Logos and Memorabilia

Baseball for many is a smorgasbord of statistics, numbers, dates and milestones. To achieve 3000 hits, or 300 wins, to bat .400, or win 20 games, these all mean something to the faithful, the fantasy player, the historian. Baseball has it's place in history, it's heritage is marked with mile posts such as the dead ball era, the House that Ruth built, Ted Williams assault on hitting .400 or Joe DiMaggios's 56 game consecutive hitting streak.

It is also made of trivial and nonsensical and whimsical things like team logos, team promotions, and gadgets that we collect, and pass on through generations as part of our heritage. Items like bobble heads, baseball cards, old board games, anything that seems to take us back to our childhood.

When you begin to try and display examples, you are struck by the enormity of how much their is. As time passes, teams look and dress differently, uniforms, hats, hairstyles, ballparks and logos change, some because the teams have moved on to another city, such as the A's who started in Philadelphia, then moved to Kansas City , then finally to Oakland, who may some day move north and renames themselves a 4rth time.

Here is sampling of some familiar and long forgotten team logos.














These are long forgotten logos for such teams as the Brooklyn Dodgers, St.Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Sox and the defunct Seattle Pilots.

For some added fun, here are some bobble heads of pre expansion teams.

Yanks and Dodgers

Rivalries make the best story lines in any sport, Lakers - Celtics, Oliers - Flames, Leafs - Habs,
Steelers - Browns, and Yanks - Boston.
Heck, rivalries seem to define some sports because what do you remember, Pedro Martinez
fighting with Yanks coach Don Zimmer, or the game he pitched ?

What do you remember about any of these rivalries, usually the moments, individual
performances, but many times it's the pure hate between both teams. I mean look at the Tiger
Cats and the Argonauts, most of these players get changed each year, but the rivalry is so
intense every time they meet. Fights in the stands, fights on the field, snowballs rain down in
winter, beer cans in summer, insults at any time.

The New York Yankees for decades were the Kings of the game, they had the stars, they had
the money, and the won all the Series, while their poor NL cousins the Brooklyn Dodgers were
referred to as Dem Bums, even by their faithful fans. It was always " Wait till next Year !! "

Dom Camilli once said " I'd rather beast the Yankees than kiss my wife, okay you get the picture, these team hated each other.

The Yankees played in upper Manhatten, while the Brooklyn Dodgers played in the rougher area of the boroughs, in little Brooklyn, so you already had a city divided along baseball lines. To make matters worse you also had the New York Giants who played in the Polo Grounds, but we'll stick to the Yanks/Dodgers for now, adding a third rival is a bit much.

Just look at the stadiums, Yankee Stadium was majestic, it soared, dignitaries wanted to be seen there, while the park in Brooklyn was built in area originally called "Pigtown", and was built by Charles Hercules Ebbetts on a fairly limited budget, but is was so close tot he players and had a certain charm that smaller parks always had. It suited the Dodgers, and their fans, and their players, rejects, washed up veterans, and the Yankees have always seemed to have royalty.
Ruth, DiMaggio, Gehrig, Mantle, Berra, and Maris...you just do not have the same litany of Dodgers greats.
Yes Duke Snider and Pee Wee Reese were good players, so was Jackie Robinson, and Roy Campenella but not as luminous as the Yankees were, so that fed the rivalry.

It did not the rivalry that when the Brooklyn's finally started getting to the World Series, there were the Yankees to beat them down again.

Until 1955, then everything changed, the Bums won, and it was next year, and here are a few of that 55' team,Reese, Snider, Camilli and Robinson.

The heroes from Flatbush won that one time, and then in 1959 moved to Los Angeles where they are stars in Hollywood, finally reaching some notoriety but losing the cross town rivalry with the Yankees.

So, what did the Dodgers do, well they started a new rivalry with the San Fransisco Giants.



Enjoy !

Cheaters

I hate cheaters in any sport, win it or lose on your own ability, and baseball has had artful rule benders almost it's entire history. I am not even talking yet about the drug issue. I will, just not today.
No, what I am looking at is the ball scuffers, the bat tinkerers to make the ball dance, and dart away from hitters, and the guys who add cork or super balls to get an advantage on a lighter bat to increase their bat speed, or more bounce as it were.
The last legal hurler tossing the spitter was Burleigh Grimes, a long time ago, but that has not stopped many pitchers from scuffing the ball on a nail, a thumbtack, sandpaper, their belt buckle, or any number of rough surfaces to mark the ball.

As recently as the Tigers - St. Louis world series where lefty Kenny Rogers was suspected of doing something nasty with either pine tar or stick'um, and they are very good at it too.

Ask Gaylord Perry, he confessed once he retired to using slippery elm, and Vaseline and had to change it's hiding place each game since he knew the umps were always watching. He also admitted that even there were times he just wanted the hitters to believe he was using a foreign substance, and he wasn't, but the fear factor was there in the hitter's mind.

Don Sutton was caught with an emery board, Joe Neikro used a thumbtack taped inside his glove, and the battery of Denny McLain and Bill Freehan ( 1967 Tigers ) had a new twist, McLain would toss back a ball to Freehan, who rubbed it against his side, which had a patch of Vaseline, and with the home jersey being white, it was unspotted by opposing teams, who claimed McLain was throwing illegal pitches.

They checked out McLain, and of course never found a thing. Ingenious eh ??

As for the hitters, well they had to counteract the hurlers with tricks of their own, with cork inserted to allow the bat to be lighter to swing, but the meat of the bat, the sweat spot was still intact. The other rotten trick was drill or hollowing out the core of the bat and seeing how many super balls, hard and very dense so as to generate as much oomph as one could when you made contact.

Sammy Sosa was caught corking, and maybe Sammy wasn't done there, but that's another article for another day.

I will leave you a picture of the most honest pitcher I ever heard of, I think he turned in a teammate once in spring training, and his name is Sandy Koufax.

More to come.

It's Alive

Greetings & Salutations,

First order of business is to say a big thanks to Clark who gave me the idea to write down my baseball/sports ramblings in a more uniform manner.
Whether many actual read my personal memories, and current observations on baseball and other sports is not anything I can control.

If you do, thank for taking the time. For me, I just need the venue to vent, and reflect
The picture to the right is one taken outside the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame, my son and I ventured down there 4 years ago, with a side trip to watch 2 Syracuse Chiefs games.

It was a great moment for me, to see the old uniforms, gloves, and equipment. For those of you that have ever watched the Ken Burns Documentary called Baseball, you will know why.

Second order of business is today's topic, Topps 1971 baseball cards. These were my favorite set growing up, here are a few ( Johnny Bench and Thurman Munson ).

After years of searching to replace these cards, yes, mom tossed them away when we moved to Scarborough, I just recently finished my search to reacquire the complete 715 card set. It took me about 7 years of card shows, and e-bay purchases to bring it all home.

As the Jays face the Yankees in New York, I will likely be spending some time reflecting on some of the old Jays/Yankees series and memories.

See you all at the ballpark !