Sunday, June 13, 2010

Rodak Remembers: Baseball Quiz #1

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I saw both Elvis and then the Beatles make their debuts on The Ed Sullivan Show. If you have any idea what I'm talking about, you have some idea of my age. Just about the time Elvis hit the Big Time, so did Mickey Mantle and Al Kaline. Duke Snider and Willie Mays were in their prime. Stan "the Man" Musial and Ted Williams were the WWII-era "super-stars" (before the term was invented) still representing my father's generation for the National and American leagues respectively. We are talking late 1950s and early 1960s here. In those years, I ripped dozens of pictures of the baseball stars from the pages of Sport Magazine and Sports Illustrated, as well as many other baseball publications. To honor those players who provided me with so many thrills in my mid-western boyhood, and who have now been largely forgotten other than by hard-core baseball aficionados, I have decided to post some of their portraits here. I will post the pictures without the names, giving the true fans a chance to identify them and prove to the world how much they know.


I will begin with this Cleveland Indian. This time I will provide a hint: there was a book, and then a Hollywood movie, about this player, who was arguably better looking than the actor who portrayed him in the film. If you think you know who he is, state your guess in the comments section:


Who is it?
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