Who Can It Be Now?
Bradley David Havens was born on November 17, 1959 (according to Baseball Reference; The Baseball Cube says Havens was born 11/17/1958), in Highland Park, Michigan. He grew up in the Detroit area and played baseball for Kimball High School in Royal Oak, Michigan.
According to an unsourced but incredibly detailed blog post about Havens, Havens "watched the Detroit Tigers play at Tiger Stadium hundreds, if not thousands[,] of times as a child and teen." Not to pick nits, but the top-end of that math is probably off. Even if Havens watched every single game at Tiger Stadium from the day he was born until the end of the 1977 season, he would have topped out at 1458 games (and that doesn't try to take into account the few games that were cancelled for strikes in the early 1970s or rainouts that were never made up). But hyperbole is a better story.
Anyway, that website is probably correct in saying that Havens was an All-State pitcher in Michigan in 1977 as a senior. That was the year that Havens was selected in the 8th Round of the June Amateur Draft by the California Angels.
Havens did not play minor league baseball until 1978, however. It's unclear why he did not play in 1977 -- probably because he signed too late, if I were guessing -- but the Angels sent him to Single-A Quad Cities in the Midwest League, a full-season league, for his professional debut in 1978. At Quad Cities, he pitched well -- 200 innings, 171 hits allowed, a 2.66 ERA (based on 59 earned runs...though he gave up a total of 80 runs), 74 BB, 197 Ks -- all good, solid numbers for a kid fresh out of high school. Maybe the 200 innings was a bit much, but there's no indication that it caused any arm problems.
Before the 1979 season, however, Havens left the Angels organization. He was one of the pieces sent to Minnesota (along with catcher Dave Engle, pitcher Paul Hartzell, and OF Ken Landreaux) in exchange for eventual Hall of Famer Rod Carew. The Twins had tried to force the Angels into trading them Carney Lansford, but the Angels refused to include Lansford after his 1978 season.
In the Twins organization in 1979, Havens split time between Single-A Wisconsin Rapids and Double-A Orlando. He got lit up like a Roman candle in Orlando -- 7.28 ERA, 128 hits allowed in 94 innings, 50 walks against 63 strikeouts -- so the Twins sent him back to the Single-A California League with Visalia in 1980. Frankly, assuming that he was born in 1959, he had plenty of time even at that point -- he was still nearly 2 years younger than his competition in Visalia. There, he put up a good record of 14-9 and a 3.32 ERA (but 18 unearned runs) in 195 innings. His walks went back down and his strikeouts went back up, which is what you would expect for a good pitching prospect.
In 1981, Havens started the year in Double-A Orlando. He pitched pretty well -- 3.53 ERA in 74 innings (with 9 unearned runs) and with good walk and strikeout ratios. He was called up to the major leagues on June 5, 1981 for his major league debut. It had to be an intimidating experience -- he debuted by pitching a half an hour from where he grew up, against the Detroit Tigers -- his childhood team. He was facing the Tigers ace, Jack Morris, on top of everything else.
Yet, he was not overawed -- despite being credited with the loss, he only gave up two hits, though one of them was a solo homerun to shortstop Alan Trammell. The news story about the game mentioned that he was "obviously pumped up at the prospect of pitching before a Polish Night crowd of 23,133. . . ." I mean, those crazy Poles...but, more saliently, he showered and left the stadium before the game ended with his father. Havens pitched one more game -- another loss to Detroit, this time in Minnesota -- before the strike shut down work for a couple of months.
When play resumed Havens pitched creditably -- getting his ERA as low as 2.74 by September 20 before getting rocked his last three starts of the season to finish with a 3-6 record, a 3.58 ERA in 78 innings with 24 walks allowed (with 6 of those in his final two starts) and 43 strikeouts. This performance gained him a point in the rookie of the year voting -- good enough to tie him with his teammate Gary Ward for 9th overall in the voting -- but far behind winner Dave Righetti.
Thus, at the age of 22 in 1982, Havens skipped over Triple-A and pitched the entire year in Minnesota. He did okay -- a 10-14 record for a team that finished 60-102 and with a 4.31 ERA for a team that finished with a 4.72 team ERA isn't a bad result.
Theoretically, then, he came into the 1983 season as the putative ace of a staff that was led in 1982 by the now-recently deceased Bobby Castillo. Indeed, Havens was the Opening Day starter for the Twins in 1983 -- once again pitching against the Detroit Tigers. To say things went poorly for Havens in 1983 is akin to saying that things went poorly for Custer at Little Big Horn.
The first start was a disaster. The Tigers sent 10 men to the plate in the first inning, though it could have been worse in that the inning ended when Tom Brookens was thrown out in a rundown at third bases to end the inning. He made it into the second inning, and was yanked after getting just four outs. TV announcer Pat Hughes -- who later joined the Milwaukee Brewers as Bob Uecker's straight man/color commentator -- was calling his first game of his career at the age of 27. He misremembered the game story, but the story he tells is nonetheless wonderful gallows humor from Twins manager Billy Gardner:
My major league debut was opening day, Twins-Tigers, April 1983, at the Metrodome. I'm twenty-seven, doing TV, excited till Detroit scores six runs in the first, young starter Brad Havens giving up a three-run homer to Larry Herndon to the football press box in right-centerfield. Later, I'm having a beer in the press lounge when Twins skipper Billy Gardner sits down and starts sipping. I say, "Havens left after only two-thirds of an inning. One good thing, Billy, is that he threw only thirty pitches. You could probably bring him back in a couple of days to pitch again." He took a sip, smiled, and said: "You're right, I could." Pause. "But why in the world would I want to?"
By the time the Twins finally sent Havens to Triple-A, he had racked up 80-1/3 innings in which he gave up 110 hits, 11 homeruns, 38 walks (against 40 strikeouts) and 73 earned runs for a massive 8.18 ERA. His 8 earned-run season debut didn't help matters, but it was not an isolated incident -- he allowed four or more earned runs in 11 of his 16 appearances.
In many regardings, 1983 exposed Havens for being the limited Quad-A pitcher that he turned out to be. It also started a four-year series of moves in which he changed teams 4 different times by being released three times and being traded twice. The Twins tired of Havens's ineffectiveness and sent him to the Baltimore Orioles at the end of spring training in 1985 in exchange for pitcher Mark Brown. Havens spent his final full season in the majors with the Orioles in 1986. Otherwise, he shuttled back and forth to Triple-A, the very definition of a replacement level pitcher.
In 1987, Havens was shipped out to Los Angeles with John Shelby as part of the Dodgers dumping Tom Niedenfuer for giving up a homer to Ozzie Smith. At first, things went reasonably well. But, by 1988, Havens was the butt of Tommy Lasorda's jokes. Lasorda left Fernando Valenzuela in a game in mid-April for 151 pitches. The Bill Plaschke story from the LA Times (no word on whether Plaschke was wearing argyle) had the following exchange:
When asked if he had to leave Valenzuela in [the game], Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said: "Absolutely. Who should have I brought in? [Brad] Havens?"
File that one under, "call your agent immediately." The Dodgers designated Havens for assignment a few weeks later. Havens rejected the trip back to Albuquerque and was released on May 13, 1988.
Being left handed, though, Havens was able to catch on with the Cleveland Indians. He pitched in 28 games there in 1988 and 7 games in 1989 before the Indians released him -- once again on May 13, but this time in 1989. Despite lackluster results, Havens got yet another chance.
This final chance was with his hometown Tigers. They saw 13 games and 22-2/3 innings of work and decided that they, too, could live without the cosmic stylings of Brad Havens, and they released him at the end of the season. This time, however, enough VHS videotape of Havens getting taken deep by people had worked its way around the league, and he did not get another chance.
Mustache Check: I'm not sure that the 21-year-old blond Havens physically could grow a mustache at the time this photo was taken. So no mustache.
Trivial Pursuit
If I thought Steve Henderson was bereft of interesting side information, I had no idea of what was in store with Havens. So, here's what I got: Havens was pitching (for Detroit, not for Pittsburgh, ESPN) on July 23, 1989 when he gave up a walk-off hit-by-pitch against the California Angels. It took until April 12, 2014, for the Angels to win again on a walk-off hit-by-pitch.
Seriously, that's it.
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
Facing Havens in the 1980s was not a difficult thing for batters. Opponents hit .272/.341/.438 against Havens over the course of his career. That's not very good when you are looking at league averages roughly around .263/.324/.400 for the AL and, for his two NL season, around .255/.320/.380. He actually did slightly better against Milwaukee than his career numbers would suggest, but I don't remember him for that.
Other websites have tried to find Havens. For example, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune tried, and the best they came up with was that Havens has returned home to suburban Detroit and that his name is tied to two companies -- Brad Havens Baseball Clinics, Inc. and Major League Gutters & Windows. From what I could tell, that first company is no longer an active corporation, having been dissolved by the Michigan Secretary of State's office for the failure to pay the annual registration fees.
What I have been able to discern is that Havens has for some time now been serving as an assistant coach at the high schools back home in Royal Oak, Michigan. For example, Coach Joel Hoover at this website references that he was instructed by Havens when Hoover was still 17 years old and at least 17 years ago. That would be about the right timing for Hoover's retirement from major league baseball after playing in Detroit.
The other, even clearer context clue is from a story that I cannot access but which has a short excerpt saved at Topix.com. The Daily Press & Argus from Novi, Michigan, had a story on June 5 with a photo of "Brighton assistant coach" Brad Havens having pitched 8 years in the majors. Havens does not appear by name on any of the Brighton High School baseball photos, but I have to think that that is him. There are enough references from the archives on Google from that newspaper to make me fairly certain about that.
I just don't care enough to pay any money to get to the Novi, Michigan, newspaper articles.
Before I jump into this card, I want to say a few words about Robin Williams. In 1982, Williams had starting making the transition from being a television star whom all the little kids like myself loved to being a serious movie actor. Indeed, in this blog, two of my headlines -- Nanu Nanu and The World According to Garp reference Robin Williams vehicles. He was a very good actor who had a number of incredibly memorable roles -- everything from Mork and Garp to Popeye to Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning, Vietnam and John Keating in Dead Poets Society and the Genie in Aladdin -- and that does not even mention his Academy Award winning spot as Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting.
Sometimes, the great ones fade away, and other times they shine brightly and blow out quickly. Williams did neither, but instead fought drug abuse, alcoholism, and depression for much of his life, but he always gave an incredible show. He will be missed.
Now, back to the fun frivolities that are the baseball cards of the 1982 Topps set.
Who Can It Be Now?
Carney Ray Lansford was born on February 7, 1957, in San Jose, California. He was raised in the Bay Area as well, attending Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, California. Lansford grew up a big baseball fan, admitting in 1989 (prior to the Bay Area World Series) that he liked players on both the Giants and the A's. Not only was Lansford a baseball fan, he was also a key player on the Santa Clara Little League team in 1969, which made it to the finals of the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA, but lost to Chinese Taipei (as Taiwan was called) in the finals 5-0.
According to this kid-friendly biography, Lansford was "very good" in baseball, football, and basketball in high school. His selection at the top of the third round of the 1975 June Amateur Draft (49th pick overall) by the California Angels put to rest any thoughts of which sport he preferred, however, and he signed near the end of the summer with the Angels.
The Angels sent Lansford to the Pioneer League in Idaho Falls in 1975, then moved him to the more advanced Midwest League at Quad Cities in 1976. After a good season there with an excellent OBP -- .287/.391/.457 in 501 plate appearances -- Lansford was pushed to the hitter's paradise in El Paso for the 1977 season. The only thing that might have held him back was his fielding -- a brutal 34 errors in 1976 at Quad Cities (.906 Fielding Percentage) improved to just 15 errors and a .955 fielding percentage at El Paso. As a result, he was invited to spring training with the big league team in 1978, and he did not play again in the minor leagues until he was rehabilitating an injury in 1991.
Something I had forgotten about Lansford was that he actually had pretty good speed, and his minor league stats show that he also had very good instincts on stealing bases. In Quad Cities, for instance, he stole 26 bases and he was caught just 7 times -- a 79% success rate. He did even better in El Paso -- 20 steals in 23 attempts for an 87% success rate.
At the age of 21, then, Lansford became the Angels regular third baseman. The issue with his fielding was still there -- 17 errors and a .942 fielding percentage -- and his range was pretty much right on the league average. But, the Angels and the other teams which employed him throughout his career did not employ him because they expected Brooks Robinson or Graig Nettles.
Lansford was an immediate success. He finished a distant third in the Rookie of the Year voting behind winner Lou Whitaker (who won easily) and finished one vote behind eventual Hall of Famer Paul Molitor. In 1979 and 1980, it was more of the same, really -- a decent batting average (though declining from 1978 through 1980), a decent OBP, and a decent SLG.
Perhaps the decline in his batting average spurred it on, or the Angels really felt that getting Rick Burleson and Butch Hobson was worth it, but for whatever reason, the Angels picked up those two players in exchange for reliever Mark Clear, outfielder Rick Miller, and Lansford.
Lansford's new surroundings in Fenway Park agreed with him, as his batting average surged to an American League-leading .336. More importantly, it appeared that he started redeveloping the good batting eye that had marked his minor league days. He went from walking just 39 times in 1979 (712 plate appearances, BB% of just 5.5%) to 50 times in 1980 (670 plate appearances, BB%: 7.5%) to 34 times in 438 plate appearances in 1981 (BB%: 7.8%). At the same time, his strikeouts declined precipitously as well -- from 115 in 1978 (K%: 16.2%) to 93 in 1979 (K%: 13.9%) down to just 28 in 1981 (K%: 6.4%). Yes, in 1981, he got "lucky" on his batting average for balls in play with a .352 mark, but nonetheless he was showing progress.
While 1982 was another good year for Lansford (.301/.359/.444), he still found himself on a new team for the 1983 season. The Red Sox shipped Lansford to the Oakland Athletics along with minor leaguer Jerry King and utilityman Garry Hancock in exchange for Jeff Newman and Tony Armas. In retrospect, it's pretty clear that the Red Sox made the correct decision by promoting farmhand Wade Boggs to be their third baseman for 1983 and beyond. The Red Sox chose that path rather than letting Lansford play out his contract and become a free agent, and with a ready-made replacement in the farm system, it worked out pretty well for them. At the time, though, it was a bit of a gamble.
Nonetheless, Lansford found himself back home in the Bay Area in 1983. The season started out tragically for Lansford and his wife Deborah. In 1981, the couple celebrated the birth of their first child, Nicholas. The baby struggled with kidney disease after that. Unfortunately, on April 11, 1983, Nicholas lost his fight and passed away at the age of two. Lansford missed a couple of weeks of the season after that, and fought injuries the rest of the season.
As the third baseman for ten seasons for Oakland, he was a part of those late 1980s teams that made the World Series in 1988, 1989, and 1990 in the steroid-fueled Bash Brothers days. Lansford was not a proponent of the steroid regime and to this day still spews a fair amount of bile against Jose Canseco for his role in tainting the 1989 World Series team. I guess that simply being Jose Canseco's teammate does not make a player a steroid user -- perhaps that guy that got me upset on the Nolan Ryan entry should remember that.
Lansford was named to the only All-Star team of his career in 1988, as he was hitting .331/.376/.427 at the break. That year ended horribly for Lansford, though, as his second half was just horrible -- .185/.242/.240 over 220 plate appearances qualifies as horrible, I'd say. But, it was not his worst year with the A's.
No, that year had to be 1991 because that was the year that, at the age of 34, Lansford had to rehabilitate his knee. Lansford tore up his knee in an off-season snowmobile accident at his home in Baker, Oregon. He thought he was not close to his own property line, but he was. He ended up hitting a barbed-wire fence that marked his property line and crashed his snowmobile. As he put it in early 1991, "I'm lucky the knee is all that happened. I could've been paralyzed."
He made his way all the way back and resigned with the A's for the 1992 season. He played 135 games that season and had a league average OPS. The A's made it back to the post-season that year and lost in 6 games in the ALCS to the Toronto Blue Jays. In the aftermath of that game, Lansford announced his retirement.
Mustache Check: For much of his career, Lansford was a full beard kind of guy. Here, though, he's sporting just a small little mustache.
Freeze-Frame
I have never watched the movie "Angels in the Outfield." I have an aversion to any Tony Danza movies, and when it was released in 1994, I was not its target demographic -- families with younger kids.
On the other hand, when the movie was released, Carney Lansford's sons would have been right in that wheelhouse -- his son Josh would have been 10 and his son Jared was 8. So, I guess it makes sense and had to be quite a thrill for Carney to appear as Chicago White Sox player Kit "Hit or Die" Kesey in that movie.
Family Ties
I mentioned Carney's sons Jared and Josh above. Both of them played professional baseball. Josh was a pitcher and, before that, a third baseman, in the Chicago Cubs organization from 2006 to 2009 and in the Oakland organization for 2010 and 2011 before he ended up in independent ball. Jared was also a pitcher in the Oakland organization from 2005 through 2011. Jared and Josh ended up playing together in the Atlantic League with the Long Island Ducks, where both of them have pitched since 2012.
Carney also had two younger brothers who played professional baseball. His brother Phil Lansford was the tenth pick overall in the 1978 June draft, where he was selected by the Cleveland Indians. He ended up in the Toronto organization in 1979, and he never made it past the Carolina League before his career ended.
The next year, the third Lansford brother to be drafted was Joe or Jody Lansford (depending on your source). Joe was selected by the San Diego Padres with the fourteenth overall pick in the 1979 June Draft. A large man -- 6'5" tall, 225 pounds -- he made it to the major leagues in 1982 with the Padres as a first baseman and totaled 37 plate appearances. He basically stalled out at Triple-A. Eventually, in 1985, the Padres traded him to the Oakland A's for Tim Pyznarski. The A's cut him and the White Sox signed him. Then, the White Sox cut him. Finally, after the 1987 season back in the Padres organization, he was done playing professionally.
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
I recall Lansford well from 1982 due to his exploits in leading the American League in hitting in 1981. That same year, Cecil Cooper finished third at .320, and I guess I sort of resented Lansford for not letting Cooper win after his .352 average the previous season put him second behind George Brett.
I will say that my recollection regarding Lansford rather failed me a bit. For some reason, I really thought that he feasted on Brewers pitching. As it turns out, he really did not. Quite the opposite. Against Milwaukee and as compared to how Lansford did overall against the various teams in the American League, Lansford had his fourth-worst batting average, his worst on-base percentage, and his second worst slugging percentage. He hated hitting in Milwaukee County Stadium -- 298 plate appearances led to just 1 home run, 9 doubles, 1 triple, and a slash line of .243/.282/.293. In other words, the Brewers were fine with him being on the other team.
After Lansford retired and finished his cameo for his movie career, he joined up with Tony La Russa as the bench coach first for the Oakland Athletics in 1994 and 1995 and then for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1997 and 1998. Lansford then managed for a year in Triple-A Edmonton. He took a few years off -- perhaps because his kids were in high school at that point -- and came back in 2007 to serve as the hitting coach in Colorado Springs under Tom Runnells.
In 2008, one of his childhood teams, the San Francisco Giants, asked Lansford to be their hitting coach. He agreed to do it, but that job ended after just two seasons. When he was fired from the position after the 2009 season, he complained to the San Jose Mercury News that the mistake he made was to take the Giants job "for sentimental reasons" and that he shouldn't have been fired for not turning a bad hitting team into the league's best offense.
He was out of baseball in 2010, but then was convinced by Jim Tracy to take the job of hitting coach for the Colorado Rockies. Between 2011 and 2012, the Rockies were a terrible team, and that cost Jim Tracy his job. It then cost third base coach Rich Dauer and Lansford their jobs one day later.
In 2014, Lansford is now the A's pre-game and post-game analyst for CSN Bay Area. I'd guess it will take a lot of prodding for him to leave that position after his experiences in San Francisco and Colorado.
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.
