In other baseball news...

Recently I mentioned the fact that in 1970, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher and all-around bad-boy Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter, despite the fact that he was tripping on acid at the time he did it.

The next day I heard from one of my brethren-in-blogging, John M., who dispenses indispensable info over at Uncertain Times. Back in March, he also posted about "Dock Ellis' Excellent Adventure", which has another funny Dock story, plus a link to a piece that Weekend America did on it. Check it out here.

I have been recommending to friends the Chuck Brodsky CD The Baseball Ballads (2002) for years, but I don't know if I ever mentioned it here. If you like baseball, or offbeat history, or offbeat baseball history, this might be right in your strike zone, as it were. Brodsky is a huge baseball fan, and the CD is filled with songs concerning some of the more fascinating footnotes in baseball history.

Some of these you may already know the story on, but they are really good songs, too.

Examples:

"The Ballad of Eddie Klepp" - Pitched for the Cleveland Buckeyes in 1946 as the first white man to play in the Negro Leagues.

"Bonehead Merckle" - In 1908 Fred Merkle learned that you can be a decent slugger, hit doubles all day long and even make it to the playoffs. But forget to touch one little base and you never hear the end of it...

"Moe Berg: The Song" - MLB catcher, coach, spy... a/k/a "the brainiest guy in baseball"

In addition, now there's a new CD out from The Baseball Project -- i.e. REM's Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey from The Young Fresh Fellows and a couple other cats as well. The CD is Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails. I haven't heard much of it, but it's in the same vein.

Some song titles:

"Harvey Haddix" - On May 26, 1959, pitched 12 2/3 perfect innings against the Milwaukeee Braves, only to end up losing the game 1-0 on the last batter.

"The Yankee Flipper" - a/k/a Jack McDowell, who flipped off the fans at Yankee Stadium after being booed off the field after getting bombed by the White Sox on July 18, 1995 in the second game of a doubleheader.

"Ted Fracking Williams" (well, that's what the title would be on Battlestar Galactica, at least) - I gather the old Tedster was a bit hard to like.

Technorati tags: baseball, history