Who Can It Be Now?
Lynn Nolan Ryan was born on January 31, 1947, in Refugio, Texas. It's the same Nolan Ryan as the one who set a record for most no-hitters in a career, as celebrated on Card #5. As mentioned in the extensive SABR biography for him, Nolan grew up in Alvin, Texas, from the age of six weeks old because his father was transferred to the Hastings plant for Stanton Oil Company.
From the time that Nolan was a sophomore in high school, he was his team's star pitcher. He had wildness issues -- the SABR biography mentions a game in which he hit the leadoff batter in the head (cracking the batting helmet) and the second batter in the arm (breaking the boy's arm) before the third batter had to be shamed into standing in the batter's box for three perfunctory swings and a strikeout.
Despite the schoolboy stardom, however, Ryan was not drafted until the 12th round of the first-ever June Amateur Draft in 1965. The SABR biography appears to blame this drop on a bad outing that Ryan had in front of scouts from the Mets in May of 1965 -- an outing that took place "less than a day after Coach Watson had death-marched the Yellow Jacket team through endless wind sprints over a perceived lack of concentration in practice." Maybe so. Ryan had to choose, though, between the University of Texas and the New York Mets.
He chose the Mets.
Ryan signed immediately and headed to Marion in the Appalachian League. Baseball Reference does not have strikeout totals for Ryan that year; the Baseball Cube does. In his 78 innings, Ryan racked up 56 walks (6.46 per 9 innings) and 115 Ks (13.27 per 9) while yielding 61 hits (7.04 per 9). In other words, a fairly typical Nolan Ryan season in many respects.
His 1966 season was his breakout year in the Mets system. His overall stats between Greenville in Single-A and Williamsport in Double-A was 17-4, 2.36 ERA, 202 innings, 118 hits allowed (5.3 per nine innings), 127 walks (6.25/9 IP), and 272 strikeouts (13.38/9 IP). The year earned him a late-season callup to the Mets in September, where the 19-year-old got knocked around some. The first hitter he faced was Atlanta's Pat Jarvis, whom he promptly struck out. He closed his first ever inning pitched by striking out future Hall of Famer Eddie Mathews looking., though he did give up a home run to Joe Torre in his next inning of work.
1967 was a lost year for Ryan due to arm trouble. A team doctor recommended surgery, but Ryan refused to go under the knife. He chose to rehabilitate his arm on his own, and he did so successfully. When he came to spring training in 1968, he was ready to go and ended up sticking with the big-league club out of spring training. Quickly, baseball men around the league sang his praises -- with then St. Louis manager and later Hall of Famer Red Schoendienst calling Ryan, "the fastest I've ever seen. Period." Ralph Kiner said, "I haven't seen anybody like him since Bob Feller." Catcher Jerry Grote claimed that Ryan "is faster than Koufax. He's got twice the speed of Juan Marichal." I don't doubt he threw hard, but twice the speed of Marichal? That would have put him solidly in the 160 to 190 MPH range.
In any event, Ryan pitched a total of 5 seasons for the Mets, finishing with a losing record but earning his one and only World Series ring in 1969. Indeed, But, by the end of the 1971 season, Ryan had suffered with a number of various ailments and interruptions in his Mets career. When he wasn't sidelined by repetitive blisters -- solved, apparently, by pickle brine bought at a Bronx delicatessen -- he would have to report for Army Reserve drills. Even the article from 1968 singing his praises noted that in the spring of 1968, Ryan had a tender biceps, an inflamed elbow, and blisters.
As a 1980 news article about Ryan quoted a New York Times article as stating, "He has been on the military list and the disabled list more often than he has been on the Mets rooming list." As a result, the Mets gave up on the young fireballer and traded him with Frank Estrada, Don Rose, and Leroy Stanton to the California Angels on December 10, 1971, in exchange for Jim Fregosi. The trade was new GM Harry Dalton's second major move of the off-season, and it turned out to be a winner for the Angels. After all, Fregosi played 146 games in Flushing; Ryan threw four no-hitters in Anaheim.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Ryan was not as good in his years in New York as he would become later. After all, he was just about to turn 25 years old when the Mets traded him. From 1972 through 1979, Ryan pitched with two good (1978 and 1979) and otherwise, with bad teams for Gene Autry. He still fought through some injuries, having bone chips removed from his elbow in the offseason before the 1976 season.
Ryan had some incredible statistical seasons with California -- 1974 in particular stands out. In that season, Ryan went 22-16 with a 2.89 ERA. He led the league in innings with 332-2/3, in walks issued with 202, in strikeouts with 367, in batters faced with 1392, in fewest hits per nine innings with 6.0, and in strikeouts per nine innings with 9.9. In all, Ryan never had a season in California in which he walked fewer than 114 batters -- his lowest total was 114 in 1979. Despite incredibly low totals for hits allowed, he never had a WHIP (Walks plus hits divided by innings pitched) below 1.137 (his first year in California, 1972, when he allowed a miniscule 5.3 hits/9 IP).
During those years, however, Ryan was an All-Star on 5 occasions. He did not pitch in the 1977 game, though, because he thought he should have been selected right off the bat. Instead, he refused to play in the game only after he was selected as an injury replacement for teammate Frank Tanana -- a move which angered Billy Martin. When Ryan was named to be the starter for the 1979 game against Steve Carlton, Ryan was quoted as saying that Martin had said that Ryan wouldn't have been on the team in 1978 even if Nolan were 40-0 -- so Bob Lemon being the Yankees manager helped Nolan become an all-star once again.
After the 1979 season -- a season which finished with Ryan having pitched one game in the ALCS -- Ryan became a free agent. Despite receiving significant interest from a number of teams, including the New York Yankees, the Texas Rangers, and the Milwaukee Brewers (!), he signed what was, at the time, the richest contract in American team sports with his hometown team, the Houston Astros, for a four-year, $4.5 million deal with a $1 million signing bonus and an additional $250,000 payment in 1984 with an option for 1984 at $1 million. After the initial 5 years deal, Nolan inked for another four years with the Astros -- keeping him with the club through his age-41 season.
The signing was not universally loved. In an article from the first ever issue of Inside Sports, now-ESPN loudmouth Tony Kornheiser wrote an article about Ryan and his big contract. A number of people were quoted being critical of Ryan. Jim Palmer, for one:
Nolan's got so much more natural ability than the rest of us. He's like a child prodigy. You can't even comprehend what it's like to be that talented ... [but] he tries to intimidate people. I try to get them out. If you're going to lose, it's sure great to strike out 380 guys. I'm not saying he isn't a winner. Maybe his niche is 383 strikeouts. Mine is winning two-thirds of my games.
That's easy for Palmer and his incredible team defense to say. Ryan even picked up on this in his response to that barb:
Don't tell me that Jim Palmer says he wouldn't throw a 3-2 curveball if he could throw 98; he wouldn't throw it down the middle if he could throw 98 -- and anyway, he couldn't know what it's like because he can't throw 98. He never stood on that mound with a bad team and no runs and knew if he threw one bad pitch he'd be beat. He was never in that position. Jim Palmer's always pitched for the best infield in baseball, and his team scored runs.
Ryan made another 2 all-star teams in Houston -- in 1981 and again in 1985. He pitched for generally good teams in Houston, but he finished his 9 Astro seasons with a 106-94 record -- a .530 winning percentage. In Houston, though, he was better able to harness his walks down to a far more manageable 3.9 BB/9 IP, which was 1.5 BB/9 lower than his totals in California.
If Ryan had quit after the 1988 season, he probably still would have made the Hall of Fame. By that time, he had racked up 4775 strikeouts and a 273-253 lifetime record. Instead, Ryan signed on with the Texas Rangers at the age of 42. He made one final all-star team in 1989, and he picked up another 51 wins -- pushing his total to 324. At the age of 42, he led the American League in strikeouts with 301 and in wild pitches with 19. He gave up the fewest hits per nine innings in the American League in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and he led the American League in K/9 in each of those three seasons at the ages of 42, 43, and 44 respectively. He did his pitching in 1990 while fighting a stress fracture in his lower back and a sore thumb injured by a car door being slammed on it.
He finally retired at the age of 46, after a 1993 season marred by ineffectiveness, wildness, and pain. He was then inducted into the Hall of Fame with Robin Yount and George Brett in 1999.
Mustache Check: Nope -- I've never seen a photo of Nolan with a mustache, and this one is no different.
Trivial Pursuit
Nolan Ryan's page at the Baseball Hall of Fame notes that Ryan is the only pitcher to have struck out the side on 9 pitches in both the American League and the National League.
He did it in the National League, says the HOF, on April 19, 1968. Unfortunately, Baseball Reference does not have counts available for this game, so it could have been the first inning or the third inning in which Ryan performed the feat against the Dodgers.
His 9-pitch strikeout inning came in the American League on July 9, 1972, against the Boston Red Sox. Considering that Ryan pitched a one-hitter (1 walk, 16 strikeouts, game score of 100) against the Red Sox, that probably should not be a surprise. Once again, without any information on the ball/strike count, it is impossible to know whether that 9-pitch inning came in the second or the third inning.
Incidentally, Ryan holds the record for most walks issued in a career, most strikeouts by a pitcher, and for the longest career in baseball, appearing in 27 seasons.
Louisiana Cookin'
A Texan like Ryan would bristle visibly at having his cooking abilities highlighted under a category named for another state. But, when the recipe for Nolan Ryan's "Secret Barbecue Sauce" is published a newspaper article in 1983, is there any other place to put it? The ingredients include onion, lemon, beer, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, and bottled pre-made barbecue sauce (which seems like cheating to me).
But that was 1983. Now, Nolan has his beef products available for purchase under the brand of Nolan Ryan's All Natural Beef. His website includes "Signature Recipes" which all call for beef, of course. Four 20 oz. steaks can be yours for the low, low price of just $74.99 plus shipping. Then, when you get those steaks, be sure to put some of his Signature Seasoning on it -- just $29.97 from Amazon!
The World According to Garp
Not only is Nolan selling food products, he's also writing cookbooks. In May, Little Brown & Co. published The Nolan Ryan Beef & Barbecue Cookbook: Recipes from a Texas Kitchen. It has gotten good reviews on Amazon, though I'm not sure whether those recipes vary from his website's signature recipes.
Ryan has written at least 3 autobiographies. He combined with Harvey Frommer to write Throwing Heat: The Autobiography of Nolan Ryan in 1988. In 1992, he collaborated with Jerry Jenkins to write Miracle Man: Nolan Ryan: The Autobiography (a book title that looks like an SAT comparison question gone awry). Finally, in 1999 and to capitalize on his election to the Hall of Fame, Ryan worked with T.R. Sullivan and Mickey Herskowitz to write Nolan Ryan: The Road to Cooperstown.
He also lent his name and received authorship credit on a book written in 1991 by Jim Rosenthal and Ryan's then-pitching coach, Tom House, called Nolan Ryan's Pitcher's Bible: The Ultimate Guide to Power, Precision and Long-Term Performance.
Ryan is credited with writing forewords for two books on top of all that -- Working at the Ballpark: The Fascinating Lives of Baseball People from Peanut Vendors and Broadcasters to Players and Managers and Once They Were Angels, a history of the Angels franchise.
Finally, in 1993, his name is on a book called Kings of the Hill: An Irreverent Look at the Men on the Mound. I'm less sure on this book being his, since Amazon's summary of the book is, "An award-winning journalist probes the war of intimidation waged by American Express CEO James D. Robinson against banker Edmond Safra, as he used the resources of an entire corporation against one man. Reprint."
Sounds pretty irreverent to me.
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
There isn't much you can say about Nolan Ryan that hasn't been said before. Longevity, stubbornness, a mediocre win-loss record, control issues, a three-true-outcomes pitcher -- all of them are true.
Now, some of the things written about him, though, may not be true. I hate to give this guy any web traffic, but this blog post from TODAY sounds like the biggest bunch of spurious guilty-until-proven-innocent crap I've seen in a while. Basically, it's an exercise in two plus two equals seven (five is too close to correct).
The summary is the first sentence of the article: "Nolan Ryan could have been using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PED), not just late in his career, but also in the 1970s."
Proof?
Tom House was Ryan's pitching coach in the early 1990s. House used steroids in the 1970s, as he admitted in 2005. House estimated that six or seven pitchers per team were at least experimenting with steroids or human growth hormones. Ryan pitched into his mid-40s. He threw fastballs by players years after other players his age had retired. Ryan's SABR biography does not mention the word steroid, nor does it "even . . . refute the idea that Ryan used PED." Ryan was Jose Canseco's teammate in 1992 and 1993.
Summary: "How come no one challenges Nolan Ryan? He played long enough to have used steroids. His longevity is suspicious. . . . Ryan's final seasons leading the league in strike outs [sic] were at the ages of 40, 41, 42, 43. His previous age as league strike out [sic] leader was 32. Ryan went seven years without being strike out [sic] king until he recovered the touch at age 40. Ryan pitched a record seven no hitters at these ages: 26, 26, 27, 28, 34, 43, 44. This anecdotal evidence is completely ignored. Did Nolan Ryan use banned and/or illegal stuff to enhance his performance? I have no idea but I find it odd that the steroid zealots have such narrow vision."
My short response: Shouldn't you have more of an idea than "no idea" before you start throwing out your "anecdotal evidence" that has been "completely ignored"? I have no idea whether Ryan used steroids, HGH, Viagra, Valium, Penicillin, or injected himself with the blood of 15-year-old virgins, and neither does anyone else other than Nolan Ryan and perhaps his family and friends.
The man was fanatical about working out, lifting weights, throwing all the time, and staying in good shape. Find someone who says, positively, that Ryan took steroids before you start throwing darts. I mean, if Canseco knew Ryan took steroids, you know that Nolan's name would have been the first one on the cover of the book. It wasn't.
I've probably wasted too much energy and time thinking about that post, but the leaps of illogic are incredible.
On a brighter note, if you are interested in supporting Nolan Ryan's charity to assist the city of Alvin, Texas -- and the Nolan Ryan Exhibit Center at the Alvin Community College -- then check out the foundation here. Part of the fundraising efforts consist of selling autographed balls and jerseys -- and the balls are only $80. Considering the costs for autographs at the recent National Collectors Convention, that is a reasonable cost.
Who Can It Be Now?
Steven Curtis Henderson was born on November 18, 1952 in Houston, Texas. Henderson grew up in the Third Ward neighborhood in Houston and attended Jack Yates Senior High School, from which he graduated in 1971. He was not drafted straight out of high school, so he attended nearby Prairie View A&M University.
After his junior year, the Cincinnati Reds drafted Henderson with the 23rd pick of the 5th Round of the 1974 June Draft. Henderson signed and was assigned to Billings in the Pioneer League. He spent the requisite one season there and moved up to Single-A Tampa for the 1975 season. According to the Tampa Sports History blog from 2009, Henderson met his wife in Tampa that year and thereafter made Tampa his home.
Despite not hitting for any power in the Florida State League -- as was the case for most players -- the Reds promoted Henderson to Trois-Rivieres in the Eastern League in 1976. Henderson showed off both his speed and his hitting ability there (I'd call it French Canadian Pittsburgh, but not having been to Trois-Rivieres, I don't want to insult one or the other city with the comparison) -- slashing at .312/.384/.504 with 24 doubles, 11 triples, 17 homeruns, 61 RBI, 44 SB (17 CS), and 55 BB in 571 plate appearances.
That performance was good enough to earn Henderson an invitation to spring training in 1977. He played well there and impressed Sparky Anderson, whom the AP quoted as saying, "That guy in centerfield is going to be some player." Then again, Sparky Anderson promised us in the mid-1980s that Chris Pittaro was the "best young infielder" that Sparky had ever seen. Still, Henderson kept his head about him, saying that, even if he had been informed that he had made the club that year, he would "probably ask them to send me down [because] I want to play every day, not sit on the bench."
Henderson waited in Triple-A Indianapolis for only about two months before he received the call that he would be playing in the Major Leagues. What he didn't expect, though, was that the call to the majors would come from the New York Mets. Henderson was a key part of the "Midnight Massacre" trade that sent Tom Seaver to the Cincinnati Reds on June 15, 1977.
The trade gave Henderson the opportunity to play every day for the Mets as their leftfielder, and he took advantage. In his rookie year of 1977, he hit .297/.372/.480 with 12 HR, 65 RBI, and 6 SB in 398 plate appearances. Perhaps if he had been with the Mets the entire season, he might have racked up enough stats to overtake the Montreal Expos new star outfielder Andre Dawson in the Rookie of the Year balloting. Instead, Henderson was edged out by the Hawk by one vote -- a 10-9 total, with the Padres' Gene Richards getting 4 votes and Houston's Floyd Bannister garnering the final vote.
Perhaps 1977 set the bar too high, but Henderson struggled some in 1978. In nearly twice as many plate appearances, Henderson hit 2 fewer HR and drove in the exact same number of runs. He did steal more bases and hit nearly twice as many doubles, but his .266/.333/.399 slash line had to be disappointing to the Mets.
Henderson's numbers improved in 1979, but an ankle injury shelved him in late July for the rest of the seasons except for a pinch-hitting appearance on September 25. It was especially poor timing for Henderson because his July was one of his best runs as a major leaguer -- .369/.398/.553 for that month of July.
By 1980, the Mets figured out that Henderson was never going to be a superstar. He would provide a solid bat, average or slightly below average fielding, and a little speed, but he was never going to be the star that the Mets hoped he would be when they made the trade for Seaver. For his part, Henderson said in 1980 that he had "never been able to understand why [he] was the one they said made the deal. It doesn't make sense."
After the 1980 season, the Payson family put the New York Mets up for sale. The Paysons were much maligned for their cheapness in dealing with their players -- such as Seaver and another victim of the 1977 "Midnight Massacre," Dave Kingman. So, when publisher Doubleday & Co. bought the club in 1980 (with Fred Wilpon as a 1% owner), the impression was that the new owners wanted to show fans that they weren't the cheapskates that the previous owners were. Doubleday wanted to undo the harm.
As a result, one of the first moves the club made was to send Steve Henderson and cash to the Chicago Cubs in return for Dave Kingman. Noted Seaver troll Dick Young was not impressed, as the first paragraph of his syndicated column on March 8, 1981, makes clear:
Henderson for Kingman is a bad deal. It is a bad deal because Dave Kingman is a bad ballplayer. He also is not a nice person, but that's only part of it. Most of you, the fans, never will be exposed to an unpleasant person he is and therefore need not accept Dave Kingman on that basis. You will judge him on that basis. You will judge him on what he does for the Mets, as compared to what Steve Henderson and $100,000 would have done for the Mets. I'm afraid it will be a minus, a big minus.
The next several paragraphs then griped about Kingman being a jerk, being injured all the time, being selfish, and being a bad writer. Young then compared Henderson to Kingman:
In Steve Henderson, the Mets lose a fine ballplayer and a fine person. I don't think there has been another major league trade involving two men of such contrasting character. Steve Henderson has been playing tense during his years with the Mets. He reminds me of Bill Robinson when he was young. Bill was a talented young man but intense. He failed to cut it with the Yankees, who traded Clete Boyer for him, but at age 29, Bill Robinson started a career that was to span nine highly worthy years with the Phils and Pirates, and he's still at it. Steve Henderson can be like that.
I wouldn't call that a great comparison in retrospect -- the two are not all that comparable nor were they at the time each was traded -- but you see what Young is getting at, and he was at least partially correct -- Kingman was an unpleasant person who really only cared about getting his homers.
Enough feeding the troll. Henderson spent two years with the Cubs before the Cubs decided that they had seen enough, sending Henderson to the Seattle Mariners for pitcher Rich Bordi. Henderson played two complete seasons for the Mariners in 1983 and 1984 before signing with the Oakland Athletics as a free agent -- perhaps Oakland thought they could fool their fans into not realizing that the Henderson in the outfield was Steve and not Rickey, whom the A's had traded during the 1984 offseason to the Yankees.
If that was the goal, it was not reached. Steve played a total of just 142 games over 3 years with the A's. His time in Oakland was interrupted for a while in 1986 when Oakland released him and the White Sox signed him. But, he never played in the majors for the White Sox. Then, in 1988, Henderson hooked up with his hometown Houston Astros for one final season. After that year at home, Henderson hung up his playing spikes and called it a big-league career.
Mustache Check: Steve's fu-manchu mustache isn't much more developed than the wispy stylings of Biff Pocoroba, but he's got one.
Trivial Pursuit
It's not much, but it's all I've got: Henderson was the first Prairie View A&M player to be drafted in the Major League Baseball draft. He's probably not the A&M player who had the best career though. That honor would likely belong to Cecil Cooper, who was not drafted.
A Few Minutes With Tony L.
Henderson spent 1982 in the National League with the Cubs, so I didn't think too much of him at that point. When Henderson was in the AL, though, he absolutely loved to face Milwaukee pitching. Even though it is a fairly small sample -- just 78 plate appearances -- Henderson owned the Brewers to the tune of .351/.385/.568 with 7 doubles, 3 HR, and 14 RBI. I mean, considering his lifetime stats in the AL were .280/.346/.422, I would call that "owning" the Brewers.
After his retirement from the Astros, Henderson played a year in the Senior Baseball league. He played and coached some in winter ball as well. Then, in 1990, he was hired on by Pittsburgh to be a minor league hitting instructor. In the Pirates system, he met up in Triple-A with a manager named Terry Collins. When Collins was hired in 1994 to be the Houston Astros manager, Henderson went with him and coached the outfield and baserunning.
After Houston, he hooked on with the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays as a roving minor hitting instructor. He spent 1998 in Tampa as the club's first ever hitting instructor. That didn't go all that well, but he stayed with the Rays back in the minor leagues from 2000 through 2005.
The Rays then "called him back up" in 2006, where he stayed as the hitting coach until 2009, after which he was fired and dispatched by the Rays. A blogger on SB Nation said at the time that Henderson might have been let go because of B.J. Upton's failure to develop as a hitter.
Whatever the reason, he left Tampa and joined the Philadelphia Phillies organization in 2010. He served as the Phillies minor league outfield and baserunning coordinator in 2010 and as a minor league hitting coordinator in 2011-12. In 2012, Henderson was named as the hitting coach for the Phillies and still serves in that role today under former Cubs teammate Ryne Sandberg.
Who Can It Be Now?
Biff Benedict Pocoroba was born on July 25, 1953, in Burbank, California. Biff -- that's his actual first name -- attended Canoga Park High School in Canoga Park, California, and graduated from there in 1971. The Atlanta Braves drafted Biff in the 17th round of the 1971 Draft with the 401st pick overall, and Biff signed immediately.
The Braves sent the 17-year-old to Wytheville, Virginia, in the Appalachian League. He performed well enough there -- .298/.360/.427 in 136 plate appearances -- so he was sent to Single-A Greenwood the next season. The Braves were not patient souls in those days, so Biff got a 1 game call up to Triple-A as a 19-year-old late in the 1972 season. Biff then spent both 1973 and 1974 at Double-A Savannah learning how to hit.
In spring training of 1975, Pocoroba was going to be given "a long look" in spring training because he was a switch hitter and could handle pitchers well. He attracted attention that spring for, as the Baseball Library says (no citation, I couldn't find anything to prove or disprove either) "when he threw out 11 straight runners in 1975 spring training." He made the team, but then he did not play for 18 games -- making his debut as a late-inning substitution on April 25, 1975.
Pocoroba played sparingly for two seasons for the Braves. As much as the Braves success over the past twenty-five years was built in part thanks to Ted Turner's purse strings and his national cable plan for TBS, the club was a mismanaged cesspool in the mid-to-late 1970s. Part of this mismanagement was not having a clue as to player development. Almost certainly, Pocoroba would have benefited by playing more than 1 game in 1972 in Triple-A. He certainly would have benefited by playing regularly in Triple-A rather than backing up journeyman Vic Correll in 1975 and 1976.
Finally, in 1977, Biff got his break and played reasonably regularly for a terrible Braves team that finished 61-101. Even with regular playing time, however, there was trouble on the horizon for Biff that came with the September call-ups in 1976 and again in 1977. That trouble was named Dale Bryan Murphy, who was an enormous catcher drafted out of high school with the fifth pick overall in 1974.
The Braves, though, recognized that Murphy might not be a catcher in the future. They apparently were happy with Pocoroba and his very good .290/.394/.445 hitting as a switch hitter in 1977 and, as a result, moved Murphy to first base. For his part, Biff stirred things up a bit.
He demanded a trade to the West Coast. He said he did this because the Braves refused to allow him to play winter baseball. The Braves responded that Biff just wanted money. I think the Braves were correct here. Nowhere in the newspapers of the day do we see any further Pocoroba-agitation for a trade once Biff got his 6-year, $750,000 contract in May of 1978. That contract also gave Biff a no-trade clause, allowing him to veto any trades anywhere that he did not want to go.
1978 has to be considered both Biff's greatest and worst seasons. It was his greatest season because he made the All-Star Game. Some would say that he was one of the worst All-Stars ever. If I had to guess, I'd say that the reason he made the team and got in the game was the fact that Phil Niekro made the team as well, the manager wanted to have him pitch, and none of the other catchers wanted to catch the knuckler (check out the ninth inning).
It was his worst season ever because 1978 was when the rotator cuff and shoulder problems that would plague him for the rest of his career -- and sap him of the ability to switch hit -- required surgery for the first time. I'm not sure if this mention of shoulder surgery in 1979 is another surgery or is still the same one, but in any case, the injury lingered.
Biff was limited to 28 games -- 46 plate appearances -- in 1979 and to 70 games and 96 plate appearances in 1980. He appeared in 57, 56, and 55 games in 1981, 1982, and 1983 respectively and, in those 168 games, he hit a catcher-appropriate .240/.315/.320. By this point, Pocoroba had been supplanted by Bruce Benedict as the starting catcher. Benedict got his chance in 1979 when Pocoroba was fighting the shoulder issues, and Bruce never relinquished that position.
Pocoroba made it to 1984 -- that final year of his 6-year contract from 1978 -- with the Braves. He made 4 appearances that year and went o-for-4 with 2 walks. He didn't make it to the end of April with the team, as the Braves released him on April 24, 1984. And that was the end of Biff's baseball career.
Mustache Check: It's the wispy 'stache of a younger man, but Biff's certainly trying hard enough here to qualify.
Family Ties
Biff's brother Joe Pocoroba played two seasons in Rookie League baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1978 and for the Atlanta Braves in 1979. Coincidentally, Joe was also drafted in 1978 in the 17th Round of the June Draft -- the same round as Biff was in 1971.
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
Sure, I knew who Biff Pocoroba was in 1982. A name like that is nearly unforgettable. I was partial to Matt Sinatro, to be fair, but Biff had that wily veteran edge about him.
Before I get into frivolity, there is one negative I found about Biff -- he apparently was arrested in DeKalb County, Georgia, in February of 1997 for Assault with the Intent to Commit a Crime. I have no case disposition on this, no idea what happened, and no idea whether this amounted to anything. I can't even find a news story for it.
Let's be honest -- Biff Pocoroba was not a star, but because of his name most people seem to remember him. I recall that the Rotisserie Baseball Guide -- or some other fantasy guide -- used the term "pocorobas" in lieu of "dollars" for the units one bids in a fantasy baseball auction.
Since his time with the Braves, Biff has become a punchline of sorts. Terrible songs have been written with his name as the title (terrible is my opinion; you might like that dreck). Here's the live version, in a high school classroom. One guy thought that Biff had NOT gotten enough remembrance for his time in the bigs and wrote about him.
And at least one (though, definitely, more than one) website has inducted him into their Name Hall of Fame.
I mean, this blogger even dedicated a post to Biff because two people out of 12 named BIff as the first baseball player to come to mind.
Even 14 years ago -- in 2000, when Lycos was still a search engine that people used -- one newspaper headline writer used Biff as a comic foil. The headline: "What about Biff Pocoroba?" The story: who were the top 10 athletes whose names are most often typed into search engines. By the way, it should come as no surprise that the answer to that question in 2000 was "Anna Kournikova."
I am not entirely sure where Biff Pocoroba is these days. For a few years, Biff had started a company called Sausage World in Lilburn, Georgia (which is in Gwinnett County outside of Atlanta by about 25 miles). The problem is that the companies I found tied to a Pocoroba have been administratively dissolved by the Georgia Secretary of State's Office for failing to keep their corporate registrations up to date and paid for in full. Plus, Sausage World appears to be owned now by a guy known as Sergio Pace.
There is a Biff Pocoroba who has an active United States general freight carrier operating license who is based in Georgia. There is also a Biff Pocoroba on LinkedIn with ties to a company called RB Enterprises. The two entities I found in Georgia with that name either have had their corporate registrations voided or are slated to be dissolved.
I mean, I'm pretty sure that Biff Pocoroba still lives in the Greater Atlanta area. One "people finder" site has him living in Snellville, Georgia -- also in Gwinnett County -- as does this one.
In any event, Biff is remembered today for being Biff Pocoroba. It's a tough name to forget.
Who Can It Be Now?
Matthew Lon Keough was born in Pomona, California, on July 3, 1955, and grew up in Southern California. He attended high school at Corona del Mar High School in Newport Beach, California, and graduated in 1973. He was drafted immediately out of high school by the Oakland Athletics as a third baseman in the 7th round of the 1973 June Amateur Draft, and he signed with the A's after the 1973 season had ended.
As a result, the A's assigned Keough to Burlington in the Midwest League in 1974. Remember, he was drafted as a third baseman. The A's then moved him to shortstop when he reported for duty. Shortstop was the position Keough played in 1974 and 1975. His first experience in Single-A was terrible -- slashing at .198/.272/.291 -- and that kept him at Single-A for 1975.
He was assigned to Modesto in the California League, and he turned in a respectable season there, as he finished 13th in AVG (.303/.370/.476) as a 19-to-20-year-old who was still young for the league. Keough had two or three issues, though, that impeded his progress as a shortstop. The first was that he was a really, really bad fielder at shortstop. In 1975, for example, though he hit well, he actually made more errors (56) than double plays (55) to finish with a fielding percentage of .897 over 110 games. The second, related issue was that the A's had a prototypical good-fielding, light-hitting 1970s shortstop -- Rob Picciolo -- one level ahead of Keough both in 1975 and 1976. The third issue was that in the 1970s, shortstops were not supposed to be 6'-3" tall. Cal Ripken Jr. came along in the early 1980s to dispel that myth (along with Robin Yount coming to prominence), but in 1975 that was not an option.
As a result, in 1976, Keough took to the mound for two innings in two games for the Chattanooga Lookouts. He had some success in those two innings and the A's must have thought that it couldn't hurt to give the kid a chance. So, in 1977 and once again at Double-A Chattanooga, Keough became a starting pitcher. He had success there -- 9-12 record, 3.81 ERA, 67 BB, 153 K in 175 innings -- so the A's gave him a September call-up in 1977 and threw him into the rotation immediately for a team going nowhere (finishing 63-98 is going nowhere) fast.
Thus, with one minor league season of pitching under his belt, Keough did not return to the minor leagues until 1983, when injuries had caught up to him. But that is getting ahead of the story.
After making the big-league team directly out of spring training in 1978, Keough started out like a house on fire. His first half was extremely strong -- 6-4 record, 2.16 ERA, 104 innings, 61 Ks (42 BBs), and just 2 HR allowed. In fact, his start was so strong that he made the AL All-Star team in 1978 and was the first pitcher used out of the bullpen in relief of Jim Palmer, who got rocked in his 2-2/3 innings. The league caught up to Keough in the second half of the season as scouting reports on him started making the rounds, though, and Keough also suffered from a knee injury. The numbers reflected these problems as his second half was abysmal -- 2-11 record, 4.44 ERA, 43 BBs against 47 Ks, and 7 HR allowed.
That second half was a warning sign of things to come in 1979. Keough started out that season historically bad -- 14 straight losses from Opening Day and 18 losses in a row (dating back to the previous September) bad. Rather than send him to the bullpen or to the minors, though, the A's simply carried him on their roster without using him from August 8 through September 5. That September day saw him defeat the Milwaukee Brewers in a complete game pitched before about as many people as I graduated college with -- 1,772 people chanted his name. In the game story, in fact, Keough admitted that he had brought in 10 of those people from his home in Newport Beach. So the paid attendance was even lower.
1980 was probably Keough's best year in the major leagues. The A's had hired Billy Martin to manage the team, and Billy's philosophy on starting pitching was that it was best to let your starter pitch for as long as possible. At the age of 24, Keough started 32 games, finished 20 of them, pitched 250 innings, and finished with a 16-13 record, a 2.92 ERA (though he was very lucky -- FIP of 4.22), with 94 BBs and 121 Ks in that time.
That was the Billy Martin rotator cuff grinder for you. Keough had an incredible 25 starts out of 32 in which he faced 30 batters or more. He threw a 14-inning complete game on May 17; unsurprisingly, when he pitched again on May 22, he got lit up for 7 runs (6 earned) in 3-1/3 innings against the Royals. Two starts later -- after another complete game -- the Rangers smacked Keough around for 7 runs (6 earned) in 2-1/3 innings. As punishment, Billy put Keough on the mound the next day for 2 more innings against the Indians.
Any pitcher subjected to the number of innings/pitches thrown that Keough was in 1980 becomes a ticking time bomb in many respects. It's not a matter of if the guy will get hurt, but when. In 1981, Keough and the rest of his Oakland cohorts were subjected to the same treatment as in 1980. Keough made 19 starts and completed 10 games that season. But, he started having shoulder pain that year -- pain which kept him out of the AL West Divisional Series against the Royals. Keough was the backup to Rick Langford for Game 3 of the ALDS, but Langford was able to pitch and close out the series sweep. Instead, Keough pitched in Game 3 of the ALCS and took the loss when the Yankees finished off their series sweep.
In 1982, Keough's shoulder problems continued, but they did not keep him from pitching -- albeit poorly (5.72 ERA, 5.88 FIP, 1.6 HR/9, 4.3 BB/9, 3.2 K/9). 1983 did not look much better, and Keough found himself moving across the country at the June trade deadline to pitch for the New York Yankees in exchange for Marshall Brant, Ben Callahan, and cash. He spent 1983 with the Yankees and 1984 in Double-A Nashville before going under the knife for rotator cuff surgery for the first time in October of 1984.
His rehabilitation took a while. He spent 1985 in Triple-A in the Cardinals organization. In 1986, though, he made the Chicago Cubs as a non-roster player. He stayed with the Cubs for just over two months before they cut him in June. He signed with the Astros thereafter, pitched some for the Astros in Triple-A, and then pitched for the Astros out of the bullpen after being called up in August.
The Astros cut Keough after the season. That did not end his career, though, as Keough spent four years pitching for the Hanshin Tigers in the Japanese Central League. After the 1990 season, however, he had to undergo a second rotator cuff surgery and missed the 1991 season.
He was a non-roster invitee to the California Angels spring training camp in 1992 when his life was altered. Keough was sitting in the third-base dugout when San Francisco Giants outfielder John Patterson lined a foul ball into the dugout during the first inning. Keough was struck above his right ear and had to be removed on a stretcher. He underwent an emergency craniotomy (removal of a portion of the skull) after a brain scan revealed an epidural hematoma -- a pool of blood or blood clot inside the skull. He lived, but that was the end of his baseball career.
Mustached Check: Matt has a mustache here. He still has it in his mugshots in more recent times.
Family Ties
Keough came from a baseball family. His father, Marty, played 11 seasons in the major leagues for the Red Sox, Reds, Braves, Senators, Cubs, and Indians and later became a scout. Matt's uncle Joe Keough played for the A's, the Royals, and the White Sox between 1968 and 1973.
From a more recent generation, Matt's son Shane was drafted by Oakland in the 26th Round of the 2005 June Draft and played four seasons in the Oakland minor league system. Matt's youngest son Colton was drafted by the Seattle Mariners in the 49th Round of the 2010 June Draft but did not play.
Freeze-Frame
One of my least favorite reality television series is on Bravo -- all those "real" housewives shows. I really felt bad for Keough's career ending the way it did until I found out that Keough and his now-ex-wife -- former Playboy Playmate Jeana Myers Tomasino Keough -- appeared on the original series of that horrible genre, The [allegedly] Real Housewives of Orange County. For what it's worth, it appears that Jeana grew up in my old stomping grounds, Milwaukee, and attended a high school (Whitnall HS) that my high school sports teams played against in our conference in the late 1980s.
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
As a fan, Keough was never a guy who really frightened me. The Brewers hit well against him -- .286/.345/.443 against in 14 games (despite that first win of 1979), 6-6 record, 4.54 ERA. It probably does not hurt that Keough's good years of 1980 and 1981 made me lump him in mentally with Rick Langford, Mike Norris, Brian Kingman, and Steve McCatty thanks to the meat grinder to which Billy Martin subjected them.
Outside of his Real Housewives fame, Matt Keough has an additional claim to fame. If you have read the book Moneyball, you may recall that Keough was employed by the Oakland A's and Billy Beane as a scout. In fact, in the movie version of the book, Keough is played by character actor Nick Searcy.
If you follow the Real Housewives stuff -- and I have to admit that I don't despite the fact that one of my law school classmates appears on the Atlanta version of that show -- then you probably know that Matt Keough has been in all kinds of trouble for his tendency to drive while drunk. He was charged on September 19, 2009, with Felony DUI. It was at least the second time he had been arrested for DUI. He was lucky, in that he was sentenced to only a year in prison (with 194 days credit for time served) and 3 years probation. He could have killed someone, frankly.
A number of folks -- his lawyer and his daughter, at least -- say that Keough became an alcoholic as a result of his brain injury in 1992. His lawyer, Rob Harley, said that Keough "lost all self-respect, his self-esteem" as a result. I won't disagree with that statement. I'm pretty sure that that had to be the case for him to sign off on that horrendous Housewives show.
Who Can It Be Now?
Dane Charles Iorg was born on May 11, 1950, in Eureka, California. He was a baseball star at Arcata High School and, as a result, was drafted in 16th Round of the 1968 June Draft by the Kansas City Royals.
That draft position was not enough to convince him to forego his opportunity to play collegiate baseball at Brigham Young University, however, so Iorg went to Salt Lake City instead and majored in P.E. For the Cougars, he played regularly all three years and drew attention his junior year when he finished his collegiate season in 1971 with a .401/.485/.685 slash line with 11 HR, 50 RBI, 4 SB, and 32 BB versus 10 K in 48 games. Indeed, in 1982, he was inducted into the BYU Hall of Fame.
The Philadelphia Phillies selected Iorg in with the 22nd pick of the 1st Round of the June Secondary Draft in 1971. Despite being Mormon, Dane does not appear to have gone on a Mormon mission as most 19-year-olds in the Latter Day Saints (LDS) Church do. Perhaps it was because he was a sports star, perhaps it was because his parents were not all that active in the LDS Church, or perhaps it was because of the Vietnam War getting kids drafted, but Iorg does not appear to have missed any time in his career for that. Indeed, after being drafted, Iorg went directly to Walla Walla in the Northwest League and hit the cover off the ball -- .367/.459/.542 in 333 plate appearances.
For whatever reason, it appears that Iorg was loaned or assigned to the Carolina League with a Texas affiliate in 1972 and, once again, he hit well. That earned him a short call-up to Double-A, where he struggled. After those initial struggles in 1972, though, his 1973 season was far better at Reading and it earned him a look at Triple-A in Toledo in 1974 in the International League. Iorg took a while to adjust there once again, and his career appeared to have stalled out between Double-A and Triple-A as of 1975.
In 1976, though, in Oklahoma City, Iorg found his batting stroke and hit .326/.408/.528. The problem was that Iorg was already 26 years old by 1976 and he did not even get a call-up to the major leagues off that strong Triple-A season. Iorg did receive a chance in spring training the next year, however, to make the team and he did so as an injury-replacement for regular 1B Richie Hebner. Once Hebner came back, Iorg went back to Triple-A.
The Phillies were in the heat of the 1977 pennant race, though, and wanted to get an upgrade for their outfield. As a result, the Phillies worked out a deal at the June 15 trade deadline with the St. Louis Cardinals, sending Rick Bosetti, Tom Underwood, and Iorg to St. Louis in exchange for Bake McBride and Steve Waterbury. Iorg spent a few weeks with the Cardinals Triple-A affiliate before getting the opportunity to serve as a left-handed pinch-hitter off the bench.
Iorg had a similar experience in 1978. He started as a lefty pinch-hitter early in the year, but he struggled in that role -- hitting .143/.211/.143 when he was sent back down to Triple-A at the end of May. The Cardinals gave Iorg a September call-up, though, and he started to hit the ball much better late in the year. As a result, 1978 -- at the age of 28 -- was the last time that Iorg spent anything more than a three-game injury rehabilitation stint in the minor leagues.
That's not to say he became a regular, but he did become a regular bat off the bench for manager Ken Boyer, and, later, Whitey Herzog starting in 1979 and ending in 1984, when his contract was sold to the Cardinals in-state cohorts the Kansas City Royals. He spent two years serving as a designated hitter/utilityman for the Royals before moving closer to home (well, not that close, but at least he was in the same state as Eureka) to San Diego to close out his career in 1986.
Iorg was a member of two World Series championship teams in 1982 with the Cardinals (more on that later) and 1985 with the Royals. Indeed, Iorg came back to haunt his former team in that 1985 World Series, blooping a hit with the bases loaded in Game 6 (after that horrendous call by Don Denkinger) to drive in two runs and win the game for the Royals.
Iorg retired from baseball after the 1986 season.
Mustache Check: I'm not sure -- does the LDS Church allow mustaches? They didn't let Dane grow one here.
Family Ties
If you were a fan of baseball in the 1980s, you knew that Dane's brother Garth played major league baseball also. More on him and his multiple baseball playing sons in a few hundred cards. What you might not know is that Dane's son Seth also played baseball at Brigham Young.
Dane was the oldest of three Iorg boys, and Garth was the youngest. The middle brother was Lee Iorg, and he also played baseball. He was in the New York Mets farm from 1974 through 1977, getting promoted to Triple-A Tidewater before his .197/.248/.291 hitting caught up to him and he was released.
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
Welcome to the biography for one of my two least favorite major league baseball players in all of the 1980s. It's not that Dane Iorg was a jerk -- I never met him. Nope. It's simpler than that: he absolutely destroyed the Brewers in the 1982 World Series.
In that Series, the designated hitter was used. At that time, the use of the DH alternated years, and Iorg served as the DH against right-handed pitching for the Cardinals. In the five games in which he played, Iorg went 9-for-17 with four doubles, a triple, an RBI, and four runs scored. He wasn't the MVP (Darrell Porter was) but Iorg was the guy who caught a hot streak at exactly the right time to sear himself into my brain as one of the most hated men in baseball.
I've gotten over it now -- I mean, it's been 32 years -- but it took a long time. Hell, I even hated Garth because of Dane.
Some former LDS members have called out guys like Dane and Dale Murphy for being Sabbath-breakers, never going on a mission, and otherwise having different rules apply to them as opposed to others in the church. I don't know much about that, but it seems to have really ticked those folks off.
These days, Dane is a distributor and some-time pitchman for a company called Synergy Worldwide. According to this video, he absolutely loves Proargi9+, though he doesn't exactly explain what the product is. If he were on one of those Food Network Stars or Apprentice "reality" shows, he would be booted off for that.
Anyway, it appears that the product contains l-arginine, which its website says is an amino acid that helps your body enhance its own cardiovascular system. It looks like it tastes terrible -- I mean, the guy on that page is getting paid to show off the product, and he's grimacing in the photo. But, according to WebMD, it might have use "as a cream for sexual problems in both men and women."
So, even if it tastes bad, it might make you feel real good. Maybe that's why the product is so awesome!
Who Can It Be Now?
Lynn Everett McGlothen was born on March 27, 1950, in Monroe, Louisiana. McGlothen grew up on a farm seven miles outside of Grambling, Louisiana, and he attended Grambling High School.
In high school, McGlothen was a fantastic athlete. Yes, most baseball players are excellent athletes, but McGlothen was incredible. He earned sixteen varsity sports letters as a member of the football, basketball, baseball, and tennis teams. He was named to the football All-State team in 1967, and he was the state high school tennis champion as a sophomore, junior, and senior.
As the newspaper story from 1974 linked above points out, McGlothen did that while walking to school every day for two years -- seven miles each way every day. That is dedication. McGlothen either was shy or was embarrassed by the walking, because no one knew about his daily walks for two full years. After that, his coaches made sure he got at least one ride a day.
These days, he probably would have turned pro in tennis, or gone to college for football, or maybe just "focused" on one sport, but in 1968 the Boston Red Sox drafted him in the 3rd round of the June Draft.
He signed almost immediately and was assigned to Waterloo in the Midwest League. As he tried to harness his pitches and to learn control, the Red Sox kept him in Single-A ball through 1970. Throughout his minor league career, McGlothen struck out a lot of hitters -- averaging over 7.0 K/9 from 1968 through 1973, but control was his bugaboo. Between his 1969 performance at Winter Haven and his 1970 performance at Winston-Salem, McGlothen cut his walk rate from 5.3 BB/9 to 3.6 BB/9 -- leading to his ERA dropping from 3.92 in 1969 to 2.24 in 1970.
As a result, he skipped right past Double-A and went to Triple-A Louisville at the age of 21 in 1971. He did okay there, but his performance (10-10, 3.72, 179 IP, 13 HRA, 98 BB, 151K) did not earn him a September call-up. The next season, however, McGlothen's control returned, and it earned him a trip to the major leagues when Boston needed a starter at the end of June.
His first major league appearance was a loss to the Brewers, but it took him only three starts to notch his first major league win -- a complete game shutout of the Minnesota Twins on Independence Day in 1972. Despite pitching reasonably well during his rookie year for the Red Sox, however, he did not have a long leash in 1973.
It started poorly in spring training, as he hurt his knee trying to get out of the way. After that, he struggled out of the gate in his first three starts -- 13 innings, 20 hits, 14 earned runs, 6 walks, 6 strikeouts -- so the Red Sox moved him to the bullpen. McGlothen's results in three bullpen appearances were bad as well -- an ERA of "only" 6.30 with 19 hits allowed in 10 innings of work. Once it was clear that the knee wasn't healing properly on its own, he had surgery to remove cartilage from the knee and he went to Triple-A to rehabilitate.
With that demotion, his Red Sox career ended. On December 7, 1973, he was traded with John Curtis and Mike Garman to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for Reggie Cleveland, Terry Hughes, and Diego Segui. McGlothen enjoyed his three most productive years in the major leagues while in St. Louis, finishing with a 44-40 record, a 3.49 ERA, and a 1974 season in which he was named to the National League All-Star team and pitched a scoreless 8th inning which included striking out Reggie Jackson. He even got some consideration for the Cy Young Award, picking up a vote, for a season in which Mike Marshall's 200 innings in relief convinced the BBWAA to vote for him as Cy Young -- even though McGlothen, Buzz Capra, Andy Messersmith, and Phil Niekro all had better years.
It was a tumultuous 1976 for McGlothen, though. First, he was suspended for five days and fined $300 for admitting that he threw at Mets players Del Unser and opposing pitcher Jon Matlack. Matlack retaliated, hitting McGlothen. As a result and as all the news stories of the day noted, both Matlack and McGlothen were fined an immediate $50 for intentionally hitting a batsman after being warned.
The year ended with McGlothen having his ties to the Cardinals severed. As the Cardinals looked forward at the end of that season, they decided that they needed an upgrade at third base more than they needed McGlothen. So, they traded McGlothen to the San Francisco Giants for their former third baseman Ken Reitz because their one-year Hector Cruz experiment did not work out as planned.
It was not a trade that worked out well for McGlothen. The Giants were, at best, an okay baseball team, and McGlothen's control issues reared their ugly head once again. McGlothen suffered from arm problems and spent time on the disabled list. By mid-1978, the Giants had decided that McGlothen was expendable, so McGlothen packed his bags and made his way to Chicago's North Side with the Cubs.
In Chicago, McGlothen pitched decently -- not great -- and was not helped out by the team's defense. In both 1979 and 1980 (his two full seasons with the Cubs) McGlothen served as a swingman, starting some and relieving some. In those years, his FIP was nearly a third of a run lower than his ERA -- and an extra run every 27 innings will make a difference over the course of 400 inning pitched.
The 1981 strike-shortened season saw McGlothen change teams again midway through the season. This time, though, he only changed ballparks and not area codes, as the Cubs sent him to the White Sox on August 15 -- just days after the strike ended. By this point, McGlothen was viewed strictly as a reliever.
After spring training in 1982, though, the White Sox had seen enough of McGlothen to feel that he was expendable in another way. The Sox wanted to add backup catcher Marv Foley to their roster, and McGlothen was the guy who was designated for assignment to make room. A week later, on April 13, McGlothen cleared waivers and was released.
The New York Yankees gave McGlothen one last chance, signing him to a minor league deal in May. He was called up in mid-August and pitched in one close game (giving up a home run in 1/3 of an inning) and three lost causes. After that quick look, the Yankees decided they had seen enough and released him before the end of the 1982 season. That was the end of his major-league baseball career.
Mustache Check: Yes, McGlothen went with the closely trimmed look here, but he definitely has a mustache.
Nanu Nanu
This card was McGlothen's only baseball card in 1982 and, therefore, the only card on which McGlothen appeared as a member of the Chicago White Sox. Well, sort of -- because this uniform looks like a poorly painted version of those old late 1970s White Sox uniforms, I'm pretty sure that the original photo showed him on the Cubs. It was also his final baseball card during his major league career.
He did have one card in 1992 when The Wiz put out a set of all the Yankees from the 1980s. Otherwise, nothing.
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
Lynn McGlothen is a player whom I associate with his days on the Cubs in the late 1970s. As my late aunt was a big-time Cubs fan, I would hear about the exploits of King Kong Kingman, Bill Buckner, and Rick Reuschel, so I followed them a little bit -- as much as an 8-year-old with a winning team nearby in the Brewers could. McGlothen was not someone who made much of an impact, though.
Time for a little "inside baseball." In researching this or any of the posts here at 1982 Topps, I read through a number of sources -- blogs, videos, interviews, news stories, Google's newspaper archives, and SABR biographies are the main ones -- and I use bits and pieces of those stories that I find interesting and which illuminate my subject. I try to link to all of the sources as well in case anyone is interested in seeing the source material.
If a blog or news story does not have a link for a particular fact, I do my best to try to verify it. There are times I will be right, and there are times that I will be wrong. But trying that for Lynn McGlothen was frustrating. I say that because I found three items of interest or note that I would have loved to write more about or read more about, but which I either could not find a source to back up the written information or, worse, I found the source material incorrect.
First, what I believe to be an incorrect item. Generally, BaseballLibrary.com is a decent source. It includes only squibs on most players, and McGlothen's biography is no exception. But there was one interesting fact that I wanted to use. In the BL write-up, the writer says that, "on August 19[, 1975,] against Cincinnati, [McGlothen] struck out the side on nine pitches." So, I went to Baseball Reference to find the box score and the play-by-play to highlight that feat.
The problem I encountered was that I could not find an inning in that game in which McGlothen had a one-two-three inning with three strikeouts. I'm guessing that the BL writer may have been referring to the Reds' second inning, in which Cesar Geronimo, Darrel Chaney, and Gary Nolan all struck out looking -- but the problem there is that Tony Perez led off the inning with a single. That, to me, is not striking out the side on 9 pitches. Does anyone know if MLB records track that feat and, if so, whether MLB cares if there are hits in the inning? I mean, theoretically, Chan Ho Park could have struck out the side on 9 pitches in the Fernando Tatis two-grand-slam inning in 1999, but would anyone ever count that toward the record book?
The second item came from a book review on a blog called Sleeping Hedgehog about a book by Dan Epstein called Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America In The Bicentennial Summer of '76. It makes reference to a passage in the book in which the story is about how "icon of the game Joe Torre cold-cock[ed] Cardinals pitcher Lynn McGlothen." I'm sure that this passage came from oral histories or interviews of some kind that the author had, but I just could not find a reference to it. That may be my own bad researching, but perhaps I just need to buy that book.
The final item was one of futility. Recently, Ryan Vogelsong had four straight starts in which the Giants failed to provide any runs in support of him. In the San Jose Mercury News article about this terrible hitting -- which has cost my fantasy baseball team several wins, I'll add -- the writer said that Vogelsong was "the first Giants starter since Lynn McGlothen in 1977 to get zero runs of support in four consecutive starts."
My problem here: once again, the game logs do not seem to support this. I mean, perhaps there were four straight games in which the Giants did not score while McGlothen was on the mound or was the pitcher of record -- maybe the first four games of the year? But even that is contorting facts -- since he won the fourth game of that streak when the Giants scored three in the top of the 7th and McGlothen was credited with the win. I like statistical quirks as much as anyone, but I also like those quirks to be verifiable. I just couldn't do it.
I would have liked to have written more about and learned more about McGlothen. He was a fastball pitcher with some control issues, and those control issues left him as a free agent at age 32. I could not find why Baseball Reference said he attended Grambling University -- perhaps that was what he was doing after he retired?
In any case, McGlothen passed away far too young. Less than two years after he retired, his life came to a sudden and tragic end. He was spending the night with a woman called Gloria Smith Reed in a mobile home in Dubach, Louisiana. The mobile home somehow caught on fire (no foul play was suspected) and Ms. Reed was able to save her two children, but she was not able to save McGlothen or herself. McGlothen and Reed both were overcome by the heat and flames, and McGlothen died of smoke inhalation.
He was 34 years old.
