Wednesday, September 30, 2009

GSNHOF Nominee - Pete LaCock

I'm really surprised that this card wasn't nominated before. Like...really surprised...I think his name is almost as good as that of Rusty Kuntz, and that guy was a first ballot HOFer. Every time I nominated a new name from my excel list, I passed Pete's name and chuckled. But for some reason, 5 ballots went gone by and Pete hasn't been on one of them. This aggression will not stand, man! I think the reason why Pete was never nominated before was because I nominated a bunch of Dicks back in the day and didn't want to add too many new members to the nomination list at once. But all those dicks are gone now, and it's Petey's time to shine. And so I bring you the newest nominee of the Great Sports Hall of Fame, Pete LaCock.

Some fun facts about Pete:
- Career line of .257/.326/.366 with 27 homeruns and 224 rbi as a 1B/OF type. Not exactly a power hitter, but laced quite a few doubles (86) and triples (11) in his career.

- Played in one game of the 1980 World Series for the Royals. Came in as a defensive replacement in the 8th inning of game 2 with the Royals up 4-2. That inning ended with four Phillie runs on the board and the Phillies went on to win the series in six games. Not Pete's fault though - he made an unassisted putout on a ground ball by Pete Rose and was on the end of a 6-4-3 double play to end the inning. Pete was a good fielder in general.

- Son of Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall (born Ralph Pierre LaCock) and nephew of actress Joanne Dru (born Joan Letitia LaCock. How's that for an absolutely awful name?).

- Pete is currently the hitting coach of the Tuscon Toros.

- Pete led the Texas League in walks in back to back years (1971 and 72). Yeah! He was also the first batter to hit a homerun off of Dave Frost (thanks to wiki for that random, random fact).

- Pete's wife is the executive director of the Mid America Chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in Kansas City.

- Finally, since Rusty Kuntz works for Kansas City and Pete LaCock's wife works there, odds are pretty good that Rusty and Pete are in the same city on a semi regular basis (at least in the offseason). I don't know about you, but I'd love to live in the same city as Pete LaCock AND Rusty Kuntz.

To see the best sports names of all time, visit the Truly Great Names page.
To see some good sports names that were voted out, visit the Good Names page.
To see the current voting ballot, visit the Ballot page.

5 comments:

  1. I love these posts!!! I don't think he has a card, but I used to have a customer who was a boat racer and his name was Dick Sweat. The secretary loved calling that name over the intercom!

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  2. ewwww! Haha apparently there was also a NH congressman named Dick Swett. Found him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Swett

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  3. Oh cool, he lives in Bow, NH. That's my parent's hometown.

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  4. Gene Leek and Frank Funk played for the Indians. Isn't there a kid named Putz who is a pitcher in the American league?

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  5. J.J. Putz, he's on the Mets now. But yeah, good name. Good other names too though!

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