It's slow in here so I thought I'd bring up a local sports figure that I called a friend. One of the best and one of the most fun loving men I ever worked with. He was always going on with some foolishness. He also loved his pack of beagles like they were his kids. I used to go out and help him with them when he was older, but he finally had to sell them off.

They called him Big Bill in pro baseball, and he was a big old boy even after he got old. Some years back I was watching a World Series game and they had one of those baseball trivia questions. It was probably the only one I have ever known as soon as I saw it.

The question was: Who wore the highest jersey number in baseball and what was the number?

I knew immediately that it was Bill Voiselle and the number was '96'. (Ninety Six, SC)

I miss Bill and if he had lived he would be 98 now. I always figured he's pass at 96 years of age, but unfortunately he didn't make it. Bill died in 2005.

He had so many stories about playing and traveling with the old legends of baseball it wasn't funny. He could go on all day. Stories he had heard or witnesses about Jim Thorpe, Ted Williams, etc, etc. His memory was amazing because he could tell you about the batters he faced and the pitches that the catcher called for and whether he would throw that pitch or not and why. He pitched in a couple of World Series games too. Bill wasn't a bragger, he told me one time that if it hadn't been for all the player gone to war he wouldn't have made the pros. I don't think that was it, he went into the National League in 1942 and stayed until 1950. He stayed there for 9 season with 3 teams, most of those after the war.

You can Google him and get a ton of hits with his stats in the NL etc. Here's the Wiki page on Bill Voiselle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Voiselle