[Author's Note: Some while back I wrote a post about unfulfilled promise on the baseball diamond and the tragic story of Tony Conigliaro.  With Rick Ankiel's remarkable rise from the ashes in recent weeks, I thought it might be appropriate to re-visit that Tony C post if only to remember the courage it takes to step back onto a baseball diamond after fate forces someone off of it.]

 

He was ready to take his place among the pantheon of great Boston sports heroes.  Williams.  Russell.  Cousy.  Yaz.  They were all going to have to move a little closer together to make room for a young slugger who was bunching up home runs with impressive density at Fenway Park.  His name was already written in pencil on the pages of legend, waiting only for his inevitable accomplishments to fill those letters in with permanent ink. But in one instant on one perfectly placid summer afternoon in 1967, it ended.  In the time it takes to blink, his name simply vanished from the pages of history.

 

 

 

On one pitch in one game of the long baseball season, Tony Conigliaro's magical run with the Boston Red Sox ended.  California's Jack Hamilton threw a fastball that sailed high and tight, and Conigliaro never had a chance.  The ball struck him nearly flush on the left eye, scrambling his flawless eyesight like a beaten egg.  Though he would eventually recover from the beaning, his eyesight would never be the same and his chances at baseball immortality went with it. 

 

Meanwhile, the Sox reluctantly went on without him.  They even made an improbable run to capture the AL Pennant in 1967, referring to their unexpected success that year as "The Impossible Dream."   But they did so without one of their brightest young stars.  That Tony Conigliaro was not around to enjoy and contribute to the wild ride that was the AL stretch run in 1967 surely took some of the edge off the team's "Dream."

And so it was.  Tony C, the local kid from Revere, Massachusetts who made good.  The right-handed hitting phenom who hit 24 homers in 1964 at the age of 19.  The All-Star rightfielder who was supposed to bookend with Carl Yastrzemski for the next decade and give the Sox the most feared lefty-righty punch in the league was essentially done before his 23rd birthday.

He did make it back to the big leagues in 1969 and hit 20 homers.  He followed that up with 36 more the following season, a true triumph considering the toll it must have taken on his psyche to step back into the batter's box and face his greatest demon - the pitched ball.  However, the baseball gods simply wouldn't give him a break, his eyesight, which had cleared enough to allow him back into the big leagues, went for good in 1971.  Another comeback in 1975 (ironically, another pennant winning season for Boston) ended disastrously, and at 30 years old, the game had dispatched Tony C for good.

 

He would go on to sports broadcasting, if only to remain connected to the world he was never fully able to realize.  However, as with his playing days, fate was undeniably cruel to him.  At 37, he suffered a major heart attack that left him in a coma for over a month.  Although he survived, and "survive" is the operative word here, what was left of his shattered life lingered on for eight painful years.  In 1990, Tony Conigliaro, the youngest player in AL history to reach 100 career home runs, passed away.  He was 45 years old.

 

Somewhere, I think there's a place in the very heart of New England that still feels the pain of Tony C's lost career, his one chance to fulfill the promise of being the Next Big Thing in Red Sox history.  And there must also surely be a place among baseball fans in general that not only feels bad about the numbers that never appeared on the back of Tony Conigliaro's baseball card but also that his name must be referred to in the past tense, decades before that ever should have been the case.

 

Stats:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/conigto01.shtml

 

Other Sources:

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/recbooks/rb_hr6.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Conigliaro

Before he sat down to learn about Cuba and have some food and just after he discovered there was, in fact, no birthday party waiting for him in Mr. Hand's first period history class, Ridgemont High's favorite stoner Jeff Spiccoli surveyed the classroom before declaring, "Whoa, I know that dude!"

 

 

I imagine a great many fans at last Thursday's St. Louis Cardinals' game might well have said the same thing.

 

In 1999, Rick Ankiel was all promise, a wicked 19-year old lefty who had rocketed through the Cardinals farm system all the way to the big leagues.  In 33 innings with the big league club, the rookie phenom struck out 39, had a 3.27 ERA, and for all the world looked like the Next Big Thing in baseball.  In 2000, he won 11 games with a 3.50 ERA and helped St. Louis to the division title.  Cards' manager Tony LaRussa was so confident in his prized young pitcher that he gave Ankiel the Game 1 start in the NLDS against the Braves.  It was supposed to be Ankiel's grand entrance to the national spotlight, the first shining moment in a blossoming career.

 

 

What happened next was like something straight out of the "Twilight Zone" or the "Zone Out Zone" or some kind of other worldly zone.  Whatever it was, it sadly had nothing to do with the strike zone.  In Game 1 of the 2000 NLDS, Rick Ankiel went from burgeoning superstar rookie pitcher to the baseball equivalent of a straight jacket and padded cell in the span 2 2/3 innings.  And in the span of those eight outs, he uncorked five wild pitches.  And by "wild", these errant offerings were not of the garden variety waywardness.  Some flew all the way to the backstop, others bounced feebly short of the plate or veered so wide that the on-deck hitters had to raise an eyebrow.  If such a thing can be impressive, it was one of the most impressive displays of wildness that most had ever seen.  By the time LaRussa came out to get his fully-melted down young star, his promise had practically turned to dust.

 

And just like that, the well went dry.

 

Some will tell you that the baseball gods can be cruel, and seeing what happened to Rick Ankiel in 2000 might just be enough to make one believe it.  Now, the story could have ended there, a sad parable about the cruelty of fate and the brutal reality of athletic Darwinism.  But it didn't.  And how the story continued is a rather remarkable journey in and of itself.

 

So what do you do if everything you've worked for, if all of your professional promise gets smashed to pieces?  If you are Rick Ankiel, you simply pick them up along with a bat and start hitting home runs.

 

Yogi Berra once said, supposedly, that baseball was 90% mental, and the other half was physical.  Given that, Ankiel's ability to reclaim his shattered psyche is noteworthy, indeed.  If he'd made it all the way back as a pitcher, people would have applauded but, at the same time, been somewhat nonplussed by it.  That Ankiel somehow re-shaped his career by taking on an entirely different discipline and succeeded to the point that he legitimately merited consideration at the highest level of the game is what turned a good story into a great one.  And he bought his ticket back to the big leagues with power - 21 homers in 321 AB's between A and AA level ball in 2005 and 32 bombs in 389 AB's at AAA in 2007.

 

 

As if that weren't enough, just being back on a big league ballfield, being able to kick around some dirt in the batter's box and settle in at the plate as major league hitter, even for just a single at-bat, would have been a triumph.  Instead, he was able to turn on a pitch in that first game back and hit a three-run bomb, helping to ice the Cards' 5-0 win over San Diego.  As if on cue, he took a curtain call two nights later by hitting a pair of homers against the Dodgers.

 

Whether Ankiel eventually develops into a star MLB hitter or if he fades after his storybook comeback debut is somewhat irrelevant.  The greater point has already been made.  Rick Ankiel, one-time pitching prodigy, stared down defeat and embarrassment to earn his place back at the MLB table.  One home run at a time.

 

And Jeff Spiccoli and Mr. Hand might both agree that watching Ankiel's story unfold has, in fact, been a very productive use of our time.

 

Stats

http://www.baseball-reference.com/a/ankieri01.shtml

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/playerGameLog?categoryId=85805

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/A/Rick-Ankiel.shtml

 

Other Sources:

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/27220.html

756.

 

It is probably a number worth repeating.  756.  It is a number that has never been used in compiling the regular season home run total for a single player in Major League Baseball history.  Until now.

 

Barry Bonds is Major League Baseball's All-time Home Run Leader.  That is not a statement of advocacy.  Or a condemnation.  It is now simply a statement of fact.

 

The instant bat met ball last night at AT & T Park Barry Bonds' moment in history was distilled to its most basic element: a baseball player hitting a baseball.  And if only for that instant, what actually happened in between the lines of a baseball diamond took its place above all else.

 

And in focusing squarely on that pitch at that moment in that park and the reaction and technique Bonds used to drive it out of the ballpark, one can appreciate the richness of the act of a home run itself.

 

Balance, speed, the proper timing of the hands, the correct angle of the bat, knowing a pitcher and what pitches he throws at what speed and with what degree of movement, considering the count and game situation and how that might effect pitch selection - a hitter needs all of that all at once, all in the time it takes to blink.  And if he is fortunate enough to square the ball and hit it solidly, he then has to watch to see if the defense makes a play on the ball.  If after all of that, he's driven the ball solidly and squarely enough for it to leave the ballpark, then, and only then, can he relax and complete his circuit around the bases.

 

Fans see home runs hit every day, and most likely underestimate the difficulty it takes to produce just one.

 

Multiplied by 756 against the highest level of competition in the world, Bonds' home run yesterday has to create some pause, some momentary suspension of the circus.  With the maelstrom swirling about everything that led up to Bonds' moment in history and everything that will undoubtedly follow it for the foreseeable future, I thought, for just this instant, it might be refreshing just to consider the moment.  Not the character of the player in question.  Not the validity of allegations of back room dealings and mystery elixirs.  Not the significance of bronze plaques and lines in record books.  Rather, just consider the simple perfection of a hitter squaring up a fastball and sending it into the heavens.

 

In that sense, baseball is still a beautiful game.  It is still principally about a pitcher, a hitter, 60'6", and the pitched ball.  And what happened last night was still principally about that as well: a pitcher, a hitter, and a pitched ball.  In this case, the hitter just happened to hit it out of the ballpark and was able to round the bases.  For the 756th time in his big league career.

 

And if anyone says that's something they've seen before, it wouldn't be true.  Certainly not as true as who MLB's new All-time Home Run Leader is.

Author's note: I wrote this post for last year's 4th of July and thought I would re-post because it seemed appropriate for the occassion (ok, that and I haven't had much time to write new stuff lately!).

--------------------------------------------

I would like to take a moment to celebrate this country's birthday on this blog by putting exactly four candles on the cake.

Why only four? There is a certain symmetry to the number "4" in sports.  Four quarters.  Four bases.  Four wins to take a Best-of-Seven championship series.  Even the "Big 4" sports as we know them in the US: Baseball, Basketball, Football, and Hockey.

And over time, the number "4" has been worn in singular or duplicate by some of the greatest players in the "Big 4" of sports.

Baseball - #4, Lou Gehrig, First Base, New York Yankees, 1923-1939

Career Highlights: A lifetime .340 hitter with 493 career homers.  Won two MVP awards.  Led the league in homers three times and RBI five times.  Won AL Triple Crown in 1934.  3rd All-time in Slugging Pct (.632), 4th All-time in RBI (1995), and 5th All-time in On-Base Pct (.447).  Key contributor to six World Series winning clubs.  Hit .361 in the postseason with 10 homers in 119 AB's.  Held MLB record for consecutive games played until 1995, a staggering 2,130 games played in a row, earning him the nickname, "The Iron Horse".  The Hall of Fame waived the 5-year waiting period requirement and inducted him immediately upon his retirement in 1939.

Signature Moment: He addressed a packed house at Yankee Stadium in 1939 and told those in attendance that he considered himself "the luckiest man on the face of the Earth" before announcing his retirement from professional baseball.  Less than two years later, he was dead.  Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal degenerative nerve disease, had claimed his life.  That he likely knew he was dying that day at Yankee Stadium in 1939 and still managed to express gratitude and thanks speaks volumes about his character away from the ballpark. 

Basketball - #44, Jerry West, Guard, Los Angeles Lakers, 1961-1973

Career Highlights: Two-time All-American at West Virginia University.  Co-captain of the Gold Medal U.S. Olympic Basketball team with Oscar Robertson in 1960.  Drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers with the 2nd overall pick in the 1960 NBA Draft.  13-time NBA All-Star, 10-time All-NBA 1st Team, and 4-time All-NBA Defense 1st Team.  Led the league in scoring in 1970 and in assists in 1972.  5th All-time in Points per Game and 3rd All-time in Steals per Game.  Nicknamed "Mr. Clutch" for his ability to hit crucial shots in high-pressure situations, he averaged over 29 points and 6 assists in 153 career playoff games.  Led the Lakers to nine appearances in the NBA Finals and the NBA title in 1972.  Elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1980.  He has also had a very successful post-playing career as an NBA executive, helping to build a Lakers team that went on to win three straight NBA titles (2000-2002).

Signature Moment: In the 1970 NBA finals between West's Lakers and the New York Knicks, West hit a 60-foot buzzer beater in Game 3 to send the game into overtime.  However, the Lakers ended up losing the game and, eventually, the series to New York.  So, West never liked talking about that shot.  Instead, perhaps, West's most lasting legacy is the fact that it is his silhouette that now adorns the official NBA logo.

Football - #4, Brett Favre, Quarterback, Atlanta Falcons, 1991, Green Bay Packers, 1992-Present

Career Highlights: 8-time Pro Bowler with over 53,000 career passing yards and 396 TD's.  Led the league in TD's four times and passing yards twice. Ranks 2nd All-time in TD's, Passing Yards, and Completions.  Won three consecutive MVP awards (1995-1997).  Has thrown for over 4,900 yards in the playoffs with 33 TD's.  Led the Green Bay Packers to an NFL title with a 35-21 win over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXI.  Has started 221 consecutive games, an NFL record for quarterbacks.

Signature Moment: In 2003, despite still grieving for his father who had suddenly passed away the day before, Favre played in a nationally televised game against the Raiders in Oakland and proceeded to throw for 399 yards and four TD's en route to a 41-7 Green Bay victory.

Hockey - #4, Bobby Orr, Defenseman, Boston Bruins, 1966-1976, Chicago Blackhawks, 1976-1977, 1978-1979

Career Highlights: Orr revolutionized the way NHL defensemen played.  He became a dangerous scoring threat as well as a stellar defender.  Orr was the first defenseman in NHL history to score more than 100 points in a season as well as being the only defenseman to lead the league in scoring.  In a Hall of Fame career, he was an 8-time Norris Trophy winner as the league's best defenseman and a 3-time Hart Trophy winner as the league's MVP.  He finished his career with 270 goals and 645 assists in just 657 games.  In the postseason, he added another 92 points in 74 career playoff games and led the Boston Bruins to a pair of Stanley Cups.  Like Lou Gehrig, his sport's Hall of Fame waived the mandatory waiting period for induction.  Orr was enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame upon his retirement in 1979.

Signature Moment: In leading the Bruins to the Stanley Cup in 1970, Orr scored the game and title-winning goal in overtime of Game 4 against St. Louis.  On the play, Orr was tripped and sent flying but still managed to get his shot past Blues goalie Glenn Hall.  The picture of Orr flying horizontally three feet above the ice remains one of the sport's most enduring images.

Four sports.  Four legends.  Not a bad way to celebrate the Fourth.

Stats courtesy of: www.baseball-reference.com ; www.basketball-reference.com

www.pro-football-reference.com ; www.bobbyorr.com

Northern California is a pretty dynamic place.  To the North, there are the world-renowned vineyards of Napa.  To the East, the Sierra Nevada mountain range beckons with world-class skiing in the winter, and Lake Tahoe counters with breathtaking scenery in the spring and summer.  To the South, the high tech nirvanas of Santa Clara and San Jose keep pumping out micro processing gold.  To the West, the seemingly endless expanse of the Pacific.  And at the very center of it all is San Francisco - the Golden Gate, cable cars, precarious hills, and the soupy layers of fog pouring in off the crisp waters of the Bay.  If you've ever been there, it's pretty easy to see why Anthony Benedetto sang about misplacing a certain multi-chambered organ while wandering around the place.

 

  

And Northern California is no stranger to great baseball.  Long before the Giants left the Polo Grounds behind for the wind tunnel at Candlestick Point and the A's cast Kansas City aside for Oakland, the area already had a rich tradition on the diamond.  Northern California natives have been populating major league rosters for decades.  So, as San Francisco gets set to host this year's MLB All-star Game in a couple of weeks, it is probably fitting to highlight some of the very best players that the area has sent to the big leagues.  So, if one is to put together a Northern California "Dream Team" of sorts, it might look like this:

 

Catcher - Ernie Lombardi

Birthplace: Oakland  

 

  

Although he was a Hall of Fame catcher and a career .300 hitter, Lombardi was probably best known for his big nose and his nearly unprecedented sloth on the basepaths.  That's unfortunate, because Lombardi was a terrific baseball player.  An 8-time All-star, Lombardi won the NL MVP in 1938 by hitting .342 with 19 homers and 95 RB for Cincinnati.  Amazingly, he struck out only 14 times in 489 at-bats that season.  Four years later, he won an unprecedented second batting crown (for a catcher) when he hit .330 for the Boston Braves.  Defensively, he had an impressive throwing arm and was a dependable and stout target behind the plate.  He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1986.

 

First Baseman - Derrek Lee

Birthplace: Sacramento  

 

  

Though he'd been a solid run producer for most of his career (25-35 HR and 75-85 RBI per season), Lee really emerged as a star in 2005.  He won the NL batting title (.335), finished second in the NL in home runs (46), was selected to the All-star Game, and won his second career Gold Glove.  As if that weren't enough, he also ripped 50 doubles, scored 120 runs, and stole 15 bases.  2006 promised great things.  Unfortunately, the big Chicago Cub 1B broke his wrist on a freak defensive play early in the season, and his entire year was pretty much a wash after that.  The good news is that Lee appears to be back on track in 2007, again hitting well over .300 and playing stellar defense.  However, his home run rate is down significantly but could get a boost with a strong second half.

 

Second Baseman - Tony Lazzeri

Birthplace: San Francisco  

 

  

Though the powerhouse New York Yankee teams of the 20's and 30's primarily rode on the iconic shoulders of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig (and later Joe DiMaggio), a number of exceptional supporting players also did their part to insure the continuity of the Yankee dynasty.  One of those players was the team's hard-hitting second baseman, Anthony Michael Lazzeri.  "Poosh 'Em Up Tony" was a hard-nosed, aggressive player who seemed incapable of doing anything at less than full speed.  In his best season, 1929, he hit .354 with 18 homers and 106 RBI.  His success with the famed Yankees made him a hero in San Francisco's close-knit Italian-American community and paved the way for other young Italian ballplayers from the old neighborhood, like Joe DiMaggio and Frankie Crosetti, to follow his footsteps to the big leagues.  He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1991.

 

Third Baseman - Carney Lansford

Birthplace: San Jose  

 

  

Lansford never did anything flashy in his 15-year big league career with California, Boston, and Oakland.  However, he did just enough of everything to be a valuable part of three pennant-winning teams (Oakland, 1988-1990), one of which earned him a World Series ring (1989).  He had enough pop to finish with double-digits in homers eight times, was a talented enough hitter to have five .300 seasons and a batting title on his resume, and was adept enough on the base paths to steal at least 20 bases in a season five times.  Lansford also won the Hutch Award in 1992, an award given by MLB to honor spirit, effort, and competitiveness.

 

Shortstop - Joe Cronin

Birthplace: San Francisco  

 

  

Before Banks, Ripken, A-Rod, and Jeter, Cronin was one of the few heavy run producing shortstops in the game.  He drove in over 100 runs eight times in his brilliant career and finished with a .301 lifetime batting average.  Though his career home run total of 170 may seem modest, particularly by today's standards, Cronin did most of his damage in the gaps.  He's just one of just over 40 players in MLB history to have over 500 career doubles (515).  In addition, Cronin was a player/manager for most of his career, leading the Senators to a pennant in 1933 and the Red Sox to the AL title in 1946.  In all, he finished with over 1,200 wins as a skipper.  He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1956.

 

Left Fielder - Harry Heilmann

Birthplace: San Francisco  

 

  

Heilmann may be the greatest hitter in MLB history that most fans have never heard of.  In 17 big league seasons, he rapped out 2,660 hits and finished with a .342 lifetime batting average.  Though Detroit teammates Ty Cobb and Sam Crawford garnered more press, Heilmann was very much their equal at the plate.  In one five-year stretch (1921-1925), he compiled batting averages of .394, .356, .403, .346, and .393.  As an encore, he hit .398 two seasons later in 1927, winning the last of his four batting crowns.  All the more impressive was that Heilmann sported those gaudy averages while being a key run producer, driving in over 100 runs eight times.  His 542 career doubles rank 23rd all-time.  He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1952.

 

Center Fielder - Joe DiMaggio

Birthplace: Martinez  

 

  

Where Harry Heilmann might have been rendered invisible by baseball history, Joltin' Joe suffered no such similar fate.  Bursting onto the scene with the Yankees in 1936, DiMaggio was an instant superstar.  By his second season, he put up numbers for the ages - a .346 average, 46 homers, 167 RBI, 151 runs scored, and just 37 strikeouts in 621 at-bats.  In 1941, he put together a mind-boggling 56-game hitting streak.  He was an All-star in each of his 13 seasons, won 3 MVP awards (though, he won one when Ted Williams was infamously left off of one writer's ballot entirely), and collected nine World Series rings.  He also married Marilyn Monroe and was included in one of the most famous lines in pop music history.  Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?  Straight to the Hall of Fame in 1955.

 

Right Fielder - Lefty O'Doul

Birthplace: San Francisco  

 

  

Francis Joseph O'Doul was the quintessential San Franciscan - cosmopolitan, adventurous, and fiercely loyal to his hometown.  Though he was always on the move, "The City by the Bay" would always draw him back, and it would draw him back for some of the most important chapters of a fascinating life.  He reached the big leagues as pitcher in 1919, ruined his arm, went back home to San Francisco and re-taught himself to be a hitter in the Pacific Coast League, made it back to the big leagues as an outfielder, won a pair of batting titles en route to a remarkable .349 career average, and went back home again and became the manager of the PCL's San Francisco Seals where he mentored an immensely talented but outrageously erratic shortstop named Joe DiMaggio and offered hitting advice to a young outfielder with the San Diego franchise, Ted Williams.  Oh, by the way, he was also largely responsible for helping to bring professional baseball to Japan. Unfortunately, O'Doul has yet to be honored in the quiet, revered halls of Cooperstown.  However, it seems to me that San Francisco's favorite son, America's greatest baseball ambassador to Japan, the self-taught career .349 hitter, and mentor to Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams surely did enough in his baseball life to merit such an honor.

 

Starting Pitcher - Randy Johnson

Birthplace: Walnut Creek  

 

  

At one time, Randy Johnson's lone claim to MLB fame was his height.  At 6'10", he was one of the tallest players ever to appear in the big leagues.  However, he simply wasn't able to command any of his overpowering pitches consistently.  By 1993, he was 29 and had been little more than a .500 pitcher with a ton of walks.  Then, something clicked.  From 1993 on, he suddenly had command of his pitches and became one of the greatest left-handed power pitchers in MLB history, striking out over 300 batters in a season six times.  He's a five-time Cy Young Award winner and has led the league in strikeouts nine times.  Now 43, he has over 280 career wins and at least an outside chance of reaching 300 before he retires.  Not bad for a guy who didn't really learn how to pitch until he was almost 30.

 

Relief Pitcher - Dennis Eckersley

Birthplace: Oakland  

 

  

In 1978, Eckersley won 20 games for the Boston Red Sox with an impressive  2.99 ERA.  Fourteen seasons later (in 1992 with Oakland), he won the AL Cy Young and AL MVP as one of the most dominant relief pitchers in baseball history.  That "The Eck" could notch nearly 200 wins and nearly 400 saves in the same career speaks to his resiliency as a pitcher.  Further, his resurgence as a dominant closer was made all the more remarkable, because his career at the time appeared close to being over.  In 1986, Eckersley was 6-11 with a 4.57 ERA as a starter for the Cubs.  At the start of the 1987 season, he was traded to the A's for three middling minor league prospects.  At 32, he was sent to the bullpen by Oakland.  However, once there, he thrived.  Without the wear and tear of regular starts in the rotation, Eckersley's velocity returned and his control was nearly perfect.  In 1990, he posted a stat line that seems hard to believe: a 0.61 ERA in 73 1/3 innings with 73 strikeouts, 48 saves, and just 4 walks (one of which was intentional!).  He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2004.

 

The final tally for these ten players is as follows: six Hall of Famers, one sure-fire future Hall of Famer (Randy Johnson), one player who should be considered for the Hall for his lifetime of baseball achievements (Lefty O'Doul), and two All-star caliber players with multiple honors in their respective trophy cases.  Not a bad ledger of players.

 

So when the best players in MLB get set to square off at AT & T Park in a couple of weeks, it won't be the first time that Northern California has seen its share of stars.

 

Birthplace Info:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/CA_born.shtml

 

Stats:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/l/lombaer01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/l/leede02.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/l/lazzeto01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/l/lansfca01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/cronijo01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/h/heilmha01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/d/dimagjo01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/o/o'doule01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/j/johnsra05.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/e/eckerde01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/2B_career.shtml