A-P Baseball BS stories

[Guest iramets]

Overpriced.

[seawolf17]

Joe Morgan is full of shit?!? I'm stunned. I've never heard a bigger blowhard broadcast a baseball game. I can't even listen to the guy. It's insulting that his name is on the "Baseball for Dummies" book.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I agree that it's a double-switch if a guy pinch-hits for the pitcher, then stays in the game replacing a guy whose spot was supsequently cleared later in the frame.

[stevejrogers]

To break up the Morgan bashing in this thread, caught this on another board that was discussing finding old radio broadcasts on the 'net, specifically Mets vs. Cards 4/11/1962 and the yarn about the Mets giving up their first ever run on a balk:

]So I'm listening to Bob Murphy call the first Mets game ever, and in the bottom of the first, I'm waiting for Roger Craig to balk across the first run. Lo and behold, it doesn't happen! Here is the bottom of the first according to Retrosheet, which matches up exactly with Murphy's description - CARDINALS 1ST: Flood flied out to center; Javier singled to left; White singled to right [Javier to third]; Musial singled to left [Javier scored, White to second]; Craig balked [White to third, Musial to second]; Boyer grounded out (third to first) [White scored]; Minoso popped to catcher in foul territory; 2 R, 3 H, 0 E, 1 LOB. Mets 0, Cardinals 2. I go looking on the Internet, and I found Lindsey Nelson's description of the balk, and he distinctly says that White scored on the balk for the first run given up by the Mets in their history. Here's the link to Nelson's call: http://www.loge13.com/images/Firstrun.L.mp3 Of course, Lindsey may have corrected himself later, I dunno. But two Mets announcers, both working the first inning of the first game of the season, and they don't agree on how the first run scored. Bizarre.

FWIW, the balk story apparantly appears in Jimmy Breslin's Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?: The Improbable Saga of the New York Met's First Year while the Nelson account is presumably from the game rather than a recreation (and those did happen for LP recordings) you can probably blame the printed form for this story.

Actually, probably alot of the "lore" and "lovableness" of that 1962 team probably comes from Breslin's book, which apparantly even took its title from an apocryphyl Stengel quote, well according to this Amazon.com review:

]For years author Jimmy Breslin claimed that "Can't anybody here play this game?" was an actual quote from New York Met manager Casey Stengel. Then several years later in another book that he wrote, Breslin admitted he had made up the quote. When I read his book "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game," I got the impression he used this same approach in writing it. Not that the book isn't mostly true, but what he wrote was for effect. It appeared to me that he wanted to inject a lot of humor and light-heartedness and not necessarily provide a well-rounded description of the season where that would detract from his intended perspective.

[stevejrogers]

BTW, here is the link to the Murphy broadcast

http://www.archive.org/details/620411NYMvsSTLC

[Guest iramets]

Breslin basically fictionalizes all over the place. One of his best is the Throneberry triple story, which has all sorts of inaccurate details that Breslin never expected anybody to confront him on. It's a good story, it just didn't happen the way he said it did. Even his title almost certainly misquotes Casey, who more likely (and more ungrammatically) asked "Can't anybody play this here game?"

[stevejrogers]

SteveJRogers wrote: while the Nelson account is presumably from the game rather than a recreation (and those did happen for LP recordings) you can probably blame the printed form for this story.

Just listened to the Nelson call couple of times, and upon further review it does have the feel of a recreation recording done for LP purposes.

-The call is too quick and tight, and generally balking in a run aren't "bang-bang" plays the way Nelson makes it seem.

-Too consistant level of inflection in both Lindsey's voice and the St. Louis "crowd" One would think even Red Barber would have a slight bemused sound in his voice watching the very first run a team gives up in their history on a first inning balk. Also something like that should have garnered some unsual reaction from the crowd rather than the usual general din noise.

-Also a bit overly descriptive for a TV call, generally TV broadcasters don't tell you that a pitcher is winding up and throwing.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Welcome to the thread, Duffy Dyer. Duffy appears to tell a tale here of him debuting in the big leagues by hitting an opening-day game-winning pinch-hit homer in his first plate appearance.

Undoubtedly, he's referring to April 8, 1969. Unfortunately, the account doesn't quite hold up, as Dyer had actually debuted with an 0-for-3 start behind the dish the previous summer.

What's perhaps more disappointing is that --- as starting pitcher Tom Seaver or losing-pitcher Cal Koonce might telll you --- while Dyer did indeed smack a ninth-inning three-run homer, the Mets were down by four, and while they did get the next two batters on, the rally fell short and the Mets indeed lost, 11-10.

The Mets lost the first five games Duffy appeared in..

[Guest iramets]

Edgy DC wrote: Welcome to the thread, Duffy Dyer. Duffy appears to tell a tale here of him debuting in the big leagues by hitting an opening-day game-winning pinch-hit homer in his first plate appearance. Undoubtedly, he's referring to April 8, 1969. Unfortunately, the account doesn't quite hold up, as Dyer had actually debuted with an 0-for-3 start behind the dish the previous summer. What's perhaps more disappointing is that --- as starting pitcher Tom Seaver or losing-pitcher Cal Koonce might telll you --- while Dyer did indeed smack a ninth-inning three-run homer, the Mets were down by four, and while they did get the next two batters on, the rally fell short and the Mets indeed lost, 11-10. The Mets lost the first five games Duffy appeared in..

Also of note in the interestingly titled piece "Boys of Summer can be trusted to entertain" (but not, apparently, to tell the actual, you know, truth) is the assertion that Shea was sold out. According to retrosheet, it was good sized crowd, "Attendance: 44541," but nowhere near a sellout.

[stevejrogers]

Milt Pappas in the oral history of the Baltimore Orioles, From 33rd Street To Camden Yards by John Eisenberg mentions an incident the Spring Training after he got traded for Frank Robinson where Frank stood him up for some photo shoot featuring the principles in the trade, then that he never wound up facing Frank untill he (Pappas) was a Cub and Frank was a Dodger in 1972.

Pappas mentions that every time Robinson came up he buzzed him, and that he struck him out three times in the game.

It seems plausible, but I really didn't think it happened the way it did since Pappas has a history of overselling himself (especially for a shot at the HOF)

Well, Pappas faced the Dodgers on June 17, 1972 and Robinson did indeed strike out three times during the game, but his first AB against Pappas resulted in this

DODGERS 2ND: Robinson grounded out (pitcher to first); Buckner
grounded out (shortstop to first); Sims flied out to left; 0 R,
0 H, 0 E, 0 LOB. Dodgers 0, Cubs 0.

and he struck out the third time against another former Oriole Tom Phoebus!

[stevejrogers]

Interesting to note though, Pappas did "own" Frank:

From Baseball-Reference

Car# Year Date Tm Opp Score Inn RoB Out Cnt Pit Play Desc.
+-----+----+-------------+---+----+-----------+---+---+---+---+---+-------------------------+
1 1972 1972-06-17 LAD @CHC tied 0-0 t 2 --- 0 - Groundout: P-1B
2 down 0-2 t 4 1-- 2 - Strikeout
3 down 0-4 t 7 --- 0 - Strikeout
4 1972-08-29 LAD @CHC tied 0-0 t 2 --- 0 - Groundout: 3B-1B
5 ahead 1-0 t 4 --- 0 - Groundout: 2B-1B
6 ahead 1-0 t 6 --- 2 - Single to LF
7 down 1-2 t 9 1-- 0 - Strikeout

[MFS62]

seawolf17 wrote: It's insulting that his name is on the "Baseball for Dummies" book.

As I may have mentioned before, I believe that book must be his autobiography.

EDIT:
oops, wrong thread for the additional comments I had posted here.

Later