His Wikipedia entry says he went to Cooley High, but does anybody know where exactly he lived?
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His Wikipedia entry says he went to Cooley High, but does anybody know where exactly he lived?
The 1940 Census has him and his family living at 2008 Magnolia, but that's way out of Cooley High School's boundaries.
I never knew he was from Detroit. He started pitching in the majors for Baltimore at age 18, which was even more rare in those days when most guys, especially pitchers, spent several years in the minors. Kind of reminds me of a certain outfielder - born in Baltimore, played for Detroit at age 18.
He changed his family name from Papastergios.
He graduated from Cooley in 1957. He led the Cardinals to two straight Metropolitan League titles. I graduated from Cooley and in the mid 60's, the coaches said that he was the best baseball player that ever graduated from Cooley.
He won more than he lost and he did it for a heck of a long time. But he was traded a lot, perhaps because of that dependability.
He had the misfortune of being on the wrong end of a trade that sent Frank Robinson to the Orioles from Cinci. The next year Robinson won the Triple Crown and took the team to the World Series, which they won. Poor Milt had a pretty good year too, but, you know.
One other thorn in his side was a perfect game he had going towards the end of his career. The usual, two outs, ninth inning, 3-2 count and the €!?]% behind the plate called ball 4! He got the next guy and had a no-hitter but Milt took the position that the ump violated the code that says that when an old warhorse is spinning a miracle out there, it is impossible to walk the 27th batter on a 3-2 count, no matter where the pitch is. Of course he knew he was not entirely in the right but those umpires are a bunch of ^+*¥!!< to begin with.
I knew Milt as well as his younger brother Perry, who pitched for Cooley as well but was nowhere near the pitcher Milt was. They lived on the corner of Terry and Chalfonte. Milt was a couple years older than me and Perry was a year or 2 younger. I think they were Greek and I know they were very tight friends with the Mitchell family. Harry Mitchell played quarterback for Cooley and had an older brother John. The Mitchells lived on the corner of Whitcomb and Eaton. I used to play sandlot sports with the Pappases, the Mitchell brothers, Jimmy and Johnny DeMassa [[who lived on Sussex 2 houses off of Lyndon) at the Burns School playground, Cooley's baseball diamond, and on the Montgomery Wards parking lot off Lyndon between Whitcomb and Prest.