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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Will Jimenez join ranks of ballplayers who bite Chicago Cubs’ fans on their behinds for seasons to come?

Eloy Jimenez is the star ballplayer from the Dominican Republic who is expected to be a significant part of the rebuilt Chicago White Sox ballclubs that will play in future years. 

Coulda been a Cubs star, but w/ Sox instead

And his quality of play will most definitely be studied these next two days. Every little move he makes will be watched for evidence that he’s making his former employer “suck it” big time.

FOR JIMENEZ IS the big White Sox star whom the Sout’ Siders acquired in a trade a few years ago with the Chicago Cubs. Jimenez was the guy whom the Cubbies knew had potential to be a big star – but they let him go in a trade to acquire a more-experienced pitcher.

Yes, Jose Quintana has been a solid pitcher for the Cubs – giving the ball club what they expected when they acquired him. Yet I can’t think of a single White Sox fan who’d rather have Quintana back.

Jimenez has finally made it to the major leagues this year, has had some big ballgames (particularly against the New York Yankees) and could very well join all those Cubano ballplayers the White Sox have acquired to create a talented (and potentially championship) ball club.

And now, due to the concept of inter-league play, the White Sox will be playing the Cubs. The White Sox will be the visiting ball club – traveling to the North Side for a two-game series.

 

Wound up winning Sox champ instead

YOU JUST KNOW that White Sox fandom will be rooting for Jimenez to be the big bat who beats the baby blue Cubbie bears over their batting helmet-clad heads. While I don’t doubt Cub-dom will hope that Jimenez turns out to be insignificant – or perhaps makes an error or strikes out at a key point in the game.

All so they can spew some trash talk that this Jimenez kid (he’s only 22 now) is a bust who won’t ever amount to anything special!

A Hall of Famer … for dreaded Cardinals

Of course, there have been several dozen ballplayers who managed to do time with both the White Sox and Cubs. There also are those players whom the Cubs have managed to let go – only to have them turn into stars somewhere else.

Take the case of Jon Garland, who back in 1997 was a first-round draft pick of the Cubs. Only to be traded to the White Sox a year later for more-experienced pitcher Matt Karchner.

White Sox would gladly have returned him

GARLAND EVENTUALLY DEVELOPED into a solid starting pitcher for the White Sox, and was a significant part of their pitching rotation in 2005 – the year they brought Chicago its first World Series victory in 88 years (and first of the 21^st Century).

Before anyone starts thinking the key to the White Sox acquiring major league talent is to make a trade with the Cubs, I’m sure many Sox fans will recall the 1974 trade that saw Cubs legend Ron Santo have an absolutely awful (a .221 batting average, 5 home runs and 41 runs batted in) stint with the Sox.

That, even more than his overbearing, Cubbie-loving personality, is why his persona will always be detested on the South Side.

But it hasn’t always been good times for the Cubs and their fans, who had to endure decades of grief over the 1964 trade that saw then acquire pitcher Ernie Broglio in exchange for outfielder Lou Brock – who went on to become a St. Louis Cardinals star, a great base stealer, and a Hall of Famer.

THAT IS ONE trade that Cubs fans wish could be erased from baseball history. Or at least the chapters related to Wrigley Field.

Sox would have refused his return

I remember back when Cubs fans tried downplaying that deal by insisting that an even bigger embarrassment was the 1992 deal where the White Sox eagerly acquired slugging outfielder Jorge Bell for a skinny Dominican kid outfielder Sammy Sosa.

The same Sammy who bulked up and went on to hit all those home runs (600-plus), only to get tagged with tales that he used steroids and that his whole experience was a fraud. All the more reason why White Sox fans never felt any sense of loss at the trade while many Cubs fans now try to pretend that Sosa never really happened!

Although one wonders if Jimenez has the chance to become an even bigger embarrassment to the Cubs than any of these deals – if he continues to show his stardom in Chicago!

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EXTRA: Quinn on hand for tribute to a Cardinal; How will the Cubs fans react?

Now, he's a bridge

I realize that the greater St. Louis metro area spills over into Illinois (similar to how metro Chicago includes a piece of Indiana). Yet I can’t help but think it a bit odd that our governor was among the dignitaries on hand Saturday for the opening of a new bridge that pays tribute, in part, to the St. Louis Cardinals’ great Stan Musial.

Would a Missouri governor feel compelled to be on hand if something were named for Chicago Cubs great Ernie Banks? At least in his case, it could be justified by saying he once played for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro leagues of old.

BUT QUINN WAS among the political people who showed up for the ceremonies marking the new bridge that connects St. Louis to East St. Louis – which makes it a major entryway to people entering Illinois from the southwest.

And Quinn justifies the appearance by saying it’s the first new bridge built in that area in four decades. A “catalyst for business development and job creation for the future?,” as Quinn phrased it.

Let’s only hope so. Because I wonder how many people hear the name “East St. Louis” and automatically envision the Griswold family driving through town on their way to Walley World (remember “National Lampoon’s Vacation”)?

Officially, the new bridge is the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge, which means it pays tribute to the military veterans that Quinn likes to honor any chance he gets.

IT’S TOO BAD that this wasn’t a bridge named (for whatever reason) for Lou Brock. He was, after all, both a Cardinal and a Cub.

Although I suspect that reminding Cubs fans of that deal would probably kill off any chance that they would consider voting for him in the November general election.

Can we pretend it didn't happen?

Then again, if he hadn’t shown up on Saturday, he might well have been accused of snubbing those baseball fans of Madison and St. Clair counties – which are among the few places outside of metro Chicago where Quinn might actually get significant numbers of votes.

How quickly the trivial gestures our political people make take on actual substantive results!

PART OF WHAT amuses me about this particular move is that putting Musial’s name on the bridge is supposed to make us forget how Cardinals fans in the Missouri Legislature actually named a nearby highway for Mark McGwire.

Oops, wrong team!!!

It was in the aftermath of 1998 and everybody was drunk with the spirit of those 70 home runs and Interstate 70 does pass through St. Louis. I remember people cheering at the sight of McGwire meeting personally with Pope John Paul II when the latter was in St. Louis early in 1999.

Of course, now that even McGwire admits he was using certain questionable substances to help bulk up his body to give him added strength for those “dingers” (remember The Simpsons? That’s what people really want to see), it seemed embarrassing.

Local officials actually went back to calling it the “Mark Twain Highway.”

NOW, CARDINALS FANS can still have a ballplayer’s name prominently displayed in the area near downtown St. Louis. And considering that Musial hasn’t played ball in 50 years (and died last year), it is unlikely he could do anything that would bring added shame on the St. Louis area.

Which may be the one way in which Chicago Cubs fans showed some restraint. To my knowledge, too many people got absolutely stupid in their worship of Sosa and his home runs all those years ago, but we don’t have anything named after him.

Except for those people who actually shelled out $19.95 (plus tax) to get a “Sammy Sosa Drive” sign. Which they can now use to whack themselves upside the heads while asking, “What was I thinking?!?”

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