Tuesday 4 March 2014

I Had To Feel Sorry For Alice Roth,

when I read about her trip to the ball game, 


admittedly I only read about it yesterday, but the game played out back in 1957 on August 17, Alice was the wife of Philadelphia Bulletin sports editor Earl Roth, she decided to take in the Phillies-Giants game with her two grandsons, Preston and Tom, at Shibe Park, she and the two young boys were seated in the press box behind third base when Richie Ashburn stepped to the plate, the rest as they say is history, unluckily, she was paying more attention to her grandsons than the game and didn’t see the foul ball coming, it struck her directly in the face and broke her nose,


as if that was not bad enough the injury was so serious the umpires called time, after she was attended to for a short while, play resumed, the next pitch came in and Ashburn did the unthinkable, He sent another foul ball to the left side that hit Alice…while she was lying on a stretcher being carried out of the section, ouch! to be hit twice in the same game by the same hitter, what are the chances?



Ashburn, by the way, went 2-4 in that game with a double and a single, the Phillies ended up winning it 3-1, after his playing career was over, Ashburn became an announcer for the Phillies starting in 1963, a job which he kept until 1997, whilst commentating though he could not help but enjoy a pizza, during home games Ashburn would sometimes ask if anyone from nearby Celebre’s Pizza wouldn’t mind sending him over a free pizza, because Celebre’s was not an official sponsor of the Phillies, the organisation made him stop, to get around this, he would sometimes include with the birthday/anniversary wishes things like: “…special birthday wish to the Celebre’s twins, Plain & Pepperoni” to try to get them to send him a pizza, he sounds like a neat type of guy.


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