Mack's Apples - 10-29-17 - Babe Ruth, Herb Score, Roberto Clemente, Home Runs, Met's Apple

Good morning.

 Babe Ruth signed this baseball ‘to Troop 6,’ and now it’s being auctioned for Scouts –

       

     The year was 1948. The place: a crowded gym in Larchmont, N.Y.

Eagle Scout Jack Coughlin, then the 20-something Scoutmaster of Troop 6 out of Larchmont, had to confiscate the ball so nobody got injured.

But this wasn’t any baseball, Coughlin realized. It was signed by Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat for the New York Yankees. The inscription read “To Troop 6 Larchmont Boy Scouts.”

When Coughlin asked the Scouts about the autograph, they said they assumed all baseballs were signed like that.

Nearly 70 years later, this baseball has found its way from Troop 6’s equipment box to the Steiner Sports auction house.

‘Saint Jude, Stay with Me’: A True Baseball Story -

Herb Score knew that he owed his life to the patron saint of hopeless causes. They were loyal to each other. ‘Saint Jude, stay with me.” Lying on the pitcher’s mound under the lights at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, as 18,000 people in the stands looked on and hundreds of thousands more across Northeast Ohio and the New York metropolitan area listened on the radio, Herb Score wondered whether his right eye was still in its socket. That’s where a line drive off the bat of Yankees shortstop Gil McDougald had hit him, knocking him down. The ball caromed to the left side of the infield, and third baseman Al Smith picked it up and threw to first, for the out, but forget the out — McDougald ran straight to the mound.

Baseball great Roberto Clemente's widow , son help with hurricane relief efforts in Houston –

More than a week after escaping her storm-ravaged home in Puerto Rico, Vera Clemente is helping provide aid to communities hit hardest by Hurricane Harvey.

Clemente, the widow of baseball Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente, was joined by former Astros outfielder Jose Cruz and team president Reid Ryan in hosting a volunteer packaging event at the Houston Food Bank on Friday. 

The event will benefit those still recovering from one of the worst storms in United States history.

Baseball Didn’t Always Love Home Runs –

Its career has waxed and waned. In the steroid era — the mid-’90s to 2003, say — players grew beefy and offensive stats ballooned and homers fell in bunches. Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and later Barry Bonds broke the single-season home-run record set by Roger Maris (61). Players who’d always hit 20 were suddenly hitting 50. Dugouts filled with behemoths who had giant forearms and necks, monstrous thighs straining the fabric of monstrous baseball pants. It ruined the aesthetics. Ted Williams’s fluid elegance turned into something muscular. It separated players from fans, alienated some of us: These guys looked like members of a different species.

I don’t happen to think that steroids have worked their way back in the game like they were in the late 1990s through 2003. I think there are more strength coach approaches to build up solid muscle mass, which, in the long run, may be as bad for the sport as the roids.

 Mets Create Custom AR Experience -

The Mets on Sept. 25 handed out Coca-Cola-branded cards as a promotional item to fans attending the game. Using the augmented reality feature embedded in MLB’s Ballpark app, fans could see the Mets’ famous Home Run Apple rise in center field, as Dori Silverman, Coca-Cola’s marketing director for sports and entertainment, explained in a National Sports Forum webinar.

The rising apple leads into a montage of Mets homers throughout the season, and there were plenty of those to watch — the Mets slugged 224 total round-trippers to shatter last year’s previous franchise record of 218.