Posted on 12/22/2005 1:25:31 PM PST by MikefromOhio
Okay, I know it's been a while, but didn't the Mets win the 1969 Series?
At least the writer didn't try to hand the 1968 Series to the O's, one of the only two that Detroit won in the past half century. :-)
Misread it. "Went to" doesn't mean "won." D'oh!
heh....
nah the Orioles won the 1970 World Series....
"Went to", not, tragically, "won".
One of the huge probs I had with Earl Weaver is that he was beaten by managers with inferior teams in 1969, 1971 and 1979.
Sometimes, ya gotta BUNT!
Lolich won three games that Series. I believe the mound was lowered after that season.
Seriously, it sounds like he a was a good man and good ambassador for the game of baseball. RIP!
I think Dave McNally died recently as well. You know your getting older when players you watched as a kid are passing away.
Phantom tags are part of the game :)
Living here in Atlanta, in the early 90's Atlanta had a minor league hockey team called the Atlanta Knights and they had one of Gretzky's brothers (Brent). He was OK but I geuss never good enough to make the NHL.
I actually feel guilty screaming at players now ...
I remember Brent. Both he and Keith were very light by hockey standards, but so was Wayne.
He just had a knack of avoiding any contact. The guy was impossible to check.
Yep, I miss old Mickey!
'A Walking History of the Orioles'There's also a great story about Elrod catching for Palmer:
Elrod Hendricks could make you laugh without making any sense. His voice was a thick gumbo of island patois (he was raised in the Virgin Islands), crab-soaked Bawlmer-ese and regional accents picked up from the many small towns in Mexico and the American south where he played as a minor leaguer. The voice had the grizzled texture of a baseball lifer, and everything "Ellie" said seemed to come out as one jumbled (and often profane) grunt -- "Scragglyoldsumbitchgawnwhompupsidedathead" -- and was inevitably followed by a laugh so booming, its shock waves triggered involuntary spasms of laughter in your own chest, whether you understood him or not. "It wasn't until the second or third year I worked there until I finally got to where I could understand him," said Rick Vaughn, the Baltimore Orioles' public relations director from 1984 to '94. "But you knew, whatever it was, it was funny -- because everybody was laughing."
Soon enough, once the shock and the sadness wear off a little, there will be laughter all over Baltimore, as folks start thinking back to their favorite memories of Hendricks, who died Wednesday night of a heart attack. Hendricks, who wore an Orioles uniform -- first as a player, then as a coach, 37 years total -- for more games than anyone in history, would have been 65 yesterday.
"This is a tremendous shock," Orioles legend Cal Ripken said, through a spokesman. "Elrod has been such a big figure in Baltimore for so long. He was as much a mainstay in the Orioles organization as anyone I can think of."
"We lost the most beloved Oriole of all-time," said Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, in a statement issued by the team.
. . . .
Ask Hendricks's friends for their favorite memories of him, and inevitably they ask whether you want only the printable ones. Hendricks's aptitude for cursing -- in complex conjugations, between syllables, in multiple languages -- was legendary.
"One day, Elrod is back there catching, and Palmer is yelling at him from the mound, and [Manager Earl] Weaver is yelling at him from the dugout," said Richard Justice, who covered the Orioles for The Washington Post in the 1980s and '90s. "And finally, the umpire says, 'How do you put up with this?' And Elrod says, 'I'll tell you what. You throw one of them out of the game, and I'll go beat the [expletive] out of the other.' "
Funny story, nicollo. Thanks for posting it. I knew The Rod was always laughing, I just didn't know what he was laughing about. Since last posting on this, I recalled another Oriole from those teams who died not too long ago, Dave McNally. Way too young.
heh that's exactly how I remember him.
And even though when he said something jumbled, you knew EXACTLY what he was trying to get to you to do.
Great stuff, thanks!
A member of arguably the best one-season staff ever with Palmer, Cuellar and Dobson in 1971.
I agree, it certainly is in the running -- there hasn't been a staff with four 20 game winners since, and you had to go back to the early 1900s to find one before that. Funny thing about that staff, there was no really outstanding relief pitcher and, not that one was needed, no real fifth starter -- Grant Jackson was the "in a pinch" guy. The pen had Eddie Watt, Dick Hall, Pete Richert, Tom Dukes -- okay, but nothing special. The Orioles churned out outstanding pitchers with incredible ease for years and years. Starting with the Pappas, Estrada, Barber, Fisher "Kiddie Corps" of the early 60s, then pitchers like Wally Bunker and Tom Phoebus and Dave Leonard had their brief moments, on through Palmer, Cuellar, McNally and Dobson to the Flanagan, MacGregor, Stone, Martinez and Boddicker era.
The Braves late 90s staffs of Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz and either Avery, Millwood or Neagle were no slouches either. Or way back, the Indians of the early to mid-50s with Feller, Wynn, Garcia and Lemon -- three of them in the Hall of Fame. Or for that matter the Yankees of that same era, with Ford, Reynolds, Raschi and Lopat.
Jeez, I'd better get my Christmas hat back on, this is turning into real Hot Stove League stuff here!
It amazes me that guys back then, lacking all the technology and training expertise we have now were able to pitch as much as they did and never complain.
Complete games were not a novelty back then!
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