As I was walking out of Nationals Park a couple of weeks ago, one of me droogs (Dave, to be exact) asked me to recite the starting line-up of the 1960 Yankees and then their opponents in the World Series — the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. This was a matter of pride, of course, and I puffed myself up to meet the challenge. I had learned the starting line-ups off the back of the 1960s Topps set of cards, perhaps the most memorable set ever made, and I had it down. By heart. So I recited: Mantle, Maris and Tresh in the outfield; Boyer, Kubek, Richardson, Skowron and Berra around the infield — with Elston Howard as a fill-in behind the plate. And then I did the Pirates, struggling over who played third and short (it was Don Hoak and Dick Groat — and honestly, I missed Hoak), but getting the rest.

Dave looked at me: “You sure about Tresh?” Sure I’m sure, I said. I sat right there in my father’s chair and watched the Yankees play every Saturday. They called it the “Game of the Week,” but it was New York Yankees television. I remember it like it was yesterday. I even remember the little black and white screen and the summer heat. I damn near can still smell the room. I remember the voices of Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean announcing the games. The game came to us over the only television station we had; it was WSAU in Wausau, Wisconsin. The announcer who did the news for the station was Walter John Chilson (who lost an election to Mel Laird). They had a mascot at the station: a graphic of a knight on a horse with a sword. Am I sure? Don’t make me laugh. Damn right I’m sure.

Well, here’s the deal — as Dave so kindly pointed out to me later. Tom Tresh didn’t play for the 1960 Yankees. The guy who played left field for the Yankees was Hector Lopez. I was stunned. Hector Lopez? I would have been less surprised if Dave had told me that left was played by Sarah Palin. I was sure, I was positive, I was absolutely certain, that Tom Tresh played left field for the 1960 Yanks. Don’t tell me he didn’t. Hector Lopez? He played for the A’s. Right? Right?

Scientists tell us that people forget for three reasons: they don’t get it in the first place, they had it but lost it or, they have it but can’t find it. You get memories by acquiring them, storing them and retrieving them. You lose memories when you fail to acquire them, fail to store them or (when you get older) you fail to retrieve them (which is why, I suppose, we have the Baseball Reference). In the case of Hector Lopez, I probably never acquired the memory in the first place — and then, for some reason, substituted Tom Tresh for Lopez. But here’s the thing: I am quite certain I can remember the 1960s Tom Tresh Topps card. Man, I just know how that guy looks on his card. I swear it. So when Dave told me that Tresh didn’t play left field for the Yankees in 1960 I scoffed and looked through my collection for him. Numbered. In order. In a box. Complete.

He wasn’t there.

I always thought that Tom Tresh was a heck of a ballplayer. And he was, but only for a time. Hector Lopez was better. A lot better. Lopez came over to the Yankees from their farm club (the Kansas City Athletics) and became one of the greatest Panamanians to ever play the game. He hit the hell out of the ball for the A’s, which is why they traded him to the Yanks (A’s owner Arnold Johnson was a business partner of Yanks owner Del Webb). As any Yankees fan can tell you, Lopez was a mainstay for the Yanks during their five consecutive pennants (1960 to 1964), along with Ford, Howard, Richardson and Boyer (who was signed as a bonus baby by . . . the A’s). Lopez went on to be the first black manager at the Triple A level. He’s the reason the Yankees are loved in Panama. He was a very good player and, arguably, a better hitter than Maris (whom the Yanks got from the A’s) and if he had had a little power he would have been him.   

I got it. Hector Lopez played left field for the Yankees in 1960. He hit second behind Kubek in the World Series. He watched, in shock, as Bill Mazeroski put it over the centerfield fence in game 7. He trotted into the dugout as Mantle, slumped with his head in his hands, wept. He came out the next year and played only part time as Yogi Berra, near the end of his career, was put in the outfield. At the end of the season, the Yankees called up their newest phenom, Tom Tresh. Tresh only played in nine games in 1961, but the next year he was in the line-up nearly every day. He hit .286. It was the best year he would ever have. Hector Lopez retired in 1966, after playing twelve seasons.  

I remember it like it was yesterday.

Wily Mo (aka “Wily Modesto”) Pena is this year’s Washington Nationals left fielder — exhibit number one that this guy has a hankering for molding the Nats into Cincinnati East. Not great news, considering the senior circuit’s oldest club just hired this destroyer-of-perfectly-good- pitching-arms. But Jimmy never saw a Redleg he didn’t love, and he absolutely loves Wily Mo: “His power works at any stadium,” Bowden said soon after Wily Mo arrived on the scene. “He is a good kid with a big heart. He has got to be driven. You have to stay on top of him. You have to get him to work hard.” At 6-3 and 215, Wily Mo can drive the ball: he hit 26 home runs for the Reds in 2004, with 66 RBIs. The downside? Wily Mo swings through the ball: 118 strikeouts in 336 at bats. You’ve got to get him to work hard?

You’ve got to get him to make contact — that’s what you’ve got to do.

After the next year — after 2005 — the Reds had seen enough of Wily Mo and dealt him to Boston for Bronson Arroyo. The deal looked like a brilliant move for Cincy, and one of the few knuckleheaded moves made by Boston Red Sox (“oh, those dirt dogs”) wunderkind Theo Epstein. Theo had it all figured out. “Pena strikes out on a rate basis more than anyone else in the big leagues,” Epstein said in his usual snooty neo-empiricist meanderings right after the trade. “There is precedent for those (type) players developing a little bit more discipline, increasing their walk rate and becoming better all around hitters as they adjust to the big leagues.” Oh yeah, Theo, like who? We might point out (dearest Theo) that, while with Cincinnati, Pena struck out more times than Arroyo had struck out batters.

Stick that in your “rate basis.”

In 2006, Arroyo was 14-11 with a 3.29 ERA for the Reds while Wily Mo continued to battle the breezes: 94 strikeouts in 289 ABs. We might imagine Theo rethinking this just a tad and looking around the league to see just who would take Wily Mo off his hands. So Pena came to the Nats for a player to be named, who turned out to be 25-year-old first baseman Chris Carter. Not bad really: Wily Mo is a solid citizen, a team player, and has a lot of heart (Jim is right about that, but you can dismiss his other statement — “his power works at any stadium” — really Jim, no shit). Then too, while Wily Mo doesn’t run a lot of sprints, ya gotta luv him. For all of Jim’s talk about how ya gotta stay on him, Wily Mo works hard. I’ve seen him run up the steps onto the field. As our friends at Nats320 point out, he is “big, strong, and incredibly confident.” And yahavtaluvaguy who is modest about what he needs to work on: “I need to work on my defense and my hitting,” he told Nats320. And his baserunning: no one would ever mistake Wily Mo for Willie Mays Hayes.

There’s an upside, which no one who saw him play in RFK last year will forget. Before he arrived the Nats averaged 3.9 runs per game, but with him in the line-up they averaged five runs a game, and his defensive statistics were surprisingly good. He’s quicker with the glove than he looks: no errors in 57 chances. He ate up NL East pitching, hitting .324 with six HRs in 30 games. Which makes him my pick to put one out on Opening Day, against the hated Braves. But the moment I can’t wait for (next year, methinks) is when Wily Mo sticks one in the parking garage and Theo takes out his slide rule, does a few calculations — and tells us “told ya so.”

It’ll be worth the strikeouts.