Tuesday, January 23, 2018

1/23: Ralph HoF; Billy for Rabbit; One That Got Away; HBD Benny, Kurt, Alphoso, Ed, Cy, Bill, Jack & Victor

  • 1890 - March 23, 1890 - OF Ed Barney was born in Amery, Wisconsin. Ed played for the 1915-16 Buccos, hitting .229 after being claimed on waivers from the NY Yankees at mid-season. Following a promising start in Pittsburgh, he hit just .197 in 1916 and was released in July, ending his MLB career. He took a three year baseball hiatus after that, and then closed out his career with six minor-league campaigns and a one-year stint as a farm club manager for Elmira. 
  • 1891 - C Orie “Cy” Kerlin was born in Summerfield, Louisiana. Not much is known about his baseball life; he was a well-thought-of 24-year-old catcher out of LSU when the Pittsburgh Rebels called him in 1915. He didn’t play until June with a finger injury and then got just one at-bat in three games before ending his only big-league season, playing behind 35-year-old veterans Claude Berry and Paddy O’Connor. The Rebels folded, Orie served during WW1 and then returned home to begin a business career. 
Bill Regan from Pre-Pirates days (image via Find-A-Grave)
  • 1899 - 2B Bill Regan was born in Oakland, a self-described stone’s throw from Forbes Field, which rose a decade after his arrival on the planet. He went to Fifth Avenue School and sold peanuts at FF until he joined the service during WW1. Bill came home, played semi-pro locally, then joined the Red Sox in 1926, starting for Boston over the next five years. He spent his last season at Forbes Field with the Bucs, but hit the wall at age 32 and batted just .202 for the home club, altho he did have a day dedicated to him, planned by his local buds. He played minor league ball until 1935, worked as a landscaper and then once again joined the service during WW2. He became an Allegheny County cop on his return and now lies buried at Hazelwood’s Calvary Cemetery.
  • 1903 - IF Otto “Jack” Saltzgaver was born in Croton, Iowa. He played for the Yankees for five years and then spent the next eight seasons in their farm system (Jack spent all or parts of 19 seasons in the minors) before the Bucs sent OF Bill Rodgers and cash to Kansas City for him in 1945. At that time, the last season of the WW2 manpower shortage, the 42-year-old Saltzgaver was the oldest active major league player. He showed well, batting .325 in 52 games before spending another year in the bushes, then hanging up his spikes as a player and managing on the farm through 1950. 
  • 1921 - SS Rabbit Maranville was traded to the Bucs by the Boston Braves for IF Walter Barbare, OF Fred Nicholson, OF Billy Southworth and $15,000. Rabbit and Billy were the keys to the deal. Hall of Famer Maranville played four seasons in Pittsburgh, hitting .283. Southworth played another eight years in the league and entered the Hall of Fame with a career slash of .297/52/561 and a stellar coaching record, winning four league titles and a pair of World Series. 
Rabbit Maranville 1924 (Conlon Collection/Detroit Public Library)
  • 1940 - In a harbinger of future free agency, which was still 36 years away from being an official thing, former Detroit 2B Benny McCoy, 22, who had been declared a free agent by Commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis for violations by the Tigers, announced the Bucs offered him a signing bonus of $35,000, which was later raised to $40K, to go along with a two-year contract worth $10,000 per year. He had hit .394 in a 55-game audition in the Motor City in 1939 and passed on both Bucco bids, inking a deal a week later with Philadelphia for $45,000 after sorting through proposals from 10 clubs. Whether he was worth it or not is debateable - he hit .264 as the A’s starer in 1940-41, but ended up in the service for four years after those two campaigns and lost his touch over that time, never playing MLB again. 
  • 1947 - IF Kurt Bevacqua was born in Miami Beach. The Bucs called on him twice, in 1974 and then again from 1980-81 despite a .171 lifetime BA in a Pirate uniform. He spent 15 years in MLB (six with SD) and had his moment in the sun when he hit two homers in the Padres’ World Series win against the Detroit Tigers in 1984. Kurt has bounced around in the baseball media world since retirement. 
  • 1957 - LHP Alfonso Pulido was born in Tierra Blanco, Mexico. His Pirates career is easy to miss; he pitched two innings in 1983 and two more in 1984, giving up seven hits and four earned runs before being traded to NY. He did pitch a bit more credibly with the Yankees in 1986, but that would mark the end of his big league time. Even if El Norte was a step too far for a guy considered a hot prospect, Alfonso did carve out a stellar 14-year career in the Mexican Leagues. The Pirates had originally purchased his contract from the Mexico City Reds in 1983 (he stayed w/the Reds on option until after their playoffs) where Pulido had gone 17-3, with Chuck Tanner commenting that he had “Valenzuela-type stuff.” 
Benny Distefano 1990 Fleer
  • 1962 - 1B/OF Benny Distefano was born in Brooklyn. He played for the Bucs in 1984, 1986, and 1988-89, hitting .227 in 300 PA. Distefano was the last lefty to catch a major league game, going behind the dish three times for the Pirates in 1989. He played some in Venezuela since his last MLB game in 1992 and has been a Mets farm coach since 2010. 
  • 1968 - RHP Victor Cole was born in Leningrad, Russia (his student father married a Russian girl). Cole’s MLB/Pirates resume consists of eight games with an 0-2, 5.48 slash in 1992, but that was enough to make him the first Soviet-born major leaguer since the thirties. He later went on to play in Korea and part-time for the Russian national team (he suited up when they played in the US) in 2003 and 2007. 
  • 1975 - OF Ralph Kiner was elected to the Hall of Fame and was inducted on August 18th. Kiner played only 10 years in MLB, but led the NL in home runs for seven consecutive seasons. He received 273 votes on the 362 ballots cast by the writers, exactly enough to be selected. There are a pair of often cited quotes that follow Kiner. One, attributed to Kiner himself was "Home run hitters drive Cadillacs and singles hitters drive Fords." The other was a quote by Bucco GM Branch Rickey when he told Kiner that he had traded him to the Cubs: "We finished last with you, we can finish last without you."

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