Baseball Players we have known

[The Brus]

I used to play hardball in the sixties. My position was 9 on the scoresheet so that would tell you where I sat on the team depth chart. When I was not playing, I was number 48 on the bench.

We played a Detroit team several times. There was an outfielder on that team who could hit a ton, throw a mile and run like the wind. I thought to myself that this guy would become a great major leaguer some day.

Well, he did make the majors and played a lengthy career with several teams. His name was Tom Paciorek. He was a career bench player and will never make the Hall of Fame.

To this end, I wonder. How good were guys like Reggie Jackson and some of the other superstars when they played sandlot ball.

 

[Cool Dude]

I pulled a fastball foul against Frank Tanana in highschool.

Don't laugh, he struck out like 15 out of 18 batters, no hit us, one walk. I still hate him.

 

[The Brus]

Man,

Who Walked?

 

[Cool Dude]

I can't say his name but I remember the guy swinging at a letter high fastball...only it was a bender and bounced off the plate...he kept the bat on his shoulder after that and got a BB.

 

[Speedo]

Don't laugh, he struck out like 15 out of 18 batters, no hit us, one walk. I still hate him.

As do most Blue Jay fans for the six-hit, 1-0 shutout he tossed against them to end their pennant dreams in the 1987 finale...(Me, I loved it...)

His name was Tom Paciorek. He was a career bench player and will never make the Hall of Fame.

He did some ChiSox announcing with The Hawk years ago if memory serves me right...

 

[The Brus]

Neither the Hawk nor Tom Paciorek will make the Hall of Fame. Incidentally, remember when the Hawk tried to be a professional golfer? He was somewhat like Michael Jordan as a minor league baseball player.

As I talked with various people about this subject, a good old friend of mine, who is a septuagenarian, reminisced about the sandlot days in Windsor when he played against a kid from Windsor who went on to a nondescript career in the major leagues. His name was Reno Bertoia, who played the bench for the Detroit Tigers for a number of years in the fifties and sixties. My friend indicated that Bertoia was good on the sandlots, but not spectacular.

As for Frank Tanana, my best friend also struck out three times in a game against him. He told me that he could not even see the ball but a couple of those strikes sounded a little high to him.

 

[shinjitsu]

I remember ...

Tom Paciorek ... he played OF/1B/DH near the end of his career with Seattle. Good hitter for average, but little power.

Anyone play against the Butler Bros, Nigel Wilson or Alex Andreopoulos? All Ontarians.

 

[slowandeasy]

Tom Paciorek ... he played OF/1B/DH near the end of his career with Seattle. Good hitter for average, but little power.

Anyone play against the Butler Bros, Nigel Wilson or Alex Andreopoulos? All Ontarians.

Any old timers play against Ferguson Jenkins?

 

[hummingbird]

My uncle played in an exhibition game against a Negro league barnstorming team featuring Satchel Paige. They lost, naturally, as they did every year when Satch's team came to the Windsor area. But not by a lot...

My uncle got a hit against Paige. But when the game was actually on the line, he never saw the three pitches that struck him out. It seems that the whole plan by Paige's team was to beat you by a run or two, so that they'd get invited back next year.

 

[hummingbird]

During the war, my dad played third base and relief pitcher for a Canadian army team while waiting in England for D-Day. Their team was pretty good, and got to face a U.S. team in a Canada-U.S. challenge. Although major league baseball wasn't integrated yet, the American team featured a big first baseman named Luke Easter, who had a brief major league career in the fifties, starting at age 35 (!) with the Cleveland Indians. Your most recent comparable player would probably be Cecil Fielder - a right-handed hitter with lots of power but no speed at all.
Easter came up late in the game when my dad was pitching in a 2-2 tie. My dad had a knuckleball as his "out" pitch. Easter had evidently seen a knuckler before, because he hit a monster home run to win the game. To quote my dad: "The ball's still going somewhere".