David Ortiz could be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Tuesday, but there will be trends worth noting even if he, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and others fall short.
Goodwin & Company - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Benjamin K. Edwards Baseball Card Collection.
Larry Corcoran is a name a lot of fans may be unfamiliar with, but for a brief time in the 1880s as a member of the Chicago White Stockings, he was quite a force on the mound. The right-hander tossed three no-hitters in the early 1880s, but he then had a hard and fast fall from grace. By 85 Corcoran had a dead arm and two years later he was completely out of baseball. Unrelated to his no-hitters, he is amusingly credited with coming up with the first method of communicating pitches with his catcher something he accomplished by shifting his wad of tobacco to different places in his mouth.
share-square-1068820
Phil Niekro, the man, was in many ways the opposite of the signature pitch that made him one of baseball’s legendary hurlers over a 24-year Hall of Fame career. His knuckleball was as unpredictable a pitch as any in the game’s history, leaving baffled hitters’ attempts at connecting utterly futile.
But ask anyone who knew Niekro, and they’ll tell you: He was as steady, reliable and easy to connect with as they come.
When Niekro passed away at the age of 81 on Saturday, the baseball world lost not only one of its greatest pitchers, but also one of its greatest ambassadors. Since 2009, Niekro had served as a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Board of Directors, and no Hall of Famer was more immersed in Cooperstown than he was.