In last week’s Twins Porn, we took a look at the uniqueness of Twins minor leaguer Jason Lane, the baseball career of Conway Twitty and a pitcher who threw from both sides of the rubber in a MLB game. Today, we’ll talk about snow-outs, a kid whose MLB career was over before he turned 17, and the baseball career of the truck driver who had big trouble defeating Lo Pan in Little China.

If you take a look outside in Minneapolis right now, it certainly doesn’t look like the baseball season is ready to begin in two weeks. Target Field ground crews began removing the accumulated winter snow the first week of March, but it looks like we could see plenty more between now and April 1.

There have been plenty of MLB games snowed out, including opening days, and some of those games came much later in the season when weather anomalies raised their ugly heads. Rescheduling games due to weather is a regular occurrence across baseball, but one team chose to go ahead and play their home opener in the snow.

The Toronto Blue Jays were an expansion team in 1977, playing at old Exhibition Stadium. The atmosphere heading into the season was such that the team received more than 200,000 requests for tickets to the franchise’s historic first game. So when the field was covered with snow and more falling on Opening Day, the team simply did their best to remove what snow they could from the playing surface and pushed forward with the game.

The Jays beat the White Sox 9-5 that day and, from what I can dig up, there’s no mention of the game being so much as delayed due to the weather. Canada in the late 70s must have been full of some tough, weather-hardened people…or at least some serious baseball fans. Fans in attendance that day couldn’t even drink a beer to warm their bellies a little; the Ontario government banned alcohol at games for the Jays’ first five years of existence.

Even if Twins fans were willing to come out for a snow game at Target Field — personally, I’d be on that in a heartbeat — I doubt the team would allow it in this day and age. The increased likelihood of fans slipping and falling would probably be too much, let alone players losing sight of a ball in a sky full of off-white snow. Tracking a ball against the Metrodome ceiling sounds like nothing compared to that scenario.

Kurt Russell Played Baseball

And so did his dad, Bing Russell. Unlike a lot of actors and musicians, Kurt Russell was a well-known actor before he played minor league ball, showing up in numerous television shows as a child and signing a 10-year contract with Disney in 1971.

That same year, at age 20, Russell made his debut with the Bend, Oregon Rainbows, at the time an affiliate of the California Angels. He hit .285 that year and was named to the All-Star team as a second baseman. Playing for AA El Paso two years later, Russell tore the rotator cuff in his throwing shoulder during a collision on the base paths and was forced to retire. He was leading the Texas League with a .563 batting average at the time of the injury.

Russell went on to star in such awesome films as Escape from New York, Escape from LA, Captain Ron and, of course, Big Trouble in Little China. Baseball must run in his family: not only did Russell’s father play professionally, his nephew is former MLB and NPB player Matt Franco. The image at the top of this post is of Kurt Russell.

Alex George Played His Entire MLB Career Before Turning 17

There are a number of unique players that made appearances in MLB games during World War II due to a shortage of available players, but George showed up on the scene at age 16 in 1955.

The shortstop was signed out of an area high school in the Kansas City Atheltics’ first season after leaving Philadelphia. He appeared in five games, collecting one hit and seven strikeouts in 11 plate appearances. The following season, he was shipped to the Athletics’ Class D affiliate in Fitzgerald, Georgia.

George played for eight minor league teams in nine leagues over the course of the remainder of his career, but retired from baseball at age 24 having never returned to the Majors. His best season came in 1958 at age 19, when George hit .282 with 23 home runs.

This Week’s Number: 42

That’s the number of players left on the Twins’ spring roster after a series of cuts this past week.

This Week’s Fact: Until the 1930 and 1931 seasons in the American and National Leagues, respectively, a ball that cleared the outfield fence after a single bounce was still counted as a home run.

Here’s the full version of Russell in Captain Ron, if you want to pretend like you’re stuck on an airplane circa 1992:

Later this week, I’ll continue looking at how competition at key positions has played out so far this spring. Try to stay warm today.

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In last week’s Twins Porn, we looked at the only man to make it to The Show from short-lived Class E, second baseman George Thorogood, and a pitcher with one leg. Today, we’ll look at a baseball player-turned-actor and a third string catcher-turned-spy.

With the first round of the World Baseball Classic kicking off a couple of days ago, I started looking into birthplaces of MLB players.I wanted to see how global the American pastime really is.

After the U.S., the Dominican Republic is entrenched in second place with well over 500 past and current players from the island nation having made it to The Show. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Canada, Cuba and Mexico round out the top seven. If you wanted to have the top baseball-producing nations in a ten-team tournament, you could throw Japan, Australia and Panama in the mix, and end up with a pretty competitive tournament.

But what of the have-nots? Utility player Yan Gomes made his MLB debut last season as the first player born in Brazil. Al Cabrera was born in the Canary Islands, played one MLB game in 1913, and remains the only African-born player to make it to The Show. The infamous Al Campanis played seven games for the Brooklyn Dodgers and remains the only player born in Greece. Same goes for John Hattig of Guam, Tom Mastny of Indonesia, Danny Graves of Vietnam, Bobby Chouinard of the Philippines, Craig Stansberry of Saudi Arabia, and Robin Jennings of Singapore.

Of all the one-hit wonder nations listed for MLB players, though, my favorite has to be the dude who was born at sea, somewhere in the Atlantic: Ed Porray. Porray started three games for the Buffalo Buffeds in 1914, but played several years in the minors for teams such as the Alabany Babies and Pittsburgh Filipinos. He’s also rumored to have been a co-writer of the 1918 Mae West hit song, “Everybody Shimmies Now.”

Twenty-eight nations sent teams to this year’s World Baseball Classic, including the qualifying round, making this the most-attended WBC yet. We’ve had a guy who was born at sea make it to The Show, and even the Austro-Hungarian Empire had four players suit up in the Majors. Oddly, Haiti, which shares an island with the Dominicans has yet to produce a MLB player.

Scott Patterson Played Baseball

Patterson played Luke on the show Gilmore Girls. He was a romantic interest and friend on the show, had that rugged thing going for him, was a hard nut to crack, and didn’t like change…at least that’s what my chick says. I don’t care to find out any more about Scott Patterson, Gilmore Girls Stud.

Scott Patterson the pitcher, though, went to Rutgers then pitched in the minors for seven seasons in the 80s for the Braves and Yankees. He wasn’t very good: he walked too many batters and gave up too many hits without a lot of strikeouts. He was converted to a reliever his last three seasons, but it didn’t seem to help much. A few years later, he played a pitcher in the classic film, “Little Big League.”

Patterson is in some movie called “Meth Head” that’s coming out in a few days. It’s the directorial debut of someone named Jane Clark who has previously played nurses in a number of television shows. That’s the hot guy from Gilmore Girls at the top of this post.

Moe Berg was a Spy
Berg made it to the Majors as a shortstop for the Brooklyn Robins then spent the better part of 15 seasons as a backup catcher for the White Sox, Cleveland, Senators and Red Sox. He was an excellent defensive player with a career .243 BA and six home runs. He played briefly for the Minneapolis Millers in 1924.

Berg managed to balance playing professional baseball with a career as a lawyer in the late 20s and was a successful quiz show contestant in the 30s. At the outbreak of World War II, he began working for the US government and eventually took a position as a Paramilitary Operations Officer with the OSS. He parachuted into Yugoslavia,kidnapped Italian rocket scientists, and was tasked with determining whether or not the Nazis were close to developing an atomic bomb. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom, but rejected it.

After the war, Berg was offered coaching positions with the White Sox and Red Sox, but rejected those, too. In fact, Berg worked very little over the course of the rest of his life, living off of siblings until his death in 1972. When criticized for not fully utilizing his intellectual abilities—Berg studied seven languages and devoured up to ten newspapers a day—he replied, “I’d rather be a ballplayer than a justice on the US Supreme Court.”

This Week’s Number: 4
That’s the number of times Robby Thompson was caught stealing in a 1986 game, a record. In fairness to Thompson, it was a 12-inning game.

This Week’s Fact:
Three of ten first-time ballot inductees into the Hall of Fame since 2000 played for the Twins: Kirby Puckett and Dave Winfield in 2001, and Paul Molitor in 2004.

What I Did This Week: I did like eight loads of laundry over at my mom’s house and watched some remodeling show starring Vanilla Ice for four straight hours. I also ate a ton of pulled pork and saw some electronica show at Icehouse.

Here’s a music video some weirdo made of Scott Patterson in “Little Big League”:

With the World Baseball Classic underway, that’s what I’ll be focusing on this week. Stay warm.

If you liked reading this, tweet it: traffic helps pay my bills. You can follow me here, and like us on Facebook here.

In last week’s Twins Porn, we looked at minor league outfielder Macho Man Randy Savage and a pitcher with six fingers, and speculated on Drew Butera‘s future as a player-manager. Today, we’ll look at Twins making the jump from AA to The Show, a former NFL star who played minor league ball while running wild on the college gridiron, and a leadoff hitter who did massive amounts of cocaine while putting together a career worthy of the Hall of Fame.

With Aaron Hicks and Joe Benson in the competition for the starting center field spot this spring, it’s a good time to look at the Twins recent track record of bringing players up from AA or even A ball. It’s far from an extensive list, but it might help us gauge the chances of Hicks skipping AAA entirely and starting the season with the Twins sans a September call up in 2012.

Benson was a September call up a couple of years ago, and Chris Parmelee and Ben Revere were September call ups, too, so for our purposes here, they don’t count. Same goes for Doug Mientkiewicz and Jose Mijares. Johan Santana was a Rule 5 draftee, so his situation is unique, as is that of Eric Milton, who jumped from the Yankees AA affiliate to the Twins at age 22.

In 1982, The Twins started the season with a number of players on the roster who made the jump directly from AA and, in Kent Hrbek‘s case, Class A. The team was in full-on rebuilding mode, threw the best young talent they had on the field, and watched it pay off with a World Series title in ’87. Leading up to the 1991 Championship, Scott Erickson and Chuck Knoblauch came up from AA in 1990 and 1991, respectively. Other than Baby Jesus, as far as I can tell the last position player to skip AAA entirely without a September call up was Cristian Guzman in 1999.

However, the Twins have had pitchers make the jump from AA in the past decade, with Pat Neshek skipping AAA in 2006 and Alex Burnett following suit four years later. Brad Radke did it in 1995.

So what does this mean for Hicks’s chances of skipping AAA and starting this season with the Twins? The Twins may need Hicks with the big league club out of necessity, but if we go by the team’s track record Hicks will probably start the season in Rochester. I think Alex Meyer has a better chance than Hicks does of skipping AAA entirely this year, and Trevor May could make the jump, too, if he starts the season in New Britain.

Ricky Williams Played Baseball

The NCAA record-breaking running back that the New Orleans Saints traded their entire 1999 draft for was also drafted out of his San Diego high school as a shortstop in the eighth round by the Phillies. Williams didn’t hit exceptionally well as an outfielder in the Philadelphia organization and never got above Class A, but he was apparently pretty fast. “Fastest guy I’ve ever laid eyes on,” former Piedmont Boll Weevils teammate Jimmy Rollins has said.

In 1998, the Montreal Expos selected Williams in the Rule V draft and then traded him to the Texas Rangers, but the Rangers were unable to convince Williams to continue his baseball career. He would go on to play for the Dolphins a couple of times, become the highest paid player in the CFL, and smoke a lot of pot before retiring with the Baltimore Ravens last year. The player in the photo at the beginning of this article is Williams.

Tim Raines Did A LOT of Cocaine

Raines is one of the greatest leadoff hitters ever and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. He started his career with a MLB-record 27 stolen bases without getting caught, he played his first pro game at 17 and retired at age 42, and he got a chance to play in the same Orioles outfield with his son, Tim Raines, Jr. His playing career spanned four decades, and he’s continued his career as a manager.

Early on in his career, however, Raines did a ton of cocaine. Over a nine month period in 1982, the Expos star reportedly spent over $40,000 on the white lady which is, well, just a lot of cocaine. In Raines’s defense, it was 1982, he was only 22 years old, he apparently sought help of his own accord, he overcame his addiction to continue a storied career, and he has spoken honestly and openly about his past. That being said, my favorite Tim Raines fact has to be that he admitted in the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials that he slid head-first into bases because he kept a gram of cocaine in a glass vial in his pocket during games, and his apparent recklessness on the base paths was just him making sure he would have blow on hand between innings.

It wasn’t just Raines who had a drug problem in the early 80s, though: stars Keith Hernandez, Dave Parker, Lonnie Smith and others were all caught up in the drug trials, and Hernandez estimated that forty percent of MLB players were using cocaine at the time, although he later recanted the statement.

This Week’s Number: 6

That’s the number of days until the Twins first spring training game against the Orioles.

This Week’s Fact:

Kevin Correia and Rich Harden have the same number of career shutouts: 1

What I Did This Week: I watched the break off in the movie Beat Street like eight times in a row, almost beat Renegade for the NES, bought some amazing sausage and bacon ends at Big Steer Meats in St. Paul, and had my article about Twins draft pick Joe Theismann picked up by national site, mlbtraderumors.com.

Here’s a video of Ricky Williams playing baseball:

Okay, so maybe I had to watch the breaking battle in Beat Street a ninth time. That little dude in the blue hoodie at the 4:00 mark is just plain sick. By the time this film came out, Tim Raines had been clean for two years.

Later this week, I’ll finish up my position-by-position spring training preview and take a look at another pitcher the Twins signed to a minor league contract with an invitation to camp. First spring training game is Saturday, folks.

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