Friday, April 5, 2013

Vintage Fridays: Clint Courtney, 1954 Bowman #69

I mentioned a few days ago that bespectacled catcher Clint "Scrap Iron" Courtney hit the first home run in Orioles history, though thankfully he wasn't wearing a jersey guilty of apostrophe abuse when he did so. I guess the artists over at Bowman weren't big on grammar.

Anyhow, Courtney wasn't much of a power hitter throughout his 11-year career with the Yankees, Browns/Orioles, White Sox, Senators, and Athletics. He totaled 38 home runs in 946 games, with a season high of eight. In the Birds' inaugural 1954 season, Clint hit four in 397 at-bats.

Today, Chris Davis hit his fourth home run in his first 15 at-bats of the 2013 season. This one was the biggest yet, a first-pitch, tie-breaking grand slam in the bottom of the eighth inning in the O's home opener. "Crush" is now the fourth player in MLB history to go deep in each of his team's first four games, joining the formidable trio of Willie Mays, Mark McGwire, and Nelson Cruz. He also has 16 of the team's 29 RBI, and that's a modern record for the first four games of the year - at least since 1920, when they started keeping track of runs batted in as an official statistic. Since my sister and I attended today's game, Chris is also going to be taking the blame for my hoarse voice. I may have completely lost my fool mind with that one swing of the bat that wrapped up the Orioles' 9-5 win over the Twins. But that's a trade I'll make every time.

5 comments:

  1. This is actually my favorite uniform of all time, even though the O's only donned them their first year after relocating from St. Louis. Obviously envious of their cross town rivals beautiful 'birds on bat' jerseys, they went the route of copying it to the best of their ability. Other than the apostrophe (giving players the odd feeling of being 'owned' by their employer), I LOVE this jersey and vow to bring it back when I own the O's.

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  2. Isn't "O's" the same as oriole singular possessive? Shouldn't be "Os" - plural non-possessive?

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  3. Just noticed. I did the same thing when I set up my blog name several years ago. My bad. I'll have to correct it to "Os fan in Buffalo".

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  4. Just noticed. I did the same thing when I set up my blog name several years ago. My bad. I'll have to correct it to "Os fan in Buffalo".

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  5. O's is fine because it's a contraction. O's is an contraction of Orioles.

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