Sport

Baseball’s Good Old Days

Ah, remember when baseball was a pure game, before all this stuff about gambling and steroids? Well, here’s a nice story about the time that Yankee second baseman Bobby Richardson entered the final game of the season hitting .299:

“I was hitting .299 and (manager) Casey Stengel told me if I got a hit in my first time up, he would take me out (with a .300 average),” Richardson says. “We were playing in Baltimore, and their players knew, too.”

Billy O’Dell, a Newberry native and Richardson’s off-season hunting buddy, pitched for the Orioles that day, and he sent word that he would throw straight down the middle. Brooks Robinson advised that he would be playing a deep third base if Richardson wanted to bunt for a hit.

“Joe Ginsberg, the catcher, said he would tell me the pitches,” Richardson says. “Ed Hurley, the first-base umpire, said, ‘Just make the plays close.’ ”

With help like that, how could he fail? He didn’t, but he almost did.

Hey, if everybody’s in on it, is that really cheating?