Eddie Robinson, Phil Linz

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but baseball can go all time machine without notice or warning. Like yesterday, when I saw on MLB.com that Eddie Robinson was four days short of his hundredth birthday. A power-hitting first baseman, Robinson was traded to the White Sox at the age of 29 in 1950. And, No, I have no recollection of the man playing on the South Side, 1950-52. But I’ve used him in Strat-O-Matic, and I do remember he was there cheering on the Indians, his first team, against the Cubs in the 2016 World Series; Robinson played on the last Cleveland Series winner back in 1948. So, happy birthday, Mr. Robinson. If memory serves, you and Gus Zernial shared the team homerun record at 29, until Bill Melton came along and broke it in 1970. Melton I remember and Phil Linz, too. A utility player mostly with the Yankees, Linz died Wednesday at the age of 81. Lucky for Linz the cause of death didn’t involve a harmonica. It nearly did in August of 1964. The Yankees had just dropped four in a row to the Sox at Comiskey Park to drop them to second place against the hitless wonders; at one point in the season, the Sox had dropped ten in a row to New York, so this was a pretty big thing. For reasons best known to himself, Linz decided to start playing a harmonica on the team bus on the way to O’Hare. Manager Yogi Berra didn’t like it and told Linz to stop, only Linz was all the way in the way and couldn’t hear. “What did he say?” Linz asked Mickey Mantle, who answered, “Play it louder.” Accounts vary as to what happened next, either Berra knocked the harmonica out of Linz’s hands or Linz tossed it to his charging manager. Whichever, the incident somehow broke the tension and may even have helped the Yankees win the pennant against the Sox by all of a game. That, I remember, and Dick Allen…