Who Can It Be Now?
Patrick Edward Putnam was born in Bethel, Vermont, on December 3, 1953. There have not been many major leaguers born in Vermont -- 38 total as of the end of 2015 -- and only 6 have made their debuts since 1965. Those include Carlton Fisk, Putnam, Len Whitehouse, Mark Brown, Chris Duffy, and Daric Barton.
As the always excellent source of a SABR biography for him notes, Pat grew up outside Burlington. Luckily for Pat's baseball career, his father's job transferred him to Fort Myers, Florida, when Pat was 8 years old. Pat first attended Miami-Dade North JC on a baseball scholarship, and then went to play at the University of South Alabama under the legendary Eddie Stanky.
After his Junior College graduation, Putnam was selected by the New York Mets in the 12th Round of the 1974 draft but chose not to sign and went to USA (then SAU). The next year, he was drafted in the 1st round of the June secondary draft by the Rangers and chose to sign.
He first reached the major leagues in 1977, but Putnam's major league career took off in 1979. He finished tied for fourth in the Rookie of the Year voting thanks to hitting 18 HR in 139 games for the Rangers. He followed that up in 1980 with a 18 HR season -- both of which were punctuated with an OBP of .319. The problem for Putnam, though, was that the Rangers fell in love with Mike Hostetler in 1982. So, after the 1982 season, he was traded to the Seattle Mariners for a journeyman-type pitcher named Ron Musselman.
Putnam looked like a genuine steal for the Mariners in 1983 when he hit 19 HR and drove in 67. But, once again, his team fell in love with a rookie at first base -- this time, in 1984, the rookie was Alvin Davis who was a far better hitter than Putnam, who found himself traded at the end of August to the Minnesota Twins.
At the age of 31 and for the 1985 season, Putnam served as a Triple A insurance policy for the Kansas City Royals. Tiring of that role and not having a family to consider as a single man, Putnam signed on with the Nippon Ham Fighters for the 1986 season. He did so well there -- .286/.355/.478, 25 HR, 78 RBI -- that he stayed another year. His 1987 season in Japan was his last real professional season, not counting the Senior League.
Mustache Check
It's not the best photo of him, but pretty much every Pat Putnam photo and card available shows Pat as clean shaven. So, I'm guessing that he is here too.
Totally Gnarly
Putnam had a reputation early in his career as being something of a nutjob. As the 1980 Topps blog noted, the Sporting News from June 7, 1980, said that "Putnam belongs on any all-whacko list for his proclivities of eating dog biscuits, imitating Shamu the Whale in the whirlpool and assorted other eccentricities."
No wonder he's still a bachelor.
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
Maybe it was just holiday boredom that overtook me, but I decided to post here again today. Maybe if try I do one of these a week or two a month or something, I'll have the time to do it.
In my head, when Pat Putnam's name comes up, he's a Mariner -- despite the fact that he spent less than two full seasons there. That is almost certainly a recency bias on my part. Well, that and the 19-homer season he had that year.
Putnam spent most of his post-baseball life as a businessman in his hometown of Fort Myers, Florida. He started a company called Home Environment Center, which (the SABR biography tells me) specialized in "air and water purification." It appears that Putnam may have retired from that company in the past few years after the SABR biography was written, as the company is no longer an active Florida Corporation.
I'm not 100% sure what Mr. Putnam is up to these days, though it's possible that he is a member of the Lee County Tennis Association who is responsible for dealing with people interested in playing pickleball at Waterway Park on Poetry Lane in North Fort Myers. I mean, I could call the phone number on that page and ask if that person is the same Pat Putnam, but that feels a bit intrusive to me.
After a weekend away and a busy day yesterday, the 1982 Topps Blog is back!
Who Can It Be Now?
Robert Barry Bonnell was born on October 27, 1953, in Mariemont, Ohio. He grew up in Ohio and attended Milford High School in the Cincinnati area. He was an excellent high school baseball player -- indeed, in 2011, the Cincinnati Enquirer called him the 43rd best baseball player of all time from Cincinnati -- and he was also a star on the high school basketball team.
Based on his high school prowess, Bonnell was drafted in the eighth round of the 1971 June Draft by the Chicago White Sox. He did not sign and instead matriculated at "THE" Ohio State University. His play at OSU was excellent, and it led to him being the first pick overall by the Philadelphia Phillies in the January Secondary Draft in 1975.
Bonnell skipped his senior year at Ohio State and signed with the Phillies. The Phillies assigned him to Spartanburg (SC) in the Western Carolina League in 1975. He played a grand total of 23 games over a month and a week in the Phillies system before he was traded for the first time. The Phillies sent Bonnell and catcher Jim Essian to the Atlanta Braves along with $150,000 in exchange for Dick Allen and catcher Johnny Oates.
The deeper story here revolves around Allen. The Braves made this trade because Allen refused to report to play for the team after the Braves had traded for Allen in the 1974 offseason. Wanting to get something to show for their work, Atlanta finally admitted defeat and traded for Bonnell (with Essian being sent to the White Sox as part of the original deal to get Allen).
I'm not even sure that Bonnell had to move apartments after the trade -- Spartanburg is just over an hour away from Greenwood, where the Braves assigned him, and both are fairly close to Greenville. Bonnell hit well that season, so the Braves pushed him up their chain quickly. Bonnell spent a half season at Double-A and, despite a .223/.288/.372 line at Savannah, he moved up and spent a half season at Triple-A Richmond in 1976. Then, after 14 games and one month in Triple-A in 1977, he was called up to the Braves and never again played minor league baseball.
Bonnell's three years in Atlanta were fairly decent. His best season was his first season -- perhaps before the scouting reports made the rounds -- as he hit .300/.368/.339 in 404 plate appearances with just one homer and 11 doubles. The Braves toyed with putting him at third base for a while during that season and in 1978 as well -- he was not good at third, though, so they kept him as a center fielder. One hyperbolic story compared Bonnell in center to Joe DiMaggio -- as a fielder, I'm guessing -- but it took going to winter ball in the offseason to get his bat back in shape after the 1978 season.
After the 1979 season, however, the Braves decided that Barry Bonnell was not the answer to their outfield questions. Despite his ability to play any of the three outfield positions, the Braves determined that Dale Murphy could do the same thing and provide a bigger power threat. So, Bonnell was traded for the second time in his career -- this time, going to the Toronto Blue Jays with pitcher Joey McLaughlin and shortstop Pat Rockett in exchange for first baseman Chris Chambliss (whom then-Braves manager Bobby Cox had worked with in New York).
Bonnell's time in Canada provided some of his best seasons. While 1981 was a terrible year for him, both 1983 and 1983 were fine mid-career seasons. In 1982, for example, Bonnell hit .293/.342/.407 with 14 SB (2 CS) and 6 homers. In 1983, he hit .318/.369/.469 with 10 HR and 10 SB (though he was caught 7 times). Perhaps in a bit of irony, Bonnell's these two seasons in Toronto came with Bobby Cox as the manager. That 1983 team was also Toronto's first winning season as a franchise.
As is often the case, however, teams that improve to become contenders for the first time in a while based off building from their farm system also see weaknesses in their existing team that need to be improved. In Toronto's case, the same situation faced it in the offseason after the 1983 season as did the Braves in 1979. While Bonnell was a very good player who produced offensive seasons worth two wins (measured by WAR), the Blue Jays wanted more.
Toronto decided turned to its farm system where George Bell was ready to take over in right field or left field from Bonnell and Dave Collins (who was traded after the 1984 season). As a result, Bonnell found himself being traded one more time -- this time to the other 1977 expansion team, the Seattle Mariners, in exchange for pitcher Bryan Clark.
Bonnell was 30 years old when the 1984 season dawned. He played in 110 games that season, but his career was on the downside at this point. This "down side" in large part could be traced to his first spring training with the Mariners. He got sick in 1983 and struggled through them before finally going to a doctor. A chest x-ray showed that he had all kinds of blockages in his lungs -- he described it in 2003 as looking "like spider webs in there" -- and he was diagnosed with Valley Fever and pneumonia.
The maladies he contracted in 1983 limited his ability to play for the rest of his career. It did not help that the Mariners of 1986 were in full rebuild mode. By mid-July, the Mariners had released high-priced veterans such as Gorman Thomas, Milt Wilcox, and Al Cowens. Bonnell saw the writing on the wall. He came up with an unusual offer to the Mariners' then-owner, George Argyros: let me earn the rest of my salary by serving as the pilot for your private jet. I'm not sure if Argyros took Bonnell up on that offer, but the Mariners did release Bonnell on July 16, 1986. His last game was against Milwaukee -- and he went 1-for-2.
Mustache Check: It's an LDS thing to be clean shaven, so it should be no surprise that Bonnell is without a mustache.
Goody Two-Shoes
Bonnell was nicknamed "Preacher." Being of reasonable intelligence, Bonnell picked up on the fact that this nickname was not given to him as a compliment.
Nonetheless, Bonnell received this nickname because of his strong beliefs and faith. As a devout member of the Mormon Church (Latter Day Saints), Bonnell used to read his Bible regularly on team bus trips. One of those trips in his first minor league season led a teammate to ask Bonnell questions about his faith. Bonnell eventually baptized that teammate into the LDS church.
That teammate was Dale Murphy.
Consistent with this theme, Bonnell became a Mormon bishop for a time after his playing days ended.
The World According to Garp
Barry has written his memoir called Steel Ribbons. As far as I can tell, no one has published it yet, but Bonnell has a website on Weebly to promote the book and to seek representation. But don't go to that site and think that you'll be able to get in touch with Bonnell. As his smaller print disclaimer on the Steel Ribbons page says in a perfectly long run-on sentence, "Thanks to all the baseball fans who browse this site with interest in my current work, however, this site is not intended to solicit requests from fans, rather to provide a place for literary professionals to sample my writing and to contact me if interested.."
Totally Gnarly MEETS The World According to Garp
I had no other way of describing this one. Based on an article from a few years ago, Bonnell apparently was working on a teenage science fiction book called "MUFOC". Based in his hometown of Milford, Ohio, the story was about a UFO Club for kids in Milford. In writing the book, Bonnell said that he and his friends "actually had a UFO investigative club with an adult advisor."
Perhaps Bonnell could be the LDS version of L. Ron Hubbard.
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
For whatever reason, I feel like Barry Bonnell always killed the Brewers. His career numbers against Milwaukee support that he did better than his career averages, and he had more doubles against the Brewers than against any other team in major league baseball. But that's not exactly "killing" the Brewers. I must just be remembering a game or two where he drove in some key runs or something.
Bonnell has led an interesting, widely varying life. He played major league baseball, obviously. He had a dream as a kid to become a pilot, and he satisfied that passion as well. In fact, he became a professional pilot in 1989 with Northwest Airlink flying little SAAB 340 planes for Northwest. That plane, now discontinued, is a two-engine turboprop plane that seats 37 passengers in its current configuration for United Airlines.
After ending his piloting career when he saw that airline consolidation would probably keep him so far down the totem pole that he would never fly any of the big jets, he turned to working in mail order medication for a home medical equipment company. His LinkedIn profile touts his progress in becoming the director of contracting for the northwest United States for Lincare, a national company. He apparently worked himself out of a job at Lincare since his bio says that "[w]hen the original risk plans began to fail, the contracting position was no longer needed at Lincare and the position was eliminated."
After that, he started his own company to bring the world Britney Spears lunchboxes and N'Sync teddy bears. He sold off that company and turned to writing and to "Pet-activated turnkey products" with his current company "Roy's Boys Pet Toys."
According to his high school's biography for him, Bonnell still lives in the Seattle area, where he settled after his playing days ended. A cautionary note for any Washington attorneys: Bonnell is the citizen member of the Washington State Bar Association's Disciplinary Board.
Perhaps "totally gnarly" meets "The World According to Garp" is the most accurate way to describe him. Or, at least the term Renaissance man.
Who Can It Be Now?
Thomas Edward John was born on May 22, 1943, in Terre Haute, Indiana. Tommy is 71 years old, meaning that he avoided the entry draft and, instead, was signed by the Cleveland Indians out of Gerstmeyer High School in Terre Haute (a school which no longer exists). He had been a high school basketball star and, according to his SABR biography, he was recruited by none other than the noted University of Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp.
When John first signed in 1961 -- again showing how long ago it was -- he was assigned to Class D Dubuque in the Midwest League. He pitched well there, though he had some control issues. He moved up to Triple-A Jacksonville in the International League as a 19-year-old for the second half of the 1962 season, where he made 8 appearances and 7 starts in a league in which John averaged being nearly 7-1/2 years younger than everyone else. According to John, he had no idea how to be a pitcher at this point in his career, and started learning only in 1962 from a player-coach in the Indians system named Steve Jankowski in Single-A. From Jankowski, John learned the classic art of pitching to contact and saving the 100% effort pitches for key points in the game when it was needed rather than throwing at 100% all the time.
His performance in Double-A Charleston in 1963 -- a 9-2 record, a 1.61 ERA, 12 walks and 45 strikeouts in 95 innings -- earned him a promotion back to Jacksonville in 1963. He did not pitch badly there, and so the Indians gave him a late season cup of coffee that year. He yo-yoed between Triple-A Portland and Cleveland in 1964, getting sent down in mid-July after getting lit up for 11 runs (10 earned) in 3-1/3 innings in his last three appearances for the Indians. John's effectiveness may have been compromised by John trying to please Hall of Famer and pitching coach Early Wynn, who told John that John needed to learn a slider to go with the curveball and fastball he already threw. To throw the slider, John made adjustments to his delivery which threw off his control.
After the 1964 season, Indians GM Gabe Paul tried to undo the unpopular 1960 trade engineered by Frank "Trader" Lane which sent Rocky Colavito to the Tigers in exchange for Harvey Kuenn. Sportswriter Terry Pluto wrote about this -- and the ensuing years of misery that followed -- in his book The Curse of Rocky Colavito. Indeed, one of the parts of the curse was that getting Colavito back caused the Indians to trade John. In a three-way deal consummated on January 20, 1965, Tommy John, Tommy Agee, and John Roman were sent to the Chicago White Sox by the Indians. The White Sox sent the Indians Cam Carreon (Mark Carreon's dad). The third team, the Kansas City Athletics, received Fred Talbot, Mike Hershberger, and Jim Landis from the White Sox and then sent Colavito to the Indians.
John spent 7 years on Chicago's South Side, putting up a good ERA -- 2.95 (ERA+ of 117, putting him 17% better than league average) -- but only a fair-to-middling 82-80 record. He was named to the American League All-Star team in 1968 and pitched a scoreless 2/3 of an inning in the AL's 1-0 loss. Still, the White Sox of the late 1960s had declined significantly in John's time with the team -- going from the 2nd place team with a 95-67 record of 1965 to their low point of 56-106 in 1970 (a team so bad that they finished 9 games behind both the Kansas City Royals and the Milwaukee Brewers -- two teams that had come into existence the previous season).
While the Sox had bounced back somewhat in 1971, it probably was a welcome change of scenery in many respects in December of 1971 when the White Sox sent John to the Los Angeles Dodgers with Steve Huntz in exchange for mercurial third baseman Dick Allen. With the Dodgers, John enjoyed three solid years in 1972 through 1974.
He had an injury issue that shortened his 1972 season: bone chips in his elbow. Today, we would see this issue and likely would start thinking that the pitcher was walking a fine line with his ulnar collateral ligament. Then, it was a procedure to clean out the elbow for John in hopes that he could pitch without pain the next season.
And he did pitch without pain in 1973 and into 1974. In fact, he started out so well in 1974 -- a 13-3 record -- that John and his wife were certain that New York Mets manager Yogi Berra (as the manager for the All-Star Game for the National League) was going to name John to the All-Star team. Sally John told the story to the AP in 1976:
Tommy came home from the ballpark that night [of July 16, 1974] with huge ol' cow eyes. It's the only time I've ever seen him angry. I don't think anyone realizes how much the snub hurt him. I hate Yogi Berra to this day for that. I know that's bad for a Christian to say, but Yogi Berra cannot even be considered a human being after doing that.
Okay, Sally, sit down and relax. The next night, though, things changed even more to the worse for Tommy -- it was the night that he snapped his UCL.
Dr. Frank Jobe was at the game for the Dodgers, as he always was, as the team doctor. After all the diagnoses were completed and everyone knew that John had torn the UCL, Tommy pushed Jobe to come up with something for him to be able to pitch again. As Jobe recalled in 2000:
"You have to understand," Jobe says now, "there was no known procedure to fix something like that. But Tommy told me, 'You've got to do something. I don't care what it is, but fix me.'" . . . "I have to give Tommy credit. I might not have taken on his case if he hadn't pushed me so hard."
So, on September 25, 1974, Jobe took a 6-inch strip of tendon from John's right arm and used it to replace and fix John's left elbow. Complications arose. A second, secret surgery took place in December of 1974 to clear up scar tissue that had formed around John's ulnar nerve and caused his left hand to curl up into a claw.
John missed the entirety of the 1975 season rehabilitating his arm. If the surgery had not worked and his career was over, he would have been just another 32-year-old former pitcher with a sore arm who finished his career with a 2.97 ERA, a 124-106 record, and good stories to tell his children and grandchildren.
Instead, he came back in 1976. He enlisted the aid of his teammate and kinesiologist Mike Marshall and Dr. Jobe and rebuilt his mechanics. As was said in a 1984 interview with Robert Markus of the Chicago Tribune:
When he was just starting as a pitcher in high school, John explained, his coaches told him he was throwing the ball across his body and "that it was the worst thing in the world. They told me I had to do what they called 'open up.' I worked and worked to 'open up.'
But that put a lot of strain on the elbow and could have been the reason for the injury. In rehabilitation, I did a lot of talking with Dr. [Frank] Jobe and Mike Marshall and found that throwing across the body was not as bad as people said it was back in 1961. In fact, it's a pretty good way to throw effectively.
It clearly worked for John. He enjoyed his finest seasons in the major leagues in the years 1976 through 1980. In 1976, he ran out of gas down the stretch and went from 10-1 to 10-10. Despite the 10-10 record at a time when win-loss record mattered a lot, John was named the National League Comeback Player of the Year in 1976. As his former teammate Mike Marshall put it, "At that moment [of John's first start on April 16, 1976], Tommy John became the comeback player of the year."
From 1977 through 1980, though, John put up impressive numbers for any pitcher -- whether working on a reconstructed elbow or not, whether aged 34 through 37 or not. He put up an 80-35 record, a 3.12 ERA (ERA+ of 124), gave up just 45 homers in 975 innings, made the All-Star team three times, finished as the runner up in the Cy Young Award race twice, and even garnered attention for MVP. He also swapped his Dodger whites for the pinstripes of the New York Yankees after the 1978 season when the Dodgers refused to meet his demands in free agency.
John was a regular in the post-season between 1977 and 1982. He missed out on pitching in the post-season in 1979 only because the Orioles pipped the Yankees to the AL East Title that season. In 1982, he pitched for the Angels against the Brewers in the ALCS, winning game one but taking the loss in game four. He stayed with the Angels until 1985 when, at the age of 42, the Angels released him. His career was not done yet. The Oakland A's picked him up for the rest of that season but did not sign him after that.
In 1986, then, John entered the season without a team. Surprisingly, however, on May 2, 1986, the New York Yankees gave John another shot. John got a bit lucky -- a 2.93 ERA v. a 4.17 FIP shows that -- but it led the Yankees to keep him on board until the end of May in 1989. Shortly after his 46th birthday, the Yankees released John.
Mustache Check: No whiskers for Tommy John here. Sorry Night Owl.
Trivial Pursuit
We all know now that Tommy John was the first pitcher to undergo the tendon-to-ligament transplant surgery that Dr. Jobe pioneered in 1974. According to Tommy John himself on Twitter, the second pitcher to have the surgery performed was Brent Strom.
Strom's career did not turn out as well as John's did, however. I'm assuming that he underwent the surgery in 1977 since he missed 1978 entirely. Strom never made it back to the major leagues. I wonder if pitchers today would be as quick to get the surgery if Strom and not John had the surgery first.
Bonus Trivia: According to his SABR biography, Tommy John enjoyed a 26-year career in major league baseball. The only two players to have longer careers of 27 years each were Nolan Ryan and Cap Anson.
Totally Gnarly
John decided to retire in 1989 rather than trying to hook on with another club. He jokes today that his decision to retire came about from the fact that Mark McGwire got two hits off him. McGwire's father was a dentist in Southern California who counted Tommy John as a patient, so, as John claims to have said, "When your dentist's kid starts hitting you, it's time to retire!"
Not to be a spoilsport, but that's a better line than it is a truth. After all, if giving up hits to Mark McGwire was John's impetus for retiring, he waited three years too long. In an August 24, 1986 game at Yankee Stadium, then third baseman Mark McGwire went 3-for-5 against John. In fact, McGwire's first inning double off Tommy John was McGwire's first major league hit.
I think he should have used Novocaine.
Bonus Gnarliness: If you have a spare $1,295 laying around, you can purchase a limited edition print directly from Tommy John's website. The print features four different MRI photos of Tommy's UCL ligament signed both by "Patient Zero," Tommy John and the Late Dr. Frank Jobe. Proceeds go to two different organizations: the "Let's Do It Foundation," an organization whose goal is to end the need for Tommy John Surgery and the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention. The second organization reflects the fact that John's youngest son Taylor committed suicide by a prescription drug overdose in 2009.
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
This entry has taken a ton of time to write in large part because Tommy John pitched for 26 years, had a groundbreaking surgery, and generally is a nice Indiana boy who married a college cheerleader. It's tough to make calls as to what to include when there is literally too much information. I mean, he wrote a book. He was traded in 1982. He managed in the minor leagues. He's engaged on social media. There's a lot going on here. That said, Tommy John to me was and is a Dodger because that is when he first came into my consciousness as a baseball player. The fact is, though, that John pitched 8 years for the Yankees and 7 years for the White Sox versus 6 years for the Dodgers.
The question that has to be raised about John, though, is the obvious one: is he a Hall of Famer? It's a very close call and it depends on how much "credit" you give to him for being Dr. Jobe's Patient Zero, I think.
Before his surgery, John was a pretty good pitcher. Certainly, he had some good years for some bad White Sox teams in the late 1960s, but his totalled stats for that period are good but not great: 124 W, 106 L, 2.97 ERA (3.16 FIP), 28 shutouts, 1273 strikeouts (5.3 K/9) versus 633 walks (2.6 BB/9). His average season was a 10-9 record with 180 innings pitched. In those days, that would be a low innings total for a starter.
After his surgery, John turned into a total "pitch to contact" innings eater. He played with better teams, however, and that shows in his stats: 164-125 record (18 shutouts), 3.66 ERA (3.56 FIP), 972 strikeouts in 2544-2/3 innings (3.4 K/9) versus 626 walks (2.2 BB/9). His average year -- with numbers tamped down by the 1981 strike and the mercifully early end to his 1989 season -- was 12-9 in 182 innings with 200 hits allowed and 69 strikeouts.
The BBWAA considered John's candidacy and his overall career mark of 288-231 every year for 15 years between 1995 and 2009. His percentage of the vote got no lower than 18.7% (1999) and no higher than 31.7% in 2009 -- the last season bump.
Evaluative methods based on statistics are mixed for John as well. He did not lead the league often or even finish in the top ten with frequency in any of the major categories -- Black Ink score of 11 versus 40 for the average HOFer, Gray Ink score of 134 versus 185 for the Average HOFer.
On the other hand, he scores a 112 on the HOF Monitor, which means that his longevity and his pitching for good teams helps him tick a lot of those boxes; indeed, 25 of his 112 points come from his 288 wins. The HOF Standards Test, which attempts to normalize the players in the Hall on a scale of 100 puts John at 44 and a likely HOFer at 50. And looking at similarity scores, the only two players on John's ten most similar pitchers who are not in the Hall are Jim Kaat -- #1 on the list -- and Tony Mullane (#8). But, to be fair, those beyond Kaat are not all that similar to John.
Even using WAR/WAR7/JAWS is a mixed bag. John does pretty well with WAR due to the long career -- 62 for him, average pitcher in the Hall is 73.4. WAR7 and JAWS attempt to measure career peak more, and those are not kind to him -- 34.7 WAR7 (wins above replacement in his peak 7 seasons; HOF average is 50.2) and 48.4 JAWS (combines WAR and WAR7; average HOF pitcher is 61.8).
What do you do with a problem like Tommy John and his HOF candidacy?
Part of me is the sentimentalist. It says to reward the guy who stuck around so long, who overcame all the obstacles that life threw at him (I didn't even mention the issues with his son Travis in 1981, after all), who was a groundbreaker in sports medicine.
The calculating, rationalist part of me looks at John's candidacy with a jaundiced eye. Would we even care about a pitcher with 288 wins over 26 seasons (which comes out to an average of just 13 wins a year) if not for the fact that John is a good-looking, tall, lanky lefty who pitched for two of baseball's most storied franchises and, oh, yeah, he has an elbow surgery named for him?
Compare him to his most comparable fellow pitcher, Jim Kaat, for just a moment. Both pitched for a long time. Both finished with over 280 wins -- Kaat at 283, John at 288. Kaat also pitched for the Yankees for parts of a couple of seasons (1979 and 1980). John is slightly better in WAR for his career, Kaat is better on the Hall of Fame Monitor (130 vs. 112), and both are at 44 on the HOF Standards Monitor.
I have gone back and forth on this, and in the end, I think he should go in. Joe Posnanski made a compelling case for the fact that, taken as a whole, John's career is groundbreaking -- for being Patient Zero -- and distinguished. Posnanski noted that Tommy John had 13 no-decisions in which he pitched eight or more innings and gave up one or fewer runs. Those 13 games going John's way would have given him 301 wins and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
So, initially I was going to say no way, but I'm now convinced. While John would be a borderline Hall of Fame inductee, I think he should be in the Hall based on the overall body of his contributions to Major League Baseball. Yes, being desperate and having it work out positively matters sometimes.
Who Can It Be Now?
It's Astros team leaders Art Howe and his .296 batting average and future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan for his 1.69 ERA from 1981.
Coming in to 1982, the Astros had high hopes. They had lost out to the eventual World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers in Divisional Series in an epic five-game series in which the Astros blew a 2 games to zero lead. Whether the team in 1982 suffered from a year-long hang over, or whether they simply got a year older without getting a year better, their 1982 was a year to forget.
They started their season with Nolan Ryan on the mound against the eventual champion Cardinals at home in the Astrodome in front of just 33,521 fans. Ryan promptly gave up 6 runs, 8 hits, and 2 walks in three innings before the immortal Gordie Pladson replaced him. To be fair, they rebounded and won the final two games of that series, and were 1 game over .500 -- which was their high-water mark for the season. They dipped as low as 14 games under .500 on August 8, and "rallied" to finish 8 games under .500 by the end of the year -- a 77-85 season.
The season unraveled for the Astros at the plate. In 1981, the team finished 9th (of 12 NL teams) in runs scored, 5th in batting average, 6th in OBP, and 8th in SLG. In 1982, all those numbers regressed -- 11th in runs scored, 11th in batting average, and dead last in the National League in OBP and SLG.
For its part, the pitching did not help matters either. The team's ERA jumped from an NL-leading 2.66 in 1981 to a fourth-place finish at 3.42. Strikeouts per nine stayed about the same, but the team regressed in its league standing in batters struck out -- moving from 1st to 6th. The big problem here came from the bullpen -- by the Wins Above Average ranking, Houston had the worst bullpen in the National League. Further, the team did not perform well either in one-run games -- 22-29 record, a .431 Pct. -- or in games that were blowouts (winning margin of five runs or more) -- 8-16, .333 Pct.
The only real change of note that had happened from 1981 to 1982 was that the team jettisoned long-time first baseman Cesar Cedeno, trading him to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for Ray Knight. In the end, that trade was pretty much a wash. Perhaps the biggest problem offensively was that CF Tony Scott proved that his 1981 numbers with Houston -- .293/.338/.396 -- were a smaller-sample-size mirage and that Tony Scott really was the .249/.297/.327 hitter where his career numbers finished.
Mustache Check: Nope, neither Howe nor Ryan sported a hairy upper lip.
Don't You Want Me
On August 10, 1982, Astros chairman of the board John McMullen fired manager Bill Virdon. At the time, Virdon had been the manager of the Astros longer than any other manager in the National League. The next longest tenure at that time was shared by Pirates Manager Chuck Tanner and Dodgers Manager Tommy LaSorda, each of which was in their sixth season as manager in 1982.
According to the story about his firing, Virdon predicted at the beginning of the season that the 1982 team would be "the best team I ever had in Houston." Oops.
On his way out the door, however, Virdon diagnosed the team's problem as being exactly what the statistics said it was: the bullpen. He noted that injuries had decimated the bullpen -- as the Astros lost Joe Sambito to an elbow problem and Dave Smith to back issues while Frank LaCorte was ineffective. He added in a quote: "we couldn't close out anyone. The seventh, eight[sic] and ninth innings have been misery."
Virdon landed on his feet, though, as he was named manager of the Montreal Expos just days after the regular season ended and on October 11, 1982.
Totally Gnarly
I don't really like Danny Sheridan of USA Today. I feel like his statistical models are created in a way that he builds in his own inherent biases to the exclusion of relevant information. I really did not like how his numbers were used for the BCS College Football determinations either.
Now, my bias out of the way, it's funny to me to look back when he was making baseball predictions in 1982. According to his numbers, the Yankees and the Houston Astros should have reached the World Series. Some other numbers that were off: he said Milwaukee was "good on paper but haven't produced" and that the abysmal Texas Rangers were "deep everywhere, but not overpowering; best third baseman in baseball -- Buddy Bell." I think George Brett would beg to differ with that assessment.
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
Since 1982 is a decade and a half before the onset of interleague play, the Astros and Brewers did not play one another. Looking at the Astros for whom they did play, it is interesting to see against which clubs they played well or struggled. Keep in mind: the scheduling in 1982 was done at the league level rather than at the Commissioner's Office level. So, while the 14-team American League had fairly even scheduling -- 13 games against each divisional opponent, 12 games against each team in the other division -- the 12-team National League had weighted scheduling. That meant playing divisional opponents 18 times during the year versus 12 games against the teams in the other division.
The Astros had losing records against five opponents, winning records against four teams, and .500 records against two teams. Their two worst records came because the Astros really struggled against the San Francisco Giants (who finished 87-75; Astros went 5-13 against them) and the Chicago Cubs -- with the Astros having a 3-9 record against a team that finished 73-89. Turn those records around, and the Astros pick up fourteen games against .500.
Now, it's time for the Brewers Countdown.
Former Brewers on the Checklist
No one appearing on this checklist had pulled on a Brewers jersey prior to 1982.
Former Brewers Who Played in 1982 for the Astros
The Brewers and Astros made a trade at the end of August in 1982. So, coming to the Astros from Milwaukee and appearing in 1982 for the Astros were two players who had appeared previously for Milwaukee: outfielder Kevin Bass and pitcher Frank DiPino. Otherwise, the Astros stayed away from former Brewers, it appears.
Future Brewers on the Checklist
As I mentioned, the Brewers and Astros made a trade at the end of August in 1982. Going to the Brewers -- and becoming an integral part of the September and post-season rotation -- was thirty-seven-year-old Don Sutton. Sutton stayed in Milwaukee through 1984. After that season, the Brewers traded Sutton to the Oakland A's for two minor leaguers and Ray Burris.
Another future Brewer was shortstop Dickie Thon, who finished his career with an 85-game stint in Milwaukee in 1993.
And, while he did not play for the Brewers, Phil Garner spent eight years -- from 1992 through 1999 -- in Milwaukee as the Brewers manager, finishing with a record of 563-617 (.477 Win Pct.). His first season saw the Brewers enjoy a 92-70 record and a second-place finish in the American League East behind the eventual World Series Champion Toronto Blue Jays.
Future Brewers Appearing but Not on the Checklist
He did not get a card in the 1982 Topps set, but second baseman Bill Doran got 100 at-bats in September of 1982. He finished fifth in the Rookie of the Year voting in 1983. Then, in 1993, he capped off his career with a 28-game stint for the Brewers with Dickie Thon.
Future Hall of Famers on the Checklist
The starting rotation featured two future Hall of Famers -- Don Sutton and Nolan Ryan. Sutton started 27 games for the Astros and Ryan started 35, and both pitched fairly well. Indeed, even though Ryan was 35 to start 1982, he still had another eleven seasons to go in the major leagues. And, even though Sutton was 37 to start 1982, he pitched for another six seasons.
Future Hall of Famers appearing in 1982 but not on the checklist
No one else on the roster got any real consideration for the Hall of Fame, nor as far as I can tell should they have gotten any consideration.
The only players with even a shout at being looked at would be Joe Niekro -- who simply did not pile up enough counting statistics in his 22-year career to merit consideration -- or perhaps Jose Cruz, whose career numbers were harmed significantly by playing in the cavernous Astrodome. Still, that argument for Cruz only gets you so far, and it isn't far enough.
Who Can It Be Now?
Lynn Morris Jones was born on January 1, 1953 in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Meadville is in the Pittsburgh/Youngstown, Ohio region in the western corner of Pennsylvania. As Jones told the Lakeland (FL) Ledger in 1979, "Scouts don't get up that way much." As a result, Jones was not drafted coming out of high school and matriculated at Thiel College (pronounced "teel") in Greenville, Pennsylvania.
He finally got noticed at Thiel by the Cincinnati Reds and was drafted in the 10th round of the 1974 June Amateur Draft -- 7 picks after Mark "The Bird" Fidrych was drafted by the Detroit Tigers. Jones signed immediately and was assigned to Seattle in the Northwest League in 1974.
As that 1979 story about Jones mentioned, while the Reds gave him a chance to play professional baseball, that chance was tempered by the fact that the Reds weren't exactly promoting Jones on any kind of fast track. Jones made it to Double-A ball in 1975 at the age of 22 at Trois-Rivieres -- apparently the Quebecer version of Pittsburgh, since his 1982 Topps card calls it "Three Rivers" -- on the strength of his second year in the Northwest League being a 13 HR year with a .336/.433/.611 slash line. He stayed in Pittsburgh-Quebec until 1977.
Jones complained about this career stagnation in 1979, saying, "I felt like they didn't really have plans for me, but I kept progressing through the system. I was playing well enough so they kept moving me up." When he got to Triple-A in 1978, he was told that he would be a defensive substitute there but that he should not expect to play regularly. When injuries hit the big league team, however, the Triple-A roster got shuffled around and Jones got regular playing time that he parlayed into a .328/.386/.459 slash line, 9 homers, 62 RBI, and 20 steals in 532 plate appearances.
Despite the good year in Triple-A in 1978, the Reds did not add Jones to their 40-man major league roster and left unprotected in the Rule 5 draft. The Detroit Tigers snapped Jones up and kept him on their roster all year. Thus, at the age of 26, Jones got the opportunity to be in the major leagues for a complete year. He hit reasonably well as the Tigers backup rightfielder, splitting time with Jerry Morales.
When 1980 rolled around, he was splitting time in center field for the first month of the season with rookie Kirk Gibson. Then, his knee started swelling up on him; he wasn't even sure how he got hurt. Surgery to repair the knee came next, followed by rehabilitation in Triple-A before getting called back up to the big league team in September.
Nonetheless, Jones did not lose his confidence. In spring training in 1981, he declared to the Lakeland Ledger that, "To myself, I'm a better outfielder than anybody we've got. And I think I can hit. The only thing I can't do is hit with power. But after I got hurt, the whole thing changed. I don't know where I stand now. I don't know if I'll make the club or not." He added, "It's frustrating, but I don't feel down about it. I think I can play, and I think I have a good attitude. I'll do whatever I'm asked."
Sparky Anderson must have disagreed with Jones on Jones being anything more than a fourth outfielder. Who can blame Sparky with guys like Steve Kemp, Al Cowens, and Kirk Gibson in front of Jones? Those three outfielders saw the majority of time for the Tigers, with Jones filling in for those times when Gibson was hurt with one of his various ailments like "not being able to hit a curveball."
1982 did not go much better for Jones. Relegated to fourth/fifth outfielder status behind Larry Herndon, Chet Lemon, Glenn Wilson, and Kirk Gibson, Jones came to bat just 150 times all season. Even he recognized that he was not going to get to play behind those guys, telling the Ludington Daily News in June of 1982 that, "when you look at the outfielders we have on this club, it's obvious that I'm not going to play very much this year. I still think I can, and do, play a role with this club. But I'm not going to help the team by complaining all the time ... I like this team and I'm comfortable."
That comfort ran out after the 1983 season. He came to bat just 70 times all year for the Tigers that season. In an interview in October of 1984 with the Eugene Register-Guard, he alluded to problems that he had with the GM in Detroit: "The general manager and I had our differences in Detroit. They told me if I didn't sign a contract, they'd send me to Triple A. The contract had a raise in it, but not even a cost-of-living raise." After that year, he signed with the Kansas City Royals.
He played sparingly for the rest of his career in Kansas City, amassing just 332 plate appearances in 224 games for the Royals over three seasons with a .228/.278/.288 slash line. While he watched his former team the Detroit Tigers win the World Series in 1984, he got to enjoy winning his own World Series ring in 1985 with the Royals. He went 2-for-3 in the Series against the Cardinals with a double and a triple. He retired after the 1986 season.
MUSTACHE CHECK: Oh yeah. A major crumb catcher.
Trivial Pursuit
Some players are front runners and some are mop-up men. Jones definitely qualifies as a front runner. In his 527 career games, the teams on which he played finished with a record of 316 wins and 211 losses -- a .600 winning percentage. That winning percentage is good enough for fifteenth overall for those players playing between 1957 and 2006 whose teams won at least 200 games in which they appeared. Now that is trivial.
Totally Gnarly
In 2004, Jones was serving as the first base coach for the Boston Red Sox under manager Terry Francona. Jones was at home working on his water softener when, well, let the Boston Globe tell the story (with my emphasis added):
The Sox lost first base coach Lynn Jones for at least a few games to an eye injury he suffered working on a water softener at his home in Conneautville, Pa., about 90 miles east of Cleveland. Jones lost control of a screwdriver, which stuck him in the eye. He was taken to the Cleveland Clinic, where he was expected to receive stitches.
Thankfully for Jones, it was not so serious as to cost him any of his vision and, further, he kept his job the next year coming off the Red Sox 2004 World Series victory.
Family Ties
Lynn's brother Darryl Jones played 18 games at the age of 28 in 1979 for the New York Yankees. Jones will have one of his numbers that he wore with the Yankees retired in the near future, however, since Jones wore number 2 that year -- 16 years before some kid named Jeter made it his.
A Few Minutes With Tony L.
Certainly, Lynn Jones was never a guy who struck fear in the hearts of pitchers facing him. Putting up a career slugging percentage of .321 does not make many pitchers fear him. He did, however, feast on Brewers pitchers in the 85 plate appearances he had against them -- lifetime percentages of .313/.329/.388 are nothing to sneeze at.
Jones became a "baseball man" after his career ended. He was the Royals first base coach in 1990 before he became a minor league manager in the Florida Marlins system. He spent several successful years with the Kane County Cougars -- with the team reaching the postseason twice while he was managing them. In 2001, the Marlins made him their first base coach. He did that for a year before managing the Macon Braves in 2002. The Red Sox then hired him in 2003 to be a coach for the major league team. The Reds hired him in 2006 at the end of his Red Sox tenure to be their outfield/baserunning/roving instructor for their minor league clubs. He stayed with the Reds two years before returning to the Atlanta Braves system for three years in the same role.
That said, Jones is doing pretty well these days, it seems. His wife is on Twitter and has a family photo as her Twitter icon. Last year, Jones moved back to Western Pennsylvania and went back to his alma mater, Thiel College, to become a member of its baseball coaching staff.
Who says you can't go home?
Who Can It Be Now?
Thomas Winton Boggs was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, on October 25, 1955. He moved around a bit as a child, though -- the Kentucky Baseball blog noted a couple of years ago that Tommy grew up playing little league in Lexington (their source was Boggs's wife, apparently, so all I can do to fact check this is ask her to e-mail me to confirm that same information!). At the age of 11, though, Boggs's family moved to Austin, Texas, where he attended high school and (spoiler alert!) still lives today.
Boggs was a highly touted fireballing right-handed pitcher coming out of Lanier High School in Austin, Texas. He was so highly regarded that he was drafted second overall in the 1974 June Draft by the Texas Rangers. He was selected ahead of such baseball luminaries as Lonnie Smith, Dale Murphy, Garry Templeton, Lance Parrish, Willie Wilson, Rich Dauer, and Rick Sutcliffe -- all of whom also were selected in the first round that year. He signed immediately though he did not follow his fellow Texas schoolboy phenom David Clyde, whom the Rangers had drafted the previous season, by debuting in the major leagues.
Instead, the Rangers sent Boggs to their Rookie League team in the Gulf Coast League. He started ten games there, completing four, and gave up just 50 hits in 64 innings pitched. As a result, the Rangers pushed Boggs up to Double-A Pittsfield in the Eastern League for 1975. Since Boggs's arm did not fall off, Texas promoted Boggs again for the 1976 season to Sacramento in the Pacific Coast League.
Apparently, going through 18 Triple-A starts with a 6.89 ERA in 115 innings pitched -- 153 hits, 60 BB, 77 Ks, 23 HR allowed -- was enough in those days for the Rangers to say to themselves, "I think this Boggs kid should be in the major leagues!" So, on July 19, Boggs made his major league debut against the Boston Red Sox and pitched reasonably well though he did not record a decision. Boggs stayed with the Rangers through the rest of the season and did not pitch terribly even though he had a bad win-loss record: 1-7, 3.49 ERA, 8.7 H/9, 3.4 BB/9. He wasn't striking people out -- 3.6 K/9 against a league total of 4.7 K/9 -- but he did okay.
As a result, he broke camp with the major league team in 1977. Outside of one game against expansion Seattle in which he held the Mariners to 4 hits and 2 walks in 7-2/3 innings on April 19, though, 1977 was a disaster. In his first start of the year, he was tagged for 3 earned runs on 8 hits and 2 walks in 4-1/3 innings against Cleveland. After the start against Seattle 5 days later, Boggs had four more starts for the Rangers and was tagged regularly -- 15-1/3 innings, 28 hits, 15 runs (all earned -- ERA of 8.80), and 8 walks. In those games, he was touched up for an OPS of 1.011. That's pretty bad -- even if he was just 21 years old.
So, the Rangers sent Boggs back to Triple-A for the remainder of 1977. As bad as those last four starts were for the Rangers, well, that is how badly he pitched in Triple-A at Tucson. Certainly, the Arizona air and the PCL were not conducive to good pitching (League ERA: 5.22, Team ERA: 6.45...and that was not the worst in the league--Albuquerque finished with a Team ERA of 6.93), but Boggs was horrible. He sported the worst ERA for qualifiers in the league at 8.54. In 97 innings, he gave up 131 hits, 107 runs (92 earned), walked 83, struck out 70, and gave up 11 HR. Ouch.
It should be no surprise, then, that the Rangers did not mind trading Boggs away after the 1977 season. What was surprising was that Boggs was included in a crazy four-team, eleven-player deal. In that trade, here's how the tote board worked out:
Atlanta Braves: received Boggs, Adrian Devine, and Eddie Miller; gave up Willie Montanez
Texas Rangers: received Nelson Norman, Al Oliver, and Jon Matlack; gave up Boggs, Devine, Miller, Bert Blyleven, Ken Henderson, and Tom Grieve
Pittsburgh Pirates: received Blyleven and John Milner; gave up Norman and Oliver
New York Mets: received Montanez, Henderson, and Grieve; gave up Matlack and Milner.
As the news story linked to above points out, this trade was set up by the Rangers then-owner Brad Corbett, who got assistance from Ted Turner wanting to dump Montanez's $300,000 salary, which led Ted Turner to give this quote: "we got some young players more interested in baseball than money."
Boggs yo-yoed between Triple-A Richmond and Atlanta in 1978 and 1979. His Triple-A results were far better than his major league totals from those years, but those Triple-A results make it look like he figured out how to pitch, finally. His 1980 season made that appear to be true as well. At the age of 24 and in his fifth big-league season, Boggs had his best year -- 12-9 record, 3.42 ERA, 192-1/3 innings, 180 hits allowed, 46 walks against 84 Ks. Not bad at all for Boggs, and at his age it appeared to be a step in the right direction.
In 1981, Boggs slotted in behind 42-year-old Gaylord Perry and ahead of 42-year-old Phil Niekro in the Braves rotation (along with 24-year-old Bob Walk and 27-year-old Rick Mahler). Boggs's record on its face looks uninspiring -- 3-13, 4.10 ERA -- but underneath, his peripheral numbers were better, as he struck out 5.1 per nine innings (league average of 4.9) and a K/BB ratio of 1.5 (league average of 1.54). That was important progress because those numbers improving are the sign of a pitcher starting to understand how to pitch (allowing homers was never that much of an issue).
As 1982 began, then, Boggs was 26 years old and appeared ready to make a leap forward. And, to an extent, he did -- he again struck out more hitters per nine innings that season. Unfortunately for Boggs, though, the reality was that 1982 was the beginning of the end for his major league career.
He struggled with shoulder problems during the 1982 season. He was diagnosed with a slightly torn rotator cuff and, to fix it, sat out three months. He went on a rehabilitation assignment to Richmond, and came back to pitch very well in September. His desire to get his shoulder right meant that he decided to forego his usual routine of working out with the University of Texas baseball team in that off-season. But, then, in spring training of 1983, he had to have pieces of cartilage removed from his shoulder. As the news story quoted Boggs as saying -- with an unfortunate sense of false hope:
"They went in with an arthroscope and and found that the cartilage in the front of the shoulder was frayed," Boggs said. "They trimmed that up and told me to rest it for two weeks. But the arthroscope showed no tear of the rotator cuff. That's a great relief. You get rotator cuff in the back of your mind ... it's ended so many careers. Now I can get that out of my mind."
What Boggs was describing was that his labrum was frayed -- or at least that is what is my best guess. The unfortunate false hope I referred to is based on the fact that Boggs would pitch in just 9 more games over the rest of his career -- 5 with the Braves in 1983 and 4 with the Rangers in 1985. His shoulder gave out, and that was the end for him.
The Verdict
On March 3, 1984, Tommy Boggs plead guilty to misdemeanor gambling charges in the Superior Court of DeKalb County, Georgia. DeKalb County is the county due east of Fulton County, where the majority of the City of Atlanta is located. Apparently, Boggs placed bets on football games while he was with the Atlanta Braves. Initially, he was charged in October of 1983 with felonies of commercial gambling and of communicating gambling information, but those charges were determined to be "inappropriate" and were reduced to the single misdemeanor. He paid a $1,000 fine and received 12 months probation.
Totally Gnarly
Bobby Cox holds the major league record for most lifetime ejections -- a record he set in 2010. Boggs's role in the ejection is a weird one. The Sports Illustrated story about Cox's career mentions that the game story in The Atlanta Constitution the next day reported that Boggs had found a sick blackbird before the May 1, 1978, game between the Braves and Mets. The bird started feeling better, and Boggs let it go. After Cox was ejected, though, the bird started attacking the home plate umpire, Nick Colosi, who had ejected Cox. As the news story is quoted as saying, "Nobody knows for sure if Boggs gave the command to attack."
A Few Minutes with Tony L.
Tommy Boggs made no impact whatsoever on me in his time in the major leagues. I never saw him pitch. I am not even sure that I could have identified his name as belonging to a major leaguer.
But he does have a mustache, so there's yet another one.
After his shoulder refused to cooperate with his being a pitcher, Boggs moved back to Austin, Texas. There, he founded Austin SLAM baseball in 1986, with teams in all age groups from age 7 through age 18. In the 28 years that organization has been in existence, it has produced a bunch of major leaguers, including Ryan Langerhans, Mario Ramos, Randy Choate, Scott Ruffcorn, Nate Minchey, Robbie Beckett, and, more notably, Matt Belisle, Lance Berkman, and current Cardinals pitcher Shelby Miller.
In addition to his work with Austin SLAM, he has been the head baseball coach at Concordia University - Austin since the beginning of the 2009-2010 season. His team has done reasonably well and, indeed, his team performed very well in 2012 -- leading to he and his staff being named the 2012 American Southwest Conference West Division Coaching Staff of the Year after the Concordia Tornados turned in a 17-4 conference record and a 37-11 overall record.
And, if you're interested in e-mailing Mr. Boggs, his e-mail address at Concordia is located on that last link.
