Back in the 70s, before full-scale free agency kicked in and ratcheted up the salaries, major league baseball players often had to find additional off-season employment to make ends meet. Tom Seaver, however, was in the upper echelon of baseball's salary bracket; in late '75, after winning his third NL Cy Young award, the New York Mets raised his salary to a then-whopping $225,000 a year. But as a star player, you get plenty of endorsement deals thrown your way, so... I guess it makes sense that Seaver would have chosen to make a few bucks on the side by shilling for the Sears mens department.
Here's "Tom Terrific" on his 1976 Hostess card. The epitome of baseball cool, right? Now look again at the Sears ad on the top of the page, also from '76, and observe how a baseball hero can be transformed into a schlubby insurance salesman, sleazy private detective or "with-it" high school principal with just one four-piece ensemble. That's right, people — just $110 (or about $400 in today's currency) would have gotten you a two-button blazer, a flap-pocketed leisure suit jacket, and two pairs of "slacks" (one plain, one checked) in your choice of "fashionably new spring shades of blue, green, tan and rust" (that's right, rust), all tailored (perhaps "formed" would be the more accurate word) from bolts of wash-and-wear doubleknit polyester. Jesus, I'm getting skin cancer just thinking about the way that fabric must have felt...
But speaking of 1976, this seems like a good time to mention (since I basically keep forgetting to say something about it on this blog) that I've signed a deal with St. Martin's Press (the same fine folks who published Big Hair & Plastic Grass) for a book about that very same year. Tentatively titled Bicentennial Boogie: Baseball and America in the Star-Spangled Summer of '76, the new tome will be filled with all kindsa good stuff from the year that brought us Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, The Bad News Bears, the return of Bill Veeck, the last glorious championship thrust of "The Big Red Machine," Charlie's Angels, Legionnaire's Disease and the dark horse Presidential victory of Jimmy Carter, is slated to come out in April 2014. I am extremely excited to be working on a book about what's pretty much my favorite year in baseball history, and to be working again with my righteous editor Rob Kirkpatrick.
Will Tom Terrific's fashion faux pas make the cut? It certainly has a good shot, at least at this point. But if any of you fine folks reading this run across any other great baseball-related print or TV ads from '76, please let me know. Ditto for any of you collectors who are sitting on some previously un-published baseball photos from the Bicentennial year, and might be willing to let me include them in the book in exchange for a few bucks, credit, and my undying gratitude. In any case, a major tip of the Monsanto Toupee to all of you who bought, reviewed, talked-up or otherwise supported Big Hair & Plastic Grass. I am deeply thankful for your help, deeply gratified by your enthusiasm, and I really couldn't have made it to this next book project without you. Long may you all groove like Ellis Valentine...
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