The Iron Horse. Koufax. El Curvo. The Babe. 1934 World Series.

•September 16, 2011 • 1 Comment

1937. Lou Gehrig’s hands. Such an awesome photo courtesy of the Boston Public Library who released some amazing Baseball photos this week. There are over 1700 photos to check out and I have to admit I checked each and every one out. I am such a nerd.

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Game 4 of the 1963 World Series. An ecstatic Sandy Koufax jumps in the air after making the final out of the World Series. He tossed a 2 hit complete game to finish off the Yankees and to complete a truly epic season. How epic you may ask? Well he was an All-Star, Cy Young winner, NL MVP, World Series MVP, won the Pitcher’s Triple Crown and the Sporting News Pitcher of the Year Award. It’s very possible Baseball may never see a season like that again.

Also, I’m pretty sure that’s Maury Wills in the background.

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A great photo of Connie Marrero during his time with the Almendares of the Cuban League. There no real way to tell when this photo was taken as Marrero played many years with the Almendares in the 1940’s and 1950’s. He was also their Manager at one point.

If you are not sure who Connie Marrero is, you should look him up as he is the oldest living former Major League Baseball player (100 years old!) and has lived a very interesting life. I was introduced to him via the Monte Irvin documentary “The Bases Are Loaded” which is a great movie and I suggest anyone watch who loves the game of Baseball. You can rent the movie via Netflix.

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A young Babe Ruth during his days as a member of the Boston Red Sox. This is such a perfect photo.

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Game 7 the 1934 World Series. Joe Medwick of the Cardinals sliding hard into Tigers 3rd basemen Marv Owen. Why this photo is cool is because it lead to one of the more crazier moments in World Series history. With the Cardinals leading 9-0 and the Tigers all but having lost the World Series, Medwick’s slide provoked Owen to attack him as he must have thought it was unnecessary. After the fight was broke up, angry Detroit fans began to throw food, bottles, and whatever else they could find onto the field which lead the game being postponed. Commissioner Landis made the decision to order both players be pulled from the game to restore order.

To see AMAZING footage of the ’34 series, click HERE. You can see the slide and the aftermath of the incident at about 1:27. What catches my eye the most when watching this footage is the amount of hard sliding going down. The players genuinely seem to be hurting themselves to win. This is the way it should be.

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Bullet Bob & The Yankee Clipper. Weaver. The Washington Padres? Gibson. Carey & Wagner.

•September 13, 2011 • 3 Comments

1941. Bob Feller and Joe DiMaggio pose for a photo together. I wonder if this photo was taken before or after Feller’s Indians stopped DiMaggio’s hitting streak?

I recently found this quote by Feller regarding The Yankee Clipper: “Ted Williams was the greatest hitter I ever saw, but (Joe) DiMaggio was the greatest all around player.” Not surprising but still very cool.

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A great photo of Buck Weaver of the Chicago White Sox from 1913. Weaver played with the San Francisco Seals in 1911 and with the Chicago White Sox from 1912 to 1920 before being banned for life by Commissioner Landis after the 1920 season. Here is an interesting tidbit I found on Weaver’s wiki page regarding this:

Later in life, Weaver contacted a New York City attorney who vowed to get him reinstated. After Weaver sent his legal papers and correspondence to New York, however, they were never returned back; to this day, baseball historians have been unable to find Buck’s legal files

Very interesting information. Also, while reading up on Weaver I came across Clear Buck and THIS article from 2005 by Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune. Both links are definitely worth checking out.

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1974. Dave Freisleben modeling a 1974 Washington uniform. This should seem VERY odd to anyone looking at this photo due to the fact that the nation’s capital did not have a MLB team from 1972 to 2004. The reason behind this photo is because the San Diego Padres were almost sold prior to the 1974 season to a Washington based ownership group lead by Joseph Danzansky. This move was so close to happening that Topps Baseball Card Company even made Padres cards with “Washington” as their representation. Click HERE to see Willie McCovey’s card as an example.

Ray Kroc, who was the co-founder of the McDonalds restaurant chain ended up stepping in and saving Major League Baseball in the city of San Diego. He owned the team until his death in 1984. It would have been a shame if San Diego lost Major League Baseball after attaining it just 5 years earlier. Thank you again Mr. Kroc.

(Thanks to Bill Swank for sending me this great photo!)

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The one and only Josh Gibson. Photos of Gibson are kind of few and far between so I must admit that I was pretty stoked when I found this gem.

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1913. Max Carey and Honus Wagner of the Pittsburgh Pirates. What a great photo of these two Hall of Famers. Is it me or do old photos of Wagner just seem so much cooler then photos of other players from his era?

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Great Quotes From Great Pitchers.

•September 12, 2011 • 1 Comment

“Have you ever thrown a ball 100 miles an hour? Everything hurts. Even your ass hurts. I see pictures of my face and say, ‘Holy shit’, but that’s the strain you feel when you throw. I had one of those faces you look at it, man, and say, ‘Man he’s an asshole.’ Could be, depends on if you pissed me off or not.” – Bob Gibson

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“Buck O’Neil deserves to be in the Hall. Not just as a player, but as a human being and as a person that promotes baseball all over the world.” – Bob Feller

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“I’ve never hurt my arm pitching. I’ve only hurt my arm in brawls, and swinging the bat and running into walls falling out of buildings. I’ve never hurt myself pitching. I’m still pitching. People ask me how I do that — I roll logs, I work for a living, I do yoga and I drink a lot.” – Bill Lee

(Thanks to Mike at Old Time Family Baseball for sharing this gem via NESN.)

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“I was brought into situations God couldn’t get out of, and I got out of them.” – Goose Gossage

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“I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the ball and started trying to make them hit it.” – Sandy Koufax

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“I didn’t begin cheating until late in my career, when I needed something to help me survive. I didn’t cheat when I won the twenty-five games in 1961. I don’t want anybody to get any ideas and take my Cy Young Award away. And I didn’t cheat in 1963 when I won twenty-four games. Well, maybe a little.” – Whitey Ford

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Satchel in Cuba. The Brooklyn Coaches. Seals vs Oaks. Newk & Campy. Beavers vs Tigers.

•September 3, 2011 • 3 Comments

This photo captures a young Satchel Paige during his time with the Santa Clara Leopardos of the Cuban Leagues. Satchel played with the Leopardos in 1929 and 1930. Any photo of Satchel is great and in my opinion a young photo of him in Cuba is priceless. Actually it went for $925.77 in an auction back in 2004, not priceless but you get the idea.

(This photo is from CubanBeisbol.com which is an awesome site. Check it out, you won’t regret it.)

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1938. Here we have Babe Ruth during his time with the Brooklyn Dodgers alongside fellow coaches Burleigh Grimes and Leo Durocher. While Ruth and Durocher are well known, I did not know anything about Grimes before finding this photo. I decided to geek out and do some research on the guy.

What I found out about Grimes is that during his playing days he was the last Pitcher to legally throw the Spitball. After the pitch was banned in 1920, he was a member of the 17 player group who were “grandfathered” in and allowed to use the pitch. He lasted longer then the other 16 players and ended up having a Hall of Fame career. In addition to this he once threw a ball at a batter who was in the on-deck circle. While pitching.

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I snapped a photo of this comic recently while I was at the Northern California PCL player & family reunion. I am assuming the 1948 Seals & Oaks were not young teams? I will never get enough of old PCL stuff like this.

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September 27, 1955. Don Newcombe & Roy Campanella run around Yankee Stadium prior to Game 1 of the ’55 World Series. You can’t look at this photo and disagree with the fact that Baseball keeps us young. I seriously love this photo so much.

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1909. An awesome 102 year old photo from a PCL game which placed the Portland Beavers (black uniforms) against the Vernon Tigers. When I initially found this photo the description said it was from 1908 which confused me as The Vernon Tigers did not enter the PCL until the 1909 expansion. After some research, I came to the conclusion that it was from 1909 as the uniforms match up to the year. Regardless of the year, it’s still a great photo.

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Longacre. Negro League All-Stars. Leonard plays pickle. Lefty, Joe & Marilyn. Clemente.

•September 1, 2011 • Leave a Comment

A great action shot of Ed Longacre of the 1937 San Francisco Seals. I got to admit, those pinstriped Seals uniforms are pretty much perfect.

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Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Don Newcombe, Luke Easter, and Roy Campanella pose for a photo at Ebbets Field during the 1950 All-Star break. All of these former Negro League players were now Major League All-Stars with the exception of Luke Easter as he was never an All-Star. I am kind of curious as to why Easter was there?

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1944. Buck Leonard of the Homestead Grays is caught in a rundown against the Baltimore Elite Giants while teammate Josh Gibson stands at 3rd Base after advancing. After doing some research, I am pretty sure the 3rd Basemen is Felton Snow and the Catcher is Eggie Clark. It still blows me away sometimes when I find hard to get information like that via Google, I must say we live in a wonderful age.

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Lefty O’Doul, Joe DiMaggio, and Marilyn Monroe. I am curious as to what the back story is to this photo. Maybe the Yankee Clipper just wanted to introduce Marilyn to a former teammate (1935 San Francisco Seals) and a fellow Bay Area Baseball legend? The fan in Marilyn’s hand makes wonder if the photo was taken in Japan though. If this is the case, it could have been on O’Doul’s trip to Japan in 1950 in which he brought DiMaggio. However as far as I know, Joe didn’t meet Marilyn until 1952. It also may have been on their Japanese honeymoon? Maybe they ran into Lefty while there on one of his various Japanese Baseball trips?

On an extremely unrelated note, I found out recently that Joe’s birth name was Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio. Interesting huh?

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Roberto Clemente retrieves the ball after hitting his 3000th career hit. So awesome.

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