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MLB’s “Baseball Origins Committee” choose members

In his first official act of MLB’s Official Historian, John Thorn will serve as chairperson of the “Baseball Origins Committee”. The purpose, according to mlb.com simply put is to:

“seek to determine the facts of baseball’s beginnings and its evolution. The Committee will compile and evaluate information that pertains to the game’s founding and its growth. Following the study period, the panel will seek to tell the story of baseball’s beginnings and explore not only the game’s broadest origins”.

Fortunately for me, we have one of the members of the committee here on the University of Illinois campus in Dr Adrian Burgos.

Here is the full list of the committee membership:

DAVID BLOCK, an early baseball historian, author of Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).

JAMES EDWARD BRUNSON III, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs at Northern Illinois University and author of The Early Image of Black Baseball: Race and Representation in the Popular Press, 1871-1890.

ADRIAN BURGOS, JR., Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois; author of Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line and Cuban Star: How One Negro League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball; a consultant to Ken Burns’s Baseball: The Tenth Inning; and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).

KEN BURNS, award-winning filmmaker of Ken Burns’s Baseball, Ken Burns’s Baseball: The Tenth Inning, The Civil War, Jazz, The War, and many other highly acclaimed documentaries.

LEN COLEMAN, the former President of the National League.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, Presidential Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir.

STEVE HIRDT, Executive Vice President of the Elias Sports Bureau, the official statistician of Major League Baseball, and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).

JANE LEAVY, Former staff writer of the Washington Post; author of Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy and The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and The End of America’s Childhood; and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).

LARRY McCRAY, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who, since 2005, has coordinated "Project Protoball," a record of print references to baseball and parallel bat and ball games prior to 1860, and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).

GEORGE F. WILL, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator, Washington Post and Newsweek columnist, ABC News analyst and author of Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball.

Part of me is excited of me to find out what this esteemed group will reveal and part of me is wary. I guess I’m concerned because of the inherent nature of an organization discovering its own history.

Will this committee’s findings be public? Or will it be subject to MLB’s spin? Time will tell. In either case, I’ll be interested what comes out of it.

Animated short about Dock Ellis’ drug enhanced no-no

This animated short about Dock Ellis’ no-hitter while he was on LSD definitely has its elements of humor. But creator James Blagden from No Mas, a NY-based repository of sport and cultural art, did his homework, too. Doc Ellis and The LSD No-No was fueled by research done by Blagden.

He scoured interviews done with Dock Ellis a year before he passed away last year. In those interviews, Ellis pretty much a moment-by-moment account of his infamous no-hitter. Apparently, Blagden used much of this info in this animated short.

Oh, Dave Cash is quite the funny in the video, in my opinion.

Crosley Field website

Cluke passed on a link to a pretty neat web site, www.crosley-field.com, all about the Reds’ former stadium.

Scroll on down and you’ll find a treasure trove of great photos of the stadium itself but also some of the greats (and maybe not-so-greats) who played in Crosley. There are also related scanned news clippings and interesting stories.

Great find!

Manager Connie Mack

connie-mack-hof-1 Here is another fact off my tear-off White Sox trivia calendar. Who holds the record for most years as a Major League manager? Connie Mack (53 years)

He is the longest-serving manager in MLB history, holds records for wins (3,731), losses (3,948), & games managed (7,755), with his victory is almost 1,000 wins more than any other manager. Mack was the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics for the club’s first fifty years before retiring at the age of 87 in 1950.

Connie played eleven years (10 in the NL & one in the Players League) in the major leagues, as a light hitting catcher, .245 career average. He hit five home runs in 2,931 at bats, three in 1888, when he sacrificed average for power, batting only .187 (his only season below .200). His best season as a player was in the Players League in1891 when he batted .266 with12 triples, he was HBP 20 times. His last three seasons as a player, were also his first three as a manager, as he was the Pittsburgh Pirates player/manager (even back then they were trying to save money).

Mack wanted men who were self-directed, self-disciplined, and self-motivated; his ideal player was Eddie Collins. As a manager, he won nine pennants and appeared in eight World Series, winning five.

Over the course of his career he had three pennant-winning teams. His original team, with players like Rube Waddell, Ossee Schreckengost, and Eddie Plank, won the pennant in 1902 and 1905, losing the 1905 World Series to the New York Giants. During that season, New York’s manager John McGraw said that Mack had “a big white elephant on his hands” with the Athletics. Mack adopted a white elephant as the team’s logo, which the Athletics still use today.

As his first team aged, Mack acquired a core of young players to form his second great team, which featured Mack’s famous “$100,000 infield” of Eddie Collins, Home Run Baker, Jack Barry, and Stuffy McInnis. These Athletics, captained by catcher Ira Thomas, won the pennant in 1910, 1911, 1913, and 1914, beating the Cubs in the World Series in 1910 and beating the Giants in 1911 and 1913, and losing to the Boston Braves in 1914.

That team was dispersed due to financial problems, from which Mack did not recover until the twenties, when he built his third great team. The 1927 Athletics may have been the best second-place team in history, featuring several future Hall of Fame players including veterans Ty Cobb, Zack Wheat, and Eddie Collins as well as players in their prime such as Mickey Cochrane, Lefty Grove, Al Simmons, and rookie Jimmie Foxx. That team won the pennant in 1929, 1930, and 1931, beating the Chicago Cubs in the World Series in 1929 and beating the St. Louis Cardinals in 1930, and losing to the Cardinals in 1931.

The Veterans Committee voted Connie Mack into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937.

2005 World Champion Chicago White Sox

1927 Yankees Team Photo 2 The 2005 White Sox were the Major League team since the 1927 Yankees to lead wire-to-wire, and then go on to sweep the World Series, their first World Series championship since 1917. This fact appeared on my tear-off Chicago White Sox trivia calendar.

Greatest White Sox CF’er Ever!

Johnny-mostil As a lifelong White Sox fan, I found today’s White Sox tear-off calendar page of particular interest.

Johnny Mostil – This native Chicagoan patrolled centerfield for the White Sox through most of the 1920s with great distinction. In 1969, he was voted the greatest-ever for the White Sox at that position.

Centerfield what a glorious position, free, ranging, taking every ball he can get to, arguably the best athlete on the field. The corner outfielders can’t hold the centerfielder’s jock when it comes to outfield defense, which is why I’ve argued for some time now that the Outfield Gold Glove Award should be given to one leftfielder, one centerfielder, & one rightfielder, rather than just outfield. The way it’s done now, three outfielders in each league, would be like giving out four infielder gold gloves, not, one firstbaseman, one secondbaseman, one shortstop, & one thirdbaseman.

My personal favorite White Sox centerfielder was Ken Berry, or the Bandit, as he was known back then. I remember one year where he actually leaped over the centerfield wall to catch at least 100 potential home runs, well maybe not quite that many, but still it was alot.

Later I came to appreciate Chet Lemon, nicknamed Juice, he was always in a hurry, often times diving headfirst into firstbase, trying to beat out an infield hit. With Ralph Garr & later Ron LeFlore in LF and Richie Zisk & later Claudell Washington (I can still see the banner brought in by a clever fan, “Washington Slept Here”) in RF, Chet had to cover alot of ground.

I still remember oldtimers talking about Jim Landis, as the greatest defensive centerfielder ever to play on the Southside of Chicago. But that, no doubt, has something to do with the White Sox winning the pennant in 1959 with Jim patrolling CF, the same way current White Sox fans will remember Aaron Rowand out there for the 2005 World Champion ballclub.

But who was this Johnny Mostil? Turns out he was born in Chicago, ended his career with a .301 career batting average. It looked like this kid could fly. In 1925 he stole 43 bases, leading the league, he also walked 90 times & scored 135 times that season. Mostil had 82 career triples. Johnny only played two seasons after his failed suicide attempt in 1927, after it was discovered he was having an affair with teammate Red Faber’s wife.

Cap Anson – Was also a Racist

anson On my tear-off White Sox calendar today was the question, "Whose Hall of Fame plaque begins with the words: GREATEST HITTER AND GREATEST NATIONAL LEAGUE PLAYER-MANAGER OF THE 19TH CENTURY"? Answer: Cap Anson

Here’s more on Anson from wikipedia…

Anson was well known to be racist and refused to play in exhibition games versus dark-skinned players. This attitude was not considered unusual in his day, and Anson remained very popular in Chicago while playing for the White Stockings. On August 10, 1883 Anson refused to play an exhibition game against the Toledo Blue Stockings because their catcher, Moses Fleetwood Walker, was African American When Blue Stockings Manager Charlie Morton told Anson the White Stockings would forfeit the gate receipts if they refused to play, Anson backed down. On July 14, 1887 the Chicago White Stockings played an exhibition game against the Newark Little Giants. African American George Stovey was listed in the Newark News as the Little Giants’ scheduled starting pitcher. Anson objected, and Stovey did not pitch. Moreover, International League owners had voted 6-to-4 to exclude African-American players from future contracts. In September 1888 Chicago was at Syracuse for an exhibition game. Anson refused to start the game when he saw Walker’s name on the scorecard as catcher. Again, Anson pressured his opponents to find a Caucasian replacement.

HOFers Interesting Baseball Facts

ty-cobb-hof-1 I have a tear-off White Sox calendar, here are some interesting facts I came across recently regarding Hall of Famers that I thought I’d share with you.

1) Bruce Sutter is the only player in the Hall of Fame never to have started a game.

2) Ty Cobb hit nine homers 100 years ago in 1909, to lead the AL with long balls (the only time he topped the Junior Circuit in home runs), he also had the highest batting average .377, 107 RBIs were also tops, his only Triple Crown. Cobb also was tops with 76 SBs, 216 hits, 116 runs scored, .431 OBP, .517 SLG, .947 OPS, 194 OPS+, & 296 total bases, not a bad day at the office.

In 21 seasons with the White Sox, pitcher Ted Lyons won 260 games, faced Ty Cobb and Ted Williams, hurled a no-hitter, and pitched a 21 inning complete game loss. He later managed the club for two seasons. In 1955, Lyons was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Colbert’s Clouts Makes Him a Man of his Word

colbert When Nate Colbert was a boy growing up in St. Louis his father took him to a doubleheader in which Stan Musial hit five home runs in a doubleheader in 1954. Young Nate turned to his father and said, “Someday I’m going to do that”.

Now fast forward to August 1, 1972, the San Diego Padres were playing a doubleheader against the Braves in Atlanta. Colbert, nursing a bad back, wasn’t going to play. But when he took batting practice with an old bat, he hit five balls out, and a couple of more that were long gone, but just foul. Nate’s manager decided his slugger would play, so Nate taped up the old bat, and used it in the first game. He hit two out in the first game and three more in the nightcap, leading the Pads to a sweep, 9-0 & 11-7, driving in 13 runs on the day, two more than Stan the Man. Nate finished the season with 38 homers (second only to Johnny Bench’s 40) and 111 RBI’s (highest percentage of runs driven in to a team’s total runs scored in MLB history).

I still remember this big day by this big slugger, even today, but don’t ask me what I ate for breakfast!