Selected by the Braves in the 17th round of the 1971 amateur draft, Pocoroba spent the majority of his career as a backup catcher, with one good season (1977) and one all-star appearance (1978). I just didn’t know what to make of Biff Pocoroba.īiff Benedict Pocoroba was born on Jand played 10 years in the Majors with the Atlanta Braves. ![]() So was Don Aase (until several years later when I first heard his name pronounced ‘AH-see’.) But the funniest name of all to me had nothing to do with body parts. ![]() I was still too young to think Bobby Cox was funny, but Dick Drago was. I was 8 years old…Dick Pole made me giggle (still does at 48). I remember Mike Schmidt’s wide collar and Phil Niekro’s windbreaker… Bill Bonham’s terrible hair and Oscar Gamble’s magnificent afro… the weird Greg Minton pre-Photoshop, hand-painted portrait/snapshot hybrid… I sorted, re-sorted and studied the cards as if there was going to be a test. I was captivated by the funny names, colorful uniforms, bad hair and big mustaches. To me, they were my first real introduction to the game and the characters who played it. The set is known to collectors for its simple design with the team names emblazoned across the bottom of the cards in an iconic script. When I took-over the collection from my older brother, it had trading cards of all sorts, including 2 or 3 fat stacks of 1978 Topps Baseball. In fact, now that I think about it, without that first shoebox-full of cards there wouldn’t be a Van Lingle Mungo Hall of Fame at all. ![]() The Van Lingle Mungo Hall of Fame has become a fun exercise for me on many levels, but the very best part is the time traveling I do every time I see a name that makes me recall my first baseball card collection. Later in life Kettle ran a baseball school and also worked for himself … as a beer distributor.Ĭheers to Kettle Wirts for that winding trip down memory lane – and welcome to the Van Lingle Mungo Hall of Fame! Wirts was certainly a better ballplayer than I, but it seems our love of baseball wasn’t the only thing we had in common… His professional baseball career began in the minors in 1918 with the class B Spokane Indians and extended until 1935. The right-handed catcher played 43 of those games with the Chicago Cubs, before moving to the southside and playing his final 6 with the White Sox. The resulting mixtures are called “worts”.?Įlwood Vernon “Kettle” Wirts was born on this day in 1897 and played in 49 Major League games over 4 seasons between 1921-24. In fact, I did indeed make a brief foray into homebrewing back then, making several batches of shitty beer before giving up after a carboy exploded its yeasty muck all over our Greenlake rental kitchen.Īs I recall, the first step in homebrewing, is to boil malt, sugar and water in a kettle. The first year I got my old Little League and High School teammates back together to play in the NABA…our team name was the Bothell Brewers. I even played on a men’s fastpitch softball team for two summers. Beginning 1994, each spring and summer I played baseball in the NABA, and on several competitive and rec-league men’s and co-ed slow-pitch softball teams. Looking back on my life back then, it could very much be defined by Baseball and Beer. ![]() We were also regulars at the Kingdome in those days (usually after a stop at the King Street Alehouse and followed by a trip to the Owl n’ Thistle) and were first-hand witnesses to the rise of the Seattle Mariners and their brief heyday, including their historic playoff run in 1995. I spent a lot of time in bars back then, in large part because I worked in the wine and craft beer business… and in a (much) larger part, because I liked drinking beer and watching baseball. I was fresh out of college and living with 3 buddies in a house near Greenlake, that was about halfway between Leny’s (in what is now known as Tangletown), and Murphy’s Pub on 45th. When I first saw the name “Kettle Wirts” it immediately made me time-travel back to my mid 20’s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |