Yankee4Life

6 out of 10, 56 seconds. Grasping at straws today my friends. Arjen Robben played for? Who the hell is Arjen Robben? Who was the coach of Steaua Bucharest in season 2004-05? Yeah, like I know. My guess was Joe Girardi. 😅

8 out of 10, 65 seconds. I needed this today because terrible Thursday is right around the corner! 😮

7 out of 10, 43 seconds. Thank you for some football questions. Which NFL team was coached by Tom Landry? Wow!

Oscar Melillo It sounds like a parody of Popeye, but the doctor was deadly serious when he told Oscar Melillo in 1926 that if he wanted to live he could eat nothing but spinach. Facing a potentially fatal kidney problem (Bright’s Disease), the 27-year-old Melillo wisely followed the doctor’s remedy and recovered from the disease, enabling him to continue his baseball career and live to the age of 64. Rather than having parodied Popeye in fact, Melillo’s story may have actually inspired it. The comic strip was created three years after Melillo’s diagnosis, by E.C. Segar, who may have known of the ballplayer’s story. Melillo reached the major leagues in 1926 after six seasons in the minors. He then played 12, through 1937, mostly as a second baseman. The first nine-plus were for the St. Louis Browns and the final nearly three seasons were as a member of the Boston Red Sox. He finished with a career .260 average, driving in 548 runs and scoring 590. Melillo then coached at the major-league level for 13 more years. Melillo was of slight stature, standing 5-feet-8 and weighing 150 pounds. He was born on August 4, 1899, in Chicago to Italian immigrant parents Maria Scaldaferri and James Melillo, a painter and shoe cobbler. Both had come to the United States from Tuscany in 1883. Oscar was the youngest of five children; his older siblings included Josephine, Munzie, James, and Rosie. He started a working life early, dropping out of high school almost as soon as he got there, “playing hookey and golf and baseball, particularly baseball.” He took a job in the office of the Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad, attending night school to take stenography, but too much teasing about being a “sissy” led him to apprentice as a tool maker at International Harvester in West Pullman, Illinois – certainly a more masculine-sounding job. He started playing baseball on weekends with the Alma Maters, the company semipro team. A connection to International Harvester dated back to his grammar school days. The company’s football team had a popular left tackle named Frank Fiske, whose nickname was Ski. Some of the other kids saw the way Melillo kicked the ball and helped pin the nickname on him. Years later, when he himself was working for the company, Oscar cheered Fiske on so much that his fellow workers started calling him “Ski” as well. Catcher Jake “Tomatoes” Kafora, who played in parts of a couple of years with the Pittsburgh Pirates, recommended him for his first job on organized ball, to manager Jack Sheehan of the Winnipeg Maroon. He signed with them in the fall of 1919. He played two years of outfield in the Western Canada League in 1920 and 1921. After the two years of Class B ball, it was on to Milwaukee, where he played four years (1922 through 1925) in the American Association, improving his average each year from .280 to .294 at Double A. His contract had been packaged as a late “throw-in” when the Brewers bought pitcher Eddie Schaack. Midway into his second year with the Brewers, he transitioned to the infield when the team’s second baseman, Fred “King” Lear, jumped the club to play with a team in the Wisconsin Industrial League. Oscar had played second base with the team in some postseason barnstorming in the fall of 1922, so he volunteered to take the job; shortstop Johnny Cooney seconded the notion, and he kept it. His final year with the Brewers, 1925, saw a .294 average, with 46 extra-base hits (13 of them home runs). Major league scouts were following him, and the Brewers reportedly turned down $50,000 in cash but accepted five ballplayers from the St. Louis Browns. Manager George Sisler was trying to strengthen the Browns’ defense and dealt for the second baseman that some writers were beginning to call “the new Lajoie.” With Milwaukee, Melillo had set a new record, handling 1,096 chances at second in 1925, and took part in 132 double plays. In the fifth game of the 1926 season, he took over late in the game for third baseman Gene Robertson and went hitless in his first major-league at-bat. His first hit came the next day, a double with a run batted in. His first game-winning hit came later in April, as he singled in the bottom of the 12th inning in a 2-1 victory over the White Sox. He didn’t homer often (22 in his 12 seasons); the first and only one of his rookie year was hit off Washington pitcher Dutch Ruether on June 18, tying the game in the eighth inning. His fielding won acclaim: On July 21 the New York Times wrote, “One reason the Yanks lost was Melillo’s beautiful stop of Keonig’s fast grounder near second, resulting in a double play of what should have been a base hit. Ruth’s homer followed immediately, but nobody was on.” Melillo appeared in 99 games in 1926,a year in which the Browns tumbled to seventh place after they finished third the year before. Melillo’s season had ended prematurely, after the August 9 game when he was hospitalized for six weeks with what was described as “complications due to a bad case of tonsillitis.” Indeed, he was only released at the end of October, after being diagnosed with what was termed kidney poisoning. For the season he batted 255 with 29 RBIs and 54 runs scored. His fielding was good – although he committed 22 errors, that was just two more than player-manager Sisler at first base and far fewer than Wally Gerber’s 37 at short. Following the kidney poisoning diagnosis, Melillo began his unusual diet. “They told me to eat nothing but spinach for the next few months if I wanted to live,” he said. “I tried to talk them into letting me have a steak, spaghetti, ravioli, or goulash once in a while, but they said nothing doing. When I told them I couldn’t stand the monotony of spinach three times a day, they told me I could have some variety by boiling it for breakfast, making a salad of it for lunch, and baking it for dinner.” Between meals, he was allowed to chew on raw carrots. It’s not surprising that he also earned the nickname “Spinach.” He was fortunate to survive, but there he was reporting to the Browns for spring training in 1927. He played all season long, getting spelled a couple of times a week while appearing in 107 games. He didn’t hit as well (.225), though, and his fielding suffered (36 errors, a .935 fielding percentage). Still, at the end of the year manager Dan Howley had him penciled in as his regular second baseman for 1928. In the spring, however, Otis Brannon played so well that he looked to have taken the position from Melillo by the end of March. Melillo had suffered some illness over the winter, so his stamina may not have been what it should have. There were several stretches in the 1928 season when Melillo had to sit out for a week or more. It was a disappointing year in which he struggled to play as regularly as he would have liked, and he only hit .189 in his 132 at-bats. Brannon hadn’t hit that well that season, either. As a result, the team pinned some hopes on prospect Eddie Grimes, and Melillo was seen as a reserve for the 1929 season – until that spring, when he proved himself and became Howley’s starting second baseman by Opening Day. On May 5, he had the only hit against Rube Walberg, denying him a no-hitter, but in general he started slowly, only really passing the .250 mark around the end of June. He had a strong second half though, finishing with a .296 average – well above the team’s .276 average – in 141 games, driving in 67 and improving in the field. St. Louis finished fourth, two games behind the Indians. Bill Killefer took over the helm in 1930, but the team sank to sixth. Melillo’s average dropped to .256 that season, although the team’s average was only .268. He played in all but five games, clearly having addressed his health issues. In 1931, Melillo had his best year, batting .306 and at times was among the league leaders in the early going, batting around .340 as late as mid-June. He drove in 75 runs. In the field, he handled 1,003 chances. He even placed eighth in the most valuable player voting, and earned an extra $3,000 thanks to a bonus for hitting .300 promised him by owner Phil Ball. In 1933, he set a career mark with 79 RBIs, in part on the strength of a .292 average. His fielding was excellent, at one point handling 316 chances without an error and setting a new record at second base with a .991 fielding percentage. Rogers Hornsby took over as manager about two thirds through the season, but the Browns finished last. They’d still never won an American League pennant. Not surprisingly for a last-place team, there were trade rumors throughout the offseason, and Melillo was often among them. He wasn’t moved, though, and played another full season in 1934. His average fell once more, down to .241. Though St. Louis climbed back to sixth place, Hornsby announced that for 1935 everyone was on the trading block. Joe Cronin had taken over as manager for the Red Sox, Tom Yawkey’s checkbook was open, and the Red Sox were looking for a second baseman. There were rumors galore during the winter, but nothing came of it until May 27. The two teams finally made a trade, with Melillo going to Boston and Moose Solters and a reported $25,000 in Yawkey cash going to St. Louis. Because of his inconsistently at the plate, his fielding was what kept him in the game. He played a deep second base and excelled at positioning himself well, anticipating the action – “playing the batter.” Hornsby wasn’t happy to give up so much on defense, but said he really needed a .300 hitter. Solters came through and hit .330 for him. Melillo had only been hitting .210 before the trade, no doubt a little preoccupied with all the rumors. After he landed with the Red Sox, he hit. 260. In Boston, he found himself with a home locker next to Lefty Grove. That presented an awkward situation because of a moment on August 23, 1931 when Oscar’s RBI double for a 1-0 Browns win had prevented Grove from extending his streak of 16 consecutive wins. Grove had never spoken to Melillo again, and didn’t for the first several weeks they were lockering neighbors. Finally, Grove relented and told him, “You’re eating with me tonight.” He was the starting second baseman in 1936, too, but appeared in only 98 games and hit just .226. He was 36 and perhaps starting to show his age, with a series of minor injuries that limited his playing time, though he did not miss any long stretches. A young ballplayer from Southern California joined the Red Sox in 1937: Bobby Doerr. It became Melillo’s job to tutor the promising prospect. It was predicted that he “may not appear in 50 ball games, but if Manager Joe Cronin carries out his plans the infielder will earn his salary.” It turned out to be Eric McNair who moved over from shortstop to second and handled the lion’s share of the action, while Doerr became accustomed to major league ball. Melillo appeared in just 26 games, hitting an even .250. In early December, Melillo requested and was granted his release so he could take up a job with the Browns as a coach under Gabby Street. Doerr said, early in the season, “I’ve learned more about second base just watching Ski these few weeks than I picked up in my whole three years on the coast.” He coached off and on through 1956, first with the 1938 Browns (managing the last 10 games of the season after Gabby Street left the club, finishing 2-7 with one tie.) He later served as a coach for the Indians under Oscar Vitt and Lou Boudreau. After the 1947 season, he was dropped from Boudreau's coaching staff at the insistence of owner Bill Veeck. Melillo spent part of 1948 managing in the Indians' farm system, but returned to Cleveland to serve part of the year as an aide to Boudreau for the 1948 world champions. After spending the 1949 season as a minor league manager, he coached under Boudreau in 1950, his final year with the Indians, then again with the Red Sox and Kansas City Athletics.

8 out of 10, 80 seconds. These questions were a struggle but not impossible but I should have done better. I can not get going this month.

He is unstoppable this month! Not counting today he has won eight of the sixteen days! 👏

10 out of 10, 36 seconds. I had some pressure on me trying to keep up with everyone else today. Can you believe there are two weeks left?

8 out of 10, 54 seconds. Again I missed one I should have easily had.

9 out of 10, 37 seconds. No, just no. It should have been a clean sweep today. It's been a hard month.

Thank you to both of you. It explains my question perfectly.

Those screen shots look beautiful. What has been preventing me from attempting me to acquire this game is that I won’t be able to get deeper into it. I see some things written in English to get by but not a lot. I was thinking why didn’t Konami release it here? Major league baseball is followed and viewed over in Japan so why not sell this game here? Then I realized why. Major league baseball probably does not want any competition from anyone in this country and they don’t want to have the casual or uneducated fan to see how baseball is played without launch angles, bat flipping and personalized hand shakes for every player on the team. In short, these Japanese guys play the game and this game from what I’ve seen and viewed on Youtube is the real deal. If it was sold here I would even buy a Playstation 5.

6 out of 10, 76 seconds. The time may not have been there for me but it never is on Thursdays but I'm happy because I was given a rare Oakland Raiders question that I had no chance of missing.

9 out of 10, 72 seconds. I took it a little slower today based on the questions that were thrown at me and it worked out well. I figured I had to do well today because Thursdays for me can be a struggle.

6 out of 10, 69 seconds. I should be happy that I got this many right but I'm sitting here wondering how I did it. 😄

5 out of 10, 55 seconds. As soon as I read question one which was a baseball card question I knew I was in trouble. Turns out I was right! 🙂