SI.com's "Things We Miss in Baseball."

Liked these jerseys. Ideal for their time.

 

Zander Hollander's Complete Handbook of Baseball for me. Had mugs, bios and career stats of key players, long before such things became commonplace on anything other than a baseball card. His football books were good, too.

Once I got into high school, I graduated to Bill Mazeroski's Baseball, which had good position-by-position breakdowns and prospect reports. I didn't discover Bill James until college, unfortunately, by which time he'd quit writing the annual abstracts.

 

Loved the Mazeroski mags. I think I still have one of those Hollander books from 1975 or so in a box at home somewhere.

 

Oh that book was fantastic. We used to do a lot of trivia with it. For example, which team did Bill Grabarkewitz play for an won the NL Rookie of the Year Award and how many stolen bases did Matt the Scat Alexander and Herb Washington have?

 

Grabarkewitz played for the Dodgers. The other part I'd have to look up.

 

I get a kick out of teams wearing dark jerseys during hot and sunny day games. That's the worst thing you can wear. You're needlessly sentencing your starting pitcher to two or three buckets of extra sweat.

 

I actually prefer dark colored clothing on hot days. I don't buy into that light, dark color stuff.

 

Funny thing about that is that a lot of clubs let each day's starting pitcher decide which jersey the team will wear.

 

Best looking uniforms were the old Oakland A's Sunday unis. All White.

 

I haven't done the CNE in years, but I will again someday soon.

Along with the absence of Exhibition Stadium itself, the one thing that'll always not seem right - no more big Bulova clock tower.

 

I miss hearing Skip Caray say, "Time flies, Bulova soars."

(Or, in one case, "Time soars, Bulova flies.")

 

When I covered an MLB team, it was the starting pitcher's choice as to which jersey the team wore that day, so if he picked the dark one he only had himself to blame.

EDIT: I see A_QB pointed this out above me. My fail.