Replies

...with the Phillies endorsing Lifebuoy deodorant soap, became a clever joke after a fan took a can of paint to it making it read (the fan's addendum in bold) The Phillies Use Lifebuoy ...and they STILL stink! I had always taken that incident as the signature exclamation point of fan frustration with the "Phutile Phillies" clubs of 1919-1947...

Maybe that's why they switched to Ballantine Beer.

Thanks for the great stories, and good luck with your book. Sounds right down my alley - - me and my family are baseball nuts and I coach two little league teams every year, "in-house" and travel, and have three kids playing. Please be kind to Richie Ashburn. He had a lot of funny things to say about the '62 Amazins over the years.

Please be kind to Richie Ashburn. He had a lot of funny things to say about the '62 Amazins over the years.

I liked Richie Ashburn. Thought it took too long to put him in the Hall of Fame, unlike an awful lot of the Veterans Committee picks, Ashburn really did deserve the honour.

I'll tell you a funny Ashburn story. He got close to Marvelous Marv Throneberry that season. One day in Wrigley Field, he spotted a rather sexy looking woman he thought he recognised, and beckoned Throneberry over for a look. "Marv, have a look at her," he said. Throneberry smiled that shy little smile he had and said, "Oh, that's my wife."

Ashburn's jaw dropped. Then he realised why he recognised the woman - Throneberry kept a very sexy looking photo of her (we're talking swimsuit issue style, folks) tacked up on a sidewall in his locker.

Another time, Ashburn was desperate to keep shortstop Elio Chacon from causing collisions in the outfield. Chacon was a shortstop who ran back for any and everything he thought he could get, usually plowing into Ashburn. When Ashburn realised Chacon spoke very little English, he went to a bilingual Met named Joe Christopher and asked him, roughly, how do you se habla "I got it" Espanol. Christopher told him, Yo la tengo! Ashburn couldn't wait. Sure enough, here came a short fly to left center. Ashburn comes motoring in from center. Frank Thomas comes gunning in from right. Elio Chacon is running out from shortstop. Yo la tengo! Yo la tengo! Ashburn hollered. Chacon stopped on the proverbial dime. Ashburn heaved a sigh of relief and lined up for the catch.

This time, Frank Thomas plowed into Chacon. Richie Ashburn probably wondered if he should have called the paramedics. From Bellevue.

Ashburn and Throneberry both won boats at the end of the 1962 season. Throneberry won his because he'd hit a circle on the Howard Clothes sign on the outfield fence more than any of his mates; Ashburn won his because he was voted the team's most valuable player. Not only did neither man live anywhere near the water at the time (Throneberry lived then in Collierville, Tennessee, miles away from the Wolf River; Ashburn lived on the lone pray-rie in his native Nebraska in the offseasons during his playing career), but Throneberry got stuck having to declare his boat on his 1962 income tax. "You earned it," the commissioner's player advisor on legal affairs told the Marvelous One. "Ashburn was voted his boat." Not that Ashburn had much better luck. When he retired to accept the broadcasting job with the Phillies, he docked the boat in the Philadelphia region - and it sank. Needless to say, Ashburn's broadcasting career went the opposite way of the boat, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. I used to wonder what would have been if the Mets had replaced, say, Ralph Kiner with Richie Ashburn. Ashburn with Lindsey Nelson and Bob Murphy would have been priceless.