Episode 309 - Billy Hamilton was Ty Cobb Before Lou Brock Was Rickey

0:00hello everybody welcome to another episode to strike noise everybody's top 20 ish baseball history podcast my name is jeff i am one half of the show as usual joining me the other half from the pacific northwest from the henry cotto studios today it is mark a johnston mark how you

0:32doing oh man never better it stopped being so cold and just started raining again so weather is much nicer sounds like seattle it is it's been nice here i know everybody else is getting a bunch of cold and snow i am playing baseball in shorts here yeah far be it for me to say anything negative about you but i'm thinking it far be it yes yeah all the things i gotta edit out every week but that's so unfair but true this is this is one of the we've got like a month maybe two months in

1:03california where everything is green and this is it and then it all turns gold and then there's fires but i'm excited it's i've started my baseball season not real games but i'm practicing and going to pick up games so i'm very excited not hitting well but i'm very excited you're not in mid-season form yet that's all speaking of spring training as we get into our bp segment here it was truck day for the blue jays already last week wow they're coming a long ways yeah i was thinking they got they've got a ways to go to get down to florida and they probably have to unload the entire truck

1:37at the border these days this is true make sure they're not sneaking anything in or anybody in and tariffing the heck out of it and it's just probably a big deal at this point to get all that done but it is truck day where it was truck day for the blue jays i'm assuming we'll see some other truck day stuff i'm not on twitter anymore so i don't know i don't know who posts there but blue sky i gotta tell you if you're not on blue sky for baseball blue sky is pretty good there's a i think a lot of the

2:08people that were or are on twitter also have a blue sky account and post there but blue sky is definitely a good baseball platform if you're looking for social media that is not twitter or whatever i don't call it x just not twitter but you can follow us there you can follow us a lot of places but mark some other things that have been going on at least for me i have been watching the marquee network masson a bunch of these baseball networks that are just showing classic games during

2:40the off season and i cannot get enough of them i'm watching random like cubs brewers games from the 80s from a tuesday in july it's been a lot of fun actually that is fun and as we as we get closer it seems like the days go slower to get to actual real baseball that counts i'm stoked about uh world baseball classic i am too man yeah except for i was talking about it on our twitch stream the other day i'm a little down because like i see altuve and is it bregman i don't or no correa carlos correa

3:17aren't participating because they couldn't get insurance so remember edwin diaz missed a whole season for the mats so i do get it but also this is it's becoming a premier event it's it's not as big obviously it's the world cup or the olympics but for baseball fans it is just so great and dovetailing is that the phrase from the how great the world series was last year assuming we don't have a work stoppage at the end of this season this is going to be another great event for major league baseball i i too am excited for it yay yeah absolutely yeah i'm going

3:54to catch as many games as i can i'm ready to roll it's about that time now i'm a big college hoops fan too you don't have that bonus going for you i got college basketball as my methadone to get me to baseball season c didn't college football just end like last week college basketball sorry yeah but college football it just ended oh yeah no it did yeah and we're into college hoops boy exciting not for me but for anybody else so i mentioned i was watching a cubs game i was on marquee it was like i said it was from the 80s it was so weird though because the original broadcast didn't have any

4:27kind of score bug or anything and it was in a four by three aspect ratio black bars on the side it looks like it was shot with a potato it's from the 80s but i was so disappointed marquee put up their own score bug for this game but they didn't use the one that they would use say this year or last year they put this huge square up there that doesn't have the count or anything it just has the score the inning and the half inning and it just it was so big it took up it took up like 20 percent

5:00of a screen that was already shrunk down it was awkward but i still enjoyed the game but yeah i would i like when i watch those classic games i don't want all the i don't want the bug score i don't want the strike zone i like it's fun just to watch baseball how we used to watch it but they decided that they were gonna stick this big honking square up there they might as well have just had it be floating around the screen like the dvd screensaver every now and then get in the corner exactly that's

5:31how distracting it was for me at least but i understand that yeah still fun to see some old games speaking uh i don't want to say speaking of old that's not a nice transition yeah come on now oh you're not talking about me not talking about you this time but i'm talking about a guest that we've had on in the past that just announced they are going to be retiring after this season it is mariners radio voice rick riz yes i saw that and i'm happy for him sad that he's gonna this will be his last season i hope maybe he'll make a few cameos now and then because he's a really good dude

6:05he was great on when we had him you and i both talked to him just at stadiums i remember running into the bathroom at fenway and he had no idea why i was there because he was used to me at safe go at that point but he's just a great guy hopefully his last play ever will be a single that scoots on by up the middle that's it and wins the world series there we go all right mark last episode we talked

6:35a little bit about tombstone at the beginning and we don't want to risk actually maybe we do want to risk being listed on some tombstone podcast top 10 lists because we tend to we tend to fall into those things a lot but for the rest of bp here i do want to just revert back to that i've got some i've got some tombstone stuff and we also decided we do it sometimes around holidays and other things that you and i were going to come up with some baseball names that were related to tombstone

7:06so yes we've got those to do but i've got a couple of things here first that are baseball related that i wanted to mention so i've mentioned colma california before it's here in the bay area it's in san francisco george high pockets kelly is is buried there ah yes some consider him to be the least worthy of all hall of famers he was considered tall thusly the high pockets nickname though he was not exceedingly tall by today's standards but he is buried in colma california of which there's even

7:41a bart stop at colma you could get off and probably walk right to this cemetery also buried there wyatt earp oh really yes i had no i'm like why would he not be buried in like tombstone or somewhere in arizona or colorado city yeah exactly but i'm gonna definitely have to make a trip to see george high pockets kelly but i also want to go see wyatt earp out why is he buried in san francisco i don't know but also in tombstone the movie the role of marshall fred white played by harry carrie jr

8:20yes that's right not related to the harry carrie from the baseball world but harry carrie jr was 72 when he played the role of marshall fred white in the movie tombstone the actual marshall fred white is believed to have died at either 30 or 31 years old so close he's like joey and friends who thinks he can still play a teenager he's like steve buscemi in the hello fellow kids meme it's i'm

8:50harry carrie jr i'm totally 30 years old here ignore the walker and all of the loose skin i am definitely maybe the real harry carrie or the real fred white maybe he just aged really rapidly he benjamin but it was a rough time it was a benjamin button situation probably for for frank for fred white also prior to being aligned with the cowboys in the movie sherman mcmasters yes he was a texas ranger oh there you go so let's see i've got some i've got some things out there also

9:27i want to mention that frank stallone is in this movie he's in yes he is he plays ed bailey who was not the ed bailey that i think of the six-time all-star catcher for cincinnati and san francisco but he is does play a character named ed bailey prompting that famous line why ed bailey are we cross are we just gonna quote the movie again oh i hope so so i've got a couple of other guys from the credits or people from the credits i wanted to call out before we get into the actual movie itself

9:59candy l walken was the key hairstylist which just made me think of candy maldonado or john candelaria it's a reach it's a stretch i admit there was a driver one of the drivers on set was named mike morgan okay let's see also i mean kurt russell was in the movie good point he really i've learned a lot about this movie in the past week looking for these names the original director got fired like a month in because they were so far behind schedule they brought another director in

10:34but kurt russell essentially directed this movie and changed the whole plot to revolve around him and val kilmer so not so much a popular figure on the set of tombstone he took a lot goodness yeah so the original director wrote it and did a fantastic job of the dialogue it's quick it's you know relates to the time period the way they used to talk apparently kurt russell stole all the good lines

11:04and gave them to him and val kilmer certainly seems that way yeah they've got a lot of great lines so before i we get into any of my names here let's hear some of your tombstone baseball names the first name that came to mind when we did this was dusty baker oh i didn't i don't have that yeah good old dusty you seen dusty coming down the road it seems like a cowboy name so yeah i went with roy halliday because he was of course sure doc that was the easy one for me absolutely that one makes sense how

11:38about the one and only cap anson does that sound old west to you his nickname as well the marshal the marshal yeah racist as hell but we're overlooking that right now and we're going and we're skipping the do not talk about just to say names yeah just to that we'll just move on from him but yeah he's definitely on the dental list i got rod beck because rod beck was nicknamed shooter okay which either makes you think of happy gilmore or maybe an old west all right okay okay how about this see this

12:12i struggled with this one a little bit because it's more blazing saddles than it is tombstone but how about hoot gibson it does sound like a blazing saddles you've seen hoot gibson around all right i have got george doc medic another doc actual pitcher he was a vascular surgeon as well he was on the mount i one he saved somebody's life at a game i'm fairly certain that he went into the stands not like jim rice

12:43style where he carried a small bleeding child to the dugout but i believe that doc medic actually gave cpr to somebody and saved their life at one point but he also was on the mound when ricky henderson broke the single season stolen base record in milwaukee that's hard remember doc medic okay fair enough i don't have a ton more i i figured we probably should put a boon in there there's a bunch of them there's a lot of there's one family in particular but yes i'm just gonna call this pick

13:16your boon okay whichever boon you'd like to throw in there whether it's no boon pickens is like a billionaire in oklahoma isn't he i'm thinking i was trying to think of more that's kind of weird wild west names i came up with richie hebner because he was nicknamed the grave digger oh there you go and then this guy who i think he's got to be on our dental list but we're suspending it here just to talk about tombstone niger morgan he had a lot of characters that he played while he was in baseball one of which was tommy tombstone i'm sorry tony tombstone is what he called himself

13:52and he literally dressed up as a cowboy and he told the media that he wanted to be referred to as tony tombstone for now on very nice the tops never did a card with him like they did for tim rains and just said okay you want to be rock you're rock yes tony tombstone didn't stick as well but there are pictures of him dressed up as a stereotypical cowboy niger morgan yeah very nice i also thought of this is a stretch because i was looking for johnny ringo so i came up we've got

14:26johnny ugly dick shot is the only sure and that's just because i wanted to mention him more than anything there is a frank ringo that played for four years in the 1880s he was the epitome of a number two catcher in the 1880s he barely played his lifetime war was a minus 0.29 and that's not so good he couldn't hit obviously he didn't have a single career home run didn't steal a base

15:00struck out a lot more than he walked his on base percentage was 215 i think his main job was just to sit five feet behind home plate and catch the ball once it stopped rolling was really his only role but nice he frank c ringo died in 1889 oh wow he died at age 26 probably consumption or a farm accident one of the two yes and consumption being along with tombstone as well

15:30yeah oh absolutely yeah the other the other ones that i found here a little bit less tied we had the iron horse luke garrick sure of which there are trains in the movie we also have the arizona diamondbacks and the houston colt 45s if we're looking at just team names there you go i found a pitcher earl huckleberry earl eugene huckleberry appeared in a single game for the philadelphia athletics in 1935 he went six and two-thirds gave up eight hits seven runs all

16:04earned including a home run walked four struck out two for a career era of 9.45 a career war of minus 0.2 and a career era plus of 51 but he's in the baseball encyclopedia he is on baseball reference okay so that makes him eligible yep he is he's definitely eligible there i also had this one i was proud of this one i think i came up with this on my own but i'm not sure pat okay corrales

16:38that's good huh that's good i was pretty happy with that one and then my last one just i wanted to mention chuck connors the rifleman sure yeah that's good so that's what i came up with uh listeners if we have missed any that you can think of for baseball related tombstone names let us know tombstone and if you can tell if you have a western that is better than tombstone let us know because there's a lot of good westerns i love westerns personally so i do love me some spaghetti

17:10westerns with clint eastwood and ennio marcone it's doing the soundtrack and what's the other guy that's in all of those movies his name is like a vaughn somebody oh you got me on the spot man lee van cleef oh sure lee van cleef is like in every one of these movies as well and he's so good as well and then there's unforgiven there's newer ones too more clint eastwood but i love me some westerns all right yeah me too that will do it we're getting close to we're gonna have some

17:44some debuts coming up pretty soon but not yet so let's just move on let's move on let's let the grass crew come out and do their thing they've spray painted along the foul lines 2026 spring training already they're ready to go on the field so the field looks great mark i have got a story this week we've talked about this guy so many times i don't know why it never struck me to just do a whole story on him but i thought to myself why don't we talk about the original slide and billy

18:18hamilton this week okay with ricky we talk about slide and billy all the time and of course we are talking about the original slide and billy from the 1800s not the non slide and billy hamilton of the current age it's a little bit of a difference but most of the guys we talk about from the 1890s to be honest look either like laurel or hardy maybe abbott and costello might be a better one of those two they're either really tall and skinny or stocky and a little wide but

18:52there we go but players don't look like yasiel puig which it's commonplace now like i saw a roll this chapman throwing at his home on social media he's like 80 years old now but he still looks like a linebacker kind of thing but nice bartolo cologne like bartolo is one of the body types that was a common baseball player body type in the 1890s and i'm not body shaming i'm just trying to keep it real real sexy of course real big sexy yes then you have billy hamilton he was

19:23five foot six 160 pounds if you passed him on the street you'd think why isn't that kid in school and where's a truancy officer when you need one not pro athlete you remember in cartoons when were truancy officers really a thing like walking around town looking for kids not in school i don't know i don't know i didn't skip school very often oh okay you i thought you were cleaning chimneys at that point so you had to skip school no i was i was looking at the fish market oh okay you were in

19:54seattle so it makes sense billy was short he was stocky had these massive tree trunk legs that didn't really fit the rest of his body but he didn't care about looking the part he just wanted to play baseball mainly because he grew up in clinton massachusetts working in a cotton mill when he was 14 truancy officer might have picked him up if he was working instead of being in school at 14 but that was his life he wasn't playing baseball for headlines he was playing baseball and he was running because he was very fast and stealing bases because that was better than stealing breaths

20:28of asbestos laden dust for 12 hours a day which i think was in the job description for pretty much every job at that point he said his speed was his ticket out of the cotton mill and he ran like his life depended on it because it did because asbestos is not good for you you should run away from asbestos if you encounter it today is just that the tip i'm giving you before he even sniffed the big leagues though he was making a name for himself in the new england league in 1888 he was

20:58playing for wooster and he put up a stat line that seemed like the numbers might have been swapped in the columns he played 61 games he hit 351 he scored 76 runs in 61 games he also in those 61 games swiped 72 bags wooster was a small club and realized pretty quickly that they had a kid that was too fast and too good to be playing in wooster so they sold him to the american association kansas city cowboys for some quick cash in 19 i'm sorry i have in 1988 or 1888 one of those and cowboys nice

21:36for some quick cash and i did it again for some quick cash in 1888 the team's first in the american association and ultimately their penultimate season in the american association for the kansas city cowboys billy continued to do what got him there though he ran one of the papers back then said that he tried to steal everything in the stadium including the umpire if he could billy is a bit of a trailblazer he's credited as the guy who basically invented the headfirst slide and the fadeaway slide he'd go

22:12into a base and twist his body away from the tag at the last second the kind of stuff today that if a player can do it it's like all over social media for a week and it's included in every season ending highlight reel but he would do these perfectly but he would perfect these by really just never ceasing to run they sometimes would set up a crude treadmill in the dugout for him in between at bats just so he could keep running i'm making that up that's false don't write a paper with that in it it's that is not

22:43true one of the things that kills a lot of base dealers from having long careers is that to steal a base you have to get on base otherwise you're just herb washington or terence score or even the modern day billy hamilton but the real billy hamilton was always on base his career on base percentage is 455 that's pretty decent yeah that's 50 points higher than ricky henderson's just to put that in perspective that's fourth all time he is behind ted williams babe ruth and john mcgraw now john mcgraw

23:16by the way is only in the hall of fame as a manager but he was actually a pretty good ball player but despite playing for 17 years only a handful of them were full seasons because he was often the player manager and figured out that he had a lot more control over the game as a manager than as an average third baseman so think about that he's in a statistical bracket with the greatest hitters to ever live and john mcgraw but he was doing it by simply pressuring the pitcher not to make a mistake

23:47the very first walking triple if you will is sliding billy hamilton he walked over a hundred times in five different seasons and he'd just stand there tiny little strike zone and he'd foul off pitches until the pitcher's arm felt like it was going to fall off because that's the way that they did it back in those days this takes us to the phillies on january 7th 1890 philadelphia purchased billy's contract for five thousand dollars the cowboys were broke they were disbanding it was fire sale time

24:18they wanted to get whatever they could for whatever or whoever anybody else wanted so at the time the phillies were in a tough spot because a bunch of their players had just jumped ship to join the players league phillies were scrambling to fill holes on the roster they had minor leaguers anybody that they could get from other clubs and hamilton seemed to be the perfect fit to take over in the outfield i hate to just skip over billy's first four seasons in philly because they were really good but he hit a collective 341 had a 446 on base percentage walked three times as much as he struck out scored 516 runs

24:55and stole 313 bases in four seasons that's a 22.1 war in four seasons if there had been an nvp award in 1891 he would have won it he led the league in nine different offensive categories but some things to set the scene here before we start to talk more about the numbers of billy first of all steals we've talked about this before how steals were actually scored during billy's career there's a

25:26normal store there's a normal stolen base easy one just like today but also if you try to double steal or even a triple steal i don't i when was the last triple steal i don't know but apparently happened with the bases loaded back in the day and one runner was caught all the other runners would still get credited with a stolen base obviously that is not the case today the other runner gets no stolen base if the partner in the double steal is thrown out runners also got a stolen base credited

25:57if they advanced on a fly ball so if you're standing on second and buck naked is at the plate and he flies to deep you tag up you get to third you've just stolen a base my friend sack flies stolen bases as well you get an sb you get an sb everybody gets an sb just like oprah and then there's the big one that we've talked about ad nauseum if you are on base and a batter gets a single anything more than a single base advanced is a stolen base so if i go from first to third on a single i took second on the base hit

26:31and then stole third these were the rules up until 1898 which was around the end of billy's career also something to think about i alluded to it a little bit earlier the bunt foul for a third strike didn't become a rule until 1901 and billy was among one of the many players who could control his table leg of a bat against pitching and remember balls were a lot softer than they only used one guys were not even throwing as hard as jamie moyer's fastball at that point the beginning of

27:07billy's career they were still throwing it underhand billy could just stand at the plate and knock balls foul until he either got one he liked or the pitcher just simply missed and he took a walk there's the whole pesky you have to be on base before you can steal thing and how billy who was a great hitter anyway would get on base then we get to 1894 and i'm going to note that in 1894 coca-cola was still laced with cocaine pretty much a hundred percent of the medicine that you

27:39were able to purchase at your chemist was either a hundred percent morphine heroin or cocaine those were pretty much roll aids probably had a bunch of heroin in it you know pepto morphine i don't know it's just there's a lot of drugs going on and there was no drug testing in the cba if you can believe it at that point in 1894 did they take laudanum maybe to help out a little bit before we're going tombstone yes yes exactly that consumption you got to take that you got to take the laudanum yeah but

28:12in 1894 billy scored 198 runs 198 runs in 132 games that's a run and a half every game billy would score babe ruth never got close to that ricky henderson never got close to that to get to 198 runs you basically have to be living on third base just a bit more on that billy's run scored per game over his career was 1.06 ricky henderson and ty cobb both 0.74 babe ruth's 0.88 so the dude hit the pay station

28:53a lot man i guess so the 1894 phillies were pure statistical anomalies across the board billy hit 403 and he didn't even lead his own team in average fellow hall of famer and niagara falls aficionado ed delahante and a full point in wax packs heroes for his mustache alone sam thompson both hit above 400 as billy did it's the only time in history that an entire starting outfield

29:24hit 400 or better wow so you've got billy on first he steals second he steals third and then one of these giants just knocks him in with a sack fly billy gets another stolen base on the sack fly it's a great gig for billy at this point on august 31st of that year he stole seven bases in a single game against washington seven bases it's a mark that he shares with fellow 1880s player george gore since then though only four other players has ever recorded six stolen bases in a single game

29:58eddie collins did it twice in two weeks in 1912 no doubt told people about it ad nauseum for the rest of his life because he's cocky cocky eddie collins base dealers though tend to bother people eddie collins was hated ty cobb hated maybe not always because of his cockiness though other things that might have been blown out of proportion ricky henderson cocky brash hot dog people would describe ricky billy likewise though was so annoying that other teams generally hated him because he was so good

30:32one of those teams and show favorite the cleveland spiders had a third baseman named chippy mcgar which is just great i love that man chippy finally snapped and i'm guessing showed us why his nickname was chippy billy was doing his usual stuff stealing bases talking about how he was going to steal a base or was about to and mcgar didn't even try to tag billy out when he tried to steal third he just picked billy up remember billy's not a big man he's only five foot six 160 picks him up takes him

31:05over to the stands and dumps him over the railing into the stands okay i could find no specifics about what happened after that frankly because i'm sure this actually never happened but it's one of those great baseball stories that is told but there's no detail because it never happened but it's still fun to talk about nobody had a lot of power in those days but in may 1893 and we're working off some spotty records at best here but he hit a leadoff home run and a walk-off home run in the same game the first

31:37guy to ever do that i was trying to find out more about this because i wanted to know if they were both inside the park jobs or actual over the wall shots i'm guessing it's probably the former rather than the latter being billy hamilton but no couldn't find out it's such a weird specific way to ruin a pitcher's day though you start the game with the home run and then an hour or two later you end it by doing the same thing i it's ultimately one of the coolest things you can do and it didn't happen

32:07again for 64 years wow after billy did it and in fact it is only happened five other times just like my favorite base dealer billy knew that he was the best after he retired everyone started obsessing over this new guy ty cobb and some of the other guys that were fast and could steal bases and billy felt completely ignored he spent his retirement in worcester and he was just he was fuming he was just fuming about all these articles about ty cobb and his stolen bases by 1973 he was 71

32:41years old and he was still pissed he wrote a letter to the sporting news basically saying look i'm the greatest base dealer ever and if you people actually bothered to count the stats right you would agree with me so he literally called for a recount he knew the record keeping in the 19th century was a mess and he knew that cobb was getting credit for stuff billy had been doing decades earlier so he told them i am and i will always be the greatest and if they ever just recount i will get my just reward

33:12it sounds a lot it sounds a lot like ricky's speech when he broke the all-time mark there's a little bit luke brock was the symbol of great base stealing but today i'm the greatest of all time thank you now i'd be remiss here if i didn't point out again that billy was credited with how many with who knows how many stolen bases where we advanced from first to third on a single or

33:42on a fly out that kind of things but yes by all means learn to count and you'll see i'm the greatest the crazy part though is he was right because before ty cobb came along everyone pointed the everyone pointed to blah blah before ty cobb came along the guy everyone pointed to as the stolen base king was arlie latham with around 700 ish career stolen bases but decades after billy passed researchers actually went back through the old box scores and they found the official tallies

34:15and they were way off once they fixed these box scores and redid the math it turned out that billy did indeed hold the all-time stolen base record for 81 years more than ty cobb lou brock didn't even pass him until 1979 he had 973 career steals and he did it in only about 1500 games for comparison it took ty cobb almost 3000 games to get 892 wow so billy hamilton as i mentioned he's one of the only guys to

34:50ever score more runs than games he played in he scored 1697 runs he only played in 1594 games so that equals that 1.06 runs per game that i told you about the second highest total is harry stovey who had 1495 runs in 1488 games which is almost exactly one run per game yeah george gore i mentioned

35:21him he's just about at one as well just some other names that you might be more familiar with who had more walks than strikeouts joe dimaggio career 790 walks 369 strikeouts yogi berra 704 walks only 414 strikeouts uh ted williams 2 021 walks 709 strikeouts and then tris speaker this is just a stupid that is incredible let's go back let's go back to while he was still playing i know we skipped ahead

36:07to him being a angry old man yelling at clouds after he retired but by the time billy got to the boston nationals in 1896 those tree trunk legs were finally starting to give out he'd spent 15 years treating his body like a crash test dummy sliding headfirst into infields that were probably not always rock and cigarette but free i'm guessing he also wasn't the little pest anymore that everyone thought he was when he was younger he was a guy dealing with those old-fashioned ice bags taped all over his knees

36:39after every game they called it heavy legs back in those days it's a polite way of saying you're old you're not as fast yeah in philadelphia he was routinely swiping 100 bags a year but by his last season in 1901 that number was just 15 he could still get on base his eye was so good that he still was walking more in his final season than he did even in his prime but the threat of him running was gone he retired at age 35 not because he couldn't hit it ended up with a lifetime 344 lifetime average

37:12455 on base as i said but he just he couldn't run as much or certainly as quickly as he did after billy hung up the cleats in 1901 i mentioned he moved back to worcester mass basically he became a regular guy he spent years working as a production foreman at a leather plant he was a family man with a wife and four daughters and he lived in a modest house he did some scouting for the boston braves and managed a few minor league teams there in worcester he spent the last year of his life though mostly

37:45confined to his bed dealing with heart disease he died in 1940 at the age of 74 still waiting for that just reward that he'd written about three years earlier it finally came but it took another 21 years and the hall of fame finally inducted him his kids were there during the ceremony when he was finally inducted into cooperstown but there is sliding billy hamilton the ricky henderson of ty cobs of lube rocks before ricky henderson very cool so there we go there we've finally done it we have finally

38:22done the sliding billy hamilton story yay i would have loved to have seen sliding billy hamilton slide billy hamilton cool papa bell i would love to have seen those kind of players back in the day man that had to have been just adding pure excitement to the game those guys when they get up to bat and especially when they get on base it's amazing stuff yeah and so i was doing research i wanted to see what kind of player was he defensively because he's got this speed he was considered average and because they didn't wear gloves at that point or if they did they were just

38:56like isotoners they're just you don't have a mel hall louis polonia glove out there which might be good because those guys are both on the dental list for specific reasons and they had those extra long gloves so there might be a correlation but it could be he could get to balls it's just a matter of then catching them but it also helped him steal bases because catchers weren't set up right behind home plate pitchers were not winging the ball over there trying to pick people off they weren't even winging the

39:27ball into home plate so he could get a much bigger lead and be off and i'm guessing most of his stolen bases weren't even close like he's standing up when the shortstop or second baseman catches the ball from the catcher is what i'm guessing right but just incredible numbers by hall of famer sliding billy hamilton all right very nice thank you jeff mark i can see by the big clock on the wall we've got one of those novelty clocks it's actually executive producer mitch and it's his arms are yeah we have

40:03a grandfather clock here yeah and my grandfather is actually in it okay are you doing okay good he's fine okay as long as it's not the one that passed away 10 years ago he did but we just haven't told him it okay so he's still working in there big mop of hair like a it's a toupee on top of this novelty clock of executive producer mitch though i don't know where that comes from yeah it's got to be a weave okay yeah it's up there but i can see by that clock that it is time for us to wrap up this segment and head into our final part of the show that is the part that we refer to as wax pack

40:41hello again friends it's time for another installment of wax packs heroes before we can start though let's go over the rules mark and jeff are going to play an old-fashioned game of war

41:12except this is more like baseball reference war they'll each get one card and will score the baseball reference war of the year of the card but wait they can add or subtract points depending on certain aspects of the card and the player's season any 80s baseball aesthetics the card displays will earn an extra tenth of a point or if they don't like something like two and one stirrups they can subtract a tenth of a point as well also if the player won any awards that season they get a half a point for

41:42each if the player led the league in any categories they'll get a tenth of a point for each positive category but minus half a point for each negative one if there's a hall of famer anywhere on the card that's a whole extra point if the player had a costacos brothers poster made of them they get a half a point for that if ricky henderson or nolan ryan get pulled the round is over jeff automatically wins if either pulls a ricky card and mark wins if nolan is pulled if the player has any pop culture references

42:13they get a half a point unless they appeared on seinfeld the simpsons or sabrina the teenage witch that friends is a whole point for each if the player was suspended for off the field mischief during their career or are on the 2sn don't talk about list that's a minus a half and a whole point respectively so with that out of the way it's time to play wax pack heroes all right mark looking at the scoreboard i am currently up seven to four and i'm loving it but whenever i get comfortable like

42:46this i go on a five game losing streak so i'm not comfortable yeah let's see it is time to play here we've already heard the rules from another hall of famer vin scully thank you vin for recording that before you passed away now mark one of the reasons we didn't have a show recently is because i was out of town helping my best friend do some stuff that included going through just tubs and tubs and tubs and tubs of thousands of loose baseball football hockey and basketball cards i took some of these cards

43:20not many and i went through them all on stream actually if you want to join us there monday wednesday friday on twitch and youtube nine o'clock pacific time a.m but what i decided i took some of these sporting news cards they're all reprint cards they've apparently got a name somebody in chat shouted it out when i was showing them but they these are cards that are there's a gabby street card in here that will tell you what kind of cards these are right these are cards from the early 1900s through

43:551940s ish so we're going to use these cards there's probably not going to be a lot of pop culture references probably not going to be any mims bands or anything like that but the conlins yes is that was what they said yeah i did i got my dad a whole set of common sporting news cards for christmas one year oh that's what they these cards i went through there were two or three complete sets so i just took the loose ones so as not to break up a set so we're probably not going to have heard of a lot

44:25of these players but it's a baseball history podcast we're here to learn about them so that's right let's do it we're gonna we're gonna play see how it goes with these guys do you want to go first or second first please first all right your first card is a pitcher for the new york giants it's jack bentley and this is from it says 1925 on the front and he played through 1927 so i'm assuming the front is like the year that the card was the picture was taken so that's what we're gonna go by

44:58gotcha let's see if i can spell his name right all right jack bentley nine years needles nickname john oh that's not a nickname that's his middle name john needles bentley okay he's maybe his mom was a seamstress or his dad mom or dad a surgeon i don't think many moms were surgeons at that point but i don't know let's see overall 19 sorry nine years in the big leagues five with the new york giants four with the washington nationals and then one for philly in night just part of the season in 1926

45:35we're looking at 1925 his 30 year old season 11 and 9 with 5.04 era 157 innings pitched 200 hits allowed but only 88 earned runs so wow stranding a lot of runners walked 59 only struck out 47 for a whip of 1.65 for a starter it's a bit harsh but still a 0.7 war yeah so not bad nothing on this card is

46:07going to help you out it's just a bust shot of him posing let's see anything notable here probably not going to be a lot of trades kind of something interesting he was a pretty good hitter he was the last pitcher to pinch hit in the world series until zach granke in 2021 oh wow there's a nice pull yeah 59 games at first base and three in right field because he was a good hitter there you go there is there's some good stuff for your grid when it asks for a played one game third base or first

46:39base and you can throw a pitcher in there it's going to be a low score there you go all right i don't see anything else here though not bad a 0.7 for jack bentley you're going to be going up for me the saint lewis brown's second baseman from 1929 oscar melello m-e-l-i-l-l-o okay let's see oscar nicknamed spinach or ski spinach or spinach those are two completely opposite things spinach and skiing but

47:16overall 12 years in the big leagues 10 with the saint lewis browns and then finished his career off in boston for three years in 1929 he was 29 years old hit 296 337 on base 401 slugging had five arm runs 67 ribs 11 stolen bases 29 walks 30 strikeouts and a war of 3.0 he does have real stirrups on i'm guessing if you if it's a full body shot we're gonna get real stirrups yeah i don't think

47:48there's gonna be many fakes yeah and if they're if it's actual game action at the plate they're not gonna have batting helmets on nor batting gloves so you got that going as well but this is just like on the on-deck circle before a game but his 3.0 war i think is probably gonna be the thing that puts me over the top right away let's see he was traded for moose salters at one point good old moose but that's about it this is pretty interesting actually right here he suffered from zoophobia a generic term

48:22for the class of specific phobias to particular animals including rabbits birds and snakes his animal phobia led to many pranks from both opposing and teammates he died from a heart attack at age 64 probably because somebody gave him an animal and scared him yeah someone's sick to squirrel on him or something way to go people let's see here he in 1930 he handled 971 chances without committing an error only 17 less than that blageways major league record wow and

48:58he received his only chance to manage in 1938 at the major league level where he replaced show favorite gabby street but let's see all of that is gonna equal a win for me so i'm up one to nothing i'm a big fan of ski there is a saber bio about ski mellow melellow if you want more apparently he had catch your nickname tomatoes oh so if he's nicknamed spinach and then the battery is spinach and tomatoes

49:31i guess that's a very healthy it's a very healthy battery all right i'm up one to nothing your next card is not actor bruce campbell but outfielder for the detroit tigers in 1940 bruce campbell he does not have a chainsaw or gun attachment for one of his hands that's a major that's my next question difference and his last name was campbell so of course his nickname was soup or soupy of course has to be let's see overall 13 years in the big leagues cleveland for five st louis browns for three

50:05white socks for three detroit for two and the nats for one in 1940 his age 30 season he hit 283 381 on base he slugged 448 for a 106 ops plus uh let's see here eight home runs 44 ribs two stolen bases seven caught stealing he did walk 45 times only struck out 28 for a for a war of 1.0 he this is during bp because i can see that one of those little tiny screens behind him

50:40but he is wearing real stirrups as well so that'll be a 1.1 for you interesting here in 1932 he led the league in strikeouts with 104 the next season he still struck out a lot but then at the end of his career he apparently inherited a great eye because he walked a lot also served in the military for a bit and was traded for nobody that i have heard of bruce campbell likewise has a cyber a saber bio if you're

51:16interested in learning more about him and he's a member of the lions township hall of fame so congrats there was a big ceremony for that i remember all right you are going to be going up with your 1.1 against my earl grace catcher for the phillies 1936 okay is this earl from earl had to die it could be goodbye earl i guess was the name of the song not earl gray by the way folks no this is not t yes let's see the t on earl though i've got overall eight years in the big leagues pittsburgh for five

51:52phillies for two and the cubbies for two in 1936 he was 29 years old 249 average 352 on base 353 slug for an 83 ops plus four home runs 32 ribs no sbs for a 0.2 war there is nothing on this card not even his scowl that is going to get me extra points so unless he appeared on seinfeld the simpsons or sabrina the teenage witch i don't think i'm going to win this round let's see there's something interesting okay

52:27he committed only one error in 413 total chances in 1932 and that established a national league fielding record and i just wanted to point this out because i wanted to say the guy's name beat the record previously held by shanty hogan he was always singing when he was on the field shanty was but pretty good one error and 413 total chances chances as a catcher not bad that sounds a lot like oscar malello yeah yeah we got this is the all defensive wax pack heroes all defensive 1920s

53:00wax pack heroes there you go all right so that is a win for you we're tied at one apiece all right your next card is pitcher also for the phillies a lot of phillies here s y l johnson let's see sylvester w johnson aka sil 19 years in the big leagues the st louis cardinals for eight of those phillies for seven tigers for four and cincinnati for one in 1940 this was his final year

53:34in the big leagues at age 39 he only pitched 40 and two-thirds innings gave up 37 hits struck out 13 for 93 era plus 420 era nice he went two and two with a war of a positive 0.2 nothing on this card is going to help you out let's see did win a world series in 1931 with the cardinals he pitched okay in that series not great nothing to write home about and i don't see any other names that i recognize that he was

54:10involved with he likewise has a saber bio did they is there a saber bio for everyone in this set i wonder highly possible yeah inducted in the oregon sports hall of fame in 1990 or 1981 died in 85 sorry an early proponent of a pension plan for players it was rejected by kinesaw mountain land is shocking yes pension plan was approved in 1947 of course after land this was gone nice all right good for you sill all right so that's a 0.2 for you and you are going to be going

54:49up for me against pitcher for the phillies what a lot of phillies here i thought i did shuffle these as well johnny podgan p-o-d there's a lot of vowels in a row here p-o-d-g-a-j-n-y good luck and i i don't know hopefully there is a pronunciation here johnny is just johnny johnny his nickname was specks

55:21you'll never guess why i'm just gonna throw a wild stab at that he wore glasses no he smokes smoke cigars while he played oh that's why you're close five years in the big leagues phillies for four then pittsburgh and cleveland he split time we are looking for the 1940 season which was his rookie year at age 20 he was a pitcher only appeared in four games went one and three with a 2.83 era 35 innings pitched 33 hits 12 strikeouts one walk very nice 139 era plus for a 0.6 war plus he's got

55:58glasses on and real stirrups nice so he didn't get busted for beating up his wife or drugs i think i'm gonna win this round he was once traded by the bucks to the cardinals for preacher row does have a saber bio which is good because his wikipedia page is literally two sentences that mean that this person gregory h wolf had to have done a lot of research in here including a whole paragraph on how to say his last name oh my god this is a long long i'm we should really go

56:33back and read these these are probably really good he was popular with orioles fans the president of pimlico horse racetrack named a race after him the pojami handicap huh and he was a honorary fireman capitalizing on his role with a club when he was given that role in a pre-game ceremony all right we now know more about johnny pojani that's a weird name now that i think about it than we did before but i will take that win it is two to one and i'm one away from winning it all

57:07right your next card is pitcher for the st louis browns a lefty mills you'll never guess which handedness he is he's amphibious he is amphibious howard mills bats him through left is what it says here so i guess that puts that to rest overall five years in the big leagues all five of them for the st louis browns 1938 he was 28 years old he went 10 and 12 with a 5.31 era 210 innings pitch 216 runs

57:43allowed struck out 134 for a 94 era plus led the league and hit batters the next year but this year good news for you a 2.5 war wow he does have real stirrups on if you can believe it so that'll get you an extra tenth of a point nothing else on this card is going to help you out saber bio which is good because again three paragraph three sentences one paragraph for lefty on wikipedia let's see anything

58:14quick we can find here served in the military always want to mention that wow i just these writers that do these these saber bios do such a great job this is a very in-depth article about lefty mills that we're not going to get into right now but you have got a 2.6 and you will be going up for me who is this it is a it does not tell me what position he played but he's a hall of famer so i like

58:50that bobby wallace here of the cardinals bobby wallace sounds like a nascar driver from the 90s bobby wallace yeah let's see overall 25 years 15 for st louis the browns five for st louis the cardinals and then five for cleveland he is a hall of famer i like that oh this card says 1918 which was his last year his age 44 year uh-oh only appeared in 32 games he hit 153 202 on base a 14 oh yes plus and a

59:29minus 0.7 war wow he is a hall of famer so that'll get me a whole point so that'll be a 0.3 but nothing else on this card is going to help me out and i remember he was on sabrina the teenage witch but they cut his scenes out so i don't get the points there bummer it's as aired is what it is he was oh this is interesting he was a member of the cleveland spiders but he was assigned to the st louis perfectos in 1899 by the imagine that we know how yeah we know what's going on there

1:00:05yeah come on guys all right that's a win for you interesting wallace claimed to have invented the continuous throwing motion as a shortstop what does that mean like walt weiss you never stop and pick the ball up you never clutch is that what it's talking about well it's like the continuous like when you run after a ball and you stay in motion and you throw him while you're in motion so like the derrick jeter icon the like the michael jordan's got the the shadow of him dunking and

1:00:35jeter's got his jump throw essentially yes i think so all right his nickname mr shortstop and he had a record broken by another dental list member omar viskel in 2012 oops yeah all right all right so your next card in our final round here you have got a outfielder for cleveland 1936 roy weatherly let's see stormy was his nickname we're getting good i get it i get it yeah 1943

1:01:07he won a world series with the yankees overall played 10 years in the big leagues seven for cleveland two for the yankees one for the new york giants also missed two years for military service this is 1936 his rookie year he hit 335 364 on base of 519 slugging for 113 ops plus eight home runs 53 ribs and a 1.8 war as a rookie very nice nothing on this card however is going to

1:01:39help you out let's take a look at some of his stuff here he's got a saber bio a very interesting picture on wikipedia i'm not going to comment on what's going on there all right so you've got a 1.8 is your final card here and you will be going up against detroit tigers third baseman i'm going to call him marvelous marv owen i don't know that's his nickname but i'm going with it it is now yep let's see marv

1:02:12owen frack his nickname was frack i don't know what that means that's that green ogre creature in the the timu version of shrek frack that's it let's see yeah he's buried in santa clara close overall nine years in the big leagues six with detroit two with the white socks one with boston this is 1935 with detroit let's see hit 263 326 on base 346 slugging for a 77 ops plus

1:02:44two home runs 77 ribs i'm sorry 72 ribs and a 0.4 war nothing on this card is going to help me out was he on seinfeld wasn't he a background actor when they couldn't find the car in the parking deck at the mall is that yeah he was one of those guys my thinking correct or not i think he drove by with the car and wouldn't give them a ride he was featured in ripley's believe it or not with the claim that he could hold seven baseballs in one hand his hands were so large that he was reportedly

1:03:22able it doesn't say whether he it just says the claim it doesn't say whether he could or not this is cool a baseball on which he gathered the signatures of 11 of the first 12 members of the baseball hall of fame was sold at auction in august 2018 for 623 369 dollars he had preserved the ball inside a fur lined glove kept in a safe deposit box until his death in 91 a fur lined glove does that

1:03:52mean the fingers have fur inside or the pocket is fur i i would assume that the fur was touching the ball i would it's got to be like a display right not like an actual full-size baseball glove lined with fur 11 of the first 12 hall of famers my goodness shorts up with the fur uh let's see he actually seems very interesting this guy might need his own his own episode beyond

1:04:28the ripley's believe it or not in 1934 the tiger's battalion of death infield collected 769 hits owen was included in that along with the mechanical man charlie geringer hank greenberg and billy rogel wow wow that's that's pretty plus the battalion of death i love that we can't get away we cannot

1:05:00get away from tombstone no let's see game seven of the world series in 1934 joe medwick of the cardinals tripled in the sixth inning and knocked owen down with a hard slide into third owen stepped up to medwick as he lay on the ground and suddenly became lash and suddenly began lashing out at owen's legs with spiked with his spiked feet the two players fought and when medwick returned to left field in the bottom of the inning because they weren't tossed of course the detroit spectators pelted him with fruit

1:05:35bottles and other debris sports writer paul gallico described the fans as quote a deadly and vicious mob he added quote the next moment the air was full of flying fruit apples oranges bananas and beer not a fruit and pop bottles i watched the crowd and medwick and the pelting missiles through my field glasses it was a terrifying sight every face in the crowd man woman and child was distorted with rage they yelled hey medwick ducky we're here all week oh my gosh all right well that is nowhere near a 1.8

1:06:14so you have won that my friend only with the help of some superstars let me tell you yeah i thought this was interesting definitely guys we haven't talked about yeah listeners let us know if you like this if we should work this in every now and then or if we should stick to the more contemporary one i thought that was fun we got some cards we definitely have never talked about players we've never talked about that's going to wrap up this episode of two strike noise as well as wax packs heroes if you want

1:06:46more of us good news for you it's easy to do we've got over 300 episodes if you are new you can go back and listen to them or if you're not new why not revisit some of your favorites but likewise you can find us on all the socials they are all listed in the show notes you can also just google two strike noise that's two strike noise i also as i mentioned i do stream three times a week monday wednesday and friday at nine o'clock a.m west coast time on both twitch and youtube we do baseball dailies we do some

1:07:20other stuff we look at cards and that kind of stuff i think during the world baseball classic we're also just gonna watch the games together if you want somebody absolutely somebody to talk to while you're watching the games that would be a good time to join us as well or you can just watch the vods but also mark you have an email address that is in use yes write to us we're desperate for attention you can write to us at two strike noise spell it out twostrikenoise at gmail.com all right thank you

1:07:50very much for listening again hopefully we'll be able to get back into our groove here and return to our every week type of thing but thank you again for listening to us and hopefully we will see you again on the next episode of two strike noise thank you god bless you have a great day so you

1:08:22We'll be right back.