Paul White

Friday Stuff New York/San Francisco Giants Edition

It’s an all-Giants edition of Friday Stuff, including a great right fielder hardly mentioned anymore, a trade they never should have made, and a couple of pioneers in fighting the reserve clause. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Baseball Remembers: George "Tubby" Scales The 2022 Early Baseball Era Ballot from the Hall of Fame including an interesting group of ten finalists, and an even more interesting voting result.

In 2022 the Hall of Fame had a loaded final Eras Committee ballot and some odd voting results, including the relative snubbing of George “Tubby” Scales. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Forgotten Treasures: Matt Williams Figurine Sometimes it nice when they take some artistic license.

Sometimes baseball memorabilia gets a little too accurate and shows a player in an unflattering light. Such is the case with a figurine of Matt Williams I recently found. @ibwaa.bsky.social

The Tom Terrific Trade It was all because of free agency.

In 1977, the Mets traded away Tom Seaver, a guy literally known as The Franchise, in one of the first deals made to avoid paying a star player what he could get as a free agent. @ibwaa.bsky.social

First Gloves: Doug Rader For reasons that don’t make much sense now, in the early 1970s Doug Rader won five consecutive Gold Gloves as the supposed best defensive third baseman in the National League.

The process for awarding Gold Gloves was pretty strange for the first 30 or 40 years it existed, and the five in a row won by Astros third baseman Doug Rader illustrates that better than anything. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Friday Stuff Dead Arm Pitcher Edition

It’s all pitchers on their last legs in this week’s Friday Stuff, from former Cy Young winners to one of the earliest great relievers, and even a guy who was briefly the best pitcher on earth. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Being a Manny Stan I’m not cool.

This one is really straightforward: Someone recently claimed that Manny Ramírez was the best right-handed hitter ever, and I jumped on that like a duck on a junebug. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Late Bloomers: Ron Guidry Ron Guidry was on quite a heater coming into the game of June 17, 1978.

Nolan Ryan once called Ron Guidry “kid” even though only three years separated them. Guidry wasn’t a kid at the time, he just got off to a slow start to his big league career. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Baseball Remembers: Mickey Lolich Until his dying day, a couple of weeks ago on February 4, Mickey Lolich wanted you to think he was just a regular guy.

The baseball world lost Mickey Lolich a few weeks ago, a really good pitcher who wanted us to believe he was just a regular guy, when in truth he was pretty special. @ibwaa.bsky.social

The Nickname Batting Race We really don’t do nicknames the way we used to.

The nicknames were a lot more cruel in 1926, but three teammates saddled with mean nicknames had one of the greatest batting races in baseball history that year.
@ibwaa.bsky.social

Friday Stuff Suspensions and Legal Proceedings Edition

Ballplayers often run afoul of the law or the commissioner, and we cover a string of those incidents in this week’s Friday Stuff. That includes the day we nearly lost the services of all players from Japan. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Bargain Basement Beltrán For nearly 30 years, the Kansas City Royals were the Walmart of the major leagues.

In 2004, the Kansas City Royals had a homegrown future Hall of Famer, but traded him away for little return because they were too busy turning the franchise into baseball’s Walmart. @ibwaa.bsky.social

The Frank McCormick Sampler This was going to be a First Gloves edition, with Reds first baseman Frank McCormick as the subject.

Frank McCormick fits a lot of different niches that I cover here, from his glove to the late start to his career to the odd path to getting a job. So today we’ll cover a sampling of all of them. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Sunday Newspaper All-Stars I was a child of the 1970s and ‘80s.

The Sunday paper used to be the best place to see what kind of year players around baseball were having. It also proved to be a poor way to predict who would make the All-Star team. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Late Bloomers: Sam Jones He had two nicknames, and they both fit him well.

Sam Jones didn’t play baseball before joining the Army, and didn’t learn to look at home plate when he threw until he was 31, yet he still became the first Black pitcher to throw a no-hitter in the integrated major leagues. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Friday Stuff World Series MVP Edition

After a week of projecting past World Series MVP winners, it’s only fitting that we end the week with a World Series MVP edition of Friday Stuff, complete with the man the award is named for. @ibwaa.bsky.social

World Series MVPs: 1940 to 1954 Just as a reminder, this week is going to be dedicated to reviewing all of the World Series played before the World Series MVP award was first introduced in 1955, in an effort to figure out who should...

We wrap up our quest to identify worthy winners of the World Series MVP from the years before it was created. The 1940 to 1954 seasons are today’s subject, so get ready for a lot of Yankees. @ibwaa.bsky.social

World Series MVPs: 1925 to 1939 Just as a reminder, this week is going to be dedicated to reviewing all of the World Series played before the World Series MVP award was first introduced in 1955, in an effort to figure out who should...

We continue our look at projected World Series MVPs, this time from 1925 to 1939, a list that includes a remarkable twelve future Hall of Famers. @ibwaa.bsky.social

World Series MVPs: 1910 to 1924 As I noted yesterday, this week is going to be dedicated to reviewing all of the World Series played before the World Series MVP award was first introduced in 1955, in an effort to figure out who coul...

Our next round of retroactive World Series MVPs covers the window from 1910 to 1924, tells us how Home Run Baker got his nickname, and it includes the first Negro Leagues World Series, too. @ibwaa.bsky.social

World Series MVPs: 1884 to 1909 I’m back from vacation, and decided it would be a good week to launch a mini-series about who should have won World Series MVP trophies if the award had existed before 1955.

The World Series MVP wasn’t awarded until 1955, and it’s about time we tried to figure out who should have won it in each of the World Series that was played before that. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Friday Stuff Phillies Comings and Goings Edition

We’ve got Phillies coming and going, from new Hall of Famers to washed up relievers, and hot prospects both arriving and departing. All in this week’s Friday Stuff. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Baseball Remembers: Mike Tiernan Here’s every player to:

The Pro Football Hall of Fame is currently in the news for having a flawed process. The Baseball Hall of Fame should take note, since they’ve never given players like Mike Tiernan a fair look. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Forgotten Treasures: Ted Williams’ 500th Homer Ball Pick the biggest current hitting star in baseball.

Can you imagine the chaos in the stands when Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge hits their 500th career homer and people fight for the ball? Well, in Ted Williams’ case, picture the exact opposite. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Delaying Stan Musial In 1941, the Cardinals were playing way over their heads.

In 1941 the Cardinals were in a dogfight for the pennant when they lost two starting outfielders to injury, yet they decided to leave their top prospect in the minors. Some kid named Stan Musial. @ibwaa.bsky.social

First Gloves: Buddy Bell If Brooks Robinson didn’t exist, there’s a very strong chance we’d all be talking about Buddy Bell as the greatest defensive third baseman in baseball history.

Buddy Bell unfortunately started his career in the shadow of the greatest defensive third baseman ever. That’s a shame, because it’s possible Bell was the next-best defender there, ever. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Friday Stuff Hall of Fame (or near) Indians Pitchers Edition

We have nothing but Hall of Fame (or close) pitchers from the Cleveland Indians in today’s Friday Stuff. That includes the worthy, the unworthy, the unelected, and even an appearance by Satchel Paige. @ibwaa.bsky.social

The Anonymous David Wright Vote Now that all of the various Hall of Fame voting results are known, I’ll offer up a few thought in the coming days and weeks, but want a bit of time to digest it all first.

Voting for David Wright for the Hall of Fame is fine. He was a good player. But voting for ONLY David Wright, and doing so anonymously, is both cowardly and indefensible. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Late Bloomers: Socks Seybold Two different players named “Socks” played for the Philadelphia A’s.

Two guys named Socks have played in the big leagues, both for A’s. This one deserved to be there long before he got the chance.
@ibwaa.bsky.social

Baseball Remembers: George Altman George Altman lived a remarkably eventful life.

George Altman was a baseball pioneer, one of the few veterans of the Negro Leagues, MLB, and Japanese baseball. But he almost became a high school basketball coach instead. @ibwaa.bsky.social

Forgotten Treasures: Ten Random Objects As you might imagine, when I go antique browsing with my wife we find a very small number of cool or valuable baseball items and a much larger number of things that could most charitably be called jun...

Maybe it’s junk. Maybe it’s awesome. The only way to find out is to show you ten random baseball objects found nearby and take a poll to see if it was all a worthwhile exercise. And it’s free! @ibwaa.bsky.social