Baseball Photo Trivia

[Homebrewer]

17 minutes ago, Angel Oracle said:

Ryan had suffered a serious arm injury in his last start a few days earlier, that coming several days after pitching 7+ sensational innings in his last Angel Stadium start in front of 58,000 fans.   No doubt, a lot of those 58,000 cursed Buzzie Bavasi during the game. 

I was there. Ryan got standing ovations when he went to the pen to warm up, when he walked back in to the dugout, when he took the mound and all through the first inning. The game was sold out to see Nolan Ryan. He was striking out Angels at Anaheim Stadium and the crowd was on it's feet going wild.

It was very weird.

[Angel Oracle]

I was at that game too (in the view level down the RF line), cursing Bavasi and giving Ryan every possible rooting on that I could.

[fan_since79]

Got a good question coming up, although the guy is so obscure I might go ahead and just do a write-up with all the details.

 

[makepeac]

I was there too, in sitting in the right centerfield stands which were normally void of fans but packed that day. Angel fans needed something to cheer about back then.

[Angel Oracle]

They did have Salmon completing the franchise's first ROTY season.

[fan_since79]

I'll start this as a question, but the name is obscure. If nobody gets it, I'll provide the answer without delay.

The starting pitcher (and winner) of one of the most important games in Detroit Tigers history. In his entire career he pitched 67 innings, starting four games, and finished with a WAR of 1.0

[fan_since79]

He outdueled the great Bob Feller, pitching a 2-0 shutout. Feller was having one of his best years and came into the game with 27 wins, having pitched a no-hitter on Opening Day of that season.

 

[Angels#1Fan]

I had never heard of him before and had to look that one up.

The Detroit manager really left himself open to second guessing had it not worked out.

That was a really tough question.

[fan_since79]

Floyd Giebell was the unlikely hero for the Tigers in late September, 1940. They were two games up on Cleveland when the teams met at the end of the year for a three-game series. He had also won a critical game eight days earlier. His complete game shutout on September 27th against the great Bob Feller clinched the pennant for Detroit.

from Wikipedia:

Giebell got his first start on September 19, 1940 with Tigers and Indians tied for first place. Giebell, who had just been called up from Buffalo where he went 15–16, pitched a complete game, giving up only two runs as the Tigers beat the Philadelphia Athletics 13–2.

On September 27, 1940, the Tigers needed one more win to clinch the pennant. With 27 game winner Bob Feller scheduled to pitch for the Indians, Detroit manager Del Baker decided to start Giebell against Feller rather than "waste" his aces Bobo Newsom or Schoolboy Rowe. Time magazine described Giebell at the time as "a gawky stringbean" — Giebell was 6 ft 2 1⁄2 in (1.89 m) and 172 pounds (78 kg) —who "looked like a sacrificial lamb as he ambled out to the mound." But, as Time reported after the game, Giebell was "no lamb" that day. Instead, "[w]ith cunning change of pace and the control of an oldtimer, the green-as-grass rookie shut out the Indians 2-to-0." Feller gave up only 3 hits for the day, but one of them was a 2-run wind-blown home run by Rudy York. That was all the Tigers needed thanks to Giebell's pitching that day.

Edited April 21, 2017 by fan_since79

[fan_since79]

There are four players here who are well known. The others are more obscure.

The all-rookie lineup of September 27, 1963. Also the youngest lineup in baseball history, average age of 20.

[Dick B Back]

I'm gonna guess Joe Morgan, Jimmy Wynn, and Rusty Staub are in this photo.

[fan_since79]

45 minutes ago, Dick B Back said:

I'm gonna guess Joe Morgan, Jimmy Wynn, and Rusty Staub are in this photo.

Wynn, back row right

Staub, middle row right

Morgan, middle row second from right

One more name that most would recognize. He later played for the Mets.

Edited April 26, 2017 by fan_since79

[fan_since79]

It's Jerry Grote, bottom row right.

 

[fan_since79]

Ty Cobb, making his minor league debut on this date in 1904, with the Augusta Tourists of the South Atlantic League.

 

The following excerpt is from the recent book "Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty". It's just too good a piece not to reprint here.

There was something quintessentially American about the Tourists first-ever opening day, which was also Confederate Memorial Day in the South. The first two fans to pay the 10-cent admission fee, said the Augusta Chronicle, were “M.J. Murphy, of North Augusta, and Charles Love, colored.” (Murphy, for his dime, got to sit wherever he pleased; Love was limited to the Negro section in right field.)

The Catholic school band played “Dixie” for the mostly Protestant crowd and a prominent lawyer named Henry Cohen threw out the first pitch (bouncing the ball three feet in front of home plate, and exiting to good-natured razzing). The president of the Augusta Rooters Club, Mexican-born music teacher Jose Andonegui, was offering $10 in gold to any Tourist who hit the ball over the centerfield fence that day.

Even the parking was egalitarian: the city announced that it was putting in “hitching posts for horses, buggies and automobiles,” with a security guard present to discourage joy riders, a much-discussed problem in those days. Just before game time, the sky brightened and the drizzle all but ceased. About 2,000 turned out and during batting practice “got up on their hind legs” to cheer the Tourists and “show that they could be counted on.”

Two thousand was a decent crowd for a mid-week major league game in those days, and it certified the Tourists as the most popular attraction in town since a traveling show reenacting scenes from the Boer War had passed through a month earlier. In a matter of months, manager Con Strouthers would be begging for an umpiring job in a lesser league, and the skipper of the Skyscrapers, Jack Grim, declared legally insane (long story). But for now, hope reigned. Even though it was 3:30 p.m. when the home team finally trotted onto the muddy field, it was morning in Augusta.

The Tourists failed to keep the good mood going, losing a seesaw battle 8-7, but Cobb, after making out in his first two “organized ball” at-bats, finished the game in what would become his signature style.

Leading off the eighth inning, he stroked a double over the centerfielder’s head. He then immediately stole third and, two batters later, scored on a slow roller to the second baseman, coming into the catcher, Dennis Shea, like the Wabash Cannonball. “Cobb was enthusiastically cheered,” said the Chronicle. “His opening of the fireworks [the Tourists would score four more runs that inning] gave him a warm place in the hearts of the fans.”

In the ninth he led off once more, and this time “slammed the ball over the ridge in left for a clean home run.” In its game notes, the paper prophetically called the opposite field blast “a peacherina” that drove the crowd “bughouse,” and added that Tyrus “was going to make a good man.”

 

[Dick B Back]

4 hours ago, fan_since79 said:

It's Jerry Grote, bottom row right.

 

Really, I thought he came up through the Mets system. Learn something new everyday.

[fan_since79]

On this date in 1901, a pitcher for the Cleveland Blues named Bock Baker, in his major league debut, allowed 23 hits. They were all singles.

This is an all-time AL record. Baker would pitch in one more game later that year for the Philadelphia A's, and that was the extent of his career. Very little is known about the man, and there is not even a decent picture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bock_Baker

 

 

[fan_since79]

Lou Gehrig consoles Babe Dahlgren in the Yankee dugout after Dahlgren replaced him in the lineup, bringing an end to Gehrig's streak of 2,130 straight games.

May 2, 1939

[fan_since79]

Name three people in this photo besides Hank Aaron.

[Angel Oracle]

I'll wild guess two of them:   Del Rice and Andy Pafko.

[Angels#1Fan]

Eddie Mathews?

[fan_since79]

3 hours ago, Angel Oracle said:

I'll wild guess two of them:   Del Rice and Andy Pafko.

I think that's Pafko in the back. You only see his eyes.

But I was thinking of three other people.

 

[fan_since79]

2 hours ago, Angels#1Fan said:

Eddie Mathews?

That could be Mathews on the far right, in profile, but I'm not convinced.

I'm still thinking of three other people in the photo.

All three are familiar names.

 

Edited May 5, 2017 by fan_since79

[Angel Oracle]

I looked it up.

[makepeac]

Chuck Tanner to the left of Hank?

[fan_since79]

2 hours ago, makepeac said:

Chuck Tanner to the left of Hank?

Yes!