Thursday, January 31, 2008

Fogotten Bucco History - "I Got It!"

I stumbled across the following bit while doing some research, and I figured it was worth sharing. From the May 31, 1886 edition of The Sporting News (p.5):

In a game at Pittsburg, Morris was knocked down twice in running at flies. First he collided with Ringo, and next Carroll ran against him, sending him to the ground with a bloody nose. Poor coaching was the cause of these collisions.

A lot of people like to pretend that players from way back when had perfect fundamentals and played purely out of a love for the game, and I think it's refreshing to see a reminder once in a while that the old-timers were just as greedy and lazy and fumble-fingered as the players of the modern era.

Incidentally, if you're interested in old-time baseball, Paper of Record is a tremendous resource. They offer a free, searchable online archive of a number of different newspapers, including a complete run of The Sporting News from 1886 to 2003 (listed under Missouri, its state of publication). That's more than 189,000 pages of textual goodness, most of it baseball-related.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Paper of Record is tremendous fun. Plan to spend more time than you ever planned with The Sporting News. The more years of accumulated memories, the longer this is going to be.

Giggle said...

Thanks for the kind words--Bob Huggins
Founder & President
PaperofRecord.com