DifferentBreedsVille
We only went to one Vancouver Canadians game at Nat Bailey Stadium last summer and my scorecard says we did not see Trey Yesavage make one of his four starts in Lotusland in the middle of his meteoric rise from rookie league ball to the big leagues.
So, apropos of pretty much nothing at all, late one afternoon last week I was talking with a friend, a fellow old guy science-geek type, and we came to the conclusion that the last time we had seen a rookie who had been called up late in the season so dominate the play-offs was Ken Dryden back in 1971.
With this shared bit of historical wisdom that, to the best of our knowledge, had not been jammed down our throats by any of the 37,000 sports shows and/or branded content foisted on Canadians of all stripes by the Rogers Family Empire throughout the Blue Jays World Series run, we patted ourselves on the the back and headed for home.
Unfortunately, while Yesavage did get five outs and the hold in a relief appearance during Saturday night's Game 7, he also give up that 8th inning homer to Max Muncy which took a little shine off that rose.
However...
This got me thinking laterally in the most digressive, tangential way possible, as is often my want.
Which brings me to the connection between Carlton Fisk and Mr. Dryden.
First, here's an account of my not so close encounter with Mr. Fisk during his last season in the Big Leagues, which is
more than thirty years ago now:...I saw Carlton Fisk, for real, in 1993.
Which was a time when both baseball and American exceptionalism still meant a lot to me.
And on that particular day Fisk was toiling near the end of his career for the Chicago White Sox warming up a guy named Jeff Schwarz in the right field bullpen of Oakland Alameda County Coliseum.
Truth be told, I was actually more interested in Mr. Schwarz that day because, after 11 years in the minors as a draft and follow straight out of highschool, Schwarz was finally getting his first shot in the show. To put that in perspective, Schwarz made more in meal money in that, his only full season in the big-leagues, than he made in all of 1992 when he was toiled for the Vancouver Canadians.
How do I know this?
Because Schwarz told me so himself later that very afternoon as we sat in the bar of the Oakland Airport Hilton where Goose Gossage was holding court a scant six feet away.
Another interesting thing about Schwarz was the fact that he liked to loosen-up by long-tossing with both his right and left hands.
I never did find out what a crusty old customer like Carlton Fisk, who by then had been in the majors for more than 20 years and had caught more games than anyone else in baseball history, thought about Mr. Schwarz' feats of ambulatory ambidextriosity.
I do, however, know that Pudge hated watching himself on T.V.
Why?
Because, Fisk said, he had his own memories of that moment and he didn't want the eye of the camera to turn them into something they were not...
So what, you may be asking yourself, does this have to do with Mr. Dryden?
Well, soon after he died earlier this fall, Mike Boone had Steve Paikin and Bruce Dowbiggin on his
podcast to talk about the former Cornell University goaltender, and one of the things they discussed was how Dryden refused to watch old videos of his games and highlights.
Dryden's explanation, as told to Dowbiggin:
"I have an image in my head of what I looked like, sounded like, and played like back then and I want that to be what stays with me."
Imagine that!
_______
Apparently, it was Greasy Phil who first called Dryden the 'Thieving Giraffe', although the future senator was also known as the Octopus and the Four Storey Goalie.
And here's an even crazier thing that also came up on Toronto Mike's very independent podcast...Dryden was originally drafted by Boston Bruins in 1964 but they traded his rights to the Canadiens when he did the then blasphemous thing and went off to the Ivy League to get an education while he went 76-4-1 at Cornell, back in the days when the world still allowed ties...
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