You’re not Alou

Posted by Dave Studeman
Here's something I didn't know, courtesy of Craig Wright's excellent subscription newsletter, A Page from Baseball's Past. The Alou brothers weren't really Alou's.

Felipe Alou is really Felipe Rojas. A mistake was made on his first contract in which the scout put in the family name of his mother rather than that of his father. Felipe made the name "Alou" so famous that his younger brothers Matty and Jesus adopted it when they came to the U.S.. The "Alou" brothers have a half-brother from their father's first marriage, and he had a son who also went on to the major leagues. That son was naturally raised under the family name of Rojas name back in the Dominican Republic. That player was Mel Rojas, who pitched 10 years in the majors. Matty Alou in particular still goes back and forth between his two last names depending on which country he is in or what he thinks the situation calls for. "I use 'Alou' when I call the airlines for reservations, because I get a better seat."

That blows my mind. It's like saying Babe Ruth's first name wasn't really Babe.

Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.

Comments

Wooden U. Lykteneau said...

Dave - Any chance this can get this fixed? Clicking through from Google Reader - the link looks like this:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/youre-not-alou/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+hardballtimes+(The+Hardball+Times)&utm_content=Google+Reader

The ? is what breaks it.

Posted 11/19 at 10:30 AM

Dave Studeman said...

Something appears to have happened to some of our RSS feeds, but we haven’t changed anything. Wooden, what RSS feed do you use?

Posted 11/19 at 07:47 PM

Wooden U. Lykteneau said...

Dave - I’m using Google reader.

This is the link from Craig’s “Your Thursday afternoon tizzy”

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hardballtimes/~3/jtjJPvIYMqU/

which redirects to:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/your-thursday-afternoon-tizzy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+hardballtimes+(The+Hardball+Times)

The screen then reads “Invalid GET Data”

To fix it, I have to go into the address bar, delete that “?” and hit enter. I’m thinking there’s a way to kill that from the redirect, if THT controls it. I seem to recall pointing this previously and it got fixed but nobody said how.

Posted 11/19 at 08:42 PM

Dave Studeman said...

Thanks, Wooden. We have many RSS feeds at THT. Do you know which one you’re using?

Posted 11/19 at 11:14 PM

Dave Studeman said...

If you’re in Google Reader, go to the feed and click on “show details.” The specific RSS feed will be listed as the “Feed URL.”

Posted 11/19 at 11:18 PM

Wooden U. Lykteneau said...

http://feeds.feedburner.com/hardballtimes

Hope that helps - I brought it up because I’m using such a common RSS reader!

Posted 11/20 at 10:25 AM

Dave Studeman said...

Thanks, Wooden. Something has happened at Google (they own Feedburner) so that the Feedburner RSS feed now gives funky links. I don’t know why, but all of our other RSS feeds work.

This is our most popular RSS feed…

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/content/rss_2.0/

...and it seems to be working fine in Google Reader. Or you can choose one of the RSS feeds listed in the right-hand column of our home page. They all should work for you.

Posted 11/20 at 10:37 AM

Wooden U. Lykteneau said...

Thanks, Dave - the one you suggested works the way I’m used to.

Posted 11/20 at 10:49 AM

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

You’re not Alou

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