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Breakfast time: Fingers, Mang baseball tell stories
Hall of Famer, local minor-league
umpire speak at YSU baseball event
By Greg Gulas
BOARDMAN
Youngstown State outfielder Blaze Glenn was downright excited when he heard that Hall of Fame pitcher and fellow Toronto native Rollie Fingers would be the featured speaker at YSU baseball’s ninth annual First Pitch Breakfast.
Fingers joined minor-league umpire and Austintown native John Mang Saturday at The Embassy to share some of professional baseball’s more humorous stories, telling the more than 500 in attendance to never stop chasing your dream.
“I was a kid, too, and if you are lucky enough you might get a break,” Fingers said. “Like John [Mang] here who is entering his seventh season as a [umpire] this spring, work hard and continually improve your skills. You never know how good you are until someone tells you.”
In 1963, after pitching an exceptional game for his high school team, it was Jess Flores, a scout with the Minnesota Twins, who approached Fingers to tell him how good he thought he was.
“[Flores] asked me if I ever thought about playing Major League Baseball, to which I replied, now I do,” Fingers said. “I never heard back from the Twins, but it was Art Lilly, a scout with the Kansas City Athletics who eventually signed me.
“I signed for $13,000, gave my father $3,000 and bought my mother a sewing machine that she really wanted. I bought myself a 1957 Chevy and blew the rest, but boy did I have fun.”
Fingers was a starting pitcher when he first came up with the A’s in 1968. He played for the Athletics, San Diego Padres and Milwaukee Brewers, winning 114 games over 17 seasons, posting a 2.90 earned run average and a then-record 341 saves before retiring after the 1985 season.
He played for 14 managers and countless pitching coaches, crediting Dick Williams, his manager with the Athletics in 1972-73 during the first two of three straight championship seasons as the skipper who saved his career when he moved him to the bullpen.
“I was in the right place at the right time,” he said.
Fingers also said he enjoyed playing for New Castle, Pa., native Chuck Tanner during the 1976 season.
“You had better get your hand in Chuck’s when shaking his, otherwise he’d crush yours,” Fingers said. “He had the strongest grip of anyone I ever knew. He managed us only one season, but we had a lot of fun that season.”
Fingers said the best advice he ever got came from former Cleveland Indians pitcher Mudcat Grant when they were Oakland teammates.
“Mudcat said to me, ‘See those guys in the blue uniforms, just don’t do anything to agitate them,’” he said. “They might miss a few, so continue to be that happy-go-lucky guy on the mound because the dish can go from 18 inches to the size of a soap dish in just one pitch.”
The 1992 Hall of Fame inductee said he isn’t for the steroid guys, noting you cannot put an asterisk next to the players who originally set the records.
Fingers said that Dick Allen absolutely belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
“He swung a 44-ounce bat,” Fingers said. “Once I threw him a fastball at the old Comiskey Park and he hit a laser. I jumped to catch it and hit a speaker in dead center field some 450 feet away. He had tremendous power and belongs in the Hall of Fame.”
Mang’s baby-sitter was the late MLB umpire Wally Bell’s mother.
“I loved coaching and when I was done after graduate school I took a position with a financial advising company, but something was missing,” Mang said. “Wally told me to go to umpiring school and I am now in my seventh year. Baseball has opened so many doors for me and for that I am very grateful.”
Last fall, Glenn has ranked as the No. 56 draft eligible hitter by D1Baseball.
He led the team last season with a .325 batting average, roped 64 hits, registered 43 runs batted in, posted a .558 slugging percentage and had a .445 on-base percentage.
He played for the Mankato Moondogs this past summer in the Northwoods Wooden Bat League.
“It’s nice to be recognized, but I’m more about team accomplishments,” Glenn said. “The goal is still to win the Horizon League and make the NCAA tournament.
Glenn and the Penguins get their season under way when they travel to No. 9 Mississippi State on Friday.