Does any one other than me remember Ryne Duren? He pitched mainly for the Yanks during the late fifties and early sixties.
I came across his stats on Baseball-reference.com recently and it brought back memories of a real character.
He was a righthander who pitched mostly in relief. His stuff was legendary smoke. He could throw a baseball through a brick wall, except that the wall would have to be bigger than the side of a barn for him to hit it.
When he came out to the mound, he squinted through Coke-bottle eyeglasses. Looking directly at him was like looking at a frog through four feet of ice. His warm-ups went up the screen, way over the catcher's head and anywhere else but in the strike zone. I think this was really mostly for show and to intimidate the batter. He did strike out 630 in 589 career innings so he threw hard.
I remember him in Detroit in 1961, throwing twelve high fastballs to Rocky Colavito. The Rock kept fouling them off until he finally struck out swinging, probably from the fatigue of swinging for the fences a dozen times.
It would be interesting to hear about other such characters from the baseball of times gone by, not the crap that has been the sport since 1973, when Andy Messerschmidt and Catfish Hunter ruined the memories of the "Boys of Summer."
I came across his stats on Baseball-reference.com recently and it brought back memories of a real character.
He was a righthander who pitched mostly in relief. His stuff was legendary smoke. He could throw a baseball through a brick wall, except that the wall would have to be bigger than the side of a barn for him to hit it.
When he came out to the mound, he squinted through Coke-bottle eyeglasses. Looking directly at him was like looking at a frog through four feet of ice. His warm-ups went up the screen, way over the catcher's head and anywhere else but in the strike zone. I think this was really mostly for show and to intimidate the batter. He did strike out 630 in 589 career innings so he threw hard.
I remember him in Detroit in 1961, throwing twelve high fastballs to Rocky Colavito. The Rock kept fouling them off until he finally struck out swinging, probably from the fatigue of swinging for the fences a dozen times.
It would be interesting to hear about other such characters from the baseball of times gone by, not the crap that has been the sport since 1973, when Andy Messerschmidt and Catfish Hunter ruined the memories of the "Boys of Summer."
