Celebrating 64th Anniversary of the Smallest Professional (?) Baseball Player Ever

It was August 19, 1951 when Eddie Gaedel stepped up to the plate as a pinch hitter for Frank Saucier. Today we have Eddie Gaedel Societies popping up around the country recognizing short people. Pictured here is Bill Rogers, President of the St. Louis Browns Historical Society and Emmett McAuliffe, VP of the Organization. While not short in physical size, they say they are short of money.  Who isn't??

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Pictured is Tom Keefe, founder of the Eddie Gaedel Society, preaching the gospel about Eddie Gaedel.

There is one surviving member of this 1951 event, Frank Saucier.  Frank is pictured on the Browns luncheon flyer and can be seen at:  http://2015browns.blogspot.com.

Remembering Baseball's Smallest Player

Bill Rogers, Fan Club President/COO with
. . . . . . . Eddie Gaedel?

NY Times Writes "In St. Louis, Celebrating a Team Long Gone"

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By Hillel Kuttler
Published: October 19, 2013
 In the corridor of a St. Louis-area hotel last month, Sam Cash waited in line for autographs from members of the long-departed major league team known as the Browns. The signatures secured, he then sat at an adjacent table with his own Browns display that featured team trivia, a team time line and photographs of his favorite Browns player, Bud Thomas. Fans and several former Browns took a look.

Most of those attending the St. Louis Browns Historical Society and Fan Club’s annual luncheon that day were, understandably, in their 70s and 80s. Cash, a talented baseball player and Kansas City Royals fan, is 10.

Leaders of the Browns group — founded in 1984 on the 40th anniversary of the team’s first and only appearance in the World Series — know that Cash is an exception, that the clock is undoubtedly ticking on a 330-member organization dedicated to a sad-sack franchise that left town six decades ago to become the Baltimore Orioles.

Read the entire article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/sports/baseball/in-st-louis-celebrating-a-team-long-gone.html?_r=0

Browns Fan Club Participates in Cardinals Reminisence League

By Art Holliday

ST. LOUIS (KSDK) - When a group of St. Louis Cardinals fans get together, the conversation is easy because they have shared memories. That's the idea behind the Cardinals Reminiscence League: sharing memories to preserve memories. Their guest speaker this month was Bill Rogers, President of the St. Louis Browns Fan Club. "While the Browns have been gone a long time, this group remembered quite a bit about the Browns players," according to Rogers. "The Browns Historical Society is pleased to offer support and participate in their programs."

Just like a baseball game, the Cardinals Reminiscence League begins with the national anthem. A difficult song is even more of a challenge for people with Alzheimer's; not everyone remembers the words. Twice a month at the Alzheimer's Association office, the Cardinals Reminiscence League meets. The participants have two things in common: love of baseball and early stage Alzheimer's disease. The program is inspired by a dementia support group in Scotland. Reminiscence therapy has several benefits. It improves memory and mood. It improves communication. And it gives the league participants a purpose, gathering every other week to talk about baseball memories.

Jim Muskopf is a regular at the twice monthly meetings.

"I have to be active. My lifestyle is been that way so many years," he said

.

The 69-year-old Muskopf was the director of graduate studies at Fontbonne University until retiring in 2011. He and his wife Ruth realized things were not right. It wasn't a total surprise that Muskopf has Alzheimer's because his mother had it.

"He knows he's got the disease," said Ruth Muskopf about her husband. "And he knows from his experience with his mother what's possible down the road. But being here and sharing with the other people it's like everybody's normal. They're all talking and doing the same thing and you forget about the Alzheimer's."

"It really is a very good way to trigger remembering and get people talking about something that they can all mutually remember," said Morley. "In St. Louis, the Cardinals belong to everyone. It makes people happy, not only the participants, but the caregivers, who get to see a loved one really excited about something." 

Click the link below to view Art Holliday's report.

http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/388980/3/Talking-baseball-is-a-hit-in-local-Alzheimers-program-

To participate or volunteer for the Cardinals Reminiscence League visit www.alz.org/stl.

Texas Fan Talks Browns Baseball

St. Louis Browns Fan Club member, Dick Ensweiler, chats with Club President, Bill Rogers, at a break in the action during a recent conference in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Ensweiler is CEO/President of the Texas Credit Union League and an avid collector of baseball memorabilia.

Dick Ensweiler (l) visiting with Browns Fan Club President Bill Rogers (r)

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At Home with the Browns

Hello. My name is Jeff and I’m a certified Brownsaholic.

 

Don’t ask me why. The star-crossed franchise hasn’t existed in its St. Louis form since 1953, when the club was sent packing to Baltimore to become birds. George Sisler may be the only Brown that your average baseball fan can name. And I’m from New England.  So why do I love reading anything I can get my eyes on about this largely forgotten team?

Is it the colors of those two handmade Cooperstown Ballcaps of mine, brown with orange trim and white with brown trim?  There’s just a warmth to them. Earthy, almost.  And the name Browns, rhyming with frowns and clowns, a built-in sadness I can empathize with. It certainly isn’t because of their uniform logo, which at times was either the knight Saint Louis on a horse or some kind of diabolical pixie.  Nor their talent, because they never won a 20th century championship, and their sole pennant in 1944 largely happened because every other roster in the league was emptied by the War.

The Browns were very unlike the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, the Giants leaving New York, the A’s leaving Philadelphia, or the Senators leaving Washington.  Those teams moved but their names went with them, or in the Senators’ case, returned in expansion form.  The Browns’ sorry legacy is forever embedded in what for many decades was baseball’s “other” two-team town, on the banks of the Mississippi.  All I know is that I’ve daydreamed about kicking back on a broiling 1930s afternoon at Sportsman’s Park with a lemonade, cigar, and 596 other fans, and that I’ve replayed three entire Strat-O-Matic seasons largely to see how Roy Cullenbine, Elam Vangilder and Baby Doll Jacobson would fare.

But the good news is: I’m not alone.

The St. Louis Browns Fan Club (or Historical Society, for long), has over three hundred members, 36 of them actual surviving Brownies. Club President Bill Rogers organizes yearly luncheons and dinners in St. Louis, complete with speakers and memorabilia exhibits, and is constantly looking to bring new and possibly younger members into the fold.  With Browns lore receding into the public mind a bit more each year, though, this is not an enviable task. Rogers is especially proud of his July banquet last year, when Bob Costas arrived unexpectedly to announce Tommy Lasorda as featured speaker in a last-minute coup.  (Lasorda is considered an “almost Brownie” merely for going to spring training in 1953 with the team.)

FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, VISIT: http://www.seamheads.com/2011/01/10/at-home-with-the-browns/
Thanks to Jeff Polman for the story.
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