Last week I was watching one of the quarterfinals episodes of Baseball IQ that had aired on MLB Network.  (If you missed it, this show pitted a representative of each MLB team plus one from MLB.com and the Hall of Fame in a single elimination trivia tournament that raised money for each team’s charity.)  Rather than just a question/answer format, the show required that each of the two contestants populate lists based on a statistical prompt from the host, e.g. “name the all-time National League home run leaders with at least 300 home runs”.  The contestants then alternated giving an answer until one of them supplied an incorrect response.

During the matchup between representatives of the D-Backs and Rockies, one of the categories prompted the contestants to name the pitchers who had at least 8 postseason wins.  As an intro to the category, they played a video of Bob Gibson – who finished his career with 7 postseason wins – striking out George Scott of the Red Sox to end game 7 of the 1967 World Series.  Included in the video was the ensuing celebration of the newly world champion St. Louis Cardinals.  Check it out here.

Did you see what happened at about the 4:31 mark?  No, your eyes are not deceiving you.  That was the third base umpire running up to the Cardinals mob and taking the hat right off the head of one of the celebrating Cardinals players.  It also appears that he had a hat in his hand before nabbing the second.  According to the baseball-reference account of this game, the third base umpire for this game was Augie Donatelli.

Augie passed away in 1990 and is credited with starting the Major League Umpires Association and was known for his quick and dramatic trigger when it came to ejecting players and coaches.  Based on this video, it appears he should have also been known for confiscating portions of uniforms from players celebrating on the field.  What would an umpire do with two Cardinals hats?  How did he get the first one?  What did he do with them after the fact – sell them, eat dinner out of them?

Sadly, I am not writing to proclaim that I have solved this mystery.  Instead, I am hoping that some aspiring baseball historian will make it their life’s goal to figure out why Donatelli took the hats and what became of them.  This LA Times article from 1987 is the only info I could find – Donatelli claims the hats were “falling off”.  Sounds fishy to me.  This post is proof that the nwe baseball season cannot come fast enough.

Yesterday my dad took Chiquita to the grocery store. Apparently, he asked her which “car cart” she wanted to drive/ride in. Her choices were red and blue. Now, let me point out that this is the girl that almost always responds with a confident “yellow!” when asked what color something is, regardless of what it really is. But not this time! without hesitation, she pointed to the blue cart and said, “Dodger Blue!” Atta, girl.

Now if only the Dodgers had a mascot she could love like she loves the Philly Phanatic (he’s one of the only green things she can correctly identify). At least one member of our household was glad to see the World Series played in Philly– she loves the Phanatic almost as much as she loves Manny (good thing for us, he’ll be back next year)!

This is how she looked every time she saw the Phanatic when we were in Philly:

Speaking of Dodger Blue, we got to go to a playoff game this year to root on the Blue. Unfortunately, we all know how the season ended but the game we went to, NLDS Game 2, was pretty darn exciting! Going to a playoff game was all David wanted for his birthday (well, aside from attending a World Series game, but alas, that was not an option this year). Click over to view the slide show if you are in a reader or your email inbox).

We’ll be thinking blue all off-season and are already looking forward to Spring Training ’10!