More about Baseball Lists and some catchy reader feedback

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Often when Vivian and I are taking a long, boring drive and we tire of listening to oldies on the CD player, the conversation sometimes turns to creating what we refer to as "Baseball Lists". In our previous post (a story is known as a post in the blogging world), we included some of our favorite lists.

The trick is to create interesting categories and then interesting players within those categories. A category such as COLORS is too easy. More of a test is coming up with players who fit in RELIGION, STATES, AND CLOTHING ITEMS, for example.

A favorite of mine, not yet posted is, FOREIGN COUNTRIES OR NATIONALITIES. Our extensive list includes Turk Lown, the Mad Hungarian (Al Hrabosky), the Mad Russian (Lou Novikoff), Mark Portugal and Frenchy Bordagaray.

It's sort of cheating to use baseball card checklists and Googling to come up with names for a list. For someone with my baseball card experience with Bowman, tobacco cards, Goudeys, early Topps and many other issues, it is amazing what can pop into your mind.

For example, Vivian and I were working on a FOOD list one day and suddenly I said, Mayo Smith. We also like names that can be on more than one list. Vivian offered, "Turkey Mike" Donlin, who is appropriate for both our FOOD and FOREIGN COUNTRIES lists. We also offer for your consideration a trifecta, Frank "Home Run" Baker who shows up on the BASEBALL TERMS, FOOD and the OCCUPATIONS list.

Several readers responded to the baseball lists in our previous post. Thank you for your interest.

Barrie Sullivan, of the Colorado Sullivans, especially enjoyed our Alous list....Felipe, Jesus, Matty, Moises and Boog. The photo above does not include Moises and Boog.

Speaking of the Alous, here is a story from Barrie:

About 10 years ago in Lowell, Mass. which was a farm team of the BoSox, there was a billboard which read, "JESUS IS THE ANSWER".

Someone climbed up and wrote: "YES, BUT WHAT IS THE QUESTION?"

Two weeks later a fan climbed up and wrote: "WHO IS THE THIRD ALOU BROTHER?"
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Mark Rotker, is a baseball junkie and former coach who attended my high school in Levittown, NY and Vivian's college (Cortland State). He had a few wonderful additions:

Mark gave us Bill "Spaceman" Lee for THINGS YOU SEE IN THE SKY. He also suggested Ty Cobb for our CLOTHING ITEMS list, and for STATES Ron Guidry (Louisiana Lightning) and two players named Cal, Ripken and Abrams.
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We encourage reader participation, so here is something to ponder:

A new Lists category is "Players whose last names spelled backwards are the same as someone else in baseball". Here are examples: Rob Deer and Ron Reed, along with Brian Giles and Bud Selig. We do not want other players with these names, just other pairs. The best answers will be used in an upcoming post.