O'BRIEN NEWS....

 

 

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DIAMOND LEAGUE 14YR. 60'/90' SPRING LEAGUE FOR 2009- Local high schools are again getting behind a the 2nd season of DIAMOND LEAGUE 14yr. old / 8th grade 60'/90' developemental spring league. The league will play out of Obrien with some games at local high school fields as well. Broken Arrow, Union, Jenks and Owasso teams are anchoring the league along with Skiatook, Sperry, Berryhill and many others. More school teams are expected and INDEPENDENT 14yr. teams are also welcome with some restrictions. For further info. visit the league web site at: www.eteamz.com/super14's and or contact OBrien

2009 Teams to date:
Jenks
Collinsville
Owasso
Broken Arrow
Union Red
Union White
Sperry
Skiatook
Berryhill
Sooner Baseball
Bartlesville.........CHECK BACK...

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JOY LEWIS / Tulsa World

Former major leaguer Bob Blaylock warms up his hitters prior to a Sooner Collegiate League game at O’Brien Park on Monday.

By MATT BAKER World Sports Writer
7/10/2007

THE 72-YEAR-OLD PITCHER stares down the 19-year-old batter with his Dodger-blue eyes, fingering a raggedy old ball in his raggedy old hand. "I've got good stuff today, Sparky," the pitcher says as he takes off his cap. The sun shines off of his hairless head. "You're not hitting me today." He winds up the same way he did when Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider were at the plate and fires the ball at the boy. Crack. The boy blasts it over his coach's head, through a hole in the batting cage and over the outfield fence. "Thatta boy," the old man says.

A half-century ago, the Talala man would have dreaded giving up a hit like that -- even if it was to Mantle or Snider. But with his playing days long behind him, Bob Blaylock smiles. He knows that giving up a hit like that is what gives his players in the Sooner Collegiate League -- and himself -- another shot at the Major Leagues.

When Blayock was a young man himself, he rocketed the kind of pitches that make a catcher's hand sting after the first batter. Scouts from all 12 Major League teams were at his 1954 graduation, hoping he'd sign with their club after leaving Muldrow High School. He passed up a chance on a six-figure contract to sign with the St. Louis Cardinals for $3,000. After two years in the minors, the Cardinals called him up in July 1956 to face the Brooklyn Dodgers and its roster of six future Hall of Famers. "It was just an awesome experience," Blaylock says. "I was pitching against a bunch of guys I admired so as a kid growing up. But I was scared to death." He played like it. The 21-year-old loaded the bases in the first three innings and was benched after Snider blasted a shot over the clock in left field in the sixth inning.

Blaylock went 1-6 with a 6.37 ERA in his rookie year but quickly learned to force groundouts with a splitter that sunk like the Titanic. His fastball in the mid-90s blew past batters -- including strikeouts of Mantle and Yogi Berra in the same inning. "He was a very intense player," said Solly Hemus, Blaylock's teammate in 1956 and manager in 1959. "Anytime you wanted him to pitch, he'd be out there, and every time he went on the mound, he gave you his best effort." But his eagerness became his downfall. After throwing as a starter and reliever almost every day for two years in the International League, he pitched seven games with a sore arm on St. Louis' 1958 tour of Japan. "I wanted to make an impression on the Cardinals, so I went ahead and played with it," Blaylock says. "Then all of a sudden I didn't have anything. My arm was just dead."

Blaylock later learned he had been pitching for years with a torn rotator cuff and calcium deposits in his bones. He made it back to the majors in 1959 for a few games and pitched for the Tulsa Oilers from 1959 to 1962 but was never the same. By the time a Tulsa trainer told him the damage he'd done, it was too late. At age 27, his arm and career were shot. The first few years without baseball were tough, but Blaylock moved on. He worked for the chamber of commerce for five years before being hired by former Oilers owner A. Ray Smith to run a hotel. He retired in 1991. But Blaylock couldn't get the game out of his head. He started coaching his son's American Legion teams and continued off and on for years.

He started again in 1996 with his 8-year-old grandson's tee-ball team, the Oklahoma Redbirds, and stayed with them until they reached high school. Three of his boys are on their way to the Major Leagues: Pete Kozma was a first-round pick this year by St. Louis; Chris Anderson is playing rookie ball with the Angels; and his grandson, Josh Beal, signed with the Reds in June. "A lot of guys always dream of having a guy like that around all of the time," Beal said. "I've had him around every day of my life."

Kozma credits Blaylock with teaching him how to hit by constantly reminding him to lead with his hands -- even if it meant yelling at him from the stands during his high school games. Though Blaylock wasn't much of a hitter himself (.083 average), he knows what a good swing looks like. You learn pretty fast watching Snider rip shots over your head. As Kozma prepares to sign with St. Louis, Blaylock's advice has shifted from hitting to handling life in the pros. "Every time I see him, he keeps on telling me to stay away from girls and stay away from booze," Kozma said. "I'm going to keep that in my mind wherever I go." Blaylock means what he says. He knows what it's like to have a career ruined in its prime; he doesn't want that to happen to Kozma and company.

Blaylock says the hope that his players realize the dream he never could is what keeps him feeling young. Fittingly, two of his minor leaguers, Anderson and Beal, are pitchers, and the other, Kozma, was drafted by his coach's former team. "It's more rewarding for me to watch them do well than it was for me to do well myself," Blaylock says. "I think it's always a little bit more rewarding for one of your kids to do something than for you to do it. And they're all my kids." Their future is why Blaylock tries to put his days of dueling Satchel Paige behind him, focusing instead on his grandson's starts with the Reds. It's why he still coaches the Tulsa Cards, a group of college players trying to take their game to the next level.

And it's why, 50 years after blowing out his arm, he throws batting practice for hours on a muggy July night with the setting summer sun beating down on his forehead. Pitch after pitch. Batter after batter. Bucket after bucket. A couple hundred balls before each game, if that's what it takes to make his kids better. Blaylock knows that, like a long fly ball over the fence that just curls foul, he's been given another shot at stardom.

And this time, he doesn't intend to miss.

Matt Baker 581-8355
matt.baker@tulsaworld.com

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USED BASEBALL/SOFTBALL EQUIPMENT ?
Bring any of your used, outdated, balls, bats, gloves, shoes, uniforms, etc. to the park and donate it to "WORLD BASEBALL OUTREACH". They will gather and distribute it back out to deserving kids locally and around parts of the world. This is a Tulsa based operation. Visit their web site at http://www.worldbaseballoutreach.com/

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