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Committee Chairman

Committee Chairman

Kirk Buchner, "The Committee Chairman", is the owner and operator of the site.  Kirk can be contacted at [email protected] .

Mike Griffin was already playing in top baseball leagues for four years, last playing a season in the short-lived Player's League for Philadelphia.  The Outfielder joined Brooklyn in 1891 of the National League, the final team he would play for.

Griffin had a great start with the Bridegrooms, leading the NL in Doubles (36) with 65 Stolen Bases.  Swiping at least 30 Bases each of the next three years, Griffin began a five-year streak in 1894 where he batted at least .300, which concluded in 1898.  To his surprise, Brooklyn merged with Baltimore, and he refused to sign a contract under the new Manager, Ned Harlon.  His contract was sold to Cleveland, who then transferred his contract to St. Louis.  Griffin would never play again but did win a lawsuit against Brooklyn for money he felt owed $2,300.

His end with Brooklyn was not pretty, but his play was solid, with a .305 Batting Average, 1,168 Hits, and 264 Stolen Bases.

Burt Hooton cut his teeth with the Chicago Cubs, making their parent club in 1971, but the struggles in Wrigley saw the hurler traded to L.A. early in the 1975 Season.  If you are to go by traditional statistics, this was the most fantastic year of Hooton's career, as he went 18 and 9, the best Winning Percentage in the National League.

Hooton remained a Starting Rotation fixture for Los Angeles for years, which included a spectacular year in 1978 where he was the Cy Young runner-up with a career-best in Wins (19), along with a strong ERA of 2.71.  Helping the Dodgers win two Pennants in the late 80s, the veteran southpaw remained a viable hurler for L.A., going to his first (and only) All-Star Game in 1981.  That year, he helped Los Angeles win the World Series, where he went 1-1 with a 1.59 ERA and won the NLCS MVP, where he earned both decisions by allowing zero runs in 14.2 Innings.

The righthander's career fizzled after the championship, winning only 16 Games over the next three years, and he was demoted to the bullpen in 1984.  Hooton left for Texas as a Free Agent in 1984, but that lasted only one year before retiring.

With Los Angeles, Hooton had a 3.14 ERA with 112 Wins against 84 Losses.

An All-Star with the Pirates in 1945, Elwin “Preacher” Roe made the most of his belated opportunity with the depleted World War II roster, but when the Majors were replenished, the next two years saw his ERA balloon over five, though likely this was the result of the after-effects of a fractured skull he suffered from a fight while refereeing a high school basketball game.  Now over 30, it appeared that Roe’s run in the Majors would end shortly, but Dodgers GM, Branch Rickey, had other ideas.

Now a Dodger, healthy, and using an illegal spitball, Roe became a star in their rotation.  Roe went to four consecutive All-Star Games (1949-52), peaking with a 22-3 record in 1951, where he was fifth in MVP voting.  Brooklyn were contenders, and he helped them win three Pennants (1949, 1952 & 1953), and though there were no Titles in Roe's resume, he had a 2-1 post-season record with a 2.54 ERA.

Age and fatigue caught up to the Preacher, and he never played for Baltimore, the team he was traded to after the 1954 Season.  His pitches were slow, but he generated outs for Brooklyn and gave them a scintillating record of 93-37.

Claude Osteen was a popular southpaw who played most of his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers, though that was his third MLB team after playing for Cincinnati and Washington.

Osteen was traded to the Dodgers after his first solid year with the Senators (1964), and he was more than competent over the next ten years.  A three-time All-Star for the Dodgers, Osteen helped Los Angeles win the 1965 World Series, and though he hemorrhaged hits, he always found a way to get more Ws than Ls. Osteen never had a year in L.A. where he won less than 12 Games, and he had 15 Wins in seven of them. 

Osteen’s third All-Star year (1973) was his last as a Dodger, as he was traded to Houston, where his career faltered, sputtering with spots in St. Louis and Chicago (AL), and was out of the game in 1975.  With the Dodgers, Osteen had a record of 147 and 126 with a 3.06 ERA and 1,162 Strikeouts.