Johnny Antonelli - The Last New York Giant...
The Baseball Almanac Player of the Day:
Today, I selected Johnny Antonelli as the Baseball Almanac baseball player of the day. Born on April 12, 1930, this date in baseball history, he was awarded - directly out of high school - the highest signing bonus in baseball history (at the time), so large his teammates voted not to give him a share from the World Series "melon" his rookie year (read what the Commissioner of Baseball did about that).
On Baseball Almanac, you can read about his dad renting a stadium for scouts to watch his son pitch, see a newspaper clipping about one of the no-hitters Johnny threw in high school, and read some baseball trivia about how he was the last New York Giant pitcher to win an ERA Title, and also the last too (Johnny Antonelli Online Baseball Card)...
Every day, since 1999, Baseball Almanac has been going beyond the stats and attempting to preserve baseball history. I don't care if a pitcher took the mound only once, or three-hundred seventy-seven times, I care about their stories, good and bad, their baseball trivia, their baseball anecdotes, their baseball lore, and I hope you'll visit. Unlike ESPN / MLB, I have no staff at all, no employees, no office even, so when I wrote - sixteen years ago - "Where what happened yesterday, is being preserved today" - I meant it, literally. Today, I am 500,000+ pages strong, I update dozens of pages each day (and I am never caught-up), and I look forward to hearing from my LinkedIn connections.