Lookout Landing: Lookout Landed (Jeff Sullivan retires)

I’m genuinely gutted.  Sullivan was hands-down my favorite baseball writer on the internet.

For a guy who makes his living as a professional writer, I don’t know a whole lot about quality writing. This is one of the reasons I don’t like to self-identify as a writer, not that “blogger” is any better. But I do know that, when reporting news, you’re supposed to lead with the substance. This is why they call it the “lead”, or the “lede” if you want to seem smarter. With that in mind, my lede: this is my final post for Lookout Landing. [...]

But that comes with its attendant upsides and downsides. LL has been a side job, but it’s felt a lot like my regular job. When you turn a hobby into work, you sort of lose the hobby. For a while, LL hasn’t served as a hobby; it’s served as an extension of what I do, and it’s at the point where that’s just become too much writing, too much baseball. I haven’t had time to develop other hobbies. I know that I could still run this place, but I know I’ve never been less motivated to do that. I don’t see that turning around with the season around the corner.

So long, Jeff, and thanks for all the fish.

Boswell: Earl Weaver, Words from a Baseball Master

“●On managing in the lowest rung of the minor leagues: “You’ve got 100 more kids than spots on the team. Every one of them has had a goin’ away party. They have been given the shaving kit and the $50. ‘See you in the majors in two years.’ You write on the report, ‘4-4-4 and out.’ That’s the lowest rating in everything. You say, ‘It’s the consensus among us . . .’ Some of ’em cry. Some get mad. But none of ’em will leave until you answer ’em one question: ‘Skipper, what do you think?’ And you gotta look every one in the eye and kick their dreams in the [butt] and say, ‘Kid, there’s no way you can make my ballclub.’”

I know there was already a thread on Weaver, but this is worth a read. Follow the “Earl Weaver quotes to Boswell” link on the sidebar

First Coast News: Ryan Freel, former MLB player from Jacksonville, commits suicide

Tragic news this cheery weekend. RIP.

First Coast News sports director Dan Hicken has learned that Ryan Freel, a Jacksonville native and former Major League Baseball has died at the age of 36.  The cause of death is suicide.

Freel played baseball at Sandalwood and Englewood High School.  He played for five different MLB teams from 2001-2009.  He is most known for his six-year tenure with the Cincinnati Reds.

His career batting average was .268 he stole 143 bases in his career.

Since his retirement from professional baseball in 2009, Freel was a part of an organization on the First Coast called BLD Baseball which stands for Big League Development.  Through this organization, Freel coached local youth baseball players.

APSU baseball great Jimmy Stewart dies

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – Jimmy Stewart, the former Austin Peay baseball great who was a member of the university’s first athletic Hall of Fame class, and enjoyed a 10-year major league baseball career, died Saturday in Tampa, Fla.

-

After college, Stewart strictly concentrated on baseball, where he played for the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati Reds and Houston Astros from 1963–1973.

 

Last player to homer for NY Giants dies at 81

Gail Harris, the final player to slug a home run for the New York Giants before they relocated to San Francisco, has died. He was 81.

According to a report from the Associated Press, Harris, who hit 51 homers over parts of six Major League seasons, passed away at his home in Gainesville, Va., on Nov. 14. Harris played first base for the Giants from 1955-57 and the Tigers from 1958-60.

Rox sign Jaime Moyer to Minor League deal

Fun fact: When the Rockies came into existence, Jaime Moyer was in his eighth Major League season.

The Rockies’ search for a veteran for the starting rotation could take them to the ultimate veteran, 49-year-old left-hander Jamie Moyer.

Colorado and Moyer have agreed to a Minor League deal that includes an invitation to Spring Training, the club announced on Wednesday. The agreement is pending a physical.

Moyer underwent Tommy John surgery on his throwing elbow in 2010 and didn’t pitch last season. The lefty worked as an analyst for ESPN in 2011 but stated that he intended to try to pitch again in ‘12.

Moyer went 9-9 with a 4.84 ERA for the Phillies in 2010.

Former American League umpire Marty Springstead is dead at age 74

Marty Springstead, who at the age of 36 in 1973 became the youngest umpire crew chief in World Series history, has died. He was 74.

Major League Baseball said Wednesday that Springstead was found dead at his home in Florida on Tuesday night.

A native of Nyack, N.Y., Springstead was an American League umpire from 1966-85. Among his three World Series were 1978 and 1983, and he also was an umpire at the All-Star game in 1969, 1975 and 1982 and at five AL championship series.

After retiring from the field, he became the AL’s executive director of umpires, then worked as an umpire supervisor for MLB after umpire staffs from the leagues merged.

He retired from his management position before the 2010 season.

“For a quarter-century, Marty mentored a new generation of our umpires, not only in the major leagues but around the world,” Commissioner Bud Selig said. “Marty was an avid teacher, a great storyteller and a friend to countless people around our game. Like so many of my colleagues, I always appreciated his wonderful sense of humor and the pride he had for his profession.”

Thanks to Rod Nelson.

Don Carter, USBC and PBA Hall of Famer, dies at age 85

Farewell to “The Babe Ruth of Bowling”...

Don Carter, one of the most prominent and successful players in the sport of bowling, died at his home in Miami on Thursday night. Carter, who had recently been hospitalized with pneumonia complicated by emphysema, was 85.

...Born in St. Louis, Mo., on July 29, 1926, Carter was more interested in baseball and football while in high school. After graduation, he served two years in the Navy before signing a baseball contract with the Philadelphia Athletics. He was sent to the minor league team in North Carolina.

In a Bowlers Journal interview in 1970, Carter said he hit .304 and did pitch some games, but the team played 128 games in 112 days and he lost 30 pounds from his 180-pound frame.

“I got $150 a month plus room and board,” Carter recalled. “Riding that bus all over the countryside to games was too much. I quit after a season.”

That would lead Carter back home to St. Louis and the start of his career in bowling.

Minor league stats

Former Major Leaguer Howie Koplitz passes away at 73

What is there to say…

Andy Carey, helped preserve Larsen’s perfecto, dies

RIP,

Andy Carey, a former Yankees third baseman who helped preserve Don Larsen’s 1956 perfect game, passed away on Dec. 15 in Costa Mesa, Calif., his family announced. He was 80.

A career .260 hitter, Carey played in 11 Major League seasons from 1952-62, beginning with the Yankees at age 20 in ‘52 and spending nine seasons wearing pinstripes.

Born on Oct. 18, 1931, in Oakland, Calif., Carey signed with the Yankees after spending a summer playing semi-pro ball in Weiser, Idaho. As New York’s everyday third baseman in ‘55, Carey led the league with 11 triples and was known as a solid defender and clutch hitter.

Carey played on four Yankees World Series teams, winning rings with the 1956 and ‘58 squads. He is remembered as playing a key role in Larsen’s Oct. 8, 1956, perfecto against the Dodgers at Yankee Stadium.

Ted Beard, 90. Played for Pirates, White Sox.

Ted Beard 90, professional baseball player and WWII veteran, passed away December 30, 2011 with his family by his side. Ted, voted most popular player for the Indianapolis Indians in 1948 and 1951, began his professional career in 1941. His career was interrupted to serve in the Pacific Theatre in WWII.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/beardte01.shtml.

St. Louisian Don Mueller, former big-league star, dies

Don Mueller...

St. Louis native Don Mueller, who led the majors in hits in 1954 and roamed the outfield with Willie Mays of the New York Giants, died on Wednesday. He was 84.

Mueller, who played at CBC, was signed by the Giants in 1944 and made his big-league debut four years later.

At age 23, he became a starter for the Giants in right field and hit .291 in his first full season.

...A career .296 hitter, Mueller became known as “Mandrake the Magician.” He finished his career with two seasons with the White Sox in 1958 and 59.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 12-28-2011

Milwaukee Journal, December 28. 1911:

[Red Sox manager] Jake Stahl says that he is sure he has no more dead players on his list. Since he discovered Lockwood, the dead Vancouver man on the list, he has been over it very carefully.

Cross him off, then.

CBC: Alberta shooting victim’s baseball-themed funeral draws 600

Farewell to the ballplayers…

The mother of Mitch MacLean — a ballplayer from P.E.I. who was killed in an Alberta murder-suicide last week — read her poem called Last Time at the Plate during her son’s funeral that was attended by hundreds.

Cars were lined up along the road by Winsloe United Church, just north of Charlottetown, for the service. An overflow room was set up for those who could not get one of the 220 seats in the chapel. An estimated 600 attended.

A former girlfriend of MacLean’s, Melia Thompson, said after the service it was “exactly what Mitch would’ve wanted.”

MacLean was a promising young baseball player, and the sport played a prominent part in the service.

The poem read by his mother was one she had written herself. His casket left the church to the tune of Centerfield by John Fogerty.

Deadspin: Legendary Columnist Bill Conlin Resigns Over Forthcoming Philly Inquirer Bombshell

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s top investigative reporter, Nancy Phillips, has written a story containing what we’re told are allegations of child molestation against sportswriter Bill Conlin, a longtime columnist at the rival Daily News. Conlin resigned just moments ago, according to a source at the Daily News.

Conlin, who turns 78 this May, won the Ford C. Frick Award last May. The story supposedly will drop soon (the newspapers publish under a joint-operating agreement, sharing some resources and a website but otherwise competing for the same readers). Conlin has hired an attorney to defend himself against the piece. We’ll have more details on this. For now, we can tell you that Conlin is at his condo in Largo, Fla.

And Bill Conlin’s articles on BTF...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 11-25-2011

Milwaukee Journal, November 25, 1944:

Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, commissioner of baseball since 1921, died at St. Luke’s hospital Saturday morning at 5:35.  He was 78 years old.
...

Landis, a gruff speaking old man with shaggy white hair, battered hat and keen wit, became a legend in his lifetime.  He was noted for his fairness and as a man who always gave the underdog a break.

Unless they had too much melanin.  In which case they were screwed.

In all seriousness, though, the linked article is an excellent obituary.

On The Passing Of Greg Halman

I don’t even feel right referring to Greg as a baseball player. Obviously he was a baseball player, and that was how we knew him, but I don’t feel right giving him that label, that identity. Still, while “baseball player” wasn’t Greg Halman’s full identity, it was a part of it, so it’s worth noting how much Halman achieved, and what he came to represent. He wasn’t just a Mariners prospect on the brink of a big league career. He was the first Dutch-born, Dutch-raised, and Dutch-developed player in Major League history, and from the bottom of Geoff Baker’s piece:

[Coach] Chlup said Halman was surprised that so many fans in the Czech Republic seemed to know who he was. Other than [Prince] Fielder, Chlup said, Halman got the loudest reception of any player introduced to the crowds.

“He knew that, for a lot of Dutch kids, he was the one who got it done.”

Halman was one of the faces of European baseball. In one sense, he was trying to make it. In another sense, he already had…

Greg Halman was born in Haarlem in 1987. He learned four languages. He graduated from college. He signed with the Seattle Mariners in 2004. He represented his country in 2009. He made the Major Leagues in 2010. He hit his first Major League home run in 2011. All the while he comported himself with an eagerness and a joie de vivre sufficient for envy. This is a paragraph summary of Greg Halman’s life, and I hate it. I hate that it’s insultingly brief, and I hate that it had to be written.

Daily Mail: Seattle Mariners’ Halman [fatally] stabbed

Ugh.  Just ugh.

Seattle Mariners baseball star Gregory Halman has been killed in a stabbing in Rotterdam.

Dutch national TV station NOS-TV said the family of Halman, 24, had confirmed his death.

Yes, we can all agree that he’s not a star.  That makes this no less horrific.  RIP, Greg.

Update: Reuters reports Halman’s brother has been arrested in connection with the stabbing.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 11-21-2011

Milwaukee Sentinel, November 21, 1911:

The proposed deal which is said to involve the transfer of the Boston Rustlers to a company headed by Henry Killilea of Milwaukee and Charles Baird of Kansas City is off.
...

Should the present owners of the Rustlers come down a little in the price quoted there many be some chance of the deal going through.

That seems unlikely, because…

Boston Evening Transcript, November 21, 1911:

William Hepburn Russell, president and chief owner of the Boston Baseball Club of the National League, died this morning at his home.

That tends to throw a monkey wrench into negotiations.

Charlie Lea, former major league pitcher, found dead at Collierville home

Charlie Lea...RIP.

Former major league pitcher Charlie Lea, a star at Kingsbury High and then-Memphis State University before embarking on a successful pro career, was found dead in his Collierville home Friday. He was 54.

Collierville Police Chief Larry Goodwin said Lea died of a suspected heart attack.

Winner of 62 games in an eight-year major league career that ended with the Minnesota Twins in 1988, Lea pitched a no-hitter for the Montreal Expos against the San Francisco Giants in 1981, and was the starting and winning pitcher for the National League in the 1984 All-Star Game.

Some ‘food for thought’

The area lost another of its sports gems with the passing of Paul “Jake” Martin on Tuesday.

For those who don’t know, Martin grew up in Fayette City, was a graduate of Marion High School and played with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1955.

He pitched two scoreless innings against the Brooklyn Dodgers after signing his pro contract, which included a $20,000 signing bonus, and later that season suffered an arm injury that cut short his career. He pitched in seven games for the Pirates before the injury.

Cardboard appreciation: 1976 Topps Mickey Scott

Remembering Mickey Scott...

Scott continued to live in Binghamton after his career. He opened a bar, called “Mickey’s Mound,” which I remember driving by when I was a teenager, having no idea that it was Mickey SCOTT’s Mound. I wonder how the conversation would have went if I asked my folks if we could just pop into a bar to see if a former major leaguer was there. (Mickey’s Mound is now The Brass Lantern Tavern).

Scott pitched for a Yankees farm team, the Binghamton Triplets, during the 1960s, and kept his connections to the Yankees after his career, working in various capacities. Yankees manager Billy Martin often frequented Scott’s bar.

But on Sunday, Scott went out to rake leaves. He never returned. His lifeless body was found slumped over outside of his home in Binghamton. Relatives believe he suffered a heart attack or stroke. Mickey Scott was 64.

In this article, Scott’s sister calls her brother a “super, super guy” and “fun-loving.” “Mickey was a hell-raiser, but everyone had good things to say about him,” she said.

Hell-raiser indeed. His card sure raised hell with me in that basement in 1976.

Baseball great Matty Alou dies in Miami

Farewell…Matty Alou. I’m crushed.

Santo Domingo.- One of the most inconic Major League Baseball greats from the Dominican Republic, Mateo Rojas Alou (Matty Alou) died early Thursday in Miami of unspecified ailment.

Alou, one of the famous brothers Jesus and Felipe, who all started with the San Francisco Giants in the 1060s, crowned his career while playing with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1969, when he won that National League Batting title with an average of .342.

Dominican Olympic Committee president Luisin Mejia made the announcement on Channel 9 Thursday morning.

Dallas Morning News - Adrian Beltre: “We all know we lost the Series yesterday.”

Interesting bit of post-mortem from AB:

“We all know we lost the Series yesterday. We shouldn’t have let it slip away. We came back today to try to win it, but the momentum just took them and they won it. It’s not a nice feeling.

“We had in our mind that we were going to win the World Series. We were one strike away, but it didn’t happen. It would be easier if you lose four games in a row than having the thought that you were one strike away. It’s not easy. That game [on Thursday] will be hard to forget.”

Ex-Angel, Montclair standout Ricky Adams dies

Ricky Adams…

Ricky Adams, whose Major League Baseball career featured being a member of the Angels’ 1982 Western Division championship team, died early Friday following a lengthy bout with cancer.

Adams was 52.

“The Angels organization and their alumni are deeply saddened to hear of Ricky’s passing,” said Tim Mead, Angels vice-president of communications. “There is always a special bond with any member of the Angels family.

...At the age of 23, Adams made his major-league debut with the Angels on Sept. 15, 1982. He played in 66 games as a utility infielder during the 1982 and 1983 seasons.

He became a free agent in 1984 and signed with the Giants, with whom he spent two seasons. His final pro season was 1987 with the Angels.