Orel Leonard Hershiser. Tommy called him “Bulldog.” Born in Buffalo, N.Y., on September 16, 1958. His name is etched in Dodger history alongside many of their greatest pitchers. Most of that praise comes from one magical season when the stars aligned, and he was the best pitcher in the game. His performance in the regular season, the playoffs, and World Series carried the Dodgers to their fifth title in Los…
Coming in at #23 on the all-time WAR list, 35.0 is one William Park Kennedy. William came into this world on October 7, 1867, in Bellaire, Ohio. Today it is a town of less than 5,000 on the Ohio River and is considered part of the Wheeling, West Virginia, Metropolitan Statistical Area. In Kennedy’s day, Bellaire was known as “The Glass City,” but it lost that title in the late…
We are going to take a look back at all the former owners of the Dodgers. Not in depth, but just a glimpse at the evolvement of the team. Most of them, you know at least something about; others, not so much. Ferdinand Abell and Charles Byrne were the two main owners that formed the 1883 team that would one day become the Dodgers. Abell was a casino owner, putting…
In 2004, the first season under new owner Frank McCourt, the Dodgers won their first division title in 8 years. The 1995 Dodgers won the division after the strike was over in a shortened season. But they were ousted out of the playoffs in the NLDS. The new GM was Paul DePodesta, a strong advocate of analytics when teams were just starting to use that kind of data. He traded…
A lot of guys on teams are nothing but scrubs who wait for their chance to contribute to the team. Over the years, many of these guys were favorites of mime simply because when they did get in a game, they played their hardest. I will attempt to give some examples here, starting with a guy who drove Lasorda bananas. Derrell Thomas On November 14th, 1978, the Los Angeles Dodgers…
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has given us a keyhole view towards the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy, where a dazzling array of stars reside. Most of the view of our galaxy is obscured by dust. Hubble peered into the Sagittarius Star Cloud, a narrow, dust-free region, providing this spectacular glimpse of a treasure chest full of stars. Some of these gems are among the oldest inhabitants of our…
If you go to the Dodgers baseball reference page, you will see photos of the top 24 Dodger players, according to WAR. Of those 24, nine played only in LA, and six played in Brooklyn and LA. The rest played exclusively in Brooklyn. Number 12 on the list with a career WAR of 47.2 is George Napoleon Rucker. Better known as Nat. For ten seasons, he was one of the…
What comes to mind when you think about Ron Cey? To me, it is his trot around the bases after he hit a homer and his solid play as one of the anchors of ” The Infield.” Cey was born on the 15th of February 1948 in Tacoma, Washington. He was a multi-sport athlete at Mount Tacoma High School. He was the first athlete to receive nine varsity letters. Upon…
I thought it would be interesting and appropriate to look at the Dodger bullpens in the seasons they won the World Series. This is simply because so much of what I have read lately on our site pertains to the makeup for the post-season of our relief staff. For the record, the 1955 team used 15 pitchers during the season. Five were primarily starters, Newcombe, Erskine, Podres, Meyer, and Loes….
Wesley Branch Rickey was born in a small Ohio town on Dec 20, 1881. His father was a farmer. He had an older brother, Orla, {B 1875} and a younger brother, Frank {B 1888}. His father, Jacob, was a very religious man, and the household was your typical pious Methodist family. Rickey finished grade school, but then labor on the farm called. He got help from a retired educator who…