When I'm doing my blog research at the library, it's fun to read old sports pages to see how the Tribe was doing. And sixty years ago, the Indians were playing the Yankees – with one of my favorite ballplayers pitching for New York: Jim Bouton. His name in the headline above (from the June 1, 1963 Journal) caught my attention.
Unfortunately, Bouton is only briefly mentioned in the story, with no witty quotes or hilarious anecdotes of the kind that ended up in Ball Four. He did end up beating the Indians 5-2, and having a pretty good game with the bat, with 4 RBIs.
Jim Bouton has showed up on this blog before. Back here, I wrote about his second baseball book, which was published in June 1971. And on this post, I wrote about one of his future Seattle Pilots roommates, Gary Bell, when he appeared in Lorain at Jay's Sparkle Market in 1962.
By the way, here's my autographed photo of Jim Bouton.
6 comments:
Funny how a name change can uncouple years of being a fan, but it did for me too. I'll listen to them on radio occasionally but that strong tie I once had with the Tribe throughout my childhood is gone. The sports page of The Journal is something else from a bygone era that I sorely miss. As a kid I couldn't wait to read about yesterday's game.
Where I growed up it was a constant battle between Cleveland and Picksburg fans about everything. About the only thing they could all agree on was that they hated the Yankees!
I agree about the name change too,while I do think it should've been changed but they should've changed it to the Cleveland Spiders.That name has history practically all the way back to founding of professional baseball.And Cy Young was a member of the Spiders.Young was born in Ohio and entered the major leagues as a Spider.That name would've been perfect.
Hey Dan - I can't believe you didn't mention the ladies softball team sponsored by your favorite suds "Old Dutch". A fastpitch tilt at Subway under the lights. Todd
Muni Stadium: Where *everyone* would eventually complain that there was a post in the way!
Great observation, Todd!!!
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