Yankee4Life

10 out of 10, 39 seconds. I have no idea what held me up today!

7 out of 10, 62 seconds. One question I was asked was what did Eddie O'Brien have for dinner at the Cafe Bohemia in Washington DC in the Jim Bouton book Ball Four. I got it wrong. The correct answer was lamb chops and now I will never forget it.

10 out of 10, 30 seconds. My fastest time in months. Thank you Friday.

10 out of 10, 91 seconds. My first perfect score in a general question setup. Shocking!

7 out of 10, 120 seconds. Really tough questions today and again I can't get going this month.

7 out of 10, 83 seconds. No matter what I can't get going this month.

Luis Tiant Luis Clemente Tiant y Vega, a charismatic right-handed pitcher whom Reggie Jackson called “the Fred Astaire of baseball,” won 229 games over parts of 19 seasons in the major leagues. His midcareer comeback, dramatic family reunion, and World Series heroics inspired a region, likely leaving him one of the most beloved men ever to play for the Boston Red Sox. Tiant was born in Marianao, Cuba, the son of Luis and Isabel. His father, Luis Eleuterio Tiant, was a legendary left-handed pitcher who starred in the Cuban Leagues and the American Negro Leagues for 20 years. The elder Tiant was famous for a variety of outstanding pitches (including a screwball, spitball, and knuckleball), a tremendous pickoff move, and an exaggerated pirouette pitching motion. As late as 1947, at the age of 41, Luis put together a 10-0 record for the New York Cubans and pitched in the East-West All-Star Game. Monte Irvin claimed that Luis would have been a “great, great star” had he been able to play in the major leagues. The younger Tiant was an only child, and grew up in a baseball-mad country. He was a star on various local youth teams, and as a 16-year-old played on an all-star club that traveled to Mexico City for an international tournament. His father did not encourage him to make a career of the game, believing there was little chance of a black man being successful in baseball, but his mother was more supportive and carried the day. After failing a tryout with the Havana team of the International League, Luis started his professional career in 1959, at age 18, with the Mexico City Tigers. His first year was quite poor (5-19, 5.92 ERA), but he followed this up with 17 wins in 1960 and 12 more the next year, after being delayed for two months trying to leave his homeland. At the end of the 1961 season, the Cleveland Indians purchased his contract for $35,000. During these three seasons, Luis spent his summers living in Mexico City, and then returning to Havana for the offseason to play winter ball and be with his family. In 1961 he met Maria del Refugio Navarro, a native of Mexico City, at a ballpark – she was playing for her office softball team. After a short courtship, Luis and Maria married in August 1961. At the close of the season they were planning to return to Luis’s home in Marianao. But the political embarrassment and potential economic hardship of massive Cuban emigration led Fidel Castro’s government to ban all outside travel. Accordingly, upon the advice of his father, Luis did not return home to Cuba in 1961, not knowing when or if he would see his parents again. Now the property of the Indians, Luis pitched for Charleston in the Eastern League in 1962 and had a respectable year (7-8, 3.63) considering that he was living in an English-speaking country for the first time. In 1963, for Burlington, he was likely the best pitcher in the Carolina League, finishing 14-9, including a no-hitter, with a 2.56 ERA, leading the league in complete games, strikeouts, and shutouts. He was 22 years old, and presumably one of the prizes of the Cleveland farm system. The following winter Tiant was left off the Indians’ 40-man roster, but no team risked the $12,000 it would have taken to claim him. Despite a good spring in 1964, the Indians first sent him back to Burlington, but an injury to a pitcher on their Triple-A Portland team in the Pacific Coast League brought Tiant to Oregon for the 1964 season. He was outstanding in Portland. The Indians finally called him up on July 17. Tiant finished 15-1 (a PCL record .938 winning percentage) with a 2.04 ERA, completing 13 of his 15 starts. Tiant joined the Indians in New York on Saturday morning, July 18, and was asked by his manager, Birdie Tebbetts, if he was ready to pitch. When advised that he was, Tebbetts told him he was pitching the next day against Whitey Ford. Tiant responded with a four-hit shutout, striking out 11. Luis finished 10-4 for the Tribe with a 2.83 ERA. His total line for 1964: a 25-5 record and 2.42 ERA in 264 innings. Luis was afflicted with a sore pitching arm in 1965, finishing 11-11, and showed up the next spring having lost 20 pounds on the advice of his father. He started the 1966 season with three consecutive shutouts, a streak that ended in Baltimore when Frank Robinson hit a ball completely out of Memorial Stadium, the only time that was ever done. Luis hit a rough spell in May and June and spent most of the last half of the season in the bullpen, notching eight saves in 30 relief appearances. Despite only 16 starts, his five shutouts topped the American League. His ERAs in 1966 and 1967 were 2.79 and 2.74, respectively, more than adequate, but not enough to win more than 12 games each year. In 1968 Tiant became a star, finishing 21-9 and posting a league-leading 1.60 ERA. Luis also led the league with nine shutouts, including four in succession (one short of the then-record set by the White Sox’ Doc White in 1904). He pitched his best game on July 3 in Cleveland when he recorded 19 strikeouts in 10 innings against the Twins. In the top of the 10th, the Twins got runners on first and third with no one out but Luis responded by striking out the side. The Indians pushed across a run in the bottom on the 10th to give him a 1-0 victory. The Indians finished 1969 with the worst record in the American League, and their worst winning percentage in 54 years. Luis fell to 9-20, and posted an ERA of 3.71. It was not really as bad as it seemed – changes to the strike zone and mound sent the league ERA up to 3.62. Nonetheless, Luis was an average American League pitcher, which was quite a step down from 1968. In December of 1969, Tiant was traded to the Minnesota Twins in a six-player deal that brought Dean Chance and Graig Nettles to the Indians. In 1970 he won his first six decisions for a very strong Minnesota team, but left during his sixth victory with a sore shoulder that had been bothering him since the spring. Luis went to see a specialist, who found a crack in a bone in his right shoulder and prescribed only rest. He sat down for just 10 weeks, and returned to lose three of four decisions in the final weeks of the 1970 season. By spring training of 1971, Tiant claimed to be fully recovered, but soon pulled a muscle in his rib cage, missed two weeks, and was otherwise ineffective in only eight innings. On March 31 the Twins gave him his unconditional release. Calvin Griffith believed that Tiant was finished at age 30. Suitably devastated, Luis believed the move was intended only to save money. THE ROAD TO BOSTON: The sole team willing to give Tiant a shot was the Atlanta Braves, who signed him to a 30-day trial with their Triple-A Richmond team. After limited work, the Braves were unwilling to promote him at the end of the trial period, so he signed with Louisville, the Red Sox’ Triple-A affiliate. He pitched very well in 31 innings for Louisville – 29 strikeouts and a 2.61 ERA – and was summoned to Boston on June 3. He was not an immediate success with the Red Sox. After his first appearance, on June 11, resulted in five runs in only one inning, Clif Keane wrote in the Boston Globe: “The latest investment by the Red Sox looked about as sound as taking a bagful of money and throwing it off Pier 4 into the Atlantic.” Tiant remained in the rotation, but he dropped his first six decisions as a starter. After one loss, Keane led a game story with, “Enough is enough.” Nonetheless, manager Eddie Kasko believed there were signs that Tiant could become a quality pitcher again. He threw seven very good innings against the Yankees but lost 2-1 on a two-run home run by Roy White. He threw 10 shutout innings, and 154 pitches, against the Twins, but did not figure in the decision. Kasko finally took him out of the rotation in early August. He was better in the bullpen, finishing 1-1 with a 1.80 ERA in that role. After his four-month audition, many in the media were surprised that Tiant was still on the 40-man roster in the spring. On March 22, 1972, the Red Sox traded Sparky Lyle to the Yankees for Danny Cater and Mario Guerrero, a trade that ranks among the worst that the Red Sox ever made, but which likely saved Luis’s spot on the team. On August 5 at Fenway Park, Tiant started for just the seventh time and beat the Orioles. One week later, in Baltimore, he beat the O’s again, pitching six no-hit innings before settling for a three-hitter. After a relief appearance, he pitched a two-hitter in Chicago’s Comiskey Park on August 19, losing a no-hitter with two outs in the seventh. After this game Kasko finally announced that Luis was in the rotation to stay. Surprisingly, the Red Sox had climbed into a fierce four-team pennant race with the Yankees, Orioles, and Tigers. Even more surprisingly, Luis Tiant had become their best player. Over a period of 10 starts, beginning with the game in Chicago, Luis furnished a record of 9-1 with six shutouts and a 0.82 ERA, all nine victories being complete games. He began with four straight shutouts, his streak of 40 scoreless innings ending during a four-hit victory over the Yankees at Fenway Park on September 8. After a loss in Yankee Stadium, Luis blanked the Indians back home on the 16th. Before the second game of a twi-night doubleheader against the Orioles on September 20, the fans rose to their feet as Luis walked to the bullpen to warm up and gave him such an ovation that his teammates joined in. The crowd spent most of the evening chanting “Loo-Eee, Loo-Eee, Loo-Eee,” as their hero recorded out after out. When he came up to bat in the bottom on the eighth on his way to another shutout, the crowd again rose to give him an ovation that continued throughout his at-bat, the break between innings, and the entire top of the ninth. Larry Claflin, the veteran Boston Herald sportswriter, wrote that he had never heard a sound like it at a game, unless it was “the last time Joe DiMaggio went to bat in Boston.” Carl Yastrzemski, who had had one of baseball’s most famous Septembers only five years earlier, said, “I’ve never heard anything like that in my life. But I’ll tell you one thing: Tiant deserved every bit of it.” Though he was essentially a relief pitcher for the first four months of the season, Luis finished 15-6 and won his second ERA title (1.91) and the Comeback Player of the Year award. By leading the Red Sox into an unexpected race for the pennant, Tiant won the hearts of the Red Sox fans. He would never lose them. He capped his comeback by winning 20 for the second time in 1973, while the Red Sox again finished second. The next year Luis won his 20th by August 23 to give his team a seemingly safe seven-game lead. But the Red Sox went into a horrific teamwide batting slump that was responsible for a disastrous fade – they were 8-20 during one stretch – and consigned them to a third-place finish, seven games behind Baltimore. Luis struggled for most of the 1975 season. While the Red Sox took over the division lead for good in late June, 34-year-old Tiant was seen more and more as an aging back-of-the-rotation starter. He may have had a reason for his struggles: His heart and mind were occupied with a long-overdue family reunion. Though his mother had visited Mexico City to visit Luis and his family in 1968 (his father was reportedly jailed, with his release only assured on her return), Luis had not seen his father in 14 years. A renowned jokester, his mood darkened when he thought of his homeland and his parents. In December 1974 he told Boston Herald reporter Joe Fitzgerald: “My father is going to be 70 years old soon, and I don’t know how many years he has left. He’s working down there at a garage, serving gas, and I can’t even send him a dime for a cup of coffee on Christmas.” Luis spoke of his parents often, and had been led to believe many times over the years that a reunion could be arranged. When asked about his namesake, Luis would say, “I am nowhere near the pitcher my father was.” In May 1975 US Sen. George McGovern (D-South Dakota) made an unofficial visit to Cuba to see Fidel Castro. While it was not the reason for his trip, he carried with him a letter from his Senate colleague, Edward Brooke III (R-Massachusetts), making a personal plea that Luis’s parents be allowed to visit their son in Boston. The letter suggested that “Luis’ career as a major league pitcher is in its latter years” and “he is hopeful that his parents will be able to visit him during this current baseball season.” The very next day, Castro approved the request and put the diplomatic wheels in motion for a visit. After several delays and postponements, Isabel and the elder Luis touched down in Boston’s Logan Airport on August 21. Their son, with his wife, Maria, his three children, and dozens of reporters and cameramen, greeted them. As witnessed in homes all over New England, Luis embraced his father and shamelessly wept. Isabel told her son, “I’m so happy I don’t care if I die now.” On August 26 the Red Sox arranged for Luis’s parents to be introduced to the crowd and for his father to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. After a prolonged ovation, the 69-year-old Tiant, standing on the Fenway Park mound adorned in a brown suit and Red Sox cap, took off his coat and handed it to his son. He went into his full windup and fired a fastball to catcher Tim Blackwell – alas, low and away. Looking vaguely annoyed, he asked for the ball back. Once more he used his full windup, and floated a knuckleball across the heart of the plate. The fans roared as he left the field. His son later commented, “He told me he was ready to go four or five innings anytime.” The younger Tiant was hit hard that night and again four days later. The whispers in the press box included the lament that it was a shame that his parents had not gotten here a year earlier, when Luis was still an effective pitcher. At this point, Luis (with a record of 15-13 and an ERA of 4.36) took 10 days off to rest his aching back. On September 11 manager Darrell Johnson decided to give Luis one last chance to get it going, against the Tigers. The Red Sox lead, once as high as nine games, was now five. Luis responded with 7⅔ innings of no-hit ball before allowing a run and three hits. When asked about the hit by Aurelio Rodriguez that ruined the no-hitter, Luis’s father responded, “Don’t talk about a lucky hit. The man hit the ball pretty good.” Luis’s next start, on September 16, was the biggest game of the year and one of the legendary games in the history of Fenway Park. The hard charging Orioles, now 4½ games out, were in town and Jim Palmer faced Tiant. Many observers claim that there were well over 40,000 people in the park that night, several thousand over its official capacity. Predictably, Tiant pitched his first shutout of the year, a 2-0 five-hitter, and the crowd chanted all evening (“Loo-Eee, Loo-Eee, Loo-Eee”). After these remarkable performances, Tiant was the obvious choice to start the first game of the divisional playoffs. He three-hit the Athletics to spark a Red Sox sweep. One week later he began the 1975 World Series with a five-hit shutout of the Cincinnati Reds. In Game Four, in perhaps the quintessential performance of his career, Luis threw 163 pitches, worked out of jams in nearly every inning, and recorded a complete-game 5-4 win. He could not hold a 3-0 lead in Game Six, and was finally removed trailing 6-3 before Bernie Carbo and Carlton Fisk bailed him out with legendary home runs. Alas, the Red Sox lost the seventh game to the Reds the next evening. The 1975 postseason marked the zenith of Tiant’s career, as his family story, his charm and charisma, his unique pitching style, and, finally, his talent made him a national star. At age 34, he was said to have thrown six pitches (fastball, curve, slider, slow curve, palm ball, and knuckleball) – from three different release points (over the top, three-quarters, and side-arm). His windup and motion seemed to vary on a whim. Roger Angell, writing in The New Yorker, once tried to put a name to each of his motions, including “Call the Osteopath,” “Out of the Woodshed,” and “The Runaway Taxi.” It was said that over the course of the game Luis’s deliveries allowed him to look each patron in the eye at least once. With all of his loved ones nearby, Tiant won 21 games for a struggling Red Sox team in 1976. His parents never returned to Havana. They stayed with Luis for 15 months, until his father died of a long illness in December 1976. Two days later, while resting for the next day’s memorial service, Luis’ mother, Isabel, died in her chair, although she had not been ill. The two were buried together near Luis’s home in Milton, Massachusetts. After watching several of his teammates reap the rewards of the new free-agency era, Luis had a protracted holdout in the spring of 1977. He came to terms, but managed only 12 and 13 wins the next two years. Tiant’s relationship with the team’s management was strained from this point forward. After their stunning slump late in the 1978 season, the Red Sox had crawled back to within two games of the Yankees with eight remaining. Prior to the subsequent contest in Toronto, Luis said, “If we lose today, it will be over my dead body. They’ll have to leave me face down on the mound.” He won, and the Red Sox went on to win their last eight games, including two more victories from Tiant on three days’ rest. On the final day of the season, the Red Sox needed a win and a Yankee loss to force a playoff game. Catfish Hunter and the Yankees lost in Cleveland and Tiant dazzled the Fenway crowd yet again with a two-hitter against the Blue Jays. In the offseason, the Red Sox offered the 38-year-old Tiant only a one-year contract, allowing Luis to sign with the New York Yankees for two years, plus a 10-year deal as a scout. Dwight Evans was devastated at management’s ignorance of what Luis meant to the team. Carl Yastrzemski says he cried when he heard the news: “They tore out our heart and soul.” Heart and soul aside, Tiant’s September-October record for the Red Sox was 31-12. The Red Sox would not be in another pennant race for several years. Luis won 13 games in 1979, including a 3-2 victory over the Red Sox in September, before falling to 8-9 in 1980. After the season, the Yankees let him go. He signed with Pittsburgh in 1981, but spent most of the season with his old team in Portland. He excelled again for the Beavers – 13-7, 3.82, including a no-hitter – but struggled with the Pirates and was released at the end of the season. He finished up his major-league career with six games for the 1982 Angels, with his final win coming against the Red Sox on August 17. Tiant compiled a 229–172 record with 2,416 strikeouts, a 3.30 earned run average, 187 complete games, and 49 shutouts in 3,486 1⁄3 innings. He was an All-Star for three seasons and 20-game winner for four seasons. He was inducted to the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame in 1997. Luis Tiant was one of the most respected and revered players of his time, with his teammates, opponents, the media, and his fans. His career was one of streaks, but his best streaks – in the pennant races of 1972, 1975, and 1978, and in the 1975 postseason – occurred when his team needed him most. He was believed to be finished in the middle of his career but came back to have most of his best seasons and to become, for a few weeks in 1975, the center of the baseball world. I have included a bonus photo this time. This is a photo of the Casa Ayus magazine in 1946 in Havana, Cuba that shows the champion Cienfuegos. Players such as Alejandro Crespo, Luis Tiant, Silvio Garcia, Adolfo Luque and Martin Dihigo are on the cover.

10 out of 10, 40 seconds. He who hesitates is lost. And that is the story of my game today. 🙁

8 out of 10, 94 seconds. A miracle today and I really needed it.

6 out of 10, 60 seconds. I just can not seem to get going this month!

3 out of 10, 88 seconds. Another day, another poor score!

You do NOT have to go in another thread to ask for the same thing!!!!!

Make this roster even funner for me? You mean make this roster more fun for me. Please if anyone can do this reach out to me. Ok, now that that is out of the way you have to realize it is a lot of work to take one team out and substitute another. It does sound simple. Take one out and put a new one in but like most things it is more involved than that.

2 out of 10, 79 seconds. This may have been the hardest set of baseball questions they've thrown at me! 😞

10 out of 10, 32 seconds. Finally a good day all around. I have not had one of these fast days in awhile.

Lou Finney Lou Finney was a tough man to strike out. A fast, feisty left-handed hitter with line-drive power, Finney made contact often enough and was versatile enough in the field to play an important role first for Connie Mack’s Depression-era Philadelphia Athletics and later for Joe Cronin’s World War II-era Boston Red Sox. A scrappy, curly-haired Alabaman who spoke with a Southern drawl, Finney stood 6 feet tall and weighed 180 pounds; batted from the left side; and threw from the right. He spent 15 years in the major leagues between 1931 and 1947, and fanned just 186 times in 4,631 at-bats, or only once for every 24.9 official turns, one of the 50 best ratios in major-league history. A .287 career hitter who hustled whenever he was on the field, the fiery Finney slugged just 31 big-league home runs, but hit 203 doubles and 85 triples. Although he could scamper around the bases, he was not a strong basestealer and swiped just 39 sacks in 84 tries. A top-of-the-order slap hitter, Finney scored 643 runs and drove in 494. He collected 1,329 career hits and walked 329 times to post a .336 on-base percentage. At his best in his natural position, right field, Finney also played first base for Mack and Cronin. “What almost clinches a post for Finney is the fact that he can play first base like a regular,” James Isaminger wrote for The Sporting News. “He is great on ground balls and handles all kinds of throws. He really is an artistic first sacker. A man who can play both first and the outfield as Finney does is too good to be turned loose.” Most often a reserve, Finney still appeared in 100 or more big-league games in seven seasons. He was highly competitive – Jimmie Foxx once said, “He’s a guy that’ll cut your heart out to win a ballgame” — and loved to needle opponents. Sporting News editor J.G. Taylor Spink recalled in a story about player superstitions, “Bobo Newsom, the garrulous Senator slinger, also has an allergy for small pieces of paper. It was worked to the limit one day by Lou Finney, who, along with the rest of the Athletics, was being mesmerized by Bobo’s fast ball. As he took the field one inning, Finney stuffed a newspaper in his pocket. Out in right field, he tore the thing to little bits, and spilled them all over the mound as he came into the dugout after the third out. Newsom went into a tantrum; park attendants had to be called to clean up the wind-blown bits before Buck would agree to pitch again. By that time he was well cooled out again and the A’s hitters knocked him out of the box.” Finney played semipro baseball at Akron, Ohio, in 1929, but when the 1930 Census reached the Five Points Hamburg Region of Chambers County in April, he was back on the family farm and at work at a rubber plant. Legend suggests that he was seated behind two mules in late June 1930, when a neighbor informed him that the Carrollton (Georgia) Champs of the Class D Georgia-Alabama League needed an outfielder. Finney answered the call. Just 19 years old, he launched a barrage on the league in his first season in organized baseball. He batted .389 with 17 doubles and 7 home runs before Carrollton and Talladega, the league’s cellar dwellers, disbanded on August 14. By that time, he had been spotted by Ira Thomas, a scout for Connie Mack’s Athletics. Philadelphia purchased Finney’s contract after the 1930 season and assigned him to the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Senators of the Class B New York-Pennsylvania League for 1931. However, he failed to impress the Harrisburg manager and was transferred to the York (Pennsylvania) White Roses in the same league. At York, he resumed his assault on minor-league pitchers. He batted .347 for manager Jack Bentley and earned The Sporting News’ All-NYP honors. Mack purchased the young Alabaman’s contract for the season’s final weeks. Just a month past his 21st birthday, Finney made his big-league debut for the Tall Tactician on September 12, 1931, against the St. Louis Browns. The Athletics were in the midst of a 19-game home stand, and Finney appeared in nine games – all at Shibe Park – and rapped out nine hits, including a triple, in 24 at-bats. He scored seven runs and drove in three in his three-week stint. Finney spent the 1932 season with the Portland Beavers of the highly competitive Pacific Coast League. Often called the Third Major League, the PCL boasted a number of future and former major leaguers. Two of the best in 1932 were Finney and fellow Philadelphia farmhand Michael Franklin “Pinky” Higgins, both of whom made The Sporting News’ All-PCL team. One or the other was among the league leaders in every offensive category to propel Portland to the PCL pennant with a 111-78 record. Finney slapped 268 hits and batted .351 with 7 triples, all team highs, and finished third in the league’s Most Valuable Player voting. Sporting News correspondent “Beaver-Duck” reported that “Lou Finney is just about the sensation of the league in right field. In batting, fielding, and throwing, but above all in pepper and hustling spirit, this 22-year-old looks like a certain major leaguer. He loves to play, does his best work in the pinches, and does it with the eager enthusiasm of a youth to whom winning the game for his team means much more than base hits for his individual average.” Still 22 years old, Finney rejoined the Athletics and his Portland teammate Higgins, who was Philadelphia’s third baseman in 1933. Finney enjoyed a splendid spring training and was viewed as a replacement for Al Simmons, one of baseball’s all-time great outfielders, whom Mack had traded to Chicago before the season. Finney was “emulating Ty Cobb of a quarter-century ago with his base-running,” Bill Dooley gushed in The Sporting News. “I think Finney will not be long in making Mack forget Simmons,” Dooley wrote. “Not a slugger like the great Milwaukeean, Finney is none the less a sharp hitter and a lot faster than Simmons. Here is a lad whose baserunning will open a lot of eyes. He is not only fast on the basepaths, but alert and daring. Any fielder who loafs in returning one of Finney’s hits to the infield will find him taking an extra base.” Dooley was also impressed by the “Alabama flychaser’s” desire to improve. “Finney didn’t know how to slide into a bag when he reported to the Athletics this spring. One of the first requests he made of the coaching staff was a sliding pit. He practiced in it day after day until he learned.” When the regular season started, Finney was still hot. But he was nervous and quickly cooled off, and Mack sold his contract with the right to recall the outfielder on 24 hours’ notice, to Montreal of the Double A International League. There, Finney hit .298 with 23 extra-base hits in 65 games. His second home run for the Royals came on his last at-bat, on August 15, after Mack notified Montreal to return Finney to Philly. The sudden recall derailed the Royals’ playoff hopes and created friction between Montreal and Mack. Back in Philadelphia, Finney continued to hit well. For the season, he played 63 games as an outfielder, appeared in 11 additional games as a pinch hitter, and batted .267 with 12 doubles and 3 home runs in 240 at-bats. Between seasons, there were rumors that Mack would trade the youngster to Boston, but when the 1934 season opened; he was Philadelphia’s fourth outfielder behind Indian Bob Johnson, Doc Cramer, and Ed Coleman, and sometimes spelled slugger Jimmie Foxx at first base, roles he reprised the next year. Finney played in 201 games in 1934 and 1935, batted .276, and though he hit just one homer in the two seasons, he smacked 22 doubles. Mack continued to feel the effects of the Depression and declining attendance at Shibe Park, and dealt the powerful Foxx to Boston before the 1936 season for players and cash. Rookie Alfred “Chubby” Dean (77 games) shared the first-base duties with Finney, who also played the outfield in 73 games. Playing nearly every day for the first time, he batted .302 in 151 games and collected 37 extra-base hits, though just one was a home run – an inside-the-park effort. The AL leader in at-bats with 653, he scored a career high 100 runs and drove in 41. On July 27, he collected five hits in a 15-8 win over the White Sox. Finney’s fifth hit came in the ninth when the Athletics scored seven runs off two Chicago pitchers. Despite Finney’s fine season, he and Dean split the first base duties in 1937. (Dean, a lifetime .274 hitter, later unwisely moved to the mound and compiled a 30-46 record and a 5.08 ERA as pitcher.) Finney did play 50 games at first in 1937, made the only appearance of his career at second base, where he recorded an assist, and played 39 games in the outfield. Bouncing around the lineup and battling an ailment he picked up in Mexico in spring training, a hernia, a chronic sinus infection, and later, appendicitis, he saw his average slip to .251. He hit another round-tripper, again inside the park, his sixth home run in six major-league seasons. With 10 days left in the regular season, Finney, with Mack’s consent, returned home to Alabama and underwent surgery on his sinuses, had a hernia repaired, had the inflamed appendix that had bothered him for months extracted, and had his tonsils removed. Healthy in 1938, the 27-year-old “Alabama Assassin” enjoyed a power surge when he slugged 10 home runs – with nine of them clearing the fences. He finished fourth in the AL with 12 triples and smacked 21 doubles. He split time at first base with Dick Siebert, Nick Etten, and others, served as a fourth outfielder behind Johnson, Moses, and Sam Chapman, and played in a total of 122 games. In 1939 Siebert started at first base and Finney batted just .136 in nine games before Mack sold him to Boston on May 9. Detroit and Boston had both claimed Finney on waivers; Mack dealt him to the Red Sox, who paid $2,500 more than the $7,500 waiver price. He joined a Boston team that boasted former teammates Jimmie Foxx, Doc Cramer, and Lefty Grove, along with 20-year-old Ted Williams, who had made his big-league debut 18 days earlier. The Alabaman enjoyed great success as a pinch-hitter – he led the AL with 13 pinch hits in 40 at-bats — then finished the season at first base after Foxx underwent an appendectomy. For the Red Sox, Finney flourished under manager Joe Cronin and veteran scout and hitting instructor Hugh Duffy. He credited Duffy, the legendary New Englander, for teaching him to snap his wrist. The results were immediate. Finney batted .325 in 249 at-bats in his 95 games with Boston, with 22 extra-base hits, including a pinch-hit home run at Sportsman’s Park. The next spring, he praised Duffy to the Boston Traveler’s John Drohan, among others: “I was with the Red Sox for a week or so when Hughie Duffy, who led the National League in batting way back in 1894, asked me if I were willing to take some advice from a 76-year-old man (Duffy was actually 72 at the time). As I realized I was not going anywhere, I told him I was more than willing. Consequently, Hughie, who was one of the Red Sox coaches and batted grounders in the infield practice despite his age, converted me from a choke hitter into a batsman who grabbed his bat way down at the end and swung from the hip. He also changed my stance in the batter’s box, spreading my feet a trifle further apart. He also told me to put more wrist into my swing like Ted Williams. Well, I was not hitting my weight when I left the Athletics and I wound up the 1939 season with a mark of .310, the best I ever had.” The Red Sox posted an 89-62 record and finished second to the Joe DiMaggio-led Yankees, who methodically captured their fourth straight AL pennant despite the loss of Lou Gehrig to the illness that would tragically cut short his life. In spite of a broken finger in spring training, courtesy of Cincinnati’s Johnny Vander Meer, and a nagging cold, Finney enjoyed another fine season in Boston in 1940. He played in the outfield in place of the injured Dom DiMaggio, and hit so well that the Red Sox postponed DiMaggio’s return, before Finney himself suffered a leg injury. When he came back, he moved to first when Foxx injured his knee in a collision. When Double-X returned, Cronin asked his team captain to play catcher for the injured Gene Desautels, which allowed the Boston manager to keep both Finney and DiMaggio in the lineup. In either position, Finney hit well. He was the first major-league player to record 100 hits that season, ranked among the league batting leaders through the summer, and finished with a .320 average, ninth best in the AL. Finney and New York’s Charlie “King Kong” Keller tied for second in the league with 15 triples, four behind league leader Barney McCosky of Detroit. The 15 triples were a career best for Finney, who also achieved personal highs with 31 doubles and 73 runs batted in. He scored 73 times and was the AL’s toughest man to strike out, fanning just once per 41.1 at-bats, well ahead of runner-up Charlie Gehringer of Detroit, who struck out once every 30.2 AB’s. “Finney has been tremendous for us,” Cronin said in June. “His hitting has won him the right-field job and I’m going down the line with him. He’s a great team player. Never squawks and does a great job every day.” Finney continued to credit Duffy, and attributed some of his success to a trip to the Louisville Slugger factory. “I never had a bat I liked in my life,” Finney told United Press writer George Kirksey. “So last May when the Red Sox played an exhibition game in Louisville, I went out to the bat factory to get the kind of stick I wanted. I saw some old Max Bishop models stuck away and I picked up one of them. I liked the feel of them so I had a model made up with a few minor changes. Right away I began to hit better. Then I began to watch Ted Williams and with coaching from Hughie Duffy, I learned to copy Ted’s wrist action and follow-through.” Duffy was somewhat modest. “Finney goes around telling everybody I made a batter out of him, but he’s exaggerating,” Duffy told the Traveler’s Jack Broudy. “ It’s true I saw several things he was doing wrong when he came to the Red Sox and we worked on them together until he straightened them out, but that doesn’t mean I should get the credit for it. Lou is a fine boy and very appreciative.” Duffy told another writer, “Sure I told him about the bat swing, but he worked hard in changing his style and it was by his own perseverance that he improved.” In July, Finney made his only All-Star Game appearance, and coaxed a walk from Carl Hubbell in the NL’s 4-0 win. On May 11, he hit one of his two career grand slams, off Marius Russo at Yankee Stadium, to help Boston send New York to a defeat, the Bronx Bombers’ eighth straight. Though never again an All-Star, he continued to provide valuable depth for the Red Sox the next two years. In 1941, Finney banged out 24 more doubles and 4 home runs, and batted .288. In 1942, he hit .285 in 113 games for the Red Sox at the age of 31. He was particularly adept in night games, collecting 14 hits in 35 after-dark at-bats between 1939 and 1941 — a .400 average, even better than the .324 mark Williams posted in 34 at-bats. By 1942, World War II was changing the face of baseball. Players began to leave the game to enter the military or to work in industries vital to the war. After the season, Ted Williams entered the Navy, where he served as a fighter pilot. Finney, who had applied for a chief specialist rating in the Navy at one point, returned home to the 171-acre cotton farm near White Plains, Alabama, that he and his wife, the former Margie Griffin, owned in Chambers County. Finney, who was 32 years old and had no children, had received his draft notice, and had to choose between entering military service and staying on his farm to grow food, an occupation deemed critical to the war effort. On January 11, 1943, the New York World Telegram reported, “Lou Finney, Red Sox outfielder, was told by his Alabama draft board to remain on his farm or be inducted.” He voluntarily retired from the game and sat out the entire 1943 season and the first months of the 1944 campaign. While Finney farmed through the first half of the 1945 season, the Allied nations subdued Germany in May, and moved closer to victory in the Pacific over Japan. Once again, Finney journeyed north to rejoin the Red Sox. Cronin, who broke a leg on April 19 and hadn’t played since, inactivated himself to open a roster spot for Finney on July 15, but used the Alabaman just twice, both times as a pinch hitter, before the Red Sox sold his contract to the defending American League champion St. Louis Browns on July 27, 1945. Finney spent time at first base and in the outfield, though Pete Gray, who had lost an arm in a childhood accident, served as the fourth outfielder for manager Luke Sewell. Finney also played one game at third base, and handled one of two chances successfully. In 58 games, he collected 59 hits, including 8 doubles, in 213 at-bats, a .277 average. On August 1, he smacked a grand slam off Dizzy Trout at Briggs Field (later called Tiger Stadium), and on September 9, he scampered around the bases for the final home run of his major league career, an inside-the-park circuit clout against Washington’s Alex Carrasquel at Griffith Stadium. At 35, he returned to the Browns at the start of the 1946 season. But the war had ended the previous year, and many of the veterans had started to return to organized baseball. And though Finney collected nine singles in 30 at-bats, a .300 average, the Browns released him on May 29. Finney took one more shot at the brass ring when he pinch-hit unsuccessfully four times for the Philadelphia Phillies, his only at-bats in the National League, before the Phillies released him on May 13, 1947, at the age of 36. Less than a week later, with his major-league career done, Finney returned to the minors, this time with St. Petersburg in the Class C Florida International League. With the Saints floundering in last place and 17 games behind in the standings, his old teammate Jimmie Foxx was fired on May 17. Finney took over a few days later as a player-manager and guided St. Pete to a 71-80 record, good for fifth in the eight-team league. Primarily a first baseman, he continued to spray the ball around. He hit .308 with 26 doubles, 9 triples, and 2 home runs. The Saints posted a 78-73 record in 1948 and improved to fourth with a full season under Finney. St. Petersburg’s attendance of nearly 137,947 was more than 23,000 better than the year before, the second best in the league behind league champion Havana. Finney played first base and in the outfield. He hit .314, with 27 doubles, 4 triples, and 8 homers. The fiery Finney not only drew fans to the park, he got them fired up. After a 1948 doubleheader, The Sporting News reported, “The fans’ ire was fanned when manager Lou Finney was tossed out of both contests. The umpires were given a police escort to their quarters, but some 500 gathered outside and refused to leave. Finally, the arbiters rode out in a police car, while policemen made way with a flying wedge through the crowd." At the baseball meetings after the season in Minneapolis, wealthy new West Palm Beach owner Lucius B. Ordway lured Finney away from St. Petersburg, which then slumped to seventh under four different managers in 1949. Finney piloted West Palm Beach to a fifth-place finish in the league, which had moved up to Class B. The Indians posted a 74-78 record, 4½ games better than the previous year, and enjoyed an attendance increase of 8,000. Despite his success, when Ordway entered into a working agreement with Philadelphia, the Athletics picked a new manager for West Palm Beach for 1950. The Indians finished seven games worse than in 1949 and attendance fell by more than 24,000. Finney managed to catch on with Temple (Texas) of the Class B Big State League. Temple had finished last the year before, and Finney again turned things around on the field and at the gate. The Eagles improved by 17 2/3 games, to 74-70 in 1950 and attendance leapt up to 105,081, nearly 32,000 more than the year before and the best in the league. Finney batted .345 in 68 games for the fourth-place Eagles, who lost in the playoffs to regular-season champion Texarkana. In December 1950, Finney was appointed to manage the Raleigh Capitals of the Carolina League, but resigned in February 1951 to devote time to his business in Chambers County and was replaced by Joe Medwick. Two years later, Finney left Alabama to manage the Lincoln (Nebraska) Chiefs, a Milwaukee Braves farm team in the Class A Western League. The Chiefs managed nine more wins than they had the previous year and drew 26,000 more fans, but in the final month of the season, Finney resigned in order to again to join his brother Hal in the family feed and grain business, and was replaced by Walter Linden. With that, Finney’s baseball career came to an end. Lou ran the family firm for the remainder of his life with his brother Hal. Like Lou, Hal broke into the major leagues in 1931. That year he played 10 games; six at catcher and four as a pinch-hitter, for the Pirates. He played 31 games the next year, and 56 in 1933, when he hit his lone homer and drove in 18 runs. He played in five games in 1934, spent the rest of that season in the minors with the Albany (New York) Senators in the International League, missed the 1935 season because of a fractured skull and an eye injury suffered in a tractor accident and started the 1936 season without a hit in 35 at-bats before the Pirates released him.

7 out of 10, 72 seconds. This one was a tough one today. Baseball card questions always get me because I don't buy them.

10 out of 10, 42 seconds. Again I was too slow. 😕

George Pipgras In the 146 years of professional baseball, no team has come close to attaining the legendary status of the 1927 New York Yankees. They were, and are, the symbol of greatness, both individually and as a team. As the prominent baseball historian Donald Honig said, “Never before or since has there been in the game such a coalescence of talent, such a fusion of lusty hitting and sharp pitching, and all of it torrentially consistent, dismembering the League with a meat cleaver, losing just 44 of their 154 games, setting records … with a near-homicidal attack….” Whether one is a Yankee lover or hater, the names are forever part of baseball lore — Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri, Meusel, Combs, Pennock, Hoyt, Pipgras … et al. “When we got to the ball park,” George Pipgras said, “we knew we were going to win. That’s all there was to it. We weren’t cocky. I wouldn’t call it confidence either. We just knew. Like when you go to sleep you know the sun is going to come up in the morning.” Although not as well-known as the superstar batters, it was the pitching staff who provided the balance and strength, leading the league in earned-run average (3.20); and having four of the league’s seven pitchers with E.R.A.s of 3.00 or less. On that staff was an Iowa-born, Minnesota-raised farm boy, whose only prior major-league experience was a two-season “stop in for a cup of coffee” resulting in a 1-4 record with a nearly 6.00 E.R.A. average. So how was it that George Pipgras came to be a key link in the Yankees’ rotation from 1927-1933; an undefeated World Series pitcher; and whom Hall-of-Famer “Goose” Goslin in 1928 called “the best pitcher in the American League.” George Pipgras was born into a baseball-loving family on December 20, 1899 in Ida Grove, Iowa. His father William was a farmer who played baseball before gloves were used, umpired local games occasionally, and raised five sons — all over six feet tall — four pitchers and a catcher. Pipgras’ early life was filled with farm chores beginning at 4:30 a.m. — milking cows, feeding sheep, currying horses — followed by work in his father’s butcher shop in Anton, Iowa. In between were the demands of schoolwork, including forming the battery for his Schleswig, Iowa high school baseball team with his brother Herman. His family moved to a farm in Slayton, Minnesota, where “Pip” continued to pitch for the high school team. America entered World War I in 1917 and Pipgras, lying about his age, enlisted in Sioux City, Iowa with the U.S. Army 60th Engineers serving for a year and a half in France, England, and Germany. Unfortunately, after 18 months in Europe, he became a victim of the influenza epidemic of 1918. Returning to Minnesota in 1919, he went back to work on the farm, and to playing baseball for the local town team. It was when pitching a game for Woodstock, Minnesota with eight other farm boys as teammates that he attracted the attention of Frank Flynn, a railroad conductor and volunteer scout for a number of minor-league clubs. Ralph Works, a former American League pitcher, scouting for the White Sox, dropped in and tried to sign him for Chicago. Pipgras wanted to accept, but he had already accepted terms with Jimmy Hamilton, manager of the Joplin, Missouri team. He played for Joplin in 1921, but was so wild, they almost immediately farmed him out to Saginaw, Michigan where in a game against the London, Ontario Club, he walked 15 men in five innings, lasted one game, and was given a ticket back to Minnesota. Down on his luck, nearly broke, and stranded back in Worthington, Minnesota, “Pip” spent 35 cents on a breakfast and with 15 cents in his pocket, wondered if his dream of the big leagues was over. His choices were limited. On the one hand, the farm and the corn fields beckoned. On the other, Minnesota’s harsh hobo laws threatened, because Pipgras was convinced he’d end up a hobo if he couldn’t get a job pitching somewhere. Playing a hunch, he placed a five-cent phone call to a baseball savvy friend to see if any midwestern teams were looking for a pitcher. “Sure,” said the friend. “Hop over to Madison, South, Dakota, and tell the manager I sent you. The South Dakota League season is opening today and he needs a pitcher.” He got there just in time to pitch the opening game of the season. He stayed, pitching in 24 games with Madison and finishing with a 12-6 record while his team finished in the second division. The Boston Red Sox secured Pipgras in the Spring of 1922 for $1,000 before the season started and sent him to Charleston in the South Atlantic League. He pitched 42 games for Charleston, winning 19 and losing 9 and was a key factor in Charleston’s winning the league title. His record led to his recall by Boston; interest by Bob Connery, the New York Yankees’ head scout; and on January 3, 1923, he was traded with outfielder Harvey Hendrick to the Yankees for the 1923-24 seasons. As the Yanks won their third pennant and their first World Series in a row in 1923, Pipgras warmed the bench, while finishing with an anemic 1-3 record. That was followed by an even more disappointing 1924 record of 0-1. Pipgras was fast, but wild, so Huggins sent him down to work on his control. “Two years in the minor leagues will cure him,” Huggins said — and he was right. In 1925, he was farmed out to Nashville and Atlanta of the Southern League, where he had a 19-15 record. The next season, the Yankees sent Pipgras to St. Paul where he established a very respectable 23-18 record. In 1927, he was called back up to the Yankees and became a regular. After coaching from Shawkey and Pennock, and Miller Huggins’ patience and faith in Pipgras, he was asked to pitch a game in July 1927 for a sick “Dutch” Ruether against the Detroit Tigers. He responded by pitching a three-hitter. His time had arrived. Now a complete pitcher, he had a fastball with good control, and a curve, courtesy of future Hall-of-Famer Herb Pennock. Now he was the fifth starter for the 1927 club, and finished the season with a 10-3 record. In control all the way, he beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-2, with an impressive “seven hitter” in the second game of the World Series — which the Yankees swept in four games. Manager Miller Huggins was the first to congratulate him, “You pitched a wonderful game, and I’m proud of you.” He went on to a notable career and was one of the Yankees’ key pitchers from 1928-30. In 1928, he was the Yankees’ ace, with a 24-13 record and after that he never had a losing season until his last, when he was 0-1 with Boston. His 93-64 record in nine years with the Yankees established him as a key link in those years of Yankee domination. Mike Gazella, a Yankee substitute infielder said he heard Babe Ruth say that Pipgras “with his fast ball he couldn’t be beaten.” Since 1928, no right-handed Yankee pitcher has since won more games than Pipgras’ 24. After a relatively dismal 7-6, 1931 season, Pipgras roared back with a 16-9 record and he was a main factor in the Yankees’ winning that year’s World Series. After the 1932 season, the Yankees traded Pipgras and infielder Billy Werber to the Red Sox. Although he recorded a respectable 11-10 record in 1933, he broke his arm in a freak accident while pitching against Detroit, accelerating a premature end to his baseball career. Pipgras finished with an anemic 0-0 record in two games in 1934 followed by a 0-1 record in five games in 1935. Forced to retire from baseball, he wanted to stay involved with the game he loved. His former boss, Tom Yawkey of Boston, invited him to join him, Eddie Collins, and a few others for a weekend of duck hunting at South Island Plantation near Georgetown, South Carolina. Yawkey suggested umpiring and arranged for Pipgras to umpire in the old NY-PA League (now known as the Eastern League), a job he held from 1936-38. American League President Will Harridge, who had helped Pipgras get his initial umpiring job in the NY-PA League, had kept tabs on him and was so satisfied with his progress that he appointed him to the American League regular staff in 1939. Including training games, he umpired in 192 contests in 1939. He umpired until 1945, including officiating All-Star games and World Series and earning a reputation as one of the game’s best umpires. “Yes, I like umpiring,” reflected Pipgras. “It is pleasant work. Perhaps you don’t get the thrill out of umpiring a game in which there have been no kicks as you do over pitching a low-hit shut-out, but you’re still in baseball, and in quite an important department of the game.” He had the distinction of both having played and umpiring in World Series games. He finished his baseball career supervising umpires from 1946-49 and working as a scout for the Boston Red Sox. In his 11-year career Pipgras had a 102 - 73 record with a 4.09 earned run average. He struck out 714 and pitched sixteen shutouts.

4 out of 10, 104 seconds. Friday can not get here soon enough. 😢

5 out of 10, 138 seconds. I got the first four in a row right and then everything went south as the questions became impossible.

4 out of 10, 158 seconds. Now that's a nice way to start a month! Here are the final standings for September. I believe this was our closest one yet. It was decided in the last few days. And I think October is going to be even closer because I have got in the habit of looking on what day the month will end. This month it ends on Thursday and that means it will be tougher on me because I do not do well on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Wednesday is hit and miss for me. Thank you all. this was not easy.

Well to tell you the truth it's not by design. I get up around that time and let out the dog and before I go back to bed I get my trivia game out of the way. There are times when I don't but that's what usually happens.

7 out of 10, 65 seconds. Some questions were downright crazy. I was asked what kind of pitch Pete Rose hit when he broke Ty Cobb's record. Naturally I got it wrong.

Did you read the first post in here?