Baseball obituaries 2008-2009

r.i.p. johnny podres

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/pics/johnny_podres_autograph.jpg

Johnny Podres, Series Star, Dies at 75
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Johnny Podres, who became a celebrated figure in the storied history of the Brooklyn Dodgers in October 1955, when he pitched them to their only World Series championship, died Sunday at a hospital in Glens Falls, N.Y. Podres, who lived nearby in Queensbury, N.Y., was 75.

His death was announced by his wife, Joan, who said he was being treated for heart and kidney problems and a leg infection.

Podres was hardly a star on a team with Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges and Duke Snider in the lineup and Don Newcombe and Carl Erskine on the pitching staff. He had been injured twice during the ’55 season and he had a modest record of 9-10 for a team that won the National League pennant by 13 ½ games.

But at 3:43 p.m. on Oct. 4, 1955, Podres proved the man of the hour for Dodgers fans, whose unrealized quest for a World Series championship had been embodied in the refrain “Wait til next year.”

Going into the 1955 season, the Dodgers had won seven pennants and had lost seven times in the World Series. They had been beaten by the Boston Red Sox in 1916, the Cleveland Indians in 1920, and, most painful of all, by the Yankees in 1941, ’47, ’49, ’52 and ’53.

The powerful team that came to be known as the Boys of Summer seemed destined to fall short again in 1955, losing the first two games of the World Series to the Yankees. But Podres won Game 3 on his 23rd birthday, giving up seven hits in an 8-3 victory at Ebbets Field. The Dodgers won the next two games at home, but lost at Yankee Stadium in Game 6.

In a duel of left-handers, Podres was matched against Tommy Byrne in Game 7 at the Stadium. The Dodgers had a 2-0 lead, both runs driven in by Hodges, but in the sixth inning the Yankees had runners on first and second with nobody out when Yogi Berra hit a fly ball toward the left-field line that seemed about to drop for a double. Sandy Amoros, who had just come into the game, replacing Jim Gilliam in left field, saved the day for Brooklyn. After a long run, he reached out for a one-handed catch, then made a relay to Reese, the shortstop, who threw to Hodges, doubling Gil McDougald off first base.

Podres had been effective with his changeup early in the game. As the autumn shadows began to approach home plate, making it tougher for batters to see the pitches, he turned to his fastball. He stopped the Yankees the rest of the way, completing an eight-hitter by retiring them in order in the ninth inning. When Elston Howard grounded to Reese for the final out, Podres was mobbed, and Brooklyn erupted in ecstasy.

“There was a hell of a party that night at the Hotel Bossert in Brooklyn,” Podres told Donald Honig in “The October Heroes.” As Podres recalled it: “Boy, the champagne! There was one guy there who kept telling me he’d been waiting for this since 1916.”

Podres was named the most valuable player of the World Series.

“I guarantee, there was more celebrating in Brooklyn that day than there was for the end of World War II,” Buzzie Bavasi, the Dodgers’ general manager at the time, said a half-century later.

Podres was born and raised in Witherbee, N.Y., in the Adirondack region where his father mined iron ore. He grew up a Dodgers fan, listening to Red Barber’s broadcasts, signed with the Brooklyn organization out of high school and made his debut with the Dodgers in 1953.

He won 9 games as a rookie, 11 in his second season, then endured a disappointing summer in ’55. He injured his shoulder and later sustained bruised ribs in an incident that, as baseball lore would have it, could happen only in Brooklyn. He was struck by the Ebbets Field batting cage while groundskeepers were moving it during a pregame workout. But then came the October of his lifetime.

Podres became a leading pitcher for the Dodgers in the years that followed. He led the N.L. in earned run average, at 2.66, and shutouts, with six, in 1957, the Dodgers’ final year in Brooklyn, and was a consistent winner when they moved to Los Angeles. He had an 18-5 record in 1961 with a league-leading winning percentage of .783. He pitched in four World Series and he was an All-Star three times.

Podres was traded to the Detroit Tigers in 1966, and also pitched for the San Diego Padres. He had a record of 148-116 in 15 major league seasons.

He was later a pitching coach for the Minnesota Twins and the Philadelphia Phillies.

In addition to his wife, Podres is survived by his sons, John Jr., of Queensbury, and Joseph, of Fort Myers, Fla.; and his brothers, Thomas, of Watervliet, N.Y., and Walter, of California.

Byrne, his pitching opponent in Game 7 of the ’55 World Series, died last month at 87.

For all of Podres’s achievements, his day in the sun would always be that afternoon at Yankee Stadium in October 1955.

“Sometimes when I’m home doing nothing, I’ll put the video in,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer 50 years later. “I get the feeling that I’m young again. What a time that was.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Former pitcher Cardwell dies at 72

By Anthony DiComo / MLB.com

Don Cardwell, who threw a no-hitter with the Cubs and one of the key figures of the Miracle Mets' 1969 World Series run, died on Monday at the age of 72. The cause of death was not immediately known.
"He was a tremendous mentor to the young guys on our staff," Mets Hall of Famer Tom Seaver said in a statement through team spokesman Jay Horwitz. "When he said something, you listened. He was the ultimate professional on and off the field. Just a tremendous, tremendous guy -- and a big part of everything we accomplished that year."

Cardwell split his career among five teams, but was perhaps best known for the role he played leading up to the 1969 World Series. After posting a 3-9 record over the season's first four months, Cardwell strung together five straight wins down the stretch to help the Mets overtake the Cubs in the National League East.

He won just 20 total games in four seasons with the Mets, but the quality of those final five certainly trumped all else. Beginning the streak with a stretch of 28 scoreless innings, Cardwell went on to allow just one run over the five victories, good for a 0.26 ERA. By the time he finally lost a game on the season's final day, Cardwell's Mets -- thanks also to a rotation that included Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Gary Gentry -- had clinched the division title.

He pitched one perfect relief inning in Game 1 of the World Series, marking the only postseason appearance of his career.

"He was a three-quarter-arm guy with a real good sinker, slider. Hard stuff," former Mets teammate Ron Swoboda said. "I remember hitting off him before we got him from Pittsburgh and you really had to convince yourself from the right-hand side to stay in there against him."

Part of his success came from his demeanor. Swoboda recalls Cardwell sticking up for his teammates during a fight with the Astros in 1969, and sending Houston third baseman Doug Rader flying to the ground.

"I think it helps calm you down when you've got a guy like that who's ready to do what it takes," Swoboda said. "When it got to fist city you needed some guys that were ready to go."

Cardwell also played for the Phillies, Cubs, Pirates and Braves, and finished his career with a 102-138 record and a 3.92 ERA.

It was with the Cubs that Cardwell placed his first claim to fame, firing a no-hitter against the Cardinals on May 15,1960 -- in his first start with the team.

"All you-know-what broke loose with people coming on the field," Cardwell told WGN Sports back in 2005. "The ushers tried to hold people back, but there was just no way. I was trying to get off the field, because there was just so many people right on top of you. For years, I've told people I just didn't want to spike anybody."

After retirement, Cardwell began working in automobile sales, where he was at the time of his death. Cardwell is survived by his wife, Sylvia, three children, five grandchildren and three sisters.

"We need more Don Cardwells in the world," Junie Michael, who worked with Cardwell selling cars for more than 35 years, told the Associated Press on Monday. "I just can't say enough about what a positive influence he was on our community.

"I've never met a better guy in my whole life."

Ed Vargo, 79, Plate Umpire When Aaron Tied Ruth, Is Dead

BUTLER, Pa. (AP) — Ed Vargo, a National League umpire who worked in four World Series and was behind the plate when Hank Aaron tied Babe Ruth’s career home run mark, died here last Saturday. He was 79.

His death was confirmed by Geibel Funeral Home in Butler, about 35 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Vargo umpired in the National League from 1960 to 1983, worked the 1965, 1971, 1978 and 1983 World Series and four All-Star games. He is the only major league umpire to call a no-hitter and a perfect game for the same pitcher, according to MLB.com, major league baseball’s Web site. He was behind home plate for Sandy Koufax’s no-hitter June 4, 1964, and his perfect game Sept. 9, 1965.

A former minor league catcher, Vargo stayed in baseball long after leaving the playing field. He was the supervisor of umpires for the N.L. from 1987 to 97.

Vargo wore the same jacket when he worked Koufax’s perfect game, the first World Series night game in 1971 and the game Aaron hit his 714th home run in 1974. He gave the jacket to the amateur umpire Ray Gouley, who donated it to the Hall of Fame.

Edward P. Vargo was born in Butler in 1928. One of his first jobs was as a batboy and equipment manager for the Butler Yankees.

He is survived by his wife of 45 years, Elizabeth; two daughters; and two sons.

On the last game of the year in Pittsburgh in the mid-1970s, Mr. Vargo was umpiring first base and rookie umpire Eric Gregg was behind the plate.

"He told Eric, 'You've got to take command. If that (Chuck) Tanner says one word to you, throw him out of the game,'" Tanner said Monday from his Florida home. "So there was one pitch, and I said, 'Eric, where was that one?' And he turns and yells, 'You're out of here!' He threw me out of the game! And Vargo was over there at first laughing."

RIP, Shea Sign Man.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3238455

Thomas T. Roberts, a prominent arbitrator best known for his mid-1980s ruling that major league baseball club owners had improperly colluded to prevent free-agent players from obtaining richer contracts, died last Wedenesday. He was 84.

Roberts (Loyola University, Loyola Law School) was fired twice by Major League Baseball management for issuing rulings in favor of the players. In 1986, he ruled that teams could not negotiate drug-testing clauses with players individually; they had to deal with the players union under the collective bargaining agreement.

After being reinstated, Roberts issued his most famous ruling in the baseball case widely-known as the “collusion case” in which he found that, following the 1985 season, no teams had sought to sign free agents unless their old clubs had lost interest in them. He termed that “a strong indication of concerted action,” something prohibited by baseball’s collective bargaining agreement. Roberts was fired again by management. But in 1990 his ruling was vindicated when the owners agreed to pay affected players $280 million plus interest to settle the collusion cases.

Bob Howsam, the former Reds general manager and the man credited with building the "Big Red Machine" dynasty in the 1970s, died on Tuesday. He was 89 years old.

28 HR, 9 K, Tommy Holmes - 1945

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/2008/04/14/2008-04-14_met_family_mourns_tommy_holmes-2.html

Wow, he really loved the game. Rest in peace, slugger. ±

john marzano, 45, maybe a heart attack?

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/sports/20080420_Jim_Salisbury__Marzano_brought_South_Philly_to_game.html

Buzz Bavasi died. He was a pretty cool dude:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/20080501-1612-bn01bavasi.html

He faced criticism in Anaheim for not re-signing free agent Nolan Ryan after the 1979 season when the pitcher had gone 16-14.

"We'll just have to find a couple of 8-7 pitchers to replace him," Bavasi said at the time.

haha

But yeah, he was a good guy. RIP.

REPLACE THE AGGREGATE

Podres ...also pitched for the San Diego Padres

I always thought that was pretty cool, even cooler than a guy named Cliff Ditto later managing the minor league team in Walla Walla. What's even better is that Podres played on the Padres his very last year in the majors, 1969, which was of course the Padres' expansion year. It was always seemed like it happened on purpose, just because of his name.

former o's groundskeeper pat santarone died at age 79. santarone was famous for his tomato patch at memorial stadium and was known to engage in tomato growing comeptitions w/ earl weaver.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2008-05/38603542.jpg

Geremi Gonzalez, struck by lightning

Lordamighty, horrendous

http://home.earthlink.net/~sscutchen/baseball/Quotes/baseball_vs_football.htm

RIP splendid scholar/author Jules Tygiel:

http://futilityinfielder.com/blog/2008/07/jules-tygiel-1949-2008.shtml

Sporting News archives packed into trucks and driven out of St Louis:

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/othersports/story/2534301A1E8E95FE86257480001240F8?OpenDocument

RIP bobby murcer

Seemed like a swell, humble guy, RIP.

But media use of "Yankee great"...

RIP Red Foley

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3486538

Rob Neyer on Murcer (via Futility Infielder):

To some, Bobby Murcer will always be famous for not being Mickey Mantle. Both were from Oklahoma, both played for the Yankees when they were only 19 years old, both were perennial All-Stars and both played center field. But of course, Murcer never quite reached the heights that Mantle did.

To some, Murcer might have suffered from those lofty comparisons. If so, he never admitted it. As he once told The New York Times, "I was too young and too dumb to realize what they were trying to do in the first place, and by the time I realized it, I had already established myself."

It did take a few years to establish himself. After playing briefly for the Yankees in 1965 and '66, Murcer was one of the very few major leaguers drafted into the military during the Vietnam War. Inducted into the army during spring training in 1967, he missed all of that season and the next while serving as a radio operator. Murcer worried that his career was over, but would later tell author Philip Bashe, "What I thought was going to be a horrible experience was really a positive thing for me in the long run. I learned responsibility and, obviously, a little bit of discipline. When I got out I was ready to proceed with my baseball career on a much more mature level."

No kidding. Murcer, who had struggled in the majors before going into the army -- understandably, considering that he'd been a 160-pound teenager -- got off to a brilliant start in 1969. He homered on Opening Day and drove in three runs. He homered in his next game, too. When Murcer hurt his ankle in late May, he was leading the majors with 43 RBIs.

He cooled off after getting back into the lineup, but still led the club with 82 runs and 82 RBIs. Also that season, Murcer finally moved into Mantle's old spot in center field. Murcer, like Mantle, had been a shortstop in the minors, and he'd stuck there during his first stints with the Yankees. But in 1969 they moved him to third base, an experiment that lasted five weeks and included 14 errors. He spent the next months in right field, and finally moved to center in late August; the transition was complete, and in 1972 Murcer won a Gold Glove (something Mantle never did).

In 1971, Murcer's first great season (and his best), he played in his first of five straight All-Star Games. They didn't all come with the Yankees, though. In 1974, Murcer became the highest-paid Yankee ever -- his $120,000 salary topped the $100,000 earned by Joe DiMaggio and Mantle. But Murcer hit only 10 home runs in 1974, and shortly after the season the Yankees traded him to the Giants for Bobby Bonds.

Murcer played well for the Giants for two years, then not so well for the Cubs for two years. In the summer of 1979, in what now looks like a salary dump, the Cubs traded Murcer back to the Yankees for a minor leaguer. A few weeks later, Thurman Munson died while trying to land his airplane. Murcer delivered a eulogy at Munson's funeral; in the Yankees' next game, Murcer drove in all five runs in New York's 5-4 victory.

A part-timer during the next few years, Murcer was hardly playing in the summer of 1983 when George Steinbrenner invited him to join the Yankees' broadcast team. Just like Phil Rizzuto 27 years earlier, Murcer accepted the offer and made the transition immediately. And like Rizzuto, Murcer became a fixture.

As a player, Murcer has been both overappreciated and underappreciated. In the 1970s he was one of the game's more famous players, because he played for the Yankees and had plenty of flair. He was, by the common definition of the term, a superstar. However, he was a great player for only four seasons: 1970 to 1973.

On the other hand, as is often the case with very good players with a broad range of skills, history has not been kind to Murcer. Would you believe he was just as good as Andre Dawson and Tony Oliva, both of whom might one day be elected to the Hall of Fame? He was. Would you believe he was quite a bit better than Roger Maris? He was. At his best, Murcer routinely hit 25 home runs, scored 90 and knocked in 90. And in Murcer's era, those numbers meant something.

difference between ilb and ile: no one pissing all over the obituary threads.

Very few baseball players were as contentious as oh Jesse Helms.

or tim russett.

Neyer says Murcer was "a great player for only four seasons."

Just like Don Mattingly.

RIP Skip Caray

http://www.ajc.com/sports/content/sports/braves/stories/2008/08/03/skip_caray_dies.html

http://www.nokahoma.com/caray.jpg

http://rain-delay.com/images/erinieskippete.jpg

;_;

RIP

I might've shed a tear or two during Skip's TBS farewell last year.

2008 hates the Braves.

skip > harry > chip

rip

I'm glad he was able to work right up to the end. I don't know when his last radio broadcast was, but he did occasional Peachtree TV games as recently as a couple of weeks ago.

Belated RIP Jerome Holtzman, inventor of the "save."

Sad + funny Braves broadcast tonight.

Dottie Collins (I saw her, I think, on an All-American Girls League panel at a SABR convention):

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/west/chi-collins-obitaug19,0,3496738.story

buzzards are circling...

note: Paul Newman played Mark Harris' hero Henry Wiggen in the 1956 live-TV version of Bang the Drum Slowly.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202808/

http://static.baseballtoaster.com/blogs/cardboardgods/images/2007/Ed_Brinkman_75.jpg

EDDIE BRINKMAN 1941-2008
Ex-Tiger was the real deal

BY JOHN LOWE
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER
October 1, 2008

Former Tigers shortstop Eddie Brinkman, whose good humor and love of baseball made him a cherished figure in the game, died Tuesday. He was 66.

His death was announced by the Chicago White Sox, whom he served as a coach and scout for 18 years.

The cause of death wasn't announced, but Brinkman had been in poor health for several weeks.

Brinkman joined the Tigers for the 1971 season in the eight-player trade that sent controversial Tigers ace Denny McLain to the Washington Senators.

The deal was a one-sided win for the Tigers. It also brought them right-hander Joe Coleman, who averaged 21 wins in his first three Detroit seasons, and strong-armed Aurelio Rodriguez, who served as the Tigers third baseman for several seasons. McLain won 14 games in his career after he left Detroit.

For his four Tigers seasons, Brinkman was something of an iron man at shortstop. He played at least 151 games there each season from 1971 through 1974. In 1973, he played at short in all 162 games and also made the All-Star team for the only time in his career.

"As a shortstop, he wasn't what you would call smooth," said Dan Ewald, who covered the Tigers for the Detroit News during Brinkman's time with the club. "But he got all the balls somehow. It didn't look like a picture. But he got to them and made the throw.

"He was always in control of the situation. If you've got a shortstop who isn't aware of everything, you've got a problem. Eddie had control of the situation. That's why he was better than his raw physical talent.

"He enhanced his ability by anticipating. He was a very solid, smart shortstop. He wasn't flashy or flamboyant."

In 1972, as the Tigers won the AL East, Brinkman won the Gold Glove as the AL's best defensive shortstop.

Brinkman, a right-handed batter, never hit higher than .237 in his four Tigers seasons. But in the final one, 1974, he rose up and hit 14 homers -- the only time in his career he was in double figures.

After the 1974 season, the Tigers traded Brinkman (about to turn 33) to St. Louis in a three-way deal that also included San Diego. The Tigers got San Diego slugger Nate Colbert, who lasted only a few months with Detroit.

"He was a great teammate to everybody," Ewald said. "He was just a good person to be around in the clubhouse.

"He was a fantastic pinochle player. He'd play on the team flights with Gates Brown, Joe Coleman and me. He was a competitor at that, too. He'd count tricks, and one time, that made Gates throw the cards at him. Eddie was smart."

On the night the Tigers clinched the 1972 AL East title, the public caught Brinkman's fun-loving, uninhibited side in a way the FCC wouldn't have condoned. During that night's clubhouse celebration, Brinkman emphasized what a great group of guys the Tigers were by using an expletive on live TV.

"He loved the baseball life," Ewald said. "He loved the game. He loved being around ballparks. He felt his best at them."

oh, for the days of .224 lifetime-hitting shortstops (and the complete games they facilitated).

further:

George Kissell, 88, Dies; Taught the Techniques of Baseball
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

George Kissell, who became one of baseball’s most renowned teachers in a long career with the St. Louis Cardinals’ organization as a manager, player, coach and instructor, died Tuesday in Tampa, Fla., of injuries in an auto accident on Monday. Kissell, who lived in Pinellas Park, near St. Petersburg, was 88.

Kissell’s death was announced by the Cardinals. The Pinellas Park police said Kissell had been a passenger in a car driven by his daughter, Karolyn Kidwell, that collided with another auto.

Kissell never played in the major leagues, but he tutored virtually every player who made it to the Cardinals through their minor league system going back to the 1940s, and he imparted his baseball wisdom to players arriving in St. Louis from other major league teams. What became known as the Cardinals way — their approach to fielding, hitting and strategy — was essentially the Kissell way.

In 1971, when Kissell was a Cardinals coach, he oversaw Joe Torre’s switch from catcher to third baseman, working with him daily in spring training and providing insights that served Torre well long after he left St. Louis.

“He’d stand behind me and throw a ball off a concrete wall, and I’d have to react to its bounce and catch it,” Torre recalled in his memoir “Chasing the Dream.”

“The more we did it, the closer I moved to the wall, and the closer I moved to the wall, the more my reaction time quickened.”

Torre remembered how Kissell also convinced him that his feet were spread too wide apart in his fielding stance. Rather than simply ordering Torre to make a change, Kissell likened his stance to that of a basketball defender who would be ill-positioned to guard against a fleet player like Bob Cousy.

“I learned one of many lessons from George that day,” Torre wrote. “As a manager, you have to find a way to communicate with people — to correct and suggest things — without having them resent you for it.”

Kissell, who grew up in the Watertown, N.Y., area, was signed by the Cardinals’ organization in 1940. He played for three seasons in the minor leagues, then served in the Navy during World War II. He was a minor league manager, instructor and scout in the Cardinals’ system from 1946 to 1968 and a coach for the Cardinals from 1969 to 1975. He tutored players in the Cardinals’ system after that at spring training and directed their winter instructional camps in Florida. At his death, he was the Cardinals’ senior field coordinator for player development.

In 1993, Kissell received the King of Baseball award from minor league baseball for his service to the game. In 2005, the Cardinals named their spring training clubhouse in Jupiter, Fla., for him.

In addition to his daughter, Kissell’s survivors include his wife, Virginia, and a son, Dick, according to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Whitey Herzog, the former Cardinals manager and general manager, marveled at Kissell’s rapport with young players and his love for the game.

“He is one of those baseball lifers that loves to talk baseball, and kids eat that up,” Herzog told The Tampa Tribune in 2005. “George Kissell is the only man I know who can talk for 15 minutes about a ground ball.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Bruce Dal Canton, Teacher Turned Pitcher, Is Dead at 66
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARNEGIE, Pa. (AP) — Bruce Dal Canton, a former high school teacher who turned a good showing at a tryout camp into a long career as a major league pitcher and coach, died Tuesday. He was 66.

A Carnegie funeral home confirmed his death. The cause was esophageal cancer, according to a news release from the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, the Atlanta Braves’ Class A affiliate in the Carolina League, for which Dal Canton worked until mid-May as pitching coach. Dal Canton went 51-49 with a 3.67 earned run average from 1967 to 1977 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Kansas City Royals, the Braves and the Chicago White Sox.

The right-handed Dal Canton was used as a starter and a reliever, and found his best success with a knuckleball — the darting pitch that also made him the 1974 American League leader in wild pitches with 16.

Dal Canton spent more than 25 years in the Atlanta system as a pitching coach, and had been at Myrtle Beach since 1999. In June 1990, when Bobby Cox took over as manager of the Braves, Leo Mazzone replaced Dal Canton as their pitching coach.

Dal Canton was born and grew up near Pittsburgh and was a star at California University of Pennsylvania. He did not attract a lot of attention from big-league scouts, however, and went to work as a high school teacher and coach.

In the mid-1960s, Dal Canton went to a Pirates tryout camp, hoping for one last chance at a baseball career. The Pirates signed him, and he made his major league debut with them in 1967 at age 25.

Dal Canton went 8-2 with Pittsburgh in 1969 and 9-4 in 1970, when the Pirates were National League East champions. After that season, the Pirates traded him and Freddie Patek to Kansas City. He was 8-10 for the Royals in 1974 and pitched his only two career shutouts with the team.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

39 year-old Kevin Foster

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3642624

rip newark bears

daaaaamn

Herb Score RIP:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3695975

godDAMMit
Herb was the definition of old school
RIP

wtf

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=ApECDbU0xo5clr672t1KqcMRvLYF?slug=ap-obit-werber&prov=ap&type=lgns

take my word for it I guess

Werber was an avid reader and occasionally wrote letters to baseball commissioner Bud Selig. Werber told Selig he doesn’t think women should sing the national anthem, that games today take too long and that he’s disgusted with the long hair on modern players.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3853506

SABR published a full-length Werber bio a few years ago. He reminisced about Ruth peeing on him in the shower.

"We'd get on the Green Diamond Express and Babe would say, 'Cut the cards!'" Werber said. "Then he'd take a fifth of Seagram's and he had a glass about this big" -- he held his hands about 8 inches apart -- "and he'd pour out most of that bottle, put a little ice in it and maybe this much water" - and then he held his thumb and index finger about a half-inch apart.

...Our interview ended promptly at 5 p.m., when his girlfriend rapped on the door and told him it was cocktail hour.

"She's my bartender," Werber said as Madeline poured the drinks. He insisted I joined them with a glass of Jack Daniels on the rocks, and when a 100-year-old ballplayer offers you a drink, how can you say no?

http://www.nj.com/yankees/index.ssf/2009/01/former_yankee_billy_werber_100.html

btw, with Werber's death, the most distant MLB season that has a surviving player is 1933 -- this guy:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/f/freylo01.shtml

There are about 20 players left from the '30s.

(research by David Vincent of SABR)

http://www.thedeadballera.com/Obits/bergensobit.jpg

Shall we change thread title? 2008-09?

RIP BatMan.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/wires/03/03/2010.ap.bbo.death.of.a.bat.man.1st.ld.writethru.1546/index.html

Title changed.

ew xp

George Kell

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090324&content_id=4058660

boy it helps to have a long broadcast career to glide you into the HOF.

"I have no use for him in the HoF, but RIP."

Kell was a great broadcaster.

i used to listen to him and Kaline call the Tigers TV games

yeah, he was pretty great as a play by play guy

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4015615

A St. Louis Browns fan in his youth, Arthur Richman went to work for the New York Daily Mirror as a copy boy in 1942 and worked there until it folded in 1963. He wrote one of New York's most popular baseball columns, "The Armchair Manager."

He joined the Mets as director of promotions, then became publicity director and was named traveling secretary in 1980. He was replaced as traveling secretary in December 1988 after he criticized the postseason share he was awarded by players. Six years later, he said then Mets co-owner Nelson Doubleday often made anti-Semitic remarks in front of him.

Richman was hired as the Yankees vice president of media relations the following May.

Baseball’s Herman Franks Dies at 95
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Herman Franks, who managed the San Francisco Giants to four consecutive second-place finishes in the 1960s but who was also remembered in connection with an elaborate sign-stealing scheme during the Giants’ dramatic 1951 pennant victory in their Polo Grounds years, died Monday at his home in Salt Lake City. He was 95.

His death was announced by his family.

In a baseball career going back to the early 1930s, Franks was a major league catcher, a coach and manager with the Giants, a manager and general manager with the Chicago Cubs, and a scout.

“Is finishing second so evil?” The San Francisco Chronicle quoted Franks as asking when he resigned as the Giants’ manager after the 1968 season, having taken San Francisco to the No. 2 spot in two tight National League pennant races won by the Los Angeles Dodgers and in two runaways won by the St. Louis Cardinals.

In 1951, the New York Giants seemed destined to finished second behind the Brooklyn Dodgers, trailing them by 13 ½ games in mid-August. But they won the pennant in a playoff on Bobby Thomson’s three-run, ninth-inning homer off Ralph Branca.

Franks was a Giants coach that season, but he was in the center-field clubhouse at the Polo Grounds when Thomson connected. He never explained exactly what he was doing there at that moment. But Giants teammates said long afterward that, at the behest of Manager Leo Durocher, Franks was using a telescope that afternoon (and in the weeks preceding it) to steal the signs of opposing catchers so that Giants batters would know what pitch was coming.

Details of the operation were related by the sports columnist Dave Anderson of The New York Times, in his book “Pennant Races” (Doubleday, 1994), and by Joshua Prager in The Wall Street Journal in 2001 and in his book “The Echoing Green” (Pantheon, 2006).

After watching the opposing catcher wiggle his fingers, Franks was said to have had an electrician alongside him activate a buzzer in the Giants’ bullpen in right-center field, one buzz for a fastball and two for a curveball. Sal Yvars, a reserve catcher in the bullpen, would listen for the buzzes. If Yvars held on to a baseball, the Giants batter glancing at him knew a fastball was coming. If Yvars tossed a ball in the air, it meant a curve could be expected.

Yvars said years later that he flashed the tip-off for a fastball, as correctly predicted by Franks, just before Branca delivered his home-run pitch to Thomson. But Thomson told Prager that he had been concentrating so heavily that he had not looked at Yvars.

Herman Louis Franks, a native of Price, Utah, grew up in Salt Lake City. He made his major league debut with the Cardinals in 1939, played for Durocher’s pennant-winning Dodgers in 1941, for the Philadelphia Athletics and, in one game, with the Giants. He had a .199 career batting average as a backup over six seasons.

Franks managed the future Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda and Gaylord Perry as the Giants’ manager in San Francisco. He managed the Cubs from 1977 to 1979 and was their general manager in 1981.

Franks is survived by his wife, Ami; his sons Herman Jr. and Dan, and a daughter, Cynthia Wright, all of Salt Lake City; and seven grandchildren.

The controversy over the Giants’ sign-stealing and its presumed impact on perhaps the most dramatic pennant race in baseball history lingered long after the summer of 1951. But Franks was not eager to have the last word.

“I haven’t talked about it in 49 years,” he told The Associated Press in 2001. “If I’m ever asked about it, I’m denying everything.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

http://www.wheatstatecardz.com/store/bb/1968/12016.jpg

Love it.

Nick Adenhart, you were awesome.

way too young, man

fuck! i traded wieters for him!

there there?

Man, look at Scott Boras:

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2009/04/09/ba-aptopix_angel_0500011890.jpg

Remembering Nick Adenhart (also belongs in Kickass thread)

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=1236

RECENT INJURIES & TRANSACTIONS
4/9

A. Amezaga, FLA, CF Sent to minors for rehabilitation
N. Adenhart, LAA, SP Deceased
D. Nippert, TEX, RP Sent to minors for rehabilitation
B. Upton, TAM, CF Sent to minors for rehabilitation

Phillies TV man Kalas dies at 73

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4064793

Aw, man

RIP Harry ... at least you lived to see another Phillies world championship.

FUCK! Mark Fidrych.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20090413/NEWS/904130257/1116

wow, that really makes me sad. r.i.p.
http://i.rollingstone.com/assets/rs/11/3861/images/22693_lg.jpg

what a bummer of a day ;_;

I probably thought about The Bird more in the last month than I had in 30 years, since I saw him interviewed on MLB last month (they ran it again tonight) -- and then, I saw the last 2 innings of that '76 win against the Yankees early early yesterday morning, plus his postgame chat with Bob Uecker. Seemed like a sweet goofball rather than a Masshole.

OH NO :C

one of the first baseball games i remember was a yankees-tigers game in 1977 -- it was the season after Fidrych's famous rookie season, but it was just before he blew out his arm and he was still a box-office draw. my older sister thought Fidrych was really cute, i was just getting into baseball at that point, plus my parents were interested because Fidrych was a genuine pop sensation at that point -- so they let us stay up late to watch the ballgame. i don't remember much else about that ballgame (like, who won and whether Fidrych got a decision one way or the other and silly shit like that), but i do remember my dad (and older sister) explaining as much of the Fidrych phenomenon as a 7-year kid could understand.

good times ;_;

The night he went toe-to-toe w/ Spark Anderson favorite Don Gullett:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET197706200.shtml

aw man. He got me excited about baseball when I was a kid.

24 Complete Games his rookie year :-0

20-30K fewer people in the seats the game before and after the one linked above, btw.

RIP Danny Ozark, the Phillies' manager from 1973-1979

first harry kalas, and now this ... ;_;

wow, didnt know he was still around.

Neyer:

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/sweetspot/0-2-34/Ozark-remembered-for-good--bad.html

rip dom dimaggio

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4151140

i read something about danny ozark a month or so ago after harry kalas died -- maybe ozark said something in memory of kalas, i don't remember -- and i was also surprised that he was still around. maybe i was confusing him with paul owens (who died 5 years ago, around the same time that tug mcgraw died).

http://www.sportsartifacts.com/aumjoed.JPG

SF Seals 1937-1939

RIP

oh shit, that's Joe. I GIS'd Dom tho. Sorry brother.

It's ok, it's only what people did to him his whole life! ;_;

rip dom dimaggio 5/8/09 never forget

Gerald W. Scully, Who Wrote Landmark Baseball Analysis, Dies at 67

By BRUCE WEBER, NY Times

Gerald W. Scully, a sports economist who offered an early statistical argument that major league baseball players were being exploited by their teams, died on May 4 in San Diego. He was 67 and lived in San Juan Capistrano, Calif.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, his daughter Audra said.

Mr. Scully wrote on many economic issues, including the relationship between government spending and economic growth; he argued that the optimum size of government is about one-fifth the size of the economy as a whole. But he is best known for an article, “Pay and Performance in Major League Baseball,” which was published in The American Economic Review in December 1974, long before the economics of sport became a common field of scholarly inquiry.

The article described a method of determining the contribution of individual players to the performance of their teams, not only in the won-lost column but in the balance sheets. He used statistical measures like slugging percentage for hitters and the strikeout-to-walk ratio for pitchers and devised a complex formula for determining team revenue that involved a team’s won-lost percentage and the market characteristics of its home stadium, among other factors.

By his calculations, Mr. Scully wrote, Hank Aaron was worth $520,800 to the Atlanta Braves in 1968, and Sandy Koufax $725,000 to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1966, his final season. Aaron never earned more than $250,000 a season in his career, which ended in 1976, and Koufax was paid $130,000 in 1966.

“Even mediocre players contribute in excess of $200,000 to team revenues,” Mr. Scully wrote.

The article was significant in its use of sport to attack the economist’s conundrum of determining the value to a company of an individual’s work product. The standard major league player contract at the time included the reserve clause, which essentially restricted the market for a player’s services to a single team. In arguing that the clause amounted to economic exploitation of the players, Mr. Scully anticipated an arbitration decision the next year that considerably modified the reserve clause and opened baseball’s era of free agency.

Gerald William Scully was born in Manhattan on June 13, 1941. His father was a bank vice president and branch manager. After graduating from Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, Mr. Scully abandoned graduate studies in Chinese to pursue economics. He received a master’s degree from the New School for Social Research and a doctorate from Rutgers.

Over the years, he taught at Ohio University, Southern Illinois University, Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas at Dallas.

Among his several books are “The Business of Major League Baseball” (University of Chicago Press, 1989) and “Constitutional Environments and Economic Growth” (Princeton University Press, 1995).

Mr. Scully’s marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter Audra, of San Diego, he is survived by a brother, Thomas, of Cary, N.C., and a daughter, Deirdre Grant, of Allen, Tex.

Dusty Rhodes, Star Pinch-Hitter in ’54 Series, Dies at 82
By BRUCE WEBER

Dusty Rhodes, whose pinch-hitting heroics led the New York Giants to win the 1954 World Series, a championship the Giants, who moved to San Francisco four years later, have yet to repeat, died Wednesday in Las Vegas. He was 82 and lived in Henderson, Nev.

The cause was heart failure, said his daughter Helane.

A fun-loving, hard-drinking country boy from Alabama, Rhodes spent seven seasons with the Giants, from 1952 to 1957 in New York and, after a hiatus, 1959 in San Francisco. He was popular with the fans and with his teammates, including his black teammates — Willie Mays and Monte Irvin remained his friends — a notable characteristic for a Southerner in baseball while the game was still in the early days of integration.

Rhodes was a left-handed hitter, confident, powerful and streaky — twice he hit three home runs in a game — but his outfield play was, to put a positive spin on it, indifferent, which frustrated the Giants’ irascible manager, Leo Durocher.

“I ain’t much of a fielder and I got a pretty lousy arm, but I sure love to whack at that ball,” Rhodes acknowledged in an interview with The New York World Telegram and Sun in 1954.

As a result, Rhodes was never a regular in the Giants’ lineup for a full season, and his career statistics were undistinguished — a .253 batting average with 54 home runs. But Durocher, a notorious player of managerial hunches, picked his spots to send Rhodes into the game, and in 1954, at least, Rhodes responded with such brilliance that he earned the inevitable nickname: the Colossus of Rhodes.

That year he hit .341 and smacked 15 homers in just 82 games during the regular season, following it with one of the most remarkable postseason performances in major league history.

The Giants’ World Series opponents in 1954, the Cleveland Indians, had won 111 games and lost only 43 that season and were heavy favorites to handle the Giants. But in the 10th inning of the opener — a game already marked in baseball history by Mays’s astonishing catch of a long fly by Vic Wertz — Rhodes pinch-hit a game-winning three-run homer that just cleared the short right-field fence in the Polo Grounds.

In Game 2, he pinch-hit a single that tied the score and later homered again, securing the Giants’ 3-1 victory. And in Game 3, he pinch-hit once again, driving in two runs with a single.

All told, Rhodes batted six times and had four hits, including two home runs — off pitchers Bob Lemon and Early Wynn, both future Hall of Famers. He knocked in seven runs.

Oddly enough, playing another hunch, Durocher elected not to use Rhodes at all in Game 4, which the Giants won anyway, completing an unlikely sweep.

“It was just as well,” Rhodes recalled years later. “After the third game I was drinking to everybody’s health so much that I about ruined mine.”

James Lamar Rhodes was born in Mathews, Ala., near Montgomery, on May 13, 1927. His schooling ended after the eighth grade. As a teenager he picked cotton and worked in a grocery. He served two years in the Navy, during and after World War II. Then he played minor league baseball, hitting .347 for the Giants’ Nashville farm club before being called up in 1952.

Rhodes’s first two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter, who lives in Henderson, he is survived by his wife, Gloria, whom he married in 1980; two sons, Jeffrey, of Old Bridge, N.J., and James Jr., of Hanoi, Vietnam; 11 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

After he left baseball, Rhodes stayed in New York, living on Staten Island and working as a steerer, a deckman and a cook on tugboats. In 1963, he lost his World Series ring to a mugger.

“He never had a bad word to say about anyone,” his daughter said.

No? Not even about Durocher?

“Well, he’d call him an S.O.B.,” his daughter conceded. “But then he’d laugh.”

http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2008/12/21/alg_rhodes.jpg

Former All-Star Lonny Frey dies at 99.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2009880278_freyobit17.html

Larry Jansen, Giants Pitcher, Dies at 89
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
NY Times

Larry Jansen, the right-handed pitcher whose 23 victories helped propel the New York Giants to their storied 1951 National League championship, died Saturday in Verboort, Ore. He was 89.

The cause was congestive heart failure and pneumonia, his daughter Darlene Greene said.

On the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1951, Jansen pitched the top of the ninth inning against the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds in the climactic Game 3 of their pennant playoff, relieving Sal Maglie. The Giants had come back from a 13-game deficit in mid-August, but all seemed lost. They trailed the Dodgers by 4-1.

“The Dodgers stood there at the edge of the dugout,” Jansen told Ray Robinson in “The Home Run Heard ’Round the World” (HarperCollins, 1991). “They were yelling at me, ‘Jansen, you can go home now.’ But strange things can happen in this game. It was my duty just to keep pitching and hoping.”

Jansen quickly retired all three batters he faced. Minutes later, he became the winning pitcher when Bobby Thomson hit a three-run homer off Ralph Branca to give the Giants a pennant-winning 5-4 victory in one of the most celebrated moments in baseball history.

Jansen’s 23-11 record in 1951 tied Maglie for the N.L. lead in victories, and he had beaten the Boston Braves, 3-2, on the final Sunday of that season despite an aching back. That summer capped five seasons during which Jansen had become one of the league’s leading pitchers. He was 21-5 for the Giants as a rookie in 1947, when he led the league in winning percentage at .808. He won 18 games the next year and 19 in 1950, and he was a two-time All-Star.

But Jansen was the losing pitcher twice in the 1951 World Series, when the Yankees defeated the Giants in six games. In Game 2, he yielded Mickey Mantle’s first World Series hit, a bunt single. In Game 6, he gave up a double to Joe DiMaggio in the last at-bat of DiMaggio’s career.

Jansen, a native of Verboort, in northwest Oregon, pitched for the Giants until midway through their World Series championship season of 1954, when he became a Giants coach, having been plagued by a sore arm. He pitched in the minors for a year, then concluded his major league career in 1956 with the Cincinnati Reds. Featuring superb control, he had a career record of 122-89.

Jansen returned to the Giants in 1961, their fourth year in San Francisco, when he was hired as the pitching coach by Manager Alvin Dark, a former teammate. Jansen oversaw the future Hall of Fame pitchers Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry during his 11 seasons in San Francisco. He was the Cubs’ pitching coach in 1972 and ’73 under Leo Durocher, his former manager, and Durocher’s successor in Chicago, Whitey Lockman, another former Giants player.

In addition to his daughter Darlene Greene, Jansen is survived by his wife, Eileen; his sons Dale, Jim, Greg, Bob and Keith; his daughters Sandie Jansen, Shirley Vanderzanden, Lynne Barber and Kathleen Ross; a brother, Wilbur; many grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandson.

Nearly a quarter-century after the Giants’ pennant run of 1951, the pressures of that summer remained vivid for Jansen.

“I’d finish a game and I’d be so exhausted, so drained, I couldn’t sleep at all that night,” he told Thomas Kiernan in “The Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff” (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975).

“The next night, I’d get a few hours, but then the pressure’d begin to build to the next start two days away, and I wouldn’t sleep for two nights.

“By the time I got out on the mound, I’d be pitching from memory. But, by God, it must have worked, because that was one of my best years.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Yankee star Tommy Henrich at 96 ... this may leave Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford as the sole surviving teammates of Joe DiMaggio.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20091201&content_id=7735528&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/02/AR2009120203995.html

Lester Rodney, agitator for baseball integration and card-carrying member of the BBWAA and Communist Party USA:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/23/MNRO1B95TG.DTL