[LansdowneSt]

When you review how professional baseball integrated, it is easy to begin and end with the story of Jackie Robinson’s struggles. Scant attention is given the fact that African Americans faced tremendous resistance to their presence throughout the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the Deep South. One such player who experienced this was Blue Moon Odom. Often remembered solely for his colorful nickname, this stalwart pitcher for the Oakland A’s played his first year of professional baseball on a minor-league team that represented one of the last bastions of segregated baseball. Already under pressure to succeed because of the large bonus he received, Odom now had to pitch in an environment of great racial tensions.

It might be thought that “Blue Moon” was a nickname contrived by A’s owner Charlie Finley. After all, he had tried to persuade Vida Blue to change his name to True Blue, but Odom’s nickname came earlier. As Odom related it, “I received my nickname in the fifth grade in Macon, Georgia. A classmate of mine named Joe Morris started calling me ‘Moon Head’ and a few days later, he started calling me ‘Blue Moon.’ He said he could not call me ‘Yellow Moon’ because of my complexion; and Black Moon would not sound right. So he decided to call me ‘Blue Moon.’ I used to hate that name but now I love it.”

[Odom's career is full of colorful incidents, from the fistfight with Rollie Fingers on the eve of the World Series, the two bullets he took in the off-season trying to stop escaping burglars in the neighborhood, the struggles with addiction, and the SWAT team incident with his wife.] These incidents proved to be life-changing. Looking back years later, Odom reflected, “What happened in the past probably happened for the best. It made a better man out of me.” He gave up drinking and smoking, dealing with what in part created a crisis in his life. After retirement, accounts of Odom reflected a man who was at peace with himself, or as writer Larry Colton put it in Southern League, one whose “pleasing and pleasant personality” came back. - SABR

The facegen is a good one but the "purple" slider was turned to 11 so I moderated that a bit and resaved it. That's all and so that's one more fg I can add to my sim as I'm going through them all...