Steve Aschburner was a young baseball fan in 1970. There were some Frank Quilici cousins living nearby in the Chicago suburbs and this caused Asch to take a special interest in an Associated Press story written on Quilici that appeared in a Chicago newspaper.
Frank's death on Monday led Aschburner to search for that story — in which Quilici relayed to a reporter that a hot streak with the bat could be tied to changing his head position to account for the size of his nose.
Remember, this was 1970, political correctness had not been invented, and it was open season on nose jokes in the AP story that Aschburner forwarded to me:
FRANK QUILICI of the Twins is looking around the other side of his nose now and getting more base hits; at least, that's how he explains his .370 batting surge since the All-Star break.
The usually light-hitting Quilici, 31, who sported a .211 major league average before this year, explains how he's started facing the pitchers to get around his "Italian nose.''
Quilici said: "I was in the batting cage when a piece of dirt blew into my left eye. I lifted my hand to get the dirt out, and when I covered the eye, I discovered I couldn't see the pitcher any more.
"I'd been playing baseball all these years and at least part of the time I've been trying to hit with one eye. I couldn't see out of the right eye because my nose was in the way …
"I might potentially be a .400 hitter. I decided I had to get a nose job or a new batting stance."
