Literary birthday greetings

Larry Bowa turns 65 today. The long-time Phillies shortstop (he also played with the Cubs before batting .105 in his final year with the Mets; yeah, thanks for that) was also a short-tempered manager for the Padres and Phils. He wrote two books: Bleep: Larry Bowa Manages in 1988 and Larry Bowa: I Still Hate to Lose in 1994. He was also the subject of My Lifelong Relationship with Larry Bowa: A Man I’ve Never Met, a paean published in 2008 by Mike Metzger.

Why do we pick certain players as our favorites? It’s easy enough to go with the stars like Mantle, Mays, Koufax, etc. But the everyday grinders? My favorite as a kid was Ed Kranepool, but I have no idea why. He was slow, not a great batter (until the end of his career when be became a pinch-hitter savant). Go know.

Also marking the date:

Hall of Fame Yankee Tony Lazzeri, born1903 and subject of Tony Lazzeri: A Baseball Biography, by Paul Votano (2005).

Hall of Fame umpire Jocko Conlan (1899), who played for two seasons with the Chicago White Sox in the 1930s. He collaborated with Robert Creamer on Jocko in 1967, which was reprinted 30 years later.

Finally, there’s the sad case of Tony Horton, born this date in 1944. Horton was a power hitter for the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians back in the 1960s. He suffered from mental illness, to the ignorance of fans, including Esquire writer Scott Raab, who contributed this apology as part of Top of the Order: 25 Writers Pick Their Favorite Baseball Player of All Time.

Who knows if this was the event that put Horton over the top:

Unlike Jim Piersall, who had a well-chronicled history of mental illness, Horton did not become a media personality. He was finished in the big leagues before the age of 26.

Tagged as: Jocko Conlan, Larry Bowa, Tony Horton, Tony Lazzeri