Why I love this game I...
Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 2:33 pmI love the history of this game and ATG enables me to review the lives of some of the players in the game...
Dickie Kerr
After his playing days, Kerr was a coach and minor league manager. Stan Musial played for Kerr while he was the manager of the Daytona Beach Islanders.
In the 1988 film Eight Men Out, about the Black Sox scandal, Kerr was portrayed by actor Jace Alexander. The film inaccurately portrayed Kerr as a right-handed pitcher when in fact he was a lefty.
BTW...Although many believe the Black Sox name to be related to the dark and corrupt nature of the conspiracy, the term "Black Sox" may already have existed before the alleged fix. There is a story that the name "Black Sox" derived from parsimonious owner Charles Comiskey's refusal to pay for the players' uniforms to be laundered, instead insisting that the players themselves pay for the cleaning. As the story goes, the players refused and subsequent games saw the White Sox play in progressively filthier uniforms as dust, sweat and grime collected on the white, woolen uniforms until they took on a much darker shade. It was this treatment of the players by Comiskey that helped fuel the Scandal.
Jimmy Dygert
Dygert was very skinny even for his era, weighing about 115 pounds. Bill James listed him as one of the lightest major league players of the 1900-1909 decade. Baseball Digest wrote that he was probably the lightest pitcher of the 20th century. Nonetheless, Dygert was also one of the best spitballers when the pitch was legal and is considered the greatest ever for his weight.
Tiny Bonham
After an 1-4 start in 1949, Bonham won six straight games for a floundering Pittsburgh club, including an 8–2 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies on August 28, his final game. Eighteen days later Bonham died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the age of 36, following an appendectomy and stomach surgery.
Pat Ragan
On October 5, 1914, Ragan struck out three batters on nine pitches in the eighth inning of a 15–2 loss to the Boston Braves. Ragan became the second National League pitcher and the third pitcher in Major League history to accomplish the nine-strike, three-strikeout half-inning.
Slim Love
After his baseball career was over, Love worked as a steamfitter in a Navy Yard. Love died in 1942 at age 52 in Memphis, Tennessee when he was hit by an automobile while on a walk.
Roger Connor
Connor entered the National League in 1880 as a member of the Troy Trojans. He later played for the New York Gothams, and, due to his great stature, gave that team the enduring nickname "Giants"
Dickie Kerr
After his playing days, Kerr was a coach and minor league manager. Stan Musial played for Kerr while he was the manager of the Daytona Beach Islanders.
In the 1988 film Eight Men Out, about the Black Sox scandal, Kerr was portrayed by actor Jace Alexander. The film inaccurately portrayed Kerr as a right-handed pitcher when in fact he was a lefty.
BTW...Although many believe the Black Sox name to be related to the dark and corrupt nature of the conspiracy, the term "Black Sox" may already have existed before the alleged fix. There is a story that the name "Black Sox" derived from parsimonious owner Charles Comiskey's refusal to pay for the players' uniforms to be laundered, instead insisting that the players themselves pay for the cleaning. As the story goes, the players refused and subsequent games saw the White Sox play in progressively filthier uniforms as dust, sweat and grime collected on the white, woolen uniforms until they took on a much darker shade. It was this treatment of the players by Comiskey that helped fuel the Scandal.
Jimmy Dygert
Dygert was very skinny even for his era, weighing about 115 pounds. Bill James listed him as one of the lightest major league players of the 1900-1909 decade. Baseball Digest wrote that he was probably the lightest pitcher of the 20th century. Nonetheless, Dygert was also one of the best spitballers when the pitch was legal and is considered the greatest ever for his weight.
Tiny Bonham
After an 1-4 start in 1949, Bonham won six straight games for a floundering Pittsburgh club, including an 8–2 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies on August 28, his final game. Eighteen days later Bonham died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the age of 36, following an appendectomy and stomach surgery.
Pat Ragan
On October 5, 1914, Ragan struck out three batters on nine pitches in the eighth inning of a 15–2 loss to the Boston Braves. Ragan became the second National League pitcher and the third pitcher in Major League history to accomplish the nine-strike, three-strikeout half-inning.
Slim Love
After his baseball career was over, Love worked as a steamfitter in a Navy Yard. Love died in 1942 at age 52 in Memphis, Tennessee when he was hit by an automobile while on a walk.
Roger Connor
Connor entered the National League in 1880 as a member of the Troy Trojans. He later played for the New York Gothams, and, due to his great stature, gave that team the enduring nickname "Giants"