'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!