Baseball, Memories, and Memory
Posted on June 4, 2021 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

My last Thoughts at Large post included the casually-made claim that I could name 700 major-league baseball players.  In my original draft of the post, that number was 800-900; after further consideration, I lowered it to 750, then finally 700.  I figured:  I had followed baseball for 60 years as an on-and-off fan of the up-and-down Pittsburgh Pirates — surely I could name 700 of the 15,000 or so players who have taken the field in the last century.

That said, I must admit that I am more of a Pirates fan than a baseball enthusiast per se.  When the Pirates aren’t competitive (which for 25 years now has generally been the rule), I don’t pay much attention to them, the other teams, or the league’s star players.  So, any list of players that I could come up with would necessarily be heavily weighted toward the Pirates teams that made the post-season, along with the notable same-league opponents from those competitive years.

Armed with this understanding, I decided I owed it to my readers to put my claim to the test and see if I could actually name 700 major-league ball players.  I would be relying on memories from several sources:

  • Radio and TV broadcasts of Pirates games in the 60s and 70s, with play-by-play provided by Bob Prince, Jim Woods and Nellie King.  These include the games our family listened to on our Sunday drives as well as the late-night West Coast games that I managed to pull in on my bedside transistor radio.
  • Topps baseball cards.  I didn’t have an allowance when I was a kid, so a five-pack of baseball cards (plus gum!) seemed like a luxury.  But when I did plunk down my dime, I only wanted Pirates cards.  The real obscure cards (like Gene Leek) got attached to my bicycle frame with clothespins, to clack against the spokes.  Even so, I made sure to study the stats on all the cards.
  • The World Series Encyclopedia (1903-1960).  I’m not sure how I came into possession of this book; I suppose that my dad picked it up at a used-book emporium in Youngstown or Pittsburgh.  In any event, when I was 10 or so I consumed this paperback cover-to-cover, learning about Deacon Phillippe (who pitched in five games for the Pirates in the 1903 World Series) and the unassisted triple-play by Cleveland infielder Bill Wambsganss [sic] in the 1920 World Series.
  • Pirates YearBooks.  Back when rosters were more stable than they are today, teams dared to publish glossy-page booklets at the beginning of the season, with photos and stats of the players a fan could expect to see that year.  I pored over all of these too.  Years later, at a card and memorabilia show, I would get Bill Mazeroski to autograph my 1961 YearBook, which recounted the Pirates 1960 World Series victory.
  • Pirates box scores and the National League batting leader lists in the newspaper.  I read these daily when I was a kid.  I always wanted a Pirate to lead the league in average or RBIs or home runs, even if the team itself wasn’t winning, to justify my irrationally unwavering support.  (Still do, sorta.)
  • August 6, 1989Sunday, August 6, 1989, when three generations of the Collins clan went to the Camera Day game at Three Rivers Stadium.  We got to go onto the field before the game and take pictures of various Pirates players circulating among the fans.  The game itself lasted 18 innings, had a 45-minute rain delay, and was ultimately won when Pirates 3B Jeff King hit a leadoff homer.

So that’s primarily where my player memories came from as I got to work on my listing.  To keep my self-challenge on the up and up, I sequestered myself from baseball news while I searched my memory for names.

I made a few ground rules for my search.  (Incidentally, the term ground rule originated with baseball and only later came to be used more generally.)  First, I decided that both first and last names were required.  Otherwise, I could just say “Williams” or “Jones” and easily pick up 30 or 40 players.  No, a memory needed to be a memory.  So I did not add Dave Abernathy to my list, being that his first name is actually Ted.

That said, I gave myself leeway on spelling.  For example, I took credit for remembering Doug Granville (his name is Glanville) and I added Yadier Molina to my list even though I botched the spelling of Yadier.  On the other hand, I denied myself Paul Molitor because I remembered his name as Monitor.  That seemed to cross a line.

I also decided that I would not add managers or coaches to the list unless I was positive that they also had major-league playing careers.  That means I did not add Walter Alston, Sparky Anderson or Fred Hutchinson to the list, even though I was reasonably sure they were also players.  (After-the-Factoids:  It turns out that Alston had exactly one at-bat in a major-league game.  Anderson played just one season in the majors.  Hutchinson pitched in 242 major-league games over 10 seasons.  The three men managed at the MLB level for a combined 60 seasons.)

Ball Players Named Bob for $600, LeVar

I started out by listing all the 1960s Pirates I knew from the YearBook that I memorized (and Mazeroski autographed).  I proceeded to the Pirates who played in the team’s other post-season years, and then the stray Pirates from the team’s many and long interregna.

As my recall of Pirate player names began to run dry, I turned my focus to the rest of the player-universe.  I started out rummaging my memory team-by-team, but I found that the more productive way to recall players was by first names.  Though that approach wouldn’t work so well to unearth a Yadier Molina, say, it did deliver quite a few Bobs and Bobbys (5.8% of my list) as well as Jims (4.5%) and Daves (2.8%).

Some player names came to mind by indirect association: P Zane Smith (Pirates) led me to 3B Dick Gray (Cardinals) via the novelist Zane Grey; P Woodie Fryman (Pirates) brought to mind SS Bud Harrelson (Mets) via the actor Woody Harrelson.

But my free-associations weren’t always spot-on.  For instance, I was convinced the Pirates had a pitcher named John, or Bob, Kibler — I wasn’t sure which.  When I checked, I found that John Kibler was an umpire in the 1971 World Series (won by the Pirates) and that the Pirates never had a pitcher named Kibler.  It came to me that it must have been Kipper… and yes, there he was on the roster (1985 to 1991), so I added Bob Kipper to my list.

I was astounded by some of the names I did recall.  For instance, in what recess of my brain did I stash the name of Rawly Eastwick, the Reds relief pitcher from the mid 1970s?  Or Frank Bork, who pitched 42 innings for the 1964 Pirates in his only MLB season?

I was 11 when Bork was on the roster — his name was buried in my neurons for 57 years.  Frank Bork is now 81.  He does not get a full MLB pension due to his short service time.  (Sorry about that, Frank… but take heart, at least you have been remembered.)

Then there were the players whose last names I knew but whose first names escaped me. The pitcher (First Name) Burnette made me think of country-western star Smiley.  And the outfielder (First Name) Garr steered my thoughts to comedic actress Teri.  (The first names were A.J. and Ralph, respectively.)  Which brings me to Ichiro, whose other name I not only failed to recall, I wasn’t sure which of his names it was.  (He is Ichiro Suzuki.)

So, how did I fare overall?  The figure (right) tells the story.  I was able to list about 220 names the first day, but I soon fell victim to the law of diminishing returns.  I could only recall half that number the second day, with each successive name taking me longer and longer to retrieve.  I realized that I was not going to reach 700 players in one week, and maybe not even in one month, so I agreed with myself to stop the effort at 400 names.   While I’m sure my brain contains the names of many more players, there has to be some time and energy limit on recalling them.

Curious readers may click here to see the 400 ballplayers I could name.  The list indicates which players ever played for Pittsburgh (41% of them) and the players who are deceased (44% of them).  If you want to try this challenge yourself — and I can’t fathom why any of you would — then I’d suggest you hold off checking my list until you’ve finished your own.  Otherwise you would be getting a substantial head start.

Some of my fellow baseball fans will scan my list and say, “How could you not remember (Player X)?”  Yes, I am sure that if I picked up a sports page from the 60s or 70s right now, I would see dozens of familiar baseball names that I was somehow unable to extract from my memory banks on demand.  This serves to illustrate the difference between storing and retrieving memories, and how some things can feel familiar when re-encountered without being memorable.  The cover of the World Series Encyclopedia (pictured above) is a good example of that.  The only thing I had remembered about it was the green background, but once I saw the cover illustrations (which I retrieved via Google, the world’s memory bank), it all came back to me.

There you have it.  Although I failed my 700 baseball player challenge (and mea culpa for my inflated claim), the attempt was at least engaging, and it gave me an excuse to raid my old-photos drawer.  Now, if only my blog posts were as memorable as Frank Bork.

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Thoughts @ Large: 75
Posted on May 29, 2021 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

• Not that I want a libel suit from some real-estate developer, but my guess is that if you buy a house on a street called “Timberly Waye” in Richmond, Virginia, you have probably bought more marketing than you did house.

• Netflix seems to have turned into the Lifetime Channel, only more violent and featuring better-known actors.  Apparently, their current business model is to flood the site with mediocre titles so that viewers ultimately click on one, any one, out of sheer entertain-me frustration.  But do we still subscribe?  Yes — for now.

• • • • 

I once had a goldfish named Sad
When having a fish was a fad
But one day its scales
Turned a white shade of pale
Then it floated upside-down without rhyming or anything.

• • • • 

• We recently set out on the internet to arrange the (perfect) house rental in our area for a six-night stay in June, so that our children and grandchildren could visit us and have their own space — and so none of our tchotchkes get broken and peace prevails.  We signed up for one promising property, which looked to have a backyard play area for the grandkids, based on the posted photos.  A few days later, after we obtained the address of the rental, we did a drive-by and saw the yard was filled with weeds and poison ivy.  We contacted the owner who admitted, no, they never venture into the backyard due to the poison ivy.  Long story short, we cancelled the reservation and, after much persistence on my spouse’s part, we got our deposit back, including (finally) the non-refundable AirBnB service fee.

The reason I’m telling this story is that the idea of renting a property at location-unknown, as AirBnB forces one to do, is stupid.  This gives all the advantages to the landlord and puts the renter in the position of buyer-beware, in the name of what?  To avoid drive-bys, informed choice and comparison shopping?  Yes, exactly.

• I have taken stock and decided that, for much of the pandemic, I was in Meatloaf Mode.  That is a state of mind dominated by comfort foods like meatloaf and mashed potatoes, metabolically-charged junk foods like Arby’s and Cheetos, and passably-comforting drinks which are nonetheless drunk.

In Meatloaf Mode, various things are ingested to take the place of warm smiles, grasped hands, upper-body embraces, laughter, spontaneous conversation and jokes, and all the other tokens of the ordinary commerce of human interactions.  When this commerce is thwarted, some of us turn to — meatloaf and its comestible cousins.

In Meatloaf Mode, folks try to make up for all the sensations they have missed by stuffing a lot of stuff down their throats.  It works, sort of, as a short-term distraction.  But your gut soon informs you that what you’re eating isn’t a ticket to Happy Land.  Your body knows what works even when you don’t.  It pleads, don’t mistreat me just because you’re lonely.

• In the United States, we have a baby-bird model of hospital care.  Unless a baby bird stretches its throat up as high as it can, to get attention and show its vitality, it is less likely to get fed and survive.  Patients in U.S. hospitals are treated like baby birds.  They need proxies who stretch their necks out on their behalf.

• In the United States, we have a better idea where our Uber driver is and what time we will be picked up than when, if ever, the hospital nurse/doctor who needs to attend to us will show up and answer our questions.  Perhaps this is the future: Uber Health Care.

• If someone offered me a dollar for each one, I could probably name 700 or so baseball players. (Many more from the past than the present.)  For football, I might be able to list 200 players.  Golf, probably 100.  Basketball?  Maybe 25-30.  Tennis, about the same.  Hockey, I can think of 10.  And soccer, there was Pelé, Messi, Beckham and Wambach.  And I had to think hard about Wambach.  That’s it.

• Oh, I forgot bowling.  Wasn’t there a bowler named Anthony?  So him, and The Dude.

• No one really wants to walk down Memory Lane with you unless they lived there too.

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Summer Reading Suggestions
Posted on May 28, 2021 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

Summer is almost here (already, in our case) which means it is time again for summertime reading recommendations.  Being that I was inspired to write a few books myself during the pandemic lockdown, I thought: why not just recommend those?  And so I am.  To help you decide which title to read first, I am including the blurbs from my dust jackets.

LO MEIN IN HIGH POINTE by Craig H Collins
100 Billionth Press (2020), ISBN 9780553382570

From the jacket:  “Zach Bok is a disgruntled cashier for a Chinese restaurant in a mid-sized city.  Most days, Zach stares out the window and wishes that he worked at the Whole Foods grocery across the street.  Zach gets to know and like Kayla, a regular customer from High Pointe who always orders one egg roll and a pint of pork lo mein.  But when Kayla starts ordering special dishes — and even has them delivered! — Zach figures Kayla has become another entitled suburbanite.  Danger looms and duck sauce flows as Zach’s resentment builds to a sweet-and-sour climax.”

COLON: THE TRUE STORY OF HOW A DUO OF STACKED DOTS FORCED ITS WAY INTO EVERY NON‑FICTION BOOK TITLE by Craig H Collins
100 Billionth Press (2021), ISBN 0465026850

From the jacket: “Many punctuation marks have tried but failed to rise from grammatical obscurity.  But in Colon: the author of the popular Asked and Answered articles reveals how a dusty, seldom-used list-of-items signifier found a role of prominence as a separator in non-fiction book titles.  This in-depth study features rare interviews with rival commas and dashes; its final chapters explore the murky possibilities of Russian involvement.”

GREATNESS, A MEMOIR by Craig H Collins
100 Billionth Press (2021), ISBN 9780099842606

From the jacket: “The author/artist/coder/musician recounts highlights of his journey to greatness so that others might not only admire him but learn from him. He came of age during a time of tumultuous social and political change in America; unlike his less-talented peers, he made the most of his choices and chances, charting his own course over rough terrain and responding to changing times using his ever-reliable inner compass.  The author’s outsized presence is felt on every page of this memoir, from its table of contents to its welcome conclusion.”

I know… tough choice, right?  Pick any one, then relax, read and enjoy.

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Content © Craig H Collins 2026  ᐃ ᐁ