October 20, 2020

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

Scott Morissey figures he found his love for baseball in 1990 when he stumbled upon old baseball books from the 1950s when he was visiting his grandparents in New Brunswick.

Morissey made sure he returned to his home near Hamilton, Ont. with those books and soon his collection expanded.

When the Blue Jays made it to the World Series in 1992 and won, Morissey made sure to catch some of the action at the SkyDome. He was there, never forgetting the sensational catch made in Game 3 by Toronto centre fielder Devon White and the almost triple play involving Kelly Gruber.

When Morissey was 15, his father bought him a book called World Series, a concoction of trivia that contained neat stuff about teams, coaches, managers and even politicians. The book World Series was also a great inspiration for Morissey but he realized it covered up 1993, the year the Blue Jays also won the championship.

"It forced me to really dig deep to find Fall Classic trivia,'' Morissey said. "My intense read (of World Series) led me to find errors which I then enjoyed correcting as I wrote my comments. Soon I had enough material to cover almost every World Series year. When I reached 2015 without having a 2014 entry of trivia, I’d make sure to come up with one.''

Hamilton, Ont.-based author Scott Morissey. Photo Supplied.

Sure enough, Morissey, 40, came up with his own book which was updated this year: 114 World Series in One Book: Fun, Interesting and Amazing Facts.

In the summer of 2019, when Lacey Bakker at Pandamonium Publishing told Morissey she’d shown his manuscript to various baseball people who were impressed, he felt like he finally was recognized as an author with genuine baseball expertise.

“My book became a reality, a very exciting moment in my life,’’ Morissey said. “Having a book published, a piece of my own creation, would give me such a sense of pride. My dream was that all my research would finally come together and be appreciated. What a great feeling.

“Sometime in the summer of 1990, my father bought me my very first sports book, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of World Tennis, for all of $6.99,'' Morissey said. "My father believes I had the whole tennis book memorized by the time we returned to our home about two weeks later. My path towards a sports encyclopedic life had officially begun.’’

Morissey has become a World Series expert because of his book. He even knows that there has been only one triple play in the history of the Fall Classic. Read the book to find out. The book contains 224 pages of stats, charts and photos. You can find the book on Amazon.

Going through the book, I found a very interesting trivia item, telling the story that Larry Sherry of the Dodgers became the first and only pitcher to record two wins and two saves in the same World Series. That took place in 1959. There was no surprise when Sherry was voted World Series MVP.

A year later in the 1960 event accented by a walk-off homer in the ninth inning of Game 7 by Bill Mazeroski of the Pirates, Bobby Richardson was voted World Series MVP even though his Yankees lost. Pirates closer Elroy Face has always said he should have been MVP because of his three saves.

My favourite World Series moment? It’s actually 3-in-1: Reggie Jackson’s three homers in Game 6 in 1977 And don’t forget, as Morissey points out in his book, that Jackson actually homered in four consecutive at-bats, including a tater in Game 5.

As we all know, the Expos never made it to the World Series in their 36 seasons of operation. The closest they came was in 1981 when they lost out on Blue Monday.

Danny Gallagher’s Expos book Always Remembered is available at Indigo and Amazon.

Fact-filled World Series book assembled by Hamilton writer