TWIB

By Blaidd Drwg

For those of you old enough to remember (which, considering that I know most of the readers of this blog should be just about all of you), TWIB stands for “This Week In Baseball”, the weekly half hour baseball show hosted by the late, great Mel Allen that used to air right before the Saturday afternoon game of the week. “How about that!”

There were two big baseball stories occurred in the last week that I feel the need to comment on them.

Bobby Thompson – Bobby passed away earlier this week at the age of 86. Everyone remembers him for “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” off Ralph Branca in the 1951 playoff that put the Giants into the World Series. People forget that he was a pretty good ballplayer beyond that, playing 15 seasons and hitting 264 Home Runs. I personally got to meet Bobby Thompson years ago in the mid ‘80’s at a baseball card show. There was no one waiting behind me to get his autograph so I talked to him for about 10 minutes. He was humbled that a kid who wasn’t even born when he retired knew so much about his playing days and we talked about him growing up in Staten Island (and being born in Scotland), his military service and having the opportunity to play for the Giants while they were in NY. I would highly recommend reading Joshua Prager’s book “Echoing Green” –  it is a fascinating read about how the Giants were stealing signs in 1951 and the personalities involved in the battle between the Giants and Dodgers. It spends a lot of time talking about Thompson and Branca.

“There’s a long fly ball…THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT…THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT…BOBBY THOMPSON!…” I still get chills thinking about Russ Hodges’ call, made 22 years before I was born.

Roger Clemens – Clemens is going to be indicted for perjury before congress. One, this is going to mean absolutely nothing in the long term and two, why is this a big deal. Does anyone really think that Senate sub-committees aren’t lied to on a regular basis by people under oath? (I am looking at you BP). Besides it is a baseball player lying about steroids. I am sure that has somehow compromised national security.