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 Great Players: Babe Ruth
George Herman Ruth, Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948), also known as “Babe”, “The Bambino”, “The Sultan of Swat”, “The Colossus of Clout”, “The King of Crash”, “The Home Run King” , or simply “The Big Guy”, was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935. Ruth is regarded by many historians and fans as the greatest baseball player of all time, due to a combination of his on-field accomplishments and records; his significant roles both in changing the way baseball is played and in establishing the New York Yankees dynasty; and his resulting worldwide name-recognition. He is a charter member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Although he spent most of his career as an outfielder with the New York Yankees, Ruth began his career as a successful starting pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. He compiled an 89-46 win-loss record during his time with the Red Sox and set a number of World Series pitching records. In 1918, Ruth started to play in the outfield and at first base so he could help the team on a day-to-day basis as a hitter. In 1919, he appeared in 111 games as an outfielder. He also hit 29 home runs to break Ned Williamson’s record for most home runs in a single season. In 1920, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the New York Yankees for $125,000, in part to finance the purchase of Fenway Park, as well as payment of Red Sox related debt. The notion that Ruth’s sale helped finance the broadway play No, No, Nanette was a widely accepted urban legend for many years.[1] Over his next 15 seasons in New York, Ruth led the league or placed in the top ten in batting average, slugging percentage, runs, total bases, home runs, RBI, and walks several times. Ruth hit 59 home runs in 1921 then beat his own single season home run record in 1927 with 60. It stood as the single season home run record for 34 years. With Ruth on the team, the Yankees won seven American League Pennants and four World Series titles. He played his final Major League season with the Boston Braves in 1935. In 1936, Ruth became one of the first five players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The success Ruth had with the Yankees spawned the popular myth known as the Curse of the Bambino in later years. In 1969, he was named baseball’s Greatest Player Ever in a ballot commemorating the 100th anniversary of professional baseball. In 1998, The Sporting News ranked Ruth Number 1 on the list of “Baseball’s 100 Greatest Players.” The next year, baseball fans named Ruth to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. 
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Red Sox and othersIt's interesting to watch a team go from the underdog to the team on top that everyone tries to knock down. I am a Bostonian and sat through what seemed like endless years of sub-par Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots teams that disappointed me annually. The poor Red Sox, people thought they had a curse that couldn't be lifted. But now the Sox are World Series winners twice in three years, something I never thought I'd say! All of a sudden, the Red Sox are the mighty that everyone will want to beat. They are the bad guys now, the ones everybody wants a piece of. And it's the same thing with the Patriots. They are now hated by lots of football fans. One commentator called every game against the Pats as that team's Super Bowl. I haven't seen the Patriots this year, but I went to the Angeles vs Red Sox game 3 in the playoffs and also Game 2 of the World Series. I bought game tickets from here. This year, I think I am going to forget about sports for a while and instead check out a show, maybe Young Frankenstein. But of course you can bet you'll see me at Fenway Park or Wrigley Field during this upcoming MLB season. Great Players: James Emory Foxx
James Emory Foxx (October 22, 1907 – July 21, 1967) was an American first baseman in Major League Baseball who was one of the greatest right-handed power hitters to ever play the sport. Foxx was the second major league player to hit 500 career home runs, and at age 32 years, 336 days, is still the youngest ever to reach that mark. Although Foxx’s name appears both as Jimmy Foxx and Jimmie Foxx in newspaper accounts, box scores, baseball cards, and other records, Foxx generally signed his name “Jimmie.” Born in Sudlersville, Maryland, Foxx (nicknamed “Double X” and “The Beast”) played baseball in high school and dropped out to join a minor league team managed by former Philadelphia Athletics great “Home Run” Baker. Foxx had hoped to pitch or play third base, but since the team was short on catchers, Foxx moved behind the plate. He immediately drew interest from the Athletics and New York Yankees. Foxx signed with the A’s and made his major league debut in 1925 at age 17. The A’s catching duties were already capably filled by future Hall of Famer Mickey Cochrane, so by 1927, Foxx was splitting time between catching, first base, and the outfield. In 1929, installed as the A’s regular first baseman, Foxx had his breakthrough year, batting .354 and hitting 33 home runs. In 1932, Foxx hit 58 home runs, which stood as the single-season record for a right-handed batter for 66 years until Mark McGwire hit 70 in 1998. He followed up in 1933 by winning the Triple Crown with a batting average of .356, 163 RBIs, and 48 home runs. He won back-to-back MVP honors in 1932 and 1933. Foxx was one of the three or four most feared sluggers of his era. The great Yankee pitcher Lefty Gomez once said of him, “He has muscles in his hair.” In 1937 Foxx hit a ball into the third deck of the left-field stands at Yankee Stadium in New York, a very rare feat because of the distance and the angle of the stands. Gomez was the pitcher who gave it up, and when asked how far it went, he said, “I don’t know, but I do know it took somebody 45 minutes to go up there and get it back.” When the Great Depression fully hit in the early 1930s, A’s owner Connie Mack was unable to pay the salaries of his highly paid stars and was obliged to sell off a number of them, including the great pitcher Lefty Grove. In 1936, Mack sold Foxx’s contract to the Boston Red Sox for $150,000 following a contract dispute. Foxx played six years in Boston, including a spectacular 1938 season in which he hit 50 home runs, drove in 175 runs, batted .349, won his third MVP award, and narrowly missed winning the Triple Crown. In 1939 he hit .360, his second all-time best annual batting average. His 50 home runs would remain the single-season record for the Red Sox until David Ortiz hit 54 in 2006. Foxx’s skills diminished significantly after 1941. Some sources attribute this to a drinking problem, while others attribute it to a sinus condition. He split the 1942 season between the Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, playing mostly a reserve role. He sat out the 1943 season and appeared only in 15 games in 1944, mostly as a pinch hitter. He wound up his career with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1945 as a jack of all trades, filling in at first and third, pinch hitting, and even pitching nine games, compiling a surprising 1-0 record and 1.59 ERA over 22 2/3 innings. Interestingly, the man who was so often called the right-handed Babe Ruth throughout his career was the opposite of Ruth in this regard as well. Ruth began his big-league career as a pitcher; Foxx ended his big-league career as one. Jimmie Foxx finished his 20-year, 2317-game career with 534 home runs, 1922 runs batted in, and a .325 batting average. He won a total of three MVP awards. His 12 consecutive seasons with 30 or more home runs was a major league record broken by Barry Bonds in 2004. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1951 wearing a Red Sox cap. At the end of his career, his 534 home runs placed him second only to Ruth on the all-time list, and first among right-handed hitters. He retained these positions until Willie Mays passed Foxx for 2nd place on the all-time HR list in 1966. A series of bad investments left Foxx broke by 1958. He worked as a minor league manager and coach after his playing days ended, including managing the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Tom Hanks’ character Jimmy Dugan in the movie A League of Their Own was largely based on Foxx, but the producers took a number of liberties in creating the role. Foxx died at age 59 in Miami, Florida, apparently by choking to death on a bone. He is buried at Flagler Memorial Park in Miami, Florida. A statue of Foxx was erected in his hometown on October 25, 1997. In an article in 1976 in Esquire magazine, sportswriter Harry Stein published an “All Time All-Star Argument Starter,” consisting of five ethnic baseball teams. Because of space limitations the Irish team, including Foxx as first baseman, was omitted. Foxx was immortalized in the poem “Lineup for Yesterday” by Ogden Nash thus: X is the first (This, of course, was long before Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds.)
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Baseball & Softball Coaches Equipment - Magnetic Lineup Board Review
If you don’t have an easy to read line-up posted in the dugout you are hurting yourself, your players, and subsequently your team by allowing yourself and the team to be distracted from the game. Let’s face it, it’s information that you want to have ready access to, and you want your players to have ready access to as well. So why are you keeping this vital information on a scratch piece of paper or on a carbon copy that is barely legible? The best magnetic lineup board is about 8.5″ x 14″ and consists of a position diagram of the softball field on the top, positions for a batting order on the bottom, and a hook so it can be easily hung in the dugout for everyone to see. You simply place magnets with the player’s names in the position on the diagram that they will be playing. If you will be subbing in to a position you can go ahead and put the sub’s magnetic above or below the starter’s magnet. The same is true with the batting order. If you know you will be subbing in for a hitter just put the sub’s magnet next to the starter’s magnet. The real beauty to a magnetic lineup board is before the game has started when you are putting together your game strategy. After making your initial batting order it’s very easy to adjust for who’s hot and who’s not, or if you need a bunter in the second or third position, and if you change the batting order will that change who you want to play on defense and where you can make those changes. You can also see the effect your substitutions will have on positions and the batting order. What you used to have to envision in your mind you can now see on the board, both offensively and defensively and for the entirety of the game not just the start of the game. It let’s you create your game strategy prior to the game. It’s called HAVING A PLAN. Hey Coach, Listen Up The decisions you make in determining your lineup WILL AFFECT the outcome of the game. Once the game has started there’s not much opportunity to correct a poor batting order. Sometimes it’s easy to put together a line up. Other times, we’ve spent 10 or 15 minutes maneuvering players around on our magnetic lineup board to assess the strengths and weaknesses and determining what we needed for the upcoming game. I can’t imagine going through this exercise with paper and pen. Whether your fastpitch softball team, or baseball team, is a beginning team or a highly skilled tournament team, putting your players in the right positions, building the best batting order, and having a plan for your substitutions, will decide the outcome of many fastpitch softball games. A magnetic lineup board costs about $20.00. Twenty dollars is a cheap investment to KNOW that you have given your team their best opportunity to win. Hey, it’s worth the twenty bucks just not to have to answer the question “who do I bat after” 500 times during the season. There are two magnetic lineup boards on the market. The Easton brand and the Coacher brand. They both cost about $20.00, HOWEVER, the Coacher board is the clear winner. The Easton board does not have a field diagram which prevents you from visualizing the starting defense and, just as important, the defense after substitutions have been made. The Coacher board does have the field diagram. In conclusion, I would grade the Easton board a C because it is better than using a piece of paper. The Coacher board gets an A+ as it is the complete package and the superior product. For the same investment, you have the choice of the Mercedes or the Pinto. Having coached over 500 youth fastpitch softball games, Coach Jim decided to put his insight online to allow parent/coaches to draw on his unique experience. At http://www.mysoftballcoach.com/coaching-fastpitch-softball-successfully.html he has compiled a comprehensive list of softball game strategies, softball drills, softball tips, and techniques that are sure to help any coach become successful.
Visit http://www.mysoftballcoach.com/softball-equipment.html for numerous reviews on softball equipment, softball bats, pitching machines and other essential coaching tools, to make your team a Winning team. Before you make any softball equipment purchases be sure to read Jim’s review to make sure you don’t buy the wrong equipment. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Moyer |
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