Bosses who don’t like sports, Gaylord Perry, and Apollo 11

Baseball is a game of many things: stats, inches, 100-MPH fastballs and 400-foot shots to walk it off.

What might be my favorite thing is the stories, including one of my favorites about Gaylord Perry.

These stories that can take you to a time long ago, and even allow non-baseball fan to enjoy the sport, even for just a few minutes.

My personal baseball story has a baseball story in it. My boss is not a baseball fan. He thinks it’s boring and they spend a lot of time spitting and adjusting their equipment. I told him how much I love the game and its history, especially some of the incredible stories that have been told throughout the years.

I told him the story of San Francisco Giants pitcher Gaylord Perry, who passed away in December and was a unique character in the game of baseball. In 1964, a reporter from The San Francisco Examiner, Harry Jupiter told Giants manager Alvin Dark that Perry could hit a few home runs for him this year after watching Perry hit in batting practice. Dark replied, “There will be a man on the moon before he does that!” Five years later, Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. That was the same day Perry came up to bat at the bottom of the fourth inning and hit his first home run (here is a video of Perry telling the story himself).

Now Perry (who went on to hit another five in his career) wasn’t exactly known for his batting skills … quite the contrary! As a matter of fact, up until that game, he was hitting exactly .100 … not really the kind of stats that would excite anyone. What may also be surprising is that he hit it off Claude Osteen, who was in the middle of a nice 20-15 season with a 2.66 ERA in 321 innings. Fun fact: In that game, Osteen gave up two home runs to future Hall of Famers: Perry and Willie McCovey.

The story resonated with my boss to the point that he went to verify my story because he must have thought I was stretching the truth. To his surprise, he discovered it was all real and maybe this game isn’t so bad after all (okay, maybe I made up that last part … hehe).

So, the next time someone says that they don’t care for the game, tell them the story of Gaylord Perry and the Man on the Moon and see what kind of reaction you get.