I Wish
 

Don't worry, no rant here, just waxing nostalgically.

I wish the Senators never left D.C., although I do like the Twins and the Rangers.

I wish the Browns never left St. Louis. How cool would it be to have 2 teams share a stadium? Same reason, I wish the A's never left Philadelphia. The Dodgers? That's hard. I love the Brooklyn Dodgers, I even have a shrine to them in my man cave bedroom (my mom worked at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard during WW2, and she went to Ebbets Field, and her favorite player was Cookie Lavagetto). But my best friend from childhood to this day is a LA Dodgers fan, and so am I. Last, how about the bathtub Polo Grounds? Lot of history there, too.

I wish the White Sox never left old Comiskey Park. Sure it was run down, but it had something, there was something about it. Some of the old parks needed to go, I get it. But I bet the White Sox wish they were still there.

I wish Russwood Park in Memphis never burned down. Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, and all the rest played there at times.

I wish someone would wake up and realize the history with Terry Park in Fort Myers. Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx and all the others played there, too. When the 29-30-31 A's were in their heyday, they held spring training there. Thing is, it's still there, only the wooden stands burned down there, too, and were rebuilt only to be destroyed by Hurricane Donna in 1960.

Do I live in the past? Yes.

Thanks for the thread. Since I'm originally from Arkansas, I would like to know how you could possibly leave out Hot Springs Arkansas - the home "Spring Training"! Check out the link:

https://hotspringsbaseballtrail.com/...n-hot-springs/

I fully admit that I look to the past, with rose tinted glasses. I understand that things are not as Romantic as they seem to be, or are portrayed.

I do feel the times we describe though, were simpler. For better and for worse. When so many of life's wonders weren't necessarily taken for granted. Each generation deals with their struggles, but constantly being connected, the 24 hour news machine, seems to have made many things dull.

Would be nice to go back to a time when technology didn't permeate our lives so much. When we could catch a day-night double header, and truly enjoy Americas pastime in the glory days of our sport.

It's probably why I like this hobby so much, connects me to an era that has long since passed us by.

Nothing wrong with the past; we are collectors of it, after all.

Terence Mann: Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi.../Jones%201.JPG

Crash Davis : I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter.

I wish my grandpa had kept all of his Goudey's and Zeenuts.

I wish my dad had kept all his 52 Topps highs instead of selling this entire golden age Topps collection to buy a stereo.

I wish some dude at ALC/ATC/Brett had carefully documented the printing, distribution and packing of cards and carefully preserved his work.

I wish somebody would hurry up and sell me a T220 Silver James J. Corbett in final production form.

I wish Jackie Robinson hadn't retired instead of playing for the Giants. He didn't need to do my team like that. I don't know why people like him.

I wish people had waited to inflate Willie Mays' card prices just a few more years so I could have picked up the ones I needed easier.

I wish Juan Marichal got more credit like Koufax and Gibson for being a great pitcher.

I wish Connie Mack had appeared in more card sets.

We need a picture of those long - gone - times!

Connie Mack - hanging out with Jimmie Wilson and Cy Morgan during those early years. Looking dapper and hanging out in Florida!

What about Roberto Clemente signing with the Giants instead of the Dodgers? Roberto wanted to play in New York City because of the large Puerto Rican population there. Instead the Dodgers shipped out to Montreal and he ended up in Pittsburgh. If he had known the Dodgers were going to do that, he would have definitely signed with the Giants instead.

Sir, I can only deal with so much pain at once :D

Now we’re talking. Cy Morgan’s E95 is probably my favorite baseball caramel card pose.

That's an excellent link, and yes, I know about Hot Springs. That is where my mom and dad went on their honeymoon in 1939. Everybody from Memphis went there at one time or another, it seems, and sure enough, all the teams and ballplayers did as well.

Here is Babe Ruth at Russwood Park in Memphis, 1932, an exhibition game between the Chicks (Chickasaws) and the Yankees. Believe that is Lou Gehrig off to his left, but it's hard to tell.

Comiskey Park, 1959, Dodgers - White Sox (Go-Go Sox) World Series game. First All-Star Game played there (well, first so named). Chicago Cardinals (oldest NFL team) played there also. Boston got it right. Why did this one have to go?

I wish Jake Beckley would have had 3,000 major league hits and that I owned the Detroit Red Wings.

James, the Babe played everywhere it seems. Here is one of his last home runs in Newark.

I wonder how the Babe would approach this young pitcher? Wouldn't that be a match up to watch!

I wish Bo Jackson hadn't hurt himself playing football. He would have been fun to watch over a long career. Man, that guy had special gifts.

I wish Rob Manfred wasn't the MLB commissioner.

+1 on that!

Here's Ty Cobb, Thomas Edison and Connie Mack at Terry Park in Fort Myers, 1928 I think.

I love the old St. Louis Browns. It would be great if the Baltimore Orioles ever acknowledge that is who they were. My favorite Brown is Johnny Berardino, Dr. Steve Hardy on General Hospital.

James, here is my favorite Browns item that I own. It is an original George Burke postcard and hand written letter back to a young collector that wanted his autograph. Read the letter, it' pretty cool. He said this was the only photo item he had left, but graciously sent it to the kid. Pretty cool stuff.

THAT is incredibly cool, sir. Debs Garms was one of my dad's favorite ballplayers. I can see why.

I wish the Angels, my home team growing up, would have never traded Nolan Ryan.

I wish:

• Mickey Mantle played on two good legs for an entire career
• Major League Baseball had integrated long before 1947
• Addie Joss, Lou Gehrig, Roberto Clemente, and many others had not died so young
• Harry Frazee had never sold Babe Ruth
• Baseball had never gone on strike in 1994
• The writers or Veteran's/Era/Whatchamacallit Committee voted in Bonds and Clemens
• The card companies never started cutting up vintage jerseys
• A .300 hitter with 40 stolen bases was considered at least as valuable as a .220 hitter with 40 homers
• Modern fans realized that wins mattered as a pitching stat back when hurlers didn't bail after XX pitches
• Modern fans realized pitchers matter
  
  I could go on and on and on; however, decided to stop after the first ten things crossed my mind. It's time to go look through one of my binder sets.

I wish baseball never outlawed PEDs, so guys like Trout and Judge could be hitting 100 home runs a year, and Kershaw and Verlander could keep pitching until they are 60.

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I wish my 1960 Senators team, which was clearly improving at a rapid pace, could have held on just two more years in D.C. because then they never would have left. The town would have gone nuts over their 2nd place finish in the now 10-team American League in 1962 (as the Twins), and the brand-new D.C. Stadium would have been packed for every game. The idea of moving would have seemed ludicrous. Instead, I got an expansion team in 1961 that finished dead last for another three years of my youth to go with the cellar dwellers of my formative fan years of 1957-59 and soured me on the game for a long time. 34 years without a big league team in the Nation's Capital--what a disgrace! It still hurts to think about it.

He didn't end up in Pittsburgh by choice...

I wish:

• Doc Gooden could have laid off the white powder,
• Josh Hamilton could outrun his deamons,
• Bowie Kuhn wouldn't have voided Vida Blue going to the Reds,
• Teddy Ballgame could somehow make up those lost seasons,
• That we could have skipped the era of the astroturf, all purpose stadiums,
• Steve Dalkowski and Smokey Joe Wood hadn't hurt their arms,
• The Reds win a post-season series before I pass,
• Hitters could swallow their pride and learn to hit against the shift.

I wish Howie Fox had called the police, instead of trying to evict the drunks on his own, and the statheads running the game now would quit trying to make it as much fun as an IRS audit.

The kicker is in between the wars, he had the chance to resign his commission and separate from the Reserves entirely; instead he re-upped, which left him open to being recalled for Korea.

Amen.

I wish Billings, MT had renovated the old wooden stadium, Cobb Field, and helped maintain its glory and splendor, the creaking floors, the thunderous roar beneath the grandstand while buying snacks, and preserved the imagination of kids running wild and a booster club drunk and riotous by the 6th inning. Instead they built Dehler park, which reminds me of the Little League WS stadium.

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You guys must be younger than me. You had the Big Red Machine, the current Houston Astros of the 1970's.

Also, isn't Baltimore 30 miles from DC? Go to the Orioles games.

I wish the Adams family would let the McNair family use the name, "Oilers".

I wish
 

I could find a complete darby chocolate box oh well

We did, but only because they had those great teams and players before the franchise fell apart in the mid-80s. I went to many "O's" (as they started calling them to market to Washingtonians) games, and enjoyed them, but it never came close to being my team because it wasn't my town. And it's always a good hour or so between Balmor and D.C. no matter how you cut it, not bad but not a hop, skip, and jump either.

The Expos could have been WS champs. That team was stacked......And Tony Gwynn might have hit .400?

Had he pitched for the Yankees instead of the Browns, I would wager that Ned Garver would be in the Hall.

"Living In The Past"
 

Let us close our eyes
Outside their lives go on much faster
Oh, we won't give in
We'll keep living in the past
Oh, we won't give in
Let's go living in the past
Oh no, no we won't give in
Let's go living in the past

the close of Jethro Tull's great song....

I strongly echo the sentiment in bold, though it seems like a mere pipe-dream at this point (and I'm not getting any younger).

To add a couple of my own...

* I wish the Reds never traded Tony Perez, as they probably had a 3rd consecutive championship in them.
* I wish Cincinnati was a big market city.

"The Reds win a post-season series before I pass"
 

If you are old like me, you had your moment in the sun.....and then some.

The Big Red Machine was such a dominant force in the '70s it was scary. My tremendous Dodger teams of the '70s were always in their shadow. I recall so many great Dodger-Red games from that period, it is scary. Forget the SF-LA thing, LA-CINN in the 70s was beyond compare IMO..

My cousin and his wife are Nationals and Ravens fans. Too bad, the Orioles were really good, but I guess that was a long time ago.

Completely agree.... the most underrated rivalry in baseball, IMHO. We were Reds fans living in Orange County throughout the 1970s. We listened to the great Vin Scully every day on radio, and rooted for the Dodgers to lose every game.

But the Dodgers were always very good. When they won the division in 1974, we thought the Reds time had come and gone (with no world championship to show for it). They came very close in '70, '72 and '73, but took a big step back in '74.

Then the Reds finally figured things out, and were as dominant in '75-76 as any team in baseball history. It was such a shame when the league restructured and forever ended the rivalry by putting the teams in different divisions. Perhaps they saw the writing on the wall for small market teams, as it couldn't even be a rivalry today. :o

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My mom was from Akron (grand dad worked for Firestone). She liked the Indians in the AL and despised the Yankees, that is, except Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio separately who she adored. She liked the Reds and Brooklyn Dodgers (despised the LA version because she lived and worked in Brooklyn for a while and went to Ebbets). Because of mom, I love the Reds, too. One of my most treasured memories is going with my sister, who at the time lived within walking distance, to Wrigley Field to a game in 1973 between the Reds and the Cubs. I saw Johnny Bench, Pete Rose and all the others in the flesh. I saw Joe Morgan hit a line drive home run. When I was a kid, my dad had a radio that picked up WLW 700 am out of Cincinnati at night in Memphis crystal clear. Listened to many Reds games. I vaguely remember Waite Hoyt, Joe Nuxhall, Marty Brennaman, and I'm pretty sure Pee Wee Reese did Reds games, too. Among my most treasured baseball cards are 9 team-issued 1938-39 Reds cards. I would love to go to Great American, which they say shares some similarities with Crosley Field, and I would LOVE it if the Reds got real good again. Frankly, I think it would be good for baseball.

40 years! I've known a lot of people in the D.C. orbit who gravitated toward Baltimore and became big fans of their teams, particularly those living in the Maryland suburbs. And before D.C. got the Nationals back, I went to many games in Baltimore, Frederick, Hagerstown, and Bowie, so I got very close to the franchise, but it just never captured my affections like the D.C. teams of my youth and since. I'm a D.C. guy, born and raised.

I wish Pete Rose never bet on baseball...he could have been such a great ambassador to the game.

I feel he has suffered long enough and should be welcome back, especially since all sports have embraced gambling and the money it brings.

We will never see a player that played as hard as Rose or gave so much effort on the field to win.

Ha!!! Imagine being a Mets fan. They would have won another World Series at least if Nolan wasn't dealt for a washed up 3B.

I wish baseball had a salary cap and floor. I wish Peter Angelos sold my beloved Orioles.

how many doubles homer and steals for the .300 hitter and better yet slugging and how many times did the .220 hitter strikeout? Context!..

I wish there wouldn't have been a MLB strike in 1994 which ended the season, around 50 games shy.
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I wish Barry Bonds didn’t break the All-Time HR Record!

And that's my dividing line with baseball. I basically like everything before then. I could even stomach the AL DH and what I thought was over-expansion. Everything since has been a spiral down to the smoking dog pile it is now.