R.I.P. Broglio and Pumpsie Green

A pair of former ballplayers saw their demise in this realm of existence yet the significance of their stories within the baseball world continue to live on. They’re not to be forgotten anytime soon.

Cubbie blue never agreed w/ Broglio

One of the players was pitcher Ernie Broglio – who during his time with the St. Louis Cardinals won 70 games, including one 20-win season and another where he came close.

THE CHICAGO CUBS acquiring him in 1964 should have been the kind of move that added a potential ace to their pitching staff. Looking particularly good since all the Cubbies gave up for Broglio was an outfielder who barely hit .250 and didn’t even come close to the home run power they always dreamed he had.

The outfielder, of course, was Lou Brock, who upon going to the Cardinals suddenly discovered he could steal bases – some 33 in that partial season alone and more than 900 over the course of his two decades as a major leaguer.

The reason why he’s a member of the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Immortalized in bronze – even though there are some who like to think Brock is a perfect example of a ballplayer who wasn’t that special.

All he could do, after all, is steal bases – better than anybody else who had played prior to his arrival in baseball. Personally, I always viewed Brock as the perfect example of Cubs’ mismanagement – thinking your leadoff hitter and star base thief was a slugger just because he was one of the few who ever hit a home run into the center field bleachers at New York’s old Polo Grounds – a shot of at least 460 feet.

Cubs misjudged Brock as a ballplayer

AS FOR BROGLIO, the former ace pitcher suddenly “lost” it. In two-and-a-half seasons pitching for the Cubs, he won a total of 7 ballgames.

And now, Broglio popped back into the news briefly – he died from complications due to cancer Tuesday in San Jose, Calif., at age 83. I’m sure Cubs fans are hoping this puts that long-ago trade (that some baseball fans consider the worst ever, aside from maybe Frank Robinson to Baltimore for Milt Pappas to Cincinnati) to bed, once and for all.

But Broglio isn’t the only late ballplayer of significance this week.

For Elijah Green, nicknamed “Pumpsie,” met his maker Wednesday at age 85 at a hospital in San Leandro, Calif. His family said he had been ill for the past five months.

Pappas later redeemed rep after becoming a Cub

GREEN WAS A ballplayer who made his Major League debut as a pinch runner for the Boston Red Sox in a game July 21, 1959 at Comiskey Park. He finished out that game playing shortstop.

Which is significant because he was the first black ballplayer to play for the Red Sox, which made them the final ball club to finally give in to the integration trend started some 12 years earlier when Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Considering that Boston’s other ball club, the Braves, had integrated as far back as 1950 and that Chicago’s two ballclubs (the White Sox in 1951 and Cubs in 1953) also had made the move toward integration, it could be said that it took the Red Sox long enough to get with the program of trying to truly put together the best ball clubs possible.

Or we could celebrate the notion that the integration of the game that likes to use “the National Pastime” label to describe itself finally wasn’t a joke. Maybe it finally bore a bit of legitimacy.

AND AS FOR the memories baseball fans will have of both Broglio and Green, one doesn’t have to be of Hall of Fame statistical ability to be an interesting story.

His historic moment occurred at Comiskey

Which is why it is encouraging to learn that Green never viewed himself as some sort of racial pioneer, while Broglio didn’t let his life sink into a quagmire of sorts because the guy he was traded for went on to become a super star – and he didn’t.

Both are amongst the ranks of those who tried to play baseball professionally AND wound up making it up to the game’s highest ranks. They got their lines of type in the Baseball Encyclopedia to confirm it.

And I’m sure both of them went to their graves this week thinking of themselves as Major Leaguers – a label no one could take away from them.

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EXTRA: Three more counties, 96 to go

Three more counties across Illinois let it be known Thursday they would have their clerks start issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, and one more county said they may be at it by week's end.

Macon County (the Decatur area) is the one that may be up and running soon, while Jackson County (the Carbondale area, which means Southern Illinois University's presence), Cass County (a rural place located northwest of Springfield whose most notable feature is the Jim Edgar fish and wildlife park), and St. Clair County (which is half of the Illinois-based suburbs of St. Louis) are the places that are now prepared to issue licenses.

OF COURSE, THAT still leaves some eight dozen counties that are refusing to get along. Some of the reasons I have read in various reports are laughable.

Such as the counties where the clerks say they're too busy to address the issue because of the upcoming March 18 primary elections to the ones who don't see the stupidity in having a situation where Illinois gets a split personality on this issue.

Then, there are the ones who will wait until June 1 before they feel they're forced to do it. I'm curious to see which ones try to find legal reasons to try to hold out even longer than that.

Which Illinois county will become the government equivalent of the Boston Red Sox, who when they signed infielder Pumpsie Green in 1959 became the last ball club to take a black ballplayer on their roster. A stigma that still gets used against the Red Sox, from time to time.

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No rushing the Illinois Legislature on anything. It acts when/if it feels ready

My memories of covering the Illinois Legislature taught me one lesson that prevails over all – the Legislature will act on any given issue whenever it feels ready to do so.

QUINN: It's time, ...

Imposing deadlines on the Legislature (such as has been tried in recent years with regards to pension funding reform)? Pointless. Just look at how long issues such as casino gambling and a new Chicago-area airport have lingered at the Statehouse.

SO WHEN I learned about how Gov. Pat Quinn is trying to put the pressure on the Illinois House of Representatives to act NOW with regards to gay marriage, I couldn’t help but chuckle.

If anything, the only effect that Quinn’s comments will have is to make the representatives even more lethargic when it comes to taking some action.

There are those legislators who disrespect Quinn’s image so much that they openly look for ways to snub him. They gloat over the various polls showing Quinn with low levels of support – while ignoring the fact that other polls show that people think equally little of legislators as they do their chief executives.

Falling short of final passage on this particular issue would fall into that category – as well as appease all those pastors who are going about these days trying to show off who can sound like the most intolerant nitwit in Illinois.

THERE IS NO pushing the Illinois Legislature, which always seems willing to put off until tomorrow something that probably was needed yesterday.

... but will legislators listen?

Some might say our elected officials are merely being cautious. What is really amounts to is that they’re being cowardly – they’re desperately afraid of taking a vote that will come back and bite them on their collective behind!

Of course, by their inaction they risk having that come back to kick them in the butt! But these are the kind of people who will argue about the significant difference between voting “present” and not voting at all.

Even though many people will equate such actions as having the same end result as a “no” vote.

IF ANYTHING, ON the gay marriage vote the legislators probably will have to be shamed into taking action. Something is going to have to happen to make them feel like they risk being the 50^th (and final) state to approve such a measure – making them the equivalent of the Boston Red Sox and their first black ballplayer in 1959 (some 12 years after one J.R. Robinson joined the Brooklyn National League ballclub).

Baseball equivalent of Ill. gay marriage?

Do we really want our state’s gay marriage measure to be the equivalent of Elijah “Pumpsie” Green?

I have that thought because it ran through my mind when I learned earlier this week that Delaware managed to approve the issue and sign it into law. We got beat by Delaware! Somehow, the idea that we’ll probably beat Mississippi and Alabama to the punch on this issue just doesn’t sound that encouraging.

The issue in Illinois has been on hold, for all practical purposes, since Valentine’s Day – the date on which Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, got cute and staged the vote of approval nearly three months ago.

I COMPREHEND QUINN’S frustration. He has made it clear from early on that he wants to approve this overdue ideal into law. He wants the moment of glory when he can have a bill-signing ceremony, while also sticking it to the conservative ideologues who are always on his case because they couldn’t defeat him at the polling place back in 2010.

But in hearing Quinn say, “It’s time to vote,” I can’t help but also hear in my mind the Legislature saying “We’ll say when it’s time to vote.”

Which will probably be slipped into the Legislature’s final day of action on May 31 before they take a summer break – probably slipped in between other controversial issues out of some delusional hope that nobody will notice what they wind up doing.

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