" Steam Train" The original Hobo king..founder of the Hobo museam. He spent 80 years hopping and riding freight cars around the country.
:cry: re: Larry Sherry Larry Sherry was my first baseball hero. I was 9 when he was World Series MVP for the Dodgers in 1959. In the early 1970's, I shared almost every class with his wife at Cal State San Bernardino and we were good friends. She was a Poli Sci major like me...
Tuesday, December 19, 2006 Larry Sherry, RIP: Diamond Appraisals Filed under: Baseball News— Jeff Kallman @ 2:21 am Larry Sherry’s long battle with cancer ended in his death at 71 Sunday; he was surrounded by his children as he left this island earth to reunite with his wife, Sally, who preceded him three years earlier. He’d overcome a club foot and unusual treatment (a doctor breaking and resetting both his legs to save his ability to walk) to factor big enough in two of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ seminal moments. The second wasn’t as immediate as the first, even if it might have ended with a better punch line. The first, of course, was the 1959 World Series, for a Los Angeles Dodgers club winning a pennant in its second season out West with a club melded almost exactly halfway between up-and-comers and the remnants of the Boys of Summer. Sherry’s Series work was enough to get him a Sport byline (”Everybody Loves the Series Heroes”) and a share of the cover, with a guy named Ruth. Sherry received the call early and often in the set beginning with Game Two, in Comiskey Park, with Johnny Podres (the hero of the Dodgers’ only World Series title as Brooklyn Dodgers) down 2-1 to Bob Shaw after six. Manager Walter Alston sent Chuck Essegian up to pinch hit for Podres, and Essegian hit one out. A walk (to Junior Gilliam) later, future Original Met Charley Neal hit one out and sent Shaw out in the hole, 4-3. Sherry ducked one eighth-inning rally (with a lot of help from Sherman Lollar getting thrown out at the plate trying to score on Al Smith’s double), spent the rest of his three-inning assignment grounding the White Sox (literally; Sherry got five of his nine outs on the ground), and saving it for Podres. Back in Los Angeles and the extraterrestrial Coliseum (you had to see to believe how they shoehorned a baseball field into this cavernous oval), Sherry got the Game Three call to save it for future Hall of Famer Don Drysdale, after the Dodgers broke up the mutual shutout with veteran Boy of Summer Carl Furillo’s bottom-of-the-seventh, two-run single. Sherry came in after Ted Kluszewski and Lollar opened with back-to-back singles off Drysdale; he drilled Billy Goodman to load it up for Smith, whose double play grounder allowed Kluszewski to score the run, but Sherry struck out the side in the ninth in spite of future Hall of Famer Nellie Fox’s two-out single. Sherry turned up again in Game Four after the White Sox wrecked Roger Craig’s shutout bid with four to tie in the top of the seventh; while Sherry took care of business in two innings interrupted only by a walk to White Sox reliever Gerry Staley, another veteran Boy of Summer, Gil Hodges, opened the bottom of the eight with a blast for what proved the 5-4 winner. Sherry didn’t turn up in Game Five—Stan Williams got the call instead, for the eighth inning, after Sandy Koufax and Bob Shaw dueled magnificently (the only run of the game: Fox scoring on a double play in the fourth)—but he got the call early in Game Six, in the fourth inning, with the Dodgers up 8-0 but the White Sox threatening to close it up (Kluszewski smashed a one-out, three-run bomb, after which Podres walked Smith). He got two outs for the side, matched shutout innings the rest of the way against four White Sox relievers (the Dodgers had jumped future Hall of Famer Early Wynn, the game’s starter, and Game Three starter Dick Donovan—who didn’t get an out during his brief appearance relieving Wynn here—for the eight runs); one Sherry was equal to all four of Turk Lown, Staley, Billy Pierce, and Ray Moore, and the Dodgers landed the West’s first Series rings. Sherry went on to enjoy a fine career as a relief pitcher (including a career-high twenty saves with the 1966 Detroit Tigers) and pitching coach. But his own World Series triumph and fine career has a footnote, and it was written the night Alston broke his ‘59 Series ring on Sherry’s door in Vero Beach two spring trainings after that triumph. As things turned out, Alston could say how worth it it was—because the doings over the pair of nights that ended with the ring break led to Alston winning two more Series rings. But in the heat of moment Alston probably wanted to say only that he hadn’t yet decided which among three pitchers he most wanted to execute. Sherry’s elder brother Norm, a backup catcher with little in his bat but plenty in his head, was having a pizza one fine Vero Beach evening with a scout named Kenny Myers, a Dodger reliever named Ed Roebuck, and a frustrated Sandy Koufax—who’d nearly retired after the 1960 season, convinced he had no future as a pitcher. Now, Koufax was listening when Myers burnt a spot on a far wall with his cigar and suggested to Koufax he throw an imaginary baseball and try to hit the spot. Right there was Koufax’s flaw discovered: he pulled his body too far back in the windup and left his head above the spot, leaving him unable to hit the strike zone where he wanted to hit it. The following day, Koufax was slated to work a long B-squad game with Norm Sherry behind the plate. When Koufax got into trouble in the first inning, Sherry went to the mound. Exactly what was said has been told unto eternity (usually quoting Sherry the Elder as translating Myers’ analysis into, “Sandy, you don’t have to throw so hard”), but Sherry himself remembered telling Koufax two things: a) “Take something off the ball and let ‘em hit it.” b) After Koufax took Sherry’s advice, melded it to Myers’ experiment, and struck out the side, Sherry (as he remembered it) told Koufax, “I’m not blowing smoke up your rear end, but you just now threw harder trying not to than you did when you were trying to.” Koufax finished his outing (it was against future World Series conquests the Minnesota Twins) with eight punchouts and no hits in spite of five walks. But he’d found his control. And he’d enjoyed himself on the mound for the first time in a painfully long time. That night, he decided to celebrate with Larry Sherry. The two pitchers hit town for a late pizza, and got back past curfew. Koufax and his roomie Stan Williams were both late getting back. Each thought the other left the light on for him. Manager Alston was about to let each know in his own way how wrong he was when the 1959 World Series MVP sauntered back into the dormitory—”in his shorts, carrying his clothes, and teetering all over the place,” as Williams remembered it to Koufax’s biographer Jane Leavy. “So Alston forgets all about Sandy and tears after Larry. Larry sees him coming and he runs into his room and locks the door. Alston’s yelling . . . and Larry’s afraid to open the door because Alston’s so mad.” Alston banged on the door long enough to break his World Series ring. The one Larry Sherry won for him in 1959. Who knew that Alston was destined for two more on the arm of a Koufax whom one night’s pizza and beer turned into the pitcher Alston would have to send to the mound, no questions asked, on two days’ rest and nothing but an exhausted fastball to nail a World Series that was going the distance. It cost Koufax, Sherry, and Williams a hundred simoleons apiece in fines. It may have been the only known occasion on which Sandy Koufax incurred a managerial fine* for anything at any time of the season. The morning after, on an otherwise quiet team bus, Koufax himself broke the tension. “Hey, Larry,” Koufax chirped. “Had your door appraised for diamonds yet?”
:cry: LOS ANGELES -- Larry Sherry, Most Valuable Player of the Dodgers' 1959 World Series championship, died Sunday from cancer. He was 71. Sherry, a rookie reliever, was 2-0 with two saves and a 0.71 ERA in the Dodgers' 1959 World Series win over the Chicago White Sox. "Larry Sherry was a local product who became a household name in Los Angeles with his World Series heroics in 1959," the Dodgers said in a statement. "He will always be associated with the Dodgers' first championship in Los Angeles, and our deepest sympathies go out to his brother, Norm, and the entire Sherry family." Sherry, brother of fellow Major Leaguer and former manager Norm Sherry, grew up in Los Angeles and died at his home in Mission Viejo, Calif. Sherry had to overcome birth defects and several operations on his feet to become a multiple-sport star in high school. In 1960, Sherry and his brother became the first all-Jewish battery in Major League history. Sherry also pitched for the Detroit Tigers, Houston Astros and California Angels, compiling a 53-44 record, 3.67 ERA and 82 saves. His out pitch was a slider he learned from his brother, Norm. Sherry was traded by the Dodgers to the Tigers for Lou Johnson, who helped the Dodgers win the 1965 World Series. After his playing career, Sherry was a pitching coach for the Pittsburgh and California organizations.
Koufax....... <t>Man was he something else. I'll never forget sitting on the second row behind the Dodger dugout when he pitched here in the Astrodome in front of a SRO versus the Astros. My grandfather got us these great tickets as he knew I loved Koufax and the show he put on that night. Needless to say the Astro hitters spent the night shaking their heads on the way back to the dugout. The next day Drysdale did the same thing to them. Now that guy was nasty.</t>