Woody Main and the Wooden Fence
The story behind the wooden fence appearing in the background of so many 1950s Pittsburgh Pirates cards.
The story behind the wooden fence appearing in the background of so many 1950s Pittsburgh Pirates cards.
Paul Minner had been playing off and on in the Majors since 1946, though it would take the expanded checklists of 1952 for him to finally get rookie cards from Topps and Bowman.
There’s a favorite stat that gets passed around whenever Mariano Rivera is discussed: More people have walked on the moon than scored against him in 16 years of postseason play. Taking the story further, fewer players homered off of Rivera in the postseason than travelled with the Apollo 11 spacecraft in the first lunar mission. Neil Armstrong became the first to touch the lunar surface, and Cleveland Indians catcher Sandy Alomar, Jr. became the first to touch Rivera for a postseason homerun in 1997.
Bob Friend was durable. He was never on the disabled list at any point in his career, but that didn’t stop him from hanging around the office of the team doctor. He married the resident nurse.
A catcher’s primary purpose, to put it in the simplest form, is to catch the ball. In terms of catching a ball, Charles Johnson may have been among the best ever.
He’s wearing a Yankees cap. There’s a Yankees logo in the lower left corner. He pitches for the Washington Senators.
Mike Morgan nearly set a record for the number of teams played for. Could the dozen teams he pitched with be assembled into an epic road trip?
Which set of stats should I believe? Jermaine Dye showed some very good batting skills over the course of his career, averaging nearly 30 HRs/100 RBIs per 162 games. Joe Posnanski pointed out that Dye’s 2006 season would have won him the 1988 National League Triple Crown. Yet he barely averaged one win above replacement over the same period and his wOBA is just in the .350s.
Searching the background of a 1952 Topps common to find Mickey Mantle.
Yep. MLB voters gave the 1992 American League MVP award to a relief pitcher, one who coined the term “walk-off” to describe homeruns he had personally given up.