Buck O'Neil

BUCK O'NEIL

Courtesy of BaseballLibrary.com

The first black coach in the major leagues was John "Buck" O'Neil of the Chicago Cubs.

Signed by Chicago as a scout in 1956, O'Neil, who managed the famed Kansas City Monarchs from 1948 to 1955, made major league history in 1962 when he donned his coach's uniform. O'Neil is currently a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee.

[Editor's note: Buck O'Neil will speak on behalf of the deceased inductees to the Hall of Fame at today's ceremonies]

Exhibit to Celebrate Negro League

By The Pittsburg Tribune-Review
Saturday, June 24, 2006

The Pirates on Monday will unveil a unique, permanent exhibit at PNC Park which pays tribute to the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords.

The display, located behind the left-field gate entrance, will include a theater, statues and interactive features. It will highlight some of the greatest players -- such as Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and Buck Leonard -- from the era of segregated baseball.

"It's about tapping into baseball history and Negro Leagues history, and how it really parallels the history of Pittsburgh," Pirates spokesman Brian Warecki said.

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Baseball's `Rodeo' Balm

Baseball's `Rodeo' Balm Gives Pitchers Homespun Blister Remedy

from Bloomberg.com

July 14 (Bloomberg) -- Back in his days as a rodeo cowboy, Los Angeles Dodgers trainer Stan Johnston mixed some items in his medicine chest and came up with a balm that helped heal the burns and blisters on his hands from riding bulls and roping steers.

He kept the recipe, and now ``Stan's Rodeo Ointment'' mends professional athletes. Dodgers pitcher Derek Lowe, whose blisters would cause him to throw blood-stained baseballs when he was with the Boston Red Sox, says the black, tarry goo solved his chronic problem.

``It saved me from just having to make it through a game,'' Lowe, 33, said in an interview. ``Now talent can dictate a game again, not how long you can hold on and endure the pain.''
Johnston, who was a National League trainer at Major League Baseball's All-Star Game on July 11, has applied for a patent on his potion -- a combination of Polymyxin B Suflate and other ingredients. He says he's aiming to convince a pharmaceutical company to sell it as an over-the-counter medication.

``It heals things faster, any kinds of cuts, blisters, abrasions,'' Johnston, 46, said in an interview.
He already has believers. Most other Major League Baseball teams use it, along with the Houston Texans of the National Football League and the University of South Carolina football team. He said he expects to receive a patent July 20.

$35 a Tube

For now, he gets it made by SportPharm, a pharmacy based in Torrance, California, that supplies sports teams. It costs $35 for a 30-gram (1-ounce) tube, according to SportPharm President Robert Nickell.

The ointment is excluded from the requirement for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval because it's compounded by a pharmacy with substances that already have passed the agency's standards, said SportPharm's head pharmacist, Mike Pavlovich.

Johnston concocted the formula during his years in professional rodeo from 1974-1983. No ordinary cowboy, he had a bachelor's degree in sports medicine from Western Montana College in Dillon, which he attended on a rodeo scholarship. After he left the rodeo, he earned a master's degree in the field from Montana State University in Bozeman in 1985.

After suffering cuts and burns in the rodeo, Johnston used his expertise and combined Polymyxin B Suflate, Bacitracin Zinc and Povidone-Iodine, and applied it to his hands to toughen the skin.

`Bit of Force'

``The pressure of the rope and heat from the rope would tear off the skin on my riding hand through my leather glove,'' Johnston said. ``You are riding a 1,600-, 1,800-pound animal. It would put a little bit of force on your hands.''

Johnston began using the substance on baseball players when he joined the Dodgers as a trainer in the team's minor-league system in 1985. As players moved to other organizations, word spread.

South Carolina athletic trainer Rod Walters orders about 10 tubes a year for the football team and uses it to heal blisters on players' feet and quarterbacks' fingers.

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Bobby Bonds' Grand Entrance

Courtesy of BaseballLibrary.com

Candlestick Park / June 25, 1968
By Nathan Hale

1999 was supposedly the Year of the Grand Slam, but it was 31 years ago -- during the Year of the Pitcher -- when one of the more remarkable bases-loaded blasts was hit.

Bobby Bonds, a 22-year old outfielder just called up by the San Francisco Giants, announced his arrival in grand fashion, clearing the bases in the sixth inning with a homer off Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Jack Purdin. The hit came in Bonds' third career at-bat and made him the first player in 70 years to hit a grand slam in his first major-league game.

Bonds arrived in San Francisco hotter than a pistol, leading the Pacific Coast League with a .367 batting average before his call-up from Triple-A Phoenix. In his debut, he joined a powerful Giants lineup that included Willie McCovey, Willie Mays and Jim Ray Hart. McCovey had just been voted the starting first baseman for the NL All-Stars by his fellow players on account of his .307 average (eighth best) and league-leading 18 HR and 48 RBI. Mays finished nine votes behind Hank Aaron and his .236 BA in the voting for outfielders despite having 12 homers; Hart also stood among the leaders, tied for second with 14 round-trippers.

The Dodgers-Giants rivalry wasn't much to speak of in 1968. On this night, fans saw a face-off between two pitchers who would share the league lead at season's end with 18 losses apiece: Ray Sadecki and Claude Osteen. Sadecki emerged victorious, racking up 10 strikeouts and allowed just two hits in the Giants' 9-0 victory.

Osteen did not fare as well, allowing six hits, three walks and hitting Bonds with a pitch before giving way to Purdin in the sixth. Purdin was in the midst of the best season of his four-year career, finishing the year with a 3.05 ERA. But Purdin wasn't so reliable this time, and Bonds made him pay with a grand slam into the Candlestick Park seats.

BONDS' HOMER SIGNALED THE ARRIVAL of a legitimate offensive threat. Never one to wait for a home run, Bonds would set a major-league record (broken by Rickey Henderson in 1988) with 30 career leadoff homers. He would achieve 30 homers and 30 steals in a season a record five times (matched by his son Barry in 1997) but consistently struck out at an alarming pace. At his best he smacked 39 homers and swiped 43 bases in 1973; at his worst he whiffed an unprecedented 189 times in 1970.

However, no player, Bonds included, has ever matched the clutch hitting and good fortune of Bill Duggleby, who remains the only man ever to hit a grand slam in his first at-bat. The right-handed pitcher, who would later come to be known as "Frosty Bill" due to his less-than-warm-relationship with teammates and a tendency to wear dark suits in the summer, found the bases juiced when he stepped to the plate for the first time as a member of the Philadelphia Nationals on April 21, 1898. He returned to the dugout after a quick circuit of the bases to make him the only player ever to hit a grand slam in his first major-league at bat.

Duggleby finished the 1898 season with just one homer and six RBI. He would go without another round tripper until 1904 but finished his career with six dingers in eight years. His record on the mound was an inauspicious 93-100, and he led the NL in home runs allowed with 10 in 1905.

SINCE THEN, ONLY TWO ROOKIES HAVE come close to matching Bonds and Duggleby, both putting up a four-spot for their first big league hit. In 1982, Seattle's Orlando Mercado entered the majors with a bases-clearing shot off Steve Comer. And less than two weeks after Fernando Tatis became the first man to swat two grannies in an inning in April 1999, Red Sox rookie catcher Creigton Gubanich knocked a grand salami of his own off a first-inning offering from Oakland's Jimmy Haynes on May 3. (Gubanich had gone hitless in three at-bats in his major-league debut on April 22.)

A typical good-field, no-hit catcher, Mercado lasted eight seasons in the majors despite a meager .199 lifetime batting average and only seven career home runs. So what's due in the books for Gubanich remains to be seen. Perhaps the best thing he's got going for him is that he is one of two graduates of Phoenixville High School in Pennsylvania currently playing catcher in the majors. The other is Mike Piazza.

Gubanich's first-hit grand slam almost didn't happen. With two outs, Oakland A's third baseman Olmedo Saenz dropped a pop foul by Reggie Jefferson, who subsequently walked to load the bases for Gubanich. Bonds enjoyed similar good fortune. Had he debuted a day later he would have found not Osteen and Purdin on the mound, but big Don Drysdale toeing the rubber.

Reuss Takes Stroll Down Memory Lane

From the Los Angeles Times

By Steve Henson
Times Staff Writer
July 16, 2006

ST. LOUIS — Odd how a new building can evoke memories from 50 years ago. St. Louis native Jerry Reuss strolled around Busch Stadium marveling at how the gleaming structure brought back "the smell of stale beer and cigars from the days of straw hats."

The former pitcher is a white-haired 57-year-old Dodgers radio broadcaster these days, but he vividly recalled how he felt as a 7-year-old attending his first Cardinals game at Sportsman's Park."

I looked out at the field from the reserved level and saw that perfectly manicured green grass," he said. "At that moment I knew I wanted baseball to be part of my life forever."

Half a century later, Reuss toured the new stadium with a digital camera, taking pictures of architecture that reminded him of Sportsman's Park and old Busch Stadium, and pausing just to breathe in the damp Midwestern summer air.

Could it have been nearly 40 years ago when he was a local high school hotshot going to $5 Teen Night games? It wasn't long before he was sitting in the Busch Stadium dugout, about to make his debut at 20 with the Cardinals, who had made the left-hander a second-round draft pick.

"I happened to look up at those seats I'd sat in just two years earlier and thought, 'Am I the luckiest guy in the world or what?' " he said.

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