If the pitcher Rip Sewell is remembered at all these days, it’s for two things – a noted 1934 fistfight with Hank Greenberg, and the 1940s invention of the bloop pitch, which has appeared since from time to time in various guises, under various names.

Sewell was a right-handed pitcher whose career took place almost entirely in the National League from 1932 to 1949.  He was a Southern country boy born May 11, 1907 in Decatur, Alabama and like …