Baseball Miscellany

My mom made me throw them all out when we moved to Texas. “You don’t even play with them anymore” she said. Play with them? You don’t play with them. You carry them around and you and your friend spread them all out on the ground, discuss which ones are new, swap any duplicates you may have…

My mother threatened me with that many times; most of her threats were after I had moved out, and her admonitions were the same: “If you do not come get your stuff, I’ll…”

She never did, though.

I played a game with them by myself or with my brother, and my neighborhood full of boys did a fair amount of trading too.

One of my great regrets is that notwithstanding the amount of gum I chewed, I never got a Sandy Koufax card.

I pulled a fast one on a kid in the neighborhood once. I traded him Pete Rose for Dusty Baker. When all the other kids thought I was crazy, I slyly pulled out a second copy of the Pete Rose. I was a wheeler-dealer, I tells ya.

1 Like

Mine did. Still bothers me.

1 Like

Had one. See above.

2 Likes

The tragic OKC Basement Flood of 1980 ruined my baseball card and my comic book collection. I am still heartbroken over it.

1 Like

I shouldn’t even tell this story because it is so humiliating. My granddad got for me an autographed Mantle photo signed and personalized to me and a baseball with Ted Williams’ autograph. I was probably about 8. I used the ball one day playing catch because no one else had a ball and playing catch that given day was more important than anything else in the world. The photo ended up in a drawer unprotected and got ruined eventually. I was obviously an ungrateful little shit that didn’t deserve what I was given. Those items would be displayed and hung in my personal library today if I hadn’t wrecked them.

I think they made a movie about that.

1 Like

When I was little, my brother and I would split baseball and football cards by league to keep it straight, whose cards were whose. He had NL & NFC and I had AL & AFC. When I was about 8 or 9, he convinced me to trade all my AL cards for his NFC cards. One of the worst decisions of my childhood.

2 Likes

Daren Willman does amazing work.

I made an animation about #MLB hits and what percentage of position players have how many hits. 6% of players who had an at bat in MLB didn't get a hit 😔 pic.twitter.com/1EmkQK8VJk

— Daren Willman (@darenw) February 2, 2021
2 Likes

Wow, that is great.

I can’t believe that little snot nosed kid I grew up around has accomplished all that

While watching the Express during its first season, I realized clearly how small the funnel gets from HS star/prospect to MLB. The Express had a great AA team that year, and won it all, but not one of them became a MLB star player, except Oswalt who came up from A ball during the season. Maybe I have forgotten someone? Several of them made it to the big league for at least a cup of coffee, Oswalt became a star, and Ginter did more than a cup of coffee, but how truly difficult it is to go from a great HS prospect to a big league ballplayer who sticks for a number of years became abundantly clear to me. How many more never make it or never progress very far up the ladder?

The animation takes the narrowing funnel concept another step farther using hits as the criterion. It is awesome work.

1 Like

Was Jason Lane on that team? Reddick? Carlos Hernandez?

I assume this was the 2000 season? Here is a link with the roster:

Members of the 2000 Round Rock Express who played in Major League Baseball during their careers were Brian Dallimore, Joe Depastino, Scott Elarton, Morgan Ensberg, Keith Ginter, Jason Green, Fernando Hernandez, Eric Hillman, Mark Hutton, Carlos Maldonado, Dave Matranga, Tony McKnight, Roy Oswalt, Colin Porter, Jay Powell, Tim Redding, Jeriome Robertson, Wilfredo Rodriguez, Tom Shearn and Barry Wesson.

I didn’t mean Reddick, I was thinking Tim Redding. I totally forgot about Jeriome Robertson, but I know he had a nickname here. Smoke and Mirrors?

15 Game Winner Jeriome Robertson

2 Likes

Man what a disappointment Tim Redding and Tony McKnight were. I had almost forgotten about those two. Redding had to be one of the most frustrating pitchers to watch.

It’s too bad one of those 15 games wasn’t in his last start in the season, when he only lasted 1/3 of an inning against the last place Brewers. The Astros didn’t need that game at all. It’s not like they were in the hunt for the postseason or anything.

2 Likes