If Your Birthday is July 14th...

...you share it with Robin Ventura.  The six-time Gold Glove winner is best known for his decade with the White Sox -- a club he later managed -- but is also part of that select circle who have played for both the Yankees and Mets.    
Same for Tim Loscastro.  Best known for his strong defense and base stealing skills, he's also spent time with the Dodgers and Diamondbacks.  I captured this last summer with the Yankees' Scranton farm club.  He played 11 games with the Mets earlier this season before a thumb injury wiped out the rest of his 2023.

Jack Leathersich -- Jack WHO?? -- a lefty reliever that appeared in 17 games for the 2015 Mets, before a mid-season injury led to Tommy John Surgery.  He pitched in seven games for the 2017 Cubs and Pirates, but never regained the form that brought him to Flushing.

This trio shares July 14th with a revered name in New York baseball history.  Born in 1908, Johnny Murphy was the Yankees "Fireman," the ace relief pitcher on their great teams of the 1930s and early '40s. Moving behind the scenes after World War II, he ran the Red Sox minor league system before George Weiss brought him back to New York as part of the Mets front office.  Murphy succeeded Bing Devine as the club's general manager in 1968. A year later, with their young players developing and boosted by a smart mid-season trade for Donn Clendennon, the Mets stunned the baseball world.  Sadly, Johnny died of a heart attack just three months after the World Series victory over the Orioles.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rare Remnant of a Lost Ballpark

Image
When the subject of baseball in Brooklyn comes up, the discussion centers around Ebbets Field, the Flatbush venue most famously home to The Boys of Summer.  Those legendary 1940s and '50s teams that featured such historic and beloved players as Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella and Gil Hodges. Ebbets Field hosted its last major league game in 1957 and was torn down during the winter of 1960. But decades earlier, just before World War One, the Dodgers were based in the Park Slope area and played at Washington Park.  Once they moved out, the land was occupied by another stadium, which housed a different franchise.  The upstart Federal League, which played in the 1914 and '15 seasons, had a Brooklyn team called the TipTops.  Owned by a local baking magnate Robert Ward, whose company produced TipTop bread, the club took over the abandoned lot along 3rd Street and built a new brick and steel venue. The only no-hitter in the Federal League's two-year r
Read more

Another Yankee Trade

Image
Yankee fans: here's a last look at shortstop Trey Sweeney .  The 2021 first round draft choice was part of the three player trade with the Dodgers that brings reliever Victor Gonzalez and infield prospect Jorbit Vivas to New York. Now seeking to rebuild their pitching depth after dealing for Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo, the Yanks deemed Sweeney expendable.  While the Louisville native showed promising power in his three seasons with the organization -- he batted only .248 to go with his 36 career homers -- Brian Cashman has committed to Anthony Volpe and Oswald Peraza as his young middle infielders.  So Sweeney became a trade chip. ( My images of Trey Sweeney are from the Somerset/Binghamton AA games on July 15th and September 19th, 2023. )
Read more

Will He Wear Zero in the Bronx?

Image
The Yankees bolstered their starting rotation with Thursday's signing of Marcus Stroman .  The Long Island native, who spent 2019 and '21 with the Mets before moving onto the Cubs, brings a 77-76 career record to the Bronx, along with a recent loyalty to uniform number (?) zero.  If he requests that, he'd become the third Yank to wear it, following the path of Adam Ottavino and Domingo German.  Of course, neither of their Yankee tenures ended all that well -- Ottavino struggled badly in 2020, before reviving his career with the Red Sox and Mets; German's alcohol and domestic violence issues sabotaged such Yankee highlights as last year's perfect game. Can a number truly be lucky? You can understand kids in little league or high school ball wanting to wear 2 in honor of Derek Jeter or 7 for Mickey Mantle.  But is there an heroic ballplayer associated with 0?  The closest I recall comes from pro football, where the Oakland Raiders Hall of Fame center Jim Otto wore 00
Read more