Displaying items by tag: Hank Aaron

I just saw a headline that read “MLB Celebrating the Greatest of All” in regards to the 2021 Major League Baseball All Star Game. Greatest of all? Come on. You’re kidding me.

I also have read in multiple places where fans, especially Mets fans, are claiming, and complaining, that Pete Alonso will have ruined his swing by participating in the Home Run Derby. Again…you’re kidding me.

As for Alonso, and anyone else who participates in a “home run derby,” it is absolutely absurd to think that someone’s swing will be affected. These players sport a swing that is geared to home run derby every game. Launch angles…exit velocity…linear weights…terms in 1971, 50 years ago, were associated with a NASA spacecraft launch are now the science behind hitting a baseball.

And it was 50 years ago, the 1971 All Star Game, that it truly was an exhibition of some of the “greatest of all” in baseball history. In that game, 21 players that went to that game in Detroit made it to the Hall of Fame.

April 8, 1974...I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. I was actually working on a class project for English that I was doing with my friend Dave Cavanaugh. But I was paying more attention to Al Downing throwing a pitch that would ultimately be hit and land beyond the outfield fence in the glove of Tom House.

That project included an audio tape and Dave and I were late with the project and sort of...sort of...told a fib to our teacher about when we had completed the project. What happened on that date was captured on that tape and could be heard in the background. Dave and I were caught by Mrs. Pellecchia. So I am not sure if I remember that event more because of what happened to us...or because of what that event meant to some guy with the quickest wrists I have ever seen - Hammerin' Hank Aaron.