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By Wayne Stewart
For the Mirror
Baseball has had a wealth of funny and colorful characters.
Take Kirby Higbe, who was a big league pitcher from 1937 through 1950.
He had an intense fear of flying. On one flight, Brooklyn teammate Pee Wee Reese tried to console him, saying there was no need to fret because when a person's number is up, it doesn't matter if you're in the air or on the ground.
Higbe refused to be placated.
"Suppose I'm up here with a pilot, and my number isn't up, but his is."
One day a letter from a female admirer arrived at Higbe's house. His wife opened it, read it, then demanded to know what it was all about. Higbe verbally fumbled, then said that it must have been meant for another Kirby Higbe.
The Pirates have had their fair share of colorful characters.
Start with Johnny O'Brien, who shared a story about himself and his identical twin, Ed.
One day during spring training, Ed wasn't scheduled to play, so he was permitted to go fishing. Johnny played the early innings and did well.
Later in the game, manager Bobby Bragan decided to pull a trick -- he had Johnny wear his brother's uniform and pinch hit, reporting in to the ump by telling him that he was Ed.
That night when the brothers ate supper together, Ed asked Johnny how he had done. Johnny replied, "I did pretty good, but you went 0-for-1."
Then there was Dick Stuart, a notoriously poor defensive first baseman.
The most famous story about the man known as Dr. Strangeglove took place on a blustery day in Forbes Field. A hot dog wrapper blew onto the field. When it flew near Stuart, he stabbed it cleanly prompting the crowd of around 30,000 to erupt into a standing ovation.
Not bad, they thought, for a man who owned a stranglehold for topping his league in errors.
Even Stuart confessed that he had an iron glove. Once he told pitcher Roy Face to be careful with his pickoff move. He warned Face, "Don't throw over real hard, I might miss it."
Yankee first baseman Joe Pepitone went one step further as was disclosed by pitcher Jim Bouton in his book "Ball Four." The tale begins when Pepitone botched a throw in the 1963 World Series.
He blamed the misplay by saying he had lost sight of the flight of the ball against a background of spectators' white shirts. From then on, wrote Bouton, "He didn't want to handle the ball anymore than he had to."
In the 1964 Series, Pepitone was holding Lou Brock at first base. Bouton signaled to Pepitone that a pickoff throw would ensue.
Amazingly, Bouton peered over to Pepitone "standing there shaking his head, tiny shakes because he didn't want anybody to see. It was the first time I ever saw anybody shake off a pick-off sign."
Another infamously poor glove man was outfielder Babe Herman. Stories abound about fly balls which, instead of settling into his glove, conked him on the head.
Herman denied it saying, "Never once did I get hit on the head by a fly ball."
After a pause he added, "Once or twice on the shoulder, maybe, but never on the head."
One sportswriter stated, "He greatly improved in his ninth season. He still hadn't caught a ball, but he was getting a lot closer."
The path he took on balls hit in the air sometimes resembled that of the flight of a bumblebee.
Then there's the time Herman misplayed a ball, first coming in, then going back, then slipping on the grass. He got up, chased the ball to the fence, fumbled and kicked the ball around.
Finally he threw the ball over the backstop. When asked what had happened, he simply replied, "When?"
Wayne Stewart began writing professionally in 1978 and wrote for publications such as Baseball Digest, USA Today and 10 major league teams' publications. Some material in this story is from his book "Wits, Flakes and Clowns," available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. He resides in Amherst, Ohio.