Big Hair and Plastic Grass

Happy (Belated) Fullpack Day!!!

First of all, my funky friends, I realize that I must apologize for searing your retinas with this image of a BVDs-clad, appendix-scarred Earl Weaver — but this is far and away one of my favorite baseball photos of the 1970s. Because other than Oscar Gamble's afro, nothing says "70s Baseball" quite like a couple of cans of Schlitz, a lit cigarette, a crappy Coke clock, a TV (probably black and white) with a single antenna, a shirtless Weaver, and a sweaty, shaggy-haired Don Stanhouse in a "Stan The Man Unusual" t-shirt. I can pretty much guarantee that you will never see anything approaching this tableau ever re-enacted in a major league clubhouse...

The pic was taken in 1979, at the peak of Don Stanhouse's career. Stanhouse had kicked around for several years with the Texas Rangers and Montreal Expos as a part-time starter and occasional long reliever, before coming to Baltimore in the same December '77 trade that sent Joe Kerrigan and Gary Roenicke to the Orioles in exchange for Rudy May, Randy Miller and Bryn Smith. Given a shot as the O's closer, Stanhouse went on to post the two best seasons of his career (6-9 with a 2.89 ERA and 24 saves in '78, followed by a 7-3 record with a 2.85 ERA, 21 saves and an All Star team selection in '79) ... and give Earl Weaver several minor heart attacks in the process. Weaver, in turn, inadvertently gave Stanhouse the nickname "Fullpack," after grousing to reporters that he consumed a full pack of smokes every time Stanhouse — who typically walked more batters than he struck out — took the mound.

Stanhouse, dubbed "Stan The Man Unusual" by the late Mike Flanagan, was one of the more colorful characters of 70s baseball (and believe me, that's saying something). The cat's crown of curls would have made Harpo Marx honk his horn in jealousy, while you could have probably squeezed at least half a pint of beer (and god knows what other substances) from that moustache on any given occasion. Fullpack loved Cadillacs and ladies ("Tell me one person in the world who doesn't like women," he once quipped to the Baltimore Sun. "My trouble is that I like too many of them."), he kept a stuffed gorilla in his locker, and his pre-game ritual included scaring the shit out of anyone in earshot with primal screams. He also drove opposing hitters nuts with his agonizingly slow windup and delivery — a movement so glacial, his teammates would often tease him about falling asleep between pitches.

Unfortunately, a back injury drove Fullpack out of the game just a few years after he helped take Weaver and the '79 Orioles all the way to the World Series, where they were beaten in seven games by the "We Are Family" Pirates. He's bounced back nicely in the business world since then (as detailed in this excellent Baseball Savvy article), and he's also popped up on the Big Hair & Plastic Grass Facebook page, where he occasionally leaves comments under photos of his former colleagues (such as "Roscoe P. Foreskin" under a pic of Ross Grimsley).

I've also had the pleasure of hearing from him via email on occasion, including the time he jokingly (I think) threatened to sue me for accidentally misspelling his name as "Standhouse" in the first edition of Big Hair & Plastic Grass. And now, alas, I appear to have inadvertantly bummed him out again.

"Can't believe you dicks forgot my birthday!" read the email I received from him this morning. And while we did give him birthday props two days ago on Facebook, I must admit that I was too swamped with deadlines that day to give him a proper shout-out on this page. So, Happy Belated Birthday, Fullpack — sorry we missed it. Hope it was a most unusual one, in the best possible way!

Don't Call Him Chicken, Call Him "Motormouth"

There is funky, and then there is FON-KAY. And this grease-stained lid from a bucket of English's Fried Chicken — emblazoned with the grinning visage of Baltimore Orioles centerfielder Paul Blair — is truly the FON-KAY-est piece of baseball memorabilia I've ever laid eyes on. Wonder how much it would fetch from a collector... of baseball OR fried chicken memorabilia? (Thanks mucho to the blog Bob Lemke's Stuff for utterly blowing my mind with it.)

Blair, who turns 68 today, was a friendly, hard-hustling, eight-time Gold Glover with the Orioles. He hit .474 in the 1970 World Series, and made appearances in five other Fall Classics — '66, '69 and '71 with the Orioles, and '77 and '78 with the New York Yankees. You might also know "Motormouth" as the guy who Billy Martin sent out to replace Reggie Jackson in right field in the middle of the 6th inning on June 18, 1977 at Fenway Park, sparking Martin and Jackson's infamous dugout brawl.

Sweet medallion he's wearing in the photo below. Wonder if that was a zodiac pendant? Paul's an Aquarius, baby...

Forever Blowing Bubbles

Kurt Bevacqua, a utility man who spent parts of fifteen seasons with the Indians, Royals, Pirates, Brewers, Rangers and Padres franchises (some of them twice), is best-known these days as the subject of several colorful Tommy Lasorda tirades; some folks down San Diego way may also remember him fondly for hitting a game-winning homer off Dan Petry in Game 2 of the 1984 World Series, which to date remains the one and only October Classic win in Padres history.

But to me, a child of the 70s who found this wonderfully bizarre "action shot" card in his first-ever Topps wax pack, Kurt Bevacqua (whose birthday it is today) will always be the Bazooka Bubble Blowing Champion of the known universe. The competition, staged by Major League Baseball and Topps, Inc. (who also produced the mighty pink chewable rectangles known as Bazooka Bubblegum), featured players from all 24 teams; held late in the 1975 season, it was filmed to be shown during that year's World Series pre-game broadcasts, with the ubiquitous Joe Garagiola hosting. Though contestants included such stars as Johnny Bench, George Brett, Bert Blyleven, Bill Madlock and Gary Carter, it was Bevacqua who, er, blew his way to the top, besting runner-up Johnny Oates with with a prodigious bubble that was measured at 18 inches by umpire Dick Stello.

Sadly, baseball's Bazooka Bubble Blowing Championship was a one-time-only affair. As such, Bevacqua, who spent most of '76 with the Brewers' Triple-A team in Spokane, never had to defend his crown — which, perhaps, means that he really will remain champion forever. But thanks to the magic of the Internet, we can still watch his victory again and again. Parts 1 and 2 of the '75 Bubblegum Championship broadcast are embedded below; in retrospect, their goofy, color-saturated charm perfectly sums up much of what I love about 1970s baseball.

Part One: Part Two:

Happy Scuz Day!

Today marks the 61st birthday of Ross "Scuz" Grimsley, owner of perhaps the skankiest mop of greasy whiteboy curls in the history of major league baseball. Among his many, uh, personal quirks, Grimsley preferred not to shower during winning streaks. So if you don't feel like having a wash today, well, just chalk it up as a salute to Scuz.

The Funkiest 'Fro of Them All

I still remember opening my first Topps wax pack like it was yesterday — even though it was, in fact, a good 35 1/2 years ago. It was my friend Tim's 10th birthday, and he had a sleepover party to celebrate; his parents (permissive 70s hippie types who thought nothing of letting their son and his Fourth Grader friends read Penthouse) took us all to see The Bad News Bears, and gave us unopened packs of baseball cards as party favors. That evening, in retrospect, completely changed my life.

Up 'til that very night, I hadn't actually cared that much about baseball. I was certainly aware of it — watching the '69 World Series on TV with my Dad (a Mets fan), and the mini-Mets uniform my grandparents sent me in celebration of their victory, are among my most vivid early memories — and I'd even gotten caught up a bit in the excitement of Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's home run record in 1974; but until that fateful night, I couldn't have told you the difference between a ball and a strike. At the time, I was far more interested in building model tanks, playing with my G.I. Joe dolls ("now with Kung-Fu grip!"), and reading books on military history.

Maybe it was just that I'd never seen a movie before where the kids onscreen swore as often and as colorfully as my friends and I did, but something clicked while watching The Bad News Bears. All of a sudden, I realized that I wanted and needed to know much, much more about baseball; and, as with such previous childhood obsessions as the Cretaceous Period and the Civil War, I resolved to learn as much as I could about it, as quickly as possible.

The wax Topps pack I received as a party favor was the perfect jumping-off point (or maybe gateway drug) for my new obsession. The 1976 Topps series was, in retrospect, an especially interesting one; along with the usual player cards, it included "'75 Record Breaker" cards, "Sporting News All-Time All-Stars" cards, and "Traded" cards which told of off-season player transactions. Along with the Oakland A's team card (loved those green and gold uniforms!), I also vividly remember getting a Mickey Cochrane "All-Time All-Star," a Hank Aaron "'75 Record Breaker" (he'd surpassed Babe Ruth's all-time RBI mark that year), and the amazing Oscar Gamble "Traded" card.

I mean, seriously, just look at it. LOOK AT IT. Gaze upon its 'fro-tastic beauty, and imagine the wonder and confusion that such an artifact would trigger in the mind of an inquisitive child. I didn't understand why his hat and pinstripes were painted on so poorly that you could practically see the brushstrokes. Not yet hip to things like puns, I didn't understand why the Yankees would be gambling on him. And while I already understood that the afro hairstyle was a symbolic statement of black pride, I simply didn't understand how it would be possible to play ball with that much hair on your head.

As to the last question, I'm frankly still not sure of the answer. Oscar's other cards don't really answer that question, either; dig, if you will, his regular 1976 player card, where it looks the imbalance of his funky 'fro — an imbalance caused by the protective flap of his batting helmet — has actually thrown off his swing.

Or how 'bout his 1973 card, which features a shot taken in '72, when he was still with the Phillies. (The Topps people fooled no-one by airbrushing the "P" off his jersey.) Is he looking back to watch the play at first, or is he trying to figure out which direction his batting helmet has flown off this time?

 

Or his '75 card, where his cantilevered afro puffs look like they'd be fantastically distracting to his peripheral vision?

 

 

However he did it, though, he did it well. As one commenter on the Big Hair Facebook page commented today, too few people remember that Oscar Gamble was more than just the black player with the funkiest 'fro of them all. Discovered by the legendary Buck O'Neil, who was scouting for the Cubs at the time, Oscar played parts of 17 seasons in the big leagues, finishing his career with a respectable .265/.356/.454 slash line, 200 home runs, and a Satanically-perfect 666 RBI. In his prime, he was typically platooned against right-handed pitchers; but even not playing full-time, he was usually good for 15-20 homers per season. (Another cool Oscar fact — for a power guy, he wasn't as much of a free-swinger as you might think, averaging only 56 whiffs per 162 games over his career, while also averaging 62 walks.)

 

Oscar's greatest year came in 1977, when he was Bill Veeck's "rent-a-DH" for the "South Side Hitmen" White Sox: He set career highs with 137 games played, 470 plate appearances, 22 doubles, 31 homers, 83 RBI and 75 runs scored, while hitting .297 with a .386 OBP. His 1978 was something of a disaster; after signing a massive free agent contract with San Diego, he only managed to hit 7 homers for the Padres, and was shipped off to the Rangers as soon as the season ended. Maybe he just hit AL pitching better; in 1979, he hit .358 with a .456 OBP and 19 homers in only 327 plate appearances while splitting the season between the Rangers and the Yankees...

He'd already played for the Yankees in 1976, of course; George Steinbrenner had made him trim his 'fro to a more manageable circumference before he could don real pinstripes, but Oscar didn't seem to mind. Though he'd been tagged as a potential trouble-maker early on in his career, chiefly by crusty old white sportswriters who were freaked out by the sheer unrepentant blackness of his hairstyle, by most accounts Oscar was actually a sweet guy and a true team player. And while his hair may be mostly gone these days (he turns 62 today), the man who once said (regarding the wacky atmosphere in the Yankee clubhouse) "They don't think it be like it is, but it do" will forever be a charter member of the Big Hair & Plastic Grass Hall of Fame team — both for being one of the main inspirations behind my book, and for being part of my initial discovery of the myriad joys of baseball. Happy Birthday, you righteously funky dude!

 

 

Horton Hears A Boo

Today marks the 66th birthday of Tony Horton, one of 70s baseball's most tragic figures. A slugging first baseman who first came up with the Red Sox in 1964, Horton was traded to the Indians in the middle of the 1967 season, thereby missing out on being part of Boston's "Impossible Dream" squad. But he quickly earned the starting gig at first for the Indians, and posted a career year — .278 BA, 25 doubles, 27 home runs, 93 RBI and 288 total bases in 669 plate appearances — for them in 1969. And that's, for Horton where the trouble began...

When the 1969 season ended, Horton asked the Indians for a $100,000 contract for 1970, which was nearly three times what he made in '69. The Indians responded by low-balling him with a $46,000 offer, and Tribe manager Alvin Dark allegedly told Horton that if he didn't sign for that amount, he'd be benched in favor of fan favorite Ken Harrelson. Fearing for his job, the 25 year-old Horton finally acquiesced in the spring of '70, then realized he'd made a terrible mistake once Harrelson went down in spring training with a season-ending injury. But even though he'd dropped his original salary demands, Horton was vilified by Cleveland sportswriters for daring to even ask for such an exorbitant salary; Cleveland fans (at least, the few that bothered to even show up to see the Indians, who'd finish 32 games out of first place that season) hurled abuse and even spare change at him.

While Horton's 1970 stats don't look too terrible in retrospect (.269 BA, 19 doubles, 17 homers, 59 RBI in 452 plate appearances), the pressure to produce at the plate was murder on the intense and highly-strung Horton, and he began to have trouble sleeping or eating as the season wore on. Finally, he had a full-on nervous breakdown; and on August 28, after taking himself out of a double-header against the Angels, he returned to the Blue Grass Motel (where he was living at the time) and slashed his wrists. Thankfully, motel security managed to call an ambulance before Horton bled to death.

Incredibly, the Indians somehow managed to keep Horton's suicide attempt out of the papers; the full extent of his breakdown wouldn't be widely known until 1997, when sportswriter Bill Maddon uncovered the grisly details. At the time, the team simply announced that Horton was going on the DL for "emotional distress", then revealed in January '71 that Horton had suffered a nervous breakdown and would probably miss the whole season; he would, they said, most likely be back by '72.

It didn't happen. While Horton eventually recovered and reportedly went on to a successful career in business, his doctors recommended that he step away from the sport entirely, worrying that even watching a game on TV could trigger a massive panic attack or even another breakdown. For all we know, Horton may not have ever set foot again in a ballpark.

On a lighter note, here's the amazing clip (which I've posted before) of Horton facing off against Yankees reliever Steve Hamilton in a 1970 game at Yankee Stadium. Hamilton delivers a couple of his patented "folly floaters," and gets Horton to pop out to a young catcher named Thurman Munson; Horton comically crawls back to the Cleveland dugout in mock shame. Too bad he wasn't able to handle the rest of his 1970 season with the same degree of levity.

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."

 

Out Of Left Field

While doing the research for Big Hair & Plastic Grass, I combed through hundreds of books and periodicals from the era, but one book somehow eluded me — Bob Adelman and Susan Hall's Out Of Left Field: Willie Stargell and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Long out of print, I recently found a used hardcover copy of the 1976 first edition via Amazon; and while there isn't much in there that would have appreciably changed the content of my book, it is a really fascinating read, and one I highly recommend to fans of the era, if you can find it.

Adelman and Hall had the sort of access to Stargell and the Pirates that you would never imagine today, especially considering that they were working on an "unauthorized" book. They followed the team for the entire '73 season, a tumultuous and frustrating campaign that saw the Bucs struggling to adjust to the sudden loss of their leader, Roberto Clemente, and to the equally sudden meltdown of former ace Steve Blass. Manager Bill Virdon was eventually fired with a month left to go in the season, but all new/old manager Danny Murtaugh could coax out of the team was a .500 September and a disappointing third-place finish behind the Mets and the Cardinals.

Out of Left Field paints a surprisingly intimate portrait of this lost season, with many of the players (Stargell, Richie Zisk, Manny Sanguillen, Richie Hebner, Al Oliver, Dock Ellis) offering surprisingly frank assessments of their lives and their team that go well beyond the usual clichés and platitudes. While Adelman and Hall offer little in the way of historical context, and many of their photos are frustratingly un-captioned — and if my lack of SABR-style number-crunching in BH&PG pissed you off, you're really gonna hate this book — they do a great job of getting out of the way and let the players tell their story.

The book includes groupie tales and other snapshots of life on the road, as well as an ongoing discussion of racism, both in the game and within the context of the team. Most interesting to me is the assertion from several players that racism played a role in the team's attempted move of Sanguillen — a highly respected catcher — to right field in the wake of Clemente's death. The black and Latin players interviewed, for the most part, seem to think that the move was motivated by the front office's desire to add more white players to the lineup: therefore, instead of putting the speedy Gene Clines in right field, Pirates management put Sangy out there and brought (the white) Milt May in to catch, because white Pittsburgh fans aren't down with a mostly-minority lineup. Management, of course, denies that this is remotely the case... but eventually, Sangy's ineptitude in right (and his potent bat) will help him reclaim his rightful position behind the plate. Even so, Clines will lose the right field position to a young Polish slugger named Richie Zisk...

Of course, Bob Adelman's photos tell a story all their own. The book contains over a hundred beautiful black and white shots of the players on and off the field, and I've scanned a few of my favorites:

Here's pitcher Nelson Briles, who led the team's starters that year with 14 victories and a 2.85 ERA — and who talks in the book about pursuing a full-time entertainment career once his playing days are over — working on a song in the clubhouse.

Here's Al Oliver and his wife, lookin' fly and preparing for a night on the town.

Here's Dock Ellis, lookin' cool as he heckles an umpire from the dugout.

Here's Pops himself, gettin' down with some funky friends during a party at his house.

And my personal favorite: A fantastic Dock-in-curlers shot that I'd never seen before...

Somewhat controversial in its day — "Passages about some team-mates might make Ball Four read like a nursery rhyme," commented the New York Times at the time — Out of Left Field isn't so shocking now, but it is a beautifully-observed time capsule from a complex era. It would be lovely to see it come back into print again.

Short Takes

God Bless Bill Veeck. No baseball owner before or after him has ever brought as much love, passion and innovation to the game. And even when he got it wrong, he got it gloriously, unforgettably wrong — like with 1979's Disco Demolition Night, or 1976's uniform shorts.

The White Sox bermudas were so ugly, so ill-conceived, so utterly traumatizing, that they've wound up looming larger in the imaginations of Sox fans (and baseball fans in general) than they perhaps deserve. To this day, I continue to meet people who INSIST that the Sox wore them for the entire 1976 season, when in fact they didn't actually make their official debut until August 8, 1976, when the Sox played the Royals in the first game of a Sunday double-header. Despite their own embarrassment and the merciless mocking of their opponents, the hapless Sox (who would finish the season with a 64-97 record) actually beat the soon-to-be AL West champs 5-2 while wearing shorts.

There are two statistical oddities that stand out for me in that box score. First off, future Hall of Fame reliever Rich Gossage (pictured above) — who had been converted to a starter for 1976, a conversion that would be permanently reversed as soon as the Sox traded him to the Pirates over the winter — notched his lone save of the 1976 season in that game. Second, the White Sox managed to steal FIVE bases in the game, probably because the Royals figured they wouldn't risk skinning their knees on a hard slide into second. Two of the swipes were by Sox speedsters Jorge Orta and Pat Kelly, but Jerry Hairston, Jack Brohamer and Jim Essian all nabbed their first steals of the season in that game; Essian, a man who would steal only 9 total bases in 12 major league seasons, stole his first career bag that day. Royals catcher Buck Martinez must have been laughing too hard to get off a decent throw.

The other, more understandable myth about the shorts is that they were only worn once; however, they made at least two more regular-season appearances before the weather turned cold that year. The weekend of August 21-22 saw them donned twice against the Orioles. The shorts-clad Sox actually beat the far superior O's 11-10 on the 21st; Ralph "Roadrunner" Garr (pictured above) doesn't look too happy about being called in to pinch-run while wearing such leg-bearing fashions, but he still managed to steal a key base in the 9th before scoring the game-tying run on Pat Kelly's single. Alas, the magic of the shorts didn't hold up the next day, when they lost 6-2 in the first game of a double-header, thanks to Reggie Jackson's pinch-hit grand slam off of Terry Forster in the top of the 9th. Home movie clips from that game can be see in this awesome YouTube video, which includes some choice shots of Comiskey Park, Reggie's grand slam, a between-games beer crate-stacking competition, and of course the infamous shorts.

And that was it for the White Sox shorts... or was it? The Topps 1977 White Sox team card shows the team once again outfitted with them, but I'm pretty sure it was just a shot that was left over from 1976 and (humorously) recycled for the '77 card series. I'd swear on a stack of Dock Ellis hair curlers that that's Terry Forster at the far left of the back row and Pat Kelly third from left in the front; both players were shipped off to other, better teams (Pittsburgh and Baltimore, respectively) shortly after the '76 campaign ended.

Regularly namechecked at the top of "worst/ugliest baseball uniforms" lists, the White Sox shorts have yet to be revived for any sort of "throwback night" festivities. Whaddaya think, folks? Is it time for the shorts to make a comeback, even if only for a night?

Happy Bernie Carbo Day!

 
Before this day slips away from me entirely, I must pay tribute to Bernie Carbo — one of 70s baseball's biggest flakes — on his 64th birthday. I wish I had time to go into a little more detail here, but suffice to say that Carbo never lived up to his massive potential, probably due to the fact that (to hear him tell it now) he was pretty much wasted on a wide variety of substances during just about every major league game he played. Which would, of course, explain the jaw-droppingly pathetic swing he took in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, right before his heroic, game-tying homer. (The at-bat in question starts around the 3:59 mark...

Carbo was, by all accounts, a real flower child — sweet, gentle and completely spaced out — and one who was truly loved by many of his colleagues, despite his eccentricities and often maddening work habits. Sparky Anderson adored him when he came up with the Reds, but just about tore his prematurely white hair out over Bernardo's sudden slide from a stellar rookie season (.310 avg, 454 slg, 21 HR in 1970) to mind-boggling suckitude (.219, .338, 5 hr) the following year. Sadly, Carbo has since revealed that his inability to focus in those days — and his compulsive self-medication — stemmed from the need numb the trauma left over from being molested as a kid. Which puts a rather poignant spin on the otherwise goofy story of the time Bernie came to Red Sox spring training in the company of a large stuffed gorilla called "Mighty Joe Young," which had been given to him by fellow oddball (and former Cardinals teammate) Scipio Spinks. Bernie and the monkey were inseparable...

Carbo bounced around quite a bit over the course of his 12-year major league career, playing for the Reds, the Cardinals (twice), the Red Sox (twice), the Brewers, the Indians and the Pirates. He signed on with his hometown Tigers in 1981, but finally threw in the towel after hitting .190 for their Evansville farm team that summer. He did, however, open up Monsieur Bernardo's Beauty Salon in Detroit around that time, as befit a man with refined tastes and an impressive head of curls...