Caught some of this tonight. Just like the first time I viewed it back in 1993, the series just pulls you in. Great to see the great Satchell Paige and Josh Gibson "the Black Babe Ruth" as he was called.
Once read his Paige's biography "Maybe I'll Pitch Forever". According to his estimates, Paige pitched in over 2,500 games and won 2,000, pitches "hundreds" of no-hitters. I suspect a bit of embellishment there. Nevertheless, he was great for the Negro Leagues.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
When I read this post, my first thought was "they don't make anything like they used to." Even if the "hundreds of no-hitters" comment was a bit of an overstatement, the fact is that back in the day, people seemed more sturdy than we are now. Today's pitchers live by pitch count, days between starts, and velocity. Now, I'm not a baseball historian. I don't know how things used to be compared to how they are now. But it seems like modern day athletes, not just pitcher exclusively, are handled with kid gloves whereas in the old days such coddling would have been an insult. The athlete would probably have been labeled a sissy or prima donna or something similar. It's just like race horses (which I know more about than baseball players). Back in the day, you'd race a horse every two weeks if they were consistently winning. If you tried that today, you'd waste your money, break your horse down and have the people from PETA shut you down. Is modernity making everything and everyone more delicate? I don't know, but I'd love to tap the durability secrets from the old days.
ReplyDeleteIn the '68 World Series, the Detroit Tigers beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 4 games to 3. LHP Mickey Lolich, overshadowed by 31-game winner Denny McClain all season, won 3 games in that series.
ReplyDeleteWhat made his accomplishment so tremendous was (i) all 3 games were complete 9-inning efforts and (ii) he won games 5 and 7, pitching game 7 on 2 days' rest. He was a workhorse the rest of his career often pitching over 300 innings per season.