Southern New England Lajoie-Start Chapter meeting recap – 11/29/2014
If you weren’t at St. Philip’s Parish Center, you missed a great Southern New England Lajoie-Start Chapter meeting on Saturday, November 29, 2014, in Greenville, Rhode Island. The star of the show was without question Oil Can Boyd, who was frank and articulate, if sometimes a little bit inclined to exaggerate. Oil Can answered questions for more than an hour, then spent about 20 minutes signing autographs. Click on this link for some pictures of Oil Can, taken by Dixie Tourangeau: http://bit.ly/lajoie-start-20141129.
The only downer at the meeting was that Oil Can’s extended presence plus a couple of longish presentations bumped or curtailed a couple of other scheduled presentations. My apologies to those presenters, who will be at the top of the priority list for our meeting in June.
Mike Darowski again conducted a mock Hall of Fame election. The top vote-getters were Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez, who both were well over the required 75%. In the separate Veterans ballot, Gil Hodges got the most votes, but it was less than the required 75%. (Those results will be announced next week.) To see the vote breakdown, click on this link:
https://sabr.box.com/shared/static/sowoft7cdfpqdgckzenr.pdf
(If this link and the one above don’t work for you, just paste them in your header and get them that way. Or send me an email and I’ll forward them to you.)
Duke Goldman was a repeat winner of the trivia contest, whose theme was “Mc” and “Mac” players.
Try the quiz yourself. Here it is:
1) He was born today (11-29-39) in Hartford. He made three All-Star teams at both 2B and SS, and once tied a ML record by not grounding into a double play for the entire 1968 season.
2) He batted .334 lifetime and won 2,763 games as a manager.
3) One of two NL MVPs on this list, his last at-bat was to ground out in the 1948 World Series.
4) Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma Mc —-?
5) The first rookie to hit a World Series grand slam, at various times the former Rookie-of-the-Year led all 2B, 3B and SS in double plays.
6) Von and Lindy were brothers with the Cardinals. Von was a starter who broke in with a two-hit shutout, but was only 7-5 in his career. Lindy had a 21-year career as a reliever. What was their last name?
7) One half of the Boston Beaneaters Heavenly Twins was Cranston’s Hugh Duffy. Which Mc was the other half?
8) What was Tug McGraw’s first name?
9) Name the other NL MVP (see question 3). He had the same number of home runs as Ted Williams.
10) Another November birth boy, he managed five teams and won the World Series at age 80 in Florida.
11) Who was the last pitcher to win 30 games?
12) “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cooperstown” was authored by a one-time guest speaker to our chapter. His father allowed him to sign a Red Sox contract (at age 15) for $3,000 and two truckloads of Ballantine Beer.
13) His 493 home runs tie him with Lou Gehrig. He led both leagues in homers, with the blue Jays and the Padres.
14) Born in New London, this PC Friar played for ten teams and got a World Series ring from the 2013 Red Sox.
15) This unknown (21-27 career) threw a 2-0 shutout at the Pirates before only 6,702 fans in the last game played at Ebbets Field.
16) Arnold Mc—–, another former Cardinal Rookie-of-the-Year, once scored all the way from first base on a botched pick-off throw in the 25th inning.
17) “Deacon” managed three different NL teams to the pennant, winnng the fall classic with the Reds.
18) Yet another November birth, he broke in with the Red Sox in 2010 with a ninth-inning game-tying home run, followed by a game-winning double off the wall in the 10th inning.
19) This LHP Mac closed out the final game in both the 1975 and 1976 World Series.
20) John Mc—– was born in Gloucester, Mass. He set a 1B fielding record of 1,700 errorless chances in 1921-22 (later broken by Kevin Youkilis).
ANSWERS:
1 Dick McAuliffe 2 John McGraw 3 Frank McCormick
4 McLish 5 Gil McDougald 6 McDaniel
7 Tommy McCarthy 8 Frank 9 Willie McCovey
10 Jack McKeon 11 Denny McLain 12 Mickey McDermott
13 Fred McGriff 14 John McDonald 15 Danny McDevitt
16 Bake McBride 17 Bill McKechnie 18 Darnell McDonald
19 Will McEnaney 20 John “Stuffy” McInnis
We will meet next on a Saturday in June under a picnic tent at McCoy Stadium. The Pawtucket Red Sox will play at home on Saturday, June 13, and I hope to get the meeting set for that day. (They also play at home on the 27th, but that falls during the SABR national convention in Chicago.) I’ll let you know as soon as the date is set.
— Len Levin
lenlevin5@hotmail.com