Baseball Prospectus: Too far from town: Bristol Pirates
From Sarah R. Ingber, Davy Andrews, and SABR member Roger Cormier at Baseball Prospectus on May 7, 2020:
We are going to cheat a little bit on this one. Of course we could have a good infotaining time looking back at the Bristol Tigers (1969-1994). 26-year-old Jim Leyland’s first professional managerial job was with those Tigers, in 1971. Jim Leyland was fewer than 50 years old once? We couldn’t believe it either! Leyland tried and very much failed to hide his smoking from his charges. At the end of the year the team — they finished 31-35 — presented him with a wristwatch. He seemed well liked. It’s a nice story. That would have been cute to revisit.
Mark “The Bird” Fidrych got his nickname while pitching for Bristol after his teammates noticed he resembled Big Bird. That’s a nice story but *turns story upside down, shakes it, closes one eye for some reason and examines more closely* that is the entirety of it.
A two-time Super Bowl champion played for the Bristol Tigers in 1981. He was a quarterback for the Denver Broncos! Oh darn, it was Bubby Brister, not the former Yankee prospect.
Read the full article here: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/58740/too-far-from-town-bristol-pirates/
- Related link: Read our SABR biography of Ron Necciai
Originally published: May 7, 2020. Last Updated: May 7, 2020.