Comments on: Big League Brothers

By: bobabooie

bobabooie — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:06:08 +0000

I remember my stepbrother Johnny (two years older than me but just one grade ahead thanks to Johnny having been left back a year) had a theory that if an item was too big to fit in a store’s bag one could just walk out of the store with said item and you woudn’t be noticed. He tested out that theory one day by attempting to steal a surfboard. He was caught exactly a foot from the store’s exit (the security guard must have been quasi-law enforcement’s answer to Kreskin, the mentalist), the surfboard turned out to be a paper-mache phony (the store sold pants not surfboards) which the stepbrother’s dad ended paying $150 Dollars for to avoid Johnny’s prosecution and first criminal strike.

By: sb1902

sb1902 — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:54:13 +0000

“Zernialophile”? Best name ever. Good ol’ Gus. (Unless there’s another Zernial out there.

By: Zernialophile

Zernialophile — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:23:55 +0000

25. Ordinarily, I’d be sorry to post such a long, um, post but my girlfriend is ensconsed on the couch watching an umpteenth consecutive episode of ‘Weeds’ so I’m consequently sitting a few feet away from her, staring at my laptop, tired of reading Cubs blogs and previews for Euro 2008. So I’ll project some prose out into the empty internet, which, in this instance, is like shooting a gun at the moon.

I fell deeply, madly, and sometimes regretfully in love with baseball when I was 7 years old, particularly because my dad allowed me stay up really late to watch game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Latching on to something that was “cool” among my friends at school, I began nagging my mom to buy me packs of baseball cards. That Christmas, I received a commemorative book, issued by Topps, depicting each and every card that they’d issued dating back 35 years.

I devoured that book, so much so that the binding eventually broke. To this day, if you were to show me a Topps card issued before 1992, I can immediately state the year that it was produced.

The early sets were the best of the lot, with the airbrushed portraits set against action scenes. The 1956 cards are particularly beautiful. Each player is shown at his best, avoiding a tag while sliding into home, making a miracle catch, or applying a tag in spite of flying spikes.

Despite the beauty of ’56, the 1954 edition always caught my eye. That ’54 set is full of aberrations – cards depicting coaches, and two Ted Williams cards serving as bookends. Among the oddities are the original “Big League Brothers”, Eddie and Johnny O’Brien…

http://www.vintagecardtraders.org/virtual/54topps/54topps.html

…#139. Google won’t yield a simple JPEG of that particular card so…

http://www.checkoutmycards.com/Cards/Baseball/1994/Topps_Archives_1954/139/Ed_OBrien_Johnny_OBrien

Because of that card, I’ve always considered the O’Briens to be the Cain and Abel of Big League Brothers. Rather, I’d like to imagine that Topps’ decision to note the sibling bond between Ken and Bob Forsch was inspired by that earlier card. The Forsch brothers each had their own individual and unique card that year but some big unexplainable entity saw fit to put them together so that, in spite their specific identities, they couldn’t get away from the fact that they came from the womb.

Looking up at that Forsch card, I wonder if they were jealous of each other? In the case of the O’Briens, I wonder if, just after the original photograph was taken, one of the brothers glanced at the other and thought, “you’re a shit ballplayer compared to me…and I’m banging your wife.”

By: brer Ian

brer Ian — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 20:20:02 +0000

24. Had a good laugh re the “did you get a hit” routine — I’d completely forgotten about that, in fact don’t remember anything but haze about that first Little League season other than Buster, after threatening to do it repeatedly, breaking out the eephus pitch against Pittsfield.

Turn the shoplifting tale around to my point of view and it sure seems to fit the theme “adrift”… I didn’t really know much about Elvis Costello’s music at that point. So my attempt to gank that tape wasn’t at all motivated out of a desire to “get happy”; instead, I remember being in the store, looking at that tape and thinking something like “maybe possessing this will make me cool, keep ‘them’ from noticing me, hide the fact that I’m a zero inside.”

By: Psychsound

Psychsound — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:13:00 +0000

23. Josh: Just wanted to drop you a line that this is one of the best blogs on the Internet. A must read. Are you planning to put any of this into a book? Come on, Josh, we'll buy it!

By: Catfish326

Catfish326 — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:22:10 +0000

22. Never heard of the McCrary twins before. I loved this line at the end of the story: McCrary is "survived by his mother, Virginia McKinnish McCrary . . . ." How the hell did these women survive birth?!?!

By: Josh Wilker

Josh Wilker — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:44:02 +0000

21. No discussion of brothers in the 1970s (especially now that the Reuschels have introduced the element of girth into the conversation) would be complete without these fellows:

http://www.cojoweb.com/McCrary-twins.html

By: mbtn01

mbtn01 — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:27:52 +0000

20. Phat!

By: Catfish326

Catfish326 — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:38:00 +0000

19. Ya, all the other Big Brothers cards have the correct name under the correct brother, except the Reuschels. Those whales could really blur the vision, I guess. Looking at them together, suprised they could even fit on one card. That's awesome.

By: Catfish326

Catfish326 — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:33:19 +0000

18. Here is that Big League Brothers card of the Reuschels. What a shot! That is one awesome duo.

http://i24.ebayimg.com/02/i/000/93/3c/c3ce_1.JPG

Paul’s glasses add a real nice touch. Uh, don’t they have the names switched on this card, meaning each name should be under the other Rueschel?