Wikipedia Rabbit Holes: Psychedelic Spooks Edition

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Wikipedia Rabbit Holes: Double Entendre Nicknames Edition

 From the Wikipedia page of Tommy Baldwin, journeyman English football player:

It was thought that Baldwin was known as 'the sponge' for his ability, under pressure, to hold the ball and shield it skilfully from opponents while seeking an opening to set up an attack, but according to his interview on The Chelsea Special podcast, it was because of his ability to soak up alcohol while in the pub with his teammates.

Washington Nationals, Nationals Park

By AgnosticPreachersKid (CC 4.0)

SATURDAY, JULY 22: The Washington Nationals downed the San Francisco Giants, 10-1, at Nationals Park in Southeast Washington. Angela and I were there, lower deck, first base side. Josiah Gray pitched seven strong innings to record the win for the Nats, and shortstop C.J. Abrams contributed a home run.

We made this trip mostly to cap off our Year of Live Baseball, to mark the end of our tour of minor league ballparks with a visit to The Show. Angela gave me the choice of city and team. I asked to go to Washington and see the Nats, feeling that it was a loose end that needed tying up. My years as a Little League player and my early years as a fan were spent in the Virginia suburbs of Washington - Vienna, to be exact. But my family's arrival in the D.C. area coincided exactly with the demise of Washington's major league team, the Senators, who decamped to become the Texas Rangers. I became a fan of the Baltimore Orioles, just up the road, which was no hardship (the Orioles were consistently strong in the 1970s). But it would have been nice to have a baseball team in the District to root for. And I had never been to a Nationals game since their arrival in 2005. And I was overdue for a visit to Washington, a city I have a lot of love and nostalgia for.

The Nationals were born in 1969 as the Montreal Expos. Over 30-odd seasons, the Expos boasted some elite playing talent: Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, Vladimir Guerrero. But they were also burdened with home parks that were ill-suited to major league baseball (Jarry Park might've been fine for the minors; Olympic Stadium was miserable for any purpose) and a shaky financial base overall. 

Meanwhile, however you might feel about it, Metro D.C. boomed between 1971 and 2005, in both raw population and disposable dollars. After multiple rumors over the years of the Expos' leaving Montreal and of Washington getting a new team, when the news broke that the Expos were heading to D.C., it seemed okay, with a whiff of inevitability. Unlike most franchise moves, I didn't hate this one.

The new Washington club would not keep the name Expos (or the garish uniforms; I'm not sure they ever throw back for those). But they would also not revive the name Senators. Notwithstanding the Hall of Fame pitching career of Walter Johnson, culminating in one World Series victory in 1924, the Senators had often been a punchline: "First in war, first in peace, last in the American League." Plus, the actual United States Senate had seen its reputation suffer. Nationals or Nats had been the informal alt-identity of the Senators. To combine it with the classic script lettering of the latter-day Senators of  the '60s -- that's pretty good branding, in my book.

The Nationals built the quality of the team gradually, first through the draft and farm system, then a burst of free-agent spending, which paid off in 2019 with a World Series title. Frustratingly, however, this success could not be sustained: the Nats couldn't meet the salary requirements to keep most of its best players. (Sadly, in August, we learned that Nats pitcher Stephen Strasburg is retiring at age 35. Strasburg led the team to glory in 2019 but has barely pitched since then due to nerve damage in his elbow. He was the one player the front office signed to a max contract.)

In the alternating boom-and-bust manner of many U.S sports franchises now, the Nationals now rely on young, cheap talent. Take the two young stars of the 7/22 game for the Nats. Josiah Gray was the Nats' representative on the All-Star team this year. C.J. Abrams was having a Bobblehead Day the day we were at the park. Crucially, each of them is on a bargain salary, in the $700,000 neighborhood. When the Nats mature and become contenders again, will the financial will be there to make another run? Flags fly forever, it is said, but do earnings reports know the meaning of forever?

Anyway, it was a nice weekend. In a novel move for us, we rode Amtrak from Raleigh to Washington's Union Station. Our hotel was a walkable distance from the ballpark, and close to a Metro rail station. So it was a car-free weekend, and our Saturday jaunts (to the Smithsonian and to visit a friend in far NW D.C.) were easily manageable via Metro. 

Nationals Field, which debuted in 2008, gets high marks. I'm in the bag for any newish ballpark with a grass playing surface and bars and restaurants within walking distance. Much of Southeast Washington near the Anacostia River is newly developed; I have no childhood memory of this part of the city, because no tourists would linger there in those years. The park's playing dimensions are pretty symmetrical and not unusual. The designers did throw in a funny angle in the outfield fence in center field, just for the sake of local color.

We ignored the city's fine-dining scene on this visit; hopefully we can rectify this oversight next time. However, I've been hearing about Ben's Chili Bowl for many years, and thought I'd like to try it... Maybe it's cheating, but when I learned Ben's has a stand at Nationals Park, I figured I would check off that box at the game. The half-smoke with chili, falling apart in my hands, was good. 

Side note about the game and my sense of mortality: As a kid playing Little League ball in Vienna, I owned a Carl Yastrzemski autograph model fielder's glove. The Giants' starting left fielder in this game was Michael Yastrzemski, who is (get this) Carl's grandson. His 32-year-old grandson, at that. 

Historically, Washington produced quite a few notable players and other figures in the baseball industry, especially in the early decades of professionalism. 

• Although biographical details are scant, several Black Washingtonians made an impact in Negro League baseball, including Nip Winters and Script Lee, who both pitched for the Hilldale Club in the Eastern Colored League during the 1920s.
• Art Devlin (1879-1948) was a two-sport star at Georgetown, then played third base for John McGraw's New York Giants from 1904 to 1911. He was a brawling, hustling Irishman of the type McGraw liked. He played with three pennant winners in New York. 
• Doc White (1879-1968), also a Georgetown man, was a quality left-handed pitcher, winning 189 big league games. He earned his nickname because he was a practicing dentist for a time. Doc pitched for the Hitless Wonders, the 1906 Chicago White Sox, and got a save and a win over the crosstown Cubs in the two concluding games of the World Series that year.
• Lu Blue (1897-1958) - An interesting name for an interesting player. Lu was a switch-hitting first baseman without home run power but with a great ability to get on base. He came up with the Detroit Tigers in 1921 during a meh period for the club, the latter Ty Cobb years. Lu subsequently played for the St. Louis Browns and the White Sox, and was a regular for 12 years all told. He grew up in DC and returned to the area in his post-playing years. 
• George McQuinn (1910-1970), an Arlington, VA native, was a line drive hitter and a slick-fielding first baseman. He spent most of his big-league career with the mostly bad St. Louis Browns, but capped his career as the regular 1B on the World Series champion Yankees of 1947.
• Maury Wills (1932-2022) was the Los Angeles Dodgers' shortstop for their brilliant early-1960s run. He won two Gold Gloves and in 1962 set a single-season MLB record by stealing 104 bases. He played in four World Series and was on the winning side in three (1959, 1963, 1965). Maury graduated from Cardozo High School, not far from Nationals Park in the District.

Brooks Robinson

 

Baseball great Brooks Robinson passed away on September 26th, aged 86. He was at the heart of the Baltimore Orioles teams that I loved in the 1970s, a fixture at third base, a 16-time Gold Glove winner. He remained around the team even after retirement, and became a favorite adopted son of the city of Baltimore. Brooks's national profile went way up in after his MVP performance in the 1970 World Series, with the fielding gems he crafted and which have lived on in highlight reels ever since. I think of him first as a sweet-natured down-to-earth guy. From memory I can easily cue up the sound of his voice, that high pitched Arkansas accent, from local commercials and post-game interviews. Brooks had a Walter Mitty quality, giving hope to the balding, slope-shouldered anti-phenoms of the world. He epitomized the saying that an athlete is one thing, a baseball player is something else. 

I've been looking over his numbers, and at what Bill James wrote about him in the Historical Abstract. It's possible, in light of latter-day analytics, that we (Oriole fans and others of his contemporaries) overrated Brooks somewhat: that the dazzling defensive highlight reel outshone his offensive abilities, which were good but not dazzling. He was possibly the greatest fielding third baseman who ever played. But overall, Bill James has him at number 7 on the all-time 3B rankings, and he's probably fallen a notch or two since that list was published in 2001. There were years in the heart of his career where Brooks was an average hitter, or a little worse.

Brooks led the league twice in GIDP, which is evidence that he was a slow runner. But also, he led the league four times in Sacrifice Flies (and wow, there are a lot of ex-Orioles near the top of this list). He didn't strike out much, which speaks to good strike zone judgment and bat control. He didn't have brute batting power, but I'd say he had the timing and mechanics needed to ride the ball a long way. Given Brooks's obvious defensive skill set, gained through hard work and practice and study of the game, it makes sense to me to think of his offensive skill set this way. In his career, Brooks hit 268 home runs and 114 sacrifice flies. Robin Yount is the only player with fewer HR's and more SF's (251 and 123). 

I had a memory that turns out to be apocryphal: Brooks had a sporting-goods business that got into trouble, at or near the end of his playing career. In my mind, Baltimore fans had spontaneously come forward and donated cash to help Brooks stave off bankruptcy. According to Wikipedia, this was an exaggeration (though there was public concern that Brooks would lose his house). Wikipedia also contains an anecdote that in 1976, when Earl Weaver told Brooks he was being benched in favor of young Doug DeCinces (a handsome, broad-shouldered phenom of the classic type), Brooks asked the Orioles to explore the possibility of trading him. The Chicago White Sox were interested, but would not extend Brooks's contract beyond that season. So Brooks vetoed the deal. Late in the 1977 season Brooks retired, having never worn a big-league uniform other than Baltimore's.

Photo: Jay Publishing via tradingcarddb.com, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Captain

 

Basketball Hall of Famer and two-time NBA Finals MVP Willis Reed died on March 21. 

The word "iconic" is overused, in my opinion. But it's hard to avoid it when talking about the 1970 New York Knicks, or Madison Square Garden, or "the Willis Reed Game." 

May 8, 1970 was the day of Game 7 of the NBA Finals, Los Angeles at New York. The atmosphere was heavy with anxious speculation, since Reed had suffered a bad thigh injury a few days earlier. He couldn't possibly play. Could he?

When Reed emerged from the locker room, in uniform, and limped onto the court for warm-ups, the Garden exploded in cheers. Just by showing up for duty, the Knick captain had galvanized the home crowd and transformed doomy angst into a great hope. After tip-off, on the first possession, Reed sank a jump shot. The Garden was enraptured. Second trip downcourt, same thing. By then the Knicks were flying and the Lakers were chained to the floor. Those four points were all Reed would manage, but Walt Frazier would supply 36, and the rout was on. The Knicks built a 27-point halftime lead, and cruised to the franchise's first championship.  

Ray Ratto's obituary at Defector was headlined "Willis Reed Met The Moment."

It’s as big as it is, even still, because Reed always seemed content to let it be what it was; the legend spread as legends used to, by word of mouth and images of his two jumpshots. Reed himself never really said much about it, and he didn't have to. He did the perfect thing at the perfect time when everyone was looking, and then let it speak for itself. The lasting moments are like that.

In 1971 Reed's body seriously started to break down, in a cascading series of leg injuries. This is how I remember him, as a wounded warrior, struggling bravely to summon a ghost of his former self. In this diminished state he helped the Knicks to a second NBA title in 1973.

Writing in the afterglow of the Willis Reed Game, Pete Axthelm lauded Willis as a unifying figure between downtown and uptown, between the glamorous Knicks and the grassroots basketball culture of Harlem and the outer boroughs. Reed pioneered a new style of leadership and of masculinity, in Axthelm's view. This seems a little too grandiose now. A few years later his Knick teammate Bill Bradley wrote more simply that Reed was "the dominant member... the perfect center for our team that year." 

Reed was named to the NBA's 50th and 75th anniversary teams. His career numbers are not in the same stratus as those of the very greatest centers: Russell, Chamberlain, Kareem, or Shaq. (Russell loved Willis's game, however, and Willis and the young Kareem had some phenomenal head-to-head battles in the 69-70 season, recounted by Axthelm.) Willis was a fine versatile player, a great team player, the captain of a two-time champion, an honored part of a great hoops ensemble. 

Willis was named the Finals MVP in both '70 and '73. In neither year is it obvious from the stats sheet that he was the best player in the series. Notably, in both years, the Knicks vanquished the Lakers, featuring Wilt Chamberlain as Willis's opposite number. One could call these awards to Willis a roundabout compliment to Wilt - if you beat The Man, you must be the man - but it's also a comment on each man's style of play and character. Wilt was a monumental talent but a confounding human being. Wilt's teammates always had to fit themselves around Wilt. Whereas Willis fit himself within the team, and met the moments as they came. Willis would lean on Wilt in the post, draw him away from the basket with the threat of his jump shot, act as a decoy. He didn't thrash Wilt, he outfoxed Wilt. Bill Russell is often remembered as Wilt's great foil, but Willis, even on one good leg, had his own anti-Wilt mojo. 

Charlotte Knights, Truist Stadium

Our 2022 baseball quest has reached its end. The Nashville Sounds cruised to an easy 9-1 win over the Charlotte Knights, Friday, September 9. I guess a quest is not supposed to end with the Knights losing, but I am celebrating nonetheless. Whew! 

If it isn't obvious, Angela and I chose which games to attend based on scheduling needs, not baseball criteria. The outcome of this game might have been expected, considering Nashville is in first place in their division of the International League, and Charlotte is in last place in its division. 

This year's Knights team is Class AAA's Island of Misfit Toys. Their best player is a 30-year-old, short, stocky guy churning around center field. Their right fielder looks like Adonis but strikes out too much and doesn't hustle. Their corpulent first baseman is a failed catcher. The best athletes are not good enough players, and vice versa. Maybe the White Sox will deal them a better hand next season.

What can I say about the city of Charlotte that it hasn't already said about itself? It is North Carolina's largest city, and it has the traffic and the steel-and-glass towers to go with that status. The place has grown and changed determinedly in my lifetime. In the 1980s and 90s, Charlotte elbowed its way from being a regional banking center to a national one. In the same time frame, it became a major league pro sports city, landing teams in the NBA and NFL. (Raleigh acquired an NHL hockey team, but it's a consolation prize.)

The rest of the state has a complex about Charlotte: the eldest, most successful sibling that the others have tepidly loyal but slightly resentful feelings toward. A series of politicians has thought that being mayor of Charlotte would be a springboard to higher political office, like Governor or Senator. Most of them have been disappointed. Rural voters don't like city pols in general, and voters in the other North Carolina cities just don't especially like Charlotte.

Despite its strong minor league history, North Carolina has never had an MLB team. It took some doing just to get Charlotte elevated to Class AAA status in 1993. But Charlotte has had a minor-league team almost continuously since 1901. 

The team was called the Hornets for many years. There is a disputed story about a 1775 Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Whatever the authenticity of this document, it is true that a British official referred to Mecklenburg County as a "hornet's nest" of rebellious sentiment. Some Charlotte people take a lot of pride in this history, and adopted the Hornets nickname for their ball team. Of course, the Charlotte NBA franchise has now claimed that nickname. 

My circa-1985 memory is that Charlotte's ballpark was tired and shabby. Truist Stadium, opened in 2014, is pristine; Angela considers it the nicest ballpark we've visited, hands-down.  As McCormick Field is surrounded by trees, Truist is surrounded by skyscrapers. It's a nice view from inside. 

Photo by JBJ

This was a special night at the ballpark for the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. A nun threw out the first pitch; a chorus of seminarians sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game;" the bishop said a few words via the JumboTron. All unexpected, but nice. Ballpark foods consumed: Philly cheese steak (I had it in sandwich form, Angela in nachos form) that was sinfully good. Beer enjoyed: a Hop Drop 'N Roll IPA from NoDa Brewing Company in Charlotte.

Charlotte grew up with the Southern textile manufacturing industry after the Civil War. As a banking and railroad hub, it was first among equals relative to Gastonia, Concord, Albemarle, and others. At heart, though, in its earnest boosterism, Charlotte is a big small town, the biggest mill town of them all. 

• Huntersville native Hoyt Wilhelm (1922-2002) broke into pro ball in 1942 with the Mooresville Moors, just a few miles from home. Class D ball, unaffiliated, the lowest rung of the ladder. He entered WW2 military service for three years, then spent two more seasons in Mooresville. Big-league teams consistently doubted him: he was a knuckleball pitcher, which was unfashionable, and he got a late start due to the war. Wilhelm was a surprise success as a 29-year-old rookie reliever with the New York Giants. He bounced from team to team. But he lasted until age 49 and was an All-Star as late as age 47. He set an MLB record by pitching in 1,070 games. Wilhelm entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985, capping a remarkable, sprawling career.
• Sonny Dixon (1924-2011) has a lot in common with Hoyt Wilhelm: He broke in with his hometown team, the Charlotte Hornets, and he was slow to fledge and leave the nest. He was a right-handed pitcher, a rubber-armed innings eater.  Like Wilhelm, he spent the years 1943-45 fighting WW2. He rose through the minors slowly. Unlike Wilhelm, he had the bad luck to wind up with weak parent organizations; he broke into the bigs with the Senators and then pitched for the Athletics (Philly and KC). His final MLB stint, three appearances, was with the 1956 Yankees. Dixon pitched for the Hornets again at ages 34-35 before hanging them up. He lived most of his life in the Steele Creek community near Charlotte, and is buried there. 
• Minnie Mendoza (b. 1933 or 1934) was born and raised in Cuba, but is an honorary Charlottean thanks to spending 10 seasons with the Charlotte Hornets when they were a Senators/Twins farm team. He was sort of a full-time utility infielder, a Billy Goodman or Tony Taylor type, about the same quality. Why he spent so long at Class AA Charlotte, I don't know--possibly for his coach/mentor qualities. He finally got his cup of coffee in the Show with Minnesota in 1970, when he was 35 (maybe 36) years old.
• Raised in the world of mill-town baseball, Tommy Helms (b. 1941) went on to be the regular second baseman on the 1970 Cincinnati Reds, who won the NL pennant. He was a 9-year MLB regular with the Reds then the Astros. A good glove man, he enabled Pete Rose to switch from 2B to right field. Tommy's nephew Wes Helms is an ex-major league player and formerly managed the Charlotte Knights.
• Dickie Noles (b. 1956) was a journeyman pitcher, a reliever and spot starter. He spent 16 seasons in the pros, pretty evenly divided between the minors and the majors, mostly with the Phillies and Cubs systems. He earned a World Series ring with the 1980 Phillies. Noles and Ray Durham are both alums of Harding High School in Charlotte.
• Ray Durham (b. 1971) came up with the Chicago White Sox and later played with the A's. Giants, and Brewers. He was damn good; I had him on fantasy teams a couple of years. He had some power, stole some bases, and drew walks. He was a plus fielder at second base, at least in his younger years. Durham was named an All-Star twice (1998 and 2000), had six years of over 100 runs scored, and had a long MLB career: 1975 games, 2054 hits.
• Alex Wood (b. 1991) is a lefty power pitcher, currently with the San Francisco Giants. He pitched in three World Series with the Dodgers, winning a ring in 2020. He was an NL All-Star in 2017, amassing a 16-3 won-loss record. He has dealt with injuries off and on since high school, but he is mighty good when healthy.

Asheville Tourists, McCormick Field

In their final home game of 2022, the Asheville Tourists trounced the Bowling Green Hot Rods by a 16-6 score on Sunday evening, September 4. Gray skies and intermittent drizzles were not going to stop the game nor the postgame fireworks show. Angela and I were there along with our daughters Lily and Molly.

Our love affair with Asheville and its environs continues. I grow fonder of this city every time I visit, and I have my kids to thank. Two of them matriculated at UNC-Asheville and each then stuck around for a year or more after graduation. Hannah has since moved away, but Lily is still an AVL resident. This being Labor Day weekend, we made a nice 2 1/2 day visit of it. We selected a hotel in the Biltmore Village area, which I was unfamiliar with, and spent Saturday afternoon shopping and wandering that area. Saturday dinner was at Nine Mile on Montford Avenue. Sunday afternoon we took an excursion to Cherokee and the museum there, about an hour's drive west of Asheville. Then Sunday evening we went to the ballpark. 

McCormick Field was first built in 1924. It is tucked into a hillside in a neighborhood a mile south of downtown, near Mission Hospital. This is one of my favorites among the ballparks we've visited. The park was renovated in 1991-2, replacing wooden grandstands with brick and concrete. So McCormick combines character with modern comfort. The rows of seats rise at a steep angle, and there is plenty of leg room, which was my only mild criticism of Grainger Stadium in Kinston. It was a nearly full house, incidentally, full of high spirits, with a lot of families, some gray heads and many children and youth. 

Behind the outfield fence is a ring of trees. You can see the corner of a football field looking over from a plateau beyond left-center. The distance down the right-field line is only 297', partly mitigated by the 36-foot-high fence there. But center field is only 370' and right-center 320'. It sure seems like a great place to hit. 

McCormick had a wide selection of foods for sale (though execution varied somewhat) and a deep lineup of beers on tap. Ballpark beers enjoyed were both from Asheville: the French Broad River Kolsch, and the Hi-Wire Bed of Nails brown ale

Minor league baseball first emerged in Asheville around the turn of the 20th century. For a few years the team was nicknamed the Moonshiners, then the Mountaineers. In 1915, sportswriters began to refer to the team as the Tourists. This article claims that the nickname was simply due to most of the players being from somewhere other than Asheville. Anyway, the name has stuck; in spite of a couple of efforts to rename the team, it has always reverted to being the Tourists. It's one of the most enduring brands in the sport. 

I like Tourists; it fits. It may not inspire fear or awe; it may be pedestrian like Tars or Tobs or Furnituremakers. But Asheville is about people coming and going, exploring, exchanging, perhaps daydreaming a bit. Wikipedia says that the Cherokee used it as a meeting ground. Hernando de Soto noted the presence of a settlement here. People are attracted here by the natural beauty and outdoor recreation. Two rivers have their confluence in Asheville. It became a regional railroad hub. A scion of the Vanderbilts visited Asheville, was enchanted by it, built a big home here, and transformed the city and the region. There was manufacturing here, but it has also been a center of visual arts, architecture, and music. 

Asheville was home to a Black team (i.e. part of the Negro Leagues) for a couple of years in the 1940s, although I don't have much information on them. 

Asheville has been a fixture in the South Atlantic League since 1980. The movie Bull Durham wrote the Asheville Tourists into Crash Davis's story, and used McCormick Field as a shooting location. The area produced top players a century ago, and produces its share of top players today. 

• Ham Hyatt (1884-1963) grew up in Candler and was recruited by his uncle to enter pro ball. He was an outfielder, and is identified by baseball historian Steve Treder as the first pinch-hitting specialist in the majors. This was with the 1909 Pittsburgh Pirates, who stormed to the National League pennant. Hyatt was summoned off the bench in the first inning of Game 7 of the World Series to replace an injured regular, and played well as the Pirates clinched the world title. Although mostly a reserve in the majors, he was a star in an 11-season minor league career.
• Cliff Melton (1912-1986) broke into pro ball with the Asheville Tourists in 1931. He made a big splash in his major league debut season, 1937, winning 20 games and helping the New York Giants win the NL pennant. He battled arm trouble in later years, and wound up winning 86 games in the majors and 136 more in the minors. 
• Ken Holcombe (1918-2010) grew up around Asheville. His father was a furniture and cabinet maker. Right after high school Holcombe pitched for a year in the King Cotton Textile League, for the Greenville, SC club. He played 17 years as a pro, had some good years in the high minors, and pitched 99 games in the majors, scattered over six seasons. When his playing days were over, he settled in Swannanoa, raised his family, and worked as a supervisor for Beacon Manufacturing, a textile firm specializing in blankets.
• Sammy Stewart (1954-2018), from Swannanoa, was a colorful and effective utility pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles in the late 70s and early 80s. He allowed 0 earned runs in 12 postseason innings as an Oriole. 
• Greg Holland (b. 1985) was active with the Texas Rangers until earlier this season. A pitcher, a right-handed closer, a three-time All-Star. Holland grew up in Marion, in McDowell County, and starred at Western Carolina University. He appeared in the 2014 World Series for the Kansas City Royals, who fell in seven games to Madison Bumgarner and the Giants.
• Cameron Maybin (b. 1987): Born and raised in Asheville, Maybin was still an active player in 2021. A fast, rangy center fielder, he was a big-league regular for about four years, and a useful MLB sub for about 10 more. He played in 3 games as a defensive sub in the 2017 World Series, for the Houston Astros. 

Photos by JBJ