Baseball Things You Didn't Know Until 2019

[Edgy MD]

Long-time, famed executive and former Mets VP Lou Gorman played one season of minor league baseball, going 1-for-28 (.036) for the 1948 Providence Grays in the Class B New England League.

[Willets Point]

The things I don't know about baseball could fill a book.

[Frayed Knot]

The NY Giants wound up trading '51 play-in hero Bobby Thompson to Milwaukee after the 1953 season (in a package deal for, mainly, pitcher Johnny Antonelli).

But Thompson broke his ankle on a slide in a ST game forcing the Braves to alter their plans for LF and call up some rookie named Henry Aaron.

Thompson returned in July as a pinch-hitter although didn't start to play the field again until mid-August at which point he and Aaron split time thru the end of the year.

Aaron finished 4th in RoY -- behind Wally Moon, Ernie Banks, and teammate (P) Gene Conley -- while Antonelli won 21 games (3rd in MVP) for the 1954 World Champ Giants including 1 run allowed in 10.2 WS IP

By the 1955 season Aaron was the full-time RF'er with Thompson in LF

[Frayed Knot]

Robin Yount's older (by 5-1/2 years) brother Larry was a pitcher in the Astros org.

In a game in September of 1971 he was brought in to relieve but felt pain in his elbow while warming up so was replaced.

He never again appeared in a major league game.

He has a place in that boxscore and a ML entry in BB-Ref for being announced, but no stats or record of batters faced.

[Edgy MD]

Yount wasn't sure early in his career if his heart was with baseball or golf. By his third season, I think (he came up at 18), he committed and his game turned the corner. But I wonder if some of the ambiguity was due to the fate of Larry.

[Frayed Knot]

Robin was reportedly a very good golfer but I believe his occasional musings about trying to do that professionally were a bit of misdirection.

At one point over a winter he cut himself up pretty badly in a dirt bike accident. Wanting to hide the cause of his injuries from the team while also

needing an excuse as to why he'd be late to spring camp, he later admitted to bringing up the golf thing as a way to buy time and heal his wounds.



There may have been a contract angle involved as well, as in: pay me what I want or I'll just go and join the PGA tour. Darryl would occasionally

mention the NBA (as if he could seamlessly slip from one to the other) whenever he'd get pissed off over some perceived slight or another.

[Frayed Knot]

KC/OAK [and briefly TEX, CAL, NYY] SS Bert Campaneris played 19 ML seasons / 2,300+ Games / 9,625 PA and hit 79 career HRs. 22 of those 79 HRs (28%) came in one season (1970).

In no other season did he top 8 HRs (only four times as many as 5) and he wound up with more career triples (86) than HRs