Tag: mlb

No. 37: Tom Seaver

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This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 37:

= Donnie Moore: California Angels
= Lester Hayes: Los Angeles Raiders
= Ron Artest/Metta World Peace: Los Angeles Lakers

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 37:

= Kermit Johnson, UCLA football
= Bobby Castillo: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Ron Washington: Los Angeles Angels manager
= Tom Seaver: USC baseball

The most interesting story for No. 37:
Tom Seaver: USC baseball pitcher (1965)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Los Angeles (USC), Manhattan Beach, Twentynine Palms

Tom Seaver was a stellar bridge player.

Bridge can be a tricky game. The trick is to gather the least the number of tricks bid by the partnership at the four-person table. The rules seem simple, but mastering the strategy and complexity of it all takes time and practice. Intelligence and patience are rewarded.

During his brief time as a USC student — a pre-denistry major, because he sensed he might need a fallback career — Seaver sometimes could be found with friends hanging out at the 901 Club on Jefferson Blvd., famous for its hamburgers and beer.

And bridge building, when he was there.

In the abridged version of how Seaver went from college baseball to a pro career, there should have been a simple bridge there for him to cross from USC to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ stellar starting rotation of the 1960s.

Instead, there was a toll to pay, and the Dodgers balked.

That’s where Seaver’s poker face came into play. A fantastic 2020 book by acclaimed author and former minor leaguer Pat Jordan revealed how deep a Seaver was. But when it came to his MLB future, Seaver wasn’t bluffing on contract demands. Eventually, both the Dodges and USC lost out.

As the Vietnam War started in 1962, Seaver wasn’t keen on being drafted out of Fresno High, where he just finished his senior baseball season with a 6-5 record but made the Fresno Bee All-City team. Still, he had no pro offers, nor any college interest.

So Seaver enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves in 1962 and ’63, with bootcamp at Twentynine Palms. He realized eventually the extra weight and strength he gained in that training allowed him to eventually throw a more effective fastball and slider.

His roadmap to the bigs started with one season at Fresno City College as a freshman, then earning a scholarship to play at USC, the perennial NCAA title team under coach Rod Dedeaux (see SoCal Sports History 101 bio for No. 1).

After Seaver posted an 11-2 mark at Fresno City, the Dodgers were interested. But not more than $2,000 interested. Maybe it was $3,000. That was their reportedly their offer in 1964, the last time MLB teams would have the freedom to sign whomever they wanted before the draft kicked in.

Seaver declined the Dodgers’ gesture and went panning for gold elsewhere.

Dedeaux, who called Seaver the “phee-nom from San Joaquin,” agreed to give him one of his five USC baseball full scholarships — if Seaver first played in Alaska summer ball in ’64. Dedeaux worked out a deal for Seaver to pitch for the Alaska Goldpanners of the Alaska Baseball League, which showcased college talent. The 19-year-old experienced his first Midnight Sun Game in Anchorage — the 10:30 p.m. start on June 21 for the summer solstice that has become part of baseball lore.

In 19 games, starting five, Seaver was 6-2 with a save and 4.70 ERA to go with 70 strike outs in 58 2/3 innings. Later that summer, playing in an National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita, Kansas, Seaver, now with the Wichita Glassmen, hit a grand slam in a game where he had been called in as a relief pitcher. Seaver would say that was one of his career highlights.

At USC, Dedeaux slotted Seaver as the Trojans’ No. 3 starter – also on the staff was junior Bob Selleck, the 6-foot-6 older brother of eventual USC basketball, baseball and volleyball player and actor Tom Selleck.

Continue reading “No. 37: Tom Seaver” →

No. 53: Don Drysdale

fartheroffthewall

This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 53:
= Don Drysdale, Los Angeles Dodgers
= Keith Erickson, UCLA basketball
= Rod Martin, Los Angeles Raiders

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 53:
= Jim Youngblood, Los Angeles Rams
= Lynn Shackleford, UCLA basketball

The most interesting story for No. 53:
Don Drysdale, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (1958 to 1969), California Angels broadcaster (1973 to 1981), Los Angeles Rams broadcaster (1973 to 1976), Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster (1988 to 1993)

Southern California map pinpoints:
Van Nuys, Bakersfield, Hollywood, Los Angeles (Coliseum, Dodger Stadium), Anaheim

A mural at Dodger Stadium down the first base line for an exclusive section of field-level seats.

The dogma of Don Drysdale presents itself as an expanded truth-or-double-dog-dare discussion of the “Big D” legacy.

No question it covers Southern California culture, as well as pop culture, and the culture of a Hall of Fame athletic and broadcast career.

There are bigger-than-life discoveries about the 6-foot-6 right-handed sidewinder, a San Fernando Valley-grown kid who spent all 14 years of his big-league career with the Dodgers organization and circled back for his final six years on the planet broadcasting their games:

From the 1960 issue of Sport magazine, the self-authored story: “You’ve Got to Be Mean to Pitch”

Truth that’s been told: Don Drysdale led the league in putting the “mean” in what constituted a meaningful pitch.

Dare to discover: The dastardly stat was never kept, but if some SABR-cat researcher was compelled to go back and confirm, we’d suspect there was enough evidence to confirm he threw more brushback/purpose pitches during his 14-year career, all with the Dodgers, the last dozen in Los Angeles, than anyone else in his era.

He did hit 154 opponents, which breaks down into leading the majors for four seasons and the National League a fifth time. That can be interpreted from what Drysdale put out as his stated philosophy: You knock down/hit one of my guys, I knock down/hit two of yours.

The footnote to that: Why waste four pitches on an intentional walk with one pitch to the ribs will do? That line attributed to Drysdale may not take into the fact he did issue 123 IBB in his career.

Further research from Fangraphs on the essence of the “Two For One Special,” aka the “Drysdale Revenge Factor,’ shows of 18 times in his career where he hit two or more batters in a game. But deconstructing relative facts and figures from previous games and what else was happening is far more difficult to document. That mindset, however, leans into learning the art of intimidation by former veteran Brooklyn teammate Sal “The Barber” Maglie. Properly stated, it puts the idea in a batter’s mind that things could go south quick if you decided you owned the half of the 17-inch home plate that Drysdale decided was his for a particular at-bat.

“Batting against him is the same as making a date with the dentist,” Pittsburgh’s Dick Groat once said.

Added San Francisco’s Orlando Cepeda: “The trick against Drysdale is to hit him before he hits you.”

So, they knew the drill.

In a 1979 interview with the New York Times’ Dave Anderson, Drysdale said delivering the inside pitch was a “lost art” 10 years after his retirement.

“I just feel,” he was saying now, his right forefinger swirling the ice in his Scotch, “that when you’re pitching, part of the plate has to be yours. … The pitcher has to find out if the hitter is timid. And if the hitter is timid, he has to remind the hitter he’s timid.”

(Love that imagery).

Continue reading “No. 53: Don Drysdale” →

Day 20 of 2025 baseball book reviews: What’s good for the Mallards is good for goosing the game

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“Baseball Like It Oughta Be:
How a Shoe Salesman’s Madison Mallards
And His Renegade Staff Ignited a
Summer Collegiate Baseball Revolution”

The author: Tom Alesia
The details: August Publications, $18.95; 208 pages, released May 19, 2025; best available at the publishers website and the author’s website

A review in 90 feet or less

Updated 6.2.25

There oughta be a clear path for someone like Lauren Thiesen to write a piece for Defector.com under the headline: “The Savannah Bananas Make Baseball Boring” and not be weary of getting crapped on for it. Especially when she framed it as coming “the perspective of a baseball nut and ‘sports entertainment’ obsessive.”

Read it for yourself. Good points are made.

She followed it up with a Facebook post: “I was a tiny bit miffed by the handful of ‘this reads like an old man wrote it’ responses … You can disagree with my (nuanced!) thoughts, but idk why it would ever be inconceivable that a 30 yr old woman produced them.”

Especially from a target audience member for the traveling hardball show.

When we visited the Bananas’ second game of a two-day appearance at Angels Stadium in Anaheim this week — perhaps the only two sellouts at the place this 2025 calendar year, coming off a three-game series against the Yankees — we had Thiesen’s words in our head as a frame of reference, as well as local media coverage from the Day 1 game, but otherwise, we tried to be open-minded.

Our take on the whole idea of the Savannah Bannanas and the comparison to the Harlem Globetrotters:

It’s more more “High School Musical” meshed with Horsehide Cirque du Soleil, a wedding reception with a baseball theme wrapped around an activity that looks like a game played at the pace of a batting-practice pitcher grab-and-throw-and-grove. The between-innings experiences of corny planned contests, honoring veterans and first responders, and even a shout out to a non-profit Foster kids program doesn’t drag anything down but allows for catching one’s breath.

And it works.

A DJ-stage gathering to amp up the noise and energy before, then the “show” starts, then the after-party. Perhaps an exhausting pace for some, but it’s taking the elements of action of a “regular” baseball game and heightening it, expanding it, and amping it up. It takes advantage of incorporating local entertainment nods (Disneyland, for sure) and really knows how to read the room. It works in a baseball stadium best (because of the setup with scoreboards, wifi and capacity seating depth) but wedging it as well into a football stadium or other venue will add to its quirkiness.

It’s scripted schizophrenia, pumped up performance art, wonky scorekeeping and incredible talent on display surrounding the unplanned elements of game that has to be a communal stadium experience in person instead of judging it by a Tik Tok video clip or another high light reel. There are surprise guests. There’s a mascot, “Split,” that, at least in Anaheim, dared go up into the batters’ eye area beyond center field and do what every kid has wanted to do: Roll down the green hill.

Sensory overload, but not in a toxic way. Baseball remains the framework amidst all the improve and sketch comedy. The organizers do all they can to prevent the sale of $75 going for $1,000 or more on the open market, but that’s the world we live in — those taking advantage of a situation. Hopefully, you have karma lottery and get the best seats possible (another key to the experience) and bring in as many friends who otherwise might not enjoy a “real” baseball game to see this thing under the circus tent.

Back to how Thiesen ended her essay: “So what does someone want to see in a Savannah Bananas game? I guess they want to see the players dance. But they saw that already online. There’s no need to go to the stadium and catch it again with a worse view. Just give your minor-league boys a shot this summer. They’re probably doing something almost as weird.”

That’s where Tom Alesia starts making his case for the Madison Mallards.

The book is not just on what this college summer-league team has done, continue to do, and likely will do for years to come, but why it resonates in the community, and why it doesn’t need to try to out-gimmick anyone else by trying to be a national attraction, and how it can be content in how it has kept the game relevant in a non-MLB sphere.

It has a formula. It works.

Comparing Mallards to Bananas is more like Granny Smith apples to Cara Cara oranges. They’re each sweet and special in their own fruity way. (And that’s aside from the fact the forward to Alesia’s book is written by John Kovalic, the creator of the fantastic “Apples To Apples” card game.)

Continue reading “Day 20 of 2025 baseball book reviews: What’s good for the Mallards is good for goosing the game” →

Day 19 of 2025 baseball book reviews: Unlucky Luciano’s last out

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“Big Loosh: The Unruly Life
of Umpire Ron Luciano”

The author: Jim Leeke
The details: University of Nebraska Publishing, $32.95, 216 pages, to be released in July 1, 2025; best available at the publishers website and bookshop.org.

A review in 90 feet or less

The Los Angeles Times sports section of July 11, 1970 features a series of Ron Luciano photos, showing the second-year AL umpire in all “study of emotions” on the first-base line during a game at Anaheim Stadium.

In the 1980s, the baseball media world could count on three things:

= A movie that directors insisted “was not a baseball film at all but really one about (fill in the blank)” made it as a big box-office draw. The lineup included “The Natural” (1984), “Bull Durham” (1988), “Eight Men Out” (1988), “Field of Dreams” (1988) and “Major League (1989);

= Hearing John Fogerty’s song, “Centerfield,” meant whatever you were watching needed a sound track, over track or background score to clue you in that it had something to do with the game;

= Ron Luciano, retired umpire, wrote another self-deprecating book. While pitching Miller Lite beer. After trying to become a national baseball TV analyst. He needed to be heard, seen and, if possible, felt, and hope you were entertained.

If Fernando Valenzuela and Pete Rose generated the most baseball relatable headlines in the ‘80s, Luciano created the most commentary about it and much more.

The 6-foot-4, 240-pound former All-American Syracuse offensive/defensive lineman who bridged the Orangemen teams in the late ‘50s of Jim Brown and Ernie Davis was drafted in 1959 as the last pick in the third round, No. 36 overall, by the NFL’s Detroit Lions. He wasn’t healthy enough to pursue that, or to teaching, so he turned to umpiring school in Florida, thought he was decent at it, and that’s where his path took him.

Continue reading “Day 19 of 2025 baseball book reviews: Unlucky Luciano’s last out” →

Day 16 of 2025 baseball book reviews: Willie, Billy, and the Alabama shakes

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“A Time for Reflection:
The Parallel Legacies of Baseball Icons
Willie McCovey and Billy Williams”

The author: Jason Cannon
The details: Rowman & Littlefield, $35, 328 pages, released Feb. 4, 2025; best available at the publishers website and Bookshop.org.

“A Giant Among Giants:
The Baseball Life of Willie McCovey”

The author: Chris Haft
The details: University of Nebraska Press, $32.95, 240 pages, released Feb. 1, 2025; best available at the publishers website and Bookshop.org.

A review in 90 feet or less

The software wizardry made available by Stathead Baseball, resourcing Baseball Reference data, is such a cool tool. Compare and contrast MLB players from different eras.

Or, two dudes who led a very parallel lives.

What is doesn’t show is that, during the last month of the 1976 season when the five-time defending AL West champion Oakland A’s, scrambling to overtake the Kansas City Royals, made a curious roster move.

It made Billy Williams and Willie McCovey, two National League big-time names, unlikely 38-year-old teammates trading mercenary at-bats. Based on decades of seeing these two on their baseball cards, the versions that appeared now were as jarringly abnormal in kelly green-and-yellow as Joe DiMaggio was when recruited to coach for the franchise in 1968.

In the course of their careers, Williams and McCovey each made the NL All Star team six times, but only once were they together — the 1968 exhibition at the Houston Astrodome. In a predictable 1-0 NL win (it was the Year of the Pitcher), the only run scored when McCovey grounded into double play in the first inning, pushing across Giants teammate Willie Mays, making Don Drysdale the winner. McCovey, starting at first base and hitting third, proceeded to strike out three times against Blue Moon Odom, Denny McLain and Sam McDowell. Williams got into the game as a pinch hitter in the sixth inning and flew out against McLain.

At WaxPackGods.com, here are seven reasons why “this card is cooler than you ever imagined.”

(Footnote: In the 1969 All Star Game, McCovey homered off both Odom and McLain and was named the game’s MVP in a season where he was also the NL MVP).

Now, in Oakland, eight years later, decline evident, Williams and McCovey were serviceable as a DH, a position that had only come about in 1973 when the American League rule-makers felt there wasn’t enough offense and this was a way to keep old, reliable hitters contributing if their time playing out on the field in the National League was a bit problematic.

(Tell that one to Shohei Ohtani).

Continue reading “Day 16 of 2025 baseball book reviews: Willie, Billy, and the Alabama shakes” →