Card #152: Ramón Aviles

 

Who Can It Be Now?

Ramón Antonio Aviles was born on January 22, 1952 in Manati, Puerto Rico. Not to ruin the conclusion, but Mr. Aviles also passed away in Manati on January 27, 2020. I bring that up because, for this biography, I will be borrowing liberally from the excellent RIP Baseball, which posted a full obituary last year for Mr. Aviles. 

Aviles grew up wanting to be a doctor, but his family's more humble blue collar background (his dad was a police officer) meant that he could not afford to pursue that dream. Aviles attended Fernando Callejo High School in Manati -- a school which also produced Carlos Beltrán and brothers Javier and José Valentín. 

Aviles became an excellent baseball player -- good enough for the Boston Red Sox to sign him in the fall of 1969 as an amateur free agent at shortstop in the years before Puerto Ricans were merged into the draft. As RIP Baseball notes, Aviles got his chance thanks to his pal Juan Beniquez, who convinced the Red Sox to give Aviles the tryout that led to Aviles's signing. 

From there, Aviles began his slow climb up the Red Sox ladder, spending 1970 and 1971 in low-A and high-A ball. After the 1970 season, the Red Sox had identified Aviles as having sufficient potential as a hitter to suggest that he learn 2B and 3B in addition to shortstop with the idea that the versatility for he and a few other infield prospects would aid in their climb up the ladder and into the major leagues. This paid off eventually. Aviles moved up to AA for the 1972, 1973, and 1974 seasons, then ascended to AAA starting in 1975. He played full seasons in 1975 through 1977 in AAA. 

Aviles was on track to make the major league team in 1977, but he was sidetracked when he and Jim Rice collided with one another trying to make a play. Aviles separated his shoulder -- you would expect that the guy who is 5'9" tall and weighed 155 pounds would lose in a collision with Jim Rice. 

The Red Sox did give him a cameo appearance in 1977, calling him up in late June when the Red Sox needed an outfielder. Don Zimmer apparently wasn't told about the call up and only used Aviles one time in a doubleheader against the Brewers in mid-July. He was brought on to pinch hit for Bernie Carbo and executed a perfect sacrifice bunt, moving Carlton Fisk to third base and George Scott to second base. For what it's worth, the Sox did not score that inning -- the Brewers walked Butch Hobson intentionally before Rick Miller hit into a flyball double play thanks to Jamie Quirk throwing Fisk out at the plate.

In any event, that was Aviles's only appearance for the Red Sox, who sold his contract to the Philadelphia Phillies at the end of spring training in 1978. The Phillies parked Aviles at AAA in 1978, where he played second fiddle to future major leaguers Jim Morrison and Todd Cruz, and for part of 1979. But the Phillies gave Aviles a chance at playing in the big leagues when Manny Trillo broke his arm on May 2, 1979. Aviles had the best hitting stretch of his career -- hitting .480/.536/.560 in his first 9 games with the Phillies before cooling off. He was sent back down to AAA in June after Trillo returned, but the seed had been planted with the team that Aviles could be a fill-in for the Phils. 

Aviles parlayed this opportunity into a three-year stint with the Phillies. He still spent a couple of weeks at AAA in 1980, but he was called up in early 1980 when Trillo got hurt again -- this time a sprained ankle. The team decided this time to keep Aviles around, and him serve as the backup infielder to Trillo and Larry Bowa. Because of his role as the backup infielder, Aviles was the proud owner of a World Series ring for the 1980 Phillies even though he did not appear at all in the Series. 

He struggled in 1981 to hit anywhere near as well as he had in 1979 or 1980. He went back to AAA for a while, and only really appeared as a late-inning defensive replacement. Shortly after the 1981 season ended, however, the Phillies traded him in a minor deal to the Rangers for pitcher Dave Rajsich. 

Neither Aviles nor Rajsich appeared in the majors after the trade and, in fact, both men's major league careers were over before they were traded. Because he failed to make the team out of spring training, Aviles asked the Rangers to trade him. They obliged, and he went back to the Phillies system. 

He played in 1982 there and then served as a player/coach in 1983. That role set the stage for his next chapter: coaching and managing throughout the minor leagues. For the next 25 years, Aviles served as a minor league coach, manager, and roving instructor. He spent most of his time in the low minors, though he did hop up to AAA in 1996 when the Phillies fired Butch Hobson due to Hobson's arrest for cocaine possession. He also managed regularly in the winter league in Puerto Rico and won a number of championships there as well. 

In 2005, he hopped into the Brewers system just in time to manage Ryan Braun for Braun's first pro season with the West Virginia Power before he closed out his career as the manager in 2008 with the Burlington Lake Monsters and in 2009 as the hitting instructor for the Hagerstown Suns. 

Aviles suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure. He was scheduled to start kidney dialysis to help treat his issues, but he passed away on January 27, 2020 just before that treatment could start. He was 68 years old. 

Family Ties

Aviles's nephew is Mike Aviles, who spent 10 years in the majors as a utility player for the Royals, Red Sox, Cleveland, Tigers, and Marlins starting in 2008 and ending in 2017. 

Trivial Pursuit

According to RIP Baseball's citation to a 2006 profile of Aviles in Florida Today, Aviles was the first -- and perhaps only -- Puerto Rican to win a Caribbean World Series as a player, manager, and general manager. Overall, Aviles won a total of 25 championships in professional baseball as a player, manager, coach, and general manager. 

Nanu Nanu

This is Aviles's final appearance on a Topps baseball card. 

His baseball card history is all over the place. He made his debut on a card in 1978 in the SSPC 270 set as a member of the Red Sox. After his 1979 appearances with the Phillies at the age of 27, Topps put him on the Phillies "Future Stars" card in the 1980 set with Kevin Saucier and Dickie Noles. He appeared in 1981 and 1982 in the Topps and Fleer sets, but he never appeared on a Donruss card.

A Few Minutes with Tony L.

Aviles clearly was a baseball man to his core once it became clear to him that he would never become a doctor. His roles in the Phillies organization from 1983 through 2002 meant that he played an intimate role in developing at least some of the players that would go on to help the Phillies to make the World Series in 1993. 

As was the case for Dave Edwards, I do not have any independent recollections of Aviles as a player. That's probably not surprising. Aviles only played in 117 games, only had 223 plate appearances, and his major league career ended before I hit double digits in terms of age. Even his only appearance against the Brewers took place when I was just five years old and hadn't even started kindergarten.

Feel free to share any memories that you have of him as a player, coach, or manager below. 

Card #151: Dave Edwards

Who Can It Be Now?

David Leonard Edwards was born on February 24, 1954 in Los Angeles, California. Edwards was a product of the city of Los Angeles and attended the historic Thomas Jefferson High School, which produced such luminaries as Alvin Ailey, Ralph Bunche, Dexter Gordon, Art Farmer, and Etta James outside of sports and umpire Emmett Ashford, former Milwaukee Brave Lee Maye, and 5-time high jump national champion Otis Burrell.

Edwards was drafted in the 7th Round of the 1971 June Amateur Draft by the Minnesota Twins, and he was drafted as a catcher. I suppose he must have skipped a grade or started school early somehow since that meant that he was drafted in the year that he turned 17 years old. 

He spent four full seasons in rookie and A ball -- from 1971 through 1975 -- before getting promoted to AA Orlando in 1976. The Twins promoted him immediately in 1977 to AAA. He spent two seasons in AAA -- one in Tacoma followed by one in Toledo -- with fairly decent results (.764 OPS and a .341 OBP). 

As a result, Edwards was the one and only late season call up for the Twins in 1978 when rosters expanded in September. He made his debut against the White Sox and pitcher Ken Kravec, off whom Edwards got his first major league hit in his debut (a double). 

Calvin Griffith -- much like Charlie Finley -- viewed free agency as financial ruination, though Griffith was known for, as the Star Tribune put it in June of 2020, running the team "in a discount style." Coincidentally, in September of 1978 when Edwards was making his debut, Griffith was spouting off as only an old white racist owner could, stating that he moved the Twins to Minnesota because he "found out that you only had 15,000 blacks here. . . . We came here because you've got good, hardworking, white people here."

Quite the welcome committee. 

The offseason between 1978 and 1979 saw the Twins cheap out and traded one of their best players -- Dan Ford -- to the Angels for Danny Goodwin and Ron Jackson. The Sporting News on January 27, 1979, noted that the Twins intended to have Edwards split time with Willie Norwood in centerfield. 

That changed a couple of months later on February 5, 1979, when the cheapo Twins traded the great Rod Carew to the Angels in exchange for Dave Engle, Paul Hartzell, Brad Havens, and Ken Landreaux. Landreaux became the starter in center and Edwards became an extra outfielder. Even so, 1979 was his best year -- 257 plate appearances with an OPS of .711 (OPS+ of 89, making him just 11% worse than league average).

Talk in the offseason before the 1980 season had the Twins considering a left field platoon between Edwards and Rick Sofield. The Sporting News on March 29, 1980, ran a story outlining the differences between the two players. Sofield was gregarious -- a football stud who was convinced to spurn the Michigan Wolverines to go to the minor leagues -- while Edwards described himself as "enjoy[ing] listening" and always wanting to be a baseball player. 

This plan got tossed aside when Edwards suffered from an appendicitis in spring training. He fell out of the Twins plans and was traded to the Padres during the December 1980 winter meetings for reserve infielder Chuck Baker (who lasted all of 70 plate appearances in Minnesota). 

The Padres turned Edwards basically into a pinch hitter and fourth outfielder in 1981 and, in 1982, really nothing more than a late inning defensive replacement. He appeared in 71 games in 1982, but started only 12. The Padres released him after the 1982 season. He went on to play in Mexico for two years before calling it a career. 

Family Ties

Dave Edwards had two older brothers who were twins who played in the major leagues at the same time as Dave though at no point in time were all three in the majors at the same time. Mike Edwards beat Dave to the majors by a full season. He appeared in 317 games -- mostly with Oakland -- before leaving the U.S. to play in Mexico and Japan starting in 1982. Mike's twin Marshall Edwards will appear later in this set; Marshall was the Brewers' 5th OF for the 1982 World Series team -- even appearing in one game. Marshall debuted at the age of 28 in 1981 -- the year after Mike was let go by Oakland. 

Trivial Pursuit

In his 1980 interview in The Sporting News, Dave Edwards pointed out that, with Marshall's debut, the Edwardses were the first African-American family to have three brothers all appear in the major leagues. 

A Few Minutes with Tony

I honestly don't have much memory of Dave Edwards other than his ties to Marshall Edwards, of course. It appears that Edwards is pretty good about signing autographs through the mail, though, so maybe I'll take a stab at getting him to sign something. 

Anyone have any good Dave Edwards stories?

Card #145: Bob Horner

Who Can It Be Now?
James Robert Horner was born in Junction City, Kansas, on August 6, 1957. Horner moved to Arizona as a child and graduated from Apollo High school in Glendale, Arizona. Straight out of high school, Horner was selected with the 357th pick overall in the 1975 June draft (15th round) by the Oakland Athletics. Of course, he turned the A's down and decided instead to attend Arizona State University.  

Horner had an incredible career at ASU, leading him to be awarded the first-ever Golden Spikes Award by USA Baseball and the MLBPA. Horner's success led the Atlanta Braves to select Horner first overall in the 1978 June Draft. Considering that the Braves other options at third base were Rod Gilbreath (lifetime .248/.320/.329) or putting outfielder Barry Bonnell there, the Braves decided that they had nothing to lose and plugged Horner into their major league lineup immediately on his signing. 

Based on his 23 homers in 89 games, Horner was named as the NL Rookie of the Year in 1978, beating out Padres shortstop Ozzie Smith and Pirates pitcher Don Robinson. Based solely on their statistics and using WAR, Robinson should have been named as the Rookie of the Year, but certainly some of the hype going from college to the majors directly had to help Horner's candidacy. That season, the player that similarity scores put as most similar was a 21-year-old Miguel Cabrera. Yeah, it was a very good year.

Horner always had excellent power, and over time his batting eye developed reasonably well also. The problem he had was staying healthy. He played over 140 games in a season just twice -- in 1982 and again in 1986. He was an All-Star once -- in 1982 -- and received votes for the MVP award three times (1979, 1980, and 1983).  Yet the question with Horner was always why he did not live up to the first-overall-pick hype. Certainly, some of that had to do with Horner's less-than-good conditioning, and some of it was just bad luck.

After the 1986 season, the owners' collusion led Horner to get his best contract offer from the Yakult Swallows in the Japanese Central League. In 93 games there, Horner smacked 31 homers and hit .327/.423/.683. Horner came back from Japan after one season -- leaving a number of very derogatory remarks about Japanese baseball in his wake -- and played 60 games for the St. Louis Cardinals before everyone in the major leagues made it clear to Horner that his big-league career was over.

Mustache Check
Nope, the 23-year-old Horner did not join in the spirit of the day and remained clean shaven.

Trivial Pursuit
Horner has a few great trivial points about him.  

• He is, to my knowledge, the last player to come directly out of college and play in the major leagues. 
• He famously never appeared in a minor league baseball game. 
• He hit four home runs in a game on July 6, 1986, at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium against the Montreal Expos. In typical Braves fashion for the mid-to-late 1980s (and probably for 2015 too), the Braves lost the game 11-8.
• He was, as mentioned above, the first winner of the now very prestigious Golden Spikes Award. 
• Along with Jason Jennings and Buster Posey, he was one of three Golden Spikes winners to be Rookie of the Year. He's the only one to do it in the same year.

A Few Minutes with Tony L.

Of course I knew who Bob Horner was in the early 1980s. His exploits of coming straight from college to the major leagues made everyone who was a baseball fan aware of him.  A fun fact for me from the back of this card is that Horner is listed as living in Dunwoody, Georgia. Dunwoody is where my wife and I call home now, so that is pretty cool to me.

I met Horner once in my life. He was signing autographs at a construction-industry even on behalf of the Siemens Corporation about 12 or 13 years ago. He was in a reasonably jovial mood at the event.  To be fair, it wasn't a big line or anything either, since the event required registration fees to be paid, so perhaps that had something to do with it as well.

Horner no longer lives in Dunwoody (otherwise, I might pop over to his house...so that is lucky for him, I suppose).  Horner lives now in Irving, Texas, and has for over thirty years now.  When asked in 2010 "What are you up to these days?" in an interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, his reply was, "I don't do anything." Another website I found indicated that he does do some things around Irving, though -- he is a food pantry volunteer there.

At least he's not just playing golf. 

Card #139: Jeff Jones

Who Can It Be Now?
Jeffrey Allen Jones was born on July 29, 1956, in Detroit, Michigan. Jones grew up in the Detroit suburb of Southgate and led his Southgate High School team to the Tri-River League championship. He went undrafted out of high school, so he went first to St. Clair County Community College in Port Huron, Michigan and then on to Bowling Green State University. While it appears that he attended BGSU for just one year, during that year one of his freshman teammates was none other than Orel Hershiser.

If the stats on The Baseball Cube are correct, Jones walked 40 in 56-2/3 innings while striking out 37. That's pretty bad. But, apparently the A's of the 1970s did not put any weight on college performance, or perhaps they felt that they could fix Jones's apparent wildness. Or, maybe when you make a pick with the 329th selection overall (13th round in 1977), you're just looking for a live arm.

In any case, Jones signed with Oakland immediately after the draft in 1977 and was assigned to Class-A Modesto in the California League. There, he wasn't exactly good, but in comparison to the rest of his team he looked decent. Jones threw 46 innings and notched a 4-3 record with a 5.09 ERA. That ERA was good enough, however, to put him 6th overall on the team -- and that includes a pitcher who threw just 11 innings. Modesto had a team ERA of 6.60. In that context, Jones looked like a prospect.

So, Oakland did what most teams did with their prospects -- they promoted him before the end of the year to Double-A Chattanooga in the Southern League. Nine scoreless innings later, and Jones cemented his status in the organization. That led to being assigned to Double-A Jersey City in the Eastern League in 1978. There, Jones was basically a team-average pitcher: Team ERA: 3.70 v. Jones ERA 3.72; Team WHIP: 1.403 v. Jones WHIP 1.419. For a team that finished 54-83 and whose best player was a 19-year-old named Rickey, Jones's 10-13 record did not look bad.

In fact, it was good enough for another promotion, this time to Triple-A Ogden in the Pacific Coast League. In Ogden, Jones was far better than average -- 3.50 ERA v. team ERA of 5.20. He led the team in inning pitched at 175 and in strikeouts with 126. He also walked more batters than any other Ogden pitcher. Considering he was three years younger than his average opponent, that was the season that made Jones into a legitimate A's prospect.

When 1980 rolled around, the A's were in the throes of "BillyBall" under Billy Martin. That meant that the young starting rotation finished what they started. Jones, however, was a reliever on that team. For him, it meant appearing in just 35 games all year. On the positive side, Jones was just one save away from tying for the team lead in saves. On the negative side, Jones had 5 saves all season. 

One problem with Martin's pitching philosophy from the reliever's perspective was infrequent use. Jones's usage pattern looks schizophrenic -- five of his appearances came the day after a previous appearance (including one run in July of three consecutive games) and six came with one day of rest. But, he also had 3 stints where he had 6 days between appearances, two times where he had 9 days between appearances, and two days when he went 10 days between appearances. He even had one run of 17 days -- from June 23 through July 11-- without an appearance. I'm not sure if that was an injury or otherwise, but I did look to see whether there were any games in which relievers were used. The answer:  in that time, Billy Martin used Bob Lacey four times in relief and, otherwise, every other game was a complete game. Seriously.

The same thing happened in 1981 as well. The Associated Press mentioned in a game story in April of that year about how bored the Oakland bullpen was. In that story, Jones was quoted as saying that, "[w]e sit out there cheering and yelling, trying to keep sharp so we're ready when they need us." In the game in question, Jones came in along with Craig Minetto to nail down a 2-1 win for the A's. Indeed, Jones was probably the "closer" for the A's in 1981, as he tied for the team lead in saves with Dave Beard at three. Yes. Three. Jones also led the team in relief innings pitched with 61.

Still, it wasn't like his peripheral stats showed him to be a star of any kind. Though he posted a 3.39 ERA, his FIP was 4.80 -- fueled by 40 BB in 61 innings and a K/BB ratio of just 1.08 (43 Ks). His 1981 season was the second of two seasons in which it appeared that he got pretty lucky as it related to opposition batting average on balls in play -- .242 in 1980, .256 in 1981. 

That changed in 1982. Opponent's BABip jumped to .317, likely added to by a couple of disastrous outings early in the season. The first came on April 8, 1982, when he came in to the game in the 16th inning and promptly allowed four runs in 1/3 of an inning. The second drubbing came on May 9, 1982, against Cleveland. Jones was stretched out to make up for a terrible Matt Keough start (4-1/3 innings, 7 hits, 6 ER, 4 BB, 0 K). All was fine for Jones until the 9th inning when the roof caved in. Jones walked 3, allowed three homers, and was touched up for 8 runs (5 earned). That earned Jones a demotion to Triple-A.

The next time he pitched in the major leagues, it was August. Indeed, after that 8-run outing, Jones never again stayed regularly in the major leagues for an entire season. He spent the majority of both 1983 and 1984 in Triple-A Tacoma and did not impress Oakland's front office enough to remain with the big-league team. 

The A's released Jones on October 19, 1984. It appears that he did not pitch anywhere in 1985. In 1986 and 1987, he appeared in the Detroit Tigers minor league system in Double-A, and he spent time in 1987 in Triple-A as well. However, that was the end for Jones's pitching career. As a result, his major league career ended in 1984.

Mustache Check: Despite having a bushy mustache these days, Jones was clean-shaven on his 1982 Topps card -- the massive unibrow notwithstanding.

Trivial Pursuit
As best I can tell, Jones is the only major league player to hail from Southgate High School. Yeah, that's all I've got.

A Few Minutes with Tony L.
Jeff Jones is not a player about which I have any memory. That should not come as a surprise, since I am a Brewers fan. Jones pitched just four times (5-1/3 innings) against Milwaukee, posting a 1.69 ERA despite 6 hits and 3 walks in those 5.1 innings. He faced just 25 Milwaukee Hitters in his career, for that matter.

Perhaps Billy Martin was on to something, though, with Jones's usage (since Martin was the A's manager for the majority of Jones's time in the major leagues). Jones pitched 124 innings against teams with a record of under .500 and posted a 2.83 ERA. In his other 81 career innings against teams with a record of .500 or better, Jones was touched up for a 5.67 ERA! Just crazy how wild those splits are. That's the fun of small sample sizes.

Jones has led a fairly straight-forward baseball life. Since his retirement as an active player in 1987, Jones has been a coach in the Tigers organization for literally the rest of his adult life. He spent time in Toledo, London (Ontario), and Fayetteville, North Carolina, as a minor league coach before coming up to the majors as a coach in 1995.

He was the Bullpen Coach in the major leagues for Detroit under Sparky Anderson in 1995, under Buddy Bell and Larry Parrish in 1998, under Parrish only in 1999, under Phil Garner in 2000, under Garner and Luis Pujols in 2002, and under Jim Leyland from 2007 through 2011. In the years in between those appearances in the majors, he was the pitching coach for the Tigers' Triple-A farm club in Toledo. Since 2012, he has served as the Tigers pitching coach under both Jim Leyland and, in 2014, under Brad Ausmus. 

He stayed in the Detroit area for his entire post-playing career outside of one season in Single-A Fayetteville in the late 1980s. Otherwise, he has lived in the same area and commuted -- whether to Toledo, London, or Detroit.

It's not that Jeff Jones has lived a boring life from an outsider's perspective -- it's that he has avoided trouble, avoided notoriety, and kept working hard in the same organization. It's just tough to make that story more interesting or salacious!

Card #136: Lenn Sakata

Who Can It Be Now?
Lenn Haruki Sakata was born on June 8, 1954, in Honolulu, Hawaii. I'm leaning on his SABR biography for his background here. Sakata was a fourth generation American on his father's side, while his mother was born in Niigata, Japan. His dad Haruki fought valiantly against the Germans in World War II alongside Hawaiian hero, the late Daniel Inouye, in the 442nd Infantry Regiment and also served in the field artillery battalion which liberated the Dachau concentration camp.

Lenn played baseball through high school. He graduated at the age of 17 and came to the U.S. mainland to study and play ball at Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario, Oregon. He was drafted for the first time by the San Francisco Giants in the 14th round of the 1972 June draft but did not sign. He transferred to Gonzaga University, and, while there, set a university record for RBI in a season that was not broken until Jason Bay topped the mark in 1999.

He was drafted for the second time with the first pick in the 5th Round of the 1974 June Draft, this time by the San Diego Padres. Once again, he did not sign. Finally, in January of 1975, the Milwaukee Brewers drafted Sakata in the 1st round (10th pick) of the Secondary Draft. Sakata's signing angered Gonzaga coach Larry Koentopp, with Koentopp claiming that the Brewers had pressured Sakata to sign -- saying that Sakata had "been hot-boxed." The Brewers said that they followed all the rules and the coach was simply upset. No matter -- Sakata joined the Brewers organization.

Based on his being an advanced college player, Milwaukee assigned Sakata to Double-A Thetford Mines in the Eastern League for the 1975 season. Sakata acquitted himself well at the plate and in the field that year (.257/.340/.356 with 9 HR and 16 SB in 486 PA, 4.68 range factor per game), so the Brewers promoted him to Triple-A Spokane for the 1976 season. And there, Sakata stayed for parts of three seasons. Indeed, the only thing that ended his return to Spokane (for a stay longer than when he attended college there!) was the fact that Milwaukee switched its Triple-A association to Vancouver in 1979. 

In his time in the minor leagues, Sakata always hit well -- even hitting with a little pop. But, he became well known for his glove. While certainly hyperbole sets in when you have the local Spokane paper talking about their old college pal Sakata, columnist Harry Missildine in 1977 said that the greatest fielding second baseman that he had EVER seen was Lenn Sakata. His instincts and reflexes while playing the field were excellent, but getting stuck in Triple-A due to his bat not coming alive in the majors became his biggest problem.

Sakata did see limited playing time from 1977 to 1979 in the majors with the Brewers. Despite getting his greatest playing time in 1977 under manager Alex Grammas, it appears that Grammas just hated Sakata. This Milwaukee Journal story from 1978 quotes an unnamed "Brewers starter" as saying that, "Lenny got up there in July, and Grammas got all over him right away. Hell, he hadn't yelled at the other 24 of us all year." As the Sab Reading between the lines, though, that story appears to reveal that Sakata had something of an attitude about not getting to play everyday due to the fact that Milwaukee had Don Money as its starting second baseman.

A funny thing happened in 1978, however: Sakata made the Opening Day roster. The problem for Sakata, though, was that the Brewers suddenly had a wealth of young talent in the middle infield that season. When Robin Yount held out/thought about becoming a pro golfer at the age of 22 while on the disabled list early in the season, the Brewers had a first round draft pick from the year prior who had spent 60 games in Single-A after signing from the University of Minnesota: Paul Molitor. When Yount returned to play baseball, the Brewers decided that Molitor would be their second baseman. The younger Molitor pushed Sakata back to a reserve role and, then, to the minors -- a move coinciding with Sakata's .192/.267/.244 slash line.

With the wealth of middle infield options (including Money and local boy Jim Gantner), Sakata became expendable. So, on December 6, 1979, the Brewers traded Sakata to their divisional rival, the Baltimore Orioles, in exchange for a spare part pitcher named John Flinn. 

In Baltimore, Sakata moved into Earl Weaver's rotation system eventually. It started out roughly in 1980, but then Sakata became Weaver's main shortstop when Mark Belanger was replaced. Sure, Sakata just kept the position warm for Cal Ripken to take over in 1982, but Earl loved little Lenny.

1982 would be the only season in which Sakata appeared in over 100 games. It was his most successful season offensively (1.7 WAR on offense...out of 1.9 WAR total on offense for his career) and overall -- 2.7 WAR. In 1983, he picked up a World Series ring as a member of the Orioles, flying out in the 8th inning of Game 4 as a pinch-hitter. Sakata stayed in Baltimore through 1985, filling in at second base when Rich Dauer got a rest and playing some when Alan Wiggins couldn't stay clean and sober from cocaine use.

He signed on for a short stint with the Oakland A's in 1986, appearing sparingly in the big leagues and spending most of his time in Triple-A Tacoma. He then signed with the Yankees in 1987. After an injury-plagued season which ended on June 28, 1987 with torn ankle ligaments from a slide into second base, he retired as an active player.

Mustache Check: Lenn Sakata is clean-shaven. 

Trivial Pursuit
Lenn Sakata is the answer to two trivia questions related to his heritage and to his being born in a United States territory.  First, Sakata was only the second Japanese-American to play in a major league baseball game, and he was the first position player (the first Japanese-American to play in the majors was pitcher Ryan Kurosaki of the Cardinals).

Second, he was the first Japanese-American player to appear in a World Series game with his pinch-hitting appearance in the 1983 World Series.

Third, in a record unrelated to his heritage, he was the emergency catcher in a game in 1983 in which Tippy Martinez picked off three straight runners from first base. Apparently, the Blue Jays believed that Sakata would be easy to steal against. So, Barry Bonnell, Dave Collins, and Willie Upshaw all took too large of leads and all got picked off in the Top of the 10th inning in that game on August 24, 1983. To top it off, Sakata won the game in the bottom of the 10th with a three-run walk-off homer.

Finally, Sakata holds a second record entirely unrelated to his heritage. In September of 2007, Lenn Sakata set a California League record for most career managerial wins with 527. Since that time, he's added another 146 wins to that total.

A Few Minutes with Tony L.
I think Lenn Sakata held a grudge against the Milwaukee Brewers for never giving him a chance to play ahead of two future Hall of Famers. Sakata had 25 career home runs. Of those, 5 came against the Milwaukee Brewers. His career SLG against Milwaukee was .436 -- the highest he had against any team -- and his OPS of .770 was higher against Milwaukee than against any one else by 20 points. If not for bad luck on his BABIP (.250 career), it would have been even worse.

In fact, as this game story from 1981 points out, of Sakata's first 6 homers as a big league player, three came against Milwaukee and two of those came in a game in 1981 that knocked the Brewers temporarily out of first place in the AL East's second season that year. Sakata was quoted as saying, "I still try to play extra hard against Milwaukee." Sakata did say that he understood being replaced by Molitor completely in that 1981 game story, and he believed that the Brewers treated him fairly. But still, this guy KILLED Milwaukee.

As the Trivial Pursuit above might hint at, Sakata is a baseball man through and through. After he retired from playing in organized baseball, he managed in the short-season Northwest League in 1988. After a detour to play in the Senior League in 1989, he returned to the minor leagues as the hitting instructor in Edmonton and, later, Vancouver.  

In an effort to move himself up the chain, he decided in 1995 to move to Japan with his good friend Bobby Valentine to coach with the Chiba Lotte Marines. He never learned Japanese while there, though, because of being assigned an interpreter by the team. He left Japan after clashing with ownership over the need for weight training. 

He then came back to the States and began his decade-plus (and counting) managerial career in the Single-A California League. He returned to Chiba Lotte in 2008 and 2009 to manage them, but came back to the US in 2011. In his time as a manager, his team made the playoffs 8 times and won the California League title three times. 

He is revered in his home state of Hawaii for his continued efforts to promote baseball there. He was inducted into the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame in 2001 alongside fellow former major leaguers Sid Fernandez and Mike Lum and alongside another Sakata: Harold Sakata, who was better known as playing Odd Job in James Bond movies but also was a silver medalist in weightlifting in the 1948 Summer Olympics.

Card #134: Dan Ford

Who Can It Be Now?
Darnell Glenn Ford was born on May 19, 1952, in Los Angeles, California. He attended Fremont High School, the same high school attended by such baseball luminaries as Bobby Doerr, his own future manager Gene Mauch, Bobby Tolan, Bob Watson, George Hendrick, Chet Lemon, and Eric Davis, among others. When Ford was a Freshman, Hendrick was a senior, and Lemon was a freshman when Ford was a senior.

Based off his high school exploits, the Oakland A's selected Ford with the 18th pick overall in the 1970 June Amateur Draft. The A's assigned Ford to Burlington in the Midwest League in 1971. In 107 games, he hit 14 HR, drove in 80, stole 12 bases in 18 attempts, and slashed at .267/.361/.446 -- not too bad for a 19-year-old in a league of 21-year-olds. He repeated the level in 1972 and played in just 72 games that season -- but he made the most of them: 292 plate appearances, 18 HR, 9 SB (4 CS), and .354/.438/.667 slash line. Just some gaudy numbers.

The A's promoted Ford aggressively in 1973, skipping him over Double-A, and in retrospect you have to wonder why they did that. Sure, Ford hit fine -- 21 2B, 12 3B, 14 HR, 16 SM, and .292/.371/.480 slash -- but the outfield in Oakland was both young and very good. Perhaps Ford could have been the DH on the 1973 or, in particular, the 1974 World Champion team, but the A's did not even give Ford a late season call-up in 1974. In fact, by the end of the 1974 season, Ford has fallen so far out of favor that the A's traded him to the Minnesota Twins in exchange for the 27-year-old 1B-DH Pat Bourque -- who never took another swing in the major leagues after 1974 and moved to Mexico City. Truly a head scratcher.

The Twins, on the other hand, said "thank you, A's" and plugged Ford into their lineup as an outfielder.  He stayed with the Twins for four productive years in his early and mid 20s, totalling 57 HR and slashing at .272/.331/.435 in over 2200 plate appearances.  While in Minnesota, he made what one commentator called the worst play in team history: he scored a run from third base on a single to the outfield on which the man who was on second -- Jose Morales -- scored before him and got called out. Ford trotted in from third and neglected to touch home before Morales slid in safely. As a result, Morales was called out for passing Ford on the basepaths, and the Twins lost a game 4-3 that they easily could have won otherwise.

Perhaps unsurprisingly after negligence of that nature, Ford soon found himself in a different uniform. Now, to be fair, Ford demanded the trade in the wake of comments made by the Twins then-Owner, Calvin Griffith. Griffith was quoted as saying, among other things, that he moved the team to Minneapolis from Washington after learning that the Twin Cities had only 15,000 black people in its metropolitan area in the early 1960s. Griffith said that the move was justified because blacks just don't go to baseball games.

Also, the other team in the trade -- the California Angels -- really wanted Ford too. After the Angels' rising star OF Lyman Bostock was murdered in September of 1978 in Gary, Indiana, the Angels continued tapping the Minnesota pipeline. In the late 1970s, the Twins appeared to serve the Angels in the way that the Kansas City A's served the Yankees in the early 1960s: as a glorified major-league version of a Triple-A team. Bostock had signed from Minnesota after the 1977 season, and in the 1978 offseason, the Twins and Angels made two trades. The first saw Dan Ford join the Angels in exchange for Ron Jackson and Danny Goodwin, and the second was the trade in which future HOF member Rod Carew joined the Angels. 

Ford went from a mediocre Twins club to a team that would lose to the Baltimore Orioles in the ALCS, serving as the Angels starting right fielder and putting up his best statistical season at the age of 27. He hit 21 HR (career high), drove in 101 runs (career high), and hit .290 (career high) with an OBP of .333 and an SLG of .464 (career high).

His final two seasons in California, though, saw Ford struggling through injuries and ineffectiveness. He got suspended for corking his bat, and started a fight with A's catcher Mike Heath when Heath tried to grab the bat to claim it was corked. 

With his attitude and the controversies he stirred up -- such as posing for a centerfold for Playgirl magazine -- the singing cowboy Gene Autry lost patience. And, once again, another team really wanted Ford. This time, it was the Baltimore Orioles. Looking to open up third base for a highly touted rookie named Cal Ripken, the Orioles traded their incumbent third baseman Doug DeCinces to the Angels with pitcher Jeff Schneider for Ford. 

Ford spent the final four seasons of his career in Baltimore, though injuries again claimed a significant portion of his final two years as an Oriole. He did win a World Series ring as part of the 1983 Orioles even though he struggled at the plate in that series. But, after a 1985 season in which he appeared in just 28 games (and after a similarly limited 1984 season), Ford called it quits at the age of 33.

Mustache Check: Though it is tough to see on this photo, Ford definitely is mustachioed here.

Everybody Wants You
We haven't had one of these in a while, so I thought I'd resurrect this category to represent the fact that Ford was traded after his card was finalized to the Baltimore Orioles on January 28, 1982.

Trivial Pursuit
In 1976, the New York Yankees reopened the newly renovated House that Ruth Built. The Yankees had spent the entirety of 1974 and 1975 playing their home games in Shea Stadium. The reconfigured stadium opened on April 15, 1976, when the Yankees opened their home slate of games against the Twins.  

Dan Ford hit second for the Twins that day. Jerry Terrell walked to start the game. Ford stepped up and hit a fat pitch from Rudy May over the wall. That home run was the first home run in what some folks call "Yankee Stadium II."

A Few Minutes with Tony L.
Dan Ford had a distinctive batting style with a very closed stance at the plate. I remember mimicking his stance while playing as a kid in the wake of the 1979 ALCS. If you never saw it, that "Batting Stance Guy" tries to do it in his video here, though I feel like that one is more of a caricature than a real representation. For comparison's sake, here's Ford against Jim Palmer in game 1 of the 1979 ALCS. Ford's stance wasn't as bent-over as the BSG dude makes it appear, and Ford's back is turned much further toward the pitcher as well.

Ford never hit well against the Brewers. He only hit 3 of his career 121 HR against Milwaukee, second fewest ahead of only the Red Sox. His AVG was .255 -- third worst ahead of only the Tigers and Twins. And, his SLG was against second worst ahead only of the Red Sox. I have no logical explanation for how this worked.

Dan Ford has one of the best nicknames of that late-1970s era: Disco Dan. The alleged story behind that nickname -- which appears in Angels Journal: Year by Year and Day by Day with the Los Angeles Angels -- is that Ford got the nickname because he had a financial stake in a disco club in 1979. Another book, Oriole Magic: The O's Of 1983, claims that Ford got the nickname because "he came from California and had a little more style and flair than the conservative Baltimore Orioles clubhouse was used to."  

No offense to Mr. Thom Loverro, who wrote that Orioles book, but I tend to believe the first explanation over the second. I distinctly recall Ford being called "Disco Dan" during the ALCS in 1979. Now, certainly, that could be my overactive imagination from 35 years ago kicking in, but that is my recollection.

After his career ended, he stayed away from baseball for four years and helped run his family's ranch in Louisiana. He says that he did not enjoy that job and found it difficult to judge talent, so instead he got out of baseball. He and a man named Darryl Jackson (no idea if it is the former Twins pitcher, whose name is Darrell Jackson...but that misspelling is an easy one to make), started an intervention program to work with what Ford calls "tough kids." 

Hopefully, they made a difference in at least one person's life.

Card #132: Lee May

 

Who Can It Be Now?
Lee Andrew May was born on March 23, 1943, in Birmingham, Alabama. He was born into a working-class family. His father Tommy made mattresses and springs, and his mother Mildred plucked and washed chickens in a poultry house. Shortly after Lee's brother Carlos was born, however, Lee's parents divorced and he, his mother, and his brother moved in with their grandmother. 

Lee was a three-sport star (baseball, football, and basketball) at A. H. Parker High School in Birmingham. Parker is a nearly all-black school -- so much so that when a white girl called Crystal Wadsworth graduated in 2007, she became the first-ever white student to graduate from the school and only the second non-black student to do so (a Latino student graduated in 2006). 

May was offered a football scholarship to play fullback at the University of Nebraska. It would have been a tough move in many respects for May. After all, staying close to home was not an option for football.  After all, it took the SEC until 1966 to integrate (when Kentucky was the first SEC school to sign an African-American athlete to a scholarship), even if Alabama played against an integrated Penn State squad in 1959 in the Liberty Bowl in Philadelphia.

Instead, he chose baseball. As he put it in an interview, "the Reds offered me money and I felt I had a better chance in baseball.  Plus, I felt I'd have a longer career in baseball . . .  and it was safer."  Coming out of high school in 1961, May graduated before the onset of the draft and as a result was signed as an amateur free agent by the Reds.

He was assigned to Class D Tampa by the Reds in 1961. His manager there, former pitcher Johnny Vander Meer, converted him to first base from the outfield. He played only 26 games that season and came back for a second year in 1962. That winter, he set off for Venezuela and Puerto Rico to play winter ball. Again, as Lee put it in his SABR Biography: "They paid you better in Puerto Rico and Venezuela than your own club paid you. ... I made $350 a month in my first year in the minors and $1,500 a month in Venezuela that same winter."

After those two years in Tampa, May moved up to Rocky Mount in the Single-A Carolina League in 1963. He started hitting for more power as he filled out and grew into manhood. That power carried over into Double-A at Macon -- 25 homers at the age of 21 -- and in Triple-A in San Diego in 1965. Indeed, in San Diego, his hitting was outstanding: 34 HR, 103 RBI, .321/.355/.586 with 32 doubles thrown in for good measure. That year earned him a cup of coffee in 1965 and his first ever major league appearance in a game against the Milwaukee Braves.

In 1966, he made the team out of spring training. But, buried behind fellow youngster Tony Perez and veteran Gordy Coleman on a mediocre Reds team, he was relegated to pinch hitting a few times without a hit between April 16 and May 7 and found himself back in Triple-A -- this time in Buffalo -- as a result.  But, after 1966, he would never play in the minor leagues again.

On making the team in 1967, May still had the problem of being difficult to slot into a defensive position. He played 80 games at first that year along with 33 games in LF and 16 games in RF. Meanwhile, to make room for May and fellow first baseman Deron Johnson, the Reds moved Tony Perez to third base. May hit okay -- not great -- in 1967. He was slightly under the league average at OPS+ and walked just 19 times in 472 plate appearances. That lack of walking is probably the biggest knock that can be leveled at May over his career. Even so, The Sporting News named May as its Rookie of the Year.

Still, the Reds of the late 1960s were a team that hung around the upper levels of the National League and, in 1969, the National League West without ever getting over the hump. May was an All-Star for the first of three times in his career in 1969, and he hit a ton that year -- 38 HR, 110 RBI (his career high), and slashing at .290/.337/.469.

After the 1969 season and despite coming off an 89-73 season, the Reds let manager Dave Bristol join the Milwaukee Brewers organization to be that team's first manager in Milwaukee. In his place, the Reds hired an unknown for his first major league managing job at the age of 36: Sparky Anderson. All Anderson did was manage the team to 102 wins and a World Series loss to the Baltimore Orioles. May put up good power numbers again -- 34 HR, 94 RBI, 34 2Bs -- but his OBP fell below .300, which made him a barely above-average player despite all the taters.

Coming off that year, the Reds made few changes. May started at first, Perez at third -- just as they had the previous year. Yet, the results did not follow. The Reds went from 102 wins to 79 wins, so GM Bob Howsam decided to make some major changes -- one of which was to trade Lee May in a blockbuster deal to the Houston Astros. It was a risky move -- May was an All-Star again and finished the season 9th in the NL in 1971 in Offensive WAR (5.1), 4th in SLG (.532), 9th in OBP (.864), and 3rd in HR (39).

But the Reds got the better end of the deal. The Astros obtained May along with 2B Tommy Helms and utilityman Jimmy Stewart in exchange for OF Ed Armbrister, P Jack Billingham, OF Cesar Geronimo, 3B Denis Menke, and future HOF 2B (and completely obnoxious announcer) Joe Morgan. 

May stayed in Houston for just three years. He was an All-Star in 1972 at the age of 29 while leading the NL in strikeouts at 145; he also had his career high in walks in this season with 52 in 647 plate appearances (12 of those were intentional, however). Perhaps the cavernous Astrodome took away a few HRs, as he went from hitting over 30 HR a year to topping out at 29 that same year. May watched as his former teammates -- bolstered by the trade -- became the Big Red Machine while May's Astros finished 3rd, 4th, and 4th behind the Reds.

At the end of the 1974 season, May found himself on the move again. The Orioles needed to add power to their team, so they traded for the man nicknamed "The Big Bopper of Birmingham". In exchange, the Astros got IF Rob Andrews and OF-3B-1B Enos Cabell. May put up one final big season in 1976, leading the AL in RBI with 109. Still, his OBP was only .312, again reflecting his hacktastic approach at the plate. 

May's move to the Orioles provided his second missed opportunity for a World Series ring in 1979, since his Orioles could not close out Willie Stargell's "Family." May only hit one time in that series as Earl Weaver went with switch-hitting future HOF Eddie Murray at first base.

May turned 37 just before Opening Day in 1980. His reflexes slowing were accompanied by Weaver giving May next to zero playing time in the field that season. May played the field in just 7 games that season overall, and 61 of his 78 appearances were as the DH.  

On the clear downslope of a long career, May signed a two-year contract with the Kansas City Royals in December of 1980. He made just 68 appearances and tallied only 165 plate appearances over the two years of that contract. At the end of the 1982 season, May's career came to an end. He finished his career with 354 HR (which is currently 87th all time), 1244 RBI (134th all time), and a slash line of .267/.313/.459 in 8219 plate appearances. 

It is safe to say that he would not have been an NFL player for that length of time as a fullback.

Mustache Check: Yes, the Big Bopper of Birmingham has a big hairy lip here.

Family Ties
Lee's brother Carlos May played OF and 1B for the Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees, and California Angels between 1968 and 1977.  

Lee's son Lee May, Jr. was the first round selection of the New York Mets in the 1986 June Draft with the 21st pick overall. Unfortunately for Lee Jr., he was one of just 9 players out of the 28 selected who did not make it to the major leagues from that first round. 

Lee's grandson Jacob May was drafted twice for baseball. He was selected the first time in the 39th round of the 2010 June Draft out of high school. Jacob then attended Coastal Carolina University and blossomed. He became the Chicago White Sox 3rd round selection in the 2013  June Draft with the 91st pick overall. Jacob hit .258/.326/.395 at High-A Winston-Salem in the Carolina League at the age of 22 (he was about a year younger than the league average). He's a speedster, stealing 37 bases in 45 attempts last year.

Trivial Pursuit/Freeze-Frame
Though he never appeared on the show Cheers according to IMDB, May supposedly crushed a ball off Sam Malone -- the former fictional Boston pitcher portrayed by Ted Danson -- entirely out of Baltimore's Memorial Stadium.

A Few Minutes with Tony L.
As a kid, Lee May was an Oriole to me. It was always strange seeing cards for guys like him on other teams to me as a 7-year-old, because my brain was trying to work out how those guys used to play on other teams than the one they were on currently.

May served a few teams as a coach after his career ended. He was the Kansas City Royals hitting coach from 1984 to 1986, a job which allowed him finally to be on the winning side of a World Series in 1985. 

After a year away from the majors in 1986, he was the Cincinnati Reds first base coach in 1988 and 1989 under Pete Rose and, later, his old pal and former Reds and Astros teammate Tommy Helms. Indeed, for his time as a player and as a coach, May was inducted into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame in 2006. 

He was let go as a coach by the Reds after the 1989 season under the Marge Schott regime. If you're not familiar with Schott, she was a piece of work. She was a chain-smoking widow who made her money taking over her late husband's car dealership. She had a Saint Bernard called Schottzie which ran around on the field at Riverfront Stadium before Reds games. She once got upset when a sold-out opening day Reds game was cancelled because one of the umpires had a heart attack and died on the field.

Seriously.

Then add in this; Schott was a female, 1980s version of Donald Sterling -- perhaps with more venom that only going back 25 years in this country can add. From all indications, Schott was a racist, apparently making anti-Semitic comments and calling black players her "million-dollar (moron's word from the 1940s for black person)".  As one writer from the Cincinnati Enquirer put it recently in the context of the Sterling episode, "Marge didn't limit her ugliness to blacks. She spread it like buckshot. Schott offended everyone from scouts to Jews, gays to blacks. The litany of her indiscretions was comprehensive and impressive."

Anyway, May was under the misguided impression that he and Schott had an agreement that May would be kept on after the 1989 season. When he found out that that was not the case, he said, "If baseball is coming to the way this lady is doing things, I don't want any part of it."

He ended up back in Kansas City under his former Royals teammate Hal McRae as the hitting coach from 1992 to 1994. Then, when McRae was the manager with the Tampa Bay Rays in a terrible 2002 season, May served as the first base coach. As far as I can tell, that was the end of his baseball coaching career. Of course, he was 60 years old at that point, so you can't really blame him for hanging up his spikes.

He also, apparently, had an "Afro hair replacement" done by a guy called Jim Kreuz in Toledo in the 1970s. The fun things you can find in local newspapers.

In any event, May is 71 now. As of 2011, he was working with the Reds doing PR and, otherwise, was enjoying his retirement and his 8 grandchildren.