YFSF

Mo: 500 + 1

Congratulations to the great one, Mariano Rivera, on his 500th career save and 1st career RBI. All class, all the time. Bravo 42.

(PS: Yanks sweep the Mets!) 

Tough Run

The Sox are on a 12 game dash through what are (were?) four first place teams - the Tigers, Rangers, Yanks, then Phillies.  What a stretch.  We wonder if this has happened before, at least since the advent of interleague play, where a team plays four consecutive series against division leaders.  Paging Elias!

Dominic DiMaggio, RIP

One of the three names I remember being mentioned most by my dad while I was growing up (along with Bobby Doerr and Ted Williams) The Little Professor is dead at 92.  

A Little History

A nice story in the New York Times yesterday about Sunday's contest between Williams College (my alma mater and also George Steinbrenner's) and our (inferior in every way) archrival Amherst College, on the 150th anniversary of the first ever intercollegiate baseball game.  

Unlike the original match, in which Amherst best Williams 73-32 in 25 innings (not kidding), this year our beloved Ephs (don't ask) swatted away the Lord Jeffs (don't ask) 8-5.

Adjectival

On Wednesday night a little-known player with a very odd name hit a game-winning homer in the tenth inning for the Red Sox. Jonathan Van Every. We wondered if having an adjective as a last name (or part of one) is more common than we imagined, so we took a look.  

Scanning through Baseball Reference in alphabetical fashion*, our first adjectival seems to be Don August, but only if we hold him in high esteem. There are countless Bakers, but nobody Baked (other than Barry Zito, perhaps). We almost had another in Ed Beatin, but the spelling error is a problem. Then we got to Karl Best, definitively an adjectival, and a superlative one at that! Tommy Bianco, in translation, qualifies, but we are sticking with our mother tongue for this investigation. If we include colors (we are holding them out -- Blue, Gray, Brown, Green, etc. -- along with names/nationalities like English, German, or the French) then the crew of Blacks is in, with one oddity: every player who has played MLB with the last name "Black" has a one-syllable first name. Bill, Bob, Bud, Bud Jr., Dave, Jon, Joe, and John. Why is this?  

Nate Bland is another rarity, though frankly I found his play quite tasteless. And my mind was left a Blank by Coonie, Fred, and Matt. In 1912 Bunny Brief started his medium-length five year career. Harry Bright began his in luminous fashion in 1958. Rounding out the Bs, Frank Buttery slipped in and out of the league in 1872 in a mere 18 games. 

Mark Clear. Jim Converse. Coco Crisp. All the Crosses. Alvin Dark, Ron and Dell Darling, Buddy Dear, Mark Dewey, Jake Early. Carl, Harry, and Hugh East. Jamie and Ted Easterly (we'll keep cardinal directions off the rest of the list, like colors and nationalities). George Fair. Darcy Fast. Finely following Fast is Frank Fleet. And Charlie, Fred, and Mike Frank. Ed and Roger Freed. Jim, Mike, and Roy were all Golden, and there have been several players who were Good. A whole bunch of players are and have been Gross. 

Eight players were Hardy, and Bob, playing in the 1920s, was Hasty. Andy, Charlie, Ed, and Hugh were all High, though hopefully they didn't play in that state. Pat Hilly played for a spell, his career up and down far too quickly. 

Joe Just. Bill and Vic Keen. Harry, Jeff, and Joe Keener. Bill and Dick were both Kenworthy, the first father/son gay breast-implanted baseball players ever. (We kid, we have no idea if they were related, much less gay. Kenworthy isn't even an adjective, for that matter, unless you are a doll). Guy, Kerry, and Lee Lacy. Tom Lawless played with impunity. Seven guys were Little, a couple Lively, and sixteen Long.  Billy, Ernie, and Johnny were all Lush, playing in the days before Prohibition.

The Ms provide a motherlode:  Alex and Woody Main.  Evan Meek. Roy Meeker. Garrett Mock. Eric Moody. Forrest More. Darryl Motley. 

Not many Ns, but for one whose name is actually qualified as "The Only Nolan", from the nineteenth century.

There have been no Atheists or Agnostics, but there have been a bunch of Pagans and even a Papish! If we were French we'd mention the Petit, but we're not, we're actually Petty, like Charlie and Jesse.  

Quick! It's Eddie and Hal! No problem, Randy is Ready!

Woody Rich, Pop Rising. Harry Sage. Several Savages. Mac Scarce. Bill Sharp. Bill, Chris, Dave, and Rick Short. Many Smalls.  One Smart guy (JD). Three Starks. Adam Stern. Of course, there's Doug Strange (and Alan and Pat, too). Jamal and Joe Strong. Even a guy named Sturdy, literally: Guy Sturdy.  DIck Such. Bill Swift, x2.   

Some players get tan, but Bruce and Chuck were Tanner than most. 

Dixie Upright - what a name.  Jack and Luke Urban, one actually somewhat urban (Luke was born near Boston in Fall River) the other more rural (Jack a Nebraska native).

In the end, there have been a number of Wise men (ten in fact), but many more Young ones (38).  

We love those adjectives.  Without them, nouns would be ___

* If we missed any, and we surely did, please add in the comments.

New Technology, Same Old Feeling

Growing up as a pre-teen kid in the 70s it was always kind of a game to huddle underneath my bedcovers with an AM radio either listening to Ken Coleman or searching for far-off games from across the eastern seaboard. On a lucky night I might even get a faded KMOX, all the way from St. Louis. Tonight, as my wife slept to my left, I tuned in to the last few innings of the Sox-Yanks, put earbuds into the iPhone, and did my best to surreptitiously listen in (and now, type this post). Whereas 30 years ago I was doing my best not to be found out by my mom and dad, today I did my best not to roust my tired wife. Three decades have passed, and transistor radios may be mostly obsolete. But the digital, wireless joy of late comebacks and heroic homers feels just as it did back then.

What a game.

Identity Theft?

  

Last week Topps sued Upper Deck for supposedly stealing designs from the 1970s for their current crop of cards.  Wax Heaven has some images of the UD set, we've used a shot of their Ichiro card, the nerdish Roger Nelson is representing for the 1975 Topps set. You be the judge.

In the world of architecture, derivative works are very hard to litigate, even the slightest change to a design inoculates the derivative from charges of plagiarism. In another hot-button case going on right now, the AP is famously embroiled with Shepard Fairey over his (fair?) use of one of their Obama images. This Topps suit will be interesting to watch, though if the same standards regarding derivations are applied to these cards that are used in architecture it would seem that Topps has little to no case, even as the similarities are pretty obvious.

The Price of History Vol. XIV

It's a tradition around these parts to periodically review the state of the baseball auction market, a task we approach with a combination of curiosity, envy, bemusement, and sheer stupefaction. (Disclosure: a couple of years ago I wrote a piece on Jefferson R. Burdick, the grandfather of all baseball card collectors, which you can find here.) What appeals most, of course, are the wonderful, museum quality artifacts we often find, like the 1915 Cracker Jack poster you see above, now up for bid on the REA website (minimum bid: $25,000). A few of the other items that caught our eye:

Diehards at the Fens

This is a picture my mom recently found, of Fred Lynn (as if any Sox fan of the past 40 years needs that pointed out!), my childhood friend Amy S., and me, at the Fens.  It hung on my wall, above my bed, for the bulk of my junior high school, high school, and college years and was mothballed when my parents re-did my room after I moved out, with my Sox and Bruins pennants and most other sports paraphernalia banished to the attic. Luckily this one survived.

For a few years running we were able to get down on the field via the Sox' press secretary, a friend of my grandfather's, and get a picture snapped.   In 1974 at the age of 5 I got a moment with Yaz (Mom needs to start digging to find that one, though I know it still exists!), in 1980 it was Freddie during his last year with the Sox.   Lynn was, with Pudge Fisk, in my top two, though a pretty distant second.

Sartorially the Sox uniform still does the trick, quite obviously.  Amy wisely chose an outfit that easily stands the test of time, conservative and mature.  But what the hell was up with my choice of a wide-banded white-collared navy blue cardigan?  Fenway security should have turned me away -- for the Yankee colors alone.

June 16, 1986

On that date, Jamie Moyer made his debut as a 23-year-old starter for the Chicago Cubs, earning a no-decision in a game the Cubs went on to win. Mr. Moyer just re-signed with the Phillies for two years. Pretty cool.