Hitless Wonders
Alex and I watched the 1906 World Series as told in the Burns documentary.
Before the “Hitless Wonders” portion began I said to Alex that no team in baseball will ever end a regular season with a better winning percentage than the ’06 Cubs. They were 116-36 (only 154 games on schedule back then, fucking pussies).
He sat on my lap and we heard the prose of Franklin Adams with his famous “Tinker to Evers (sp? Jeanz? Bruce Levine?) to Chance” bit, we learned of the dominance of Ed Walsh, and the fact that the 1906 WhiteSOX hit just 7 home runs the whole season.
Brian Anderson would’ve still underperformed in 1906.
He saw a close up of Three Finger Mordaci Brown’s hand and responded with the appropriate, “Dad that’s freaking me out.”
I knew someone in high school nicknamed “Three Finger” but that’s a story for a never day.
Paused the DVD and told Alex a bit more than the Burns documentary contains. Mostly I told him about Game One (the 6th Inning of the ‘06 World Series, a story for a man to tell his son) which really stunned the baseball world of the time, foreshadowing the great upset. The SOX won the 1st game 2-1 in large part because of two errors at home. The second and most devastating error was a passed ball by Cub catcher Johnny Kling, allowing a SOX runner to make it to 3rd and then be knocked in on a weak single.
That was the game winning run and my point in the story was to tell the boy that no matter how great a team was, how good they were at the plate or their pitchers were, in baseball if you don’t catch the ball, if you don’t play sound defense, if you kick the ball all over the infield - then you will lose.
He said, “Yeah like my Tigers last year. They were better than the National League team but they couldn’t catch anything.”
Me: “Right, their pitchers were kids, except for Kenny Rogers but the other guys were young and spooked and their nerves may have cost them the World Series.”
We watched the 10 minutes on the 1906 World Series again and Alex shook his head…
“How could the best team lose the World Series?”
“It’s baseball son. Anything can happen.”
Just wait till he finds out about 1908, Fred Merkle and the furor of two games at the old Polo Grounds beneath Coogan's Bluff.
Before the “Hitless Wonders” portion began I said to Alex that no team in baseball will ever end a regular season with a better winning percentage than the ’06 Cubs. They were 116-36 (only 154 games on schedule back then, fucking pussies).
He sat on my lap and we heard the prose of Franklin Adams with his famous “Tinker to Evers (sp? Jeanz? Bruce Levine?) to Chance” bit, we learned of the dominance of Ed Walsh, and the fact that the 1906 WhiteSOX hit just 7 home runs the whole season.
Brian Anderson would’ve still underperformed in 1906.
He saw a close up of Three Finger Mordaci Brown’s hand and responded with the appropriate, “Dad that’s freaking me out.”
I knew someone in high school nicknamed “Three Finger” but that’s a story for a never day.
Paused the DVD and told Alex a bit more than the Burns documentary contains. Mostly I told him about Game One (the 6th Inning of the ‘06 World Series, a story for a man to tell his son) which really stunned the baseball world of the time, foreshadowing the great upset. The SOX won the 1st game 2-1 in large part because of two errors at home. The second and most devastating error was a passed ball by Cub catcher Johnny Kling, allowing a SOX runner to make it to 3rd and then be knocked in on a weak single.
That was the game winning run and my point in the story was to tell the boy that no matter how great a team was, how good they were at the plate or their pitchers were, in baseball if you don’t catch the ball, if you don’t play sound defense, if you kick the ball all over the infield - then you will lose.
He said, “Yeah like my Tigers last year. They were better than the National League team but they couldn’t catch anything.”
Me: “Right, their pitchers were kids, except for Kenny Rogers but the other guys were young and spooked and their nerves may have cost them the World Series.”
We watched the 10 minutes on the 1906 World Series again and Alex shook his head…
“How could the best team lose the World Series?”
“It’s baseball son. Anything can happen.”
Just wait till he finds out about 1908, Fred Merkle and the furor of two games at the old Polo Grounds beneath Coogan's Bluff.
posted by edP | 8:14 PM
4 Comments:
At first, I thought the title of this post was Hitler's Wonders. That would have been a way stranger topic.
uh oh
I made my girl watch that last winter and she asked the same questions
Ah, baseball.
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