Martin Luther King Jr. waits for a pitch from his daughter Yolanda in the backyard of their home in Atlanta (1964)
"We all disliked Gary CARTER when we played against him. He was just a little rah-rah varsity collegiate type, even though he didn’t go to college. But I respected him as a player. And when he came to New York, I appreciated him, too." Keith Hernandez
MLB catcher and Chicago White Sox manager Jeff Torborg passed away in Westfield, N.J. He was 83 years old
Baseball Birthdays January 21 1922 Sam Mele outfielder/manager (Minnesota Twins record 102 wins 1965), born in Astoria, New York (d. 2017) 1948 Dan Morrison umpire (World Series 1992; MLB All Star Game 1988; AL C'ship Series 1989, 96, 99), born in Glasgow, Kentucky (d. 2023) ' 1952 Mike Krukow pitcher (MLB All Star 1986 SF Giants; Chicago Cubs) and broadcaster (KNBR [with Duane Kuiper] SF Giants), born in Long Beach, California 1966 Chris Hammond pitcher (Braves, Marlins) 1968 Tom Urbani pitcher (St Louis Cards, Detroit Tigers), born in Santa Cruz, California 1969 Rusty Greer outfielder (Texas Rangers) 1972 Alan Benes pitcher (St Louis Cardinals) 1979 Byung-Hyun Kim player *********************************
This Day in Baseball History January 21st 1921 "The legend has been spread that the owners hired the Judge off the federal bench. Don't you believe it. They got him right out of Dickens." - LEO DUROCHER, speaking about encounters with the commissioner during his playing days. In a move widely supported by the press, 55-year-old Kenesaw Mountain Landis becomes baseball's first commissioner, replacing the three-man National Commission, formerly governed by league presidents Ban Johnson, John Heydler, and Reds owner Garry Herrmann. In November, the jurist agreed to take the position for seven years at a salary of $50,000 (minus a $7,500 reduction to reflect his current pay as a judge) on the condition if he can continue to serve on the federal bench, an arrangement that ends in thirteen months, when he resigns from his judicial responsibilities.
1941 The Indians sign Bob Feller (27-11, 2.61) to a deal worth a reported $30,000, making the 22-year-old farm boy from Van Meter, Iowa, the highest-paid hurler in baseball history. Dazzy Vance and Lefty Grove previously held the distinction when they were paid $27,500 for one season of work. 1947 The BBWAA elects southpaws Carl Hubbell and Lefty Grove, infielder Frank Frisch, and catcher Mickey Cochrane for induction into the Hall of Fame in July, along with 11 additional individuals the Old-Timers Committee selected that led to revisions in the selection process. The extensive list of new HOFers included Tommy McCarthy, Jesse Burkett, Clark Griffith, Joe McGinnity, Jack Chesbro, Eddie Plank, Rube Waddell, Frank Chance, Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Ed Walsh. After seeing just one player elected by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America during the first seven years of the 1940s, baseball fans were eager to have some of their favorite heroes gain election to the Hall of Fame. On Jan. 21, 1947, those fans got their wish when a historically large group of inductees was announced. “You can say one thing about the four gents newly elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame – they always had it when they needed it,” wrote Joe King in The New York World-Telegram. “There cannot have been many players who could do a job in the pinch as well as Carl Hubbell, Frank Frisch, Mickey Cochrane and Lefty Grove.” Frank Frisch accepts his Hall of Fame pin from Commissioner Ford C. Frick. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library) Those four inductees – Hubbell, Frisch, Cochrane and Grove – represented the second-largest class selected by the BBWAA, trailing only the original induction class of 1936. After World War II canceled several elections in the first half of the decade, the sudden spike in inductees was brought about by two significant rule changes. First, votes were limited only to writers who had been BBWAA members for at least 10 years – a rule that is still in place today. Second, the voters – who had previously failed to single out worthy candidates from a massive pool of players who had appeared after 1900 – were now asked to only consider candidates from the previous 25 years. “The choice therefore was not spread over a 47-year period,” King explained, “and current writers were not asked to match players of recent times to shadowy figures of the past they had never seen.” In addition to all its historical significance, the 1947 class featured a brilliant battery and a pair of New York Giants legends. Robert Moses “Lefty” Grove retired in 1941 as one of the greatest left-handed pitchers the game has ever seen. Finishing with an even 300 wins, Grove still holds the highest winning percentage (.682) among 300-game winners. He posted eight seasons with 20 wins or more, captured a record nine ERA titles and led the American League in strikeouts six times. In 1931, Grove used his blazing fastball to string together 16 consecutive victories. That season was Grove’s finest, as he finished with remarkable 31-4 record and a 2.06 earned run average. “I only caught him at the end,” said Hall of Famer Ted Williams, Grove’s teammate with the Boston Red Sox from 1939-41, “but nobody could throw a baseball any harder.”
Grove’s rise in stature coincided directly with that of his catcher, Cochrane, with the Philadelphia A’s. “Hardly ever shook him off,” Grove said of Cochrane. “Funny, before I’d even look at him, I had in my mind what I was going to pitch and I’d look up and there’d by Mickey’s signal, just what I was thinking. Like he was reading my mind. That’s the kind of catcher he was.” Cochrane, one of the fiery leaders of an Athletics club that won three consecutive pennants and two World Series championships from 1929-31, batted .345 during Philadelphia’s dynastic seasons and finished with a .320 career average. He captured American League Most Valuable Player honors in 1928 with Philadelphia and again in 1934 with the Detroit Tigers, who he would later lead to two pennants and a World Series title as player-manager. “Cochrane was a great inspirational leader,” said the Tigers’ Hall of Fame second baseman Charlie Gehringer. “Boy, he was a hard loser, the hardest loser I think I ever saw. He wouldn’t stand for any tomfoolery. He wanted everybody to put out as hard as they could and he set the example himself.” The other two inductees in 1947 shared a connection as well. Though they never played together, Frisch and Hubbell will be forever linked as the catalysts for two different eras of championship success at the Polo Grounds. Nicknamed the “Fordham Flash,” Frisch was a scrappy second baseman who terrorized pitchers both at the plate and on the basepaths. He led the National League in steals in 1921, hits in 1923 and runs scored in 1924, all while leading the Giants to four straight pennants and two World Series titles. He would later capture two more rings as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals’ vaunted “Gashouse Gang.” “There may never have been a fiercer competitor than Frisch, a money-player and clutch performer without a peer,” claimed Arthur Daley of The New York Times. “He could hit for a higher average and a greater distance. He covered more territory afield than a space cadet. He was a swift and daring base-stealer. He was a great player without a weakness.” Lefty Grove National Baseball Hall of Fame After Frisch was traded to the Cardinals for Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby in 1926, Hubbell maintained the Giants’ success with some of the most phenomenal pitching performances in baseball history. Hubbell captured the first of two NL MVP awards in 1933 after sporting a miniscule 1.66 ERA, setting the stage for his most famous achievement the following July. After allowing a hit and a walk to begin the 1934 All-Star Game at the Polo Grounds, Hubbell electrified the home crowd by striking out the next five AL All-Stars with his baffling screwball. The list of punchout victims is memorized by historians and diehard baseball fan alike: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin. “If you didn’t know what he threw, it was almost impossible to hit him,” Hall of Famer Billy Herman said of his teammate Hubbell. “He was one of the greatest pitchers I’d ever seen.”
1960 Stan Musial insists the Cardinals cut his salary from $100,000 to $80,000, believing the team overpaid him in 1958 and 1959, and the reduced wage should reflect his poor performance for the team last season. The Redbird's 39-year-old All-Star first baseman batted .255 with 14 home runs and 44 RBIs in the 115 games played last season. Stan & Ted 1965 Teams, Inc. meet with National League president Warren Giles to plead their case of keeping the Braves in Milwaukee through the upcoming season. The community non-profit organization, headed by future baseball commissioner Bud Selig, successfully prevents the club from marching to Atlanta at the All-Star break when the league rules the team must honor the final year of their stadium lease. 1969 Cardinal legend Stan Musial is elected into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, receiving 93% of the writers' votes. The BBWAA also selects Roy Campanella, the former Dodger catcher, the winner of three National League MVPs before being permanently disabled in a car accident just before spring training in 1958. Minnesota Twins coaches Charlie Silvera and Billy Martin with Hall of Famers Casey Stengel and Stan Musial at the Hall of Fame Game 1969
