[BluesDuke]

Two more factoids about Joe Black:

Even with the ruination of his pitching style after his striking rookie season, he had only one losing season the rest of his short major league career: 1953 - 6-3, five saves; 1954 - gone most of the season and had no won-lost record in five games; 1955, six games, 1-0 before his trade to Cincinnati and 5-2 with the Reds the rest of the season; 1956 - 3-2; 1957 - Washington Senators, 0-1 in seven relief appearances. Bitter irony: his manager on the Senators was Charley Dressen.

Also, Roger Kahn noted this in his acknowledgements page for The Boys of Summer on its original publication:

Readers may be amused to know that even as details of the book were being completed, it had become the stuff of competition among the old Dodgers themselves. "Hey, Carl," Joe Black shouted to Erskine before the old timers' game in Los Angeles in 1971, "you must have told some stories. I hear you come out good in your chapter." Put an old ballplayer back into uniform and the first thing that returns is the habit of bench jockeying.

[2Trievers]

"His legacy is the thought that unheralded players can rise to the heights, that someone who at the time was considered an ordinary athlete could wind up pitching Game 1 of the World Series," said Vin Scully, the Dodgers' play-by-play announcer since 1951.

Robinson said: "The impression he left on me was that, No. 1, you had to work hard. Also you go out there and give it all you had, play for your team and not yourself."

Always doing it his way ... RIP Joe Black. &;-)