
It took a bad dude to look intimidating in the mustard yellows and fecal browns of the 1970s San Diego Padres, but there was no Padres player badder than Nate Colbert. Still the all-time franchise home run leader with 163 taters, Colbert (whose birthday it is today) was pretty much the only reason — other than maybe relaxing in the sun with a beer and a joint — to visit San Diego Stadium from 1969 through 1973.
Six-feet-two-inches of free-swinging right-handed power, Nate averaged nearly 30 homers a season and 133 whiffs during those years, a period when both totals were considered pretty damn noteworthy. Most noteworthy of all was Nate's 1972 season, when he hit 38 homers with 111 RBI, driving in 22.7% of the 488 runs the anemic Padres scored that year; second in the Padres' production heirarchy was Leron Lee, who hit .300 with 12 HR and 47 RBI. Several years ago on his excellent Cardboard Gods blog, Josh Wilker suggested that Colbert's '72 season might be the offensive counterpart to Steve Carlton's mind-boggling 1972 pitching performance. Carlton won 27 games that year, or 45.8 percent of his team's victories; Colbert drove in 22.7 percent of his team's runs. Neither percentage has ever been bettered.

Nor have Nate's twin feats of August 1, 1972, when he hit five homers and drove in 13 runs during a doubleheader against the Atlanta Braves, respectively tying Stan Musial's mark for home runs in a doubleheader and breaking the mark of 11 RBI in a doubleheader held by Earl Averill, Jim Tabor and Boog Powell. There's a popular story that an eight-year-old Colbert, who grew up in St. Louis, was actually AT the old Busch Stadium on May 2, 1954 when Musial cranked his record-setting five homers against the New York Giants. I suppose the tale could actually be true, but it smacks so much of sugarcoated Field of Dreams feel-good wish-fulfillment that thinking about it just makes my teeth hurt. A more interesting fact (to me at least) is that, in that one day, Colbert drove in one more run than starting Padres shortstop Enzo Hernandez had knocked in over the course of the entire 1971 season.

A three-time All Star with the Padres, Colbert began to be plagued by back injuries in 1974, posting a cruddy .207 average with 14 homers and 54 RBI in 119 games. He was 28, the age when most players supposedly peak, but he was putting on weight and his career was already in free-fall. The Padres traded him in November of that year as part of a three-way deal with that sent (among others) Eddie Brinkman to St. Louis, Sonny Seibert to San Diego and Colbert to Detroit; it's safe to say that nobody came out ahead in that trade, but the Tigers really got the short end of the stick. Hitting .147/.231/.276 with 4 homers and 8 RBI in 173 plate appearances, Colbert couldn't even hold down the starting first base gig on one of the worst teams in Tigers history. The Tigers sold him to Montreal in June; his performance improved only slightly with the Expos (.173/.230/.395 with 4 HR and 11 RBI in 87 plate appearances), but he did pose for a pretty muttonchop-tastic 1976 Topps card while he was with them..

After 14 games with the Expos in 1976, Montreal gave Colbert his release, and he — like so many other once-great players on their last legs — briefly found himself in the kelly green and Fort Knox gold of Charlie Finley's Oakland A's...though only after spending most of the '76 season with Oakland's Tucson Toros Triple-A farm team. Nate clubbed 12 homers for the Toros in 238 plate appearances, but those would be the final taters of his professional career. Called up to the A's at the end of the season, Nate went 0-for-5 in two games against the Angels. The A's granted him free agency in November, and his career was over at the age of 30.

I'm not sure what's happened to Nate since, but I do love this 1981 quote from Padres/Cards pitcher Bob Shirley: "Tradition here [in St. Louis] is Stan Musial coming into the clubhouse making the rounds. Tradition in San Diego is Nate Colbert coming into the clubhouse and trying to sell you a used car."