Talking Sports: Making the show

Once upon a time I could be transfixed for hours by the Baseball Encyclopedia or Baseball Almanac. Now the information once housed in those enormous volumes can be found right at our fingertips on the Internet.

I spent some time recently scanning through all the major league players born in Nebraska. It’s a long list, but most of them seem to be from back east - Lincoln and Omaha are well represented, the panhandle not so much. It’s a population thing of course. The odds are somewhat better that a player would be from the east.

Only one player born in Sidney ever made it to the major leagues. It was, as they say, only for a cup of coffee.

Ken Ramos played for the Houston Astros in 1997. Maybe some of you know him. I confess I never heard of him. But as far as I’m concerned he did something special by making it onto that exclusive list.

The town of his birth is so obscure to the Baseball Almanac, it appears, Ramos is listed as being from “Sydney, Nebraska.”

Ramos played in 16 games for the Astros. In 16 pinch hitting appearances he never got a hit but drove in a run with a sacrifice fly. He also picked up a pair of walks.

Kind of sounds a little like the movie “Field of Dreams” with Kevin Costner. Burt Lancaster, in his final roll, played Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham. He had but one game in the bigs before finding his true calling.

The first Nebraskan to have ever played in the show was Charlie Abbey, who made his debut on Aug. 16, 1893 with the Washington Senators. Abbey was from Falls City - that’s about as far east as you can go in Nebraska. Abbey played in five seasons and hit .281 for his career.

I don’t know why such things interest me but they do. Somehow there must be a compelling story about Abbey. I wish I knew what it was. Abbey, an outfielder, played in only five seasons. I can’t help but wonder why his skills seemed to deteriorate so steadily after his exceptional first full season.

He was only 26 when he broke in. Did he sustain an injury? Did he take to the bottle? Was he disillusioned by the majors when he finally got there? Did a minor league team make him a better offer? Who knows. There are certain things the numbers can’t tell you. Even in baseball, which is a great numbers game.

In 1894 Abbey hit .314 with 7 homers, 18 triples, 26 doubles and 101 RBI in 129 games. It’s all relative I suppose. Hitting .314 sounds pretty good but maybe it was just OK--at least when you consider Hugh Duffy led the league that year by hitting .440.

Abbey was down to .260 in his final year. Maybe he found he could make a better living in San Francisco, where he died in 1926. Since he was brought back to Falls City to be buried, I suppose Abbey must have been a true and proud Nebraskan wherever he was.

But not all the Nebraskans who played in the majors were so obscure as Abbey. There were some greats too. Grover Cleveland Alexander was probably the best player ever to hail from the Cornhusker State. Since we spent a lot of ink on Alexander in this space once before, there’s no cause to rehash his remarkable career. No doubt a fair argument could be made for Bob Gibson of Omaha being the best ever. He was an all-time great. No doubt about that - no matter where he was from. I still remember watching him as a little kid dueling with Tom Seaver. He always looked scary to me. I think he liked looking scary. It was part of his mystique.

I believe it was Gibson who said how lucky Babe Ruth was that he wasn’t facing him while pointing to center field for that “called shot.” Gibson said he would have plugged the Bambino in his ear. He would have too.

Sam Crawford, I’ve heard of him. He was born in Wahoo in 1880 and broke into the majors as a 19-year old in 1899. He finished his career with a career batting average of .309 and fell but 39 hits shy of the 3,000 mark.

One might wonder why he didn’t stick around for just one more campaign just to reach the 3,000-hit club. Perhaps it may be that at that stage in his career it may have taken a few seasons to get there. His final campaign in 1917 he hit .173 with but 18 hits. There was a war on too. Maybe that had something to do with it.

Jobba Chamberlain is from Lincoln. He’s the guy for the Yankees who looks somewhat like Babe Ruth to me. He hasn’t figured out how to bend the brim of his hat - but I guess he just wants to be an individual.

Todd Pratt was a pretty good ball player too. The Bellvue native and catcher played for some good Mets teams in the ‘90s. There’s another guy named Pug Griffen. With a name like that you know he had to be from the 19th century. Kid Wilson too.

Kip Gross was from Scottsbluff. That may sound like a 19-century moniker, but he played up until 2000. He had a decent but short (six years) career as a pitcher for several teams.

There are several active players in the major leagues from Nebraska, too. Who knows, maybe one day one of them may surpass Alexander and Gibson in the hierarchy of baseball greats.

But that would take some doing.