Fangraphs: An Interview With Jim Gentile

[Frobby]

Another gem.   Love hearing these stories of how it was in the old days.  
 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-conversation-with-1960s-slugger-jim-gentile-part-one/

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-conversation-with-1960s-slugger-jim-gentile-part-two/

[Fuzzball22]

Was looking at Gentile on baseball reference. He finished 3rd in the 1960 rookie of the year voting. Oriole Ron Hansen finished 1st and Oriole Chuck Estrada finished 2nd. Not to shabby.

[Number5]

Diamond Jim!

Had an MVP-worthy season in 1961.  Only trouble was a couple guys in New York had pretty good seasons in 1961, too.

[Number5]

I'm pretty sure I've shared this before, but it's a pretty good story.

I went to a baseball clinic the Orioles gave at Memorial Stadium in 1961 or 62 or so.  They had 2 kids from each area little league, and I was one of the 2 lucky guys from my league.  Jim Gentile talked to us about hitting and Milt Pappas talked to us about pitching.

Milt Pappas showed us how to throw a curve ball and told us not to try to throw one until we were at least 13 years old.  Right!  All of us went home and were out there trying to throw curves before we even went into the house!  😀

When Diamond Jim talked to us, I happened to be the tallest kid there, so he chose me to be his guinea pig.  He was kneeling on one knee behind me and was adjusting my stance -  moving my feet at hands to get the proper positioning.  As he was doing so and I'm there holding his huge bat, he says to me, "when I say OK you go ahead and give it a rip."  So he is behind me and has me set up just about where he wants me and he inadvertently says, "OK that ought to do it."  When I heard "OK," I swung as hard as I could.  Fortunately, I could only swing his big bat so hard, and he was able to barely get his head out of the way before I would have clocked him.  There was a moment of stunned silence until it was obvious that he hadn't been hit, at which time everyone burst into a roar of laughter.  One of the men there yelled out, "That would have been on the front page of the Sunpapers!"  I was petrified, but Gentile was very nice about it.  He said "Hey, don't worry about it, you did what I told you to do.  You did the right thing.  Everything is OK."  And we tried it again!  😊  He was a nice man.  It was a great day!

[OFFNY]

On 12/5/2020 at 10:45 AM, Fuzzball22 said:

 

I was looking at Gentile on baseball reference. He finished 3rd in the 1960 Rookie-of-the-Year voting. Oriole Ron Hansen finished 1st, and Oriole Chuck Estrada finished 2nd. Not too shabby.

 

o

 

Hansen once made an extremely rare unassisted triple play.

It was the first one on the Major Leagues in more than 40 years (1927), and would not be done again for almost another quarter of a Century (1992.)

 

 

Perhaps one of the craziest occurrences ever was the fact that in 1927, unassisted triple plays happened on back-to-back days on May 30th and May 31st !!! ) 

 

Twice in a Row, It Was 3 Men at a Clip

(By Carl Lundquist)

https://vault.si.com/vault/1967/05/29/twice-in-a-row-it-was-three-men-at-a-clip

 

o