M.H. Ford

The list of prominent alums from Ripon College, a tiny (enrollment of less than 1,000) liberal arts school in Wisconsin includes a whole bunch of state legislators and NFL players from the early days. 

If you go to the school's Wikipedia page, you'll see that almost nobody on the list is a household name. There are, though, three who jumped out at TigerBlog.

First, there is Al Jarreau, the Grammy Award-winning singer who, if you recall, sang the great theme song from the wildly underrated show "Moonlighting." In terms of name recognition, Jarreau comes in third.

There's a tie for first, a relatively unbreakable on at that. In fact, you could say that two of the 15 or so greatest American actors ever are Ripon alums. For TB's money, by the way, the best of them all never went to college. He'll get back to you on that.

One of the Ripon alums is Spencer Tracy, Class of 1924. Perhaps you've heard of him? 

The other is Harrison Ford, Class of, well, it doesn't say. That's because he was actually expelled four days before graduation after a plagiarism issue. It's probably something he laughs about more now than he did back then.

With all of his success, Ford has been nominated for one Academy Award, and that was back in 1986, for "Witness." William Hurt won that year, for "Kiss of the Spider Woman," which TB has never seen. Tracy, on the other hand, was nominated nine times for Best Actor, winning twice in back-to-back years with "Captains Courageous" in 1937 and "Boys Town" in 1938.

By the way, the No. 1 actor according to TB? That's Humphrey Bogart. By the way, did you know Humphrey Bogart was a seventh cousin of Princess Diana?

What does Ripon College have to do with anything today? Well, it's like this.

TigerBlog looked up Harrison Ford and found the story about Ripon College and his almost-graduation. Then he wondered who else might have gone there and saw the rest of the list.

And why the interest in Harrison Ford? 

It's because of Princeton alum Mike Ford. No, they're not related, or at least TB doesn't think so. 

Ford's full name, though, is "Michael Harrison Ford." 

By the time M.H. Ford was born, H. Ford had already made 24 movies and was a huge star. Perhaps the Fords were big fans? 

Anyway, M.H. Ford turned 31 on the Fourth of July. During the week of his birthday, Ford was one of the best hot streaks he's had in his entire Major League Baseball career.

Say what you will about Mike Ford, but he doesn't give up easily. There aren't a lot of guys who would have persevered through what Ford has, with endless stops along his baseball journey.

It goes like this:

* undrafted out of Princeton after being the Ivy League Player of the Year and Pitcher of the Year in 2012, he signed with the Yankees. 

* he made his MLB debut with the Yanks in 2019

* he stayed with the Yankees until June 2021 before being designated for assignment

* then it was to the Tampa Bay Rays and Washington Nationals for the rest of the 2021 season, all of which he spent in Triple-A

* his 2022 season saw him go from Seattle to San Francisco to the L.A. Angels back to Seattle, for a total of 50 Major League games and a whole bunch of Triple-A games

* still with Seattle, he started the season in Triple-A (Tacoma) before being called up June 1

For his career, Ford has a .212 batting average and .725 OPS. What he can do, though, is hit home runs.

In fact, Ford has 476 career at-bats and 27 home runs, as well as 18 doubles. This season, he has seven home runs, two doubles and 10 singles in 68 at-bats.

Ford has caught fire of late for the Mariners, who are right around the .500 mark. For his part, Ford has been on an 8-for-15 run, and he crushed a shot into the Bay in the Mariners' July 4 game at San Francisco. 

That's not a bad birthday present. 

Hopefully Ford is in the Majors to stay now. TB wishes he had an easy way to look up how many players stick with it through the ups and downs that Ford has had. It's a real testament to how strong his character is, and how much he loves to play baseball.