[HercDriver]

An early start for Day 18, and expect a late start to Day 19, as I’ll be out of pocket for a couple days, but will do my best to post when I can.

A bit of a sad story today, or maybe a wasted career, whatever you want to call it. Jack Meyer was one of three Phillies pitchers who tried to live up to the Mantle-Ford-Martin tradition of baseball by day, lunacy by night. From the Seamheads.com website, I found some good stuff on them. The three, with Turk Farrell and Jim Owens, were just as disorderly and drunk, but not nearly as good the next day as the famed Yankees were. They were known as the Dalton Gang, and tended to end their inebriated nights with a fight or two, either with strangers or teammates. They usually left bar tabs, bloodied noses, and shattered mirrors in their wake. Sometimes they had fun on the field, like when Farrell got into the game balls and left messages on them for the opposing pitcher to read, which resulted in Lew Burdette yelling into the Phillies dugout after he received each ball, with it's not so nice message on it. After one particularly long night, Farrell poured ice water on Meyer, resulting in a fight that left Meyer on the DL for an injured back. The Phillies were not pleased about that, so they fined Meyer $1200. That might not sound like much, but he only made $14,000, so it was almost 10% of his salary. That may have been the largest proportion fine for a player, until today’s long PED suspensions. All that hard living didn't do Jack much good, as he was dead of a heart attack, six years after a kid pulled this card out of a Topps pack. Farrell only made it to age 43, before a car accident got him.