Episode 312 - Jackie Jensen, The 'Golden Boy' to the 'Grounded Boy'

0:00hello everybody welcome to another episode of two strike noise your mom's favorite baseball history podcast i am one half of the show as always my name is jeff and joining us as usual from the glamorous pacific northwest in the darnell cole studio it is my co-host mark a johnston dude yes darnell cole's we have a big uh giant mural of him on the wall in the studio

0:36here it's pretty awesome i would be willing to bet that's the only mural of darnell cole's that exists well that's a good point if anybody has seen any other darnell cole's murals let us know because we want to be the biggest i want to know if anybody has darnell cole memorabilia i mean i darnell cole's i had a good career as far as i remember we're not like mocking him but i mean it's just he was a i think an average player well look at that he played 14 years yeah yeah

1:07there's a good ball player he just was stuck in the pacific northwest before we ever really made any sort of a run at anything at all back when the mariners were just the mariners in the 80s and so on so he did have a career war of minus 1.5 so let's not i don't want to i mean but he played 14 years he was obviously a very worthwhile player to have on your bench he was a defensive you got a phone number here on the positions played he could play anywhere yeah which i think was probably his

1:41you know what kept him in the league for 14 years right member of the 1993 toronto blue jays oh world series champs yeah there you go let's see of his 14 years in the big leagues he had a total of one two three five six years with a positive war the highest of which he did have a 2.0 war in 1986 for the tigers that was his top his lowest was 1984 with the mariners the second year was a

2:18minus 1.7 he also has a minus 1.3 in here as well again when he was with the mariners for the second yeah those were rough times those were difficult days again we don't want to take anything away from darnell coles i would kill to have a 14 year career and he was a first round pick sixth pick overall by the mariners in 1980 do we want to know who came before him who was picked before him yeah hit me with it all right well darrell strawberry was first overall i hear he went on to have a

2:54pretty good career yeah i think he hit a few home runs yeah next the blue jays drafted gary harris from herbert hoover high school which you would think would be in in minneapolis but it was san diego okay or no that's herbert hoover not hubert humphrey that's oh my gosh that's my bad or horatio hornblower for that matter well that's a c but he never made it to the big leagues then the braves drafted ken daly who had a career a decent career in the big leagues then mike king

3:27and jeff pyburn the a's and the padres neither of them made the big leagues and then darnell coles this is the days before the multi-million dollar signings out of high school yeah let's see other guys cecil espy was a couple of picks after that and then kelly gruber there you go hans gruber there we go all right well mark what do you say we get into it let's get into the bp segment we're into spring training so i mean i don't feel like we need as much of a stretch but we still need to

3:59do it we're old so let's stretch them out let's talk about some things we've talked about this game i don't know how many times i saw it before spring training started i was telling you that the marquee network was replaying as every team's network replays old games during the off season i had been watching for some reason marquee network games i don't know why but they replayed the tuffy roads game from april 4th 1994 opening day i remember that yeah i do too as in chicago the wind was blowing out yep against the mets and tuffy roads hit three home runs the mets won the game

4:36but tuffy roads had three home runs all of them off of doc gooden wow which i wanted to the whole reason i wanted to talk about this was because of just the difference in baseball in 19 even just 94 i think of that as still being relatively recently obviously it's not but in 1994 on opening day doc gooden went five and two-thirds innings after giving up 11 hits and seven runs how are you it's

5:07doc gooden and this is i mean this isn't at the height of his superpowers but it's not too far removed five and two-thirds innings he gives up 11 hits and seven runs three home runs yeah and davy johnson's like yeah go out there and get him you can go five you can go a little more than five he ended up throwing 91 pitches he was pulled before tuffy roads came up for the fourth time so they weren't

5:37going to give him a shot to give up four home runs off of but the mets ended up winning the game they held on 12 to 8 30 hits in a strat card for that game all home runs just don doc gooden's card well i mean it was just that those are the only home runs he gave up right but in five innings you give up three home runs you're gonna have a bit of a rough rough edge track card speaking of z cubs i was just going through some other stuff i was going through the bin you know we got harry carry to do

6:10our wax packs heroes intro a long time ago before he passed and we just found it and i also found this clip of harry carry talking about some fans that are in the stands that i thought was great so let's let's listen to harry here and you'll find out why we want to welcome and congratulate mark and theresa finley from dallas texas for here on their honeymoon enjoying the cubs playing the pirates what's a younger generation come to coming to the ballpark on your honeymoon you think certainly you

6:42can find more interesting things to do without going far from home didn't you always say that you can't beat fun at the old ballpark runners are on first and second nobody out now my question is i say go into a ball game on your honeymoon i mean for me that would be like yes please oh absolutely my question is who is going to chicago on their honeymoon is that a classic honeymoon destination that i am unaware of yeah i haven't heard that before i've never had a friend say to me yeah and then

7:17we're gonna get married and we're going to chicago for the honeymoon no you're right you're right there especially i would think those winter weddings you're probably not gonna want to go to chicago for your honeymoon yeah if you get married in january yeah well as a guy that's been in baseball for a long time i remember talking with my wife about setting a date and we were like well it cannot be during baseball season because that's just too confusing so we picked out february and but we didn't go to chicago we didn't have the it never popped into our heads to go to chicago it never occurred to you

7:48that the windy city was the place to be on your honeymoon that's right i don't know why i just never thought about that i'm curious to know listeners let us know did you consult with your significant other when getting married around baseball season because i did mark did i did yeah i said we got married in the early fall in october yeah and i told why it's late october so i said oh

8:18it's going to be world series time i'm like but that's okay because days won't be there so i didn't have any concern about missing it and yeah it didn't run into a problem yeah and the dreamer i am i couldn't do october because first the marriage made the world series oh these seattle fans i feel sorry for you not the world series but just the thought for us the whole idea what we got ourselves into i understand i'm curious let's say a couple of things did you consult your significant other

8:49when planning a wedding date and was baseball included in a honeymoon or anything related to your wedding like my wife surprised me i didn't know she got me a groomsman's cake that was a that had a's logo on it it was it shocked me i was shocked when she presented it to me because i didn't expect it and then to have a big a's logo on it i was i was super excited about it but does anybody else have any baseball related wedding tidbits that they have been a part of i would like to know i think i had

9:25the entire strat league in the audience there or in the wedding and this is a true story i was working in the minor leagues at the time and i was working in the press box and so i had the guys from the press box come to the wedding and i sat them in the balcony just out of principle that's a true story all right mark let's talk rookie of the year we're getting ready to start the season we got rookies on our mind who's gonna be the rookie of the year somebody made an infograph on reddit not an infograph just a chart who each team's last rookie of the year was yeah so normally i would ask you the

9:59mariners but i think it's pretty obvious that julio rodriguez was the rookie of the year 2022 so not that far off and who was it evan white was the rookie of the year for the mariners before that no kyle lewis kyle lewis but did oh evan white won a gold glove he won a gold glove he did and they the mariners signed him before he made the majors signed him to a long-term deal and he played one year and then kyle lewis i don't is he still in is he still in baseball i believe he's out of

10:31baseball completely wow that's just crazy i mean rookie of the year is certainly not a you're going to you're going to be a star kind of thing for the a's obviously nick kurtz was last year so i don't have to sure not that i'm i could give you know what i was about to swear there but i i don't care about the a's anymore but if you could take a guess who had the rookie of the year their last rookie of the year the furthest back i guess which team holds the longest drought for a rookie of the

11:03year that's tough because you could be a really bad team and have rookie of the year yeah and i will tell you this for the american league and the national league the two longest droughts the last rookie of the year they had were both catchers and you got to go back a ways i mean this is 30 plus years for both teams right okay so i'll give you a clue for san diego who do you think they they have the longest drought who do you think their last rookie of the year was it was a catcher was it benny

11:34santiago it was santi benito santiago and the other one is for the guards cleveland guardians was a catcher oh that's a tougher one from alomar yep there you go sandy alomar okay very nice good job mark thank you thank you yeah so san diego 1987 benito santiago and the guards in 1990 with sandy alomar then you got the twins in 95 with sunbed enthusiast marty cordova yes but then now this is the next one is the cardinals 2001 albert pujols okay a guy that literally just retired but he's

12:11he's on the list here hey give me a team and say well here i'll just give you a team and see if you can guess who the last rookie of the year was well i can hear to you rockies you'll never get it right jason jennings 2002 yeah nope wouldn't have got it how about well how about the astros astros rookie of the year boy that's tough god i'm at a loss your don elvarez 2019 that makes total sense yeah yeah the rest of the i mean a lot of these guys went on to be really big names bryce harper buster

12:45posey sure shohei otani i don't know if you've heard of him pete alonso julio franco randy rosarena i mean so these guys have definitely more than not these guys have gone on to have a good career everybody in fact i think i see everybody here that was the last to be their team's rookie of the year went on to have a good career so yeah it's funny because it's not a guarantee no but there are a lot of like you were mentioning pujols went on to have an amazing career of course but then you got

13:17guys like we were talking about kyle lewis just out of baseball just a couple years later you just never know yeah ben grieve for the a's i mean he had a decent career but he was never even an all-star i don't think just he was a basically i don't want to say npc because that's kind i feel like that's derogatory but he was a common which i think is the same thing like in baseball card terms a common the base cards now they're not commons i'd like we don't want to call we don't want to refer to people as common no i think that's great and correct me from now on if i ever say a common

13:50i like that a base card that's better yeah there you go because even commons can have cards that are more valuable because they're shorter printed yeah you know no i like that that's where we're sticking with that mark i often tell everybody everywhere i can around this time of the year to look out if they want mlb.tv to look out for the mlbpa's offer where it's basically like 50 off and you get some other things as well but i am here to tell you that the golden days of that are over no more

14:21discounts espn has taken over the entire thing ruining yet another thing about baseball is espn good thing though sunday night baseball is no longer on espn i believe it is on nbc and they have already announced that they are going to have local broadcasters calling the game which i think is this is what i've been i mean i've been pushing for this for a while i would much rather have guys that know things about the players and the teams than just a general like when john miller who's a

14:55giants broadcaster has to go and do a yankees red sox game john miller is brilliant he knows a lot about baseball but he's not with the giant he's not with the yankees and the red sox every day he can't tell you oh well aaron judge brought donuts in for the grounds crew the earlier this week you don't get those kind of things you get more of a general broadcast which i can't stand and why i don't watch sunday night baseball anyway and well i mean i unless the mets are there the a's were never on sunday night baseball so i never had to worry but i'm excited about that though i'm sure

15:28it'll still just be like the dodgers the padres the yankees and the red sox but no i'm with you i like the idea of the local broadcasters they're going to give you more much better inside information good stories and stuff like that absolutely yeah and more history of the teams sure i just think it's just a no-brainer and it's going to save costs for the network too you don't have to fly the talent in the talent's already there because they've been broadcasting the three or four two or three games prior to the sunday night game so right that just makes so much more sense

16:01i agree 100 but again you cannot get that discount espn has taken over everything because that's what corporations do and yeah but i think the t-mobile i know the t-mobile offer is still good this year so yes if you are you know what i'll give t-mobile credit too because they're keeping me around with that offer i don't go looking for straying for you know other opportunities for my cell phones because i know from t-mobile i'll get the i'll get the mlb package that's 150 value absolutely yeah

16:34and i mean i plus it's out of principle i was i was thinking about not doing it this year just because i have other means of watching things but i do realize that i use the app on my phone when i'm in the car a lot to listen to mets games in the car so it's still worth it for me i think you can just get the audio package but if it's free because i have t-mobile now which was one of the reasons i switched you know there you go all right mark let's let the grounds could come out and do their stuff they're cleaning up the field getting all those seeds dragging the infield taking the batting cage

17:07out to you know we really need to rebuild the stadium so we can get the cage out of center field during play like forbes field yes we should really have somewhere to put that out of the field of play all right mark i'm gonna do the main story this week i'm gonna be talking about jackie jensen somebody i was very unfamiliar with but i just want to say first of all we didn't record a show last week we've definitely been a little bit off our schedule for the past year or so and that is like

17:3898 on me so i've been pretty honest about my mental health here before and certainly when i'm streaming i'm very honest about it there and last week i apologize i just couldn't so when i was reading about jackie jensen i knew i wanted to talk about him and the reason i read about jackie jensen was because of my streaming on twitch and youtube we come across a lot of people i've never heard of and our listeners that join us in chat they're so awesome and they're a lot smarter than i am

18:08so they're like oh jackie jensen and they start rattling off facts and then i gotta go look it up and i'm like oh there's a subject so i want to talk about jackie jensen this week jackie's nickname was the golden boy it's kind of like the nature boy but there's more gold involved are you gonna put a woo right there it's it's a great name because it works on multiple levels jackie was born in the bay area of california aka the golden state he attended uc berkeley aka the golden bears there you

18:40go there he played both football and baseball and when i say play he didn't play he starred he was a big man on campus despite being called the golden boy he was actually the man like rick flair and becky lynch rolled up into one that's all of the right that's i promise that's all the wrestling references for this show well at least for this story i can't say the whole show but he was a consensus all-american back who led cal to the rose bowl and just for fun he was also the bears ace on their baseball team on the mound he is still the only human being ever to inhabit this

19:18great flat earth of ours that played in a rose bowl a world series and a major league baseball all-star game wow this was all a far cry from his childhood when his father vanished from depression vanished vanished during the depression it could have been from depression i really i got that first way i read it but now during the depression his mother had her own mental issues and jackie spent a lot of his childhood being shuffled between relatives in oakland well in college though jackie started

19:53dating a girl and i do say girl because well she was 15 years old a little young for somebody in college a different time i guess i i'm not gonna i don't want to get into it her name was zoe ann olson she was an athlete as well she won a silver medal in diving at the 1948 olympics and then again four years later she won a bronze and from all descriptions that i read she was a goddess that worked a goddess that

20:25walked on earth as if human ah she was hot is what one of those yes yeah so two hot famous people always make for good headlines the two eventually got married in 1949 and it was headline news i mean this was a big this is this is travis kelsey taylor swift type stuff without the internet speaking of baseball players from the bay area mark have you ever heard of joe dimaggio yeah it sounds familiar maybe i'm mispronouncing it joe dimaggio i don't i'm not as familiar with him myself well the yankees

20:59had pretty good luck with that guy and he is from the bay area he's from martinez so they're like hey let's try that again so they traded for jackie to be the heir apparent to joe dimaggio in center field it was the perfect hollywood script this handsome blonde kid from oakland taking over for another bay area guy in the yankee clipper he's got an attractive famous wife maybe nobody will even know that joe's missing they might be able to just swap them out i don't know so late 1949 jackie is traded by the

21:32oakland oaks to the pcl along with billy martin to the new york yankees for a player to be named later in cash i think the yankees got the better end of that deal yeah the yankees feel like this is done we got our guy start grooming him to take over center field and yankee stadium but despite jensen being penciled in to be that guy something happened in 1951 mickey mantle walked into the locker room heard of that guy too you heard that guy all right well suddenly the heir apparent was looking

22:03at a kid from oklahoma who hit the ball harder could run faster and literally had a talent ceiling that nobody could reach maybe even in the history of the team and we're talking about some great players in the yankees so the shift from the guy to trade bait happened relatively quickly to jackie this was tough to take for him understandably he went from the man to wearing number 96 in spring training i'm making that up but i'm just yeah what you're saying there for effect here he was so rattled

22:35by these turns of vents that he actually tried to quit baseball right there he planned to try out for the san francisco 49ers he was ready to dump baseball altogether if he was gonna wear a number 97 he might as well at least be a linebacker or something where he could play but he stuck it out and it would have been a pretty short story frankly if he hadn't i'd we'd be done and going into wax packs heroes but so he did stick it out maybe something but he did stick it out if he didn't it might be something that we'd cover on our football history podcast three yards and a cloud of diamond dust

23:09which i believe we've mentioned before yes jackie played sparingly we haven't done one of those episodes for a long time either so that's right that's not my fault because i love talking football but oh yeah you're an expert man i am jackie played sparingly over two and a half seasons in pinstripes he had 249 with nine home runs he swiped some bags he had good speed but he struggled because he just he wasn't playing consistently early in the 1952 season jackie was traded to washington and he's the change of scenery there and consistent playing time earned him a trip to the all-star game that

23:44season so once he got in the lineup he was good he played well for the nats for two seasons he hit 276 had 20 home runs and 164 rbi over those two years griffith stadium however was not great for jackie of those 20 home runs he hit as a nat only two of them were at home so if you were a nationals fan at this point and they were the nats at this point and you're a big jackie jensen fan you're like i want to catch a home run ball so bad you better go on the road because it's not happening

24:19then the boston red sox came calling they wanted jackie and the nats needed a starting pitcher red sox general manager joe cronin actively was trying to trade for jackie because he believed that the dimensions of fenway park were perfectly suited for jackie's swing now i'm no geography whiz but like jackie i did figure out that boston is further away from california than dc is not a whole lot but i mean relatively for the first time jackie considered hanging it up as a professional i wouldn't say the

24:52first time because we already talked about he was gonna travel for the 49ers at one point but he was seriously contemplating retiring here because he missed his family that was so far away so joe cronin threw in a couple extra bucks his way a thousand dollars to be exact and then you know jackie didn't miss his family as much apparently cronin was right though jackie raked in boston his power numbers doubled he averaged more than a hundred rbi in his seven years at fenway three of which he led the league in rbis he even led the league in stolen bases in 1954 with 22 stolen bases running not a big part of

25:30the game in 1954 clearly not wow so jackie joined ted williams and jimmy pearsall in what many consider to be the best outfield in baseball at the time problem is baseball was expanding westward specifically jackie's home california that's a long ways from boston as we've established jackie knows this that also means that teams had to start using planes to get from city to city more and more and jackie had a tough time flying he never liked it he went on an all-star trip to

26:03japan after one season and really the anxiety started to kick in on that long flight some people just don't like to fly i don't like to walk so i get it yeah but this was crippling for jackie like he just sometimes he couldn't get on a plane whenever possible he would avoid them altogether by taking trains or driving himself city to city once he failed to show up on a team flight to to cleveland and he didn't show up because he was driving the 650 miles himself oh my goodness he arrived just in

26:38time for the game he also just missed games because he just couldn't go when he had absolutely no choice but to fly jensen would often survive the trips by taking tranquilizers and sleeping pills because but he hated them because they made him feel just awful and kind of made him look like he was drunk more than doing what they should have done he tried everything under the sun but nothing helped this anxiety about flying all the while driving himself around the country though he is freaking killing it he i mentioned led the league in rbi three out of five years he's hitting 290 every year

27:1220 plus home runs he's getting on base at a 374 clip like these are great numbers so in 1956 a tv movie is made about jackie called the jackie jensen story they really a lot of creative time put into the title of that one the jackie jensen story yeah who came up with that those big hollywood producers and marketing guys yeah they they probably ran it through a lot of focus groups and that's right a lot of time spent on that one it aired on nbc and you would think hey

27:44there's plenty to choose from here for a plot right you got a big leaguer that can't fly doesn't want to get on an airplane he's married to this famous hottie diver he's a two-sport athlete he's got hollywood looks nope the central theme highlighted on how he resisted temptation as a youth and stayed focused on achieving his goals okay this seems more suited like for an after school special than prime time where my mind wins yeah but hey i don't run a major tv network i don't know

28:14he was played as a child by an english actor gary gray jackie was british wasn't he oh i'm sure oh no he was english oh correct that he spoke english there we go there's the tie close enough there you go so jackie appeared at the very end of the movie as himself i am not rushing out to find this one i think i can miss the jackie jensen story beyond his play though in 1957 jackie and a couple of his teammates were contacted about posing for a piece of art so jackie's like do i have to fly there and they're like nope he's like i'm in

28:47so he and his teammates go and they pose for a photographer they get in uniform they're posing photographer is taking pictures as reference so jackie doesn't really know what this is for kind of does it moves on apparently even joking with his teammates afterwards that he felt like the photographer the artist didn't really know what he was doing like it just seemed kind of mish mishmash to him so next march the saturday evening post comes out with a new piece of art

29:19by norman rockwell entitled the rookie it's a very famous piece of art literally by one of the most famous american artists ever and there's jackie looking like a looking at a fictional rookie trying to make the red socks so the artist that didn't really seem like they knew what they were doing that was norman rockwell which to be honest if norman rockwell came up and shook your hand would you know that's norman rockwell probably not no who is a famous artist right now like i can i don't

29:53think we can name one right maybe banksy bank okay well sir i was gonna say if they came up and shook your hand would you know it's them but obviously you wouldn't know it was ansel adams isn't alive but could you pick ansel adams out of out of a lineup no i get exactly what you're saying yeah it makes sense so all of this culminated in 1958 i mean not the movie in the norman rockwell but his career on the diamond culminated in 1958 when jackie slashed 286 396 535 he hit 35 home runs

30:28knocked in a league leading and career high 122 runs and he was named american league nvp beating out his old teammate mickey mantle and preventing the mic from winning a third straight nvp now the story on jackie here is that he had a great year he had a war of 4.9 it's a great season but the mic had a war of 8.7 to lead the league he also led the league in runs scored home runs walk his ops was over 100

30:59points higher than jackie's every stat except for rbis was higher than jackie's but that was only good enough for mick to come in fifth in the voting fifth now the theory here was that voters were kind of tired of voting for mickey every year but i mean imagine telling otani or aaron judge that you know what you've had enough let's let somebody else win the nvp right yeah your 100 home runs

31:3020 wins 316 rbi and 800 stolen bases not good enough no sorry pal you've just been you've been on our minds too much yeah we just need a timeline cleanser here reigning nvp and this fear of flying though was still all he could think about he played well the next season again leading the league in rbi even won an article glove the next year but he was missing his family and the anxiety over plane travel was really taking its toll so at age 32 jackie calls it quits he retires he returns to oakland he

32:06opens up a restaurant in jack london square in jack london square called the bell and the bow which i did some research on was a very popular place it was right on the bay they built it on a pier it was a seafood place it was apparently a nice you know you got to get dressed up people would go there on special occasions a lot of the raiders players would go there after sunday home games it was very popular so jackie's got a seafood place mickey lulich had his donut shop we were

32:38talking about dave kingman was an ice cream mogul i mean baseball players got it going on in the food service industry it sounds like but what is odd though is that jackie had filmed four episodes of home run derby in los angeles a little bit earlier and those aired in 1960 the year that he retired that he wasn't playing anymore wow i don't know if the producers were this savvy at this point but of the four episodes he filmed two of them he went head to head against mickey mantle wow the man

33:11had the man who had usurped him in new york and who he had beaten out for that nvp so overall he appeared in four episodes he went two and two he beat ernie banks and rocky calavito but lost the two to the mick so tv kind of imitating life there yeah in some form but bad investments elsewhere started to catch up with jackie and he needed money the red socks were willing to take him back hoping he regained his nvp form but it didn't work the year off had really taken its toll he hit 263 his power

33:44dried up the speed left him and he was just he had a good year but he was it was an average year it was a base card type of year so you got that in there already something jackie never wanted to be and had never been let's be honest the season he tried everything blah that season he tried everything he could to finally get over this fear of flying this included hypnosis but not just any hypnosis at one point during the season he left the team during a road trip to detroit jumps on a train because he

34:15had to jumps on a train to reno i don't know if he shot a man in reno or not i just to see him die yeah just see him die but then he met his wife there and then they drove up to vegas to seek help from a noted nightclub hypnotist okay now when i see noted nightclub hypnotist i think of a guy that pulls people up from the audience and hypnotizes them and has them clucking like a chicken on stage or something like that right but believe it or not mark this noted nightclub hypnotist didn't work

34:50no yeah i know it's a shocker spoiler it did not work so jackie again retires this time for good his wife zoe later admitted that she lost respect for jackie when he decided to retire wow so it sounds like they're doing wow yeah well they weren't they got divorced then they remarried and then they got divorced again just for emphasis so he came wait a minute he came back from retiring and then he divorced and then he got remarried so he's he retired from a couple things yes he's very indecisive

35:26jackie to make ends meet he briefly sold cars in san jose he held national endorsement contracts still for gillette and camel cigarettes because every star baseball player had they did ads for cigarettes it's just a thing there was a ton of them yeah absolutely he continued to have a stake in the bow and bell restaurant as i mentioned he also took a job at harris casino in lake tahoe where he lived part of the time where he would set up boat races i don't know is that something that

35:58requires a full-time position i don't know jackie also coached for several colleges did some tv and radio at one point he was even working color commentary on abc's college football coverage next to wazoo grad keith jackson i love keith jackson keith jackson could get me to watch football absolutely i'm 100 with you right there also did a lot of baseball nationally you know in like the in the 70s he was a he was all over the baseball he eventually remarried moved to virginia to be near

36:29his wife's new family there they bought some land they opened a christmas tree farm which i hear is very profitable one year a month at least every year on july 14th 1982 at the age of 55 unfortunately jackie jensen suffered a fatal heart attack at his home and passed away so for the guy who was a golden boy he went from being the only person to play in a rose bowl you know all american and play in a world series game to selling christmas trees in virginia i think he might have been happiest selling

37:03those christmas trees though obviously there's not a lot of plane travel needed in that line of work as far as i know he died relatively young and it seems like he was at least happy at the end when he was just your average christmas tree salesman but that is the story of jackie jensen the golden boy oh wow that's good stuff man had you heard of jackie jensen i heard the name in passing just i think it was when they were talking about being teammates with pierce all and williams but no i did not know a thing about him i don't think i'd ever heard of him until he he showed up

37:38in in starting nine one day when we were doing that on stream and got told to look at him a little bit deeper and i'm like that's definitely a show and there we are there you go all right it's interesting to i'm sorry go ahead no i was gonna wrap it up okay yeah i'm just gonna say it's interesting that back then mental health was not really considered a serious medical issue so they were calling his condition nervous a nervous condition or flying jitters god i yeah one of the articles i read and first of all there is a great saber article shocking by

38:13mark armor who is a legendary baseball person he did this article the saber article but i think it was that article and he put quotes around it meaning he did not come up with this said his mom just had a nervous breakdown like yeah you're absolutely right the mental health was certainly nothing that anybody considered at that point but you know i have to imagine that as planes were starting to become more common there were a lot of people that i mean there are still people today that can't

38:43sure i mean john madden i mean that's an old name but he had the madden cruiser that he would tool around i did he do that when he was coaching like when the raiders were playing the dolphins did he ride a bus because you'd have to leave days beforehand and you couldn't be practicing and coaching i've never looked into that i don't that's interesting it's called aviophobia i get it i get if you just told me aviophobia i could it would either be fear of birds or fear of flying right you got it there we go all right producer mitch is back we've made up he's uh yeah good news he

39:21is wearing pants again which i mean that was the whole contingency thing we said you can't come back until you that was the issue put the pants on and now he's topless unfortunately but yeah but he's all about comfort all right well uh he is uh giving us the sign with one finger that it is time now to go into the final segment of the show so let's do it it is time for wax pack how everybody and welcome to today's edition of wax pack heroes you know wax pack

40:10heroes backwards is so a cat sow hey the rules were simple jeff and mark are here from two strike noise long time friends of mine jeff and mark they're gonna play an old-fashioned game of war but instead of using playing cards they're gonna be using budweiser's hey what okay no they're gonna be using baseball cards that makes much more sense they'll be using war of the year of the cards and

40:46whoever has the highest war that round wins cobs win cobs win cobs win just like that but there are extra factors arnie's telling me that can add or subtract from their war totals 1980s baseball aesthetics there you go extra points hall of famer bud lover extra points and if they have a pop

41:16culture reference like they were in a budweiser commercial extra points but whoa nelly if they appeared in seinfeld the simpsons or sabrina that's huge witch and they get a whole extra point or if nolan ryan or ricky henderson show up the round is over and we drink budweiser's hey but they can also lose points

41:47if they show up in the mitchell report or are on the do not talk about list you know who i think should be should be on that list arnie mark bread's uh gredzilla cut mark gredzilonic and that guy's name is is too difficult they can also get more points if they led the league in any good categories that season if they want any warrants and if they have a costaco's brother poster oh boy i could go for some tacos i love

42:25tacos but if they top the leaderboard in something bad like airs or spilling budweiser's they're gonna get a minus point so no hey let's wrap this up and go get some tacos and sub budweiser now let me hear you uh one uh two uh three wax pack heroes all right thank you harry carry for that introduction let's go ahead

43:01and look at the scoreboard mark currently it's eight to six i am on top i'm almost halfway through to reclaiming my title which i'm sure will happen and let's go ahead and look at this we still have i still have quite a few of these 2003 tops it was a pack of 35 so it's gonna be a little bit to get through these but let's go ahead and get through these mark do you want to go first or do you want to go second i'm gonna stick with going first all right you're going first so your first oh jesus your first card is this is gonna be a weird one it is a post-season highlights card of which it is highlighting two

43:40different series they're both ailed they're both division series i hate this the twins apparently upset the a's five to four and the cardinals beat the d-backs six to three to clinch both of their division series now it's a half and half card so on one half we have got eddie gordotto celebrating i'm assuming he closed out the game for the twins and on the cardinal side we have got i think it's hal

44:11morris and jared right on the mound holding up a daryl kyle jersey who if you remember passed away unfortunately that year so i think here for 2003 you can choose between eddie gordotto jared right and i don't know who this morris is i think he's a pitcher i'll have to let me look it up here okay that would be matt morris who is a pitcher is who's holding up that jersey he was a starter so you have got let me get these let me get this right let me get this right as i'm looking for it is apparently

44:47not jared right i don't see of i don't see a right on this roster yeah there's not a there's not a right on this roster this is this one card is really complicated things this really is we'll edit this down to make it snappy but there is i swear jared right war number 23 and was a pitcher but there is nobody on this cardinals team at least that made the division series well i guess i'm looking

45:18at baseball reference there's nobody named right on this so essentially you are stuck between eddie gordotto who i think was a closer and matt morris who is a starting pitcher i'm you know it's funny because we've talked about how war doesn't really favor closers but in this particular situation i'm gonna go with everyday eddie okay matt morris by the way 11 and 8 with a 2.7 war this year oh i may have screwed up all right let's see everyday eddie from stockton nice i didn't know he's from stockton

45:52let's see overall 17 years in the big leagues 12 with the twins three with your seattle mariners two with the rangers and two with cincinnati in 2003 good news for you all star so that's a bonus half a point right there 41 saves he led the league the year before with 45 wow but let's see he was an all-star so that's a 0.5 for you overall he went three and five with a 2.89 era 41 saves 65 and a third innings 50 hits allowed 60 strikeouts for a 157 era plus and a 1.9 war not bad yeah he's got a mustache as he

46:34always did and you can see it so that's a 2.5 for you right there he was traded for mark hamburger at one point okay mark hamburger played five games in the big leagues 2011 for texas as a pitcher he went one and oh with an era of four and a half mark hamburger i have never heard of him i don't recall mark hamburger no i think that might be your new nickname but i do enjoy a good cheeseburger i tell

47:07you what you will gladly pay you today or tomorrow for a cheeseburger today yeah absolutely let's see anything else he did twins hall of fame he was a bullpen coach for a while oh and we've talked about him before his son nico was on party of five for a little while oh but yeah i don't think anything there's gonna really help you though but that's a 2.5 it's not bad i have got a rockies future stars so i think i'm gonna lose here because i think neither of these guys probably made the big leagues

47:41i do know who one of them is though he's a bit of a cult hero in oakland future stars i've got renee reyes or jack cuss so i'm obviously gonna go with jack cuss because he had a good big league career but did he play in 2003 i don't know let's see good question he was a mariner i think for a bit yeah he was at the his last year of his career because he had good years in oakland and then the mariners signed just like ryan healy the mariners trying to pick off scott spezio scott's ricky henderson i mean

48:15mike moore that was before i remember it's funny because i remember tom hutler who was as a great did a great show with us once renouncing jack cussed and then he turned his mic off and said and then his mother sent him to bed with no supper the thing is he said he started that second sentence like a millisecond after he turned his mic off that's the beauty guys are pro i remember him saying when a reliever came in that he wasn't fond of and he goes click now pitching for your seattle mariners click turns it off and about to get shelled click turns it back on says the guy's name never messed

48:50up either he's never messed up he's a kind of a professional he just it's a wizard some crazy stuff he's a wizard jack cussed overall 10 years in the big leagues oakland for four then baltimore for two and then seattle colorado san diego and arizona for one apiece 2003 he did play quite a bit in baltimore 27 games that's quite a bit overall he hit 260 357 on base 521 on base for 129 ops he had four home runs 11 ribs for a .4 war he does have a what's it called when you just have a little scruff

49:25on your chin i don't remember what that is now very popular in 2003 i had it too just there but i mean that's this is not going to help me going up against everyday eddie first round draft pick 30th overall by the d-backs he was traded to the rockies for mike myers i don't know is that the serial killer or is that austin powers mike myers oh yeah i think that's austin powers oh okay that's as long as we got

49:55that's sussed that's good let's see anything mitchell report well there you go oops that is a easy win for you to start us off oh boy i think you're gonna get another easy win your next card is a hall of famer it is none other than the big hurt frank thomas very nice let's see now i should fine you because he's got those high tops on but the pants are pulled down he does have eye black on

50:26i do not see a mustache i don't think it's gonna matter but let's see i think that's the only thing that's gonna help you there hall of famer and eye black let's see frank thomas of course 19 years in the big leagues 16 with the white socks two with the oakland athletics two separate like years 2006 and then 2008 and then toronto for two as well in 2003 hit 267 390 on base 567 slug a 146 ops plus 35 no i'm

51:02sorry 42 home runs 105 ribs and a 4.3 war i'm not even going to total these up because it's not going to matter i can guarantee you first round draft pick seventh overall by the white socks in the 89 draft he is a very big enthusiast of testosterone him and doug flutie him and doug flutie let's see is there anything i opened a brew pub in 2014 called the big hurt brew house closed in 2016 but reopened the

51:33next year under the name 35 sports and grill it closed two years after that for good a spokesperson for guaranteed rate which is where the they were the name owners of the field that the white socks played on for a while and has been a new genics spokesperson since 2015 wow also had a record label who didn't back there he also does he does some studio work for a bunch of people but like i said i don't think it's

52:05going to matter you've got frank thomas and i have got let's see here i've got a future stars card again this time with the royals i've got angel angel barroa or alex gomez now it says alexis gomez i think that might be alex gomez is what he went by in the big leagues but i don't know for sure i'm going to go with barroa though i don't and again i don't know that he played in 2003 but we'll find out together

52:36all right hun gel barroa did play in 2003 only 20 games he had 227 301 on base a 347 slug for 66 ops plus he did go on to win the rookie of the year the next year but that doesn't help me five home runs i'm sorry no home runs five rbi and a 0.6 war nothing on this card is going to help me out i i want to say that this just isn't going to work for me but let's see traded in a three-team deal

53:10by the athletics with aj hinch to the royals the a's sent ben grieve who we've mentioned earlier to the d rays and tampa set cory lytle rip to the a's the rays sent roberto hernandez to the royals and the royals sent johnny damon and mark ellis to the a's so this everybody here was a decent name in this trade that's a big three-way deal i doubt there's going to be anything that's going to help me though especially as much as i need it son-in-law of former major league player louis

53:45sever silver silver silverio i don't know who that is but he was the name of the lone ranger's horse silverio i think so i think that's how you say it in spanish oh okay how you just stereotypically put an o on the end of everything to make it spanish just put an o there all right mark you're up two to nothing you're close oh geez well i guess he's not a hall of famer yet we mentioned him earlier as well you have got albert pujols my gosh what the heck are you doing here these are all great cards

54:19all right future manager it sounds like albert pujols three-time nvp rookie of the year he won two world series 11 all-stars two gold gloves six silver sluggers a batting title a clemente award winner and an nlcs nvp overall he played for 22 years st louis for 12 the angels for 10 and the dodgers for one let's see 2003 he was an all-star he led the league in one two three four five categories of

54:53which we get points for i mean this is going to be another one this is he came in second in the all-star voting this is going to be ugly okay yeah he hit 359 439 on base cheese 667 slug for a 1.106 ops jeez that's a 187 ops plus mark jeez 43 home runs 124 rbi this is his third year in the league and he's putting these numbers up an 8.7 war oh yeah that's gonna be tough to beat yeah that's not

55:30even close to his career high he had a 9.7 in 2009 jeez that's pretty good first ballot hall of famer 13th round pick jeez yeah best 13th round pick ever he was coming out of a uh i think he came out of a community college uh community or juco uh i think community wow oh yeah here maple woods community college wow he hit a grand slam and turned an unassisted triple play in his first game of his only college season right now right there you knew he was gonna shine kind of like a star high school

56:05player on a little league team right just right right yeah yeah he played shortstop and hit 461 with 22 home runs as a freshman loser i mean i don't think he's done a whole lot of media stuff a lot of charity work do he's a supporter of down syndrome charities he has a daughter with down syndrome scored a perfect 100 on his citizenship test of course he did friends with cano yeah oh it looks like he's the godfather to placido polanco's son but yeah i don't think you need any help here

56:40because you are going to be going up against jeez future stars card okay i win i'm gonna win i pulled a card with a former guest on it oh i have got a seattle mariners future stars card i've got sin shu chu and chris snelling oh there you go now we've had chris snelling on before you would think i would choose him but no i think i'm gonna go with sin shu chu on this one

57:13no offense to chris but i think in terms of career success i think chu might have him licked here overall 16 years in the big leagues seven with texas seven with cleveland two with seattle one with cincinnati didn't play in the big leagues until 2005 when did chris snelling play would i have gotten points because i'm not going to get any points no from sin shu chu no chris played in 2002 and then didn't come back up until 2005 so i wish i was going up against a manager card

57:49now he has appeared in several tv shows but i only get so much credit for that he's also been arrested for a dui in which he was 20 above the legal limit but this is good he donated a thousand dollars to every player in the texas rangers minor league system during covid who were unable to work during the shutdown well that's really cool nice close friends with day ho lee day ho day ho all right well that is an easy

58:26shutout sweep for you wow that was yeah that was turned out to be pretty okay in my favor that was so that was a blowout like i said it's going to take us forever to get through this pack because we seem to win pretty quickly on these but that'll do it for wax pack heroes congratulations mark the score is now eight to seven tightened it up a little bit there that will do it for that segment also going to do it for this episode so thank you very much for listening we appreciate it

58:58if you want more of us you can find us we are at two strike noise that is at two strike noise on all of the social medias you can also just check out the show notes there's a link to all of them shout out to everybody that comes and hangs out with me monday wednesday and friday at nine o'clock on either twitch or youtube i live stream for a while doing some baseball dailies playing some games it's a lot of fun come join us or if you don't want that live interaction or watching the you can also email us and mark is the keeper of said email the electronic mail address is two strike

59:34noise spell it out twostrikenoise at gmail.com there you go all right that'll do it for this episode thank you very much for listening we hope to see you again on the next episode of two strike noise thank you god bless you have a great day you

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