Baseball – Brad Penny, Gus Zernial, Lew Burdette Jr., Larry Doby

The Softbank Hawks of Japan's Pacific League have signed former major league pitcher Brad Penny to a one-year contract. Softbank announced the signing of free agent Penny on its website Sunday.  The 33-year-old right-hander is expected to arrive in Japan on Wednesday. Financial terms of the deal were not released. Penny went 11-11 last season for the Detroit Tigers with a 5.30 ERA and 74 strikeouts in 31 games. Penny has a 119-99 record and a 4.23 ERA over a 12-year major league career that included stints with the Florida Marlins, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Boston Red Sox, the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Gus Zernial (b. 1923) was a feared slugger for the the White Sox, A's and Tigers in the 1950s.  He led the American League in home runs in 1951.  His 237 home runs are the second most by a player whose last name starts with the letter "Z."  (Todd Zeile is first.) fairandunbalancedblog  

Pitcher Selva Lewis ‘‘Lew’’ Burdette Jr. (November 22, 1926-February 6, 2007) was an outstanding major league baseball player who spent most of his career with the Milwaukee Braves. He was born in Nitro. An excellent football and basketball player at Nitro High School, Burdette did not play baseball because the school did not have a team. He learned to pitch in 1944 with the American Viscose Rayon Company team the summer after his high school graduation. Burdette signed his first professional contract with the New York Yankees in 1946, but did not become a regular until 1952 as a member of the Boston Braves. In 1949, he married Mary Ann Shelton, a Charleston telephone operator. http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/719?utm_source=Gplus%2Bcode&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=Googleplus

On July 5, 1947, Larry Doby took the field for the Indians as the second black player in the major leagues, and first in the American League. The junior circuit was slower to integrate than the National League, and it could be argued that it fell behind in the 1960s because of it. Slower still were people to recognize Doby’s accomplishments. His number was retired by the Indians in 1994, and by the time Doby was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998, Jackie Robinson’s number 42 was retired throughout the major leagues. Larry Doby was a Hall of Fame center fielder for the Indians, patrolling the vast expanses of grass at Municipal Stadium from 1947 until he was traded to the White Sox after the 1955 season. Doby later made a return appearance in Cleveland in 1958.  http://didthetribewinlastnight.com/2012/02/06/countdown-to-pitchers-and-catchers-14-larry-doby/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter