IdahoBert

Whoop whoop!

Are you talking about the part where when he was on first base Cabrera would josh around with him and say “You should come and join the Tigers and be on a good team.”

Afraid not. I’ve pretty much exhausted my repertoire. Aside from Charlie’s three home runs in Chicago, being at the fifth game of the World Series in ‘68 and seeing Norm Cash hit one of his four homers over the right field roof at Tiger Stadium on one of those bat or ball days when I was a kid, everybody else here has seen a ton more games in Detroit than I have and I am envious. You have no idea how envious I really am.

Regarding Charlie Maxwell, on July 29, 1962 my dad’s Elks Club drove all of us kids from Auburn, Indiana in a rented school bus to Chicago to see a doubleheader vs. the Yankees, where the Sox’s player Charlie “Paw Paw” Maxwell hit three home runs in the split. I clearly remember him hitting at least one in each game and of my dad remarking upon it but I guess I lost interest and didn’t realize he’d actually hit three because I was 10 years old and I had to pee the whole time so my attention was somewhat scattered. I did get to see Mantle and Maris, which was a big deal although neither of them did anything memorable aside from batting practice, but I was pretty disappointed that my first game was not at Tiger Stadium and some woman sitting on the first base side constantly ringing a loud bell was extremely annoying, especially because I had to pee.

OK, I wondered about that because Hinch made a big deal about attitude at times and there has been talk about the clubhouse mentality or whatever you want call it changing if guys come in who are full of themselves and don’t mesh with the attitudinal gears already in play. I know there’s a tendency to think that something like this can’t be measured so it’s of no significance, but we’ve all been in situations where things just work better if there is a shared mentality.

Do you mean functionally, as parts related to each other, or as esprit de corps?

I just saw a Newsweek article gushing about it.

Gleyber Torres was only 17 years old in 2014 when I saw him playing for the Boise Hawks in the Northwest League as a part of the Chicago Cubs organization. He was the youngest player on the team, and he looked more refined than everybody else playing. He actually looked like a major league player in the field. At that level of play, you simply hold your breath when a ball player throws the ball to first base since you expect them to throw wild or bounce it and he was right on the money. He was honestly breathtaking for this level of play. I don’t know about his general deficiencies as a major league player but this move still makes me happy.

I was interested in this off-season for a change in the hopes the club would do something major and I’m losing faith this will happen. Scott Harris may get tired of operating under these restrictions. He’s already proved he can re-construct a system from the ground up. He deserves to be hungry to do this where he can also run with the big dogs which is apparently difficult to do here for a lot of reasons, not pertaining solely to the ownership group.

Yes, when I was a child I also “put away childish things.” I somehow lost my ticket stubs for the fifth game of the 68 World Series and I don’t know if that’s one of those things I can blame my mom for, in all honesty. I think after a while, she asked me what I wanted to keep and since I moved on in life, I pretty much told her “nothing.“ I would only have a sentimental attachment to the things of childhood long after they no longer existed.

What a tremendous story thank you.

I have a Henderson story. A friend of mine had front row box seats in Oakland in the pre- Bash Brothers era and we would take the BART and arrive early to the game. One time Rickey was standing near us and his eyes and mine locked and he stared me down because he was competitive in everything, even with a meaningless spectator like me. He was a pretty dominating guy on a personal level, let alone on the field. I think I inadvertently received this kind of treatment due to proximity because my friend with the season tickets would scream Ricky's name when he would take the field. RIK-EEEEEEeeeee and Henderson would always give him a dirty look until it became "a thing" between them...Sometimes Rickey would give him the look before the scream. Henderson also played his first season in Boise, Idaho, my fair city, in 1976 with the A’s Northwest League club and they played on the high school baseball field behind Borah High. Kind of an inauspicious way to start a HOF career. That was 11 years before I moved here and I don’t know anyone who went to those games and saw him play.

The guy played in the Mexican leagues. You don’t see that much often on a résumé. Doesn’t want to give up. If he does well, it would be a great feel good story.

I wonder what Torkelson’s off-season “training” interventions are like. Is it more mental than mechanical? If they can turn him from being like David Webb into Jason Bourne, I would be pretty much OK with that.

There is one about nine minutes away from where I live.

I have never considered myself a sentimental traditionalist, but if they make any of these weird changes to the game it’s going to piss me off so much I’m going to take the $3.99 a month I spend on MLB radio and spend it on fast food in protest. But not at McDonald’s.

Speaking of the omnipresence of cheating and how we kind of don’t care I was reminded of our much beloved Norm Cash and his alleged corked bat in 1961. He hit .361 that year and .249 the next.

Smokes just turned 80 a couple days ago. He is such a solemn looking guy I always thought he had to be a ton older than me, but in 2006 he was only seven years older than me which makes him nearly a contemporary of mine. I almost wonder if Jimbo was ever a child or if he came down the chute clutching a pack of Marlboro’s.

♬ King Tut ♬

Hoping the Mets and Soto will disappoint at Citi Field I asked Google if Citi was a home run ballpark and this is what its AI summary disclosed: “No, Citi Field is not considered a home run ballpark. In fact, it's known for being pitcher-friendly: Citi Field has a homer park factor of 91, which is in the bottom third of all parks. It also has the lowest park factors for singles, doubles, and triples in baseball. In May 2024, only 26.5% of fly balls with exit speeds between 100–105 mph at Citi Field were home runs, compared to 32.7% of MLB fly balls in that category.” it doesn’t reflect well upon me to be churlish about the good fortune of other teams, but I take some comfort in the fact that Soto may deliver less for the Mets then they would like.

Verlander would sure get people in the seats. It would make a great sentimental homecoming story. I’m capable of being unduly happy over this. Bergman? The people running this team are certainly smarter than me so if they’re willing to do it, sure. But I don’t know why I have to give a golly gosh darn oh my heck about what “oddsmakers” think.

I don’t think Scott Harris would’ve come here if that were the case. But it is definitely the case that if we have five guys who end up being so good the Tigers have to pay each of them in excess of $30 million a year and some of them $50 million-$60 million (and the price goes up every year) there’s no way they will ever be able to hold onto them. So there will never be teams where we can get attached to players long-term like we did with the ‘68 era Tigers or the ‘84 era team. Baseball doesn’t work like that anymore for anyone besides three or four clubs. We live in an era of deplorable inequality and spectacles which keep the masses sedated in a sentimental La La Land that gets increasingly harder to feel sentimental about. The game is certainly losing its Ken Burns feel about it.

You’re right. It seems he’s one guy on his own without a network of cohorts that could help him go into hiding. He went to a lot of trouble and planned things pretty well, but I don’t think he ever really expected to get away so once he was on the lam he had nowhere to go. He’s not as ambitious as DB Cooper when it comes to getting away, since he was more interested in making his point.