A 'Fro-Tastic Farewell: Oscar Gamble, RIP

You can't talk about major league baseball in the 1970s without talking about Oscar Gamble. Well, maybe you can, but it's impossible for me to conceive of baseball's funkiest decade without him — which is why, back in 2009, when plans for the publication of Big Hair and Plastic Grass were finally underway, I insisted that the St. Martin's Press art department include his image on the book's cover. And which is part of why my heart is so heavy today after learning about his passing at the far-too-young age of 68.

Oscar Gamble was not a superstar. He finished in the MVP voting only once (in 1977, when his 31 home runs for the White Sox earned him exactly one vote), never made an All-Star team, never led the league in any batting or fielding category, never won a World Series ring. He was often benched against left-handed starters, and only once in the course of his 17-year MLB career (1974, his best season with the Indians) did ever he log more than 500 plate appearances. Though he had a better arm than he was generally given credit for — he threw out 10 runners from the outfield in 1976, and another 12 in 1978 — Oscar's range and glove were a tad below average, and thus he spent over a third of his 1584 career MLB games as a designated hitter.

It's true that a player of his particular caliber (he walked more than he struck out, had a lifetime OBP of .356 and a lifetime OPS+ of 127) would likely be more prized today than he was in an era where Triple Crown stats were the be-all/end-all. And yet, Oscar Gamble epitomizes 1970s baseball to me. There was, of course, that gloriously funky Afro of his — arguably the greatest in the history of the game, and which in its peak state could have accommodated three caps simultaneously — and his even funkier batting stance, where he crouched so low at the plate that his elbows practically touched his knees. Both of those things were beautifully emblematic of baseball in the 70s, an era in which ballplayers finally began to feel free to express themselves on a major league diamond. But while he generally looked like the coolest cat at the disco (and he actually owned one — Oscar Gamble's Players Club in Montgomery, Alabama), Oscar always came to play; and despite his less-than-imposing size (5'11, 165 lbs in his prime), he could easily launch a pitch into the stratosphere whenever that left-handed swing uncoiled. Though never a showboat on the level of, say, Mickey Rivers or Reggie Jackson (to name two of his teammates during his Yankees stints), he was nonetheless tremendously entertaining to watch, in part because he seemed to be enjoying himself so damn much out there.

But beyond all that, Oscar Gamble was an intrinsic part of my own 70s baseball experience — he truly was a cornerstone of my love for the game and its history, and ultimately one of the main inspirations behind my baseball writing. His legendary 1976 "Traded" card was in one of the first wax packs I ever opened, which meant that I knew of him before I knew of Mark Fidrych, Dock Ellis, Bill Lee, Luis Tiant, Dick Allen, Lenny Randle, or any of my other favorite players from the era. Oscar was a starting outfielder for the 1976 Yankees, who played against the Tigers in the very first MLB game I ever attended, and whom I studied at great length during their run through the first post-season I ever paid actual attention to. (Oscar's immortal quote, "They don't think it be like it is, but it do," was in reference to the insanity and dysfunction of the Yankees clubhouse under George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin.)

Oscar enjoyed his finest season as rent-a-player for the 1977 White Sox "South Side Hitmen," who nearly slugged their way to the AL West title, and whom I became obsessed with despite observing from a distance. He was a free-agent bust with the 1978 Padres, who my paternal grandparents took me to see that year when I visited them in San Diego; and the following year, he was traded back to the Yankees while I was visiting the same grandparents at their new digs on Long Island. I rooted for him even when he was playing against teams I rooted for — because, c'mon, how could you root against Oscar Gamble? "He was a sweet, decent man without a single ounce of malice in his heart," Reggie Jackson told the NY Daily News today, "one who came through the door every day with a smile on his face." And even from the stands, or on TV, I could totally pick up on that.

Oscar's 'fro attained its greatest shape and circumference during his 1973-75 stint with the Indians, a period during which he could have easily been mistaken off-field for a member of the Chi-Lites or Rasputin's Stash. I didn't learn until many years after the fact that the Yankees had made him cut it when he was traded to the Bronx from Cleveland, or that said haircut forced him to pass on a possible Afro-Sheen endorsement deal with Johnson Products. I talk about his haircut at length in Stars and Strikes, and also got into it a bit in this "Bicentennial Baseball Minute" video I did a few years back in conjunction with the book.

I've long loved that story, because — even if the world was deprived of what could have been a seriously dy-no-mite Afro-Sheen commercial — it underlined how much of a team player Oscar Gamble really was. Though the Yankees were uptight and old-fashioned about grooming, and he would have been well within his rights to cop an attitude about their edict, he saw the bigger picture. After all, he'd spent the bulk of his career playing for lousy teams in Philadelphia and Cleveland, and he was not about to let a little (or a lot of) hair get in the way of him being part of a contender.

There is a sadder side to that story, though, one which I didn't fully grasp until a year or two ago, when I turned up an interview with Oscar Gamble while digging through some newspaper archives from 1977. In a Chicago Sun-Times article with the headline "Oscar Gamble Sheds Bad Boy Image," Ron Rapoport writes about how Gamble — by all accounts a chatty, affable guy and a dependable teammate — was widely viewed as a "troublemaker" by baseball GMs, simply for having the temerity to groom himself like the proud, handsome black man he was... and that a lot of reporters were flat-out afraid to talk to him because they perceived him to be some kind of black militant in double-knits.

"After I got a haircut [in 1976]," Gamble told Rapoport, "a lot of writers came over and said, 'We didn't talk to you because we thought you were violent.' They just came up and admitted it. That's what the hair meant to them. I just wore it that way because it looked good on me and I looked good in it. It's funny in a way — people always judge people the way they think you should be. You never know what people are thinking. I've always been a nice friendly guy, easy to talk to."

This, in a nutshell, is the side of sports that I've always hated — the side that not only encourages conformity, but also casts character-assassinating aspersions upon those who refuse to knuckle under accordingly, and punishes those who stand up for what they believe. And 40 years later, things haven't gotten a whole lot better on that score — just ask Colin Kaepernick, a gentleman whose own 'fro and ironclad sense of self surely caused Oscar to flash a knowing grin or two. Then again, that's why so many baseball players of the 70s continue to inspire me to this day; they were true to themselves, even when the game's old guard — the owners, skippers, General Managers, journalists and even veteran players — did their best to tamp them down...

It always hurts when one of the favorite players from your childhood dies, especially one who thoroughly embodied the fun, excitement freedom you felt whenever you ran out onto your local diamond as a kid. But Oscar's passing hits me extra hard today, because I'd love to commiserate about it with someone else who's no longer with us — James Saft, a brilliant Reuters columnist and one of my oldest and dearest friends, who passed away in October. One of the first things Jim and I bonded over in high school was our shared Alabama connection; my maternal grandparents lived in Tuscaloosa, and his aunt lived in Greensboro, and we each spent many formative summers in the state, which may as well have been Mars as far as our private-school classmates on the north side of Chicago were concerned. As such, we both shared a particular affection for Bama ballplayers; and Oscar Gamble, who was scouted by the legendary Buck O'Neil while attending Montgomery's George Washington Carver High School, was one of our favorite members of that fraternity. Jim spent the last years of his life in Huntsville with his wife, daughters and dogs, and I would always ask him to keep an eye out for Oscar Gamble's Players Club memorabilia at the thrift shops in Montgomery, whenever he was there. (None ever turned up, but a man can dream, right?) When the rumor of Oscar's passing first hit Twitter this morning while I was still waking up, my first instinct was to drop Jim an email, asking him if he'd heard anything... and then I remembered that I couldn't do that anymore.

And so, unfortunately, it goes; in the words of Hank Williams, another great son of Alabama, I'll never get out of this world alive. But I'm not in the mood to play any Hank right now — I'd rather spin some Delfonics, whose sweet Philly soul strains doubtless caught Oscar's ear early in his playing career, and whose gorgeous "Delfonics Theme" both fills me with the same sense of joy and wonder that I experienced while watching Oscar Gamble in action, and echoes the sadness that I feel now that he's gone. Rest in funky peace, Oscar. And thanks for everything.