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BLOG ARCHIVES PAGE
Baseball History Comes Alive welcomes you to our Blog Archive page. Here you will find listed in chronological order all of the blog topics we have posted.
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Blog Directory
7/7/2023: My Reveiw of Deadball Era Photography
6/18/2023: Happy Fathers Day!
12/14/2022: Do You Have a Caption for this Photo?
10/12/2022: 1919 Cincinnati Reds: Talk About Being Overshadowed!
10/11/2022: Black Saturday – Baseball’s Deadliest Day
9/28/2022: “Deep Dive” Into the Black Sox Scandal: Eddie Cicotte’s Performance in Game One
9/21/2022 Mickey and Bobby, an Unlikely Pairing
9/20/2022: “Deep-Dive” Into the Black Sox Scandal: Ringleader Chick Gandil Tells His Side of the Story!
9/14/2022: “Deep-Dive” Into the Black Sox Scandal: Was Buck Weaver Treated Fairly by Judge Landis?
9/7/2022: Shoeless Joe Jackson, Part Three: “Joe and the Tainted $5,000”
8/30/2022: Black Sox Scandal Essays – Shoeless Joe Jackson, Part Two: Joe’s Play in the Field And At-Bat
8/25/2022: Black Sox Scandal and Joe Jackson, Part One
8/17/2022: Let’s Take A “Deep Dive” Into the Black Sox Scandal: The “Seven Suspicious Plays”
7/24/2022: A Real Wacky Game! Blue Jays Beat the Red Sox 28-5!
5/27/2022 New Book by Pete Aman: Fielders’ Choice – Life Lessons from Baseball
3/18/2022 There is Only OneThe Most Iconic Trading Cards of All Time
3/5/2022 Big Dave Battles Donnie Baseball for the 1984 Batting Title
12/22/2021 Welling: The Backstop Invents the Backstop!
12/8/2021 Guest Submissions Are Always Welcome!
12/6/2021 It Happened! Gil’s In!
11/12/2021 It’s Time For a Quiz: Who Is This Old-Timer?
11/9/2021 I’m Contacted by Irene Hodges, daughter of Gil Hodges!
9/24/2021 MLB Should Create an “MOP Award”: Most Outstanding Player
8/12/21 More on Ty Cobb
6/8/2021 YET ANOTHER CHEATING SCANDAL
6/5/2021 BASEBALL’S INJURY EPIDEMIC
6/32021 RANDOM MUSINGS OF A LIFE-LONG GIANTS FAN
6/1/2021 My Review of “Arky, The Baseball Life of Arky Vaughan”
5/29/2021 Ty Cobb had it SO much easier than Mike Trout!
5/25/2021 WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO HITTING?
5/18/2021 CURT FLOOD AND THE HALL OF FAME
5/16/2021 Kevin Trusty’s New Book: (Not Just) Another Ballgame
5/11/2021 Who’s the Greatest?
5/8/20201 Baseball – Can It Improve From Here?
5/4/2021 HERE COMES THE HOME RUN DERBY
5/1/2021 My All-Time Favorite Dead Ball Era Players!
4/27/2021 STRIKEOUTS CONTINUE TO SKYROCKET
4/24/2001 BRING ON A KNUCKLEBALLER
4/19/2021 MLB EXPERIMENTING WITH MORE RULE CHANGES
4/17/2021 There’s No Crying – Or Sleeping! – In Baseball!
4/14/2021 Will We Ever See The Return Of The Route Going Ace?
4/9/2021 White Sox’ Yermin Mercedes Breaks 110-Year-Old Team Record Set by Ping Bodie!
4/7/2021 What Does Major League Baseball Have Against Extra-Inning Games?
4/3/2021 “Words of Regret,” Giants’ Manager Bill Terry
4/2/2021 The Philadelphia Athletics White Elephant
3/30/2021 The .400 Hitter – Gone But Not Forgotten
3/23/2021 Becoming a Baseball Fan in the 1950s
3/21/2021 Are Hitters Beginning To Look Differenty At The Shift
3/17/2021 Some Thoughts on Infield Shifts
3/15/2021 MBL Experimenting WIth More Rule Changes
3/12/2021 Happy Felton’s Knothole Gang
3/9/2021 It’s Time For Another Quiz!
3/8/2021 High Velocity Pitching: Blessing or Curse
3/6/2021 Some Very Strange Baseball Rules
3/4/2021 The Best Catchers of All Time
3/1/2021 Where Have All the Great Baseball Nicknames Gone?
2/27/2021 Who Is The “Mystery Person”?
2/25/2021 What Game Are We Watching?
2/22/2021 The Music of Baseball, Part Two
2/18/2021 Let’s have Some Fun On President’s day
2/15/2021 MLB Continues to Poison Real Baseball
2/12/2021 Thoughts About Leo, Jackie, and Willie
2/8/2021 Random Musings of a Life-Long Baseball Fan
2/6/2021 MLB vs. the Players’ Association
2/4/2021 The Short Career Hall Call
2/2/2021 The Music of baseball
1/29/2021 A Young Kid Meets Rogers Hornsby
1/27/2021 Saying Good-Bye To Our Heroes
1/26/2021 Baseball’s Hot Stove League
1/24/2021 Baseball’s Eccentrics and Zany Characters
1/21/2021 The Louisville Slugger
1/19/2021 A Kid’s Baseball Memories
1/9/2021 Take Me Out To the Ball Game
1/6/202 Comparing players a Century Apart
1/4/2021 Bring On A Knuckleballer
12/30/2021 Records That Will Never Be Broken
12/28/2020 Baseball’s Oldest Former Major Leaguer
12/24/2020 Free Agency
12/23/2020 The 2021 Season
WHAT GAME ARE WE WATCHING
Great post, Bill, I think you’ve captured today’s game to a tee…unfortunately.
Many fans from our vintage have the same or similar complaints. The game has sure changed.
Blog Entry: What Game Are We Watching?
Excellent posts Gary; thanks. Another World Series win that was destroyed by the infamous over-reliance on closers: First game of the 1988 World Series. Athletics were leading the Dodgers going into the bottom of the 9th. The Athletics Dave Stewart was dominating the Dodgers hitters and in fact was getting stronger as the game went on.
So what does Tony LaRussa do? He pulls Stewart and sends in Dennis Eckersley to pitch the 9th inning, and the rest is history: Eckersley needlessly walks a very weak hitter then gives up Kirk Gibson’s famous limp-off homer. ANOTHER brilliant pitching performance nipped in the bud by the over-reliance on the closer from which the Athletics never recovered.
Thanks Bob. Sure remember that 1988 World Series. There wasn’t the over-reliance on closers then that there is today with the parades of relief pitchers almost every game. But Eck was considered almost automatic that year. Yet is proves that you never know, even with Eck and occasionally with Mariano Rivera, what you’re going to get when you remove a dominant starter. Of course today the complete game is almost a thing of the past so you’ll almost always see a reliever on the mound in the ninth inning.
Blog Entry: What Game Are We Watching?
Agree completely, Bill.
I’ve been saying for years that while analytics may win ballgames, it has turned the game into a chess match exclusively. The element of surprise has almost been eliminated (except when Cash pulled Snell. LOL).
Analytics compares like painting a wall. Analytics proves 100% of the time that the paint on the wall will dry.
The game as it used to be compares to a masterpiece painter-you don’t know what you’ll get until the end.
How about playing the game the way it was supposed to be.
Unfortunately, Paul, I think those days might be gone. Unless one owner decides to do it the old fashioned way and proves it can beat the analytics-driven home run or strikeout game, and grooms it’s starters to go the distance. These young GMs and analytics whizzes probably never even saw the game played the right way. They seem to think they know it all just from their computer data. What a shame.
Blog Entry: Bring On a Knuckleballer
Bill,
With the possible exception of Niekro, the statement that the knuckleball has a mind of its own is a truism.
If you look at the records of all knuckleball pitchers, you find most all of them hovered around a .500 career winning percentage, the epitome of how the knuckler giveth and taketh away.
Wilhelm was also great, Paul. The Brooks Robinson statement was very interesting, that he knew where the pitch would go but with two strikes unleashed one that had the proverbial mind of its own. I’d still like to see some good knuckleballers pitching today against the launch-angle-happy free swingers who have nothing but home run on their minds. Certainly would be interesting. It’s still one helluva’n interesting pitch.
Blog Entry: Thoughts about Leo, Jackie, and Willie
Response from Bill Schaefer:
Yeah, Gary, that’s truly heartfelt stuff–and great quotes re Leo, running the gamut of sentiment, from and about, the fiery manager.
Mays really felt over-matched in the Bigs and it was the fatherly compassion shown by Durocher that kept the young player above water during the 1951 season.
When he first joined the team in late May, there was an immediate uplift for fans and team alike. Willie possessed an indomitable spirit evident as soon as he hit the playing field. In center field, the upgrade from game one was obvious. Although Bobby Thomson was touted as a fine fielder, he simply never caught a ball with his back to the plate. When Mays chased a drive, full tilt, toward the deepest recesses, he always made the catch! As fans, we knew if it stayed in the park our boy was going to make the catch (does the name Vic Wertz ring a bell?)
Just a small correction if I may, Gary (and you must understand, next to Gutman, I remember everything about ’51). Mays went 0 for 12 against the Phillies, then belted a cannon shot over the left field roof, at the Polo Grounds, off Boston’s Warren Spahn. He then proceeded to go another 0 for 13. That made it one for his first 26 at bats. Whereupon, he batted close to .290 the rest of the way and clubbed another 19 homers.
Here’s the thing: even when he was going through all those zeroes Mays was hitting some shots. I remember against the Phils he lashed the hardest two-hopper I ever saw–driving shortstop Granny Hamner back on the outfield grass. The bat speed was awesome. And I knew it was only a matter of time before Willie Mays, with the help of Leo Durocher, would explode all over the National League!
Ain’t this fun!
Best, Bill
Good stuff as usual, Bill. Love your memory for details. For some reason baseball fans never forget. Have a blog coming on soon about how our baseball memories as kids stay with us all our lives. One interesting thing. When working with Bobby on the book he once mentioned, off the cuff, that he thought he could have made that catch Willie made off Wertz’s shot. I didn’t want to disagree. Figured it was just a baseball player’s ego speaking. Bobby apparently was a very fast runner as well and probably wasn’t a bad centerfielder, but he was no Mays. No one was. What he should get credit for was the transition he made to third base. Did a good job there and it kept his bat in the lineup. Just one of the interesting things you hear when you speak with old ballplayer.
Bill
Thanks Bill…always great to hear the words of someone who was actually “there!” And thanks for the numbers correction. i always seem to get that wrong!
Blog Entry: “Thoughts About Leo, Jackie, and Willie”
Yeah, Gary, I hung on every pitch in those days. In our “hood” I was the Giants fan, Donn was the Dodgers fan and Roger rooted for the Yankees. I don’t think there were three kids in the rest of the country who followed baseball more closely.
You can believe this or not, but in ’51 I wrote Leo Durocher a letter suggesting he move Thomson to third base when Mays came up in late May. I knew Bobby played in the infield for the Jersey City “Little Giants” and thought it was worth a shot. Did I hear from Leo? No. Did he read my letter? Who knows. Do I think I influenced his thinking? Are you now thinking “delusions of grandeur?” Ha! Ha! But I swear it’s true.
Bill G. makes a great point. Thomson was an OK center fielder but his transition to third was remarkable. As was mentioned in his book with Thomson, the play Bob made against the Dodgers, September 9th that year, saved the season.
Just a note about Hoyt Wilhelm, the most effective knuckle-baller. He had a span of seven years, where in six of those years his ERA was under 2.00. Lifetime, Hoyt’s ERA was a full run lower than Niekro’s.
He said he threw the ball right down the middle. Three out of 10 broke up and in. Seven out of 10 broke down and away. He never knew which three or which seven.
Yeah, Bill, those boyhood memories are something. The excitement of my first night game with my dad in 1947. We got there early and it was still twilight. The house lights were on in the park. My father asked me what I thought of night baseball with all the lights. I admitted I was disappointed they didn’t really light up the field the way I’d imagined. Then it got darker and the real lights popped on–WOW!
My dad looked at me and smiled.
Know exactly what you mean, Bill. The great thing is that our memories of that first impression and other early baseball activities are so vivid. They seem to stay with us more than many of the other things we did as kids, though I remember most of them, too.