Category: Baseball History

For those with a penchant for baseball history, there may be a chance for you to bed down in the house that Honus Wagner built. 

Pittsburgh area entrepreneur Stanley Klos is planning to turn Wagner’s house into a bed and breakfast.  The plan is to get it done before the this year’s All-Star game in Pittsburgh. 

“It’s not often you get an opportunity to stay in the home of a baseball great like Honus Wagner,” said Klos, 52, one of three partners in Wagner Carnegie Inc., which bought the house in October. “You’ve got a house he dreamed about.”

Don’t make your reservations yet.  It hasn’t been cleared with the Carnegie zoning board yet.

(Hat Tip to Baseball Musings for the link) 

 

 

Buck O’Neil at 94 has been nominated for the Hall of Fame.  For some reason, I thought he was already in.  I think he’ll be a shoo-in. 

I was struck by his comment in the last paragraph of this MLB.com article:

“It might happen,” said O’Neil of his possible induction. “But if I don’t get into the Hall of Fame, I still feel good, because I think I’ve done a pretty good job.”

I guess at 94, you can afford to be introspective but I still think some whiny modern-day players can take a lesson from O’Neill about modesty and being humble.

Update:  I’ve since noticed that O’Neil’s last name is spelled with one “L”.  Which is interesting since the article I quoted above from mlb.com had it spelled with two “L”s.  I went back to the quoted article on mlb.com and apparently they realized their mistake too because they changed it to the correct spelling. 

I’ve corrected the misspelling as well.

An author says he has found evidence that Louis Sockalexis, the Penobscot Indian that inspired the Cleveland Spiders to change their nickname, was indeed the first native American to professionally play the game of baseball.  This contradicts a 1963 finding that a Sioux Indian named James Madison Toy, played earlier.  The evidence was in the form of Toy’s death certificate.

From the Bangor Daily News:

Although Rice wrote “Baseball’s First Indian-Louis Sockalexis: Penobscot Legend, Cleveland Indian” to make a case for Sockalexis, he did not have solid proof that the Penobscot Indian was the first. He believes he has that now in the form of the 1919 death certificate of James Madison Toy, who is currently recognized as the first American Indian to play professionally.

The delivery of a copy of that document caused Rice to set aside his chores that afternoon. On the death certificate, Toy’s race is listed as white.

The Baseball Hall of Fame has declined comment until they get a look at a copy of the death certificate.

 

I don’t know if you checked out the voting for the Hall of Fame.  I just did.  Among other things, I found this quite interesting/disturbing:

Walt Weiss 1

Which baseball writer voted for Walt Weiss (and his .326 slugging percentage) and how do we get him out of the BBWAA?

Happy MLK Day.  My son’s homework over the weekend was to find out one thing about Martin Luther King Jr that he didn’t already know.  Wikipedia to the rescue.  It’s an exercise everyone should do.

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A poll in C-U News-Gazette asks us in today’s Sports section (the paper, can’t find the poll on the web):

Who do you blame for the Bears’ loss on Sunday?

Ok, I know in today’s society, it is perfectly acceptable to ask this kind of question.  But what gives us, the readership of the News Gazette to bring down judgment on anyone?  Can’t anyone just be satisfied that Carolina was a better team than the Bears at least on that particular Sunday?  Polls like these always rub me the wrong way.  “Who do you blame?” is so simplistic and offers no analytical thought.

I’m tempted to respond to the poll and answer:

The Media

… just to cheese them off.

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Today is the 29th anniversary of Baby Doll Jacobson’s death.  See previous post about BDJ for relevance.

With the voting for the Hall of Fame class of ’06 coming up, Bob Klapisch from Baseball Analysts makes a good case for Bert Blyleven. 

My favorite quote from the article that sums it all up:

Finally, it dawned on me: Blyleven was a Hall of Famer not just because of his 3701 strikeouts or 287 wins or a 2.47 ERA in the post-season. It was the uniqueness of his best weapon, the curveball, that set him apart.

I don’t need convincing.  I’ve been a Blyleven believer since he retired.  He’s got the stats.  He’s got the post-season heroics (Ok, maybe heroics isn’t the right word.  But he performed well.)

An interesting web site is bertbelongs.com.    Somebody out there is pushing for Bert.