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THE LONG WALK HOME
Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The daily newsletter that loves baseball like Michael Scott loves paper.
Let’s dive in.
Today’s story is about an announcer that lost a bet and had to walk over 300 miles.
The Pirates and the Phillies were both terrible in ‘89.
When they played each other on June 8th, both teams were more than 10 wins below .500.
Pittsburgh quickly got ahead in the first inning, hanging a 10-spot on the Phils.
The Phillies literally had a 1% win probability of winning heading into the bottom of the first.
Pirates’ radio broadcaster, Jim Rooker, sarcastically said that he would walk back to Pittsburgh if they did not win.
Sure enough, the Phillies started chipping away.
By the time the seventh inning rolled around, the Pirates' lead had shrunk to one measly run.
In the bottom of the eighth, the Phillies exploded and put up another 5 runs to solidify the comeback. The final score was 15-11.
Rooker knew what time it was.
On October 5th, Jim and his friend Carl Dozzi began their walk from Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia to Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.
They walked an average of 24 miles each day.
It took them almost two weeks, and on October 17th, Rooker and Dozzi finally arrived at Three Rivers Stadium.
Through the walk, they were able to raise over $100K for charity, including $10K for Rooker’s former minor league teammate who was battling multiple sclerosis.
The "unintentional walk" became one of the top stories in baseball that year.
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STRANGE NAMES
If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.
Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.
If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.
Today's winner is:
Spottswood debuted in 1909 and hung ‘em up in 1923.
The bulk of his playing days happened before the establishment of the more structured Negro National League in 1920, so there’s not really a great record of his statistics, but some researchers think he hit over .400 multiple times.
He’s got an epic story - definitely might be the subject of a future story.
THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE
If you like this story, check out some of our past favorites:
That's it for today. Tomorrow we're back at it like a bad habit. See ya!