Funky birthday greetings goin' out today to Dan Driessen, who (next to George Foster) sported the baddest pair of 'chops on the '76 World Champion Cincinnati Reds.
In 1976, the Designated Hitter rule was used in the World Series for the first time, and Dan — a part-time utility player for much of his first four seasons with the Reds — became the first player to step to the plate as a DH in a World Series, hitting .357 during the Big Red Machine's four-game sweep of the Yankees. I was rooting for the Yanks, and remember marveling at the impressive depth of the Reds' roster; the Yanks didn't have anybody better than Otto Velez on their bench, but the Reds had THIS guy?!? I'd never even heard of him, and here he was raking Yankee pitching like it was batting practice...
Evidently, the Cincy front office thought they were sitting on a gold mine as well, because they traded 34 year-old fan favorite (and eventual Hall of Famer) Tony Perez to the Montreal Expos that off-season, and gave the 24 year-old Driessen the full-time first baseman position. Driessen responded by hitting .300 with a .375 OBP, 31 doubles, 17 HR, 91 RBI and 31 SBs, and put up a .994 fielding percentage at first — but he was never accepted by Reds fans as a sufficient replacement for the "Big Doggie". That the Reds didn't win the NL West in '77 or '78 didn't help Driessen's "Horace Clarke"-type standing among Cincinnati fans, nor did the fact that he never put up numbers matching his '77 output again. Still, he managed to hang onto the Reds' starting 1B gig until July 1984, when he was traded to (wait for it) the Montreal Expos, aka the home for aging Reds first basemen...
In other news, I want to give a grateful tip of the Monsanto Toupee in the direction of Weston Cutter, who gave Big Hair & Plastic Grass a nice write-up on the Corduroy Books blog. "This is baseball writing with a healthy tilt toward the style of the day and game," he writes, "not just the substance. It’s a hell of a read." Much obliged, hombre...
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