Thirty-four years ago yesterday, Cincinnati Reds second baseman Joe Morgan bobbled a throw from first baseman Dan Driessen, ending his then-record streak of 91 straight games at second without an error.
While part of me admittedly loves writing "Joe Morgan bobbled a throw," the fact is that I was in awe of him during his playing days; it was only after he misadventured into the broadcast booth that he regularly made me sputter with inchoate rage.
Little Joe was an absolute giant at his position — truly the greatest second baseman of the 70s, if not of all time. I vividly remember watching in the '76 NLCS and World Series, and my father continually pointing out the way he fielded his position, or how he timed pitches with that weird funky chicken pump of his left arm, or how he generally intimidated the fuck out of the opposition at the plate and on the basepaths. He was truly the engine that made the "Big Red Machine" go; even being on the same team as Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and George Foster, he won both the '75 and '76 NL MVP awards in a landslide.
I recently stumbled upon the awesome pic above, in which Little Joe demonstrates his batting form (and impeccably trimmed sideburns) for Gwen Conley as a guest on "Feelings," a morning TV talk and variety show broadcast on WLWT (channel 5) in Cincinnati. Conley, who initially broke into showbiz as a singer (her 1975 album, The Many Faces of Gwen Conley, fetches a pretty penny these days on Japanese import CD), was one of the first black women to host her own TV show. I haven't been able to find any clips from her show floating around the tubes, but Billy Dee Williams, Redd Foxx, Arthur Ashe, and Johnny Bench all reportedly sat in the same wicker chair that Morgan occupies above. Even local morning television was cooler back in the 70s...
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