By Dave Boeckhout

He turns and watches the ball exit the park. It is a moment internalized, reticent and reclusive. Its wicked surprise launches optimism and expectancy into the obscurity of the night, confidence and ego riding along with it. The knock of good-wood, of the batter getting all of it reverberates like a rifle report, echoing through the air, through the stands; through his skull. Seconds are lengthened. They try him, balancing somewhere between smear and mockery. And the ball lands, mercifully — ricochets across lengths of steel bleachers, a solitary fan chasing down the souvenir. (more…)

By Todd Newville

Imagine being a rookie with one of the greatest franchises in professional sports – the New York Yankees. You go on to win the American League’s Rookie of the Year award and the Yankees go on to win the World Series in a thrilling seven-game matchup with the vaunted San Francisco Giants.

Fiction, you may say. However, for former Yankee Tom Tresh, the dream was a reality in which he played a vital role. Tresh is one of only six players to win Rookie of the Year honors and play with a World Series champion in the same season.

Since the Baseball Writers Association of America instituted the Rookie of the Year award in 1947, only Gil McDougald with the Yankees in 1951, Jim Lefebvre with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1965, Fernando Valenzuela with the Dodgers in 1981, Chuck Knoblauch with the Minnesota Twins in 1991, and Derek Jeter with the Yankees in 1996 have matched Tresh’s feat.

Tresh, a lifetime .245 hitter in nine years with the Yankees and the Detroit Tigers, hit 153 career home runs, including seasons in which he clouted 25 in 1963, 26 in 1965 and 27 in ’66.
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