NOTE: This is a guest post from Tim Harms. Manners matter. More on that in a moment as I share the story of meeting my baseball hero and getting his autograph. My formative years as a baseball fan came in Wichita, Kansas, in the late 1970s. Kansas City is a three-hour drive from Wichita, and …
“Is it a full moon or somethin’?” That’s what my mother-in-law says when weird stuff happens. June 20th, 1980 must have featured multiple full moons because some bizarre crap went down. On the field, it began in Boston when the Red Sox hosted the California Angels. The Angels were decimated by injuries but the lineup …
Being an Indians fan is hard. REALLY HARD. But in the spring of 1980, there was a glimmer of hope and it came courtesy of an injury to one of their best players. During spring training, first baseman Andre Thornton, who led the team in home runs in 1979 with 26, tore cartilage in his …
The poster hung on the wall of my bedroom in southwest Ohio for years. MVP and CY. Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton. My guys. I was far from unique in worshiping the two future Hall-of-Famers, but to this day the site of this poster still makes me smile. The Phillies were considered underachievers entering …
The most important day of the 1980 baseball season may very well have taken place in June of 1971. June 8th was draft day. The Chicago White Sox held the #1 pick and chose a high school catcher named Danny Goodwin from Peoria Central High School. Goodwin was the consensus #1 choice, a 6′-2″ 195 …
The Pittsburgh Pirates sent a scout to look at him. He left after a few minutes. Not because he wasn’t impressed, but because he knew his there was no chance the kid would still be available when the Pirates pick rolled around. A Phillies scout called him, “the best prospect I’ve seen in 30 years.” “I’d …
