Hal Laycoe

Not a ball player, per se, but the bespectacled spectacle does not discriminate. You have to have a lot of pucks to play ice-hockey without a helmet- and even more to place two glass discs a few inches from your eyes. Hal sold cars in the off-season, but on the ice...

I am sure he could see forever, see every minute detail of the puck as it was flying towards his face. Determined not to live up to the nerd image, he also reportedly got into a fight with hockey hall of fame bruiser Rocket Richard that eventually led to a riot in Detroit.

No Yale or MIT degree, but he exploited his own braininess as a coach in the Western Hockey League as well as the NHL. Hal died in 1998- see his obituary in the NY Times here.

The Relic

As was mentioned at the start of this thing, some players make it here because they are great, and happen to wear glasses; others just happen to wear their glasses great. A small contingent in the Bespectacled Spectacle belongs to those pairs of glasses that made it with no help from man.

I imagine that these things (left) were forged in the fires of creation, worshiped by medieval peasants, maybe sought by Mr. Indiana Jones.

One thing is for certain- they made it to the majors without the assistance of Jim Breazeale. The back of this card points to his most storied accomplishment- he was back-up first baseman to Hank Aaron. Not that making the majors is some small feat, but I can only imagine that it was the power of those two ton frames, forged from meteorites consisting of unknown metals, that willed him from the minors to the majors.

In the end, I can completely understand his deal with the devil- I would wear those even if they brought me regional softball fame, or, even if they simply could stay on my face and guide me through the day.

Inductee #43

Dave Sisler is one of the most suave, good looking, custom cool men to ever slap on a pair of frames in the big leagues. Unlike the patron saint of the bespectacled ballists, Chick Hafey, Sisler wore his like a Cadillac wears it's chrome.

6'4" and lean, the son of Hall of Famer George Sisler (who was cut from that tough old stock, suffering from a similar sinus ailment as Hafey, but coming back from it to have an all-star second half of a career), Dave pitched for Boston and Cincinnati as a starter and a reliever, but never had as much success as his father or brother. He did have a great rookie season with the Red Sox, going 9-8 with 98 K's in 1956, supported by Jackie Jenson, Jimmy Piersall, Micky Vernon and Ted Williams.

However, despite the size and the looks, Dave still possessed some of the traits we admire at the Bespectacled Spectacle- he was a trained engineer with a degree from Princeton (class of '53), and he had a similar link to literature as Dave Hilton- his brother, Dick, was the focus of a conversation between the young and old fishermen in The Old Man and the Sea:

"They lost today," the boy told him.
"That means nothing, the great Dimaggio is himself again."
"They have other men on the team."
"Naturally, but he makes the difference. In the other league, between Brooklyn and Philadelphia I must take Brooklyn. But then I think of Dick Sisler and those great drives in the old park."
"There was nothing ever like them. He hits the longest ball I have ever seen."