Posted on 05/15/2023 6:02:50 AM PDT by Sokol
I am looking for information about Dizzy Dean. I grew up in Mobile county. When I was a teenager my dad drove me to the Mississippi gulf coast to a small building for Dizzy Dean. It was closed. We later found that he had passed, so it must have been 1974. I’m trying to determine exactly where that office was. It was several hurricanes ago, so it may be gone. Does anyone know anything about that building? Thanks for any help.
Google it.
https://www.sunherald.com/news/local/counties/stone-county/article242596376.html
https://oldfirehousewiggins.org/tag/dizzy-dean/
Back in 1929, a ballclub made up of Army soldiers, representing the Fort Sam Houston army base in San Antonio, TX was playing an exhibition game against the MLB team Chicago Red Sox.
On the mound was a 19-year-old Army soldier named Jay Dean. He was apparently pitching quite well and frustrating the professional ballplayers as he kept getting them out.
Finally, in exasperation, one of the White Sox managers shouted from the dugout for his players to "knock that dizzy kid out of the box" and proceeded to call him that "dizzy kid" for the remainder of the game.
Somehow the impromptu moniker stuck and that kid became known as Dizzy Dean for the rest of his life.
I was hoping for a better story, but there you go.
“Sometimes the origin of a nickname is disappointing, because you expected that there would have been a more colorful story behind it.”
You can say that again. I once saw the name Dickshooter, Idaho. I expected a really colorful story about a Clymer gunfighter. Instead I find that a man named Dick Shooter had a homestead there. Nothing more.
Didn’t he say, it ain’t braggin if you can do it.
There’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Dean announcing a ball game. The camera focused on a couple in the stands kissing. Dean supposedly said, “He’s kissing her on the strikes and she’s kissing him on the balls!”
From Wikipedia:
“Actor Ben Jones wrote and performed a one-man play about Dean, entitled Ol’ Diz.”
I hear that Ben’s previous one-man play, La Cocina, starring Pepe, did just okay off-off-broadway.
?........................
I hear Dean and DiMaggio used to go to Dinkie Donuts together.
One of my great baseball memories was watching Dizzy Dean pitch an inning in an old timers game in the summer of 1966 in the Astrodome. Other pitchers in the game lobbed easy pitches to the elder hitters but Ol’ Diz’ in his yellowed Cardinals uniform threw good stuff and got all three hitters that faced him out.
I recall that there were other great names in that game but the only two I am sure about were Dizzy and Mickey Mantle, who jacked one over the left field fence.
LOL!
Are you sure about Mantle? He was still active in 1966.
I had to use The Wayback Machine to get the first link.
I don’t know why, my browser, Brave, went straight to it............
Yep, he was there although not retired. It was American League v. National League. It may have been to just add to the crowd.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.