The Best Game of All Time
Well, if I had my way I’d spend all day trying to get people to contribute to worthy gofundme accounts. Sadly, it is time we move on. I don’t know how long Chi is going to keep it up and I encourage anyone who hasn’t already done so to please contribute. Now for something completely different:
It’s a Guess who this Flapper is Contest! You get nothing but personal satisfaction if you get it right. No more goddamn computer giveaways. That was a Twin thing and most recently a Chi thing. From here on out, everyone buys their own fucking computers. lqtm. Full disclosure (and a hint I guess) only one of these guys is a Flapper. The other one is his brother.
Now, I literally just came up with this game while I was posting the picture. I think this will be a fun thing going forward and since we have no baseball let’s keep it going. If you have any pics of yourself as a kid, preferably playing baseball, send them to me with, obviously, your Flap handle so I will know the correct answer. We could do this for weeks, come on let’s go, email me!
bigflavor77@gmail.com
A while back I sent in some online feedback to one of Trump’s automated email surveys. When it asked for my name I put in Fuck You. So now when I get emails from them it just says “Fuck, President Trump” to start the letter. It’s hilarious.
When you get to the part of the survey to rate his performance these are the options lol. Safe to say that good ol’ Fuck You has been rating him *other*
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
NYY fan and NY Giants fan, my pick is it’s Pawlie catching.
kinda funny stripper joints nobody mentioned Brass Rail. Early 80s I had shipping dept. forklift job right over the hill from it in Sunnyvale off Mathilda before 101. Shifts ran 9 hours Monday-Thursday and then Friday was only half day and you left early with paycheck in hand. So guys would hit the Rail by noon, get the check cashed minus a small fee grab a cold one and check out parade of gals.
shipping had to have one or two of us stay late to load UPS or outgoing trucks…guaranteed OT $$ so i usually stuck around. So maybe after 5 I’d hit Rail, and sure enough some of the others would still be there.
There used to be another strip place in Sunnyvale near Matilda av. It was near the old Russo Motel on the other side of the car dealership. Can’t remember the name of it though.
Baseball is in a really bad place right now. Manfred is ready to transmogrify the game I loved in the 60s to some bastardized hybrid. Owners like the A’s billionaire has to be shamed into paying his lowest level players. I get they will lose substantial revenue without fans but if they go hardball and shut it all down they run risk of substantially fewer fans next year too. Players unwilling to negotiate to get paid 30-40% of their salary vs. 4% with no games at all isn’t any better. The millions of us not working and scrambling for EDD bread do not have your back.
A guy like Crawford would make $5-6 mil for “working” 3 months out of the year. Even the minimum wage guys like Yaz would still get $200K. Not playing at all takes another year out of the short window they have to be able to do this..then it’s back to the real world for rest of your life.
Stop worrying about what the next CBA will look like, wipe out the lines you have drawn in the sand and compromise for the greater good, now.
I agree, today’s game is nothing like it was in the 60’s. You don’t see pitchers like Gibson and more. I think Randy Johnson might have been the last one to really strike fear into the players. I think Mays was even afraid of Gibson. I also think the DH was a big downfall to the game. It takes to much strategy out of it. To me the players seemed way tougher overall back then. I might think that way because I was younger and more into the game than I am now.
Temps sposta hit the 90’s today tomorrow in Mpls. Typical St. Louis summer weather even into the evening with Harry Carey along with Joe Garagiola coming at you where the San Francisco Giants are at beautiful Busch Stadium this 92 degree evening with Sad Sam Jones going for the visitors and to be announced for the Cards.
Since ’54 #24 has been The Man for me when his MVP year sparked the New York Giants to their World Championship over the vaunted rotation for the Indians. My mom’s fellow 1941 graduate from Clearbrook high school was Wes Westrum who caught the likes of Johnny Antonelli, Hoyt Wilhelm and Sal, the Barber, Maglie for the Champs.
Years later I got to see Willie play against their former farm team, the Minneapolis Millers, a franchise traded by Horace Stoneham for Boston’s PCL franchise, the San Francisco Seals. Staring for the Millers vs. SF, was an up and comer outfielder named Carl Yastrzemski…yeah, Mike’s grandpa among other accomplishments. In ’64, living in St. Louis then and taking in a couple games with fellow TKE’s at Washington U., I was privileged to see Mays a couple more times. The next summer, besides spending most evenings in the Village, the Flushing YMCA was my home for about three weeks as occupation had me servicing garden seed accounts for the Northrup-King seed company outta Minneapolis. In the borough of Queens that summer of ’65 I watched Mays play the Mets and also took in the nearby World’s Fair.
Our great fortune as Giants fans is that the ’31 model Say Hay Kid is still with us and that in honor of the greatest position player of all time, it would thrill my heart (and his too, I should think) to hear an N.L. umpire shout out “Play Ball” in a game featuring MY boys of summer, the San Francisco Giants.
classic Stix post, great way to wake up on a lazy Sunday morning.
BTW the Clown got it right away, that is indeed PK and his brother. Truthfully,this was a pretty easy one if you’ve studied your Flap history books.
Anyone else got a good pic of yourself from when you were a kid playing baseball, send it my way!
Great idea! Sadly no pictures. Welcome back Stix!
Thanx for the welcome and extended to all the Flappers over the last few who shared similar greetings. Also a HUUUGE thanks to ChiPower who called the “Go Fund Me” on behalf of a recently half-freed, nearly 4 years outta a septuagenarian’s life as a guest of the “they just don’t care” about their wards, Fed$. Much kudos also to Flav and Xoot for their essential supporting roles in bringing out the Brotherhood of Flappers.
Just yesterday, the brother-in-law unearthed several boxes of stuff from the home I’ve not seen since 8-8-16, just two days after I helped him and my sister marry off their daughter. Two weeks ago they became proud grandparents for the second time…it was on the same day they drove all the way from the Twin Cities to rescue me from FCC Elkton, a prime human-warehousing facility in eastern Ohio, not far outta Youngstown and nearly an hour closer to Pittsburgh than to Cleveland.
Amidst the pictures was one taken on the farm where I lived as a young child…dated 1946…with me in towheaded farmer-drag (bib overalls) with the barn and chickencoop in the background and an unremembered wheeled hobbyhorse to my left front…alas, no baseball pics, though. It was fun to see Pawlie and brother in New York Giants uniforms way back in the day. Closest I’ve come to that was yesterday from within another box was a 1989 Giants “NL Champs” tee and a rather ferddy SF Giants summer cap in black, orange and grey.
Ahh, this had become the summer of memories writ large.
Yeah, we lost all our pictures when my sister burnt our house down. Good times!
lol, your sister did what?
I enjoy Trevor Noah but man, do I miss Jon Stewart.
I never told that story? My brother, who was 6 and a bit of a pyromaniac at the time, thought it would be funny to take my 3 year old sister’s clothes into a field and burn them up one day. Given that this was the glorious 60s, I think every room had 3 ashtrays in it, and every ashtray had a lighter. My sister got even with him by taking all his clothes and lighting them on fire. In his room. Those of you from the peninsula probably know about the Highlands. A bunch of Eichler houses in San Mateo up by 280 that were made strictly of wood and glass. Wood paneling on every wall, tar and gravel roofs. What they called matchbox houses. More like tinderbox houses.
Well, my mom was pregnant with me, and she was taking a nap, and by the time my sister woke her up, my brother’s room was totally engulfed in flames. My mom grabbed two photo albums and whatever important papers she could and took my sister (Karen) outside. Luckily, my two older sisters and my brother were at school so they missed the fun. The place burned to the ground in about 15 minutes. It was around 2000 sq ft. For whatever reason my mom didn’t take a lot of pictures after that.
that’s incredible.
The house got rebuilt and we lived there for another 4 years. My earliest memories are living in that house. And I still see a couple of the neighbors across the street.
This situation may end up like the post-strike season when attendance was WAY down, and the fans were pissed off. People were throwing fake money at the players, and the fans stayed away in droves.
Joan ryan has new book out, “Intangibles” subtitled “Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry.”
Krukow figures prominently in it and she got the idea from Giants 20 year reunion of 1989 team.
Krukow had been traded over to SF,in 1983 and here’s what he said: ” As an opposing team, everybody would bitch and moan about coming to Candlestick Park. Everyone hated it. But I found out when I got traded that no one bitched louder about it than the Giants.”
After Al Rosen and Roger Craig came in though, that stuff was no longer allowed. “They said no more negative references to the ballpark…by the end of the next ST we believed it. They taught us how to win.”
Stix, your memory of the ’54 Giants/Indians W.S. took me down memory lane, as well. Through a fluke I saw Mays’ catch of Wertz’s SHOT! Didn’t know Horace Stoneham had control of the Seals (my first love!). Just think how improbable it would have been for the Giants to move to SF if he hadn’t done that. Was it in tandem with the move?
Absitively, posolutely, Stan. Stoneham got convinced by Dodger honcho, Walter O’Malley to join in on the huuge move to the coast. What made it all possible was the recent advent of jet passenger aircraft, so that an hour after hour train ride was no longer the only way to travel from coast to coast. Even with Pullman service, I’m sure that it was two to a berth, so you had to listen to your “cellie’s grunts, gripes and farts all night and then be rested up enough to play the next day.
Imagine the likes of Babe Ruth in that situation. He’da sat up all night in the club-car playing cards and drinking whiskey. George Herman Ruth’s pop was a saloon keeper in Baltimore. Whispered word behind closed doors was that the Babe’s ancestry was partially of West African descent…not a positive rep in the Teens, Twenties and Thirties. Today, it would be a matter of pride for folks whose folks had been put down for waaay too long.
Flat roofed Eichler’s were all over Sunnyvale by 60s; buddy of mine lived in one next to cherry orchards that used to abut Fremont High School football field. Great place to party and play wiffle ball or night football because street dead ended at the orchards so not too much car traffic. Lot of them are still there today
Eichler homes and sidings &even eichler fence boards( I use to mill open joint 4 half inch grooves in a 1 by 8 fence board) was so damm popular all over the Bay Area.All I would hear was how loaded Joseph Eichler’s net worth must of been.When you have a product,home,sidings,fencing named after you, you can sit back with a fat cigar and cocktail 🍸and enjoy the wealth..
The Giants TV network is showing several retro games today.
Interested to see what ESPN guy does with Bruce Lee bio. Was it ever settled exactly as to how/what he died from?
how is this sweet bastard still kicking it around? This is ten years before I was even born lol
Between Clint Eastwood &Sean Connery you have every woman’s macho& sex appeal combo wrapped in 2 packages.Hell even most men are jealous of those 2 star power..
As was related to me the other day by my mentor coach buddy who grew up in Italian part of Oakland, Cllint graduated from his alma mater, Oakland Tech.
Quite a distinguished group of alumni (including John Brodie and his younger brother) from there too if you check out wiki. Curt Flood for one and my old friend who played football and b-ball there said he used to watch him play. McClymonds in those days had Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson.
Oakland sure produced some great ballplayers.
Ken Riley corner back who had 15 yr career with Bengals is dead at 72. Played late 60s for Florida A&M and after he left NFL coached there for 8 yrs too; Was a QB as a player and led the Rattlers to a winning record while coaching there.
The photo, for me, raises questions of Proustian recall. It’s 1956 or ’57. By my hat, definitely before the Move to SF. Stamford, Connecticut. The projects. Jack’s quirky Yankees hat. Was that the logo? I am left-handed. Where did that catcher’s mitt come from? It was like a pancake. My shoes. Were they Sunday dress shoes? Or the pair I had with metal spikes? The uniform. Was it the same one I wore to school (surely against Mom’s wishes) in first or second grade? If so, (a) Did I not grow since then (FAILURE TO THRIVE, name of my book published yesterday)? or (b) Was the uni swimmingly too big when I was younger at another school? (Incident chronicled in CATCHING WILLIE MAYS; now I doubt the veracity of details in that book, but such is the Remembrance of Things Past for anyone.) My father took the picture. A box camera. Something tells me it was after church on a Sunday. People went to church; we did unfailingly, under pain of mortal sin. The photo was enlarged. That was a big deal, to have a photo enlarged. Where are the rest of the kids from Myano Lane and Myano Court? Practicing a safety drill for the A-bomb?
what’s your bro up to these days?
Retired, living in New Hampshire. Travels with his wife. Or used to. He was the far superior athlete. When we “hit ’em out,” he would blast them, as a switch hitter. Fungoes. Short (like Bobby Schantz) and muscular, like Mantle, his “guy.” Fast like a jackrabbit too.
Craig, loved your response to the Trump survey. I did that once, while I was back in the US after my Father died, clearing out stuff, etc. I loved my Pops beyond life itself, but he was always getting stuff like that from Republican “fund raisers” and always donated. I felt like he was being preyed upon in his later years. I found one of those surveys in a stack of unopened mail, and filled in all the wrong boxes with a few *fuck you’s* sprinkled about and put his name as Fuck You Too. Next time I visited my Mom a handful of months later, there were more surveys addressed to Fuck You Too. The world is full of morons, and most of them seem to be Republicans….
it’s so funny they can’t even code the simplest program to screen people that put joke names into their system. I mean, literally a 4th grader could code something that would flag the name Fuck You.
Wait? What?
“Cate Blanchett said she suffered a “little nick to the head” following an accident with a chainsaw during the coronavirus lockdown.”
Wow, I guess some people really are struggling to get haircuts during lockdown…
What did she have Bumgarner offer her a trim??
Flav: Taking you up on the Titular premise of the day’s blog. Most flappers should recall something of it when i nominate the best PITCHED game of all-time. Can’t recall the date or even year but surely one of the Gigantes cogniscenti can come up with that bit.
16 inning duel between two of the greatest high-kickers of all-time, lefty Hall of Famer Warren Spahn for the Braves and righty, the Juan and only Marichal for the Giants.Also a fixture in Cooperstown. Can you imagine BOTH starters going sixteen in this pussified, clean-hands, manicured toenails day and age? Hell! if they can manage anything more than six, to say nothing of the extra 10 I.P.,they will likely be the recipient of a full body massage from a doting clubhouse attendant. Are female reporters of the opposite sex the only ones of their ilk allowed into MLB clubhouses these days? To keep from rattling on and on, the nothing to zilch shutout duel was broken up by our very own ’31 model greatest of the Greats as “Willie do it this time?” done and did it with a walk-off. Giants WIN: One to nothing.
Greatest pitching duel of all time? I don’t think that even Iron Man Joe McGinnty of the New York Giants and
the White Earth Ojibwe reservation’s Chief Bender for the Philadelphia A’s couldda topped that one. As echoed by the baseball sages: That was one for the ages.
Maybe of interest to Zum, Chuck and other Flappers, I was reading something on Facebook the other day (I think the page was for The Bluegrass Situation) about an upcoming 2-part documentary called Laurel Canyon, about all the musicians that hung out there in the early to late ’60s.. Flying Burrito Brothers, Byrds, etc. There was a pic or two, one of Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman playing cards at a kitchen table, plus interview with Hillman. Unfortunately, I can’t provide a link, have no idea where and when the documentary will air… I’m useless. Just thought of some discussions about music on the Flap and this sounds interesting, something to watch out for if you can find it.
I want to see that documentary, but I don’t have that channel, EPIX or EPIC or whatever it is. I hope it comes to Netflix soon.
I highly recommend the related recent David Crosby documentary, “Don’t Forget My Name.” It’s very good.
Clearing stuff from house of Ex-Wife2, I found that picture. and yesterday my glove!