When The Team You Loves Leaves -- What Do You Do?

 

On a trip this past spring, made a friend who really, really carries a grudge. In a way, I can't blame him.

Howard was 12 years old in 1957 when the team he and his father loved, the Brooklyn Dodgers (known throughout NYC as Dem Bums) left for Los Angeles.

Howard told me "Of course, as a kid in Brooklyn, I always hated the Giants and the Yankees. After all both were in the Bronx (might as well have been Mars). But in Brooklyn we had Duke Snyder (the Duke of Flatbush), Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella, Don Newcomb (the only pitcher who was also a pinch hitter) and Jackie Robinson.

"And back then, every player stayed with the same team until he retired. It was like a family. At age 12 my heart was ripped out as owner Walter O'Malley pulled the plug and moved to LA. I still haven’t recovered. Ebbets Field was torn down and is an apartment complex. For the rest of my life, I never set foot in any baseball stadium. I never even embraced the Mets when they replaced the Dodgers. The LA team uniform still says Dodgers, even with same font, but it should be outlawed. The only genuine Dodgers are the Brooklyn Dodgers."

Since 1957, Howard has NEVER set foot in any other Major League Baseball ballpark. And while he did admit he watched portions of the World Series this past week, he "wasn’t rooting for LA (see, I can’t even refer to them with the D word), but I surely was rooting against the Yankees. That's just a spinal reflex. I don’t even have to think about that."

Wow, Howard really holds a grudge! He let his love of a TEAM overcome his love of BASEBALL.

I thought of family members and their reaction when the Milwaukee Braves skipped town for Atlanta in the 1966. Some switched over to following the Chicago Cubs -- I recall the NBC affiliate in Green Bay linking up with WGN to bring Cubs games to the Fox Valley and beyond -- some stayed neutral until 1970 when the Brewers came to town. Others, like Auntie Redbird, had been loyal to the St. Louis Cardinals before the Braves moved to Milwaukee from Boston in 1953.

Will admit I joined the bandwagon of Cubbie fans when exposed to them. Don Kessinger. Ernie Banks. Ron Santo. My favorite player was pitcher Fergie Jenkins, and when the Cubs traded him away, I washed my hands of the team -- but not of baseball.

That's A Lotta Yards

I know (hope?) y'all count on me to find odd little tid-bits to entertain. This one comes from The Athletic a couple weeks back.

A high school quarterback in Louisiana, Peyton Houston, accounted for  905 yards of total offense, passing for 817 yards in a single game. Playing for Evangel Christian (Shreveport, LA) in a game against Captain Shreve, Houston completed 53 of 68 passes for eight touchdowns and rushed for two more.

Yet his school lost the game in overtime, 77-76. Seems Evangel Christian scored first in OT, missed the two-point conversion, and Captain Shreve won.

Still, that's a lotta offense from a high school quarterback. There's probably guys out there who haven't thrown for 817 yards in a season, let alone a game.

Will Grier still holds the national record of 837 yards set in 2012 when Grier played for Davidson Day in North Carolina, according to MaxPreps. The site, which tracks high school sports stats, also noted that Houston set a Louisiana state record, topping the previous mark of 639 passing yards set by T.J. Finley in 2018 while playing for Ponchatoula High School.

Got me to wondering about Wisconsin High School football player statistics. We're well into the playoffs, but for the regular season a bit of research on the Wisconsin Sports Network's website produced the following regular season stats..

• Medford's Paxton Rothmeier, averaging over 10 yards a carry, led all state runners with 2,001 yards.
• Josiah Johnson, Milwaukee Academy Of Science, had 29 touchdowns (rushed for 1,975 yards, averaging 12.2 a carry).
• Matthew Buckman, Cambridge, passed for 2,720 yards and 34 touchdowns.
• Shaundel Williams, a junior at South Milwaukee, led all receivers with 74.
• Kiefer Parish, Cambridge, has 1,021 yards (averaging 15.5 per catch); sophomore Bryce Austin of Racine Lutheran caught 47 passes for 1,013 yards -- a whopping 21.6 yards per catch.

The WIAA football playoffs entered their second weekend. Of the large field, there were also 73 eight-man teams representing nine conferences (and six independents) taking to the playoff field.

Found this one hard to believe. Shohei Ohtani’s 50th home run ball sold at auction for nearly $4.4 million, a record high price for any ball in any sport.