Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Hearing From Jerry Reuss

For one of my favorite blogs, Night Owl Cards, he got a bit of a surprise recently when his favorite player of all-time responded to a post. I must say that I'm a little jealous. Jerry Reuss was one of my favorites also. Check out his post here.

What is even better is that Reuss pointed to a couple of sites worth checking out. Here is a link for his personal website at JerryReuss.com and a flickr page featuring pics of his Baseball cards from his 20+ years of professional Baseball.

In Reuss's honor, Night Owl Cards is running a poll asking what is his best card. Go here to vote. I personally like his 1984 Topps card. After all, he is wearing Dodger Blue and it features his very identifiable windup I grew up watching as a young Dodger fan.BTW, in doing some minor research for this post I came across a fascinating story about Jerry Reuss. From a 1975 story in People Magazine:
When pitcher Jerry Reuss took his wife, Ann, on the Pittsburgh Pirates' final swing to the West Coast last season, the management nicked him with a $500 fine. Jerry, to be sure, had paid for her commercial flight (spouses are non grata on the team charter jet) and the extra hotel tab, but still had violated a Pirate regulation. As a result, in a sport built on arcane records, Reuss came up with a new one for the book: he was the first player to file a grievance action to establish the right to sleep with his own wife.
Read the rest of the article here. It goes deep into the difficulties a Baseball life can have.