Big Blue Huddle

Silly Little Irish Girl

Paddy was tooling along the road one fine day when the local policeman, a friend of his, pulled him over.

"Whats wrong, Seamus?" Paddy asked.

"Well, didn't ya know, Paddy, that your wife fell out of the car about five miles back?" said Seamus.

"Ah, praise the Almighty'" Paddy replied with relief.  "I thought I'd gone deaf"

The Jamestown Jammers have been reserected.   Sort of anyway.

It was recently announced that the city of Jamestown was awarded a new franchise in the Prospect League.  The new team will retain the name Jammers.    The Prospect League is made up of college players who still have NCAA eligibility left so they do not get paid.  It gives them another channel to get noticed and perhaps signed by a major league club.  Wooden bats are used in the league.   And I believe they will play a longer season then the short season Class A NY-P League that the Jammers used to play in.   Anyway it looks like I will still be able to attend some ball games in Russell Detrich Park.   

http://www.prospectleague.com/view/prospectleague

Mike:   Thanks so much for posting this.   After it has run it's course here I think it should be moved to the history board.   It is something I would enjoy watching a few more times.

That 81 Danelo OT game brought tears to my eyes.   I got quite emotional after that one.    It was a long time coming.

Mike:   as usual a great job.  Thanks so much.

I have always been bothered by that tie in 60.   It just teed me off that the mighty Giants could be tied by an expansion team of cast offs.   But their head coach certainly knew the Giants.

I have often thought one of the big reasons for the rivalry between the Boys and Giants, at least from my perspective was jealously.  Of their success and how they did things.   When I first got Sirius Radio I loved to listen to Gil Brandt's stories about how the Cowboys ran their scouting department.  And it ticked me off thinking why the Giants couldn't do things that way.   This was touched on in the series Finding Giants that is being  broadcast now.   The Giants did learn from Dallas but it seemed to take for ever. 

Mike:  I agree with everything you said.   But for me, at the moment it happened I had no idea what it would lead to.   I just lost it.   God I was Pi**ed.  And of course everyone I knew spent the next several weeks reminding me of what happened.

Thanks Mike.   A great job again.    But I can't watch the "fumble".   It was the angriest I have ever been after a Giant game.   The apartment building I used to live in had a hole in the wall until the day it burnt down a few years ago.   Put there by me right after that game.

Mike, great post.   I enjoyed that.

I have very few memories of the Falcons but there are two that really stick out.  The most recent one (I am trying to black out my memory of last years game) was the big play off win in January 2012.  MY son and I attended that game.  Met life was just rocking.   It was the loudest game I had been to at the new stadium.  Even an old fart like me was jumping, hollering, high fiving everyone and waving our Giants towels. 

The other big memory I have of the Falcs didn't involve the Giants at all.   My wife, her sister, a buddy of mine and I attended a Falcons at Bills game.  There were two big mammas sitting in front of us and each one had a pom pom in each hand.  Every play from scrimmage even if it was nothing more then a simple dive play to the line of scrimmage these two gals would raise these pom poms up so they were right in front of my wife's and her sisters face so they had to stand up to see what was happening.  Of course row after row of people behind us then had to stand up to see and they started complaining about it.  So my wife tapped one of the gals on the shoulder and politely ask them to stop waving the pom poms in their faces as they can't see and the domino effect on the rows behind.   The gal said nothing.  Next play up went the pom poms so my wife again asked them politely to keep them down.  This one big blond who looked like a lady wrestler gets up and turns around and blurts out who back there can't see.  The folks behind us said nothing so the blond looks at my wife and her sister and says apparently it is just you two and if you don't like it go sit somewhere else.   Next play the pom poms came up but this time my wife reaches out and gabs her arm and pulls it down.  The two girls started to come over the seats and I had to dive between them and my wife to keep them apart.  These two also had some guy with them, boyfriend perhaps and he was pretty sizable too.  But he wanted no part of the situation and tried to calm the girls down.  Anyway grabbing the arm by my wife worked as the pom poms stayed down the rest of the game.  And the two gals said no more to us until after the game when one of them  turned around and said "We'll see you girls up here again sometime". 

It has been a sad week for me baseball wise.  This week it was announce that my home town team, the Jamestown Jammers of the NY-P short season A league was moving to Morgantown WV next season. To be sure this did not come as a surprise at all.  I could see the hand writing on the wall several years ago when the NY-P started putting franchises in larger metro areas like Brooklyn, Staten Island, Baltimore (Aberdeen Md) Albany (Troy), Youngstown Oh etc.  It was obvious that a small town like Jamestown could not compete economically and struggled to get a few hundred fans to any given game when other teams were drawing in the thousands.  I was actually surprised the Jammers lasted as long as they did.  But the age of small town teams is quickly coming to an end.  The NY-P still has teams in Batavia and Auburn NY but at least they are located near larger cities like Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse.

Anyway, seeing as no one (or so it seems) reads the baseball board I thought I would engage in a little self therapy and talk about the NY-P league and the Jamestown team.

The league started in 1939 and was known as the PONY league.  Pennsylvania, Ontario and New York.  They opened with the Batavia Clippers, Bradford Bees, Hamilton Red Wings, Jamestown Jaguars, Niagara Falls Rainbows, and the first league champs the Olean Oilers, a farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1957 the last Canadian team left the league and the name was changed to the New York-Penn league and has stayed that even though new Canadian teams joined the league in later years.

Through the years the NY-P had several small town teams.  In addition to the original mentioned above there were teams in Corning, Geneva, Hornell, Utica, Little Falls, Oneonta and Wellsville to mention a few.  Batavia leads the list of seasons in the league at 70 and my Jamestown comes in 2nd at 67.  And they had some great players.  Future Hall of Famer Nellie Fox played in Jamestown when he was only 16. Ralph Branca, Jerry Coleman, Pete Rose, Don Mattingly, Randy Johnson, Pat Dobson, Amos Otis are just a few of former major leaguers that played in the NY-P.  Even John Elway.  The year he was drafted by the Colts and opted to play baseball instead was signed by the Yankees and played for their farm team in Oneonta until his NFL rights were traded to the Broncos.

When I was a kid back in the early 60's the Jamestown team was the Tigers and a farm team of Detroit.  It was class D back then, the lowest designation in minor league baseball but they played a complete season starting in April and finishing in September.  And kids could get a season bleacher pass known as a Regit (Tiger spelled backwards) ticket for $3.00 and for 20 cents you could upgrade to a grand stand seat.  Those days were great.  I used to love to get to the stadium early to watch them take infield practice usually to the Boll Weevil Song by Brook Benton being played over the pa system.

One year I had a kids dream come true.  Toward the end of the season the visiting team bat boy quit and I got his job.  It was so cool to parade around in that uniform. Some little kid even asked me for my autograph.  I politely told him that he really didn't want mine and directed him to some "real" players and they would be glad to oblige.  I got to shag fly balls in the outfield during batting practice.  One of the players on the Olean Red Sox sort of befriended me.  He let me play pepper with the players on the Sox.  His name was Bob Montgomery and he made it to the majors and was a back up catcher to Carlton Fisk. One of his other claims to fame is that he was the last player in major league history to not wear a batting helmet.  When it became a league rule you had to wear one those that were already in the league and did not like them had it grandfathered in that they didn't have to.  He wore one of the inside the hat protectors until he retired.

I have many other wonderful memories of my days watching Jamestown Baseball.  Thank God I have them.  I will miss those beautiful western New York summer nights just relaxing under the stars and light towers watching the Jammers play.  Time marches on.

If there is any further interest in the NY-P league check out this article I found on the web.  It is pretty good.

http://www.starnewsdaily.com/sports/other/story/Gates-Open-On-Diethrick-Parks-70th-Anniversary-Season-2011-06-27

OK.   Mr Matt and Jim were discussing this game on another thread.    If anyone is interested, and I hope all Giant fans are, here is a film of that game.   Some of the pictures are not that clear and at times you only get the audio but it does have some great background features on several of the players from that game.  Also Jim brought up the controversy about Frank Gifford's 3rd down run late in the game.  On that play the Colts great DE Gino Marchetti broke his leg and had to be attended to.  Giff has always said that during the delay to take care of Gino the officials mispotted the ball short of the line to gain.  He was sure he made the first down.  I have looked at the play several times and have tried to be objective.  Sometimes I think he made it and sometimes I think he was short.  If you go to around 2:06.25 of the film you can watch the play.  The picture is not real clear and it is a bad angle to see it very well but take a look and decide for yourself.   Bad ending but some great history here.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSlj0lWngCc

Hit number 14 today.    Could we be looking at 20??

Well,   since no one myself included has posted here in a while.    What on earth got into Gardner.   Hope it isnt roids.    And no I don't think it is.    He hit his 13th dinger tonight.   Has been on a tear.   To bad the rest of the Yankees have not.    Anyway,  keep it up Brett.   You da man.

On behalf of the Mods it is my great pleasure and honor to announce that we have created a new position of Big Blue Huddle Historian and that Giant Obsession--Mike has accepted this position.

Many of you are well aware of Mike's passion and love for not just Giants history but pro football history in general.

Please join me in welcoming him to this new position and wish him well.   I am sure he would appreciate any suggestions and help any of you guys could give him.

Congrats Mike.   You deserve it.

The Daily News has a pretty good collection of Jeter photos thru his career.   

Enjoy:

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/derek-jeter-career-photos-gallery-1.46499

Ceri:   do you have any opinion on Branden Oliver out of Buffalo??   12th Man and I have been touting him as a possible late round or undrafted fa prospect the Giants may want to consider.   They did have a scout at the UB Pro Day perhaps to take a closer look at Mack just in case he drops that far but I wonder if he may have had some interest in checking Oliver out.   12th Man has favorably compared Oliver to Joe Morris.  Any thoughts on him??

http://www.ubbullrun.com/2014/3/3/5464780/buffalo-bulls-pro-day-branden-oliver