Talking Sports: Nebraska baseball, MLB has co-existed

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 at our fingertips on the internet.

I spent some time recently scanning through all the players born in Nebraska who have played in the major leagues. 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 significantly better that a player would be from the east.

Only one man born in Cheyenne County 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. The town of his birth is so obscure to the Baseball Almanac, 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 and Burt Lancaster. In the final roll of his career, Lancaster 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 major league baseball 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.

Somewhere 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.

Abbey 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? Maybe, like the fictional character Graham, he found his true calling also. Who knows. There are certain things the numbers can't tell you – even in a great numbers game like baseball.

In 1894, Abbey hit .314 with seven 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 in 1894. Especially when you consider that Hugh Duffy led the league that year by hitting .440.

Abbey was down to .260 in his final year during which he played 80 games. 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 might be the best player ever to hail from the Cornhusker State.

Of course, a great argument could be made for Bob Gibson of Omaha being the best ever. He was an all-time great, no matter where he hailed from. I still remember watching him as a little kid dueling with Tom Seaver on a few opening days. He always looked intimidating to me. I know a few hitters thought that too. I understand he liked looking scary. It was part of his mystique. Seaver looked more like a professor – but he's a Californian. He's growing grapes and making wine now.

I think it was Gibson who said that Babe Ruth was lucky he wasn't facing him when he pointed 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 lifetime batting average of .309 and fell only 39 hits shy of the 3,000 mark.

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

Jobba Chamberlain is from Lincoln. He's the former Yankee and now Tiger 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 Bellevue native and catcher played for some good Mets teams in the '90's. There's another ex-big leaguer from Nebraska named Pug Griffen. With a name like that you know he had to have played in the 19th century. Kid Wilson too. Kip Gross was from Scottsbluff. That may sound like a 19-century moniker, but he played until 2000. He had a decent, but short (six years) career as a pitcher for several teams.

There are still a number of active players in the major leagues from Nebraska. 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.