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10/14/2004: Remembrance of players past (subsidiary of the Interesting Baseball Factoids Department)....
I'm not going to indulge in my penchant for griping (ok, I will just a little bit), but some incompatibility between some java programming on The Cardinals Birdhouse and my video drivers makes the Birdhouse inaccessible to me from my office computer for a number of days at a time, so I missed Brian Walton's excellent "50 years later" remembrance of former Cardinals-Dodgers star Wally Moon. Wally was born in Bay, Arkansas, which is a little town on the way from Memphis to Jonesboro and points northwest if you're travelling from the Memphis area to Northeast Arkansas (and I mean little, if you sneeze at the wrong time you'll miss it). When I've gone gallivanting in the area (I've had the opportunity to do so a few times) I've always noticed Bay, because the city limits sign there notes proudly that it's the hometown of "1954 St. Louis Cardinals Rookie of the Year Wally Moon" (a bit misleading so let me explain that Moon, as a Cardinals rookie, won the National League Rookie of the Year award in 1954. Got that? Good, because there's more to follow....).
As a lifelong Cards fan with a bit of historical knowledge about the franchise I was aware of Moon's name, of course, but Brian's profile of Wally reminded me of something that I'd forgotten: in 1954, when Moon won the NLROY, he beat out the likes of Ernie "Mr. Cub" Banks (#2 in the ROY voting for that year) and Henry "Hammerin' Hank" Aaron (#4 in the voting)--who, as you are probably aware, are both very legitimate Hall of Famers.
Quite an accomplishment.
Len on 10.14.04 @ 07:43 AM CST
