<— JUNE 17     JUNE 19 —>

BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1849 Jim Tipper
1860 John Grady
1862 Howard Carleton (Dick) Blaisdell
1862 Charlie Ganzel
1866 Varney Anderson
1874 Fred Blank
1888 Marty Berghammer
1893 Ben Shaw
1896 Newt Halliday
1912 Roy Partlow
1916 Norris Phillips
1917 Jimmy Pofahl
1927 Irv Medlinger
1929 Bill Upton
1932 Ron Necciai

Pirates farmhand famous for a May game in West Virginia where he struck out 27 batters in a game. One batter reached on a ground out in the second inning – he got four strikeouts in the ninth (dropped third strike on the 26th K) to hit the mark. One walked, another was hit by a pitch, and a third reached on an error.

His SABR Bio, written by Warren Corbett, is really good.

1933 Taylor Phillips
1939 Lou Brock

The Cub fan has to deal with the Brock for Broglio stories, but let’s be honest. All of you would rather have Kenny Lofton – and Lofton isn’t in the Hall of Fame, which is wrong.

In saying that, Brock was one of the greatest World Series heroes ever, and he could still hit as he retired. Who didn’t love the Brock-a-brella? Diabetes took its on toll on his body, which was very sad.

Dave Williams knocked out his SABR Bio.

1941 Paul Brown
1949 Dave Schneck
1961 Tom McCarthy
1961 Andres Galarraga
1962 Dave Leiper
1963 Russ McGinnis
1964 Tommy Hinzo
1966 Sandy Alomar
1974 Carlos Mendez
1975 Felix Heredia
1976 Jeremy Powell
1980 Tommy Watkins
1981 Ben Johnson
1983 Jarrett Hoffpauir
1984 Fernando Rodriguez
1985 Chris Coghlan

When he came up with the Marlins, he had this quiet swing – beautiful – and it laced line drive after line drive. He deserved to be Rookie of the Year. If he never had to stop playing that fall, I think he’d still be batting .340. Unfortunately, the season ended and he never had a run like that season.

1986 Steve Cishek
1986 Caleb Joseph
1987 Jason Castro
1987 J. B. Shuck
1987 Jeremy Bleich
1987 Taylor Thompson
1989 Matt Moore
1990 Lisalverto Bonilla
1991 Tomas Telis
1993 Tayler Saucedo
1995 Jamie Westbrook
1996 Jake Meyers
1996 Nick Margevicius
1997 Evan Lee

OBITUARIES:

1879 George Fletcher

Fletcher was 34 when he passed away in his father’s home in Brooklyn.  Just two games for the Eckfords on June 20 and June 21, 1872, justifies his presence in your baseball encyclopedia (or a profile in Baseball-Reference.com).  Fletcher’s baseball life came about earlier than that, however, as you can find box scores for him playing first base, the outfield, and occasionally as a pitcher with the Nationals of Washington (along with Henry Berthrong and Seymour Studley, among others) in 1867 and 1869 – both professional nines – and the Excelsiors in New York, who were amateur but likely semi-professional in 1866.  After a brief time with the 45th Volunteer Infantry at the end of the Civil War, he was likely enticed to play baseball by club members who promised him a job with some government office in Washington DC.  Then, he returned home to Brooklyn.

Anyway – the Eckfords were a poor club in 1872 (finishing with just three wins in 29 decisions) and the two games in which Fletcher played the outfield were ugly – a 24-4 loss to Boston and a 26-6 loss to the Mansfields of Middleton, CT.

George Horace Elliott Fletcher was the son of Horace Rice Fletcher and Olive Jane Hunt, the second of five children.  Horace was at various times a grocer, a builder, and a real estate agent and through his work (and likely some family help) assembled a nice living in New York and Brooklyn.  (He was wealthy enough to afford a servant per the 1860 US Census.) Olive could trace her lineage back to Reverend John Eliot, the first reverend of Roxbury, MA known as “The Apostle to the Indians” and even wrote a translation of the Bible into the Algonquin Indian language in 1663, thought to be the first bible printed in the United States.  (Okay, that’s pretty cool.)

According to his miltiary records, George was 5′-9-1/2″ with hazel eyes and worked as a machinist during the four months he served (February to June, 1865).  His earthly remains were buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Civil War Enlistment Records, NY
1860, 1870, 1880 US Censuses
“Died,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 18, 1879: 3.
North American Families (Elliotts)
FindAGrave.com – and I suggest you walk back through the Hunt/Elliott line as it goes back to 1501 on this site.  Crazy.  The Fletcher line also goes back to some of the earliest immigrants landing in Massachusetts in the mid-1600s.

1915 Charlie Faust

This is Charles Victory Faust, a “mascot” of sorts that John McGraw kept around until he got tired of having Faust around.  Gabriel Schechter tells the story really, really well for SABR.  (He died of tuberculosis.)

1926 Alex Gardner
1927 Jack Harper
1929 Frank Bishop
1936 Al Nichols
1937 Willie Adams
1939 Murphy Currie
1947 Neal Brady
1947 Jumbo Harting
1955 Jack Katoll
1957 Milo Allison
1961 Eddie Gaedel

Known as the midget hired by Bill Veeck as a promotional stunt, Gaedel was only 36 when found dead by his mother in his Chicago apartment. However, bruises were found on the left side of his face and on his knees, leading to a police inquest into his death. (It was later determined that he died of a heart attack, but it’s possible that a mugging or fight that occurred after he left a local bowling alley could have contributed to that.)

Only weeks earlier, Gaedel and a handful of other midgets were hired to be vendors on Opening Day – a stunt that came about because fans thought that vendors blocked their view of the games.

“Remember Bill Veeck’s Midget?”, San Antonio Express, 20 June 1961, Page 20.

1963 Ben Geraghty
1966 Rollie Naylor
1968 Lloyd Bishop
1972 Willie Burnham
1973 Gerves Fagan
1977 Johnny Frederick
1979 Hal Trosky
1981 Honey Barnes
1989 Steve Senteney
2002 Jack Jenkins
2003 Larry Doby
2016 Joe Schaffernoth
2022 Dave Wickersham
2023 Dick Hall
2024 Willie Mays

YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE!!!

1938 Babe Ruth signs with the Dodgers to be a first base coach.

1945 Ace Adams pitches 3.2 innings for the Giants – and issues five intentional walks. Who was managing that team??? (Mel Ott). Adams entered the game as a reliever in the 10th and got the loss.

1947 Reds starter Ewell Blackwell fires a no-hitter and beats the Braves, 6 – 0. Blackwell fans three and walks four. All six runs were driven in by Babe Young, who had a pair of homers.

1950 Cleveland sets a record with a 14-run first inning over the As.

1953 Apparently, this is big inning day… Boston sends 23 (!) batters to the plate in a 17-run seventh inning against the Tigers. Sammy White scores three runs (a record) in the inning, and Gene Stephens is the first player to get three hits in an inning.

1967 Houston’s Don Wilson fans 15 in tossing a no-hitter to beat Atlanta, 2 – 0. THe #2, #3, and #4 hitters combined for nine strikeouts (Francona, Aaron, M. Jones)

1975 Boston rookie Fred Lynn goes 5 – 6 with three homers and ten RBI against Detroit. A triple in the third missed by a few feet of being a fourth homer and an AL record 11th RBI…

2000 Mike Lansing hits for the Cycle for Colorado. He does it in four innings… (3B in 1st, HR in 2nd, 2B in 3rd, and a 1B in the 4th.)

2012 Aaron Hill hits for the cycle for Arizona. He’d repeat the trick 11 days later…

2014 Clayton Kershaw fans 15 without a walk and no hits Colorado, 8 – 0. Dodger shortstop Hanley Ramirez made a throwing error on a Corey Dickerson grounder to open the seventh;  Dickerson reached third but didn’t score.

TRANSACTION WIRE:

1902 Steve Brodie is signed by the New York Giants – McGraw had just ditched (and pilfered from) the Baltimore Orioles (one of many reasons I think he needs to be removed from the Hall of Fame) and signed his old friend to play with his new team.

1963 The Yankees signed Archie Moore as a free agent. Moore, who had just been knocked out by Cassius Clay – oh, wait… Wrong Archie Moore… This Archie Moore was a first baseman and outfielder in the Yankees chain and spent a year with our friend, Ike Futch, in Augusta in 1963.

Ike? Got any good Archie Moore stories?

1976 Bowie Kuhn voids the sales of Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, and Joe Rudi.

1988 Los Angeles signs amateur free agent Pedro Martinez.

1989 New York sends Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell to Philadelphia for Juan Samuel. Thanks, in part, to a chemistry experiment the deal worked out for Philadelphia…

Philadelphia wasn’t done – they acquired Dennis Cook, Charlie Hayes, and Terry Mulholland from San Francisco for Steve Bedrosian and Rick Parker.

1994 Detroit signs amateur free agent Francisco Cordero.