Thursday, November 2, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Helping Sam Stratton

   On one of Samuel Stratton’s early trips to Amsterdam as part of his first Congressional campaign, he luckily ran into an 11-year old entrepreneur..

Friday, November 3, 2023-Episode 497-Several topics from Bob Cudmore’s Focus on History newspaper column: Amsterdam NY’s connection to Piscotta, Italy; carper mill tales; union Leader Leonora Barry.  Plus an interview with Phillip Malcolm Bowler about his ancestors’ brewery in Amsterdam.

Go Fund Me/November 1, 2023. Update-$2370.00 in need by December 31, 2023

U.S. Mail Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. 

on-line: The Historians Podcast, organized by Bob Cudmore 

Johnny Podres and Alex Isabel

By Bob Cudmore

       There are Amsterdam connections to the late Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Johnny Podres who died January 13 at age 75 at Glens Falls Hospital.  A longtime Queensbury resident, Podres was best known for shutting out the New York Yankees in game seven of the 1955 World Series.

       An Amsterdam man, Alec Isabel, was the Dodgers baseball scout who recruited Podres to play for the Dodgers.

       A native of Pisciotta, Italy, Isabel played baseball for Amsterdam High before World War I, getting an offer from the New York Giants. Instead, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and suffered hearing loss while on board the battleship Michigan. After the war, Isabel finished high school and played baseball at St. Mary’s Institute. He married Ann Murphy in 1923 and they had three children.

Isabel played and coach baseball in the semi-professional leagues of the day. In 1940, Alex he began coaching baseball at St. Mary’s, adding basketball duties a year later.  He became recreation superintendent for the city from 1946 until his death.  His family, primarily his brother Guy and Guy’s wife Ida, operated Isabel’s, the popular West Main Street restaurant.

As a scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Isabel scoured Upstate New York and parts of New England and Canada.

Coach Isabel’s nickname was Chief according to John Szkaradek, one of the members of Isabel’s basketball and baseball teams at St. Mary’s Institute in Amsterdam in 1952, the year Isabel discovered Podres.

“I remember the day he signed Johnny Podres,” Szkaradek said. “We were at Coessens Park.  Robert Sise, who became a judge, had taken over the team that day.  Sise was a pitcher.  Sise said the Chief had signed up a young fellow up north and he looks like he’s going to be a pretty good prospect. And I guess he was because Podres played in the World Series, pitched a no hitter in the World Series.”

Isabel died suddenly in 1953, two years before Podres pitched his World Series shutout.  Isabel and Szkaradek’s father died on the same day, both from heart attacks.

Some of Podres relatives named Zilinskis also have lived in Amsterdam’s East End through the years.

Bob Cudmore and Mohawk Valley People

Cosby Gibson and Tom Staudle with songs of the American Revolution. Previously Cosby and Tom, who live in the Mohawk Valley have done musical programs with songs of the Erie Canal and other historical events.

Coming this month!!!

Friday, November 17, 2023-Episode 499-Cosby Gibson and Tom Staudle with songs from Hanukkah, Kwanza and other year’s end holidays.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, November 1, 2023

38 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:42AM 

The Daily Gazette Family of Newspapers is excited to announce the launch of a brand-new website that encompasses our three daily newspapers as well as our newly-acquired arts and lifestyle site.

Each of the four publications still has a separate and distinct home on the website, but they all reside under The Daily Gazette umbrella, and we’ve ensured that they’ve retained their individual identity and scope of coverage.