Posted on 01/23/2015 8:09:54 PM PST by Beave Meister
Read my tag line....I’ve had ever since I joined FR.
At almost 84 years old he would not make the list of the top 100 oldest living players. Wiki only goes back to 100, but I dare say he may have not evn been in the top 200. Baseball players live long lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_living_Major_League_Baseball_players
Baseball’s oldest living player is 99 year old catcher Mike Sandlock (C) who played 195 games with the Boston Braves, Brooklyn Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates.
Football has a similar list that goes back to the top 1,000 oldest livng players.
http://www.oldestlivingprofootball.com/oldestlivingproplayers.htm#918037073
Football’s oldest living player is 100 year old J. William ‘Bill’ Glassford who played in 1937 for the Cincinnati Bengals.
Pro sports should create a mandatory class for all pro athletes and call it “The Ernie Banks School of class”...maybe then they might be able to conduct themselves appropriately.
The Eddie Mathews bat was probably patterned for more power as the thin handles and think barrels were more for the power hitters. The Nellie Fox model with the thick handle for more for just making contact and getting singles.
I had several bats from that era but for the life of me can’t remember the names but that has been over 55 years ago.
In my opinion Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio were the best middle infielders ever! And both are Hall of Famers!
“The Chicago Cubs were playing a doubleheader against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The date doesn’t matter; it could have been any time from 1953 to 1971. Ernie Banks, the always ebullient, always energetic slugger who famously told us, “Let’s play two,” popped his head out of the Cubs dugout, looked first at the bright blue sky and then at the big crowd, and said, “Let’s play three!”
That was Ernie Banks. One game in a day wasn’t enough, and when there were two, he wanted three. No one, but no one, loved playing the game more than Ernie Banks. And not many played it better, especially as a young man when he changed, at least for a few years, the way baseball looked at the position of shortstop. He is a Hall of Famer, one of only 26 players who have hit at least 500 home runs (he finished his 19-year career with 512). And he is, in every way, on and off the field, Mr. Cub.”
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