Embarrassing Pictures of Alex Knowles in Little League

I have to say... I'm very disappointed that Alex hasn't added anything to this blog since he was made a member. In order to shame him, I'm posting a few embarrassing pictures of him from his little league days. I just un-earthed these on the net. Here's a baseball card from his playing days:



Although he's been attempting to keep it a secret from all of us, Alex is now coaching a team from a wealthy enclave in West LA. In this photo, you can see that Number 34 is upset to the point of crying. Alex is trying to comfort the little boy, describing the kind of party that they'll have once they leave the ballpark:



Here is another image from Alex's glory days as a player. He made the all-star team:

Bulldog

Orel Hershiser, pitching in 1999 for the famous Mercury Mets

Years ago, my friends and I used to play midnight baseball for fun. Midnight baseball is like regular baseball, but it's played at night-time. Since baseballs are very small, to play midnight baseball you need to have a lighted area. That's why we played at Fern Bell park, the home of Huntsville's little league version of the American League:



Fern Bell had lighting, and our friend Evan was very tiny. He also happened to be an umpire at the park, and therefore knew his way around. Evan knew where the light switches were for the whole park, and he would shimmy through a window in order to get them lit. With the lights on, not only could we see, but we could play our games as late as 1 or 2 am without being molested by the cops (our illumination apparently lended us an aire of legitimacy). One day, Evan found a box full of old jerseys in the clubhouse, and he let us all in so that we could root through them and take what we wanted. I didn't really want any shirts, mostly because I was already 6'2" and way too tall to be able to properly wear any of them.

There was something I wanted, though, and that night at Fern Bell I felt compelled to steal it: a framed biography of Orel Hershiser, complete with pictures of him not only in his heroic days as a pitcher for the Dodgers but also decked out in his little league uniform at the age of 7 or 8. The print had been badly faded by the sun, and had obviously been hanging in that office for a long time before I took it as my own. Typing this now I kind of feel bad (perhaps someone was very sad the next morning when they found out that Orel was missing!), but at the time I was quite proud of myself... I think my dad was kind of proud, too... he helped me to hang it in a place of honor and now it's one of the only things in my bedroom at my parents' house that is the same as it was back when I lived there.

Anyhoo...



Orel Hershiser is my favorite baseball player of all time, and he has held that position for most of my baseball life (albeit there was a prolonged period of timed during which Ken Griffey Jr. reigned supreme). I like "Bulldog" because he is firmly ingrained in my mind as a symbol of my childhood... I was almost six when the Series happened, and that year the Fall Classic coincided with my family's trip to Walt Disney World (I must say that two decades later I have a firmer remembrance of the Series than I do Disney World). My father is from Los Angeles, and so he had an emotional attachment to the boys in blue. Their opponents were the Oakland Athletics, who were stocked up with offensive giants who had spent their minor league days hitting home runs out of Huntsville's own Joe W. Davis stadium.

It had to have been a tough choice for me, but I ended up siding with the Dodgers. After all, family ties are more important than hometown ones. And it was a great year to be a Dodgers fan! Behind the arm of Orel Hershiser, the Dodgers shocked the A's, who everyone had assumed would use their bats to overpower Los Angeles. The A's lost in 5 games though, and Hershiser got the Series MVP award for his absolutely heroic efforts in overtaking Oakland.

A lot of people think about Kirk Gibson and his hobble-off home run when they think of that Series. Hershiser, though, was the real hero. He pitched two complete games, and one of them was a shut-out. Not only that, but he went three for three as a hitter and got an RBI!

The '88 World Series happened after Hershiser pitched one of the greatest single seasons in Major League history, and at one point he threw 59 scoreless innings in a row, one more than Don Drysdale's 1968 record (according to Tom Lasorda, Hershiser was committed to stopping at 57 because he didn't want to break the record of a former Dodger, but Drysdale gave him the nod and he ended up beating the record by one as a courtesy). This season alone would be good enough for me to vote him into the hall of fame, but apparently that isn't very likely. Hershiser had a good season in '89, but after that he got injured and wasn't really same. He had a few good seasons with the Indians in the mid-nineties (most notably in 1995, when he won the ALCS MVP on the way to the Indians World Series loss to the Braves).

What's more important about Orel Hershiser, however, is the fact that he seems like a genuinely nice fellow. I have this commemorative tape of the '88 series, and it features interviews with all of the players and managers... all of them come off kind of like louses, especially the A's players. Canseco looks rough, and Lasorda looks worse (you certainly wouldn't want to meet either in an alley!) Orel Hershiser, on the other hand, is a model American! Appearing almost ego-less, Hershiser comes off kind of like an excited kid, untouched by the spotlight, as he describes the Series with words like "swell." Unfortunately I couldn't find this interview on youtube, so I had to settle for a latter-day interview from a poker tournament. The poker interview doesn't really do him justice, mostly because he uses too much jargon. Nonetheless, we can tell how sweet of a man he is. Check out at the end when he talks about having all the other poker stars sign a baseball for him!!!! What a class act:



Anyway, the point is that Orel Hershiser isn't only a great pitcher but a grade-a charmer, and that's why he's my favorite player ever. If you have any doubt at all about the charm, I suggest you watch this:

Game Over

I posted this on the Qwesi long ago, but due to the subject matter I thought it would be a good thing to repeat on this blog. It's a youtube video of a Nintendo RBI Baseball reinactment of that astounding tenth inning of the 1986 World Series, Game 6. You know, the one where the BoSox choke?

A-Rosing to the Occasion in April

This day in baseball history! (Taken from this website.)

April 13

1963 Pete Rose triples off of Pirate pitcher Bob Friend to collect his first major league hit.
1984 On the same date he got his first major league hit 21-years earlier, Pete Rose, as a member of the Expos, doubles off Phillie hurler Jerry Koosman for his 4000th hit.




April 14

1941 Pete Rose was born. (He's an Aries.)

Aprill 22

1990 Rose pleaded guilty to two charges of filing false income tax returns not showing income he received from selling autographs, memorabilia, and from horse racing winnings. (taken from wikipedia, of course.)

So Typical.

Central	W	L	PCT	GB
St. Louis	8	3	.727	---
Chicago	6	4	.600	1.5
Milwaukee	6	4	.600	1.5
Cincinnati	6	5	.545	2.0
Pittsburgh	4	6	.400	3.5
Houston	3	8	.273	5.0

I can't wait for the part of the season when the Reds start to tie Milwaukee for second place, knocking Chicago into third. And I bet the rest of you just can't wait until Milwaukee knocks St. Louis into a close second place. I won't be as excited as you, of course, since this will mean Chicago will be in third, Houston in fourth, Cincinnati in fifth, and Pittsburgh in last.

I'm going to bed.

Those Stars...

If I were Reggie Bush, I would play with the number "256" drawn underneath my eyes in white paint on a black background. Why? Because I'm from Huntsville, Alabama, and in Huntsville the area code is "256." As a Huntsvillian, I'm of course a major fan of the Huntsville Stars.

.

That's right, that's Jose Canseco, OUR hometown hero back in 1985 before he knocked his way into the majors and stole his way into our hearts as the first member of baseball's 40/40 club. Although Jose was only on the team for a short while, his brother Ozzie was a regular in the Stars' lineup for a long time, boosting ticket sales as "the next big thing" even though he never really became one:

I'm pretty sure that Ozzie is actually striking out in that picture. Here's a look at his lifetime stats, for anyone who is interested in more than his impersonation of Jose on an episode of the Surreal Life.

But Huntsville had more than just those two Identical "Bash Brothers." In the 80s, our lineup included men like Walt Weiss, Terry Steinbeck, and the indominible Mark McGwire (look at how much more attractive he was before he got really big and grew facial hair to cover his acne):



As a kid, being a fan of the Stars was always fun because the Stars were a farm team of the Oakland Athletics, one of the best teams around. A lot of hotshot young stars buzzed through our town in those days, all with something to prove on the diamond. It made for a very entertaining minor league experience! And even when the Stars moved on, they still came back every once in a while to enchant us - Jose, I remember, showed up a few times as a first base coach when he was injured in the early 90s. The A's also came through Huntsville once a year for an exhibition game in which they'd play the Stars (always losing, gracefully). I got to go once, and I got to watch a little kid race with Rickey Henderson around the bases (Rickey didn't lose gracefully, though, either because he was told to act mean when the kid beat him or because Rickey is just like that)! That was the year that I got autographs from shifty Tony LaRussa, who was managing the A's at the time, and Goose Gossage, who was ending his career with them.

The last big star I remember playing for Huntsville was Todd van Poppel, aka "the Next Nolan Ryan," who was 11-3 with a 0.97 ERA and 170 strikeouts as a senior at Martin High School in Arlington, Texas. I think I got his autograph on about fifteen different things, including a Stars Hat that had a big white Dr. Pepper logo stamped on the bill. Van Poppel didn't really work out that well, though, and the name "Stars" started to seem like a bit of a joke as the A's drifted away from their once-lofty position on top of the AL. The most excited that I can remember anyone getting about the Stars after the early 90s came as a result of something that didn't really have anything to do with the Stars: Michael Jordan was playing baseball for the Birmingham Barons and they were stopping through town:

Do you remember the baseball scene in Space Jam? Seeing that movie made me very proud to be a Stars fan, because MJ was playing against none other than the Stars themselves!

Unfortunately, the last decade or so hasn't yielded many proud moments... in 1998, the team switched affiliation from the A's to the Brewers, a move that ownership claims was because Milwaukee is a NL team, which means that Stars fans could watch more televised games featuring their former heroes (thanks to the ubiquity of Atlanta Braves broadcast in the North Alabama region). No one really believed that explanation, though. Moving from an A's franchise to a Brewers franchise was a significant blow to our town's baseball self-esteem, and it was unquestionably a demotion for the poor Stars. As the years marched on, the Stars began to draw fewer and fewer fans... Sure, a few genuinely talented kids came through (well, Prince Fielder did), but it was nothing like the glory days - when Canseco and McGwire were on the same Stars team! When I was a child I used to play the "guess the attendance" game every time I went to the stadium, and I remember that the numbers were always around 5 or 6,000. Last September, however, I went to the Southern League North Division Championship game (the one before the "Southern League World Series"), and was surrounded by no more than 300 people. The Stars won the game, but the victory seemed hollow.

This season, the Stars decided that the way to solve their attendance woes was to radically redesign their logo, which had remained essentially the same since my childhood. Unfortunately, I've just found out that the new logo looks like this:


Major bummer, dudes.

At least they have a sense of humor, though.

Mr. Red vs. The Gapper

Get to know Gapper!

Born: Unknown (still a few years from maturity though)

Height: 5'7" (insists he's 5'7 3/4")

Weight: A few pounds short of the elevator limit

Physical Aspects: Red & Furry skin, Reds Jersey (?), "Junior" style backwards cap

Career Goals: 1 at-bat against the Phillie Phanatic, 1 pitching appearance versus Bernie Brewer, To last as long and be as beloved as Mr. Red

Wants to Meet: YOU!! (Say "Hi" at the next Reds game)

How He Got His Name: When he first got to Cincinnati, our big, red furry friend didn't have a name. At Redsfest 2002 a contest was launched and the Reds left the naming up to the fans. With over 6,000 submissions during the month of December, we were overwhelmed with the response. After sifting through all the great names, the Reds decided that the name that truly fit was "Gapper". The winner of the Name the Mascot contest received season tickets for the inaugural season in Great American Ball Park. Thanks to all those who participated and congratulations to our winners!

Get to know Mr. Red! Height: 47 baseballs (stacked one on top another) Weight: ?? (He can't see the numbers on the scale when he stands on top of it!) Physical Aspects: Huge Baseball Head, Complete Reds Uniform, Signature Brand Shoes (Air Mr. Red's) Favorite Reds Moment: There are just too many to have a favorite!!! But he loves to talk about our 1990 Championship, Johnny Bench Night, the Big Red Machine and this year's team!! (Talking about 4,192 will bring him tears of joy!) Favorite Foods: Chili, Ribs, Hot Dogs, & Wooden Bats Best Friends: All Reds' Fans & Gapper Likes: Doubleheaders, New Ball Parks, Racing members of his family, and the Cincinnati Reds of course!!! Dislikes: Rainouts, Blind Umpires, and Reds' Losses (they keep him up all night!) Motto: "The key to a happy life is Reds baseball!"

My money goes on Mr. Red. But everyone over the age of 12 is probably voting for Mr. Red. He's just such a classic! WHERE THE HELL DID THE GAPPPPPER COME FROM? B-O-L-O-G-N-A.