BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: BASEBALL

BABE RUTH IN SING SING 

In 1929, the New York Yankees at Sing Sing prison played the prison baseball team . The Yankees won and it was said that Babe Ruth slugged a 620 foot home-run.

The New York Daily News (January 4, 2005),p. 15
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DON GULLETT AT THE CAR-WASH

Willie Stargell, the Hall of Fame slugger for the Pittsburgh Pirates, once said that (DON) Gullett "could throw a ball through a car-wash without it ever getting wet;"

Alex Williams. NY TIMES obituary for Don Gullett, Cincinnati Reds pitcher (Feb, 17, 2024)
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Rye Resident Now Owns the Most Expensive Baseball Card in the World! 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle Sells for $12.6 Million! For more than 50 years, the most valuable baseball card has always been the 1910 Honus Wagner. The baseball cards back then came in a pack of cigarettes, and recently that card sold for
 $7.25 Million.
                  NEW YORK TIMES (September 1, 2022)
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ABOUT CATCHERS

" The catcher has more equipment and more attributes than players at other positions. He must be large, brave, intelligent, alert, stolid, foresighted, resilient, fatherly, quick, efficient, intuitive, and impregnable. These scoutmaster traits are counterbalanced, however, by one additional entry -- catching's bottom line. Most of all, the catcher is invisible."
                                     Roger Angell
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BASEBALL QUESTION #8754

Most readers are aware of the title of J.D. Salinger's classic novel -- CATCHER IN THE RYE. What ex-baseball player and humorist wrote a memoir titled CATCHER IN THE WRY?
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MANHATTAN MERRY-GO-ROUND (1937)

It was while appearing as a guest star in this film that Joe DiMaggio first met his future wife, actress-dancer Dorothy Arnold, who was also appearing in it as a member of the 
Archive newsreel footage of Joe DiMaggio's home run in the 1936 World Series is shown in the film.
                                    iMBd Trivia 
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ON PITCHERS 

"Essentially pitching is this simple. You try to put the ball where you want it and where -- you hope -- the batter doesn't want it. You throw the curve inside, the fast ball outside. Then you bring the fast ball in, send the curve out. You move the ball around. You change speeds. You try not to throw your strikes over the middle of the plate."

Whitey Ford in The Saturday Review. March 3, 1962
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WILLIE MAYS --DOES CATCH RHYME WITH WATCH?

Willie Mays
Made one of the greatest plays
In baseball history. Watch
The catch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bLt2xKaNH0

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THE STRATTON STORY starring James Stewart

"Although Monty Stratton was a real baseball player who continued to play baseball after having a right-leg, above-knee amputation, much of the story was fictionalized for this film. For instance, in the hunting accident, the real Monty Stratton shot himself with a pistol, rather than with a rifle. Also, the game in which the real Monty Stratton returned to baseball after his amputation was not an All-Star game, as in the movie, but rather a 1939 charity game between the White Sox and the Cubs (the proceeds of which went to Stratton).


Monty Stratton played for the Chicago White Sox from 1934-38 and compiled a 36-23 won/loss record and 3.71 Earned Run Average with 196 strikeouts. He was a better than average hitter (for a pitcher) with a .224 (43/192) batting average, hitting four home runs and 24 runs batted in."


iMDb Trivia
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THE WINNINGEST JEWISH PITCHER

It’s the question that has cost many a bar bet: Who was the winningest Jewish pitcher in baseball history? 
 
If you guessed Sandy Koufax, you’d be wrong. The honor goes to Ken Holtzman, who died Sunday night. He was 78. 
 
Holtzman would end his 15-season career, which spanned the 1960s and 1970s, with 174 wins, nine more than Koufax. The MLB veteran threw two no-hitters, won four World Series rings and beat Koufax head-to-head once."
 
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ANSWER TO BASEBALL QUESTION #8754
Bob Uecker

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WILLIAMS’ LAST GAME

“I felt nothing,” he said.
“No sentimentality? No gratitude? No sadness?”
“I said nothing, Ted said. “Nothing, nothing.”

Yeah, well, we knew it all along.
If he had struck out we would have cried,
If he had walked
We would have lynched the pitcher & maybe
The manager
& well maybe the whole town of Baltimore.

But we knew something was going to happen
Because he hadn’t done much all day,
Walked in the 1st because Steve Barber
Wasn’t throwing him much
& you know if it’s only a 10th of an inch
Outside the zone
Williams
Ain’t going to swing at it, just watch it

Ride by & then him loping off to 1st.
He does more walking in Boston
Than the postmen, if you know what I mean.
So then in the 3rd he flies out to
Jackie Brandt,
So there really isn’t much to talk about

Until the 5th, what with the Sox trailing
3 to 2, but the Kid really gets hold of one,
& the horsehair is flying, climbing,
& 10,000 of us are up on our feet until    
Al Pilascik
Grabs it at the 400 foot mark.

& so all of us sit back down
& it’s damp & there’s not much wind.
I’m telling you it’s a pretty gray day.
Later the Kid says,
“I don’t think I could hit one any harder
Than that. The conditions weren’t good.”
But Gus Triandos,
The catcher, just squats back down

& the game goes on, all of us knowing
That something has to happen 
Because that’s no ordinary ballplayer up there
& if you can’t believe in that,
What can you believe in, huh?

Ed Hurley
Starts calling balls & strikes again
& so we wait & then it happens
Just the way it’s supposed to:
Williams is up, see, & you know
It’s going to be his last time at bat in Boston,
Except Jack Fisher’s
Pitching now & not Steve Barber,

& then it happens: it’s a 1 & 1 count, see,
& Fisher lets go with a fastball,
But he doesn’t get it in there low enough,
The way he wants it. He goes a little too high
& Williams
Unloads one. I mean he unloads it,

& 10,000  of us are on our feet,
Screaming like crazy
WE WANT WILLIAMS
WE WANT WILLIAMS
& he’s circling those bases with his head down
& you know it’s going to be the last time,
& his head is down & everybody’s screaming,
I mean
Who in the hell cares about the score,

& then he’s in the dugout
& we’re screaming
WE WANT WILLIAMS,
WE WANT WILLIAMS.
But he’s not going to come out for us
Until at the end of the inning
Higgins sends him out to left field
With Carrol Hardy
Tagging at his heels,

& then Williams turns & runs back.
Later The Sporting News says,
SPLINTER TIPS CAP
TO HUB FANS AFTER
FAREWELL HOMER
But that wasn’t the way it was.
What he did was
Hit a homer his last time up,
His 521st homer,

& then walk away, not nodding,
Not cheering, not tipping his cap,
Just walking away
Like a man who’s done a good job
The best he can & knows it.
Now maybe he wants to be alone
Or with his friends in a bar somewhere.
Anyway, hitting a homer your last time up,
That’s the way to go, isn’t it?











Louis Phillips

from THE DOMAIN OF SILENCE and THE DOMAIN OF ABSENCE:
New and Selected Poems 1963-2015. (NY:Pleasure Boat
Studio, 2015)
                     





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