Wsmith

With the addition of Byrd, will the Cubs have the oldest (or if you prefer, the most experienced) starting lineup in the National League?

Actually, it is voted on my the managers. My bad. I must of been thinking about when I was playing in 1964. :wink:

The award is voted on by the players and they can't vote for their own team. Maybe they know something we don't?

See if any of these help: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/recbooks/left_on_base_records.shtml http://www.knology.net/~johnfjarvis/datapages/stats2008n.html#24 http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/left-on-base/

After reading this thread, I can't imagine that could be true.

If by FO you mean Front Office, I respectfully have to disagree. Yosh Kawano was a member of the Cubs organization for 65 years before retiring last season. In the article Cubs senior vice president, Michael Lufrano is quoted as saying, “He has a standing invitation to come to any game here…” The security guards apologized to him and told him “he is not supposed to be there when the team isn’t there.” It would seem it wasn’t their decision, but that they were just following orders. Moreover, again according to the article, Kawano has visited Wrigley Field frequently since his retirement last season. If anyone in the front office actually gave a damn, this incident would have never occurred.

Yeah, I was thinking about the Mays catch too. The wall was about 440' where he made the catch.

While we’re waiting for baseball to resume, I have a couple of questions regarding outfield play: 1. What was the longest fly ball caught in the outfield? Some of the old ballparks had really long fences. For example, centerfield in the Polo Grounds was about 480 ft. from home plate. Did anyone ever catch a fly ball at the warning track? 2. What was the longest putout on a sac fly attempt? I’d guess 340 ft. Of course the variables would include (a) the speed of the runner; (b) jump off the base; © and the strength of the outfielder’s arm.

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/cubs/1664320,CST-SPT-yosh14.article You'd think he'd have his own key.

If Randy Wells is the emergency catcher--anybody on the team can be the emergency catcher.

I read the other day that Theriot was the only player in MLB to have double figures in errors, caught stealing and GDP. This may not be terribly meaningful, but I find it interesting.

This is a great discussion and I’d like to add my two cents…. When talking about the greatest Cubs of all time, I don’t have a problem with the focus being on Cubs who played in our lifetime. While there were certainly great ballplayers that played for the Cubs in the 1900 – 1930 time frames, the game was so different then it would hardly be recognizable today. Moreover, when evaluating players for such an austere recognition as “greatest Cubs” it seems to me that you have to had seen them play (I recognize that under my bias 50 years from now there will five new players on the list, but I’m OK with that) . There should be no doubt in any one’s mind that Ernie “Mr. Cub” Banks is the greatest baseball player ever to wear the Cubs uniform. Please don’t forget that during the late 50s - early 60s he was the only reason many people went to Wrigley Field. After Ernie it doesn’t make much difference how you rank them, but the best Cubs I’ve ever seen play were Ron Santo, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins, Ryan Sandberg and Sammy Sosa. Now a lot of people are throwing around stats to make a case for Santo vs. Sosa as the better baseball player. I have nothing to add on that account. However, if the question ever becomes who was more important to the Cubs and their fans during their respective eras, Santo wins hands down. All you have to do is look at each of them --what kind of man are they, what kind of ballplayer were they, what kind of Cub were they.