That's right, good people of Minneapolis and St. Paul — I am comin' to your towns to help you take some downs...or at least help you relive the 'fro-tastic glory that was baseball in the 1970s. This Saturday, June 18, I will be joining The End of Baseball author Peter Schilling, Jr. for a reading/signing double-header at Big Brain Comics (1027 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis). The festivities begin at 2 pm, and will roll 'til around 3:30. It should be a blast, so come on out and boogie down with us!
Of course, you can't mention 70s baseball and Minneapolis in the same breath without thinking of Rod Carew. The guy could flat-out rake — from 1972 to 1978, he won six out of seven possible AL batting titles, and he missed winning seven straight by .002 percentage points when George Brett won the '76 crown with a .333 average. There was even a point during the 1977 season where he seemed to have a serious chance at hitting .400 for the year. Didn't happen — he still finished with a jaw-dropping .388 — but here's a cool ABC profile of the man from that year.
...that Oakland A's owner Charlie O. Finley, desperate to get something in exchange for three of his stars before the free agency boom blew him out of the water, sold Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox and Vida Blue to the Yankees, in exchange for a total of $1.5 million. The deal was quickly (and controversially) voided by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who invoked his usual "best interests of baseball" justification, prompting Finley to rail against him as "the village idiot" in the press.
While the move would have certainly strengthened both teams, it's hard to say whether it would have appreciably changed the outcome of the 1976 AL East race, which the Yankees won by 10.5 games over the Orioles, and a whopping 15.5 games over the third-place Red Sox. At the time the deal was announced, Billy Martin's boys were already six up on Boston, and would go 65-40 the rest of the way. It's also unlikely that the addition of Vida Blue would've seriously helped the Yankee cause in October — he would've been a better choice for Game One of the World Series than Doyle Alexander, to be sure, but the Yanks really lost the Series at the plate and on the basepaths.
In any case, while Kuhn didn't officially void the deal until June 18, none of the three players had a chance to play for their "new" teams — though Rudi and Fingers did suit up for Boston. The above pic shows longtime Red Sox third baseman Rico Petrocelli welcoming Rollie (whose famous handlebar moustache is unfortunately somewhat obscured) to the Fenway clubhouse...
...that the late, great Dock Ellis, synapses and senses percolating under the combined effects of LSD and Dexamyl, threw what was probably the only psychedelic no-hitter in major league history, beating the Padres 2-0 on a rainy evening in San Diego. A no-hitter is an outstanding achievement in its own right; but pitching one under the influence of acid is a whole 'nother thing entirely. Some folks have even called Dock's LSD no-no the greatest athletic feat of all time, and I'm not entirely inclined to disagree.
While doing interviews to promote Big Hair & Plastic Grass, I've been asked several times if I think Dock actually DID pitch the game while tripping. The question initially took me aback, because, well, if you know anything about baseball in the 70s, you know that plenty of players were experimenting with drugs during this period. And if you know anything about Dock, you know that he was a free spirit who enjoyed the hell outta his drugs and booze, at least until he got sober in the 80s.
Plus, other than a little extra notoriety, Dock didn't have a whole lot to gain from the revelation. He'd kept it a secret during his playing days, even claiming in the original printing of Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball that he'd been drunk at the time; but by the mid-80s, when it was clear that the Lords of Baseball weren't going to let him back into the game at any significant level, there was no longer any harm in telling the truth. While Dock did make a little extra cash in the few years before he died selling a limited number of autographed baseballs emblazoned with his signature and "I pitched a no-hitter on LSD" (I would have loved to buy one myself, but I was flat broke at the time), it's not like he got rich off the story.
But for those of you who still doubt it, consider this: For all the wildness of his ways, Dock was a control pitcher who averaged just under 3 walks per his 12-year big-league career, and it wasn't at all unusual for him to throw a complete game without walking a single batter. But on June 12, 1970, Dock walked eight Padres, and plunked another one — by far the wildest performance of his entire career. In other words, something was up with him that day.
As to whether or not it's even possible to pitch a no-no on acid, well, I'm sure I couldn't, and you probably couldn't either. But a man who had spent a large portion of his life honing the repetitive mechanics of his pitching motion — and had quite a few prior experiences with LSD — probably wouldn't find it that difficult to get on with the task at hand, just as musicians like Jimi Hendrix had no problem going onstage and playing while tripping. If you're already in the zone, even the most surreal hallucinations can't distract you from your mission.
One question I don't know the answer to: Does footage of the "Ellis, D" no-no exist? As Time magazine put it a few years back, "If you're looking for footage of the fabled game, you're not going to find it — no tape has ever surfaced, and Major League Baseball hasn't rushed to dig through its archives for documentation of the psychedelic affair." There have been several petitions floating around the internet, including this one, signed by fans demanding to see it, but so far to no avail. (Though frankly, I'd be even more interested in watching the post-game interview.) CORRECTION: As Scott Crawford just reminded me, HBO Sports apparently DOES have a copy of the videotape,according to Keven Mcalester's very fine 2005 article from the Dallas Observer. Hmmm...
In the meantime, though, at least we've got this amazing animated short to watch, narrated by Dock himself. If you've never seen it before, do yourself a favor and carve 4 and a half minutes out of your busy day to soak it in. I've watched it so many times at this point, I'm almost ready to call it my favorite baseball film of all time — next to, of course, The Bad News Bears.
Is there any truth to the persistent Pittsburgh rumor that Dave Cash — who was born today in 1948 — triggered Steve Blass's 1973 meltdown by bedding Blass's wife? We'll probably never know, though Cash, who would become a three-time all-star as a member of the Phillies, was shipped off to Philadelphia in exchange for Ken Brett almost as soon as the 1973 season was over. Then again, the Pirates were deep at second; they already had Rennie Stennett, and Willie Randolph was coming up in their farm system, and needed a good arm to replace Blass, so it's entirely possible that the trade was simply a good business move.
In any case, it was certainly a good move for the Phillies, who got a leadoff man with a winning attitude out of the deal. From 1974 through 1976, Cash missed only two games, and led the NL each year in At-Bats; in 1975, he set an MLB record with 699 ABs (since broken by Willie Wilson and others), and also led the NL with 213 hits, 40 of which were doubles. His "Yes, We Can!" motto helped fire up the Phils in their quest of the NL East flag, which they finally took in 1976 — 26 years after the team's previous post-season appearance. Oh yeah: He only struck out 13 times that entire season, by far the best single-season AB-per-K ratio (51.23) of any 70s hitter.
Sadly for the Phils, and perhaps for Cash as well, he wouldn't be hanging around "The Vet" long enough to return to the playoff in '77 and '78, or make it to the World Series with Schmidt, Luzinski and Co. in 1980. Because in late '76, Cash — as part of the first-ever free agent draft — inked a five-year, $1.5 million deal with the Montreal Expos. Cash looks pretty pissed on all his Expos cards, like he realized he'd made the wrong career move; the Expos of '77 and '78 had some fine players, but they didn't break .500 in either season. And by '79, when they made a legitimate run for the NL East pennant thanks to Bill Lee and the all-time bad-ass outfield of Ellis Valentine, Andre Dawson and Warren Cromartie, injuries and age had caused Cash to lose his starting gig at second to Rodney Scott. Even though he hit a career-high .321 as a part-timer, the Expos shipped him to San Diego at the end of the season for the .227-hitting Bill Almon and the .207-hitting Dan Briggs; and after one unproductive season with the Padres, he was out of the majors for good.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. For all I know, the Topps photog could have snapped the above pic while Cash was grousing about Ross Grimsley using his afro pick without asking.
By the time you read this, Dave Parker will have turned 60 years old — the man they called "The Cobra" was born on June 9, 1951. And in case you're not hip to what a supreme badass The Cobra was in his day, or you missed my day-long tribute to the man on the Big Hair & Plastic Grass Facebook page, here's a little primer for ya. The Cobra would have a place in my book (and my heart) just for his nickname and the fact that he wore t-shirts emblazoned with P-Funk lyrics, but he also happened to be one of the best and most dangerous players of the second half of the 1970s. A true five-tool player, he could hit for average and power, run like hell (even if he wasn't the savviest of base stealers), and he had a solid glove and a veritable cannon for a throwing arm: The man cut down 26 base runners in 1977 alone.
The NL batting champ in 1977 and 1978 (when he hit .338 and .334, respectively), NL MVP in 1978 (when he also led the league with a .585 slugging percentage and 340 total bases), and a mainstay of the "We Are Family" World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates of 1979, Parker also nabbed the '79 All Star MVP award when he cut down Jim Rice at third and Brian Downing at home with two of the most jaw-dropping throws ever unleashed. (Note to Buster Posey — all you folks whining about how catchers need to be "protected" — THIS is how you're supposed to set up for a throw from right field.)
Above, baseball commish Bowie Kuhn hands Parker his All-Star Game MVP trophy, shortly after the NL's 7-6 victory at the Seattle Kingdome. "You know, I used to be a Washington Senators scoreboard boy," sez Kuhn. "Shut the fuck up, Honky," thinks The Cobra.
One of the first players to wear gold jewelry on the field (asked why he wore a Star of David, he famously replied, "My name is David, and I'm a star") Parker also gained notoriety for the various protective masks he wore during the 1978 and early '79 seasons, after a collision with Mets catcher John Stearns shattered his cheekbone. As Paul Lukas' excellent Uni Watch column from 2008 reveals, he only wore this fearsome hockey mask for a brief period before ditching it in favor of a batting helmet outfitted with a football faceguard; but it's a good bet that any opposing infielder who saw the 6'6", 235 lb Parker bearing down on him looking like this probably still has nightmares about it to this day.
Should Dave Parker be in the Hall of Fame? He missed out again this year, in his last year of eligibility, but I think 339 career homers (most of which were hit during a period when 20 homers a year made you a legitimate slugger), 1493 career RBI, a lifetime .290 average, three Gold Gloves, one MVP award (and four other finishes in the Top 5) and World Series rings with Pittsburgh and Oakland should have made for a fairly compelling (if not overwhelming) case for enshrinement. If he hadn't had three unproductive seasons in the middle of his career (1981-83) and hadn't been implicated in the Pittsburgh cocaine trials, he may well have been a lock. But fuck it — from 1975 to 1979 (ie, one-half of the period this blog and my book are concerned with), Parker was the most feared hitter in baseball, and that's good enough to land him in the Big Hair & Plastic Grass Hall of Fame. Plus, he was called The Cobra, fer chrissakes — a nickname which some sources claim was given to him by a member of the Bucs' organization who had a tendency to drunkenly ogle the players in various states of undress...
But hey, that's a whole 'nother story. Lemme close this piece with a great 1980 commercial for 7=Up, which featutes Parker, Mike Schmidt and Bruce Sutter in some pretty choice examples of late 70s/early 80s uniform finery. It's just too bad Parker didn't try to throw the bottle home; my guess is that it would've reached the plate on the fly. Happy Birthday, Cobra — you were the fuckin' MAN.
Dan Epstein
About Me
Dan Epstein is the author of Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s and Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76, both published by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press. He writes about baseball, music and other cultural obsessions for a variety of outlets and publications. He lives in Greensboro, NC, and is available for speaking engagements.