The Lair Report: 2038.05 – Member of First Family of BBA Retires
Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2019 11:06 pm
The National Football League had the Matthews, stock-car racing had the Pettys, Sutters ruled the National Hockey League and table tennis had its Huang Dynasty. Ask any baseball fan and they will tell you the LaLooshes are the first family of the Brewster Baseball Association.
In 1973, the late Ebby Calvin LaLoosh won the Frick League's first Steve Nebraska Award as its top pitcher and today, his grandson, Lawrence Columbus 'Crash' LaLoosh, continues a stellar pitching career, winning three Nebraska Awards of his own. But linking the two over the sixty-five year history of the BBA is Robert LaLoosh, son of Ebby and father to Lawrence.
Earlier last week, Robert LaLoosh, 61, quietly stepped down from his role as pitching coach for the UMEBA's Bucharest Balauri, citing the wish to get back to watching son's career in person, something he was able to do for eight years as pitching coach for the Yellow Springs Nine. "I've seen and done enough in this game," LaLoosh told Baseball News Network. "It's the right time to step away and now I look forward to spending these next few years following Crash." In hearing the news, Yellow Springs GM Ron Collins reflected on the consummate professional's coaching career: "What can I say? He was an icon in our dugout and is still an icon in the Yellow Springs community. He was a huge part of creating what were arguably some of the greatest pitching staffs in the history of the Nine franchise. The entire Yellow Springs organization wishes Bobby a long and healthy retirement."
LaLoosh, known for his knee-bending curveball and Bugs Bunny baffling changeup, was taken by the then-Baltimore Monarchs in the second round of the 1999 Draft. After spending a decade in the minors, including an AAA All-Star nod in 2007, a 31-year-old LaLoosh finally made it to the majors in 2009, debuting with the Phoenix Talons. After two years in the BBA spread over 28 starts, LaLoosh would spend 2011 in AAA, making two starts before retiring.
LaLoosh would resurface again in professional baseball fifteen years later, hired in 2026 as the pitching coach for the Madrid Matadors of the now-defunct European Baseball Alliance. Then in 2029, Collins reached out to LaLoosh and offered him the same role in the BBA for Yellow Springs, a position he'd fulfill until 2036. The next season, the Edmonton Jackrabbits made LaLoosh the bench coach, his first non-pitching related job. This past offseason the upstart Unified Middle East Baseball Association was the next and final stop in LaLoosh's long career, where he spent the last season as the pitching coach for the Bucharest Balauri.
"I never got the chance to work with LaLoosh," Balauri GM Joe Lederer tweeted, "but I know his years in baseball helped lead to our league starting and thriving." No word on who will succeed LaLoosh in Bucharest but rest assured, that coach will have big shoes to fill.
It may have been a short, unnoticed
transaction in the news but it was a
long, notable career for Robert LaLoosh.