Cha-Cha Cha-Chas Into the Hall of Fame

Hey baseball fans! As some of you know, there are three Puerto Rican-born Hall of Famers in Cooperstown: Roberto Clemente, Roberto Alomar, and one other person. There are also three Hall of Fame position players who played for the 1962 San Francisco Giants pennant-winning squad: Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and one other person. The “one other person” on both […]

Scenes and Quotes From San Francisco and the Giants Clubhouse After Winning the 1962 Playoff

A while ago I hunted down the San Francisco Chronicle from the day after the Giants beat the Dodgers to win the 1962 N.L. pennant. It’s been overlooked by the World Series that followed, but the race was a thriller that nearly matched 1951’s, and was the start of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry in California. To […]

Serie Mundial inédita. (An original World Series)

Las sombras de Polo Grounds persiguen al pequeño centerfielder de los Gigantes de Nueva York que corre como un velocista de 100 metros. Lo único que se ve es el 24 burbujeando en la zona de seguridad, Willie Mays estiró el guante y la pelota aterrizó en la malla, parecía estar leyendo un libro. Giró y lanzó al cuadro en medio de su caida, a un lado flotaba la gorra.

Just How Good is Jim Thome?

Jim Thome recently passed Mark McGwire for the #9 spot on the all-time home run list with 584 round trippers.  So, an obvious question arises: Just how good is Jim Thome?  Or, better yet, does his career really reflect Hall of Fame numbers? The answer is Yes.  At the end of the 2009 season, Jim […]

Ralph Houk un manager que dejó huella. (Ralph Houk: A skipper in a mission)

El pasado miércoles 21 de julio de 2010 falleció en su casa de Winter Haven, Fla el manager de los Yanquis de Nueva York, Tigres de Detroit y Medias Rojas de Boston. De inmediato imágenes de mis lecturas sobre los Yanquis de comienzos de los años sesenta tintinearon en la pantalla de mis recuerdos. El eco de sus declaraciones y de algunos de los peloteros de esos equipos resonó en algún lugar de mi cráneo.

Back to the Future: The SPORT Magazine 1969 Major League All-Stars

While going through my old magazines (again) I saw an article from the July 1964 issue of SPORT titled “A Look Into the Future: The 1969 All-Star Team” written by John Devaney.  Devaney polled more than 50 big league managers, coaches, veteran players, writers and sportscasters to find the players whom they believed would be […]

Hall of Fame Killers

Any Seamheads reader should know by now that there’s a lot of good information at baseball-reference.com. In particular, in the Play Index. For instance: in the last decade, Miguel Tejada led the majors with 223 groundball double play, 28 more than runner-up Paul Konerko. That is only one ground ball short of Jim Rice’s 224 […]

Alabama, the Cradle of Baseball Greatness

A little while ago I started to realize that Alabama has produced some of the greatest players in baseball history. I remembered reading Bill James making a point somewhere in his Historical Baseball Abstract from the ’80s about sports players tending to come from poor areas. I thought about Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, and […]