With the passing of Dr. Mike Marshall

[Deertick]

I may have told this story before, but...
In the mid 90's, I was playing on in the MABL on an 30+ team. We would play one doubleheader against each 50+ team (mainly because they had just the same 4 teams playing each other)

When we would play z-hills, Dr Mike would pitch one game, never hit, and after every inning would sit in the dugout making notes. About what? Who knows, lol. Was he memorializing the sequence and location of my at bats (1-3,2-3, 1B-7) for the time I would face him NEXT YEAR or how his arm angle or landing position affected location??
Anyway, I never saw him really speak to anyone, except maybe to acknowledge a good play behind him.

At our age, most of us knew his pedigree and kinda surly reputation but were still just thrilled to have the story to tell. Some did not.

One guy hit a HR off of him, and we told him "Hey you hit a bomb off of a CY Young award pitcher! He led the majors in saves!" "Go ask him to sign the ball after the game!", lol.

During post game handshakes, he asks. Dr. Mike looked at the guy like he just shat on his shoe. He stuck his hand out and when Jerry (or Jeremy?) went to drop it in his hand he pulled it away and ball dropped to the ground as he turned away..

We were all laughing so hard, and Dr Mike Marshall, as he did every game silently walked to his corner of the dugout, collected his notes and left. But we swear that he looked back and shook his head with a hint of a smile.

As an aside, If you ever come across a Steve Sigler Official MABL baseball with 11 Mike Marshall autographs done in 11 hands, I'll buy it!