Yankee4Life

No complaints from me Jim.

10 out of 10, 49 seconds. Some of these easy baseball questions are really too easy. But I'll take it!

8 out of 10, 80 seconds. What the hell. It really gets frustrating when you pick the wrong ones.

A nice one today. 10 out of 10, 47 seconds. Some of those questions were laughable.

I agree with you and I want you to be right all year so you can tell me how wrong I was and that I should have known better. I will gladly take all verbal about from everyone if they win.

The Yankees did what they had to do against a sub-par team. Nothing to get excited over.

You're really good with these type of questions. I really just guess. 6 out of 10, 52 seconds.

9 out of 10, 62 seconds. A good score but I should have had the other one.

6 out of 10, 61 seconds. Another day, another lousy job.

8 out of 10, 66 seconds. It was ok but I should have had nine right. I went too fast.

I join the club with you today. 10 out of 10, 46 seconds. This means tomorrow I will do lousy.

Same thing happened here. There were two town teams called the Penfield Chiefs and another one called the Irondequoit Indians. Both had to change their names for fear of the complainers getting light headed and passing out when they heard the kids yell out "go Chiefs" or "go Indians." If you have a problem with the name of sports teams for God's sake the problem is with you and not the team name.

Hahahahaaha Jim, honest to God you make me laugh. 🙂 Now Jim here is where I got to disagree with you. We are both around the same age and growing up we did not associate team names with actual Indians. Take the Cleveland Indians for example. All they had back then for any kind of talent was Rick Manning. When the Yankees played them they pounded them. That is how I think of and remember the Indians. The Yankees mostly beat them except for the playoffs in '97 and '07. Never once racial. The people that started this did this for attention and the Indians caved into the pressure. I am second-generation Sicilian. How many mob movies have you watched when the bad guy is Italian? How many TV cop shows have you seen where the bad guy ends up being an Italian? I have seen this hundreds of times but I am not going to start crying about it to get attention for it. I see it as just a movie or just a TV show and I see the Cleveland Indians as just a name and not an insult to any Indian.

5 out of 10, 57 seconds. This went downhill fast.

I don't pay attention to this group of overpaid losers anyway. He can have 162 different lineups for all I care.

Please, you can say Cleveland Indians in here because that is exactly who they are. The Twitter complainers have no voice in here. We are talking about a baseball team and not social issues. Really, isn't this a shame?

10 out of 10, 44 seconds. A rarity!

5 out of 10, 54 seconds. I had no chance today.

Bing Miller Bing Miller had two stints playing for Connie Mack as a member of the Philadelphia Athletics and made the most out of it each time. In 1922, his second major league season but at the age of 27, he hit what would prove to be a career-high 21 homeruns (fourth in the American League) and slugged at a .551 clip. He finished fifth in the batting race (.335), sixth in total bases, and fifteenth overall in the Most Valuable Player voting. Despite his prowess at the plate, manager Connie Mack had a surfeit of talent in the outfield, and beginning in 1924 Miller occasionally saw time at first base. By 1926, coming off batting averages of .342 and .319, he was expendable. In June, the Athletics traded Miller to the St. Louis Browns for Baby Doll Jacobson. The change of scenery evidently reinvigorated Miller’s bat, as he hit .331 for the rest of the 1926 season, and followed that with a .325 average in 1927. The Browns, being the Browns, were always on the prowl for a better deal…something…anything…that might improve their league standing. In December 1927, Connie Mack rescued Miller from oblivion by sending Dolly Gray to the Browns in a straight-up trade. Miller played the 1928 season as a senior citizen, a 33-year old rightfielder who still hit well enough to finish sixth in the AL batting race with a .329 average. In a category of more dubious distinction, he led the loop in being hit by pitches, getting plunked eight times over the course of the schedule. The team finished in second place that year, though, presaging the championship efforts of the next three seasons. The Philadelphia Athletics dominated the American League in 1929, and Miller was a significant contributor to that success. He logged a career-high in base hits (184, including 16 triples) on the way to hitting .331, and stole 24 bases over the regular season. He also posted a 28-game hitting streak, and topped that by hitting .368 in the World Series against Cubs that year in buttressing a 4-1 Athletic victory. On October 14, at the end of Game 5 at Shibe Park in front of President and Mrs. Herbert Hoover, Bing Miller snatched a small but permanent spot in the lore of the game. The Cubs’ Pat Malone had held the Athletics scoreless through eight and one third innings of a masterful pitching performance, and the game was just over an hour-and-a-half long at the start of the ninth. The Cubs led the game 2-0, but Philadelphia nosed its way back to a tie with a Max Bishop single and Mule Haas homerun. Malone maintained his composure, and enticed Mickey Cochrane to hit a ground ball for the second out. Sadly, though, the tragic mythology of the Cubs is built on real heartbreak. An Al Simmons double and an intentional pass to Jimmie Foxx brought Bing to the plate with the series on the line. Miller promptly smacked a double off the score board, and the Athletics took the game 3-2 and the Series 4-1. Following the stunning conclusion of the 1929 season, in early 1930, Miller married Helen Fetrow of Philadelphia. Marriage appears to have agreed with him, at least on the diamond, as the Athletics followed up with another world championship. During that 1930 season Miller led the team in games played, at-bats, and steals, and drove in 100 runs, the only 100-RBI year in his career. The team earned a third consecutive American League pennant in 1931, and nearly claimed a third straight World Series, falling to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. This marked the end of the glory days in Philadelphia, though, and by 1932 Connie Mack began changing the Athletics roster. Back in Philadelphia, young Doc Cramer, a rising talent in the outfield, forced Miller to take up the art of pinch-hitting. After 1932, Miller never had more than 197 plate appearances in a single season. [3] He was also, in 1933, the eighth oldest player in the league. In a sport for boys, Miller’s days were dwindling. He could still hit, though, and became one of the most oft-used pinch hitters in the league. In 1934, Bing had traded his jersey number “9” for a “27,” thus cementing his “bench status,” but he was still considered talented enough to be included on a roster of major leaguers barnstorming through Japan. On January 14, 1935, Miller was sold to the Boston Red Sox, and he led the loop in pinch hits with 13 that season. In 1936, Bing Miller was the oldest player in the majors (age 41), and appeared in only 30 games over the entire year. He played in his last big-league game on September 5, and on September 28 the Red Sox named him to replace Al Schacht as a coach. Miller remained in Boston through the 1938 season, then coached for the Tigers between 1939 and 1941. Miller’s contributions to the game extended beyond the foul lines. Over the winter of 1930, a young Iowa pitcher from the nearby hamlet of Norway came by for a visit, searching for some guidance as he pondered his own baseball future. Miller had heard of the boy, Harold Trojovosky, and of his talents on the mound and in the batter’s box. Eastern Iowa, in the days before mass communication, was a neighborhood unto itself, and once young Hal came under the scrutiny of the St. Louis Cardinals, Miller wasted no time in telling the young man to wait a bit until Connie Mack could weigh in. It was Bing Miller’s interest that convinced Hal Trosky that he should seriously consider professional baseball, and on the drive home that afternoon, Trosky decided to give the game a chance. Sadly for the Athletics, it took three days for Connie Mack to send a contract to Trosky. By that time (and knowing that other teams were interested), Cy Slapnicka had signed Hal for the Indians. Hal returned Mack’s contract with a note of sincere gratitude. It is interesting to consider how the fates of both player and franchises might have turned had the mail been faster. Bing Miller never lost his love for baseball. He was a lifetime .311 batter, and hit over .300 eight times. He earned two World Series rings with the Athletics, played in a third, and coached in one with the Tigers in 1940. It was part of a lifetime of memories.

8 out of 10, 57 seconds. Sometimes you just got to guess blindly.

What the hell just happened? Chapman did a great job? Wow.

Carl Erskine Romeo had Juliet, Anthony had Cleopatra, and the borough of Brooklyn had their Dodgers. Theirs was a love affair that included the likes of Duke, Campy, Pee Wee, Newk and Jackie. But the name of only one of the Boys of Summer was translated into Brooklynese. The 5’10”, 165-pound right hander, with the large number 17 inscribed on his arch back was born Carl Daniel Erskine. But between the years of 1948 and 1959, he was simply known as “Oisk.” Carl Erskine would become known for his big overhand curve during his playing career. His father Matt would first teach him how to throw one. The elder’s curve was the “old fashion barnyard” variety, different from the one “Oisk” employed while pitching in the National League. His father threw his side arm, which would cause it to break flat, or with no break at all, just sideways. “Oisk” reached the big leagues in 1948, the year after the color barrier was broken. While on the Dodgers, he would be one of the first Caucasians to have African-American teammates. Although the Dodger organization was applauded for knocking down the door, Carl had been introduced to racial integration long before the major leagues integrated. Carl made his first start August 5, 1948. After one pitch Erskine felt a sharp, hot stab in the back of his shoulder. At the time he did not realize it, but he had pulled a muscle. It was an injury that would haunt him for the rest of his career. In the game, Gene Hermanski hit three successive home runs to offset six Brooklyn errors, as the Dodgers would go on to beat the Cubs by a score of 6-4. The win would move the Dodgers into second place and earn the young pitcher his third win. When he went to spring training in 1949, he could hardly throw. The Dodgers sent him packing to Fort Worth. During those days, it was not a rehab assignment. A player was sent down because of his poor performance. Management in those days did not coddle players, especially pitchers. Erskine explained his determination and reasoning. “In all fairness, I didn’t say much at the time. It was so competitive in those days. The Dodgers had 26 farm teams and almost 800 players were under contract. They had an army of young arms throwing down in their farm system. If you faltered, it was potentially career threatening. They would ship you off to the minor leagues like they did to me for the first couple of years.” Carl spent his career pitching with this injury, with the pain a constant presence. As he explained, the game was pretty simple to understand during those years, “When they gave you the ball, you pitched. You had to be productive or you didn’t stay. That’s the way it was for everybody.” He confessed that he never wanted to be known as a sore arm pitcher. Carl started and finished a season with the Brooklyn Dodgers for the first time in 1951. His record was 16-12. Carl pitched a two-hitter against the Braves on June 17. The Dodgers swept the Giants in a double-header August 8, taking the first game with the help of solid relief work by Erskine. The sweep gave the Dodgers an 11-1/2 game lead, the greatest lead in Brooklyn’s history. A week later on August 17 Carl pitched a three-hitter against the Braves. Behind the 16th victory of Erskine on September 20, Brooklyn’s magic number was reduced to five games. After that, however, the Giants came back to force the Dodgers to a best-of-three playoff. The playoff series ended with one of the greatest walk-off homers in the history of the game — “the shot heard around the world!” The story is cemented into the annals of the game, but Carl’s non-participation was important in the outcome of baseball history. Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns recount in their book, Baseball — An Illustrated History, “The score was still 4-2, Dodgers, but two Giants were on base and as the injured [Don] Mueller was being carried from the field and Clint Hartung trotted out to take his place on third, Dodger manager Charlie Dressen considered who might the best replacement for the battered Newcombe. Carl Erskine and Ralph Branca had both been warming up in the bullpen. But Erskine wasn’t having his best breaking ball that afternoon. So it fell to Branca to save the day and the pennant for Brooklyn.” When Dressen called down to the bullpen, Sukeforth’s exact words that influenced the Dodger manager’s choice were, “They’re both ready . . . however Erskine is bouncing his overhand curve.” The next was the beginning to a moment that has been engrained into the historical annals of baseball history. Ralph Branca walked to the mound at the Polo Grounds and served up Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard around the world!” The timeless, screaming words of Russ Hodges echoed through millions of radios. “The Giants win he pennant, the Giants win the pennant!” Whenever Carl is asked what his best pitch was, he always replies, “The curveball I bounced in the Polo Grounds bullpen in 1951.” The 1956 season represented Carl’s last solid season with the Dodgers. Erskine finished the season at 13-11 as the Dodgers barely beat out the Braves by one game and lost to their yearly nemesis, the Yankees, 4 games to 3. Carl’s career was slowly winding down and the next year would be the last year that the Dodgers would play at Ebbets Field. In 1958, they would join the New York Giants on a pilgrimage to the West Coast. Carl spent one and one half years in California. He was the starting pitcher in the first major league game played in Los Angeles before nearly 80,000 fans and got credit for the win. Erskine would retire during the 1959 season. He would finish with a 122-78 record, throw 14 career shutouts and appear in eleven games during five World Series.

I also got 3 out of 10 for 41 seconds. 🙁

7 out of 10, 74 seconds. Same old story.