Big Hair and Plastic Grass

Heavy Artillery

I usually try to wrap a Big Hair & Plastic Grass blog or Facebook page post around a player's birthday or an anniversary of a particular event, but I stumbled across this clip today on YouTube, and it's too good to keep under my ballcap until next June 10.

On June 10, 1975, the New York Yankees, who were enduring their second season of shared tenancy with the Mets at Shea Stadium, while their beloved "House That Ruth Built" was being renovated — dig the Yankees' "seating chart" below — presented a 21-gun pre-game salute in honor of Army Day, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the formation of the U.S. armed forces. The results, however, were more slapstick than stirring.

Though they were loaded with blanks, the army cannons — which were placed on the warning track, facing away from the diamond — still produced enough concussive power to knock down part of the centerfield fence, set another section of the fence ablaze, and knock out several car windows in the Shea parking lot. I've found the mention of this unintentionally amusing event in several sources, including Sparky Lyle's immortal memoir The Bronx Zoo, but this is the first time I've ever seen any actual footage. As I wrote in BH&PG, "Anyone looking for a convenient metaphor for the Pentagon's botched handling of the Vietnam War, or the chaos and danger of New York City circa 1975, wouldn't have had to look much further."

 

"I'll Make The F***-ing Decisions Here!"

I remember Tommy Lasorda's ascension to Dodger manager — and Los Angeles superstar — like it was yesterday. I'd just begun seriously following the Dodgers while visiting my Mom Los Angeles during the summer of '76; I saw my first-ever NL game at Chavez Ravine that summer, a Dodgers-Reds contest on August 6. (I remember that we went to the game with a friend of hers, who drove a white VW microbus whose insides were plastered with pictures of Meher Baba.)

The Dodgers were already 11 games in back of the Big Red Machine at that point, and wouldn't get closer than 7 at any point during the rest of the season. They had a solid nucleus of players — including Don Sutton, Burt Hooten, Tommy John, Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Steve Yeager and Reggie Smith — but never quite seemed up to the task of taking down the mighty Reds and regaining the NL West crown that they'd won in '74. And Walter Alston, the taciturn manager who'd skippered the Brooklyn Dodgers to a World Series championship in 1955 and had remained with the franchise through a cross-country move, the Koufax-Drysdale era and into the mid-70s, no longer seemed like the right man for the job. But when Alston sleepwalked into retirement in September '76, the right man was waiting in the wings... or rather, the third base coaching box.

Now, don't get me wrong — I personally have no love at all for Tommy Lasorda. Without opening myself up to a potential libel suit, let's just say that there have been few people in the game, past or present, whose public and private personas have been as profoundly divorced from each other as Tommy's. (His shameful refusal to acknowledge his late son's homosexuality or AIDS-related cause of death is really just the tip of the creepy iceberg here.) But there's no denying that he brought a new energy, enthusiasm, excitement and self-belief to the Dodgers at a time when they desperately needed it. With only a few changes to the roster (like the addition of Rick Monday), the Dodgers went on to win the '77 and '78 NL titles; it's hard to imagine that that would have happened with Alston still at the helm.

There's also no denying that Lasorda was an incredibly entertaining figure — loud, colorful, and prone to dropping "f-bomb" fusillades with the sort of gusto that would put Casey Stengel to shame. His Dave Kingman rant remains the favorite of many; but for me, there's no better way to observe Tommy Lasorda's 84th birthday than to replay this extremely amusing conversation between him and Doug Rau during Game 4 of the 1977 World Series. Rau has begun the second inning by giving up three straight hits to Reggie Jackson, Graig Nettles and Chris Chambliss, but doesn't want to come out of the game. He gives some lip to Lasorda — who of course gives it back ten-fold. (Listen closely for Davey Lopes and Bill Russell, as they try to shut Rau up.)

Happy Birthday, Tommy. No doubt you've still got enough hot air in your lungs to blow out all the candles on your lasagna.

The Stealer

Thirty-seven years ago tonight, in front of a crowd of 27,285 at Busch Stadium, Lou Brock first stole his way into the record books, tying and then breaking Maury Wills' single-season stolen base mark of 104.

Lou notched his 104th and 105th swipes of the year against Dick Ruthven and Bob Boone of the Phillies. Number 105 came in the bottom of the 7th, as the Phils were leading 6-2 on the way to an easy 8-2 victory over the Cardinals; a fairly meaningless steal in the context of the game, to be sure, but it also gave Brock 740 steals for his career, setting a new NL mark. (Max Carey had previously held the record with 738.)

The game was stopped briefly, in order to celebrate Lou's accomplishment. In a very nice touch, Negro League legend James "Cool Papa" Bell — Satchel Paige claimed Cool Papa was so fast back in the day, he could flick the bedroom light switch and be under the covers before the room got dark — was on hand to offer Lou congratulations. Negro Leaguers had only recently begun to be elected into the Hall of Fame on an equal basis as their major league counterparts (Paige was the first, in 1971), with Bell being inducted in 1974. The nattily-attired Bell presented Brock with the base he had just stolen, joking, "We decided to give him his 105th base, because if we didn't, he was going to steal it, anyway."

Lou did try to make it a hat-trick in the bottom of the ninth, after reaching first on an error by Larry Bowa, but Boone managed to cut him down — one of a league-leading 33 times that Lou was caught in '74. No matter; he'd still manage to steal 13 more bases before the season was out, finishing 1974 with a stunning total of 118, and putting him on track to break Ty Cobb's seemingly untouchable mark of 892 five years later. Despite Lou's grand larceny, the Cards lost the NL East race, coming in a game and a half short of the Pirates; Lou himself would finish second in the NL MVP voting to Steve Garvey. His flower shops in St. Louis, however, apparently did quite well...

Tiger Tales

The Detroit Tigers have been on my mind a lot this week. Not only are 8.5 games in front of the White Sox in the AL Central, but they look like they have a bona-fide Cy Young AND AL MVP in the form of Justin Verlander. As my friend Peter Schilling, Jr. sagely pointed out this morning, the three times the Tigers had a pitcher who won the MVP, the team won the World Series — 1945 (Hal Newhouser), 1968 (Denny McLain) and 1984 (Willie Hernandez). So, to paraphrase Bill Murray as Carl Spackler, at least we've got that goin' for us...

But along with my slowly-building excitement about the 2011 Tigers, echoes of their 70s past have been inevitably stirring in my brain. Maybe it's because today marks the 34th anniversary of the first time that Alan Trammell and "Sweet Lou" Whitaker took their places at shortstop and second base in a major league game (a 8-6 loss to the Red Sox at Fenway), thus setting in motion a double-play partnership that would last a record-setting 18 years.

Sweet Lou was one of my favorite players as a kid; Trammell less so, though I loved the way they worked together. Brought up in two very liberal households by parents who made it crystal-clear to me that racism was not to be viewed as anything other than utterly dehumanizing bullshit, I found the idea of two players — one black, one white — forming a perfect working partnership more than just appealing; in my mind, it was the way the world (or at least this country) was supposed to work. Maybe they hung out off the field, maybe they didn't; but day in and day out on the diamond, there was no doubt that they had each other's back.

But while today is the historic anniversary of two of the Tigers' most famous players to emerge from the 70s, it's also the birthday of one of their more obscure players from the decade. I'm talking about the late Reggie Sanders — not to be confused with the well-traveled 300-300 Club player of the same name. This Reggie Sanders made his MLB debut with the Tigers on September 1, 1974, just a few days shy of his 25th birthday. He'd already spent seven years toiling in the minors by this point, for both the A's and Tigers organizations, exhibiting some solid "pop" — 47 homers in his first two years of Class A ball — but also some questionable bat control (154 Ks in 482 plate appearances in '69). However, his '74 numbers for the Tigers' Triple-A franchise in Evansville (.292, 14 HR, 88 RBI) were good enough to warrant a September call-up.

Reggie played 26 games for the Tigers in September '74, starting all but one of them at first base. The glow of the Tigers' triumphs in '68 and '72 was fading quickly at that point; Al Kaline was DH-ing out his final season, and longtime first baseman Norm Cash had been given his release n August. (They traded Jim Northrup to Montreal the same day.) Mainstay catcher Bill Freehan, though only 32, played more games at first base that year than behind the plate, in order to keep his still-potent bat in the lineup, while going easy on his aching knees. But with Reggie's call-up, Freehan once again donned the "tools of ignorance," and Reggie took up his corner spot.

While he didn't blow anybody away, per se, Reggie did put up some pretty respectable rookie numbers that fall: .273 batting average, 7 doubles, 3 homers, and 10 RBI in 105 plate appearances. He homered in his first major league at-bat, off of no less than the great Catfish Hunter. (That's Freehan greeting him at the plate in the above pic.) He even had an 11-game hitting streak going at one point, including a 4-RBI performance on September 22 against the Brewers that almost single-handedly helped tag Clyde Wright with his 20th loss of the season. Sure, his OBP was only .308, and he walked only 5 times againes 20 whiffs — but he clearly held his own well enough at the plate (and with the glove, racking up a .987 fielding percentage) that manager Ralph Houk felt confident enough to send him out there every day. And hey, the cat had some killer sideburns...

And yet, no one in the Tigers organization apparently thought enough of Reggie to bring him back to the bigs in '75; instead, they traded him to Atlanta in exchange for rookie Jack Pierce, who would turn out to be one of the Tigers' six first basemen that season, a motley aggregation that including a running-on-fumes Nate Colbert. The 1975 Tigers went 57-102, the second-worst performance in franchise history. They couldn't have used a guy like Reggie Sanders?

Apparently, the woeful Braves had no use for him, either. After two solid seasons in the minors for Atlanta without ever once tasting the proverbial "cup of coffee," Reggie high-tailed it to the Mexican League for a year, then played out '78 in the Orioles and White Sox systems before packing it in. Seems like he deserved another chance in the bigs; but sadly, for some reason, he never got it. Not sure what Reggie did with the rest of his life, but it appears that he died in Los Angeles in 2002, at the age of 52. Rest in peace, man.

 

 

No Perfection For Pappas

Want to get Milt Pappas all riled up? Mention Bruce Froemming's call on Milt's bottom-of-the-ninth, two-out, full-count pitch to Larry Stahl. The fateful pitch (and call) occurred 39 years ago today, as Milt was on the verge of pitching the first perfect game in Cubs history, and — as the MLB network clip below illustrates — MIlt's still pretty friggin' bitter about the whole thing.

Still, the man born Miltiades Stergios Papastergios was able to get the next batter, Garry Jestadt, to pop to second, thus notching no-no. It was the Cubs' second no-hitter of that year (Burt Hooton threw the first), and what would be the franchise's last one until Carlos Zambrano no-hit the Astros in 2008. (It's still the last Cubs' no-no thrown at Wrigley Field.)

Historical importance aside, the clip also offers a rare chance to see the Padres in action in their early-70s all-mustard ensembles, which I personally prefer to the mustard-and-fecal brown unis of the later part of the decade, which always looked to me like Ray Kroc got them run off at the iron-on t-shirt store at the nearest mall. It's also cool to hear the late, great Jack Brickhouse making the call...