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

Baseball: VWL Robbery, Jason Werth, Larry Doby, Monte Irvin

While Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos’ kidnapping made the headlines, he was not the only player to come across some harrowing moments off the field in Venezuela. Twins prospect Joe Benson was robbed at gunpoint after the cab he was riding in crashed. Both Benson and the driver of the cab had most of their belongings and cash taken from them. In the story link below, Benson talks about how scary the incident was, not being able to communicate with gunman, continuing to play winter ball following the robbery, and how security around him beefed up following Ramos’ kidnapping. It’s a very interesting and highly recommended read http://topprospectalert.com/

Jayson Werth, Washington Nationals: six years, $115.4 million - Signing a 31-year-old with just one standout year under his belt to a seven-year, $126 million deal seemed ludicrous at the time. Werth's contract looks that much worse after he debuted in Washington in 2011 with a 58-RBI season during which he slugged a meager .389. The Nationals will be paying Werth $21.57 million in 2017 when he is 38. Enough said. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-m-campbell/worst-baseball-contracts_b_1238625.html

He’s a Hall of Famer, a 7x All Star, a World Series champion, and was the second African American player in baseball, and the first in the American League. Now Larry Doby will be honored with a postage stamp as part of a 2012 series featuring “Major League Baseball All Stars”. In the story you can see the stamp, and learn more about Doby through the words of Charleston RiverDogs president Mike Veeck, whose father Bill Veeck brough Doby to the Cleveland Indians in 1947. http://topprospectalert.com/2011/08/20/former-cleveland-indians-great-larry-doby-honored-on-u-s-postage-stamp/

Monte Irvin has had an extraordinary life and I had the privilege to talk to him about his long career in the game recently. He is 92—he will turn 93 on February 25th—and can look back over a remarkable period in our history, as he recalled,  ”It was a time when baseball was really king.” (Monte is our guest on “Outta the Parkway, February 3) Monte started as an 18-year-old kid, signing with Abe Manley to play with the Newark Eagles. By the time he was 22, he was one of the best players in the Negro Leagues, leading the Negro National League in batting in 1941. He was one of the pioneers in breaking the color barrier of Major League Baseball with the New York Giants.  So much history for one man to see. http://seamheads.com/2012/01/30/touring-the-bases-with-hall-of-famer-monte-irvin/