February Pickups

[Scott Garner]

Here are two neat recent pickups from February.
Perhaps some of you recall I recently picked up a scored program from Bob Feller's 300th K in his career year- 1946 and posted it here on net54.

Ironically, I also just found a beautiful scorebook from Feller's 348th and final K in his 1946 campaign. This game played on 9/29/46 at DET featured a matchup of the Tigers HOF'er "Prince Hal" Newhouser and HOF "Rapid" Robert Feller. Newhouser and the Tigers prevailed over Feller in this game that was played on the last day of the season. In 1946 Feller's 348 K's tied Rube Waddell's 1904 AL record of 348 K's. Note: Many years later Waddell's record was changed to 349 K's upon closer review of early baseball box scores. This 349 K record stood until Nolan Ryan set the MLB record in 1973 with 383 strikeouts.

I also stumbled onto a really interesting pair of game used baseball cleats from Cardinals no-hit pitcher Bud Smith. In 2001 Bud Smith joined the very short list of rookie pitchers that were lucky enough to pitch a no-hitter. Perhaps some of you may recall in 2002 one of Bud Smith's teammates, fellow no-hit pitcher Darryl Kile, died of a massive heart attack in his mid-30's while he was asleep in his hotel in Chicago in July. These game used Bud Smith cleats from the 2002 season feature a huge tribute to his fallen teammate. On one cleat a large 57 (Darryl Kile's uni #) and on the other cleat a large "DK" have been written in thick silver sharpie. These are a nice addition to my no-hitter collection.
One no-hit pitcher's tribute to another...

As a side note, Bud Smith's career was very short (less then 2 full seasons) and he never made it back to the bigs after the 2002 season.

Oh yeah, the price on the game used cleats was pretty OK too- $30. Nice!