While the Peaches were not the League Champions in 1944, they did win in 45, 48, 49, and 50. Their 4 titles were the most of any one during the league’s 12 year existence.

While I do have a high level of respect for women’s fast pitch softball; I do wish there was a successful modern league for women’s hardball such as the AAGPBL.

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1939. Ted Williams crosses home plate and shakes hand with the Boston bat-boy after hitting a home run against the Yankees during his rookie season. From all the advertisements on the green monster to the huge grin on Ted’s face, everything is perfect about this photo.

This is another great photo courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

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(L-R) Leniel Hooker, Max Manning, Jim Brown, and Manager Raleigh ‘Biz’ Mackey in an awesome Negro League photo taken in June of 1939 during a game against the New York Black Yankees.

Something I noticed about this is that Leniel Hooker was only 17 years old (or literally days after turning 18) at the time of this photo. Also, I wonder why Mackey has a different uniform on? Because he was Manager?

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September 25th, 1965. A humorous photo of Satchel Paige from his last Major League appearance as a member of the Kansas City Athletics. Ole’ Satch pitched 3 scoreless innings against the Boston Red Sox that day, only giving up a double to Carl Yastrzemski during his first inning of work. Even at age 59, Satchel was the coolest guy in Baseball.

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1924. Ty Cobb manages from the dugout during his 4th season as a Player/Manager of the Detroit Tigers. Call me crazy but something tells me that Cobb may have been a difficult Manager to play for.

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My first baseball related tattoo.

•October 8, 2011 • Leave a Comment

My birthday was this week and my brother Kellen got me a new tattoo that I have wanted for a long time. I have been a fan of the San Diego Padres for the majority of my life, so I think it’s safe to say that I have earned this.

Thanks a lot Kellen, best birthday present ever! Now I gotta start thinking about my Satchel Paige tattoo…

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Dizzy. Stengel. Harmon. Mays. DiMaggio.

•October 5, 2011 • 2 Comments

A great photo of Dizzy Dean after he famously knocked himself out while attempting to break up a double play during the 1934 World Series. The supposed newspaper headlines the following day read “X-ray of Dean’s head reveals nothing” and to those who were familiar with Dean and his antics were delighted and humored to say the least.

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1915. A 24 year old Casey Stengel during his time as an outfielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers. I think the song lyrics “The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades” is very applicable to Stengel this photo.

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Harmon Killebrew looking awesome as always in one of my favorite MLB uniforms of all time. It’s still upsetting to know that Harmon is no longer with us.

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1951. Willie Mays during his time with the Minneapolis Millers. Before getting called up to the New York Giants on May 25th he played in 35 games with the Millers in which he hit .477/.524/.799 with 71 hits, 30 RBIs, 8 home runs, and an OPS of 1.323. I think it’s safe to say that he was overqualified for the job.

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1950. Joe DiMaggio “boning” his bat. This was the practice of grinding your bat into a cow bone in order compact the wood’s grain and therefore make it supposedly harder. I am curious if this made a difference whatsoever? I am leaning towards no.

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“My Friends Are Talented” – A video interview with yours truly.

•October 4, 2011 • 1 Comment

One of my best friends in the word is a guy named John Jenkins. We played in a band together from 2002 to 2008 and during that time we traveled the world together and had some of the best times ever. John is also one of the most creative and talented people I have met in my life. His life is media and art and he is carving quite the niche for himself in both a independent and professional level. In a nutshell, I am very proud of the guy.

One of John’s new projects is a website called “My Friends Are Talented” and for this he is doing video interviews of many of his own friends. He has interviewed 4 people so far and I just happened to be the first he interviewed regarding my love for the game of Baseball and running this site. Over time I have had more then a few people suggest I put it up at 90 feet of perfection, so here you go.

Please check out “My Friends Are Talented” and watch the other videos as they are done so well. While you’re at it, look up his video library on his Vimeo page. John rules, keep up the great work my friend.

Enjoy.

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The Seals & Giants. Bismarck Churchills. Longoria & The Rays. Satchel. Nyjer Morgan.

•September 30, 2011 • 3 Comments

1947. The San Francisco Seals and New York Giants square off during a exhibition game at Seals Stadium. Little did fans and players know that in 11 short years the Seals will no longer exist and the Giants would be calling Seals Stadium their home.

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The 1935 Bismarck Churchills. If you are not familiar with this team I highly suggest you do some research on them. In a nutshell, they were an independent team that operated outside of actual leagues for the most part due to the fact that they were a mixed race team. They are best known for having Satchel Paige and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe on the team and for winning the 1935 Wichita, Kansas National Semi-Pro Tournament.

The adventures of the 1935 Bismarck team are well documented in Ted Radcliffe’s book “36 Years of Pitching & Catching in Baseball’s Negro Leagues.” 

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Another photo from last night and what a photo it is. I woke up last night and actually had trouble falling back asleep due to thinking about about all the dramatics that went down. Baseball rules.

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1969. An interesting photo of Satchel Paige during his time as a “Pitching Coach” with the Atlanta Braves. The 63 year old doing agility warm-ups is humorous to me; although it does look like he was in pretty good shape. I am assuming this photo may have been from the pre-season exhibition game in which he pitched and struck out Don Drysdale.

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Say what you want about Nyjer Morgan but you have got to admit that he is fun to watch play the game. I am excited to see what does during the post-season. Let’s hope that he behaves himself.

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