Baseball Thread 6 - Steve Garvey's got a lot of mouths to feed

I'll go with Mickey Mantle.

 

Another No. 6, Keith Moreland, name-checked in Steve Goodman's "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request."

"Have the Cubbies run right out into the middle of the field/Have Keith Moreland drop another routine fly/Give everybody two bags of peanuts and a frosty malt/And I'll be ready to die..."

 

Something like that. I've heard that he said that's the last thing he remembers saying before flying out of the dugout. I was only 4 when that happened... I don't remember it live. But it grew on me every time I saw the highlight with my dad and he started cackling.

 

Didn't Mantle wear 7?.

 

I was 10, and in camp. It was the one game I had a chance to hear all summer because it was visiting day, but my parents worked in the camp. It was awesome, even on the radio.

 

Yes, baseball needs more alcoholic, bigoted, racist bastards like Billy Martin.

 

Too bad this doesn't go into another sport because Sidney Spencer wears 6 for the New York Liberty and she's the best girls basketball player Hoover High School ever produced.

 

Was she Rush Propst's daughter from the other family he had?

 

Saw him yesterday at a 7-on-7 deal.. he hasn't changed a bit.

 

My favorite Billy Martin story is that, during his Detroit Tigers days, he and pitching coach/drinking buddy Art Fowler taught the pitchers to cheat by putting soap in the crotch area on the inside of their baseball pants--white soap for home games, gray for road ones IIRC. If they wanted to lather up the ball, they'd just grab that area, and umps wouldn't check because it looked like they were readjusting themselves. That was either in Golenbock's enormous biography on him or his first autobiography.

Yeah, he had a lot of flaws, and may or may not have destroyed the arms of that early-80s A's pitching staff (though they won't blame him for it). Still a helluva manager though, and probably deserving of Hall consideration from the Veterans' Committee one of these years.

 

Mantle wore #6 when he first came up, I believe, and slumped badly. He was sent back to Kansas City for a month or so, and when he came back up and started hitting, wore #7.

When Jeter retires, taking #2 with him, #6 will be the only un-retired single-digit number for the Yankees (unless you want to include #0).

Musial was the best #6 ever, with Kaline not far behind. Garvey's not in the same solar system as those guys.