When I was a kid being raised in Laurel by my grandparents, I never thought much about WHY we support the teams we do. Popularity was part of the allure, I’m sure: there were a lot of Yankee fans in Laurel in those days, and, hey, you had to like Mantle and Maris and Berra, even Snider and Campanella, no matter your favorite team. Perhaps, too, we idolized certain players because they played the positions our little-league coaches assigned us to play. From that April in 1953 when Coach Hall put me at third base, Eddie Yost was my hero—although I preferred hitting homers like Roy Sievers and Harmon Killebrew did than working pitchers for walks as Eddie did so effectively.) In those days, even though Laurel was exactly halfway between Washington and Baltimore, I was a Senators fan, probably because I’d been born in D.C. but also because my grandfather, who had grown up in Georgetown, rooted for Washington. Besides, by the time Baltimore got the Browns in ’54, my loyalties were pretty much set—I was eight years old, after all!
We might also fall in love with an image in baseball that we never saw, such as the one I conjured as I listened to my grandfather’s extolling the exploits of Walter “The Train” Johnson. How powerful was this legend if his colleagues likened him to a locomotive (yes, that would’ve been the old steam variety). Or perhaps we’re just drawn towards unusual names rather than greatness—who wouldn’t want to know more about Shoeless Joe Jackson, Boardwalk Brown, Buttercup Dickerson, High Pockets Kelly, and any baseball player named Hack or Babe?
Or maybe, despite their on-field achievements, we admired certain players because of something they did off the field, like Clemente, or because of a mere attitude, like that of Ernie (“Let’s Play Two!”) Banks.
Your reasons for picking your favorites below are crucial to your caching success—though picking incorrectly could nonetheless lead to wonderful (and rare!) baseball success.
CF Earl McNeely 2B Jerry Adair
2B Bucky Harris 1B Walt Dropo
RF Sam Rice 3B Cal Ripken
LF Goose Goslin CF Willie Mays
1B Joe Judge LF Shane Victorino
SS Ossie Bluege RF Joe Medwick
3B Tommy Taylor SS Mark Belanger
C Muddy Ruel C Lucas May
P Curly Ogden P Rick Helling
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