Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities. I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 20 of the 2010 baseball season
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 3 week of May.
May 16
1972 With a Ruthian blast at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium off Burt Hooton, left fielder Greg Luzinski ‘rings’ the Liberty Bell hanging in dead center field on fourth level. The 500-foot clanger will account for the Phillies only run as they lose to the Cubs, 8-1.
Gregory Michael “The Bull” Luzinski was born November 22, 1950 in Chicago, Illinois.
Luzinski earned the nickname The Bull with his bulging arms, thick neck, massive body, and viscious righthanded batting stroke. As the Phillies’ left fielder in the 1970s, he teamed with third baseman Mike Schmidt to form a potent slugging combination and help the Phillies to four National League East championships in five years. As the cleanup man for the Phillies, he helped lead them in their most successful decade.
During his 15-year career, the soft-spoken slugger won renown for his eye-popping home runs and, later, his buckle-popping girth. Seventeen years after retiring he had this to say about weight training: “I never lifted a weight, still haven’t.”
Luzinski, who grew up in Prospect Heights, Ill., signed with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1968, at age 17.
The 6’1″ 220-lb Luzinski reached the Major Leagues for good in 1972, with two minor league home run crowns, one minor league batting championship, and three minor league strikeout titles on his resume.
He hit .281 with 18 Home Runs as a rookie, and .285 with 29 Home Runs and 97 Runs Batted In in 1973, the year Schmidt joined the lineup.
From 1975 to 1980, the pair averaged nearly 66 Home Runs a year.
Luzinski was hobbled by knee surgery in 1974 but rebounded in 1975 to hit .300 with 34 Home Runs and a National League-best 120 Runs Batted In.
The Bull still routinely struck out 100 times a season, yet pushed his average up to .304 the following year as the Phillies won the first of three consecutive division titles, and in 1977 he logged career highs in all three Triple Crown catagories, batting .309 with 39 Home Runs and 130 Runs Batted In.
In League Championship Series play, Luzinski was just as dangerous, slugging home runs in Game Two in 1976, Game One in 1977, and Games Three and Four in 1978, but the Phillies lost all three series.
Luzinski’s production fell off badly in 1979, and in 1980 his average dropped to .228, but the Phillies finally advanced past the League Championship Series with a five-game victory over the Astros, as Luzinski homered to win Game One. In the World Series, the Phillies used the clumsy-fielding Luzinski primarily as the designated hitter and he failed to get a single hit, but the Phillies beat the Royals in six games.
The four-time All-Star’s meteoric homers, concrete fielding glove and warm generosity are all part of Philly lore. There was the 500-footer in 1972 that dinged off the replica of the Liberty Bell that used to hang above centerfield at Veterans Stadium. There was the fly ball he dropped in the ninth inning of Game 3 of the 1977 National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers that cost the Phils the game. And there was the Bull Ring—126 seats in the leftfield stands that Luzinski bought for $20,000 each season, then gave out to underprivileged children.
Luzinski was sold to the White Sox before the 1981 season and he immediately became Chicago’s full-time Designated Hitter, where he no longer had to endure criticism for his wretched defense. He became one of the top designated hitters in the American League.
He played four seasons in Chicago, helping them to the American League West title in 1983 with 32 Home Runs and 95 Runs Batted In, then retired after hitting .238 with 13 Home Runs in 1984.
After retirement he spent several years as the head football and baseball coach at Holy Cross High School in Delran, NJ.
In ’93 Greg joined his former manager Tony La Russa in Oakland as hitting coach for the A’s before moving on to the same job with Kansas City in 1995.
In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary
Under the letter: N
National pastime
A term commonly applied to baseball in the United States. First used in 1856, it eventually overshadowed other names such as national game and “national sport.”
In Baseball: An Illustrated History, Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns noted: “On December 5, 1856, in a fine early example of New York chauvinism, the New York Mercury had referred to the game for the first time as ‘the National Pastime.’”
Fred Ivor-Campbell cites an article, dated Nov. 15, 1856, from Porter’s Spirit of the Times that refers to cricket, “base ball,” “foot ball,” and “racket” as “sports and pastimes” that “we hope may become national throughout the U.S. of America.”
Ivor-Campbell also cited a later issue, dated Jan. 31, 1857, of Spirit of the Times: “Base ball has been known in the Northern States as far back as the memory of the oldest inhabitant reacheth, and must be regarded as a national pastime, the same as cricket is by the British.”
And now for the ninth inning…
Continuing our trip around baseball cities…
This segment comes to you compliments of listener John Murden.
The Richmond Flying Squirrels
Richmond, Virginia’s brand new Giants AA affiliated Flying Squirrels brings to Richmond an almost 40 year history in now 4 cities and 9 names. The 2010 Flying Squirrels Media Guide states that “the Flying Squirrels will not carry forward team records established while the team was based in Norwich” and will operate as a new entity. Still, it is something to consider that this team which has changed names, owners, allegiances, and cities retains some connection to that first 1972 team.
The team that has become the Richmond Flying Squirrels was born in 1972 as the West Haven (Conn.) Yankees of the AA Eastern League. The 1972 West Haven Yankees were notably managed by Bobby Cox, now in what is likely his last year managing the Atlanta Braves. The club became a farm team of the Oakland Athletics in 1980 and played first as the West Haven Whitecaps and then the West Haven A’s. The West Haven teams won league titles in 1972, 1976, 1978, 1979, and 1982.
The team moved in 1983 and became the Albany A’s for a year. They played the next year as the Albany-Colonie A’s. In 1985 the franchise again changed allegiances back to New York and became the Albany-Colonie Yankees. The Albany teams picked up league titles twice in their twelve year run.
The team fielded by the 1989 Albany-Colonie Yankees is unarguably the best in the lineage: they won 70 of their first 90 games, took the pennant by 19 games, and then won 7 of 8 in the playoffs. At least 9 players on that team played or went on to play in the big leagues, including Bernie Williams and “Neon Deion” Sanders. The 1989 Albany-Colonie Yankees allowed only 3.24 runs per game, leading the league in pitching. In scoring an average of 4.59 runs per game, with 96 homeruns, 580 RBI, and a team batting average of 268, they also led the league in hitting.
Still a Yankees farm team, the team moved in 1995 to Norwich, Connecticut, to became the Norwich Navigators. The Navigators won their first and only Eastern League championship in 2002. Later that fall, the NY Yankees dropped the team and the San Francisco Giants signed on as the new parent club. Declining attendence in 2005 led to a new name and logo change, and so the Connecticut Defenders were born.
In 2009 the Connecticut Defenders went 83-59 and won the Northern Division title of the Eastern League. They defeated the New Britain Rock Cats in the playoffs to advance to the Eastern League Championship Series, which they lost to the Akron Aeros.
Beginning with the 2010 season, the team will be playing as the Richmond Flying Squirrels in the Western Division of the Eastern League along with the Akron Aeros, Altoona Curve, Bowie Baysox, Erie SeaWolves, and Harrisburg Senators.
Through all of the changes, the team has always been a part of the Eastern League. Founded in 1923 as the New York-Pennsylvania League, the Eastern League is a AA league operating primarily in the northeast (although there has been a team in Ohio since 1989). The new Richmond Flying Squirrels are the southernmost of the 104 different teams that have played in the league, taking that honor from the now-defunct Charleston (WV) Indians.
Thank you John, and as promised “You get the credit.”
For those of you that want to stick around, here’s an
Extra Inning
The following comment was left on BaseballHistoryPodcast.com by Peter Georgiades of Shearwater, Tasmania.
Hi Bob,
I discovered your show a couple of years ago and love hearing about all the old time stars of baseball. I am a Boston Red Sox fan and have enjoyed their recent success in 04 and 07 but am interested in their past more so than the recent decade.
I have recently read a book on the Summer of ‘49 and Spahn, Sain, and the Kid. If the Red Sox could have just won one more game in both those years maybe they could have been the team of the 50′s. Or, maybe the Braves winning in ‘48 they might have stayed in Boston; questions that will never be answered.
Anyway keep up the good work
Peter
Thanks Peter.
I think the book that Peter is referring to is Summer of ’49 by David Halberstam
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Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast. I’ll see you later at the ballpark.
What an awesome surprise!