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Hall of Merit — A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best Monday, August 07, 2006Boog PowellJohn (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy
Posted: August 07, 2006 at 01:11 AM | 63 comment(s)
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1. John (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy Posted: August 07, 2006 at 01:14 AM (#2129635)I think to be eligible for that, you should be a good player with a substantial career - which Powell was. There are so many others who never quite made it: Billy Jo Robidoux, Arquimedez Pozo, ...
Bombo Rivera!
1. Musial
2. Gehrig
3. Foxx
4. Brouthers
5. Anson
6. Mize
(Mark McGwire will go here somebody, BTW)
7. Greenberg
8. Killebrew
9. Connor
10. Terry
11. Sisler
12. Allen
13. Cepeda
14. McVey
(In/out line is about here)
15. Hodges
16. Orr
17. Chance
18. Cash
19. Bottomley
20. Fournier
21. Camilli
22. H. Davis
23. Vernon
24. York
25. McCormick
26. Powell
27. Kluszewski
28. Konetchy
29. H. Larkin
30. B. White
(Joe Start goes about here from a purely numerical standpoint, but some of you will recall that I had him rated more highly than that, taking the more subjective evidence into account.)
That's especially true for me because I'm not old enough to remember him playing, but I'm old enough for the commercials. :-)
Jennings Poindexter
Drungo La Rue Hazewood
(with apologies to Bob Zimmerman)
JOHN WESLEY POWELL
John Wesley Powell
Was a friend to Baltimore,
He traveled with a bat in ev'ry hand.
All along the American League,
He rattled many a nerve,
For he was never known
To miss a hanging curve.
'Twas down in Oriole Country,
the time they talk about,
With the Robinsons on base
He took his stance.
And soon the pitch he got
Was all but straightened out,
He was never known
for leaving any doubt.
All across the Sporting News
His name it did resound,
And no fastball thrown against him
Could be saved.
And there was no man around
Need bother knock him down,
It was thought he knew
the next pitch anyway.
your seaverly under rating Chuck Klein and overratiting Boog Powell
One thing that dooms a name is being commonplace. Take Alex Rodriguez. The world is awash with players named Alex, especially from Spanish-speaking households. And Rodriguez has to be one of the handful of most common Spanish family names. The only thing that distinguishes Alex Rodriguez from Alex Gonzalez (and Alex Gonzalez) is how he played, not his name.
Sometimes a name is wrong because it's already taken: how about Bob Gibson, 80's LHP, mostly for Milwaukee, 270 career innings of 94 ERA+? Of course when the second exceeds the first ... where does that leave Frank Thomas, outfielder?
"Willie Wilson" doesn't have that much going for it - except the second one had to be given a nickname and became Mookie.
---
Side question about Powell's name: how many players can you think of with a "oo" sound in their names became popular fan chants (that you had to understand were not boos)? Certainly, that applies to Lou Brock.
Boof Bonser
Lou (Piniella or Whitaker)
Youkilis
Mookie?
Mixing ethnicities like Juan Eichleberger or Vladimir Guerrero, or having a baseball term in your name inconguous with your skills like Homer Bush (he didn't) or Cecil Fielder (he couldn't).
Goooooooooooooose!
Boof Bonser
For a second, i thought this was a response re. horsebleep base runners for the Twins. But I doubt if Boof has ever been on base. Lew-Lew on the other hand makes Torii look like a really great base runner.
-ski and -witz = often fun
Ray Jablownski
Billy Grabarkawitz
Rip Repulski
Hank Majeski
Kiki Cuyler was about the only player in history who's given first and middle names could have been improved upon by the nickname "Kiki."
Sufjan Stevens
Witness Doug Eyechart and AJ Pierogi
Doooooooo-ey (Dwight Evans)
How far in time does "booing" go back?
Did they go "Boooooooth" when Ed Booth of the Brooklyn Atlantics (NA) came to the plate?
? Ok, Tom Seaver as an adjective? But is that Seaver the announcer, or Seaver the pitcher?
and over-ratiting? So you mean Boog is being overly compared to an Ostritch or Emu?
anywho
Klein, OPS+ of 137 in 7168 PA
Boog: 134 in 7810 PA
yeah, about the same- except having seen Klein's Home Raod splits in Total Baseball, I don't think Klein's a true 137, I think he took advantage of the Baker Bowl to an unusual degree, leaving the Baker Bowl his offense dropped off like Vinny Castilla(highest non-Coors OPS+ 101) leaving Colorado not like Burks leaving Colorado, iow in a real park he'd put up a 120 or somthing
I´d say the irony makes them good :)
The Rangers' PA announcer used to introduce Steve Buechele with an exaggerated vowel: "Boooo-oooo-shell!" Ranger fans were pretty much uninterested in Buechele, though, for good reasons.
Then there's the excessive curvature needed to wrap a 12-letter name onto the back of a skinny middle infielder (Schoendienst).
Bill James once repeated a friend's observation that all the baseball players named "White" were black, and the ones named "Black" were white.
And a HOFer with an even more boggling name: Mr. Carl Yastrzemski.
Quote From Episode 621: The Beast Of Yucca Flats
Mike
I had a vision I was chased through the desert by Boog Powell.
I've long looked forward to a modern baseball marriage resulting in
Ken McGriffey Jr.
Then there's the excessive curvature needed to wrap a 12-letter name onto the back of a skinny middle infielder (Schoendienst).
Two words: Kirk Dressendorfer. Both Kirk and Red's surnames are German....
Schoendienst is listed at 6'0", 170 lbs. I only remember him as a manager, not a player, but he didn't appear to have gained much if any weight in middle age. So Red's skinny back was the smaller canvas for the big name, even at one fewer letter.
OK, I haven't laughed that hard in a while.
J.D. Droooooooooooooo....
Blew out his arm, wasn't able to come back from the injuries.
Not unlike a contemporary with a similarly lengthy last name, Scott Chiamparino.
Honus Wagner told a story about the day that Booe was sent up to pinch-hit with umpire Bill Klem behind the plate. In those days, the umpire announced all substitutes to the press box. Klem didn't recognize the kid, and asked him what his name was; he replied "Booe". Klem asked him to repeat it, the kid raised his voice and said "Booe!" again - whereupon Klem got huffy, thinking the kid was playing some sort of joke, and ejected him. Fred Clarke had to come out of the dugout with lineup card in hand to show Klem that he really did have a player named Booe.
It's a good story, but I don't believe it's true. I can't imagine that Klem wouldn't have checked his lineup card before the game and seen the name "Booe" on it.
Booe, by the way, made his major league debut in Chicago as a pinch-hitter, and got a single in his first ML AB.
-- MWE
There were two Alejandros from Chile in one of my grad school classes, so I have supposed that it is a common name. But neither one was Alex. The only Alex was surnamed Viskovatoff.
> how many players can you think of with a "oo" sound in their names became popular fan chants
How far in time does "booing" go back?
Did they go "Boooooooth" when Ed Booth of the Brooklyn Atlantics (NA) came to the plate?
On the other hand, was Boog the model?
Did fans or only announcers swooon for Wally Moon?
Vida Bluuuue (#2 LHP on Your All-Time Girl's Name All-Stars Featuring Candy Maldonado behind Sandy Koufax)
#20: I thought Mookie rhymed with cookie, is that incorrect?
See Spike Lee's character in Do The Right Thing.
Oh-duh-bee, Oh-duh-bee, Oh-duh-bee!!!
Did his family call him Sasha?
(Enters "Sasha" into bbref. No hits.)
As I mentioned before, Mookie was actually William Wilson - how confused would everyone have been had he decided to go by "Willie"? I guess that would have been about as bad as Alex Gonzalez.
Six Bill Smiths (four Bill's and two Billy's)
There have been five John Smiths. Three of the vanilla variety. One went by 'Jack', and the last picked the great nickname of 'Phenomenal'. Plus two other Jack Smiths
Five Ed/Eddie/Edgar Smiths
Four Smiths picked the colorful nickname of 'Red'. The duplication made the nickname much less colorful.
Three John Johnsons and one Jonathan Johnson. Hard to get more Vanilla than that.
Two other Randy Johnson's debuted in the early 80s before the future HOF-er took the name and made it his own.
Maybe "LU-BLU".
Probably neither back in the 20's.
This raises two totally unrelated questions:
1) Is the R-L-R stacking of lineups entirely a creation of modern bullpen usage? To today's fan it seems inconceivable that the lefthanded Powell wouldn't bat between the righthanded Robinsons, but Weaver probably made the move simply because he could see that Boog had clearly surpassed Brooks as a hitter.
2) What pair of teammates combined for the most runs by A and rbi by B without B ever driving in A? My first guess would be that Ruth probably didn't drive in Gehrig very often, but did it never happen?
Too many PH-type situations to think that this would *never* have happened. Maybe, though.
Manny Ramirez drove him 165 runs in 1999, none of those 165 RBI were one of Jim Thome's 101 runs. That's a total of 166. Someone probably has that beat, but that high bar should make this easier to track down.
I can't believe nobody mentioned Jose Cruuuuuuuuz!
If Tony Gwynne married Steve Balboni, he'd be Tony Balboni.
If Duke Snider married Dolf Luque, he'd be Duke Luque.
If Fritz Petersen married Jeremy Burnitz, he'd be Fritz Bernitz.
If Harvey Kuenn had married Steve Garvey, he'd be unhappy.
Well, that goes without saying.
Go back to the Think Factory.
He used to tell a really cool story, in far more detail than I'm going to, about this time when this heavyset kid steps up to the plate, and how he was thinking how he was going to blow a fastball by this fat-ass.
"Ball's still going," is how he always told it. "Boog Powell."
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