On Father’s Day I usually re-post my post from nine years ago, but I saw this on Facebook via my brother Tom Needham so I figured I’d share this instead. I’ll let him tell this story.
"They Patrol Outfield" - this was in one of the Chicago newspapers during the summer of 1956. My Dad is on the right. He was a rookie Chicago police officer and the Department had a baseball team that he played on. They played two games that summer against a U.S. Navy team (one at Wrigley and the other at Comiskey) and one of the Navy pitchers was Johnny Podres. He was the star of the World Series the year before, in 1955, when the Brooklyn Dodgers won their only championship. Then he had to go into the service for a year, that's how it was back then. I don't know if Dad was able to get a hit off Podres, this old newspaper clip didn't have a box score and of course Dad didn't talk much about it.
John P. Needham
Father’s Day, June 21st, 2020
Spring, TX