The SDMB Hall of Fame Project: Left Fielders

The Game Room
41

Yeah, we have a ways to go. Baseball season starts Monday and I hope it will enhance voting interest.

42

Thank you all for voting in the Left Fielders poll. We have elected ten left fielders to the SDMB Hall of Fame:

Tim Raines (13 votes, only unanimous selection)
Carl Yastrzemski (12)
Al Simmons (12)
Willie Stargell (11)
Goose Goslin (10)
Billy Williams (9)
Manny Ramirez (9)
Ralph Kiner (7)
Minnie Minoso and Ed Delehanty (6)

18 other players got a vote; just missing were Lou Brock with five votes and Jim Rice, Pete Rose and Joe Jackson with four.

The career WAR leader among all left fielders who isn’t yet elected is PEte Rose is you count him. For actual left fielders, Fred Clarke.

Now you may vote for Center Fielders!

Thanks!

43

Bumped.

Color footage of Ted Williams’s last game has come to light - I’m surprised to see so many empty seats, though!: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/sports/ted-williams-film-last-game.html

44

Attendance back then was just not what it was today. The Red Sox drew 11,000 to 14,000 fans per game, depending how good they were, and they were one of the better attended teams.

45

But for his last game! I would’ve thought it would be packed.

46

A bit surprising, yeah. I just found this New Yorker piece by John Updike, written just after he had attended that game; he notes “It was for our last look that ten thousand of us had come.” (Official attendance was 10,454.)

The fact that it was a day game (as most were at that time) probably didn’t help.

47

LOl, and yet every year, bored sportswriters and bloggers write their, “Baseball is dying!” column. And they’re even more prominent in years like this when a lot of the county had absolutely crap weather up until mid May.