2020-21 Baseball Offseason Thread

AHAHAHAHAHA

 

Former Twins No. 1 pick Royce Lewis tore his ACL slipping on ice in Texas just before he reported to spring training and it looks like they caught it in the physical. Yikes.

 

Always love all the dental work that seems to get scheduled this time of year - delaying various players arrival.

 

Shaq did this for years with various medical procedures and surgeries. I think he even said something along the lines of “Why would I ruin my vacation?”

 

Many stories in the Connie Mack bio series of prominent players like Al Simmons training with a minor-league team in Hot Springs, Ark., and then not reporting to the A's until opening day. Mack was fine with it if he trusted the player, and it not being at major-league spring training every year clearly didn't hurt Al Simons.

 

Amazing. This photo was taken at Bovard Field, USC's home until 1974. That is Bovard Hall behind him. And you can see the famous Bovard Tree. It was outside the fence down the first-base line, but in the spring, it grew and sometimes branches hung over the field. Even fair balls sometimes hit the branches. As the story went, when USC opened Dedeaux Field across the street, they were going to uproot the tree and replant it at Dedeaux Field.

 

Isn't that where Mickey Mantle hit what some think was the longest homer in his career, in a spring training game very early in his career?

 

I don't know that story. I also think it would be hard to measure since if he hit it over the fence, it probably hit a building right behind. But I can't remember what was back there.
At my junior college, the English building was behind the right-field fence. Some guy hit a home run that went through an open entry door and was rolling down the hall past classrooms.

 

Chris the link is paywalled, but my guess is you have an LA Times subscription.

The home run that launched the myth of Mickey Mantle

This story debunks the myth. Either way, it was a shot.

Mickey Mantle's famous 600-foot homer at USC may have been debunked