An Eye for The Strike Zone
Gus Niarhos had one of the most impressive eyes for the strike zone.
Still Looking for A Missing Bud Podbielan Corner
I picked up most of this card in my early 2022 return to a card shop had not been visited since childhood. I say “most” because there is a missing corner which could still be floating around in a shoebox somewhere.
The ’52 Topps Coin-Flip Guy Finished What Kershaw Could Not
Picked up by the Braves on the results of a coin toss, Vern Bickford threw a no-hitter that would be in line with modern pitch counts.
Woody Main and the Wooden Fence
The story behind the wooden fence appearing in the background of so many 1950s Pittsburgh Pirates cards.
The Cubs Want a New Pitcher, This One’s Broken
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.
Moonwalking With Sandy
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.
Never Injured, Bob Friend Spent a Lot of Time with the Nurse
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.
Catch. The. Ball.
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.