Comments on: Woodie Fryman

By: Josh Wilker

Josh Wilker — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:06:19 +0000

horks:
Thanks for the info. I guess I sensed that somebody would have to be calming Ellis Valentine now and then.

By: horks

horks — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:09:55 +0000

According to Cromartie’s book Ellis Valentine was calmed down during his “episodes” by Billy “Big Country” Gullickson and not Woodie Fryman.

I think Cromartie got mad at Valentine for having his music blaring in a hotel and came down to his room to kick his ass and then Valentine went nuts and threw chairs and shit. The crisis was stopped by famed tall man and diabetes sufferer Bill Gullickson…not Woodie Fryman.

You are dead-on with the farm-town man monicker for Fryman, he always won the cow milking contests held at Olympic Stadium which was held in the early 80′s.

By: Raf

Raf — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:07:48 +0000

32. 28 I picked up a copy of Dan Turner's "The Expos Inside Out" at a garage sale a while back. That covered the Expos of the 70's & early 80's, IIRC. There's a documentary about the Expos history on youtube, narrarated by Donald Sutherland. That was produced sometime in the 80's as well.

By: Joe Romano

Joe Romano — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:47:33 +0000

31. 18 Agreed. As a kid I always thought Woody Fryman looked much older than the average player.

By: Ennui Willie Keeler

Ennui Willie Keeler — Mon, 19 May 2008 02:35:58 +0000

30. It took me until a couple of years ago to see the "e" and the "b" on the Expo cap. It also took me a while to see the arrow in the FedEx logo. But I could see the "m" and "b" on the old Brew Crew hat.

By: Josh Wilker

Josh Wilker — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:50:21 +0000

29. 28 : Well put thoughts about Woodie. And I'd buy a book about the Expos, too, especially one written by Keri.

By: Lonnie Smith for president

Lonnie Smith for president — Sat, 17 May 2008 22:22:34 +0000

28. Josh, I'm with you on the whole no-nonsense angle from Woodie: "This is for your own good," he'd mutter before knocking a person on their ass, taking no pleasure in the chore. Later, hopefully, that person would come to, in every sense, and buy Woodie his next whiskey neat and talk about the pro bowling tour, that sort of thing. Salt of the earth. Good people. That's Woodie. les Expos frequently vexed my Braves in their years of rivalry in the old NL East, but these Nationals are a poor substitute. Someone (Jonah Keri?) needs to write a comprehensive history of that team before it becomes impossible to explain Ellis Valentine and Rodney Scott to future generations. I'd buy that book.

By: Raf

Raf — Sat, 17 May 2008 05:32:41 +0000

27. We could say that the "L" stands for "Les?"

By: sly jones

sly jones — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:56:43 +0000

26. I too have a little trouble buying Woodie Fryman as frontier sheriff.
The knock-kneed, weak-looking posture kinda gives the game away.
Nicely written entry, though.

18 Yes! I always saw it as “elb” too, and was well along in years before I finally understood the “M.”
Once I started taking French in middle school, I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time trying to reverse-engineer an acronym that would make sense for “elb.”
“E” was “equipe” (which is French for “team”); “b” was baseball; “l” was always difficult to figure — maybe “league”?

By: Chiron Brown

Chiron Brown — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:33:40 +0000

25. 13 I was going to say that there is a long time connection between NYC and Montreal as Montreal became the second choice for thousands of eastern European, Jewish immigrants who, for one reason or another, were denied entry to the U.S., my great-grandmother and my grandfather to name two. Years later they moved south to be with relatives in Connecticut but my mother still remembers family trips to Montreal to visit old friends. And she took our family on trips there when I was little. It seems bizarre to me that I've been on the west coast for thirty years yet four generations of my family have eaten at Moishe's Steakhouse in Montreal. It's the only place in the world of which I can say that.