New Scaratings

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Mitch (MTCHWF/WLFFLY)

Co-Home Bar: Buffalo Wild Wings Edwardsville, IL and Time Out in St Louis, MO

Congrats to the Cards. Go National League.

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St. Louis did it...!

I will have to go down to where George Shelton's (GRS's) ashes are interred with some top grade Burbon. Drink a toast to him, and his all time favorite baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals. It is so sad that Geroge passed away earlier this year, and never got to see his beloved Carinals win the World Series again.

p.s. If any of you in the Louisville area would like to make the trip with me, please let me know.



George is the white haired guy, wearing the blue shirt in the middle of this photograph. The picture was taken on his birthday a couple of years ago at Friday's.

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"The game is afoot."

Who was the only person to ever pinch hit for Ted Williams?

Here is his picture:

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"The game is afoot."

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liljol, still residing in a humble lil abode in Buzztime's Backyard, San Diego County, in The Horribly Site-Poor Golden State, California...

<--805 NTN Buzztime sites visited as of 11/13/2018...

F CUBS!!!!! FBOSOX!!!!!

FPDRES!!!!! FCHGRS!!!!!

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LilJol, WOW... I didn't know that. I had to Google it, but you are absolutely correct. This makes Caroll Hardy the only baseball player to have ever pinch hit for two Hall of Fame players.

Great answer LilJol...!!!

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"The game is afoot."

A bit over 6 weeks until catchers & pitchers report. Sweet.

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Being a life long Boston Red Sox fan, I don't think anyone could accuse me of being a New York Yankees lover. However, I think the 1927 Yankees were the best baseball team of all time. Check their record out, and I think it is likely that you will agree with me.

I will concede that in modern times there are teams that might have beaten the 1927 Yankees, but they come from different eras. I believe teams should be judged by their records in the era they played in, and no team comes close to the 1927 Yankees in their time.

p.s. My full postal zip code is 40243-1927

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"The game is afoot."

Where are the Yankee lovers and haters on my 1927 Yankees post...? I can't believe that all of you agree with my outrageous best baseball team of all time post...

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"The game is afoot."

It's hockey season. I'll get back to you in April.

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

You act as if hawkey were an actual sport.

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Until the Stanley Cup Playoffs are over, hockey is the only sport!

Interesting avatar. My first thought was Alice Cooper, although I guess it could be someone from Kiss.

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

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Cloudy,
Here's a tip:
In order to be an effective agent provocateur you may want to steer away from selecting the cream of the crop for your cream of the crop debate starter.
Now, if you had said that the 1906 Chicago Cubs were the best team of all time, we might have something to bandy about.
The only thing with which I might take umbrage is your statement about "no team in their time coming close". The 1932 Yankees were pretty good too. I have always felt that the 1929-31 A's were undervalued historically. Check out their rosters with all of the HOFers. Impressive.

SPOTES,

All of this is so subjective. There is really NO answer to what baseball team was the best ever. It's not too hard to come up with teams that might qualify, but it is impossible to come up with an answer that everybody will agree on. Everyone will have their own opinion, and in their own minds they are all right.

I was just trying to get something going.

p.s. That damn hockey junk that got thrown in on "The Baseball Thread" is goofy silliness. Don't the Canucks and wannabe Canucks have their own Hockey thread somewhere here on the "ScaRatings"?

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"The game is afoot."

A lot of big league baseball players have nicknames. However, I think this is true, the greatest baseball players have often been given many nicknames, while most of the not-so-good players only have one. Why would this be? I would guess we can thank the sports writers for this. Sports writers find themselves having to write many more stories about the superstars, and they want to be creative in what they write. Some sports writer has already called Babe Ruth "The Sultan of Swat", so another sports writer comes up with a new nickname, and the Babe becomes "The Bambino", and so on...

Does anyone think I might be right about this?

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"The game is afoot."

In my extensive reading of baseball lore, it seems as if the vast majority of players garnered their nicknames long before they even made the majors.
Most of these fall into the "Lefty", "Rube", "Babe", etc. categories as they work their way through school teams or the minors.
But ones like "Peanuts" Lowery, "Frenchy" Bordagaray, et al. are almost always given to these fellas as kids.
Sometimes you have guys that have both. Johannes Wagner got the nickname "Honus" as a kid, and "The Flying Dutchman" through the press. At least he didn't get stuck with his older brother's nickname: "Butts". Do they let you into the HOF with a moniker like "Butts"?
Newspaper writers seem to merely famialarize the masses with pre-existing nicknames much more often than actually coining them.

SPOTES,

I won't disagree with you about players, who only have one nickname. However, I think that those, who have two or more, have most likely had these additional nicknames bestowed upon them by sports writers. This is only my thought, and I have nothing to support my supposition.

It would be intersting to find out who gave Ted Williams the nickname "The Thumper", or who gave Willie Mays the nickname "The Say Hey Kid"?

CLOUDY

p.s. My slow pitch softball nickname was STONEWALL. It was given to me by the Merrill Lynch office sales manager, Dick Austin, after some guy broke his leg trying to run me over at home plate, while I was playing catcher. (The guy, who lept into the air, and flew at me spikes first, was called OUT...!) I carried this nickname for about 30 years, and when I meet some of my old teammates today they still call me "Stonewall".)

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"The game is afoot."

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Let's see if we can wake up SPOTES...

I believe you are absolutely right about about old time players, who only had one nickname. However, i believe that baseball players, who have multiple nickmanes can thank sports writers for giving them to them.

Let's try "Vinegar Bend" Mizell. He should stir SPOTES from his sleep.



p.s. Got a feeling that we might hear something from SPOTES before too long. Sure hope so...

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"The game is afoot."

Both of you gentlemen have a valid point about me targeting old-time nicknames of players rather than more modern ones. It's because those are the players that I like talking about. The more obscure, the better.
To Cloudy's point, of course modern players have a greater number of "media" related nicknames. They have a lot more people writing about them than a handful of beat writers like the old days. Besides all of the internet stuff, both professional and general public, today's players also have a media machine Ruth and his contemporaries could never dream of: ESPN.
It seems like those guys must get paid by the catch phrase or nickname.
Sure he has a lot now, but can you imagine how many nicknames Babe Ruth would have ended up with if Chris Berman would've gotten ahold of him?
I suspect Ruth's collection of nicknames extends from writers running out of superlatives to describe what he was doing to the game. The man was hitting more home runs per year than most other teams during various seasons, fer cryin' out loud...
BTW, I always appreciated nicknames that were geographically informative like Vinegar Bend's. It's a good way to figure out where guys like him or Lon Warneke or Amos Rusie are from.

Once again, where is COORSYA, who started this thread...?

I think he has only put 8 short posts up here, after he started this thread, and I may be wrong, but I think they are all on just the first two pages. It looks like we have lost COORSYA. Does anybody know him? Hell, I'm gonna look him up, send him a private message, and ask him to get his butt back over here. Why don't we all send him private messages to wake him up, and tell him we love and miss him...? I think it would be good to get the guy, who started all of this fun, back here to post his words of baseball wisdom. Better yet, we can all thank him for starting a great thread that has grown to 21 pages, and is still growing.

p.s. I just checked COORSYA's profile out again, and I believe he may be an Octogenarian. If correct, that means he's got me by at least 15 years. Darn, I thought I was the oldest guy posting to the "ScaRatings", that is unless FrankC might have beat me out by a couple of months.

p.p.s. Which side of May 17, 1946 are the rest of you guys and gals on...?

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"The game is afoot."

Spring training games start this weekend!!

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