It feels unfair that Roger Salkeld caught a stray at the end of Ohtani: The New Name For Sturgeon, yesterday’s Willets Pod episode with guest Jesse Black. It’s not Roger’s fault that he was born with the S***eld name. In fact, he’s got more claim to S***eld than Rick Springfield, whose name is actually Richard Lewis Springthorpe. What in the name of Hans Sprungfeld is that about, and then he has the nerve to scar an entire generation of Jesses by misspelling our names? Get bent, Dick Lewis Sprungfeld, and also Dick Lewis, dystopian nightmare villain of my childhood dreams thanks to his electronics store commercial.
They’ll come for you and that whistle, one day, too, P.C. Richard.
Where were we? Roger Salkeld. His grandfather, Bill Salkeld, also was a major leaguer, hitting 15 home runs as a 28-year-old rookie with the 1945 Pirates, then never reaching those same heights — he played for the Boston Braves in 1948 and 1949, and one game with the 1950 White Sox. The trade that sent Salkeld to Boston was the November 1947 deal that brought Danny Murtaugh to Pittsburgh.
Murtaugh paid instant dividends for the 1948 Pirates, taking the second base job and batting .290 with a career-high 71 RBIs and 10 steals (never mind that he was caught stealing 11 times and his .365 on-base percentage was accompanied by .356 slugging). Murtaugh finished ninth in that year’s MVP vote (won by Stan Musial), right between Ralph Kiner and Enos Slaughter ahead of him, and Stan Rojek and Richie Ashburn behind him.
Murtaugh played three more years in Pittsburgh, splitting time at second base with Monty Basgall, and then volunteered for a demotion to Double-A New Orleans, where he became player-manager in 1952 and started working his way back to Pittsburgh. Murtaugh got there as a coach a few years later, took over as manager in 1957, and won the World Series in 1960 and 1971.
All after being traded for a guy whose grandson who is mostly part of the answer to the trivia question: who were the six guys drafted before Frank Thomas in 1989? It’s Salkeld, who was third, along with Ben McDonald, Tyler Houston, Jeff Jackson, Donald Harris, and Paul Coleman.
More to come about The Big Hurt on an upcoming episode of Willets Pod, because we need to talk about this fit.
We Can Pod It Out 72: I'm Looking Through You