by David Krell | May 3, 2017 | David Krell
They say the third time’s a charm. And so it was with Lefty Grove’s 300th victory, which occurred on July 25, 1941, against the Cleveland Indians. “Here the hundreds of fans who had been waiting for this moment ever since it became possible for...
by David Krell | May 2, 2017 | David Krell
1975 was a year of shocks in popular culture. M*A*S*H killed off Henry Blake, the lovable, goofy, and semi-competent lieutenant colonel in charge of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital 4077; Jaws injected fear into filmgoers thinking about going to the beach for summer...
by David Krell | May 1, 2017 | David Krell
Baseball—like any other living organism—evolves, adjusts, and adapts with beauty emerging from minutiae, memory, and, in some cases, masochism reinforced by decades of unrequited love. See Red Sox Boston; 1919-2003. See Cubs, Chicago; 1909-2015. On January 11,...
by David Krell | Apr 30, 2017 | David Krell
As San Francisco morphed into the headquarters for counterculture, with the intersection of Haight and Ashbury becoming as well known to hippies as that of Hollywood and Vine to fans of show business, Juan Marichal fired fastballs for the Giants, a team transplanted...
by David Krell | Apr 29, 2017 | David Krell
Victory, it is said, has a thousand fathers. Baseball, too. Daniel Lucius “Doc” Adams is, for reasons passing understanding, without tangible recognition in Cooperstown, despite being a highly significant contributor to baseball’s genesis. It is...
by David Krell | Apr 28, 2017 | David Krell
Imagining Don Drysdale playing for a team other than the Dodgers is like imagining Hershey’s making products without chocolate. Drysdale, he of the cannon disguised as a right arm firing baseballs through National League lineups in the 1950s and the 1960s,...
by David Krell | Apr 27, 2017 | David Krell
Wichita, by virtue of its service as a site for leading manufacturers in the aviation industry, owns the label “Air Capital of the World”—Cessna, for example, has operations there. The Kansas Historical Society web site details Clyde Cessna’s...
by David Krell | Apr 26, 2017 | David Krell
What if the Dodgers had stayed in Brooklyn? Further, what if migration in the modern era had never taken place, thereby forcing expansion in Kansas City, San Francisco, and other MLB cities. My paradigm assumes the following: Tampa, Toronto, Arizona, and Montreal do...
by David Krell | Apr 25, 2017 | David Krell
Chicago welcomed an addition to its iconography on July 1, 1910. Comiskey Park, that structure serving as a second home for baseball fans on the Windy City’s south side, débuted in an era of new stadia—Fenway Park in 1912, Ebbets Field in 1913, Weeghman Park...
by David Krell | Apr 24, 2017 | David Krell
In a Strat-O-Matic Hall of Fame matchup between Post-1960 National Leaguers and Pre-1960 American Leaguers, the senior circuit edged Bob Feller and his cohorts 6-5. To qualify, a National League player could have played before 1960, as long as he played at least five...