
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!
