Big Hair and Plastic Grass

Ode To The Great One

A pertinent and moving quote from Patti Smith's Just Kids, which I received from my girlfriend for Christmas:

"On New Year's Day, I lit a candle for Roberto Clemente, my brother's favorite ballplayer. He had perished while on a humanitarian mission to aid Nicaragua in the aftermath of a terrible earthquake. I chided myself for inactivity and self-indulgence, and resolved to rededicate myself to my work."

RIP to The Great One, who left this mortal coil 39 years ago today. As the old year ends and the new one dawns, it's time for all of us to rededicate ourselves to doing whatever it is that we do best. A happy and healthy 2012 to you all...

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!

 

 

Happy "No Neck" Day!

No time to do a lengthy post, but I couldn't let the day pass without wishing a funky birthday to the great Walt "No Neck" Williams, who turns 68 today.

This hard-hustling 5'6" fireplug played parts of 10 seasons in the majors, from 1964 to 1975. He had his best years with the White Sox (he hit a career-high .304 with 22 doubles for them in 1969), but I had to post his 1974 Cleveland Indians card because of the brilliant way it captures his inimitable look.

Bad-ass sideburns? Check. Equally bad-ass tinted aviator shades? Check. Warm-up jacket with shortened sleeves worn UNDER the jersey? Check. Neck? Clearly absent.

Fergie and the Panamanian Flash

This one goes out to a loyal Big Hair & Plastic Grass fan named John, who sent me a nice note yesterday to say how happy he is to see the BH&PG blog up and running again. He closed with, "December 16th is my birthday. Come up with something special."

Well, first of all, funky birthday greetings to ya, John. I wish I could tell you that you share a birthday with a 70s baseball great, but alas that's not the case. You did, however, narrowly miss sharing a birthday with Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins, who turned 69 three days ago; and since today is Adolfo Phillips' b-day, and the two are forever connected in Cubs history, I figured maybe we'd go for a little "two for the price of one" action, as Larry Williams and Johnny "Guitar" Watson might say...

Phillips' parents picked a bad time to name him Adolfo; he was born in Bethania, Panama on December 16th, 1941, just five days after Adolph Hitler declared war on the United States and all its holdings, including the nearby Panama Canal. But if young Adolfo's parents were harboring any Nazi sympathies, history doesn't record it; in any case, a bat and a glove would be his weapons in his quest for greatness, not a Panzer division or V-2 bombs.

Actually, Phillips' most lethal weapon was his speed. Nicknamed "The Panamanian Flash," it was said that the guy could easily go from first to third on an infield grounder, or score all the way from first on a single. In 1962, his second year in pro ball, Phillips stole 46 bases out of 50 attempts for the Magic Valley Cowboys, the Phillies' Pioneer League (Class C) farm team; he also hit .330 with 33 home runs that year. Three more successful seasons in the minors followed, and Adolfo looked like a can't-miss prospect; at least, that's what the Cubs thought in early 1966 when they traded half of their regular pitching rotation — Larry Jackson, who'd led the NL with 24 wins just two years earlier, and former Braves great Bob Buhl — for him, a backup 1B/OF named John Herrnstein, and an inexperienced fireballer from Canada named Ferguson Jenkins.

Touted as "the next Willie Mays" by Cubs skipper Leo Durocher, Phillips did flash some moments of brilliance as the Cubs' starting centerfielder — like the time he hit four homers in a June 1967 double-header against the Mets — but he never showed any consistency at the plate. (It probably didn't help that Leo usually batted him eighth, allowing opposing pitchers to pitch around him; in 1967, he led the NL with 29 intentional walks.)

Phillips was also plagued by stomach ulcers; behind that confident smile (as displayed above on his 1971 Topps card), was a sensitive cat who was literally being eaten up inside by the pressures of playing major league ball. On June 11th, 1969, the Cubs shipped him to Montreal for utility man Paul Popovich. Some folks like to speculate that the Cubs would have "gone all the way" in '69 if Phillips had remained in centerfield, but his stats that year with the Expos — .216/.286/.337 with 4 homers and 7 RBI in 220 plate appearances — don't exactly point to a potential North Side savior. Phillips did a little better in 1970, posting a slash line of .238/.352/.379 with 6 homers and 21 RBI in 254 plate appearances; but he lost his centerfield gig in 1971 to the much-young Boots Day, and spent the entire season in the minors. The lowly Indians picked him up for the '72 season, but even they couldn't find a place in their lineup for the Panamanian Flash. By 1973, Phillips was out of pro ball for good.

The story of Fergie Jenkins, that fireballing throw-in from the Phillies-Cubs deal, turned out much differently, of course. Beginning in 1967, he posted six-straight 20-win seasons for the Cubs, including 1971, when he went 24-13 with a 2.77 ERA; along with wins, he led the NL in games started (39), complete games (30) innings pitched (325), and walks per nine innings (a phenomenal 1.0), numbers which helped net him the NL Cy Young. (Vida Blue won the AL Cy Young that season, making it the first time that two African-American pitchers won the coveted award in the same year.)

Alas, Fergie's impressive streak was broken in 1973, when he went 14-16 with a 3.89 ERA. He bristled at the way that new Cubs manager Whitey Lockman handled the pitching staff; the fact that he only completed 7 games that season (after completing at least 20 the previous six) speaks volumes on that particular issue, as does the fact that — after being traded to the Texas Rangers in the off-season for Bill Madlock and Vic Harris — Fergie rebounded with a 25-12, 2.82 ERA performance in 1974. (He also led the AL in complete games with 29, and finished just a hair behind Catfish Hunter in the Cy Young voting.)

I posted the following clip a few days ago on the Big Hair & Plastic Grass Facebook page, but here's another chance to check it out. It's an amazing hour-long documentary, called King of the Hill; made by the National Film Board of Canada, it follows future Hall of Famer Fergie and his Cubs teammates (including Ron Santo, Randy Hundley, Billy Williams, Don Kessinger and Joe Pepitone) through the ups and downs of the '72 and '73 season, including their transition to the polyester pullover jerseys. No fan of 70s baseball should miss it...

Happy Teddy Martinez Day!

I hereby decree that today, December 10th, shall hereby be known forever more as "Teddy Martinez Day".

Yes, I realize that, for aficionados of 70s popular culture, there's really only one Teddy: Teddy Pendergrass — or "TEDDAH," as we lovingly refer to him around the Big Hair & Plastic Grass pad. And Teodoro Noel (Encarnacion) Martinez, who was born today in 1947, was merely a part-time utility man with the Mets, Cardinals, A's and Dodgers from 1970-79, who finished his career with a .240 batting average and a truly odiferous .270 OBP. So why do we celebrate him today? To paraphrase a religious ritual performed by certain people I am related to, why is this Teddy different from all other Teddys?

Simply put, IT'S THE HAIR. Teddy Martinez sported an impressively wide (and sorely underrated) array of hair and facial grooming on his Topps baseball cards. Everyone knows and loves Oscar Gamble's 1976 "Traded" card, and with good reason — but how 'bout some love for Teddy's '76 card? It's like a somebody suited up a G.I. Joe doll with "Life-Like Hair" in Charlie Finley's "Kelly Green and Fort Knox Gold"! ("Kung-Fu Grip not pictured.) The fact that the above card was issued to commemorate a season wherein Teddy hit .172 in 86 games with Oakland (after batting .190 in 16 games with St. Louis earlier in the year), leads me to believe that someone at Topps recognized the intrinsically 'fro-tastic magic of the pic...

But there were other sweet Teddy cards, too. Check out this 1975 one, from the end of his Mets tenure: The 'fro is smaller, but the sideburns, moustache and unibrow are all battling for supremacy...

Teddy didn't actually even play in the bigs during 1976; he spent the entire season in the Reds' farm system, then was picked up by the Dodgers in a Rule 5 draft. He posted the best season of his career in '77, hitting .299 as a backup infielder for Tommy Lasorda's NL pennant winners, and made only a single error in 192 innings at second base. And while Reggie Smith was the Dodgers' most prominent 'fro-sporter, Teddy definitely gave "The Other Reggie" a run for his money in that department, as evidenced by his 1978, 1979 and 1980 cards:

 

So comb your hair out today, and let your freak flag fly; Teddy Martinez would want it that way.

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.

Ron Santo: Hall of Famer

I've been meaning to get the BH&PG blog up and running again, and today's announcement that Ron Santo will finally be inducted into Cooperstown seems as good a reason as any to dust off the keyboard and shake off the cobwebs.

Ron Santo: Hall of Famer. It feels good to write that.

It also feels like kind of a cruel joke. Ronnie wanted the Hall of Fame's validation so badly, and his legion of fans in (and outside of) Chicago wanted it for him just as much. Last year, shortly after his death, I wrote on my other blog that "...it would have been so gratifying to see his joy at finally getting into the Hall, or the Cubs finally winning the World Series (or even just friggin' making it in there for the first time since 1945), that him dying before either of those things could happen somehow seemed exceptionally, arbitrarily cruel — not to mention a stark reminder that most of us will die before ever seeing our fondest dreams come true."

And now, if anything, the Veterans Committee's (and earlier, the Baseball Writers' Association of America's) multiple decisions to keep him out of the HoF while he lived seems even more arbitrarily cruel. What, did his stats somehow improve in the past year? Yes, I know the "Golden Era Committee" that finally inducted him was formed as part of the HoF's attempts to rectify the mistakes of Veterans Committees past, but it's still too late. The GEC also whiffed at the opportunity to put the very deserving MInnie Minoso in the HoF; hopefully that'll be rectified before Minnie passes away...

I feel the same combination of joy and bitterness today that I felt in late 2009, when it was announced that The Stooges would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, less than a year after their protean guitarist Ron Asheton died a lonely death in his Michigan home. Ron Asheton wanted and deserved a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as much as Ron Santo wanted and deserved enshrinement in Cooperstown; and as with the Veterans Committee and Santo (and the great Negro Leaguer Buck O'Neil, who was also unconscionably snubbed during his lifetime), the RnR HoF voters had the chance to induct the Stooges while Ron Asheton was still alive, and they blew it. So to all those folks who couldn't or wouldn't acknowledge brilliance when it was living, breathing and staring them in the face, I'd hereby like to offer a resounding, reverb-caked FUCK YOU.

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of my system, let's talk for a little bit about Ron Santo in the 1970s, which must have been a difficult time for him. Though he made the NL All-Star team three times in the 70s, only one of his post-'69 seasons (1972, when he hit .302 with a .391 OBP, an .878 OPS, 17 homers and 74 RBI in 133 games) ranked at all close to the top performances of his career. In addition to dealing with the cumulative wear-and-tear of his diabetes, and of playing all those Wrigley day games for over a decade, he also had to deal with the painful aftermath of the Cubs' 1969 collapse; the team came close to winning the NL East in 1970 and again in 1973, but never close enough.

On top of that, there were Santo's "personality conflicts" with Cubs manager Leo Durocher, and later — after being traded to the White Sox in late '73 — teammate Dick Allen. Santo's lone season with the White Sox was a dismal one: He hit .221 with 5 homers and 41 RBI (all career lows) while splitting 117 games between second base, third base, first, short, and (the final indignity) the DH spot. It was, by his account, a pretty miserable experience.

What's interesting, however, is that he didn't actually have to go to the South Side; on this day in 1973, Santo became the first player to invoke the new "10 and 5" rule, vetoing a trade to the California Angels for two pitchers. He could have done the same six days later, when the Cubs put together the deal that sent him to the White Sox in exchange for Ken Frailing, Steve Stone, Steve Swisher and (eventually) Jim Kremmel, but chose not to — a decision which led to this "Bizarro World" card of Santo, a man who would forever be associated with the Cubs, sporting the reds and pale blues of the White Sox away uni.

There's no doubt about which cap he'll be wearing on his Hall of Fame plaque, of course. With the exception of "Mr. Cub," Ernie Banks, no one ever reveled as much in his place in Cubdom — or was as thoroughly adored by Cubs fans — as Ron Santo. And while most of said Cubs fans may never get to see the team win a World Series, at least we lived long enough to see Santo given his rightful Hall of Fame due. It's just a damn shame we won't get to hear what surely would have been a hilariously garbled acceptance speech...

In closing, here's a wonderfully goofy shot of Santo playing football on the beach in 1973 with fellow Hall of Famer Johnny Bench; somewhere up in baseball heaven, he's probably wearing a similar grin right now.