LansdowneSt's Facegen Checklist

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

Oh, I always "have one" of the greats but I always look them over if I'm posting them for the community. I try to have a higher standard for others than I do for my own game play

You're just a caring, sharing type bud, for which I thank you on behalf of the wider OOTP community...

[LansdowneSt]

“He’s a superhero without a cape. That’s the way we see him.” — Alex Cora

Several of the biggest base hits in Boston baseball history came off the bat of “Big Papi,” David Ortiz. He sports three world championship rings and then wrapped up his career with one of the best final seasons any player has ever enjoyed. Within months of leaving the game, he was honored by the Red Sox, who retired his jersey number 34. He had already become an instant icon in Red Sox Nation. Had he done no more than lead the 2004 team to triumph over the Yankees and then the Cardinals, he would still go down in team history for his key role in helping them win their first World Series in 86 years. But he came up big again in 2007 and was overpowering in 2013. Ortiz hit 541 home runs in the course of his major-league career, and 632 doubles. The only two batters before him to hit 500 homers and 600 doubles were Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds. And Ortiz was, as a New York Times subhead once said, “a maestro in the statistics-defying art of clutch hitting.” - SABR

I couldn't stand that fg you have, luckymann, so posting the one I've had in my files. It's an improvement even if I don't tweak it a dozen times before posting like my others. Your sim deserves a better Big Papi soonest

[luckymann]

Now we're talking. In a pretty ordinary post-season, the glimpses we got of Papi dicing it with Big Hurt almost made it bearable, even if A-K**b was there to spoil it...

You'll see he has made it onto the Boston Reds in the AtHoL there bud, serendipity at work.

Much obliged, sir.

G

[LansdowneSt]

Ryan Klesko caught the attention of scouts early in his high-school baseball career. Scouts clamored for the prime spots behind home plate to watch Klesko, a freshman on the Westminster (California) High School varsity. Klesko hit 278 home runs and batted .279 in a 16-year major-league career. But the scouts weren’t there to watch him hit. They were there to watch him pitch. “I went to Ron LeFebvre’s pitching school eight years,” Klesko said. “At first I was going for fun. But after a certain point I was good enough that I knew I would do something in baseball after high school. I thought it would be pitching.” Klesko, a hard-throwing left-hander, struck out 138 in 96⅔ innings as a sophomore and junior and compiled a 13-6 won-lost record in his first three seasons on the Westminster varsity. After his junior season (in 1988) he was a member of the US Junior Olympic Team. But an elbow injury limited him to playing first base as a high-school senior. “I was always a pretty good hitter, too,” Klesko said. “When I was a freshman and sophomore at Ron’s school, I started batting against college pitchers and I did fine. I knew I could make it as a hitter, too.”

In the Braves championship year of 1995, Klesko hit .310 with 23 home runs and 70 RBIs in 107 games and 329 at-bats. After the Braves defeated Cleveland in the first two games in Atlanta, Klesko hit home runs in all three games at Jacobs Field in Cleveland to become the first player to homer in three consecutive World Series road games. His home run in the sixth inning of the Braves’ 5-2 victory in Game Four landed near where his mother, Lorene, was sitting in the bleachers. “It missed her by about 10 feet,” said Klesko. “She went down and got it, but she had to bribe them for it. It cost her a baseball bat, two balls autographed by our whole team and a couple of pictures. But it was worth it.” - SABR

Redid the facegen. While Ryan had several distinctive facial hair styles in his day, the one in the fg wasn't one of my favorites so I chose a source file with a proper goatee. It was that or go to his baby-faced, young Braves self...

[LansdowneSt]

Jan 30, 1996, PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- The Philadelphia Phillies and Boston made a long-anticipated trade Monday, with the Red Sox acquiring closer Heathcliff Slocumb and the Phillies getting outfielder Lee Tinsley. "It does give me somebody, besides Lenny, that can play centerfield," Fregosi said, adding that Dykstra will be his centerfielder "as long as he's physically able to play there." Tinsley, 26, hit .284 in 100 games for the Red Sox last year, the fourth organization he's played for in his nine-year pro career. In 504 major-league at-bats, he's hit .282 with 10 homers, 57 RBIs and 31 stolen bases. "Probably last year was the first time he really had a chance to show what he could do," Thomas said. "We don't have any speed and he's a switch-hitter. We can really use him in a lot of ways."

With Dykstra and right fielder Mark Whiten penciled into the starting lineup, Tinsley will be competing with Tony Longmire, Jim Eisenreich, Pete Incaviglia and Murray, who Thomas said has a shot to make it with the Phillies. "There's a couple of things we lack, power and speed," Fregosi said, noting that Tinsley stole 18 bases last year. "I didn't have anybody last year that stole 18 bases." - Wire Story on Trade

132 days later, the Sox would reacquire Tinsley from the Phillies for a minor leaguer. His mission was complete. He had been used to get the Red Sox Heathcliff Slocumb... and so the great Red Sox theft of the Mariners on the 1997 trade deadline was just a matter of time...

Redid the facegen. I think I used the same picture but the current one is over-smoothed in my opinion. Another player in my current sim.

[LansdowneSt]

Jacob Turner's comeback story with Detroit Tigers cut short
- Detroit Free Press Aug 8, 2018

ANAHEIM, Calif. — For a few hours on Tuesday afternoon, it was a cool story.

At 4:33 p.m. local time, Jacob Turner slipped through a side door into the Detroit Tigers clubhouse for the first time in seven years. Turner received a warm welcome from his teammates, some of whom he played with earlier in the season at Triple-A Toledo, one of which — Nicholas Castellanos — he played with coming up in the Tigers’ farm system many years earlier. There were hellos, high-fives and hugs.

Then came the bottom of the first inning. In what very well could be Turner’s only inning he pitches for the Tigers this season, he allowed the first eight men to reach base and gave up seven runs on six hits. “We just couldn’t get the first out,” he said afterwards. Oh, but they should have. Most of them weren’t hit hard, but the damage was done and in all likelihood, so, too, was Turner’s short return with the Tigers.

Turner, the No. 9 overall pick in the 2009 MLB draft, is now 27 years old. The Tigers traded him in 2012 to the Miami Marlins as the centerpiece of a deal for right-hander Anibal Sanchez and second baseman Omar Infante, and he has made 42 starts since, posting a 5.27 ERA. He spent time with the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Washington Nationals and returned to Miami this season before getting released. The Tigers signed him to a minor-league deal in July. Despite the outcome, which likely will end with a ticket out of town, “It was fun,” Turner said. “I have a special place for Detroit and I’ve always felt that way, so to put the uniform on again was fun.” [It was, in fact, his last game in The Show - Ed.]

I kept the facegen but it was too wide and, after looking at the pictures and noticing that, I felt compelled to narrow the head a little bit...

[LansdowneSt]

Roger Moret (born Rogelio Moret Torres) streaked across the skies of Red Sox Nation during the early 1970s like a comet with a stutter step: often brilliant but sometimes wild. Although he possessed obvious talent, he had some difficulty in harnessing it. Moret’s mound presence was that of a tall, slender – even spindly – left-hander with a whiplike motion and a speedy fastball, mixed in with a decent curve and a good changeup. Once established with the Boston Red Sox in 1973, he alternated two excellent seasons with a mediocre one. Still, he was able to compile an admirable cumulative ERA (3.43) and a 41-18 record with the Red Sox, ranking him among the best pitchers of the decade for the Bostons. He led the American League in winning percentage in 1975 and just missed in 1973. Then he went away, traded first by the Red Sox then, slowly and tragically, leaving baseball and sliding into the dark morass of mental illness. - SABR

A psychiatrist in San Juan who had been treating Moret diagnosed him with chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia, citing that the pressure of playing major-league baseball contributed to his problems. Sadly, his bio is filled with moments when a more capable medical community should have taken issues more seriously and addressed them sooner before things worsened. Instead the papers would sensationalize and ridicule Moret for incidents that should have been flashing red indicators for help.

My recollections of Moret were with the mustache he had most of his career, so that's why I redid it. Nothing wrong per se with the current fg.

[luckymann]

A sad story, I look forward to having him in the FL sometime over the next couple seasons.

[LansdowneSt]

Jim Lindsey made a name for himself pitching for semipro teams in his native Louisiana. Signed first by the Cleveland Indians, he eventually landed with the Cardinals, and pitched for six seasons as a starter and reliever before being released midway through the 1934 season.

His rookie year was in 1922 as a 23-year old, then a three-game cup-of-coffee in 1924, then a five year stretch in the Texas League before finding a home with the Cardinals in 1929. Lindsey had one of his best seasons in 1931, primarily as a reliever when relieving was not a role many pitchers aspired to. In his first eight appearances, he pitched 14 innings and allowed but one run. Observed a sportswriter, “No matter how gloomy the outlook, when manager Gabby Street gives him the nod, Big Jim strolls to the hill with the nonchalance of a bride making her fifth trip to the altar. They say, in St. Louis, that his attitude upsets the mental poise of the enemy batters. Regardless of whether there is anything to the theory, he usually gets them out with undue delay.” - SABR

He didn't have a facegen in the pack so made one.

[LansdowneSt]

Trading a promising young outfielder — a future All-Star — for a pitcher with a large contract at the end of his career may be the worst trade Harry Dalton ever made. But the pitcher was future Hall of Famer Don Sutton. The arrival of the 37-year-old Sutton wowed Brewers fans and was the final piece in the Milwaukee Brewers successful run to the 1982 World Series. Sending 23-year-old outfielder Kevin Bass to the Astros was necessary to complete the August 30, 1982, deadline deal.

Four years later, Bass made the All-Star team and was a key member of the 1986 NL West champion Houston Astros, hitting .311, his finest season, with 20 homers and 79 RBIs in 157 games. He made the final out in the 16th inning of Game Six of the 1986 NL playoffs, striking out against Jesse Orosco. The game sent the New York Mets to the World Series.

Bass played 14 years in the majors, 10 of them in two stints with the Astros. He played in 1,571 major-league games, winding up with a .270 lifetime batting average, 611 runs batted in, and 118 home runs. - SABR

Redid the facegen.

[actionjackson]

That Bass transformation is awesome. Really good work as always Lansdowne!

[LansdowneSt]

Doug Jones grew up listening to the roar of the 650-horsepower engines and watching as the drivers raced their cars around the dusty dirt tracks of the Indiana sprint-car circuit. Jones’s father was a part-time racer, and young Doug hoped to follow in his father’s tire tracks some day. When the elder Jones thought his son ready for his first taste of competitive driving, he allowed the 18-year-old to get behind the wheel in a qualifying heat at Lebanon’s Paragon Raceway. On the second lap, the rookie racer clipped the retaining wall, spun out of control, and crashed. Doug was unhurt but made up his mind to pursue a career in the somewhat safer sport of baseball.

At the time of his retirement, Jones’s 303 career saves, all but one earned after he turned 30, ranked 12th in major-league history, and his 846 games pitched ranked 21st. His 129 saves for Cleveland, at one time the club’s all-time top total. - SABR

Redid the facegen. A bunch of these are still from the inaugural '01 class of my current Random Debut sim. Thanks for the compliment on Kevin Bass.

[LansdowneSt]

Like many of us, Rich Nye followed a winding path before finding his true professional calling. What sets Nye apart from you and me, though, is that his journey included pitching duels with Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson; road trips with Hall-of-Fame teammates Ernie Banks and Ferguson Jenkins; and head-to-head showdowns with the likes of Willie Mays and Henry Aaron. A lanky 6’ 5” left-hander who burst on the scene with 13 wins for the Cubs in 1967 and pitched for five seasons before retiring with arm trouble, the multi-talented Nye also dabbled as a civil engineer and spent years as a commodities trader before finally settling into his dream career as a veterinarian and founder of the nation’s first clinic for exotic animals. - SABR

Redid the facegen.

[LansdowneSt]

From May 6, 1992, to July 24, 1993, righty pitcher Anthony Young lost 27 consecutive decisions with the New York Mets. It was an astounding run of bad luck, since Young did not pitch that poorly — although it didn’t help that “The Worst Team Money Could Buy” was behind him. In a 2009 interview with Anthony McCarron of the New York Daily News, Young said, “Everything that could happen, happened. It was just destiny, I guess.”

Yet “AY” maintained his competitive spirit and cheerful disposition during and after his losing streak. With good grace he appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno shortly after getting back in the win column — Leno had used the pitcher’s travails as monologue material. Years later Young remained philosophical. In another 2009 feature, this one with Stephen Goff of the Houston Examiner, he said, “The Mets wouldn’t have kept sending me to the mound if I wasn’t performing. It all just happened and now I’m known for this forever. I set an unusual record that may never be broken.”

Young was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in January 2017. He relayed the news while serving as an instructor at the Mets’ fantasy camp, held at their spring training site of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Doctors treated the growth as cancerous because it was located on the brain stem, making it impossible to do a biopsy to test for malignancy. He underwent chemotherapy and radiation; in a February radio interview, upbeat as ever, he reported that the tumor had shrunk. Meanwhile, he continued to give private pitching lessons through his own company, AY Enterprises. In June, however, Young fell into a coma. He died on June 27, aged just 51.

Only three pitchers from 1901 through 2017 who were involved in 50 or more decisions had winning percentages lower than .250. Yet Anthony Young didn’t mind when the kids under his tutelage joshed him about his losing streak. “That’s okay with me,” he told Stephen Goff. “I’m just happy to be able to make a difference in a young ballplayer’s life.” - SABR

Redid the facegen.

[luckymann]

Great albeit sad story about one of the game's unsung heroes. The good thing in an OOTP context is that W-L records play no part in assessing a player's ratings. Can't wait to see him in the FL and other saves, hope he kills it!

Beautiful FG as well bud.

G

[LansdowneSt]

Juan Pizarro was a talented, durable Puerto Rican pitcher. The lefty pitched in all or part of 18 major-league seasons, starting as a rookie with the 1957 Milwaukee Braves. The Braves rushed him to the big club after one eye-opening season in Class A, yet their very deep pitching staff limited Pizarro’s opportunities. He did not come into his own as a big leaguer until 1961, after he was traded to the Chicago White Sox. His best record was 19-9 in 1964 – but he never had another season with double-digit wins in the majors. After 1965, Pizarro was primarily a reliever at the top level. When the Puerto Rican Baseball Hall of Fame inducted its first 10 members in 1991, Juan "Terín" Pizarro was one of them.

Pizarro’s breakout year in the majors came at last in 1961 – though he did not start or win a game for Chicago until June 10. During that season, he was 14-7 with a 3.05 ERA. His walks were down to 4.1 per 9 innings pitched, and his K/9 ratio was a career-high 8.7, which also led the AL that year. [Manager] Al Lopez said, “When Pizarro first joined the club in 1961 he was fooling around with a screwball. Here was a young pitcher with control trouble, so I told him to concentrate on finding the plate with his fastball and curve and forget about the screwball. He had enough stuff without it.” “The White Sox didn’t give up on me, they didn’t punish me, and I pitched my a** off for them,” Pizarro recalled.

Pizarro accomplished as much as he did despite his great love of eating, drinking, gambling, and carousing. In a vivid 1982 interview with author Edward Kiersh for the book Where Have You Gone, Vince DiMaggio?, he came across as a boricua Bo Belinsky. “Yeah, I love to cel-e-brate,” he said. “I only remember the parties, the women, the hot times.” - SABR

Redid the facegen. I think we used the same picture (Braves baseball card) but I didn't think the old one looked like him.

[luckymann]

Or, to quote the great Keith Richards et al,

"I spent 90% of my money on wine, women, and drugs... the other 10% I just kind of frittered away..."

[LansdowneSt]

Ned Hanlon managed 19 seasons in the major leagues — 12 in the 19th century, when he compiled a .586 winning percentage, and seven in the Deadball Era, when his winning percentage fell to .449. “Foxy Ned” guided five National League pennant-winners, the 1894-95-96 Baltimore Orioles and the 1899-1900 Brooklyn Superbas, but never finished higher than second in the Deadball Era. Some say that by that time the game had passed him by, but another possible explanation for his lack of Deadball Era success is that he was focusing most of his attention on returning big-league baseball to his beloved Baltimore. - SABR

There were times when Hanlon didn't have his mustache but they were few, as far as I could tell. The existing facegen appears to be fine but I didn't think it actually looked like the player. Redid the facegen.

[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...

[LansdowneSt]

Juan González played in the American League during an era of power hitters like Cal Ripken Jr., Albert Belle, Cecil Fielder, Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas, and Rafael Palmeiro. Among them, Igor, as he was nicknamed in his native Puerto Rico, excelled, with the high point of his 17-year career in 1998, when he won his second AL Most Valuable Player award.

González almost became a Yankee. Yankees scout Roberto Rivera attended a game to observe González. Bernie Williams, playing right field, chased after a ball with such energy, threw it in so quickly, and so impressed Rivera that he ended up signing Williams for the Yankees instead of González.

González had the first of his two MVP seasons in 1996 and helped lead the Texas Rangers to the postseason for the first time. Despite losing 28 games to injury, he played in 134 games and batted .314 with 47 home runs and 144 RBIs. (Albert Belle led the league with 147 RBIs.). Fully healthy in 1998, González played in 154 games, 116 of them in right field. He batted.318, with a career-high 50 doubles, 45 homers, and a league-leading 157 RBIs. At the All-Star break González had 101 RBIs; the only other player to achieve this was Hank Greenberg (103 in 1935). González was again an All-Star. On September 19 he hit his 300th home run, setting an AL record for the fewest games it took to accomplish the feat. - SABR

Injuries caught up with Juan "Gone" by age 31 and he'd retire in 1995 at age 35 with a .904 career OPS and counting stats of 1,936 hits, 434 HRs and 1,404 RBIs. In retirement González settled in Puerto Rico and helped coach and finance teams and tournaments in Puerto Rico and Texas.

Redid the facegen.