Posted on 10/26/2014 5:00:54 PM PDT by fhayek
As I have mentioned before on other threads, I was very fortunate to have company season tickets I was responsible to use for eleven years in the Frank White / George Brett era. They were field level three rows behind the field boxes right on the third base line. They were just under the upper deck enough to stay dry in the rain. I saw a lot of ball games in the 78 to 89 era. Went to two WS games, man it was great.
Of course I recognize the great guys you mention (hazy on Heath though) and we all know that we saw a special moment with Baumgartner tonight.
I want the Royals to come back to KC, play small ball and win, dang it.
The Pine Tar game was in the era when I followed the Royals every game. George was a fierce competitor and that game was a great example.
We have had a lot of talk about Mantle and one thing wasn’t mentioned. He came from the tri-state area where Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri meet. It was poor mining country when he was growing up. That was an era when ball players played hard and lived hard and Mickey was one to the rowdies. It is more known in his home country but he was not someone you would want your sister to marry.
Mantle better than Mays? What’re you drinking?
I was a pimply face teenager when I went to a minor league game between the Oneonta (NY) Yankees and the Batavia (NY) Trojans in the A-league NewYorkPenn league. Mike Heath, a shortstop at the time hit two home runs. I, the ever intrepid youth, went down to the field and asked the young infielder “canI ave yer anograf?” He signed my scoresheet , and I was a lifelong fan. He was a serviceable catcher for the Detroit Tigers, and I still have his baseball card.
Did the game end? I was watching football. What’s the count now?
Mantle better than Mays. Every day, every year. How many MVP’s did Mays win?
I must congratulate the Giants tonight but now it is back to KC! GO ROYALS!!
That is a great clip covering that great incident. On that page there is a collection of clips on Bo Jackson. The one where he catches the ball and runs up the Kaufmann Stadium wall vertically was amazing to watch. He was a real trip to watch for the brief time he played as well.
Yes, I read his autobiography. He treated his wife, Merlin, pretty poorly, by his own admission.
Small ball shall rule it all !!!!!!!
Having Brandon Belt bunt was genius!
Frank White was so cool in that clip - he just cracked me up.
Bo had a couple of great moments, the one you allude to, as well as the football clip, where he makes the TD catch (vs Seattle?), and keeps on running into the stadium tunnel.
Amazing athlete, to be sure.
That tri-state area where he grew up was about as hard an area as the poorest part of the West Virginia hills or the south Alabama area above the panhandle. Pitcher, Oklahoma (which was in his background) still had poisonous city water into the early 90s.
I was building a building down near there once and on the job site next to us an excavator I knew had a D-9 parked overnight. The next morning he showed up and it had disappeared — feel into a poorly dug mine below the site that no one knew was there and test borings had failed to pick up.
The sad thing is that Frank got treated badly by the Royals after all his years of service. Glass cut his pay as their community relations director by 2/3rd and then cut him as the color commentator with no explanation. He won’t set foot in Kaufmann stadium.
He is as genuine a great guy in person as he appears on that clip. I have spent time with him after his active years when he was a minor league coach for the Royals. While I love the Royals, I can’t stand that the Glass family have stomped on one that gave their whole life to the organization especially as he was a class act gentleman for all those years.
East Coast bias pretty evident. Let’s look at the numbers—
Mays— more runs, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, RBI’s, stolen bases, total bases, better career B.A.
Mantle— more walks AND more strikeouts than Mays despite fewer plate appearances. Slugging %— Tied with Mays.
one stat— Total bases Mays = 6066. Total bases Mantle = 4511.
Sorry, Mantle played on better teams. He wasn’t the better player for most of their careers....
I am proud to say MadBum is a friend of mine...
Holy cow ! A D-9 ? That must have been something - hope it was insured.
The other clip on there is Chapman throwing his record 106 MPH pitch. I saw a preseason game this year with Chapman throwing for Cinnci against the Royals. It was the game where a line drive got hit right back and hit Chapman in the head and took him down like a steer at the slaughter house. I was only six rows back on the field level and I thought it had possibly killed him, but he recovered and pitched later in the year.
It was so bad they ended the game right there by mutual agreement. Everyone on the field and in the stands was shaken.
I did not know that - too bad. Of course, Yogi wouldn’t set foot in Yankee Stadium for years, for similar reasons, shabby treatment by Steinbrenner. They reconciled, after many years, hopefully, the same thing happens, with Frank. The game, and the fans, are worth a lot more than a greedy ownership.
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