Category: Blog

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Major League Baseball History: Angry Fans of ’95

After the 232-day strike bled into the Spring, the parties involved needed to come together and discuss another pressing matter, which was the schedule for the impending 1995 season. Thanks to the baseball gods, this conversation didn’t take too long, as the players and owners came to an agreement on a syncopated 144-game schedule. While it would allow the real players time to practice with their clubs, which, on paper, would enhance the quality of the regular season contests, it was another move that irked baseball fans, particularly those who obsess over the record books and consume the product each year in a perpetual state of anticipation, hoping that one of the game’s stars would shatter a historic single-season mark. A truncated set of games meant the chances to witness history over the course of the next six months went right down the drain.

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Major League Baseball History: The Strike Bleeds Into Spring Training

At the top of March, Spring Training kicked off in a way that could best be described as “humdrum.” With unsung players taking the field, fans of the game let it be known that without the stars, the sport wasn’t worth their time. On March 2nd, a total of five spring training games took place in Florida. Of those five contests, none of them drew 700 fans, which, for reference, meant that only about one-tenth of the usual spring crowd around this time opted to attend the exhibition games. One of those five ballgames was a showdown in Bradenton, FL, between the Minnesota Twins and Pittsburgh Pirates. About 685 fans were in attendance to watch a blend of no-name minor leaguers and replacement players. During the action, 35-year-old Pirates reliever Jimmy Boudreau, son of Hall of Fame shortstop Lou Boudreau, participated in the practice event and, sadly, epitomized the “spring training with makeshifts” experience in one particular action. While heading over to third to back up the base on a play, Boudreau, who, from 1982-86, attempted to reach the Majors but never made it beyond AA, ran over Minnesota’s third base coach, Ron Gardenhire. Gardenhire, who, unlike Boudreau, played in the Majors, appearing in 285 games, left the ballpark that day with a torn Achilles tendon from the collision. “It was a real sad day in the history of baseball,” said Pittsburgh’s coach, Jim Leyland, after the embarrassing game. “It was awkward…it was a tough day.”

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Major League Baseball History: The Season is Over (September 1994)

On September 14th, 1994, with no progress being made between the owners and players during the first month of the strike, the anticipated bomb detonated over the sport. The kind of explosion that, due to its puissance, would leave a lasting impact on the game for years to come. Bud Selig, who, at this time, was now serving as acting commissioner of MLB, held a news conference at Milwaukee County Stadium to broadcast the sour 411 that everyone knew was coming. For the first time since 1904, there would be no World Series. Carrying out The Fall Classic while countries were clashing? Not an issue. The show went on each year during World War I, even in 1918, when the influenza pandemic stung the nation at a more-than alarming rate. Hosting the sacred event amid The Great Depression? No problem. Though, according to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum, Hoover, the President of the United States at the time of the calamity, was warbled with a string of boos from the fans after throwing out the first pitch prior to Game 3 of the 1931 World Series. Years later, when World War II was at its height in terms of mania, the league, despite losing some of its stars to combat, persevered and carried on with the 1943 World Series with a slight scheduling modification due to wartime traveling restrictions.

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Major League Baseball History: Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies

In 1983, budding superstar for the Baltimore Orioles, shortstop Cal Ripken Jr., in just his 2nd full season in the Majors, won the American League MVP award. The year prior, he was named the AL Rookie of the Year in a near-unanimous decision, earning 94% of the votes. It was in May of that freshman campaign when ‘Rip’ kicked off his historic consecutive game streak. After sitting out the 2nd game of a doubleheader against the Toronto Blue Jays on May 29th, Ripken was back in the lineup the following day. From a performance perspective, Ripken’s game itself was uneventful, as the 21-year-old went 0-for-2 in the contest. As a team, Baltimore racked up just one hit in the ballgame en route to getting blanked by the Blue Jays, 6-0. Yet, the date May 30th, 1982, will live on forever in the baseball world, as it marked the first of 2,632 straight games that Ripken Jr. would start in. An incredible, unbroken chain of events that lasted almost 16 years. On September 6th, 1995, ‘The Iron Man’ surpassed Lou ‘The Iron Horse’ Gehrig’s previous record of 2,230, and became the all-time leader in the history books. Barring an unfathomable run by a modern-day ballplayer, with the way the game is trending, it’s quite possible that Ripken Jr. will remain the king of the category until the end of time.

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Jeremy’s Journal: Pin Collection

Jeremy Bhandari

Before the world turned digital, physical collectibles were king. As mentioned in a prior post, during childhood, to embody my baseball monomania to perfection, I gathered as much MLB-related possessions as possible. From team hats, trading cards, books, magazines, to posters, action figures, and bobbleheads, if the entity represented baseball in any fashion, you bet I had it.

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Jeremy’s Journal: Magical Bobbleheads

Jeremy Bhandari

Circa 2002. Though I was just 6 years old at the time, my obsession with Major League Baseball was already in full-swing. As my level of consciousness evolved at a high rate with each ensuing sleep, so too did my desire to latch onto anything baseball-related. Along with watching the local Red Sox games every night, and scanning the baseball section in the Boston Globe to keep up with the League Leaders every morning, I would beg my mother to gift me all types of physical objects affiliated with MLB. Trading cards, magazines, books, even the McFarlane brand MLB player action figures. If it had any correlation with my prized sport, I wanted it, and by good fortune, I would receive it. Soon enough, I had binders that were chockfull of cards, a mini library of Matt Christopher’s MLB-player focused biographies, an art-show’s worth of player toys, and a stack of magazines that I could scan through to read about my favorite players.

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Major League Baseball History: The Gaudy Stats From 1994

The 1994 San Diego Padres, as a unit, did not have much to write home about. At the time of the strike, their record was an abysmal 47-70, a mark that ranked them dead last in baseball. Yet, even though their house was dark, appearing to lack electrical power, a lone light shined bright in the living room. The sector in the abode considered to be the “main attraction” possessed an illumined glow that made San Diego fans forget about the gloom. In their last game before the season was stalled, San Diego Padres star right fielder Tony Gwynn collected three hits against the Houston Astros, which raised his league-high batting average to an astounding .394.

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Major League Baseball History: The Most Jam-Packed 40+ HR Club (1996)

From 1920-1929, Babe Ruth hit 40 or more home runs in eight of the 10 seasons. In the two years that he missed the mark, Ruth was suspended for a portion of one of them and ill for the other, causing him to miss a significant number of games. By the end of the 20s, just five players not named Babe Ruth joined the 40-home-run club. Though more names added themselves to the elite group that Ruth founded, they came to the party either by themselves or with a handful of others. In 1922, the year Ruth was suspended, Rogers Hornsby hit 42 home runs and stood alone as the sole member of the 40-home-run group that year, thus making his light beam in baseball lore. In 1927, when Ruth hit 60, his teammate Lou Gehrig got in on the fun, clubbing 47 en route to being the only other ballplayer to hit 40 or more that season.

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Major League Baseball History: The Mick

To the plurality of boys growing up in America in the 50s and 60s with an interest in athletics, Mickey Mantle was much more than just a fantastic ballplayer. He was a national icon who represented the American dream in a mythological-like manner—a folk hero with Paul Bunyan-like characteristics. Akin to Bunyan, “The Mick” showcased strength and vitality in his profession, while carrying out a career that was more chimeric in its nature than it was concrete. He grew up in Commerce, Oklahoma, a small town of less than 3,000. His father, Mutt, named him after the Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane, whose government name, funny enough, was Gordon Stanley Cochrane. Nonetheless, Mutt was set on honoring the ballplayer’s nickname a full two years prior to Mickey’s birth. With that said, even prior to him spawning into this universe, Mickey Mantle was destined to be a ballplayer. “He’s just a plain, big old country boy who liked to play baseball from the day he was old enough to carry a mitt,” said Ralph Sears, the bank president in Mickey’s hometown, via a 1956 newspaper article written by Carter Bradley, United Press Staff Correspondent (Bradley 4).

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