I have several baseball notes, so I decided to do an all baseball version.
It isn't often that I fill up the box with so much on one topic, but it works this time.
Sorry to hear of the passing of well-traveled outfielder Jim Landis at the age of 83.
Landis won five Gold Gloves patrolling centerfield for the White Sox and was considered the best fielding outfielder of his day.
Landis had his career year with the bat for the White Sox in 1961 with career highs in all three major categories at .283/22/85.
The SABR biography of Landis can be found here.
Two articles from Bruce Markusen's Card Corner with the topics both being outfielders from my youth in long time favorite Al Oliver and Bobby Tolan.
I remember Bobby Tolan more as an ace pinch hitter more than a star, but he was on the verge of becoming a headline player with excellent 1969 and 1970 seasons with the Reds.
I knew Tolan (article here) had missed the entire 1971 season with a torn Achilles tendon, but what I didn't know was how it happened.
Back in the days where players weren't making a ton of money, in the off-season, players used to make money, free meals etc when it was offered, there were a lot more use of promoting themselves and their teams as well and one manner of doing so that doesn't happen anymore is barnstorming winter basketball teams.
Usually, a few players get together (with a couple of ringers, if not enough players are on the team) travel around and play a game against some locals, sign some autographs and pick up a few bucks.
The problem with this is when you take in the chance of injury and the Reds banned the winter basketball team from playing even though manager Sparky Anderson gave permission.
And of course, that meant something had to happen and it was Tolan's Achilles that went.
Tolan would return with a strong 1972, but that was the last above average season for Tolan's career before leaving Cincinnati.
I thought I might have a chance of meeting Tolan when his son Robbie played for the Suns in late 2007, but he didn't return for 2008 due to injury and then a tragic shooting incident in Dec.2008.
Almost ten years to the day, the second Forgotten Superstar in the series was long time TRS favorite Al Oliver.
Markusen writes of the career of the almost Hall of Famer and what Oliver is doing today.
I found one interesting note that Texas had a trade set for Oliver to go to the Yankees for Oscar Gamble, Bob Watson and Mike Morgan that was scuttled when Gamble used his no-trade clause to block the trade.
If Oliver and his lefty swing would have gone to New York with the short right field wall-Oliver would have made the Hall-Bank on it...
SABR's Baseball Card Blog writes about card #28 in the 1959 Fleer Ted Williams set and the "Williams Shift".
The shift was created to deal with Williams and was the forerunner of the shifts (far too overdone for my tastes) in today's game.
I used to have a few cards in that set and despite considering myself a Williams fan, it's never been a set that I found all that visually appealing.
It's becoming more and more of a trend in minor league baseball for major league teams to buy minor league teams in order to ensure that their teams cannot be moved out of a particular league or keep them in a geographical footprint that is desirable.
Three teams changed hands of late as the Milwaukee Brewers are the new owners of the Carolina League's (High A) Carolina Mudcats, the New York Mets bought the International League (AAA) Syracuse Chiefs and the Texas Rangers purchased the South Atlantic League's (Low A) Hickory Crawdads.
The Brewers and Rangers were buying teams in towns that their farm clubs were already playing in, but the Mets bought Syracuse, despite the Mets having one year to go on their contract with Las Vegas so the Mets will own a team for one year that the Washington Nationals will provide the players for-unless the two teams can come to an agreement to switch now, which I am sure the Mets would jump at, but I doubt that Washington would be thrilled to do.
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