Richard Casady wrote:
On Sun, 12 Jul 2009 09:37:19 -0400, HK wrote:

Amazing. Before my time, yet I know who DiMaggio and Feller were, and I
can't name one of today's baseball players.

I know who Feller is because he is from the Des Moines area. DeSoto.
There is a bar and restaurant there that I go to. Didn't he have the
onetime fastest fastball, 100 MPH. Heard that as a kid fifty years
ago.

Casady


I remember references to Feller as the strikeout king. He's still alive,
I think.

When I worked for the KC Star, I got to go to lots of KC Athletics (big
deal, eh?) games, either on the paper's "freebie" tickets or because I
was assigned on a slow news night to write a "color" story by the
assistant city editor, who was a former sports editor and writer. The
sports desk, of course, covered the game and the players and the
intrigue. I got to write about the fans and what they were doing.
Despite the fact that it was the Athletics, I did get to see some great
baseball games and some memorable players, including the one game
Satchel Paige pitched. I was assigned to interview the old "Negro
League" players who showed up to watch Paige.

These games were in the good old days, when the baseball stadium was
downtown, only a few blocks from both the newspaper offices *and*
Bryant's Barbecue, which many consider the best barbecue in the world.
The proximity of good barbecue was damned important to the guys in the
sports box.