Baseball Passings 2013

[Benjamin Grimm]

I did. I was up until 4 a.m. watching that game. It came during the period after I had graduated college, but before I found a job, so since I didn't have to get up in the morning, I was able to stick it out. That game was so much fun to watch. And the late hour made it even more special somehow.

I recall that at around 3 a.m., Steve Zabriskie starting recapping the game to that point, and he said, "If you're just tuning in..." (pause) "...write to us to tell us why!"

[seawolf17]

July 4 was always a big deal for us, because my dad and sister were both born on that date. So every July 4 was a big mega-birthday extravaganza, where we'd be out at my aunt's house until the wee hours of the morning. Being nine, I didn't usually make it that far, so I watched the game in and out of dozing on the couch. Don't specifically remember making it to the 19th inning, but I definitely remember watching it very late.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Brad "The Animal" Lesley, 54. Of kidney failure.

Was the prototype of today's roided up, high energy reliever. Had a good career in Japan and later acted.

[Edgy MD]

He was a phenomenon in Japan. I think he rapped.

[G-Fafif]

George "Boomer" Scott, Red Sox and Brewer slugger, 69.

[Edgy MD]

Finished his career with the Yankees in a legacy-tainting final 16 games. Inexplicably wore 41 for them.

[seawolf17]

Scott was at the last baseball card show I went to, a few years ago at a little VFW in Centereach. He was at a table in the back singing autographs and the guy on the microphone introduced him as "Yankees legend George Scott."

[G-Fafif]

1979 MFYs also marred the legacies of Lenny Randle (20 games) and Roy Staiger (4 games). Ray Burris and Dick Tidrow at least sought to cleanse themselves sooner and later, respectively.

[G-Fafif]

Frank Castillo, Cubs pitching mainstay in the '90s, drowned. He was 44.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

oh yuk.

[G-Fafif]

Scott not a happy man in retirement, writes Gordon Edes on ESPNBoston.com.

Williams made his reputation as a taskmaster, but Scott felt that Williams frequently berated him publicly more than his teammates. Williams never showed him the same sensitivity, he said, that Eddie ("Pops") Popowski displayed when he managed Scott in the minors, and later as a Red Sox coach. Scott was keenly aware that he was one of the first African-Americans the Red Sox had promoted as an everyday position player. In 1961, under heavy public pressure for being the last major league team to integrate, the Sox had hired a former Negro League star, Ed Rogers, to scout the deep South. Rogers, who had discovered a young Henry Aaron, first saw Scott on a rock-filled field in Mississippi, picking grounders with ease. Rogers also showed the power the Red Sox would see first-hand when Scott hit a 500-foot home run in Yankee Stadium in 1966, and throughout a career in which he hit 271 home runs for the Sox and Milwaukee Brewers. But while Rogers may have discovered him, it was his white counterpart, Milt Bolling, who signed him. Back then, Anderson said, African-American scouts could not negotiate financial terms with players. That was a job left to white scouts. As fate would have it, Scott was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2006, in the same class as Dick Williams. The manager came up to Scott and thanked him, Anderson said, for letting Williams off the hook with his remarks at the dinner that night. "I was standing right next to him when he came up to George," Anderson said. But even that evening did not bring about a reconciliation for Scott. He complained afterward to Anderson that no one came to his table to congratulate him. By his reckoning, none of the other former players in attendance, and no one from Red Sox management. "I really don't remember that evening very well," Sox CEO Larry Lucchino wrote in an e-mail Monday night. "I do know I met a lot of people that night, and I'm sorry if I missed George. "I know that we welcomed him here subsequently, as late as 2010 and 2011, and we were hoping he'd be here last year for our 100th anniversary celebration." By then, there was probably little the Sox could have done to ease the pain Scott felt for his inability to land a job in a major league organization after his 12-year playing career ended. He managed in the Mexican League, and kicked around a few independent leagues, including a stint with the Massachusetts Mad Dogs in Lynn, but it never went beyond that. "I think he spent a lot of time waiting for that phone call that never came," said Anderson, who first met Scott in 1996.

[G-Fafif]

From above article:

Five notable facts about George Scott 1. Scott was known for his power (271 home runs), his fielding (8 Gold Gloves), his weight issues (he wore rubberized suits on his second go-round with the Sox) and his nicknames. His own was "Boomer," a name that began, he said, after his teammate Joe Foy said the ball made a boom off his bat. Home runs were "taters," an acknowledgment of his love of sweet potatoes, and he named his glove "Black Beauty." He also wore a batting helmet in the field, like Dick Allen and later John Olerud. 2. Scott played third base in the minors, but as a rookie in 1966 was moved to first base by manager Billy Herman, with another rookie, Foy, playing third. 3. As a rookie, Scott hit a home run estimated at 500 feet into the third deck of Yankee Stadium on April 26, 1966. It came off Yankee Hall of Famer Whitey Ford. 4. While Carl Yastrzemski is forever remembered for his MVP exploits during the stretch drive of the 1967 Impossible Dream pennant winners, Scott hit .344 over the seasons final eight games and hit a tie-breaking home run in the penultimate game of the season, a 6-4 win over the Minnesota Twins. 5. Scott played twice for the Red Sox, from 1966-71, then again from 1977-79. He was part of a nine-player deal with the Brewers the first time, then was swapped back for Cecil Cooper. He also played for the Royals and Yankees before ending his big-league career.

[Frayed Knot]

I saw Scott up close down in Florida during a ST one year. He had come out of the game by that point and was not too enthusiastically doing some exercises in the outfield while the end of the game played out. He had gotten quite large by that point but would smile broadly and do a little jig as Sox fans yelled out "Disco George" in his direction, clearly more interested in the fans and their reaction than he was in the "work" he was doing.

[G-Fafif]

Johnny Logan, shortstop on the world champion Milwaukee Braves of 1957, at 86. He drew an affectionate writeup in David Lamb's Stolen Season:

He sat among a group of stoic scouts, who said not a word, and yelled encouragement to the Brewers. I asked him if he was going on the Braves' reunion cruise to the Caribbean in the fall. "I talked to Pafko and a couple of the guys about it," he said. "You know what happens? Mathews, Aaron, Spahn, they go for free. And the rest of us got to pay. What an insult. You think I'm going? Hell, no. It was true. Logan had not been among the titans on the Braves and his value on the baseball-card circuit -- the measure of a retired player's worth in today's marketplace -- was only five hundred dollars per appearance [...] But Logan had played so beautifully. He had the heart of a lion and for a while there was no finer shortstop in the National League. He was the Brave you wanted at the plate with the game on the line, the infielder you prayed Snider or Kluszewski would hit the ball to in the last of the ninth. Logan was more guarded than the other former Braves I had met and he didn't seem much interested in revisiting the past. Whenever I probed, asking about his life after baseball, wondering if he saw the same ghosts in County Stadium that I did, he would go back to concentrating on his radar gun. "I got memories, he said, "but they're not really what you'd call memories, if you follow what I'm saying."

[G-Fafif]

Marty Adler, Brookyn Dodgers flamekeeper, 76.

Marty Adler, Brooklyn�s Enduring Dodger Fan, Dies at 76 By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN Thirty years after Jackie Robinson broke the modern major league color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, his legacy was honored in classrooms only a home run shot or so away from the housing development where Ebbets Field once stood. Marty Adler, the assistant principal at Jackie Robinson Intermediate School 320, bordering what had been the Dodgers� third-base stands, organized projects in which the predominantly minority student body learned of Robinson�s baseball exploits and his pioneering role in the civil rights struggle. That anniversary tribute in 1977 inspired Mr. Adler to keep memories of the Dodgers alive in Brooklyn long after their departure for Los Angeles and the demolition of Ebbets Field. When he died of a stroke on Tuesday in Bethpage, N.Y., at 76, Mr. Adler was remembered as the founder of the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame. It never had a permanent home � it was essentially a personal journey down his baseball memory lane � but it enabled him to share his passion for the Dodgers with his fellow Brooklynites. Mr. Adler saluted the heroes of his youth by bringing them back to Brooklyn for annual induction ceremonies at Grand Army Plaza. He donated memorabilia to the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Brooklyn baseball gallery at the minor league ballpark in Coney Island where the Mets� Brooklyn Cyclones play. �I�m reliving my childhood,� Mr. Adler once said. �The Dodgers lived in the neighborhood,� he recalled. �Their kids went to the schools. Their wives shopped in the shopping places. They were an integral fabric of the pattern of the whole community, and we loved the guys. �You could walk down the street and put a radio on � a black person or a white person. �How�re the Bums doing?� It was one common denominator that tied everybody up together.� Martin Norman Adler was born in Brooklyn on July 11, 1937, and grew up in the Borough Park neighborhood. He received a bachelor�s degree from Brooklyn College and a master�s in education from St. John�s University. When Jackie Robinson died in 1972, Mr. Adler campaigned to have his school, then known as Crown Heights Intermediate School 320, named for him. �The parents wanted it to be named after somebody in the civil rights movement,� Mr. Adler told The New York Times on the 50th anniversary of Robinson�s debut with the Dodgers, �but I reminded them Jackie walked with Dr. Martin Luther King. Jackie gave impetus to all the other movements that developed in the 1960s.� And so the school bore Robinson�s name and graced its lobby with an oil painting of him. Mr. Adler gave annual talks over the school�s public-address system about Robinson, saying, as he recalled it, �This is what took place here, this is American history.� In the late 1970s, Mr. Adler began sending letters to former Brooklyn Dodger players explaining his idea for a memorial to the team, and as word of his mission got around, memorabilia began to flow in. His early collection, stored in his school custodian�s office, included seats from Ebbets Field, which was torn down in 1960, two years after the Dodgers departed for Los Angeles; a uniform worn by Casey Stengel when he managed the Dodgers in the 1930s; and jars of Ebbets Field soil used as landfill at Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn. In June 1984, Mr. Adler helped create a Dodgers exhibit at the central Brooklyn Public Library on Grand Army Plaza and held his first Hall of Fame induction ceremony outside the building. His first three inductees were figures from the 1950s teams that came to be known as the Boys of Summer: pitcher Carl Erskine, right fielder Carl Furillo and first baseman Gil Hodges, who died in 1972 while managing the Mets and was represented by his widow, Joan. None of the three have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Mr. Adler remained assistant principal at the Jackie Robinson school until his retirement in 1992, and he continued his induction ceremonies for a few years after that. Tommy Lasorda, who pitched in a total of eight games for Brooklyn in the 1954 and 1955 seasons before bleeding Dodger blue as their longtime manager in Los Angeles, was inducted into Mr. Adler�s Hall of Fame in August 2009 in a special ceremony at the Cyclones� ballpark celebrating his 60 years in the Dodger organization. Mr. Adler, whose death was announced by his family, lived in Plainview on Long Island. He is survived by his wife, Linda; his sons, Eric and Jeff; his brothers, Richard and Stephen; and two grandchildren. Although he rallied Brooklynites of a certain age around their heroes of years past, Mr. Adler left one goal unaccomplished: He was never able to help propel Hodges to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He sent bumper stickers to the 5,000 subscribers to his quarterly newsletter in 1999 that read �Cooperstown Needs Gil Hodges.� He organized a letter-writing campaign to the Hall of Fame�s committee on veterans calling for Hodges�s admission. �It�s total disappointment for the Brooklyn Dodgers community,� he said at the time, �but we�re never going to give up. We�re from Brooklyn.�

[MFS62]

Olevai Sholom

Later

[G-Fafif]

National League umpire Frank Pulli, 78.

[Edgy MD]

In my mind, he was still active, fourteen years after his retirement.

[Frayed Knot]

Pinch-hitter deluxe (and occasional left-fielder) Gates Brown - 74

Had a 13 year career --all with the Tigers-- but was the definition of PHer/part-timer as he only got as many as 300 plate appearances twice and had fewer than 200 in eight of those seasons. Came up with the team in 1963 at age 24 but even that was only after serving time for armed robbery.
PH'ed his way to a .370/.442/.685 // 1127 line over 104 PAs in the Tigers WS-winning year of 1968.
The LH-swinger finished with a career line of .257/.330/.420 and one would think that had his career not been ending just as the DH era was beginning that he would have made for a scary DH in at least a platoon role.

I remember having a baseball card of a hatless and thuggish-looking Brown (listed at 5' 11"/220) with a scowl that scared my sister.

[Edgy MD]

Famously the roommate of Kevin Collins, where he persecuted his Metly teammate with snoring and sartorial issues.

[G-Fafif]

Carl Willey was coming off about as good a season as a pitcher could have for the 1963 Mets, 9-14 with a 3.10 ERA, and was enjoying a marvelous spring in �64 (26 consecutive scoreless innings) when a line drive off the bat of Brown, then a relatively obscure second-year man, broke his jaw. There, in essence, went Willey�s career. He�d be out �til June, yet would not be forgotten by the likes of us. Recalled Jerry Mitchell in his outstanding early history, The Amazing Mets:

There must have been Mets fans at Yankee Stadium one midsummer afternoon when Detroit was the visiting club. When Gates Brown, a total stranger, was introduced as a pinch-hitter, Met banners were waved and Brown was lustily booed.

[G-Fafif]

Andy Pafko, 92, who went as far back as he could in left at the Polo Grounds in the bottom of the ninth on October 3, 1951, but had no hope of catching a Shot that was about to be heard 'round the world. He would make it to the Series in 1952 with Brooklyn. Also a member of the Milwaukee Braves that won a World Series in 1957 and took the MFYs to seven games in 1958 -- and one of the last two surviving National League champion Cubs from 1945 or, for that matter, ever. Pafko had been traded to the Dodgers in '51 along with, among others, Rube Walker.

Roger Kahn, in visiting with the Brooklyn Dodgers who became his Boys of Summer, surprised Pafko at lunch by asking him for his autograph.

"Now for me," I said. "Don't kid me," Pafko said. "It's just nice being remembered." "I'm not kidding." I had been traveling with a glove, a Wilson A-2000,huge, $50 retail, more elaborate than any glove that had been designed when Pafko played in Brooklyn. "I'm asking everybody on the team to sign it, for a souvenir." Pafko looked at some signatures. Then he turned the glove over and wrote his name on the back. "I don't belong with those others," he said. "Thanks for a good club sandwich. Maybe I saved you a little money, huh? "Furillo, Snider and guys who could play like that, you oughta buy them the steaks."

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Much-beloved MLBPA jefe Michael Weiner, at 51, of an inoperable brain tumor.

Your interim MLBPA exec director will be ex-Met Tony Clark.

[G-Fafif]

Mike Hegan, 71, original Pilot, later a Brewer and A, author of the final batted ball at MFYS I, longtime Tribe broadcaster and guy I inevitably conflated with Mike Epstein. Profile from when he hung up his mic in 2011 here.

Oh look, I got his card again.

[MFS62]

G-Fafif wrote: Mike Hegan, 71, original Pilot, later a Brewer and A, author of the final batted ball at MFYS I, longtime Tribe broadcaster and guy I inevitably conflated with Mike Epstein. Profile from when he hung up his mic in 2011 here.

IIRC from Ball Four, it was Mike, in response to a question about the toughest thing you had to do in baseball, answered, "Convincing my wife why she had to take a penicillin shot because of my kidney infection".

RIP Mike, son of long time coach and player Jim Hegan.

Later

[G-Fafif]

Two more American Leaguers:

Ed Herrmann, 67, catcher, mostly of White Sox pitchers. Said teammate Dick Allen:

As he did with everything he faced on and off the baseball diamond, Ed gave all he had to give during his long battle with cancer. He was a good man and he will be missed. Without a doubt, Hoggy has already jogged out to the bullpen in heaven and has started working with some of God�s pitchers.

Paul Blair, 69, briefly a Met farmhand before the Orioles drafted him away. He became the junior circuit's premier defensive center fielder for a generation, though ironically robbed by Tommie Agee in the 1969 World Series. Hit nearly .500 in the next year's Fall Classic, won by the Birds. Finished up with the champion MFYs in the late '70s, with a stop in Cincinnati.

[Edgy MD]

On Pafko: I missed that he passed. He almost made me cry in his insistence of unworthiness in Boys of Summer.

On Hermann: Did you think you'd live long enough to see Dick Allen turn into the go-to guy for a tribute to a teammate.

On Blair: He would have hit .500 in the 1969 series too if it wasn't for Agee. He made a lot of folks lists --- back in the day anyhow --- as the greatest defensive centerfielder ever.

[MFS62]

On Pafko: I missed that he passed. He almost made me cry in his insistence of unworthiness in Boys of Summer. On Hermann: Did you think you'd live long enough to see Dick Allen turn into the go-to guy for a tribute to a teammate. On Blair: He would have hit .500 in the 1969 series too if it wasn't for Agee. He made a lot of folks lists --- back in the day anyhow --- as the greatest defensive centerfielder ever.

1) I remember Pafko playing for Brooklyn. He was a decent major leaguer playing among greats.
2) No
3) He makes my list, along with Curt Flood, Bill Virdon and Willie Mays. When I first saw Legares I thought he reminded me of Blair, but with a better arm.

Later

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Blair would probably have been the Best Met Ever until Seaver surpassed him. He was better than Agee and a better all-around player than Jones (also better for longer than either). The rules back then allowed for some real greaseball moves like taking one another's newly signed players if the team didn't move to protect them immediately, which could retard their development. The teams in turn would try to hide those guys from other team's scouts as well as they could.

The Mets signed Blair in 1961 before they even had a team to stash him with; they apparently tried to get other teams to believe Blair was injured by holding him out of workouts but the Orioles didn't buy it. I suppose in the end the Mets would have been better playing Blair as an 18-year-old than say, holding onto sketchy expansion picks like B.G. Smith but it was a damn tragedy. They should have been exempt from this process then.

[batmagadanleadoff]

http://www.examiner.com/article/how-did-the-mets-let-paul-blair-slip-away