Thank You to a Friend (In Praise of Mel Stottlemyre)

I visited my friend Paul Macchia yesterday, and he remembered that Mel Stottlemyre was one of my favorite baseball players. So he gave me a Stottlemyre 1989 Bowman card (when he was a Mets coach) and an autograph Mel had signed for him years ago.

Thank you, Paul!

I admired Mel because my Dad admired him. As a 13-year-old, Dad (who passed away 16 years ago this month) was already pitching semi-pro baseball, thanks to a wicked sinkerball he had mastered.

Years later, when I was pitching in Little League, Dad would hold up Mel as a model of how to throw a sinker. I, of course, wanted to throw something more exotic. "How do I throw a gopher ball?" I naively asked Dad. He laughed and replied, "Just keep doing what you're doing, son."

Mel's autograph now holds an honored spot beneath Rusty Staub's on top of my grandfather's old dresser. Also in the photo here is a recent, thoughtful handwritten note from Mets GM Sandy Alderson to my wife Nancy, who had written him about this year's "thumbs down" controversy.

I posted information about Dad's baseball career here two years ago.