Shape up your Boston accents! Joe Ryan will be serving the chowdah in Fenway.
First pitch: 6:10 Central
Weather: National Weather Service still gutted, slight chance T-storms, 71°
Opponent’s SB site: Over the Monster
TV: Twins TV. Radio: If Kris and Gladden babble like last week I will be sad
Young righthander Brayan Bello was briefly hyped as the second coming of Pedro Martinez, due to the effectiveness of his changeup; last year, it wasn’t so effective. He’s mainly a sinker/slider/change guy, but will mix in a mid-90s four-seamer to mess with your mind. 2024 digits:
Other things Around Baseball (and Sports)…
So, remember how we talked about Oregon passing a bill that would give owners of a new team $800 million for a Portland baseball stadium, to be paid entirely through taxes on player salaries? Well, one Portland economist did the math. If the team had EXACTLY the median MLB team salary, the taxes on that would raise… $196 million. Math lesson: $196 million is not the same as $800 million. So the state would be on the hook for the rest.
Stadiums never pay for themselves.
Here’s a British writer decrying how every new soccer stadium feels the same (they’re mostly designed by the same firm), and feels meant “to eradicate the poor supporters, to kick out the kooks and the crazies, and replace them all with docile, obedient consumers ready to stand, sing, and spend on cue.” Yup. The author also notes that stadiums frequently hurt the local economy, and that this is WORSE in America where taxpayers foot the bill. Yup.
And the Manfred Mann met with Supreme Leader to discuss… the dangers of expanded sports gambling? How we can take steps to protect people from exploitation and financial ruin? Especially children under 18 (who legally can’t gamble but are doing it anyways)? Did they talk about those things?
Nope, they talked about the late Pete Rose. Who Supreme Leader plans to “pardon”? Well, Rose was convicted of tax fraud, and rolled over on his friends he’d convinced to help him hide it… so, that tracks.
On to history!
On today in 1964, in Kansas City, the Twins hit four home runs in four consecutive ABs! First, Tony Oliva, Bob Allison, and Jimmie Hall, all off Dan Pfister to lead off the 11th inning. Then Pfister was replaced by Vern Handrahan, and Harmon homered off him. (KC pitchers would break the record for most homers allowed that year.)
Only two teams had hit four straight before: Cleveland in 1963 (with four average guys) and Milwaukee in 1961 (Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, Joe Adcock, Frank Thomas — no relation to Frank Thomas, Jr.) And Milwaukee lost that game 11-8! And Warren Spahn was the losing pitcher! Of “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain” fame! Well, everybody gets rocked sometimes.
We’re actually gonna skip back a little, though, to April 27, 1963. Red Sox starter Gene Conley is yanked after the fourth inning (he’d given up four runs). It was one of only nine games Conley would play in that year, which was his last in baseball. He finished with 17.2 WAR in 11 seasons. What’s interesting about that?
What’s interesting is that the opposing White Sox had a relief pitcher named Dave DeBusschere (who totaled 0.7 WAR in two seasons). And both those guys also played in the National Basketball Association.
There’s been 13 guys who’ve done this — including Chuck Connors, TV’s The Rifleman. Cotton Nash played in 10 games for the Twins during 1969 and 1970, and was a small forward for the LA Lakers. Howie Schultz, born in Saint Paul, played for the Minneapolis Lakers — and won a championship in 1952. (He was with the Dodgers the year Jackie Robinson made his debut, and traded to Philly six days before Robinson arrived.) And Gene Conley won FOUR championships! Once with Milwaukee in 1957 (baseball) and three with Boston from 1959-1961 (obviously, not in baseball).
Conley was a member of the Cherokee Nation (on his mother’s side). He played six seasons with the Celtics as a backup forward, averaging 5.9 points per game. Eleven years in baseball, with three All-Star nods and a 3.82 ERA, 17.0 WAR overall.
His weirdest moment came in 1962. After Conley was bombed by the Yankees (eight runs in two innings), the team bus got stuck in traffic on the way to the airport. Conley and teammate Pumpsie Green (Pumpsie!) left the bus to go pee in a restaurant bathroom; when they came out, the bus had left. So they just went on a total bender for awhile. At one point Conley bought a ticket to Jerusalem, but couldn’t board the plane because he didn’t have a passport.
Hey, who hasn’t bought a ticket to a country we’ve never been to when we don’t have a passport because we’ve had a beverage or two? OK, maybe not ALL of you have.
Conley returned to the team, got fined $1500, shaped up, and owner Tom Yawkey returned the fine at the end of the season. And Conley quit drinking a few years later.
Finally for today, this was supposed to be Walker Buehler’s turn in the rotation, so I found the following:
Be better if it was a Chicago uniform, though.
