Mike Marshall, 1943-2021

The baseball establishment doesn't like guys who think differently. They'll put up with such guys if they can win because of it. But when the winning stops, goodbye.

Mike Marshall thought differently. And, on occasion, it worked superbly for both him and his team.

Michael Grant Marshall was born on January 15, 1943 in Adrian, Michigan, outside Detroit. At the age of 11, he was in a car driven by his uncle, who tried to cross railroad tracks ahead of a train, and didn't make it. The uncle was killed, and Mike was left with a severe back injury. His long hospital stay and treatment led him to develop an interest in the mechanics of the human body.

He graduated from Adrian High School, which had previously produced Dorne Dibble, a receiver with the Detroit Lions' NFL Championship teams of the 1950s. Later, in the same class, 2003, it would produce tight end Kellen Davis of the Chicago Bears and New York Jets, and defensive end Marcus Benard of the Cleveland Browns and the Arizona Cardinals.

Marshall graduated from Michigan State University in 1965, at a time when their football team was one of the best in the country, coached by Duffy Daugherty and known as "Duffy's Toughies." His degree was in kinesiology (Kin-EE-see-OL-oh-jee), the scientific study of human or non-human body movement.

According to Wikipedia, "Applications of kinesiology to human health include biomechanics and orthopedics; strength and conditioning; sport psychology; motor control; skill acquisition and motor learning; methods of rehabilitation, such as physical and occupational therapy; and sport and exercise physiology."

He was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies, then sold to his almost-hometown Detroit Tigers. He made his major league debut on May 31, 1967. It didn't go so well for the Tigers: They lost at home, 9-0 to the Cleveland Indians. Luis Tiant pitched a 6-hit shutout, striking out 13. Mickey Lolich started for the Tigers, and didn't get past the 3rd inning. Leon Wagner hit a home run off Pat Dobson. Wearing the Number 28 he would wear for most of his career, Marshall pitched the top of the 9th inning, resulting in double, groundout, strikeout, RBI single, strikeout.

Marshall appeared in 37 games that season, all in relief, going 1-3 with 10 saves. The Tigers overcame the Detroit Race Riot in July, and came within 1 game of the American League Pennant. They won the World Series the next season, but Marshall spent it entirely in the minor leagues, as mainly a starter, with the Tigers' top farm team. Ironically, it was the Toledo Mud Hens, who, despite being across a State Line (Ohio), were half as close to his hometown of Adrian as Tiger Stadium was.

Marshall was left unprotected in the expansion draft, and was chosen by the Seattle Pilots. He shared a bullpen with, among others, former Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton, who had switched to a knuckleball after wrecking his elbow in 1965.

The Pilot staff, including manager Joe Schultz and pitching coach Sal Maglie, a former All-Star pitcher for the New York Giants with a great curveball, didn't trust the knuckler. They considered it an oddball pitch, favored by oddball pitchers, and pretty much froze Bouton out. Marshall, too, had an oddball pitch: The screwball, a "reverse curveball." It was considered such an oddball pitch, the word "screwball" came to mean a strange person.

Whereas the other Pilots, less intellectual, mocked Marshall, calling him "Brains," Bouton saw in him a kindred spirit, a man who thought well about many things, not just baseball. In his journal of that season, published the next year as the book Ball Four, "Mike Marshall is probably the most articulate guy on the club, so I asked him if he had as much trouble communicating as I've had and he said, 'Of course. The minute I approach a coach or a manager, I can see the terror in his eyes.'"

Marshall appeared in 20 games, starting 16, going 3-10 with a 5.14 ERA. Late in the season, the Pilots traded Bouton to the Houston Astros. In the off-season, the Pilots, desperate for cash, sold Marshall to Houston as well, but moved during 1970's Spring Training, becoming the Milwaukee Brewers.

The reunion didn't last long: By late June, Bouton had been sent down to the minors, never to return (or so everyone thought, but he made a comeback with the Atlanta Braves in 1978), and Marshall had been traded to the Montreal Expos. Now, he was with a team that knew what to do with him: In 1971, he had 23 saves. In 1972, he made 65 appearances, all in relief, a huge number for the time, going 14-8 with 18 saves and a 1.78 ERA.

Against conventional wisdom, Marshall didn't ice his arm after games and he pitched in short sleeves even in the coldest of weather. He believed that pitchers should throw more often, not less; and more pitches, not less.

Jim Fanning, the Expos' general manager at the time, would later said, "Marshall had fantastic stuff,  the best screwball I've ever seen in my life. You would see him on a cold night at Jarry Park and no sweatshirt, just a short-sleeved uniform top."

In 1973, he practiced what he preached, setting a new major league record with 92 pitching appearances, going 14-11, a 2.66 ERA and a National League-leading 31 saves. He broke the record for pitching appearances set in 1969, 90, by Wayne Granger, then with the Cincinnati Reds. In postseason award voting, he finished 2nd for the Cy Young Award and 5th for the Most Valuable Player.

That got the attention of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who traded Willie Davis to the Expos for Marshall on December 5, 1973. On a franchise that had Dazzy Vance, Don Newcombe (those 2, in Brooklyn), Sandy Koufax, Don Dyrsdale, and, currently, Don Sutton and Tommy John, and would eventually have Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser, Pedro Martinez, Eric Gagne * and Clayton Kershaw, the 1974 season of Mike Marshall may be the most remarkable in Dodger pitching history.

He made 106 appearances, finishing 83 games, both new major league records. It remains the only 100+ pitching appearance season in history. From June 18 to July 3, he pitched in 13 games in a row, a record that still stands.

"I had a deal with (manager) Walter Alston," Marshall said in a 2003 interview. "If I warmed up, I was getting into the game."

He went 15-12, with a 2.42 ERA and a 1.186 WHIP. He led he NL with 21 saves. Not since Dizzy Dean in 1934 (30-7, 7 saves) had a pitcher had a combined total of more wins and saves. He struck out 143, and walked 56. He made his 1st All-Star Game, finished 3rd in the MVP voting, and became the 1st relief pitcher ever to win the Cy Young Award, in either League.

The Dodgers won the Pennant, their 1st in 8 years. Marshall pitched in all 5 games of the World Series, facing 32 batters, striking out 10 and walking only 1. He saved Game 2 for Sutton, including the famous pickoff of Charlie Finley's "designated runner" Herb Washington. But that would be the only game the Dodgers would win. He allowed just 1 run in the Series, but it was a home run by Joe Rudi in the 7th inning of Game 5, and that made the difference, as the Oakland Athletics on, 3-2 to take the Series.

Also that year, through his acquaintance with Dr. Frank Jobe, he recommended to Tommy John that he get the career-saving surgery that now bears John's name. So that's another piece of baseball history connected to Mike Marshall.

But the trouble with being the smartest guy in the room is that you tend to start acting like everybody else around you is dumb. Although named to the All-Star Team again in 1975, he wasn't nearly as good, as Dodger management trusted him less. He made 58 appearances (a little over half as many as the year before, but still a big number compared to pre-Marshall pitchers), but only went 9-14 with 13 saves.

And he wasn't especially friendly -- not to his teammates, not to the media, and not to fans. Once, when a boy asked Marshall for his autograph, he told the kid, "Go get your math teacher's autograph. He's the hero you should be seeking out." (University of Alabama football coach Bear Bryant once famously said, "Nobody ever cheered a math department.)

Marshall's iconoclasm finally ticked off the conservative Dodgers to the point where they traded him to the Atlanta Braves in 1976, getting Lee Lacy and Elias Sosa in the deal, both of whom would help the Dodgers win Pennants in 1977 and '78.

The Braves gave up on him early in the 1977 season, and sold him to the Texas Rangers. Between the 2 teams, he made only 16 appearances that season. After it, the Rangers gave up on him. He wasn't signed for 1978 until May 15, by the Minnesota Twins, and they trusted him enough to make 54 appearances, going 10-12 with a 2.45 ERA and 21 saves. That same year, he got his Ph.D. in exercise physiology from Michigan State, making him Dr. Mike Marshall.

In 1979, he struck again. He went 10-15 for a weak Twins team, but led the AL with 32 saves. He pitched in 90 games, so he holds the record for most games pitched in a season in each League. He finished 84 games, a major league record that still stands.

But he was 37 years old before the next season started, and all his pitching may have finally caught up with him. In 1980, he pitched in 18 games for the Twins, going 1-3 with 1 save and a 6.12 ERA. He was released on June 6, and did not return to the major leagues until August 19, 1981, when the Mets signed hi as a free agent. He appeared in 20 games, going 3-2 with a 2.61 ERA, but no saves. He was released after the season. That was it, except for 1 game with the Edmonton Trappers, the Class AAA farm team of the California Angels in 1983, in which he was terribly ineffective.

His career record is an unflattering 97-112, but he had 188 saves at a time when that was a big number. His ERA was 3.14, his WHIP was 1.294, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio was 1.71.

Aside from Marshall, 4 pitchers have appeared in at least 90 games in a season. One was the aforementioned Wayne Granger. Kent Tekulve of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitched in 91 in 1978 and 94 in their World Championship season of 1979, and reached 90 again with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1987. Salomón Torres appeared in 94 for the 2006 Pirates. And Pedro Feliciano appeared in 92 for the 2010 Mets. The Yankee record is 86, by Paul Quantrill in 2004.

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Officially, Mike Marshall was never banned from baseball. But he was blackballed, because he knew more about pitching motions than anybody, and wasn't afraid to say so. Never publicly say that you know more than the establishment does: If you do, they will consider it an embarrassment. You can do almost anything in sports, as long as you don't embarrass the establishment. It's why Tim Tebow keeps getting new chances in football, but (for different reasons) Colin Kaepernick and Johnny Manziel do not.

"I know the injurious flaws in the 'traditional' baseball pitching motion that injure baseball pitchers and how to eliminate all pitching injuries," he said on his website, drmikemarshall.com. "I also know the mechanical flaws in the 'traditional' baseball pitching motion that decrease release velocity, release consistency and the variety and quality of pitches pitchers can throw and how to correct these mechanical flaws."

And so, he was never again hired by "organized baseball." But he coached in college. In 1984, he was an assistant coach at the University of Tampa, an NCAA Division II school. From 1984 until 1988, he was head coach at St. Leo College, also a Division II school in the Tampa Bay area.

From 1989 to 1991, he was head coach at Henderson State University, another Division II school, in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. When Jim Bouton tried to contact his former teammates for a 20th Anniversary update of Ball Four in 1989, Marshall told him of his new word, and Jim said, "Arkadelphia! Sounds like a happening place!"

This was the time of the brief Senior Professional Baseball Association based in Tampa Bay, which attracted several former MLB players, including Hall of Fame pitchers Rollie Fingers and Fergie Jenkins. Mike told Jim -- this is how the quote appeared in the book -- "And I personally am throwing the dog doo-doo out of the ball." (He was 46, and hadn't thrown a professional pitch in 6 years, but there have been plenty of pitchers that age and older who have pitched effectively in the majors. Given his conditioning, Mike could have become one of them.)

Jim asked Mike if he was going to try out for the senior league, and he said, "I just might, if they can get their act together." They didn't, and he didn't.

Jim and Mike are linked in another way, a considerably less flattering one. Each man's 1st wife, Bobbie Bouton and Nancy Marshall, came from small towns in Michigan, married pitchers with unusual pitches and unusual outlooks, and saw their husbands cheat on them on the road. In 1983, they collaborated on a book, Home Games. Mike Marshall made no public comment about the book. Jim Bouton wished Bobbie well, and suggested that everything she wrote was true.

Mike's last coaching job was in 1993 and 1994, at West Texas A&M University, in Canyon, Texas, in the Panhandle, near Amarillo. Affiliated with the regular Texas A&M in College Station, it, like the other schools he coached at, is in NCAA Division II.

He should not be confused with Michael Allen Marshall, an outfielder from the Chicago area. This Mike Marshall also played for the Dodgers, making his debut for them during their 1981 World Championship season. While he was on the postseason roster, he only played in 1 game, in the Division Series against the Houston Astros.

He later helped the Dodgers win the NL West in 1983, '85 and '88, and with them, he won the 1988 World Series, a feat denied to the pitcher Mike Marshall. He was named to the NL All-Star Team in 1984. In 1990, he was traded to the Mets, but only played 53 games for them before being traded to the Boston Red Sox, helping them win the AL East that year.

He retired after the 1991 season, with a .270 batting average and 148 home runs. He is now 61 years old, has since worked in the front offices of various teams in "independent leagues," and has also coached in college baseball. The pitcher's last season, 1981, was the outfielder's first, and I don't know if they ever met.

If not, it will never happen now. Mike Marshall the pitcher settled in the Tampa suburb of Zephyrhills, Florida, with his 2nd wife Erica. With Nancy, who died this past April 30, he had daughters Deborah, Rebekah and Kerry. Mike fell ill, and was taken to hospice care, and died on Tuesday, June 1, 2021, at age 78.

October 1: The Babe's Called Shot, DiMaggio Day, Dick Sisler, Maris 61, Ichiro 258, the 1st World Series Game, and the Browns' Only Pennant

October 1, 1932: Did he or didn’t he? He may not have pointed to center field in Game 3 of the World Series against the Chicago Cubs and said, “I’m gonna hit the ball THERE.” But the film certainly shows him pointing at pitcher Charlie Root.  It looks like he’s sending SOME sort of message.  On the next pitch, boom.  Message received.  So, by my definition, yeah, Babe Ruth called his shot.

The last living player from either team was Charlie Devens, Yankee pitcher 1932-34, died August 13, 2003, at age 93. The last to have actually played in the game was Frank Crosetti, Yankee shortstop 1932-48, and coach 1949-68, died February 11, 2002, at age 91.

Also on this day, Joe DiMaggio makes his professional debut. Like Mickey Mantle, who would succeed him as the Yankees’ center fielder, it was as a shortstop. Also like Mantle, his time at shortstop doesn’t last long. A few weeks short of his 18th birthday, DiMag has been put into the lineup for the last game of the season for his hometown club, the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. A year later, he will become the best pro ballplayer west of St. Louis. Maybe the best one east of it, too.

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October 1, 1866: A crowd of 30,000 people, believed to be the largest in baseball history to that point, watches a game between the host Athletics (no connection to the American League team founded in 1901) and the Atlantics of Brooklyn, considered the best team in the country at the time. The A’s score 2 runs in the 1^st inning, but the crowd rushes the field, and the game is called when they won’t get off.

October 1, 1903: The first World Series game is played, at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston. Deacon Phillippe of the Pittsburgh Pirates outpitches Cy Young of the Boston Pilgrims. Jimmy Sebring of the proto-Red Sox hits the first World Series home run, but the Pirates win, 7-3.

Northeastern University’s Cabot Gym is now on the site, and a statue of Young stands at the approximate location of the pitcher’s mound.

October 1, 1919: Game 1 of the World Series, at Redland Field (later renamed Crosley Field) in Cincinnati. The starter for the Chicago White Sox is knuckleballer Eddie Cicotte. The 1st batter for the Cincinnati Reds is Morrie Rath. Cicotte, not known as a dirty pitcher, but who had taken $10,000 (about $137,000 in today's money) from gamblers the night before, hits Rath with a pitch. This is the signal to the gamblers that the fix to which they'd agreed is still on.

In the bottom of the 4th, the game is tied 1-1. So far, nothing to suggest to the unaware spectator that anything is amiss. But then Cicotte melts down, and allows 5 runs. The Reds win, 9-1, and the "upset" is on.

October 1, 1921: Ray Schalk of the Chicago White Sox does something no catcher had ever done before, nor has since: He makes a putout at every base at least once in a game. The White Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 8-5.

October 1, 1924, 90 years ago: Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis bans New York Giants outfielder Jimmy O’Connell from playing in the World Series, after O’Connell confesses that he tried to bribe Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Heinie Sand to “go easy” in the season-ending series between the teams.

O’Connell also implicates 3 future Hall-of-Famers on his own team: Frankie Frisch, George “Highpockets” Kelly and Ross Youngs. Landis finds no evidence against them, and they are cleared to play. O’Connell, just 23 and with only 2 years of major league play under his belt, never plays professional ball again, and dies in 1976.

October 1, 1933: Babe Ruth pitches for the last time, in order to draw a big crowd in the finale of a season in which the Yankees did not win.  It doesn’t work: Only 25,000 fans come out.

The Babe goes the distance against his former team, the Red Sox. He gives up 5 runs on 12 hits and 3 walks, with no strikeouts… But the Yankees win, 6-5. Ruth also hits his 34th home run of the season, the 686th of his career, and retires with a career record of 94-46.

October 1, 1944, 70 years ago: The St. Louis Browns clinch the American League Pennant. It is their first. They are the last of Major League Baseball's "Original 16" teams (a term not used back then) to do so. They will not win another until 1966, by which point they are the Baltimore Orioles.

There will not be another team winning their 1st Pennant until September 23, 1957, when the Milwaukee Braves do it -- or, if you don't count moved teams, until October 6, 1969, when the Mets pull off their "Miracle."

All the 1944 Browns are dead now. The last survivor was 2nd baseman Don Gutteridge -- who, ironically, started his career with the St. Louis Cardinals. He lived until 2008, age 96. There are now 22 surviving men who had ever played for the St. Louis Browns:

Chuck Stevens, 1st base, 1941-48 (but away in the War in '44); Tom Jordan, catcher, 1 game in 1948; Ned Garver, pitcher, 1948-52; George Elder, left field, 1949; Al Naples, shortstop, 2 games in 1949; Dick Starr (no, not a porno actor), pitcher, 1949-51; Roy Sievers, center field, 1949-53; Ed Mickelson, 1st base, 5 games in 1950; Don Johnson (no, not the "Miami Vice" actor), pitcher, 1950-51; Bud Thomas, shortstop, 1951; Frank Saucier, outfield, 18 games in 1951 and so lightly regarded that he was the player that Eddie Gaedel pinch-hit for; Billy DeMars, shortstop, 1951-52 (better known as a big-league coach); Joe DeMaestri, infield, 1952; Jim Rivera, outfield, 1952 (later the right fielder on the 1959 "Go-Go White Sox"); Tom Wright, left field, 1952; Jay Porter, catcher, 1952; Hal Hudson, pitcher, 3 games in 1952; Johnny Hetki, pitcher, 3 games in 1952; Johnny Groth, center field, 1953; Billy Hunter, shortstop, 1953; Neil Berry, infield, 1953; and Don Larsen, pitcher, 1953.

Starr and Johnson had previously been Yankees; DeMaestri, Hunter, and of course Larsen would become Yankees.

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October 1, 1946: For the 1st time in major league history, a playoff series to determine a League's Pennant is played, between the St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers. The Cardinals took the 1st game, 4-2, at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, as Howie Pollet holds the Dodgers to 2 hits, a homer and an RBI-single by Howie Schultz.

October 1, 1949: Joe DiMaggio Day at Yankee Stadium. The Yankee Clipper wasn't retiring, but he'd had an inspirational season, and, with Joe's family in the stands because the Red Sox were in town, including Joe's brother, Boston center fielder Dominic, they chose this day to honor him. "I'd like to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee," Joe says.

The Yankees need to win this game to make the next day, the last game of the season, the title decider. The Red Sox take a 4-0 lead, but the Yankees come back, and Johnny Lindell hits a home run in the 8th inning, to give the Yankees the 5-4 win.

October 1, 1950: Dick Sisler hits a home run in the top of the 10th inning at Ebbets Field, and the Phillies beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 4-1, to clinch the National League Pennant. It is the only Pennant the Phils would win in a 65-year stretch from 1915 to 1980.

Still alive from this game, 64 years later: For the Phillies, 2 reserves, Ralph “Putsy” Caballero, and Jackie Mayo, who was a defensive replacement for Sisler in the bottom of the 10th; for the Dodgers, Don Newcombe (who gave up Sisler’s homer) and Tommy “Buckshot” Brown. George "Shotgun" Shuba, on the Dodger roster but not getting into this game, died over this past weekend.

This is the last major league game as a manager for Burt Shotton of the Dodgers. Also today, the Philadelphia Athletics complete a massively disappointing 102-loss season by beating the Washington Senators, 5-3 at Shibe Park.

It is the last game for manager Connie Mack: Approaching his 88th birthday, his sons Earle, Roy and Connie Jr. gang up on him and force him to finally retire as manager — something he, as also the owner, did not want to do.  Before the A’s move to Kansas City, the Phillies, new owners of the ballpark, will rename it Connie Mack Stadium, and will erect a statue of him outside.

Shotton and Mack were the last managers to wear street clothes. Although no edict specifically mandates a skipper must wear a uniform, there is now a rule that states that a person not wearing a uniform, except medical personnel, isn’t allowed on the field of play during a game.

There are 23 former Philadelphia Athletics still alive, including 9 who played for Mack: Carl Miles, pitcher, 2 games in 1940; Fred Caligiuri, pitcher, 1941-42; Larry Eschen, shortstop, 12 games in 1942; George Yankowski, catcher, 6 games in 1942 plus another brief callup with the 1949 Chicago White Sox; Carl Scheib, pitcher, 1943-47; Bill Mills, catcher, 5 games in 1944; Dick Adams, 1st base, 1947; Billy DeMars, infield, 18 games in 1948; Bobby Shantz, pitcher, 1949-54 (1952 AL Most Valuable Player, later a Yankee).

Living players from the A's in their post-Mack Philadelphia seasons: Ed Samcoff, 1st base, 4 games in 1951; Len Matarazzo, pitcher, 1 game in 1952; Everett "Skeeter" Kell, 2nd base, 1952 (brother of the late Hall-of-Famer George Kell, who started on the A's); Eddie Robinson, 1st base, 1953 (an All-Star that year, later a Yankee); Neal Watlington, catcher, 1953; Tommy Giordano, 2nd base, 11 games in 1953; Bill Harrington, pitcher, 1 game in 1953 (called back up for the A's in Kansas City in '55 and '56); Joe DeMaestri, infield, 1953-54 (later a Yankee); Bill Wilson, center field, 1954; Jim Robertson, catcher, 1954 (plus a brief callup for the A's the next year in K.C.); Art Ditmar, pitcher, 1954 (stayed a few years with them in K.C., traded to the Yankees, ended back in K.C.); Ozzie Van Brabant, pitcher, 9 games in 1954 (plus 2 more for in K.C. in '55); Bill Oster, pitcher, 8 games in 1954; and Hal Raether, pitcher, 1 game in 1954 (plus 1 more with K.C. in '57).

Miles, 96, is the oldest; Oster, 81, is the youngest. DeMars and DeMaestri are also 2 of the surviving Browns.

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October 1, 1961: Roger Maris makes it 61 in ’61.  He hits the record-breaking home run off Tracy Stallard.

Still alive from this game, 53 years later: For the Yankees, Yogi Berra, Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek, Hector Lopez, Jack Reed and Luis Arroyo. Whitey Ford and and Ralph Terry are still alive, but did not play in this game. For the Red Sox: Stallard, Chuck Schilling (no relation to Curt), Frank Malzone (a Bronx native), Don Gile, Russ Nixon, and rookie left fielder Carl Yastrzemski.

Also on this day, after providing a venue for the Pacific Coast League’s Los Angeles Angels from 1925 through 1957 and the major league expansion team with the same name this season, the West Coast version of Wrigley Field hosts its last professional baseball game. The Halos are defeated by the Tribe 8-5 in front of 9,868 fans. Wrigley West will be torn down in five years to make room for an eventual public playground and senior center.

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October 1, 1964, 40 years ago: The Red Sox beat the Indians, 4-2, in front of only 306 fans, the smallest in Fenway Park history.

October 1, 1967: A much happier day at Fenway. Carl Yastrzemski gets 4 hits, including a game-tying single in the bottom of the 6th, and cements the Triple Crown — a feat that will not be achieved for another 45 years. Jim Lonborg pitches a complete game, and the Red Sox beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-3, to eliminate the Twins from the AL race on the final day of a season with a rare 4-team race. The White Sox had been eliminated 2 days earlier.

But the Pennant is not yet clinched. If the Detroit Tigers can sweep a doubleheader with the California Angels, they would forge a tie with the Red Sox-Twins winner, and force a 1-game Playoff the next day.

In those pre-Internet days, CBS managed to link up their Detroit station, WWJ, and their Boston station, WHDH (850, once again the Sox station but with call letters WEEI), so that people in the Boston area could listen the the nightcap in Detroit. The Angels won, and the Sox had their 1st Pennant in 21 years, only their 2nd in 49 years — a Pennant whose theme song was the Broadway hit “The Impossible Dream.”

Still alive from this game, 47 years later: From the Sox: Yaz, Lonborg, 2nd baseman Mike Andrews, shortstop Rico Petrocelli, 3rd baseman Dalton Jones, center fielder Reggie Smith, right fielder Ken Harrelson, right fielder Jose Tartabull (Danny's father pinch-ran for the Hawk and took his place in the field), and pinch-hitter Norm Siebern (a former Yankee); from the Twins, 2nd baseman Rod Carew (that season's AL Rookie of the Year), right fielder Tony Oliva, replacement shortstop Jackie Hernandez, replacement left fielder Rich Rollins, replacement catcher Russ Nixon (who played for Boston in the Maris 61 game), pinch-hitter and usual starting 3rd baseman Rich Rollins, pinch-hitter Frank Kostro (usually an infielder), and pitchers Dean Chance, Al Worthington and Jim "Mudcat" Grant.

Sox 1st baseman George Scott, 2nd baseman Jerry Adair (whom Andrews replaced late in the game), and catchers Russ Gibson and Elston Howard (the Yankee Legend, playing out the string, took over late in the game for Gibson) have died. So has Tony Conigliaro, the slugging local-boy right fielder who, of course, missed the last quarter of the season after being beaned. Twins 1st baseman Harmon Killebrew, starting shortstop Zoilo Versalles, 3rd baseman Cesar Tovar, starting left fielder Bob Allison, center fielder Ted Uhlaender, starting catcher Jerry Zimmerman and relief pitcher Jim Roland have died.

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October 1, 1970: Twenty years to the day after the greatest day in Phillies history thus far (and it would remain such for another 10 years), perhaps the darkest day in Phillies history takes place — and this was in a win.

The Phils play the final game at Connie Mack Stadium, formerly Shibe Park, and the irony of playing the Montreal Expos, a team that only began in 1969, at a stadium the opened in 1909 is felt.

The game goes to 10 innings, and Oscar Gamble singles home Tim McCarver with the winning run, as the Phils win, 2-1.  Before McCarver can cross the plate, fans are already storming the field, and they tear the stadium apart.

The next year, Veterans Stadium opened, and a fire gutted what remained of the old park.  It was finally torn down in 1976.

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October 1, 1973: Only 1,913 fans come out to Wrigley Field, under threat of rain with the Cubs far out of the race, to see a doubleheader that had to be made up due to an earlier rainout. The Mets beat the Cubs in the opener, 6-4, and win the National League East, their 2nd 1st-place finish.

The Division Title that no one seemed to want to win has been won with an 82-79 record — still the worst 1st place finish ever in a season of at least 115 games. When the rain comes after the opener, the umpires call off the now completely meaningless 2nd game.

The Mets were 52-63 on August 14, but won 30 out of 44 down the stretch, including 18 of their last 22.

Back in New York, the day after the last game at the pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium -- an 8-5 loss to the Detroit Tigers, with Yankee manager Ralph Houk resigning -- the renovation of The Stadium begins, with Mayor John Lindsay, who had brokered the deal to get it done and keep the Yankees in The City, gets into a bulldozer, and ceremonially scoops out a piece of right field.

Claire Ruth was given home plate. Eleanor Gehrig was given 1st base. Some time later, Joe DiMaggio, in town to film commercials for the Bowery Savings Bank, would pose for a few pictures amid the renovation work. They should have given him a small section of center field sod. Mickey Mantle? The whirpool, since his injuries caused him to spend so much time in it.

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October 1, 1974, 40 years ago today: Needing to win both of their last 2 games of the regular season against the Milwaukee Brewers, and for the Orioles to lose at least 1 of their last 2 games against the Tigers -- or to split their own and hope the O's lost both -- the Yankees go into County Stadium without their marquee player, Bobby Murcer, who had injured his hand breaking up a fight between Rick Dempsey and Bill Sudakis.

Despite a strong pitching performance by George "Doc" Medich, and 2 hits each by Roy White, Thurman Munson, Chris Chambliss and Sandy Alomar Sr., it was not to be. Medich, still pitching in the bottom of the 10th, allows a leadoff double to Jack Lind. John Vuckovich sacrifices him over to 3rd. Don Money is walked intentionally to set up the double play, and then Medich unintentionally walks Sixto Lezcano. George "Boomer" Scott, in between tours of duty with the Red Sox, singles Lind home, and the Brewers win, 3-2.

The Orioles beat the Tigers 7-6 in Detroit, and wrap up the AL East title with a game to spare. This was the 1st time the Yankees had gotten close to the postseason in 10 years, but it was not to be.

On this same day, at the Astrodome, Mike Marshall establishes the major league mark for the most appearances by a pitcher when he throws two innings in the Dodgers’ 8-5 victory over Houston.

With his 106 appearances, the right-handed reliever appears in 65 percent of the games that his team played this season. He goes 15-12, with a 2.42 ERA and 21 saves (actually 10 less than he had the year before), and becomes the 1st reliever in either League to receive the Cy Young Award.

In 1979, pitching for the Twins, Marshall would appear in 90 games, giving him the record for most games pitched in a season in each League.

October 1, 1978: A Yankee win or a Red Sox loss would give the Yankees the AL East title for the 3rd straight season. But the Yankees get beat 9-2 at home by the Cleveland Indians. The winning pitcher is Rick Waits, feeding into a myth that grew out of the fits the Kansas City Royals game the Yankees in the 1976 and '77 ALCS: "The Yankees can't beat lefthanded pitchers."

At Fenway, the auxiliary scoreboard over the center-field bleacher triangle shows the score, and adds, "THANK YOU RICK WAITS." The Sox beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-0 on a Luis Tiant shutout, and, as Red Sox broadcaster Dick Stockton says, "We go to tomorrow! We got to tomorrow!"

It didn't seem possible in June, July and August that the Yankees would still be eligible to play a 163rd game. It didn't seem possible for the last 3 weeks that the Red Sox would still be. Now, after the Sox blew a 14-game gap over the Yankees on July 20, and the Yankees blew a 3 1/2-game gap over the Sox on September 16, they will play a 163rd game against each other at Fenway.

Also on this day, pitching for the San Diego Padres, Gaylord Perry strikes out Joe Simpson of the Dodgers for his 3,000th career strikeout. He is the 3rd pitcher to reach the milestone, following Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson. He wins the NL Cy Young Award. Having won it with the Indians in 1972, he becomes the 1st pitcher to win it in each League.

October 1, 1984, 30 years ago today: Bowie Kuhn, the biggest knucklehead ever to be Commissioner of Baseball, officially hands the job over to Peter Ueberroth, famed for his production of the recent Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Kuhn may have been a lawyer, but he sure didn't seem smart enough to get into law school. In contrast, while I didn't always agree with Ueberroth, he was far more sensible. One of the 1st big things he does is reinstate Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, whom Kuhn had suspended from official activities indefinitely because they were working for casinos in Atlantic City -- even though they were specifically kept off the gambling floors by management.

Also on this day, Hall of Fame manager Walter Alston dies from heart trouble in Oxford, Ohio. He was 72. He had managed the Dodgers to 7 Pennants and 3 World Championships, including their only Brooklyn title in 1955. The Dodgers retired his Number 24.

Also on this day, Matthew Thomas Cain is born in Dothan, Alabama. A 3-time All-Star, he's won 2 World Series with the Giants, and pitched a perfect game against the Astros on June 13, 2012, the 1st one ever pitched in the long, bicoastal history of the Giant franchise.

October 1, 2004, 10 years ago today: Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners grounds a single up the middle, and collects his 258th hit of the season.  The record had belonged to George Sisler of the St. Louis Browns since 1920 — 84 years.

If there was anyone left who still doubted whether Ichiro was a bona fide Hall-of-Famer in the making (and I was a doubter), they now believe it.

October 1, 2006: After leading the AL Central by 10 games on August 7, the Detroit Tigers lose 31 of their last 50, including their last 5 in a row, the last being the blowing of a 6-0 lead over a terrible Kansas City Royals team to lose 10-8 in 12 innings. The Tigers thus blow the Division Title to the Twins, one of the great choke jobs of recent times.

They do get the Wild Card, however, and shock the Yankees in the Division Series, while the Twins get surprised by the A’s, and then the Tigers sweep the A’s to win the Pennant anyway. Never has a team looked so bad down the stretch and still managed to reach the World Series — not even the 1949 or 2000 Yankees.

The 2006 season is also the first one ever, except for the strike-shortened seasons of 1981, ’94 and '95, in which there were no 20-game-winning pitchers in either League. Chien-Ming Wang of the Yankees and Johan Santana of the Twins each win 19, while no National League hurler wins more than 16 — 6 of them win that many.

The Twins have another honor (that does them little good after their ALDS loss), as Twin Cities native Joe Mauer becomes the 1st catcher to win an AL batting title, and the 1st catcher to lead both leagues in batting average, with .347, ahead of NL batting champion Freddie Sanchez of the Pittsburgh Pirates with .344.

October 1, 2007: Needing a Playoff for the Playoffs, the Colorado Rockies beat the San Diego Padres in the bottom of the 13th inning, 9-8. Jamey Carroll hits a sacrifice fly, and Matt Holliday scores on a disputed play at the plate.

The Padres have not reached the Playoffs since, and this play burns their fans up. The Rockies closed the regular season (and this game counts as such, as it’s officially not a postseason game) winning 14 of their last 15.

Chicago Cubs' All-Time Regional Team

The first time around, in the summer of 2010, in making out the all-time teams from the Cubs' and White Sox' regions, the easy part was deciding what part of Illinois a particular player was from: North, which meant they were either in the Cubs' or White Sox' territory; or South, which meant I had probably already listed them with, or considered and then rejected them for, the St. Louis Cardinals.

The hard part was deciding whether to put a player who geographically qualifies for Chicago's in general on the Cubs' or Sox' all-time regional team. If they -- whether from Illinois, Iowa or Indiana -- were associated with one or the other, it was easy. If they publicly stated a youthful preference for either team, that also helped.

If neither of those factors applied, then I had to guess. From Illinois, and north of the Chicago River? Cubs. South of it? Sox. In that western region of Northern Illinois between the river’' branches? Split it down the middle. If I guessed wrong – if a guy was from, say, Bolingbrook, and I listed him with the Sox team, and he actually grew up a Cub fan, well, tough cookies, he should have told me.

Then there were the other 2 States. Iowa was easy: Despite its connection to the White Sox through the film Field of Dreams, Des Moines, the State Capital, is home to the Triple-A Iowa Cubs since 1981 – although Des Moines was a White Sox farm club, the Iowa Oaks, from 1973 to 1980!

As for Indiana, the southwestern tail, including Evansville and Terre Haute, I gave to the Cardinals, while the southern half, including the city of Indianapolis, will go to the Cincinnati Reds. But the northwestern quarter is White Sox territory. Still, if a player from any of those three States -- whose names resulted in an old minor league in the region being called "the Three-I League" -- was associated with either the Cubs or the White Sox, then I overrode the secondary geographical reasons I've outlined above.

In 1981, folksinger Steve Goodman, author of the song "The City of New Orleans," wrote "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request." Sadly, he actually was a dying Cub fan: He had leukemia, and died in September 1984, just after accepting an offer from the team to throw out the ceremonial first ball at one of their NLCS games, the first postseason games to be played at Wrigley Field since 1945.

Do they still play the blues in Chicago
when baseball season rolls around?
When the snow melts away
do the Cubbies still play
in their ivy-covered burial ground?

When I was a boy
they were my pride and joy
but now they only bring fatigue
to the home of the brave, the land of the free
and the doormat of the National League.

11. Chicago Cubs' All-Time Regional Team

"I've got season tickets to watch the angels play now," Steve sang, "and that's just what I'm gonna do. But you, the living, you're stuck here with the Cubs, so it's me that feels sorry for you."

Maybe Steve will feel better, knowing that, where he is, he can watch this team -- even though some of these players are still alive.

1B Phil Cavarretta of Lane Technical H.S. in Chicago. This hometown hero batted .293 with 118 RBIS and led the NL in hits in 1944, and in batting and slugging in 1945, winning the MVP that season. With the Cubs, he won NL Pennants in 1935 (as a rookie), 1938 and 1945. He died on December 18, 2010, at the age of 94. He was the last living player who had played against Babe Ruth, in 1935 for the Cubs against the Boston Braves.

Dishonorable Mention to Adrian Constantine "Cap" Anson of Marshalltown, Iowa. Statistically, this is a no-brainer. His lifetime batting average was .334, his career OPS+ was 142, 8 times led the NL in RBIs, 3,012 hits – the first ever to 3,000, and 3,435 hits if you count his National Association years (1871-75, before the White Stockings/Colts/Orphans/Cubs were founded in 1876), including 582 doubles.

He batted .388 with 100 RBIs at age 42, and .331 with 90 RBIs at 44. He won NL Pennants in 1876, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1885 and 1886, player-manager on all but the first. And he was one of the people who brought the word of baseball all over the country, including his "invention" of spring training, when he brought the White Stockings to Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1886, to "boil the beer out of them."

But because Cap was the force behind baseball drawing the color barrier in 1887, he has to be regarded as one of the game's villains. He could be a Doctor Jekyll, but also a Mister Hyde.

2B Gene Baker of Davenport, Iowa. He was called up to the Cubs in September 1953, at age 28, after having played in the Negro Leagues – as did Ernie Banks, although Baker had also starred for the Cubs' top farm team of the time, the Pacific Coast League's Los Angeles Angels. The 2 of them made their debuts together, becoming the Cubs' 1st black players. Banks became "Mr. Cub" and a Hall-of-Famer. Baker became an All-Star in 1955, playing in all 154 games. In 1960, he was a reserve on the World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates.

Honorable Mention to Emil Verban of Lincoln, Illinois. In 1975, a group of Cub fans based in Washington, D.C. formed the Emil Verban Society. He was picked as the epitome of a Cub player, competent but obscure, and typifying the Chicago work ethic. Verban initially believed he was being ridiculed, but his ill feeling disappeared several years later when he was flown to Washington to meet President Ronald Reagan, who had been a Cub broadcaster in the 1930s and was eventually a Society member, at the White House.

While Verban was obscure, he was hardly ordinary. After a few years of bouncing around the low minors, he played well for the Columbus Redbirds, a St. Louis Cardinals farm team, in 1943, and in 1944, as World War II began to really thin out big-league rosters, the Cards called him to the big club, and he helped them win the World Series as a 28-year-old rookie.

With most of the good players coming back in 1946, the Cards traded him – could have been a good move, as they won another Series – to the Philadelphia Phillies, and he made the NL All-Star team in '46 and '47. The Phils traded him to the Cubs, and he only spent 2 years with them, making him an odd choice for a fan club's name regardless of how good he was. He finished with a .272 batting average, although he did bat .280 in a Cub uniform.

SS Lou Boudreau of Harvey, Illinois. Cub fans know him best as a broadcaster. But he was a basketball star at Bradley University in Peoria, and played in the National Basketball League, the Midwest-based league that produced the Minneapolis Lakers (now Los Angeles), the Fort Wayne Pistons (now Detroit), the Syracuse Nationals (now the Philadelphia 76ers), the Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento Kings) and the Buffalo Bisons (now the Atlanta Hawks).

It was because he was captain of his college and pro basketball teams that he suggested to Cleveland Indians owner Alva Bradley that he be named manager of the Indians when the office opened up for the 1942 season -- even though Boudreau was just 24 years old. There had been a pair of 23-year-old interim managers earlier in baseball, but Boudreau became, and remains, the youngest permanent manager in baseball history.

To be honest, he wasn't a very good manager, as he later proved with the Boston Red Sox and Kansas City Athletics. The only time Lou Boudreau the manager did well was when he had Lou Boudreau the shortstop. A 7-time All-Star, he was baseball's best shortstop in the 1940s (eventually succeeded in that regard by Phil Rizzuto, who also became a broadcaster), leading the American League in batting in 1944 and doubles in 1941, '44 and '47. Lifetime batting average .295, OPS+ 120, 2 100-RBI seasons, and all this while playing most of his home games at League Park (great park for a lefty hitter, but not for a righthanded one like Boudreau) and the place usually known as "cavernous Cleveland Municipal Stadium."

In 1948, he batted .355 (and it wasn't enough to lead the League), with 18 homers and 106 RBIs, and led the Indians to the Pennant, needing to beat the Red Sox in a one-game Playoff at Fenway Park to do it. He hit 2 home runs in that game. The team then stayed in Boston to play the Braves in the first 2 games of the World Series, and won it, still Cleveland's last title. At age 31, Boudreau was a player-manager who'd won the World Series -- still the last one ever to do that. (Pete Rose got the Cincinnati Reds to 2nd place in the NL West in '85 and '86.)

But he only played 1 more full season, and a change in ownership led to his firing as a manager and his trade as a player -- to the Red Sox, where he floundered and retired. But he's in the Hall of Fame, and the Indians retired his Number 5. His daughter Sharyn married pitcher Denny McLain. And that's Lou in the photo above, in his brief stint managing the Cubs, before moving into their broadcast booth.

3B Freddie Lindstrom of Lane Technical H.S. in Chicago. He is often considered one of the players who got into the Hall of Fame solely because his former New York Giants teammate Frankie Frisch was on the Hall's Committee on Veterans -- the "Frisch Five" usually consist of Giants Lindstrom, George "Highpockets" Kelly, Dave Bancroft and Ross Youngs, and St. Louis Cardinal teammate Jesse Haines -- and sometimes ridiculed for not one but two grounders that hit a pebble and soared over his head in Game 7 of the 1924 World Series (when he was a rookie, just short of his 19th birthday).

Actually, Lindstrom was one of the top players of is era, probably the 2nd-best 3rd baseman behind Pie Traynor of the Pittsburgh Pirates. His lifetime batting average was .311, his OPS+ 109. In 1928 he led the NL with a strong 231 hits, and he got that many again in 1930 (although he didn't lead the League, as his Giant teammate Bill Terry set an NL record that still stands with 254). He had 2 100-RBI seasons, and helped the Giants win the Pennant in 1924 and his hometown Cubs to do it in 1935. But he was already in decline, and played his last game a year later at 30.

He later managed a Giants farm team, the Knoxville Smokies of Tennessee, to Southern Association Pennants in 1940 and '41. (He could've still been playing, as he was just 35 in '41.) His son Charlie Lindstrom played 1 game in the majors, as a catcher for his hometown White Sox in 1958.

LF Cliff Floyd of South Holland, Illinois. Injuries prevented him from having a full season since 2005, and he played his last game in 2009. But he had a 119 career OPS+, 340 doubles and 233 homers, despite playing most of his home games in pitchers' parks: The Olympic Stadium in Montreal, whatever they're calling the Marlins/Dolphins stadium this year, and Shea Stadium in New York.

He helped 4 different teams reach the postseason: The 1997 Florida Marlins (World Champions), the 2006 Mets (NL East Champs and 1 run from a Pennant), the 2007 Cubs (NL Central Champs) and the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays (AL Pennant). He was never great, but, when healthy, he was very useful.

CF Kenny Lofton of East Chicago, Indiana. Speaking of making the postseason, few players have ever done it like this guy: The Indians in 1995, '96, '98, '99, 2001 and '07; the Atlanta Braves in 1997; the San Francisco Giants in 2002; the Cubs in 2003; the Yankees in 2004; and the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2006. That includes Pennants in 1995 and 2002 (and, very nearly, 2003 with his hometown Cubs, alas, Steve Bartman; and, very nearly, 2004 with the Yankees, alas, Kevin Brown). That's 6 different teams reaching the postseason 11 times in 17 seasons. And that doesn't count the Indians being in position to win the AL Wild Card when the Strike of '94 hit, or 2005 when he was with the Phillies and they just missed the NL Wild Card. He's one of these guys that "seem to get followed around by winning teams."

Of course, you can also say that a lot of teams wanted to get rid of him, including the Braves getting rid of him after just 1 year, and the Indians then signed him back. And accounts of the 2004 Yankees suggest that he was not missed when he left: They were willing to trade him for Felix Rodriguez. (Who?) Naturally.

But he wasn't just along for the ride on those teams: His lifetime batting average was .299, his OPS+ 107, he collected 2,428 hits including 383 doubles, 116 triples and 130 homers, and 622 stolen bases -- 15th all-time, 12th from 1900 onward, 9th in the post-1920 Lively Ball Era, 8th in the post-1947 Integration Era, 7th in the post-1969 Divisional Play Era, and the leader among players who began their career after 1985. (Juan Pierre is 8 steals behind him, but enters the 2014 season as a free agent, and may be done.) He made 6 All-Star teams and won 3 Gold Gloves.

Lofton is now eligible for the Hall of Fame. According to Baseball-Reference.com, the HOF Monitor, where a "Likely HOFer" is at 100, has him at 91; the HOF Standards, where an "Average HOFer" is at 50, has him at 42. That's borderline at best. But B-R's, 10 Most Similar Batters includes Harry Hooper, Max Carey and Fred Clarke (who are in); Ken Griffey Jr. and Ichiro Suzuki (who will be in, barring steroid revelations); and Tim Raines (who should be in already). Lofton has a chance.

RF Mike Marshall of Buffalo Grove, Illinois. No, not the relief pitcher who set records for games pitched in a season that still stand in both Leagues, although that one also played for the Dodgers. This was an outfielder who made the NL All-Star Team in 1984, and helped the Dodgers win NL West titles in 1983 and '85 and the '88 World Series, before receiving the kiss of death: He went to the Mets, in a "My Headache For Your Headache Trade," with Alejandro Pena, for Juan Samuel.

Samuel had a few good years left, but becoming a Met pretty much ended Marshall's effectiveness. He hit 137 homers before the trade, and was only 29; he hit just 11 afterward, and, beset by injuries, played his last big-league game at 31. He has since been a manager and executivewith independent minor league teams in California and Arizona.

C Jim Sundberg of Galesburg, Illinois. A 6-time Gold Glover with the Texas Rangers, he is probably the finest defensive catcher the AL has had in my lifetime (and I don't want to hear about that pudgy steroid-user the Rangers had later). A 3-time All-Star, he never reached the postseason with the Rangers, but won a ring with the Kansas City Royals in 1985. Not a great hitter, he did bat .291 in 1977 and 4 times hit at least 10 home runs, keeping in mind that, at the time, the Rangers played in Arlington Stadium, a frying pan of a ballpark that was no friend to hitters. He now works in the Rangers' front office, and is a member of their team Hall of Fame.

The starting rotation comes next, and the entry for the first pitcher on it is rather long, but his story is very involved. Please, bear with me, because it's worth the telling.

SP Al Spalding of Byron, Illinois. One of the true pioneers of baseball, for good and for ill. In 1865, at age 15, he was already pitching for one of the top teams in the Midwest. Two years later, he was being paid to play, I mean to clerk, in Chicago.

In 1871, with the founding of the National Association, the first all-professional league, he joined the Boston Red Stockings, some of whose players had been on the first openly professional team, the 1869-70 Cincinnati Red Stockings (hence the name). This team, forerunners of the Boston, then Milwaukee, then Atlanta Braves, won the NA Pennant in 1872, '73, '74 and '75, during which Albert Goodwill Spalding won 204 games, losing 53, with a 2.21 ERA, and also batted .323, playing the outfield or 1st base when he didn't pitch.

The success of the Red Stockings was one of the reasons the NA collapsed. In 1876, the National League was formed by Spalding and William Hulbert, including the Chicago White Stockings, which the two men also owned, thus allowing Spalding to "come home." Half the Boston roster was lured there by Spalding. This team, forerunners of the Cubs, won the first NL Pennant (seriously), and Spalding batted .312, went 47-12 as a pitcher, and was also the manager and part-owner. (He probably would have sold hot dogs while the White Stockings were batting, had they been invented yet.) After this, though, he began to lose interest in playing, and at age 26 he played his last game.

At the time he pitched, the pitcher's box (there was not yet a "mound") was just 45 feet from home plate, and all pitching was underhand (though not necessarily underhanded, meaning with trickery). Can I really say that Spalding would have been a great pitcher from 60 feet, 6 inches, and from 15 (or, after 1969, 10) inches up, throwing overhanded? It's hard to say, because quite a few pitchers who were great up until 1893 (went it went from 50 feet to 60 1/2) weren't that good afterward.

But I have no doubt that he was as great an athlete as there was at the time, and as he was a brilliant businessman, I have no qualms about his ability to learn to adapt to modern conditions, and to become an All-Star under the modern rules. The hard part would probably be convincing this man of the 1870s to get into the bucket seat of the DeLorean!

At the time he hung up his shoes (I don't know if they were "spikes" back then, but whatever the footwear was then called, his company made them), he was already a millionaire (and these were Rutherford B. Hayes dollars, as sports historian Bert Randolph Sugar would have said), because the NL was exclusively using baseballs made by the sporting-goods company that still bears the Spalding name. (Not until a century later, in 1977, would both leagues switch to Rawlings.)

Spalding published the 1st annual official guidebook on baseball, and in 1888-89 organized and led the first world tour by baseball teams. (He was 38, so he could still have been playing.) By this time, no one could doubt the phrase that had already been in use for roughly 30 years: Baseball was America's "national pastime." He died in 1915, one of the wealthiest men in America.

The downside? He also helped to establish baseball's reserve clause, thus making him a titan of management and an enemy to the labor of which he was once a part. (Thus, along with having been a dominant player in his sport, setting the stage for Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.) In so doing, he helped to break the Players' League revolt of 1890, keeping the upper hand with management for the next 85 years.

He also accepted his 1st baseman-manager Cap Anson's 1887 insistence that the game be all-white, and this held for 60 years. He traded away players like Mike "King" Kelly and John Clarkson because they had too much fondness for drink and women, and his moralizing led directly to the breakup of the Cub champions of the mid-1880s, where they didn't win another Pennant for 20 years. And he appointed the commission that was meant to determine the origins of baseball, forming the fraudulent myth of Abner Doubleday being the game's inventor.

Spalding was one of the first men inducted into the Hall of Fame, but it's thanks to him, as much as to anybody else (certainly not at all to General Doubleday), that the Hall is in Cooperstown, New York, and not in Manhattan, or Hoboken, or The Bronx, or even his adopted hometowns of Boston or Chicago, any of which would be more appropriate than the nice but damn near inaccessible little village in the Catskills!

SP Joe McGinnity of Cornwall, Illinois. He only pitched 10 seasons (ages 28 to 37, so it's not like he wore himself out, he just got discovered late), but his nickname of the Iron Man (or Iron Joe) was still fitting, as not only did he work in a foundry in the off-season (the Theodore Roosevelt years were not a time of big salaries for ballplayers), but for pitching both ends of doubleheaders. In 1903, he did this 3 times, winning all 6 games. He won the 1900 NL Pennant with the Brooklyn Superbas (forerunners of the Dodgers), and the 1904 Pennant and 1905 World Series with the New York Giants.

He won 87 games for the Eastern League's Newark Indians (as a player-manager), so, combined with the 46 games he won for Brooklyn and the 151 he won with the Giants (despite pitching in the Polo Grounds, which even then had short distances to the foul poles), he won 284 games for New York Tri-State Area teams. He won 246 games (against just 142 losses) in 10 years in the majors, and another 216 in the minors, his last at age 54.

He threw his first professional pitch during the Presidency of William McKinley and his last during that of Calvin Coolidge, starting when Cap Anson was newly-retired and ending when Lou Gehrig and Mel Ott were rookies. Move over, Robert Downey Jr., this is the real Iron Man.

SP Rick Reuschel of Camp Point, Illinois. Between Fergie Jenkins in 1972 and Greg Maddux in 1992, this portly knuckleballer was the only Cub pitcher to win 20 games in a season. It was 1977, and it helped keep the Cubs in the NL East race until August. (They tailed off, surprise, and finished 81-81.) He left the Cubs and returned to help them win the 1984 Division title, then to the Giants where they won the 1987 NL West title and the 1989 Pennant. The knuckler helped him go 19-11 at age 39 and 17-8 at 40.

He won 214 games, and would have won a lot more if he hadn't had to pitch for some awful Cub teams as well as a couple of good ones. His brother Paul Reuschel also pitched for the Cubs. His Giants teammate Scott Garrelts of Buckley, Illinois almost made this team, but he divided his career between starting and relieving and an injury ended it early, so I couldn't make him either one of these starters or the reliever.

SP Larry Gura of Joliet, Illinois. Began and ended his career with the Cubs, but never did much for them, or for the Yankees. In 1976, the Yankees traded him to the Kansas City Royals for Fran Healy, and that may have been a mistake, especially since Healy was an ordinary defensive catcher who couldn't hit and hasn't been much of a broadcaster, either.

Gura became part of a KC bullpen, and in 1978 the rotation, that won 3 straight AL West titles and gave the Yankees fits in the ALCS. He won 18 games during the Royals' Pennant year of 1980 and did it again in 1982. But in 1985, he got hit with awful luck, getting hurt, and getting traded from the Royals to the Cubs... just after the Cubs won their 1st NL East title ever and right before the Royals finally won the World Series. He was done after that season, but his career record is a fine 126-97, pretty good considering he was only a full-time starter between the ages of 30 and 36.

SP Mike Boddicker of Norway, Iowa. He was a pretty good prospect for the Baltimore Orioles under Earl Weaver, but it wasn't until Earl retired (the first time) and made way for Joe Altobelli to manage that Boddicker blossomed, going 16-8 for the 1983 O's, helping them win the World Series. He won 20 in 1984, but the team began its decline after a generation of nearly always contending and often winning titles.

He started the 1988 season as part of that awful O's team that lost their first 21 games, but he got a reprieve, getting traded to the Red Sox and helping them win AL East titles in 1988 and '90. A trade to Kansas City after that season was the beginning of the end, but he went 134-116 with a 108 ERA+. For much of my youth, he was one of the best pitchers in the game.

RP Dan Plesac of Crown Point, Indiana. Another guy who had bad luck with his teams. He got to the Milwaukee Brewers after their early-1980s glory days, got to the Cubs after their 1980s Division titles, left them before their 1998 Wild Card win, got to the Pirates after their early-1990s Division titles, got to the Toronto Blue Jays after their early-1990s World Series wins, got traded away from the Arizona Diamondbacks right before their 2001 World Championship, and released by the Phillies before they started winning NL East titles.

Still, he managed 158 saves (including 124 in his first 5 seasons with the Brewers), and remained in the majors as a lefty bullpen specialist until he was 41, and still had a 2.70 ERA in his last season.

MGR Joe Girardi of Peoria, Illinois. He doesn't make this team as a catcher (though I will always love that triple he hit off Greg Maddux to start the 3-run inning that won Game 6 and thus the 1996 World Series for the Yankees), but he's now won Manager of the Year in the NL (2006 Marlins) and a Pennant and World Series from the AL (2009 Yankees). He's managed the Yankees to 4 Playoff berths, 3 Division titles, and a World Championship. As with his predecessor, guy name of Torre, he's proved he's not just an average Joe.

Chicago Cubs' All-Time Regional Team

Over the weekend, the Mets went out to Wrigley Field, and got embarrassed by the Chicago Cubs, 7-6 and 5-3, before pounding out an 18-5 win on Sunday.

In 1964, the Mets (then a much bigger joke franchise than the Cubs... and they are again) beat the Cubs 19-1 in a day game at Wrigley. In those pre-Internet days, legend has it that someone was at work and couldn't watch or listen to the game, and called up a newspaper's sports department and asked, "How'd the Mets do today?"

"Great!" said the voice on the other end. "They scored 19 runs!"

"Did they win?" asked this fan, already, in Year 3, well versed in Metdom.

*

In making out the all-time teams from the Cubs' and White Sox' regions, the easy part was deciding what part of Illinois a particular player was from: North, which means they’re either in the Cubs’ or White Sox’ territory; or South, which means I’ve probably already listed them with, or considered and then rejected them for, the St. Louis Cardinals.

The hard part was deciding whether to put a player who geographically qualifies for Chicago in general on the Cubs' or Sox' all-time regional team. If they -- whether from Illinois, Iowa or Indiana -- were associated with one or the other, it was easy. If they publicly stated a youthful preference for either team, that also helped.

If neither of those factors applied, then I had to guess. From Illinois, and north of the Chicago River? Cubs. South of it? Sox. In that western region of Northern Illinois between the river’s branches? Split it down the middle. If I guessed wrong – if a guy was from, say, Bolingbrook, and I listed him with the Sox team, and he actually grew up a Cub fan, well, tough cookies, he should have told me.

Then there were the other 2 States. Iowa was easy: Despite its connection to the White Sox through the film Field of Dreams, Des Moines, the State Capital, is home to the Triple-A Iowa Cubs since 1981 – although Des Moines was a White Sox farm club, the Iowa Oaks, from 1973 to 1980!

As for Indiana, the southwestern tail, including Evansville and Terre Haute, I gave to the Cardinals, while the southern half, including the city of Indianapolis, will go to the Cincinnati Reds. But the northwestern quarter is White Sox territory. Still, if a player from any of those three States -- whose names resulted in an old minor league in the region being called "the Three-I League" -- was associated with either the Cubs or the White Sox, then I overrode the secondary geographical reasons I've outlined above.

In 1981, folksinger Steve Goodman, author of the song "The City of New Orleans," wrote "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request." Sadly, he actually was one: He had leukemia, and died in September 1984, just after accepting an offer from the team to throw out the ceremonial first ball at one of their NLCS games, the first postseason games to be played at Wrigley Field since 1945.

Do they still play the blues in Chicago
when baseball season rolls around?
When the snow melts away
do the Cubbies still play
in their ivy-covered burial ground?

When I was a boy
they were my pride and joy
but now they only bring fatigue
to the home of the brave, the land of the free
and the doormat of the National League.

Chicago Cubs' All-Time Regional Team

"I've got season tickets to watch the angels play now," Steve sang, "and that's just what I'm gonna do. But you, the living, you're stuck here with the Cubs, so it's me that feels sorry for you." Maybe Steve will feel better, knowing that, where he is, he can watch this team -- even though some of these players are still alive.

1B Phil Cavarretta of Lane Technical High School in Chicago. This hometown hero batted .293 with 118 RBIS and led the NL in hits in 1944, and in batting and slugging in 1945, winning the MVP that season. With the Cubs, he won NL Pennants in 1935 (as a rookie), 1938 and 1945. He's still alive, and still one of the biggest Cub heroes. (UPDATE: Cavarretta died on December 18, 2010, at the age of 94. He was the last living player who had played against Babe Ruth, in 1935 for the Cubs against the Boston Braves.)

Dishonorable Mention to Adrian Constantine "Cap" Anson of Marshalltown, Iowa. Statistically, this is a no-brainer. His lifetime batting average was .334, his caeer OPS+ was 142, 8 times led the NL in RBIs, 3,012 hits – the first ever to 3,000, and 3,435 hits if you count his National Association years (1871-75, before the White Stockings/Colts/Orphans/Cubs were founded in 1876), including 582 doubles. He batted .388 with 100 RBIs at age 42, and .331 with 90 RBIs at 44.

He won NL Pennants in 1876, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1885 and 1886, and was player-manager on all but the 1st. And he was one of the people who brought the word of baseball all over the country, including his "invention" of spring training, when he brought the White Stockings to Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1886, to "boil the beer out of them."

But because Cap was the force behind baseball drawing the color barrier in 1887, he has to be regarded as one of the game's villains. He could be a Doctor Jekyll, but also a Mister Hyde.

2B Gene Baker of Davenport, Iowa. He was called up to the Cubs in September 1953, at age 28, after having played in the Negro Leagues – as did Ernie Banks, although Baker had also starred for the Cubs' top farm team of the time, the Pacific Coast League's Los Angeles Angels. The 2 of them made their debuts together, becoming the Cubs' 1st black players. Banks became “Mr. Cub” and a Hall-of-Famer. Baker became an All-Star in 1955, playing in all 154 games. In 1960, he was a reserve on the World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates.

Honorable Mention to Emil Verban of Lincoln, Illinois. In 1975, a group of Cub fans based in Washington, D.C. formed the Emil Verban Society. He was picked as "the epitome of a Cub player," competent but obscure, and typifying the Chicago work ethic. Verban initially believed he was being ridiculed, but his ill feeling disappeared several years later when he was flown to Washington to meet President Ronald Reagan, who had been a Cub broadcaster in the 1930s and was eventually a Society member, at the White House.

While he was obscure, Verban was hardly ordinary. After a few years of bouncing around the low minors, he played well for the Columbus Redbirds, a St. Louis Cardinals farm team, in 1943, and in 1944, as World War II began to really thin out big-league rosters, the Cards called him to the big club, and he helped them win the World Series as a 28-year-old rookie. With most of the good players coming back in 1946, the Cards traded him – which could have been a good move, as they won another Series – to the Philadelphia Phillies, and he made the NL All-Star team in '46 and '47. 

The Phils traded him to the Cubs, and he only spent 2 years with them, making him an odd choice for a fan club's name, regardless of how good he was. He finished with a .272 batting average, although he did bat .280 in a Cub uniform.

SS Lou Boudreau of Harvey, Illinois. Cub fans know him best as a broadcaster. But he was a basketball star at Bradley University in Peoria, and played in the National Basketball League, the Midwest-based league that produced the Minneapolis Lakers (now Los Angeles), the Fort Wayne Pistons (now Detroit), the Syracuse Nationals (now the Philadelphia 76ers), the Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento Kings) and the Buffalo Bisons (now the Atlanta Hawks).

It was because he was captain of his college and pro basketball teams that he suggested to Cleveland Indians owner Alva Bradley that he be named manager of the Indians when the office opened up for the 1942 season -- even though Boudreau was just 24 years old. There had been a pair of 23-year-old interim managers earlier in baseball, but Boudreau became, and remains, the youngest permanent manager in baseball history.

To be honest, he wasn't a very good manager, as he later proved with the Boston Red Sox and Kansas City Athletics. The only time Lou Boudreau the manager did well was when he had Lou Boudreau the shortstop.

A 7-time All-Star, he was baseball's best shortstop in the 1940s (eventually succeeded in that regard by Phil Rizzuto, who also became a broadcaster), leading the American League in batting in 1944 and doubles in 1941, '44 and '47. Lifetime batting average .295, OPS+ 120, 2 100-RBI seasons, and all this while playing most of his home games at League Park (great park for a lefty hitter, but not for a righthanded one like Boudreau) and the place usually known as "cavernous Cleveland Municipal Stadium."

In 1948, he batted .355 (and it wasn't enough to lead the League), 18 homers and 106 RBIs, and led the Indians to the Pennant, needing to beat the Red Sox in a one-game Playoff at Fenway Park to do it, and hitting 2 home runs in that game. The team then stayed in Boston to play the Braves in the 1st 2 games of the World Series, and won it, still Cleveland's last title. At age 31, Boudreau was a player-manager who'd won the World Series -- still the last one ever to do that. (Pete Rose got the Cincinnati Reds to 2nd place in the NL West in '85 and '86.)

But he only played 1 more full season, and a change in ownership led to his firing as a manager and trade as a player -- to the Red Sox, where he floundered and retired. But he's in the Hall of Fame, and the Indians retired his Number 5. His daughter Sharyn married pitcher Denny McLain.

3B Freddie Lindstrom of Lane Technical High School in Chicago. He is often considered one of the players who got into the Hall of Fame solely because his former New York Giants teammate Frankie Frisch was on the Hall's Committee on Veterans. The "Frisch Five" usually consist of Giants Lindstrom, George "Highpockets" Kelly, Dave Bancroft and Ross Youngs, and St. Louis Cardinal teammate Jesse Haines

He is sometimes ridiculed for not one but two grounders that hit a pebble and soared over his head in Game 7 of the 1924 World Series, when he was a rookie, just short of his 19th birthday. But Lindstrom was actually one of the top players of is era, probably the 2nd-best 3rd baseman behind Pie Traynor of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

His lifetime batting average was .311, his OPS+ 109. In 1928 he led the NL with a strong 231 hits, and he got that many again in 1930 (although he didn't lead the League, as his Giant teammate Bill Terry set an NL record that still stands with 254). He had 2 100-RBI seasons, and helped the Giants win the Pennant in 1924 and his hometown Cubs to do it in 1935. But he was already in decline, and played his last game a year later at 30.

He later managed a Giants farm team, the Knoxville Smokies of Tennessee, to Southern Association Pennants in 1940 and '41. (He could've still been playing, as he was just 35 in '41.) His son Charlie Lindstrom played 1 game in the majors, as a catcher for his hometown White Sox in 1958.

LF Cliff Floyd of South Holland, Illinois. Currently a free agent, but at 37, can we really say he's done? Maybe, because injuries have prevented him from having a full season since 2005. But he's got a 119 career OPS+, 340 doubles and 233 homers, despite playing most of his home games in pitchers' parks: The Olympic Stadium in Montreal, whatever they're calling the Marlins/Dolphins stadium this year, and Shea Stadium in New York.

He's helped 4 different teams reach the postseason: The 1997 Florida Marlins (World Champions), the 2006 Mets (NL East Champs and 1 run from a Pennant), the 2007 Cubs (NL Central Champs) and the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays (AL Pennant). He's never been great, but, when healthy, he's been very useful. Surely, somebody could use him for the stretch drive this season, right? He wouldn't be eligible for the postseason, but if he gets picked up tomorrow, he could mean the difference between someone making the postseason, and not.

CF Kenny Lofton of East Chicago, Indiana. Speaking of making the postseason, few players have ever done it like this guy. The Indians in 1995, '96, '98, '99, 2001 and '07; the Atlanta Braves in 1997; the San Francisco Giants in 2002; the Cubs in 2003; the Yankees in 2004; and the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2006. That includes Pennants in 1995 and 2002 (and, very nearly, 2003 with his hometown Cubs, alas, Steve Bartman; and, very nearly, 2004 with the Yankees, alas, Kevin Brown). 

That's 6 different teams reaching the postseason 11 times in 17 seasons. And that doesn't count the Indians being in position to win the AL Wild Card when the Strike of '94 hit, or 2005 when he was with the Phillies and they just missed the NL Wild Card. He's one of these guys that "seem to get followed around by winning teams."

Of course, you can also say that a lot of teams wanted to get rid of him, including the Braves getting rid of him after just 1 year, and the Indians then signed him back. And accounts of the 2004 Yankees suggest that he was not missed when he left: They were willing to trade him for Felix Rodriguez. (Who?) Naturally.

But he wasn't just along for the ride on those teams: His lifetime batting average was .299, his OPS+ 107, 2,428 hits including 383 doubles, 116 triples and 130 homers, and 622 stolen bases -- 15th all-time, 12th from 1900 onward, 9th in the post-1920 Lively Ball Era, 8th in the post-1947 Integration Era, 7th in the post-1969 Divisional Play Era, and the leader among players who began their career after 1985.

Is Lofton worthy of the Hall of Fame? He will be eligible in 2013. His his legs were great, his bat and glove good. According to Baseball-Reference.com, the HOF Monitor, where a "Likely HOFer" is at 100, has him at 91; the HOF Standards, where an "Average HOFer" is at 50, has him at 42. That's borderline at best. But B-R's 10 Most Similar Batters includes Harry Hooper, Max Carey and Fred Clarke (all in); Ken Griffey Jr. (will be in, barring steroid revelations); Tim Raines (who should be in already); and Johnny Damon (who has a chance). Lofton has a chance.

RF Mike Marshall of Buffalo Grove, Illinois. No, not the relief pitcher who set records for games pitched in a season that still stand in both Leagues, although that one also played for the Dodgers. This was an outfielder who made the NL All-Star Team in 1984, and helped the Dodgers win NL West titles in 1983 and '85 and the '88 World Series, before receiving the kiss of death: He went to the Mets, in a "My Headache For Your Headache Trade," with Alejandro Pena, for Juan Samuel. 

Samuel had a few good years left, but becoming a Met pretty much ended Marshall's effectiveness. He hit 137 homers before the trade, and was only 29; he hit just 11 afterward, and, beset by injuries, played his last big-league game at 31. He is now the president-GM, and former manager, of the Yuma Scorpions of the independent Golden Baseball League.

C Jim Sundberg of Galesburg, Illinois. A 6-time Gold Glover with the Texas Rangers, he is probably the finest defensive catcher the AL has had in my lifetime (and I don't want to hear about that pudgy steroid-user the Rangers had later). A 3-time All-Star, he never reached the postseason with the Rangers, but won a ring with the Kansas City Royals in 1985. Not a great hitter, he did bat .291 in 1977 and 4 times hit at least 10 home runs, keeping in mind that, at the time, the Rangers played in Arlington Stadium, a frying pan of a ballpark that was no friend to hitters. He now works in the Rangers' front office.

The starting rotation comes next, and the entry for the first pitcher on it is rather long, but his story is very involved. Please, bear with me, because it's worth the telling.

SP Al Spalding of Byron, Illinois. One of the true pioneers of baseball, for good and for ill. In 1865, at age 15, Albert Goodwill Spalding was already pitching for one of the top teams in the Midwest. Two years later, he was being paid to play, I mean clerk, in Chicago. (In other words, he held a job just so he could play for that company's team. Paying someone to play baseball at that time was still considered wrong.)

In 1871, with the founding of the National Association, the 1st all-professional league, he joined the Boston Red Stockings, some of whose players had been on the 1st openly professional team, the 1869-70 Cincinnati Red Stockings (hence the name). This team, forerunners of the Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves, won the NA Pennant in 1872, '73, '74 and '75, during which Spalding won 204 games, losing 53, with a 2.21 ERA, and also batted .323, playing the outfield or 1st base when he didn't pitch.

The success of the Red Stockings was one of the reasons the NA collapsed. In 1876, the National League was formed by Spalding and William Hulbert, including the Chicago White Stockings, which the men also owned, thus allowing Spalding to "come home." Half the Boston roster was lured there by Spalding. This team, forerunners of the Chicago Cubs, won the 1st NL Pennant (seriously), and Spalding batted .312, went 47-12 as a pitcher, and was also the manager and part-owner. (I cannot confirm that he sold hot dogs while the White Stockings were batting.) After this, though, he began to lose interest in playing, and at age 26 he played his last game.

At the time he pitched, the pitcher's box (there was not yet a "mound") was just 45 feet from home plate, and all pitching was underhand (though not necessarily underhanded, meaning with trickery). Can I really say that Spalding would have been a great pitcher from 60 feet, 6 inches, and from 15 (or, after 1969, 10) inches up, throwing overhanded? It's hard to say, because quite a few pitchers who were great up until 1893 (went it went from 50 feet to 60 1/2) weren't that good afterward.

But I have no doubt that he was as great an athlete as there was at the time, and as he was a brilliant businessman, I have no qualms about his ability to learn to adapt to modern conditions, and to become an All-Star under the modern rules. The hard part would probably be convincing this man of the 1870s to get into the bucket seat of the DeLorean!

At the time he hung up his... shoes (I don't know if they were "spikes" back then, but whatever the footwear was then called, his company made them), he was already a millionaire (and these were Rutherford B. Hayes dollars, as sports historian Bert Randolph Sugar would say), because the NL was exclusively using baseballs made by the sporting-goods company that still bears the Spalding name. (Not until a century later, in 1977, would both leagues switch to Rawlings.)

Spalding published the 1st annual official guidebook on baseball, and in 1888-89 organized and led the 1st world tour by baseball teams. (At 38, he could still have been playing.) By this time, no one could doubt the phrase that had already been in use for roughly 30 years: Baseball was America's "national pastime." He died in 1915, and was one of the wealthiest men in America.

The downside? He also helped to establish baseball's reserve clause, thus making him a titan of management and an enemy to the labor of which he was once a part, thus, along with having been a dominant player in his sport, setting the stage for fellow Chicagoan Charlie Comiskey, and later hockey's Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.

In so doing, he helped to break the Players' League revolt of 1890, keeping the upper hand with management for the next 85 years. He also accepted his 1st baseman-manager Cap Anson's 1887 insistence that the game be all-white, and this held for 60 years. He traded away players like Mike "King" Kelly and John Clarkson because they had too much fondness for drink and women, and his moralizing led directly to the breakup of the Cub champions of the mid-1880s, where they didn't win another Pennant for 20 years.

And he appointed the commission that was meant to determine the origins of baseball, forming the fraudulent myth of Abner Doubleday being the game's inventor. Spalding was one of the 1st men inducted into the Hall of Fame, but it's thanks to him, as much as to anybody else (certainly not at all to General Doubleday), that the Hall is in Cooperstown, New York, and not in Manhattan, or Hoboken, or The Bronx, or even his adopted hometowns of Boston or Chicago, any of which would be more appropriate than the nice but damn near inaccessible little village in the Catskills!

SP Joe McGinnity of Cornwall, Illinois. He only pitched 10 seasons (ages 28 to 37, so it's not like he wore himself out, he just got discovered late), but his nickname of the Iron Man (or Iron Joe) was still fitting, as not only did he work in a foundry in the off-season (the Theodore Roosevelt years were not a time of big salaries for ballplayers), but for pitching both ends of doubleheaders. In 1903, he did this 3 times, winning all 6 games. He won the 1900 NL Pennant with the Brooklyn Superbas (forerunners of the Dodgers), and the 1904 Pennant and the 1905 World Series with the New York Giants.

He won 87 games for the Eastern League's Newark Indians (as a player-manager), so, combined with the 46 games he won for Brooklyn and the 151 he won with the Giants (despite pitching in the Polo Grounds, which even then had short distances to the foul poles), he won 284 games for New York Tri-State Area teams -- starting at age 28.

He won 246 games (against just 142 losses) in 10 years in the majors, and another 216 in the minors, his last at age 54. He threw his 1st professional pitch during the Presidency of William McKinley and his last during that of Calvin Coolidge, starting when Cap Anson was newly-retired and ending when Lou Gehrig (also known as the Iron Man, or the Iron Horse) and Mel Ott were rookies. Move over, Robert Downey Jr., this is the real Iron Man.

SP Rick Reuschel of Camp Point, Illinois. Between Fergie Jenkins in 1972 and Greg Maddux in 1992, this portly knuckleballer was the only Cub pitcher to win 20 games in a season, doing so in 1977, and it helped keep the Cubs in the NL East race until August. (They tailed off, surprise, and finished 81-81.) He left the Cubs and returned to help them win the 1984 Division title, then to the Giants where they won the 1987 NL West title and the 1989 Pennant.

The knuckler helped him go 19-11 at age 39 and 17-8 at 40. He won 214 games, and would have won a lot more if he hadn't had to pitch for some awful Cub teams as well as a couple of good ones. His brother Paul Reuschel also pitched for the Cubs. His Giants teammate Scott Garrelts of Buckley, Illinois almost made this team, but he divided his career between starting and relieving and an injury ended it early, so I couldn't make him either one of these starters or the reliever.

SP Larry Gura of Joliet, Illinois. He began and ended his career with the Cubs, but never did much for them, or for the Yankees. In 1976, the Yankees traded him to the Kansas City Royals for Fran Healy, and that may have been a mistake, especially since Healy was an ordinary defensive catcher who couldn't hit and hasn't been much of a broadcaster, either. (Though Healy did become Reggie Jackson's best friend on the team, and that may have been more important than any playing Healy did.)

Gura became part of a KC bullpen, and in 1978 the rotation, that won 3 straight AL West titles and gave the Yankees fits in the ALCS. He won 18 games during the Royals' Pennant year of 1980 and did it again in 1982. But in 1985, he got hit with awful luck, getting hurt, and getting traded from the Royals to the Cubs... just after the Cubs won their 1st NL East title ever and right before the Royals finally won the World Series. He was done after that season, but his career record is a fine 126-97, pretty good considering he was only a full-time starter between the ages of 30 and 36.

SP Mike Boddicker of Norway, Iowa. A pretty good prospect for the Baltimore Orioles under Earl Weaver, but it wasn't until Earl retired (the 1st time) and made way for Joe Altobelli to manage that Boddicker blossomed, going 16-8 for the 1983 O's, helping them win the World Series. He won 20 in 1984, but the team began its decline after a generation of nearly always contending and often winning titles.

He started the 1988 season as part of that awful O's team that lost their 1st 21 games, but he got a reprieve, getting traded to the Red Sox and helping them win AL East titles in 1988 and '90. A trade to Kansas City after that season was the beginning of the end, but he went 134-116 with a 108 ERA+. For much of my youth, he was one of the best pitchers in the game.

RP Dan Plesac of Crown Point, Indiana. Another guy who had bad luck with his teams. He got to the Milwaukee Brewers after their early-1980s glory days, got to the Cubs after their 1980s Division titles, left them before their 1998 Wild Card win, got to the Pirates after their early-1990s Division titles, got to the Toronto Blue Jays after their early-1990s World Series wins, got traded away from the Arizona Diamondbacks right before their 2001 World Championship, and was released by the Phillies before they started winning NL East titles.

Still, he managed 158 saves (including 124 in his 1st 5 seasons with the Brewers), and remained in the majors as a lefty bullpen specialist until he was 41, and still had a 2.70 ERA in his last season.

MGR Joe Girardi of Peoria, Illinois. He doesn't make this team as a catcher (though I will always love that triple he hit off Greg Maddux to start the 3-run inning that won Game 6 and thus the 1996 World Series for the Yankees), but he's now won Manager of the Year in the NL (2006 Marlins) and a Pennant and World Series from the AL (2009 Yankees). As with his predecessor, guy name of Torre, he's proved he's not just an average Joe.