I remember watching Carlos Beltrán during his early Major League years with the Royals, and he was exciting to watch from day one. He had quite the career, and I am glad to see him inducted into the Hall of Fame.
About one hundred miles west of Philadelphia, a train carrying fans to the Phillies-Pirates game derailed on July 28, 1962. Three of the train’s cars rolled down a twenty-five-foot embankment into the Susquehanna River. According to some reports, 19 were killed in the wreck, whereas others report 22 killed, and more than one hundred fans were injured.
Fourteen adjoining rows of empty seats along first-base line in Connie Mack Stadium were especially conspicuous that day, as 12,450 spectators watch the home team beat the Pirates, 9-2.
If you are interested in reading more about this gruesome train wreck, you can find the New York Times‘ coverage of the event here.
Or you can view video footage from the wreck in the report below:
I came across this video showing how professional baseballs are made. It is quite the fascinating process. As I watch this, I do wonder about the workers in that factory and hope they are getting paid a fair wage.
I once wrote about baseball being played on ice during the 1860s for a brief spell. If you’d like to see what that might look like today, this team of ice skaters put on a brief demonstration of “biceball” in the modern world:
It’s been a while since I last shared a Hall of Fame induction speech here. Ichiro Suzuki’s speech from yesterday’s induction ceremony in Cooperstown was so good, I just can’t not share it. It turns out, in addition to being a great ballplayer, Ichiro is quite the comedian, as well.
During a softball game when I was a teenager, I had a teammate who hit a foul ball, and next thing we all knew, the home plate umpire was on his back, his face beet red. We quickly learned that the foul ball had caught the umpire between the legs — an especially awkward occurrence for a male umpire at a high school girls’ softball game. While everyone waited for the umpire to regain his bearings, girls in both dugouts were noticeably working hard not to giggle too loudly. I felt bad for the guy.
It’s not uncommon for a player to get hit by the ball at some point in a game. However, as in situations like the one above, sometimes it is one of the umpires who gets hit. Someone put together the compilation video below of MLB umpires getting hit by the baseball, and watching it is like watching a train wreck. You feel bad for them, but somehow, you can’t stop watching.
I honestly only first heard about IMG Academy a few weeks ago, and I was definitely intrigued. For those unfamiliar like myself, IMG Academy is a preparatory school — but it is wholly unlike most conventional prep schools you will have heard of before. As much as they focus on academics, students at IMG also receive some of the best sports training and preparation a high schooler can get.
I stumbled across this video a couple of days ago, which highlights the baseball program at IMG Academy:
For a broader view of the school as a whole, you can also check out this video:
Bob Uecker received the Ford C. Frick award for broadcasting for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2003.
R.I.P.
I enjoyed watching the Woody Woodpecker cartoons as a kid. I think a lot of kids did back in the day. I came across this short episode that features Woody playing baseball, and it brought back some fun memories.
Here’s a fascinating video from Business Insider that I came across featuring Victor Conte, founder and president of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO). BALCO, you might recall, was a major player in MLB’s steroid scandal of the early-2000s. In this video, Conte talks openly about his role in the distribution of performance-enhancing substances, his thoughts on how pervasive doping has become in sports, and his thoughts about who is impacted by it all. The video focuses primarily on track and field and the Olympics, but I find it fascinating to see how this all is able to happen in general, and as the video shows, how the pressures across all sports might persuade an athlete to participate in drug use that they might not otherwise consider.