“I’m the only guy in the world who could throw a ball through a car wash and never get it wet," James Rodney Richard used to say in jest, though more than a few hitters who faced him would probably tell you it was the truth. As my pal Lenny Randle, who was a teammate of J.R.'s at ASU and faced him 19 times in the majors (hitting only .167, but only striking out once, which I suppose was something of a moral victory) once said of him, "He starts out throwing Alka Seltzers, and ends up throwing Anacins."
From 1976 to 1980 — the most intense years of my early baseball fandom — there was no pitcher as intimidating as J.R. Richard. He stood six-foot-eight, regularly threw around 100 mph, and (even once he sorted out the control issues that caused him to lead the NL in walks in two different seasons) was always wild enough to keep batters from even thinking about getting comfy at the plate. If you ever got to see him pitch in person, you've probably never forgotten the experience; it was not at all unusual to see him fan 12-15 batters in a start.
J.R. seemed on a direct path to Cooperstown, but a series of strokes essentially ended his career at the age of 30 — strokes that might have been prevented if the Astros had only taken his complaints of arm numbness and physical discomfort seriously. (The press didn't help matters — check out any sports page from the weeks leading up to his collapse on July 30, 1980, and odds are you'll find an irate columnist accusing him of malingering, attitude problems, or worse.) It's incredible to look at how dominating he was in the 1980 All Star Game while also knowing that he'd be making his final MLB start less than a week later.
J.R.'s next couple of decades were rough, including losing a bundle via an oil business scam and spending a stretch living under a bridge in Houston. Happily, he got his life back together, found some peace about the way his career ended, and was able to once again enjoy the admiration and appreciation of fans in Houston and elsewhere. Unfortunately, it looks like he'd spent the last weeks of his life hospitalized for COVID, yet another unnecessary victim of a virus that never should have gotten this far...
Hank Aaron hitting home run number 715 is my first vivid baseball memory. Before that, baseball was always something that my dad had going on the TV while I was busy playing GI Joe or reading Mad Magazine or building models or drawing comics. Sports in general wasn't my thing in those early elementary school days.
But when the 1974 baseball season was about to begin, with Hank all but certain to break the Babe's home run record in the first week or two of April, my second grade teacher Mrs. Crippen brought the topic up for class discussion, and impressed upon us the sense that history was about to be made. I knew what a legend Babe Ruth was — after all, there was a gigantic, gilt framed photo of him hanging on the wall of Bimbo's, our favorite Ann Arbor pizza parlor — and even though I didn't understand much about baseball yet, I didn't mind when my dad made us watch Monday Night Baseball on April 5 instead of The Rookies, which was what I usually watched on Monday evenings. And I remember getting chills when Hank actually hit the record-breaker out of the park, which thankfully happened before my 9 pm bedtime.
A few weeks later, my dad had to go to Atlanta for a social work convention that my grandfather was also attending, and he took my sister and me with him so we could hang out with our grandparents. My two most vivid memories of that trip are of getting absolutely tanked on Mountain Dew while watching It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on the TV in my grandparents' hotel room, and of my grandfather driving us by Fulton County Stadium so I could see where Hank had hit his record-breaking homer. Unfortunately, the Braves were on a road trip at the time; so instead of spending the evening at the ballpark, we had dinner at an Italian restaurant in Underground Atlanta, a now-long-vanished tourist attraction that managed to be both strange and strangely underwhelming.
It feels very weird to me that Hank's gone now, even though he had a long, full, heroic and rewarding life. His figure has always towered over baseball, or at least my perception of it, even though I never saw him play in person. I never met or interviewed him, either; and as I said to a friend the other day, I don't know what I could have possibly said to him had our paths ever crossed. It's like seeing the Grand Canyon in person — whatever comes to your lips will inevitably sound lame and insufficient.
My one great Hank Aaron story is actually a Neil Diamond story, and it didn't actually happen to me. In fact, it may not even be true, but it's too good not to share. It was told to me in the early 90s by a guy named David, who was a regular customer at See Hear, the record store I worked at in Chicago from 1989 to 1993...
In 1989, David was living in Atlanta, and a friend of his who was working as Neil Diamond's costume (or hair or makeup) person invited him to come and hang out backstage when Neil came to town and played the Omni. David was a friendly and easy-going guy, the kind of person you felt like you'd known forever the first time you met him, and Neil apparently took an immediate liking to him when they were introduced. After giving David a personal tour of his wardrobe and pointing out some of his favorite stage outfits, Neil invited David to join him, his band and crew for dinner, which was being catered by a local restaurant of note.
David happily accepted the invitation, and enjoyed the dinner immensely — at least up until the point when Neil turned to David and asked him, "David, how come there aren't more black people at my concerts?"
David just about choked on his food. For one thing, what a question! For another, David was just some white, Jewish dude from Georgia. "Why the hell is Neil even asking me this?" he thought to himself.
He chewed on the question — and its proper response — for a minute before answering. "No offense, Neil," he said, "but I just don't think black people like your music very much."
Neil, to his credit, did not act at all offended; he merely seemed mystified. "But why not?" he asked David, completely straight-faced. "I'm a SOUL singer!"
Flash forward to that night's show: David takes his seat, which — thanks to the hookup from his friend — is located right in the first couple of rows. He turns back to take in the rest of the arena, as one does in such situations, and immediately notices (much to his great surprise) that Hank Aaron and his wife are sitting directly behind him. David tries to play it cool; as naturally garrulous as he is, even he can't think of a way to break the ice and strike up a conversation with the legendary Home Run King. Still, he can't help himself from looking back from time to time throughout the evening to see what Hank is up to — and sure enough, Hank is genuinely digging the show, knows the words to all the songs, etc.
After the show, David goes backstage to say goodbye to his friend, and winds up passing Neil in the hallway.
"Hey Neil!" he shouts after him. "Hank Aaron was in the audience tonight!"
Neil stops in his tracks, punches the air and yells "YES!!!"
***
Oh, and speaking of baseball and Jewish guys from Georgia, my book with Ron Blomberg — The Captain & Me: On and Off the Field with Thurman Munson — will be released via Triumph Books on April 20, and is currently available for pre-order at Amazon.
I knew this was coming, but I still haven't been able to fully wrap my mind around it.
I don't remember ever learning about the existence of Tom Seaver, just like I don't remember learning about the existence of the Empire State Building; both were just always there, iconic symbols of the greatness of the city I'd been born into but didn't really begin to experience until I was almost 13. By then, of course, Tom was no longer there, having been shipped to the Reds in 1977 as part of the most heartbreaking trade in Mets (and maybe even MLB) history. And by then, seeing a Mets game at Shea Stadium was kind of like watching a Hubert Robert painting of Roman ruins come to life; you knew that greatness had previously occurred on these once-hallowed grounds, but actual traces of it could no longer be found anywhere on the field or in the neglected, urine-soaked structure.
I think I only got to see one Hall of Fame pitcher play in person while he was in his 70s prime: Jim Palmer, who efficiently beat my Tigers 3-1 with a complete game, 8-strikeout performance on April 24, 1977. And I got to see Luis Tiant, who SHOULD be in the Hall, throw a three-hit shutout against the A's that August. Both are among my most treasured 70s baseball experiences, but I really wish I could have somehow witnessed Seaver in action during his 1967-75 prime, that absolutely Olympian nine-year stretch where he won the NL Rookie of the Year award and three Cy Youngs while averaging 16 complete games and 233 strikeouts a season with a 2.46 ERA, and helped pitch the Mets to two pennants and one World Series championship. If I had to pick one pitcher from the era to take the mound for a crucial start, it would be that dude.
Still, I got to watch Seaver many times on TV from 1976 to 1979, when he was still pretty damn great; even when his fastball lost its zip, as it clearly had by 1979, he was such a tough and smart pitcher that you would have been foolish to bet against him.
But perhaps my fondest Seaver memory is of watching him pitch in an all-star softball game that was televised as part of (I think) ABC's Wide World of Sports during the spring training of 1977. Unlike his regular season starts, when he was "all business" on the mound, he was in total prankster mode that day—tossing a golf ball to one unsuspecting hitter, and lobbing an actual grapefruit to Thurman Munson, who duly (and grumpily) juiced that baby with a vicious swing...
My other favorite Seaver moment? This 1976 Sears ad for "The Travelknit Fourpiece," an Astroturf-colored set comprising a blazer, a leisure suit jacket, and two pair of trousers. In it, you can glimpse the many moods of Tom Seaver; the guy second from the right is clearly the grapefruit-throwing Seaver from the softball game, while the one at far-right appears to have wandered in from the set of The Rockford Files, where (in my dreams, at least) he's playing one of Jim's old army buddies who has sought him out for help with a business situation that is NOT WHAT IT SEEMS...
I don't know what else to say right now, other than I know how badly this must hurt for my Mets fan friends, especially the ones slightly older than me who grew up with Tom Terrific, and who got to see (or hear) their hero take the mound every fourth game. As rough as his trade to the Reds was for you folks, the news of his passing might be even rougher. Peace to you all, and to Tom Seaver, too.
I am extremely proud and excited to announce that Ron "Designated Hebrew" Blomberg (#12 in this pic) and I have signed a deal with Triumph Books for a memoir of his Odd Couple-esque friendship with the man behind the plate — the late, great Yankees captain Thurman Munson.
Titled The Captain and Me, the book will reveal a lot about Thurman that isn't widely known (not to mention plenty of amusing/interesting tidbits from the glorious days of 70s baseball) and is currently slated for a 2021 release.
A huge thank you and/or a tip o' the Monsanto Toupee to everyone who has bought and supported my previous baseball books — you made this possible!
I am incredibly thrilled to accept The Baseball Reliquary's invitation to deliver the Keynote Address for their 20th annual Shrine of the Eternals Induction Day, which will be held Sunday, July 22nd at the Pasadena Central Library. This year's inductees include legendary White Sox organist Nancy Faust and White Sox/Dodgers/Yankees/Angels pitcher Tommy John, both of whom will be in attendance.
The Baseball Reliquary is a nonprofit, educational organization dedicated to fostering an appreciation of American art and culture through the context of baseball history — so it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me or has read my baseball books that I've a big fan of the organization and its mission for a long time. (I mean, their collections include Dock Ellis's infamous CURLERS, people!)
Previous inductees to the Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals include such personal heroes as Dock Ellis, Dick Allen, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, Bill "Spaceman" Lee, Luis Tiant and Jim "Mudcat" Grant, so it will be a huge honor for me to speak at this year's induction ceremonies, especially since Nancy Faust, Tommy John and fellow 2018 inductee Rusty Staub all played such formative roles in my early baseball fandom.
The induction (which is free and open to all) will be held almost three years to the day since Katie and I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, and I can think of no better excuse to return to Southern California for a few days. If you love baseball and live in SoCal, please mark your calendars for this fantastic event!
When I moved with my mom and sister to Chicago from Los Angeles at the tail end of 1979, I knew little about the Windy City beyond which sports teams called it home. But there were two things that I was certain would happen once I set foot in Chicago: 1) I would become a White Sox fan, and 2) WLUP (a.k.a. "The Loop") would be "my" radio station.
These two things were, of course, inextricably linked via the infamous "Disco Demolition" promotion at Comiskey Park during the summer of 1979, wherein WLUP DJ Steve Dahl blew up a mountain of disco records in the outfield between the halves of a double header, and hundreds of wasted rock fans swarmed the field to celebrate. The controversial event put Dahl and the radio station on the national map, and put them squarely on my radar, as well — even though I was seven hundred miles away (spending part of my summer vacation with my grandparents in Tuscaloosa, Alabama) at the time.
I loved disco music, but I also had to admit that the market had become completely over-saturated with songs for and/or about dancing, the majority of them several notches in quality below what I considered to be the "good stuff" (Chic, Bee Gees, Sylvester, Donna Summer); and having already become completely cynical about the way the American public dutifully gobbled up any trend that People magazine or 20/20 told them was hip and happening, I found it refreshing to observe what appeared to be a consumer rebellion against the "product" foisted upon them by the record business. (That said "rebellion" had a racist and possibly homophobic undercurrent to it was entirely lost on me at the time.) And as a 13 year-old boy with an adolescent male's intrinsic attraction to all things rowdy and radical, I watched the TV news footage of the Disco Demolition riot and desperately wished that I could have been there to witness all the fuck-shit-upping in person.
My musical tastes were also shifting and changing, with the intense rapidity that only seems to occur when you're in your teens. Brilliant power pop singles like Bram Tchaikovsky's "Girl of My Dreams," Sniff N' the Tears' "Driver's Seat" and Blondie's "Dreaming" were pulling me away from disco as the summer of 1979 turned to fall; and at the same time, the hard rock sounds of KMET-FM were increasingly distracting me from the Top 40 stations on Southern California's AM dial. As if my obsession with Strat-O-Matic Baseball wasn't sufficiently nerdy enough, I'd started playing Dungeons & Dragons with a couple of school pals, and the stuff KMET typically played — Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Queen, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd — had a heavier, more mysterious vibe that offered a better soundtrack for orc-slaying than anything on KHJ-AM or Ten-Q.
KMET also broadcast The Dr. Demento Show every Sunday night, and the good Doctor regularly played "Do You Think I'm Disco" and "Ayatollah," two novelty tunes (based on Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" and the Knack's "My Sharona," respectively) recorded by Steve Dahl with his backing band Teenage Radiation. So by the time we were ready to leave L.A. that December, my ears had basically become completely primed for what WLUP had to offer — namely, Dahl (and his co-host Garry Meier) hilariously pushing the bounds of comedic taste in the morning, and heavy AOR action the rest of the day. While my nascent White Sox fandom would never really flourish, despite my great affection for Bill Veeck (that uninspiring 1980 Sox squad was a long way down the road from the glory of the 1977 South Side Hitmen, and Comiskey Park turned out to be a pain in the ass to get to from our apartment on the Near North Side), The Loop was there for me from the first time I turned on my clock radio in my new bedroom. And it was everything I wanted it to be.
And much more, really. Within the first week of regular listening, the station turned me on to AC/DC, UFO, Thin Lizzy, Rush, ZZ Top, April Wine, Angel City (a.k.a. The Angels), Montrose and Rainbow, to name several bands whose existence I'd been (at best) only dimly aware of before moving to Chicago. WLUP dug deeper into aforementioned Led Zep, Tull, Queen, Purple and Floyd catalogs than KMET ever did, while also serving up proggier stuff like Yes, ELP and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis and more straight-up rock fare like the Who, Heart, Aerosmith, Foghat, Bad Company, Humble Pie, Robin Trower, Joe Walsh, Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen, much of which was pretty new to me, as well. And not just these artists' hits, but deep cuts as well — especially if you tuned in later on in the evening.
After decades of ossified "classic rock" programming, where "Free Bird" is inevitably followed by "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Stairway to Heaven," it's kind of hard to convey just how exciting and eye-opening this all seemed at the time; I felt like I'd gotten a free ticket to a far cooler world than the one I actually inhabited, and every week I seemed to hear something else that opened up new dimensions in my musical universe. Come the spring of 1980, The Loop would be the station that hipped me to Def Leppard's first album, On Through the Night, as well as Van Halen's Women and Children First, Pete Townshend's Empty Glass, and Judas Priest's British Steel, all of which I still love to this day. And while the station pushed "local boys" Styx, REO Speedwagon and Survivor way too hard for my taste, they made up for it with endless spins of Cheap Trick deep cuts — I swear I must have heard them play every single song off Heaven Tonight and Dream Police at one time or another in the spring of 1980...
Cheap Trick really were the consummate Loop band, circa 1980, in that they embodied a musical world in which hard-driving, arena-ready guitar rock could happily co-exist with sharp, crunchy, catchy-as-all-hell power pop. Because along with all the bong-rattling sounds mentioned above, WLUP program director Sky Daniels kept the New Wave-friendly likes of Tom Petty, Blondie, Pretenders, Pat Benatar, the Romantics, the B-52s, Flying Lizards, the Clash, the Ramones, Todd Rundgren (and Utopia), Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, Joe Jackson, and even the syntho-futurist sounds of Gary Numan's "Cars" in regular rotation. Off Broadway, a brilliant power pop band out of nearby Oak Park, had a massive local hit at the time with the song "Stay In Time," but The Loop also gave regular spins to three other killer tracks — "Full Moon Turn My Head Around and Around," "Bully Bully" and "Bad Indication" — from On, the band's debut album.
My ears were wide-open to all of this, but even at the time I sensed it was an unusual mixture. I have a vivid memory from that spring of walking down Michigan Avenue on a Saturday morning, on my way to the animation class I was taking at the Art Institute, and seeing three scary-looking, denim-clad stoner dudes in their late teens walking towards me, one of them carrying a giant boom box. As they got closer, I noticed that the radio was completely covered with Loop stickers, and that it was blasting "Back of My Hand" by British band the Jags — which was being played on WLUP at that moment. These were exactly the kind of guys who, back in L.A., would have called me "Devo" for wearing short hair and a skinny tie, and threatened to kick my ass unless I could name at least four songs off of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. But on this morning, we just gave each other a friendly grunt of "The Loop!" over the sprightly tune of a track that was essentially Costello-lite; after all, if The Loop was playing it, it had to be cool, right?
That was the kind of cultural impact The Loop had in those days, at least among rock listeners in Chicago; I would estimate that at around 75 percent of the things I talked about at school with my friends that spring were based on what we'd heard on The Loop. (Most of the other 25 percent had to do with either embattled Mayor Jane Byrne and convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy, both of whom were also subjects of Teenage Radiation parodies.) We would sometimes even go to Steve & Garry's early-morning "Breakfast Club" broadcasts from the Carnegie Theater (which was only a few blocks away from Ogden, where I attended the second half of eighth grade), or hang out after school around the elevator banks of the John Hancock Building, where WLUP's studio and offices were located, in hopes of catching Steve Dahl on his way home — and despite his stature as the premiere radio bad boy of the day, he was incredibly pleasant to us the few times we actually met him. When we went to Chicagofest '80 that August at Navy Pier, the Loop booth was probably the most popular attraction outside of the live music stages; it was completely swarmed by long-haired guys and gals wearing faded plaid flannel shirts over black t-shirts that read, "The Loop FM 98 — Where Chicago Rocks". It was like a tribe, one which I felt stoked and proud to belong to.
So it's kind of amazing, in retrospect, to look back and realize that I was pretty much "done" with The Loop by fall of 1981. Part of it had to do with WLUP's unexpected firing of Steve & Garry that February, which made mornings a lot less fun and cast a pall over the station as a whole; but a bigger part of it had to do with the changes that were happening in the rock landscape, as well as in my own head. When I first started listening to the station, the perfect rock dreamworld that WLUP presented and represented seemed magically infinite, like it was going to keep expanding (and rocking!) forever; in reality, it was on the verge of running out of gas. By the end of 1980, John Lennon was dead, Led Zeppelin was done, Queen had gone funky, Pink Floyd was on post-Wall hiatus, and UFO, Thin Lizzy and most of the other Loop mainstays were reaching the point of diminished artistic returns. The brief, Knack-fueled industry vogue for "skinny tie" bands had also cratered, which meant that most of the New Wave-associated acts that once dotted the playlist were now persona non grata. WLUP filled the void with the platinum-selling likes of REO Speedwagon's Hi Infidelity, Styx's Paradise Theater, Phil Collins' Face Value, the Who's Face Dances, Journey's Escape and Foreigner's 4, all of which were grisly enough on their own but profoundly depressing when taken in toto. I instinctively knew I was going to need something angrier and more interesting to help me survive the Reagan years, so I eventually gravitated down the dial to WXRT, which at least played the likes of the Clash, Costello, Parker, Ramones, etc., even if you had to sit through shitloads of Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell to get to them...
Nevertheless, I have to admit that I felt some sadness when I heard the news that WLUP was bought out by a Christian broadcasting group and will, for the first time since its inception in 1977, cease to play rock music. I can't say that I've even listened to the station in 25 years, and I certainly spent much of the decade before that actively avoiding (and even mocking) it. But that first year-and-a-half of Loop listening completely changed my life — it made me care about music on a much deeper level than I ever had before, and made me want to play (and write about) it — and the news of WLUP's demise reminds me of how lucky and grateful I am that I got to experience the station during its early peak, at a time in my life where I was completely receptive to what it was layin' down. It's like hearing about the death of a ballplayer whom I passionately rooted for as a kid, or of a former best friend whom I hadn't heard from in 35 years; my current life won't be impacted at all by WLUP's absence, and yet respect must still be paid for the difference that it made. Thanks for rocking me, WLUP.
It's been said that a baseball game will always show you something that you've never seen before. The most memorable part of last night's Tigers-White Sox game at U.S. Cellular Field was certainly unique, though neither I nor any of the other 32,527 fans in attendance were actually able to witness it.
I refer, of course, to Chris Sale's pre-game uniform-slashing incident, in which the Sox ace — apparently troubled by the prospect of having to pitch in the evening's collared throwbacks from the second Bill Veeck era — did his best Jason Voorhees impression on the team's '76-style uniforms, resulting in a scratched start and a five-game suspension from the front office.
This, in itself, would have been enough weirdness for one evening at the ballpark. In all my years of loving, researching and writing about baseball, I've never even heard of a player throwing this kind of a tantrum over the uniform he was supposed to wear. Certainly, there were members of the 1963 Kansas City A's and the 1969 Seattle Pilots — to name two early adopters of colorful uniforms which flouted the bland "home whites/road grays" tradition — who were significantly less than happy about the fashion statements that their teams were making.
“There was a lot of grousing about the uniforms," wrote Pilots hurler Jim Bouton in Ball Four. "I guess because we’re the Pilots we have to have captain’s uniforms. They have stripes on the sleeve, scrambled eggs on the [bill] of the cap and blue socks with yellow stripes. Also there are blue and yellow stripes down the sides of the pants. We look like goddamn clowns.”
Still, Bouton and his Pilots teammates went ahead and wore their "captain's uniforms" (at least until until Bud Selig and his cronies stole the Pilots from Seattle and moved them to Milwaukee) without incident. Ditto for the 1976 White Sox, whose Veeck-designed uniforms — truly the most unique unis of baseball's most fashion-forward era — were being celebrated last night.
The '76 Sox wore uniforms featuring collared jerseys that were meant to be worn un-tucked; Veeck believed that this unusual look would give his players players more comfort and flexibility in the field. White Sox utility man Jack Brohamer (more on him in a sec) told me last year that the '76 uniforms "made it look like we were in jail," but the players still went along with the concept, even during the three games that August when Veeck asked them to take the field in short pants.
Obviously, as the author of Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76, I have a special fondness for those '76 White Sox uniforms; while I can completely understand someone else's aesthetic aversion to them, they are so iconic, so emblematic of the welcome whimsy that Bill Veeck brought to the game, that they practically transcend criticism at this point. They're like the visual equivalent of Peter Frampton's talk-box solo on "Show Me The Way" — goofy as all hell, yet also guaranteed to transport me back to one of the happiest summers of my life in a nanosecond.
Which is why, along with the fact that our beloved Detroit Tigers were in town, that my wife and I went with some friends to "The Cell" last night. Not only were the White Sox giving away '76 throwback jerseys to the first 20,000 fans who showed up — which unfortunately turned out to be sullied by the Xfinity logo on one of the sleeves — but the team was also going to take the field in the full '76 throwbacks, as well. Or so we thought...
We arrived in time to catch the tail-end of the Tigers' batting practice, and while I was a little disappointed to see that the Tigers were wearing their usual road uniforms instead of 1976 road throwbacks, I know that visiting teams don't always get on board with their opponents' promotions. I was further disappointed a few minutes later to learn via Twitter that Chris Sale had been scratched from his scheduled start; he is, after all, one of the best starting pitchers of the past few years, and you always want to see the top guys in the game do their thing, even if it means additional challenges for the team you're rooting for. But there's been a lot of talk in recent days about the White Sox trading Sale to a contending team, and it seemed like maybe this was the team's (albeit clumsy) excuse to keep him out of action and free of harm before they had the chance to deal him.
But then, when the White Sox finally took the field after a minor rain delay wearing their early 80s "Winning Ugly" throwbacks instead of the '76 ones, I felt kind of ripped off. Don't get me wrong — I am fond of those uniforms, as well, but that's really not what I'd paid to see. Figuring that this must have been some kind of screw-up on the part of the team, I tweeted out the following joke:
At least, I thought it was a joke. But an hour or so later, when I got a text from a friend saying, "I want one of the cut-up throwbacks! Can't believe Sale did that!," I checked social media and realized that Sale had indeed blown a fuse over uniforms — only, it was the '76 ones that he didn't want to wear...
There was a strange energy (or maybe lack thereof) to the game itself. No longer facing one of the game's best lefties, the Tigers should have been able to tee off against a succession of bullpen arms led by Matt Albers, the beefy journeyman reliever who'd already pitched the previous two nights, but it was not to be. Numerous scoring opportunities were squandered; and while Miguel Cabrera and Nick Castellanos did knock in two of the Tigers' three runs, Cabrera, Castellanos, Ian Kinsler and Victor Martinez went a combined 2-for-14. Only Cameron "Extra Cheese" Maybin seemed completely impervious to the evening's oppressive humidity, going 2-for-3 with a walk, two stolen bases and two runs scored. I love that guy; the Tigers would be in a far worse position right now without Kinsler and Maybin at the top of their lineup.
The game was also delayed by three thunderstorms, two of which (including the final one, which caused the 3-3 contest to be postponed until today) were the most insane I'd ever witnessed at a ballpark. We'd somehow lucked into buying field-level tickets that were actually under the mezzanine overhang, so we were able to watch the torrential downpours and sky-piercing lightning flashes in relative comfort, and (mostly) avoid the crowds that were slowly shuffling "zombie apocalypse" style through the packed concessions areas. We also spent a lot of time watching the jumbotron on the centerfield scoreboard, where they were flashing a lot of 1970s Sox pics and trivia, and at least one major gaffe:
Yeah, Jack Brohamer was the only White Sox player to hit a home run while wearing short pants. But it happened in 1976 — you know, the year that the White Sox were supposed to be paying tribute to, until Chris Sale freaked the fuck out? — not 1979. (The Sox didn't even wear shorts in 1979, fer chrissakes.) Well, at least they got Jack's name right; I found out later that my friend Michael was at the game, and his family put up a birthday message to him on the jumbotron in the eighth inning, but the Sox put the message up with the wrong middle name...
Speaking of screw-ups, an interesting, er, wrinkle to the Sale slash-fest emerged today in this article by Jon Heyman:
Wait, what? The throwbacks were made out of "heavy wool"?!? Either Heyman's reporting is inaccurate — today's throwback uniforms typically come in the same lightweight synthetic blends as the regulation unis — or the White Sox are absolutely insane. Why would you make throwback uniforms out of wool, especially when the originals that you're throwing back to were made out of lightweight poly?
But maybe that's just how it's all going at The Cell these days. There's been weird energy around the White Sox since the bizarre Adam LaRoche incident in spring training — which you'll also recall Sale unnecessarily losing his shit over — and they've seemed pretty unfocused since their 17-8 hot start in April. Maybe it is indeed time to fire Robin Ventura and/or Kenny Williams, and deal off Sale and anyone else they can get some choice prospects for, and just start over. And, at the very least, maybe it's time for Sale to reconsider his priorities. I'll leave the last word here to my friend and colleague, Cardboard Gods author Josh Wilker, who summed the whole fiasco up quite nicely, and invoked my favorite White Sox pitcher in the process:
I wrote a piece about my first major league ballgame — a May 1976 visit to Tiger Stadium for a Yankees-Tigers game — as my contribution to Baseball Continuum's Blogathon '16, which is raising money for the Rosewell Park Cancer Institute.
Go HERE to read my piece (and the many fine ones posted by other writers). And while the Blogathon is technically over at this point, you can still donate to the charity via the Blogathon's GoFundMe page. Thanks!
The first time you see your new book in print is a huge thrill — but it's an almost equally huge thrill to get a paperback edition of said book in the mail, because it means that enough people bought the hardcover version to make a paperback printing worthwhile for the publishers. So I'd like to thank everyone who has already bought Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76 for making the paperback possible!
And for those of you who haven't bought it yet — or already did, and dug it enough that you'd like to buy many, many copies for your baseball and pop culture-obsessed acquaintances — the paperback edition officially hits the streets via St. Martins Griffin on February 9. You can pre-order copies from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or of course from your friendly neighborhood indie bookseller.
I probably won't be doing a ton of reading events in support of the paperback — full-scale book tours require copious amounts of time and money — but I'm sure I'll schedule a few things in Chicago and the Midwest before the summer is out, especially since 2016 is the 40th anniversary of the Bicentennial. Watch this space for future updates!
Last night, my wife and I went to see the Detroit Tigers play their penultimate game of the season. The contest, against the Chicago White Sox at "The Cell," was pretty much what we expected — a chilly evening in a largely empty ballpark, featuring two teams struggling to stay out of the AL Central cellar and claim "We don't suck quite as badly as you do" bragging rights. And, true to form, an unimpressive Tigers lineup and an inept Tigers bullpen wasted another strong outing from Justin Verlander, thereby sealing the team's place in the division basement.
It's been a rough season for the Tigers and their fans, many of whom are outraged by the team's first sub-.500 finish since 2008. Winning four division titles in a row can warp your perspective like that, and make you forget that the Tigers only logged one post-season appearance from 1989 to 2010. I'll admit that I picked the Tigers to win the division again this year, but I'll also admit that it was a prediction borne out of sentimentality and wishful thinking (and my severe underestimation of the Kansas City Royals' ability to contend again this year) than anything approaching reality. After all, the 2014 Tigers barely made it into the post-season last year, and were eliminated with little more than the annoyed flick of a hand by the Baltimore Orioles in the ALDS; and even with the addition of Yoenis Cespedes, there was no way that the 2015 roster was better on paper than the 2014 edition, even before the injuries and age started kicking in. This was always going to be a far cry from the team that should have won it all in 2013.
Aside from the six straight wins they rattled off at the beginning of April, the Tigers were maddeningly inconsistent during the first half of the season, a team that never quite managed to fire on all cylinders despite being loaded with expensive parts. David Price didn't really got hot until June, and you could never be sure which Anibal Sanchez was going to show up for his starting assignments. Verlander, who didn't even make his first appearance until the middle of June, didn't start pitching like "Justin Verlander" until about a week before the team waved the white flag at the July trade deadline. With Max Scherzer gone, it was up to the undistinguished likes of Alfredo Simon (who wound up leading the team with 13 victories, despite posting a 5.05 ERA), Shane Green and Kyle Lobstein — and once things really got ugly in the second half, Matt Boyd, Buck Farmer and 38 year-old scrapheap artifact Randy Wolf — to patch the holes in what was once, not too long ago, the greatest rotation in baseball. And oy, that bullpen... But hey, here's some perspective for ya: Just think of how much worse the team's record would have been this year if Joe Nathan had actually stayed healthy, and Brad Ausmus had been forced by the guys upstairs to keep him in the closer's role...
The pitching staff's combined ERA (4.67 as of this morning) was the worst in the American League this year, which would have made it difficult for the Tigers to contend, even with a completely healthy offense. But the absence of Victor Martinez's bat — even when he was present in the lineup — was just too much to overcome, especially with nagging injuries cutting into Miguel Cabrera's power numbers. Much blame has been heaped upon Brad Ausmus for the Tigers' misfortunes this season; but while he hasn't exactly been the second coming of Sparky Anderson, I highly doubt that even ol' Spark would have been able to squeeze 80-plus victories out of this crew, especially given the team's glaring lack of depth.
Still, we love our Tigers, so we continued to watch them regularly this summer — at least until the process of moving to Chicago from Los Angeles in July mercifully distracted usfrom the garbage fire on the field, and from the painful deadline deals that sent Price and Cespedes to actual contenders in Toronto and New York. Since then, I've mostly just checked their box scores to see if J.D. Martinez had hit another home run, or if Miggy was still tops among the AL batting leaders. My wife and I did manage to catch the August 19 slugfest at Wrigley where the Tigers beat Jon Lester and the Cubs 15-8, and we rejoiced in Alfredo Simon's one-hitter the following night. After that, though, we've been too busy getting our life together in the Windy City to pay much attention to what the Tigers were up to — and frankly, that was probably for the best.
But when a friend offered us a free pair of tickets to last night's game on the South Side, we had to take him up on it, if only to celebrate the excellent years from Ian Kinsler and J.D. Martinez, cheer for personal favorites like Anthony Gose and Rajai Davis, bid a likely farewell to Alex Avila (who probably won't be back next year due to declining production and the emergence of James McCann as a more-than-capable catcher) and see Verlander and Cabrera in action one more time this season. JV, pitching with a competitive fire that apparently eliminated the need for a long-sleeve undershirt despite temps that hovered in the high 40s and felt much colder, struck out nine hitters in six innings while giving up only two runs. And Miggy (whom I snapped at the plate seconds before he blasted a two-run homer off of Erik Johnson) went 3-for-4 to finish the season with a .338 average and claim his fourth batting title in five years, which puts him squarely in Tony Gwynn/Wade Boggs/Rod Carew territory. It was really an honor to see his final game of the season in person.
And you know what? I'll take it. As a devoted Tigers fan since 1976, I've followed some egregiously shitty Tigers teams that gave me a whole lot less to cheer about than this one did. And while it's entirely possible that the Tigers have missed their World Series-winning window, I still feel profoundly grateful to have experienced that string of four division titles from 2011-2014, and the exciting post-season runs that followed three of them. Maybe this season is an aberration; maybe it's the beginning of another long dry spell. Either way, I'll proudly sport my 1970s Tigers road cap again next season.
So say goodnight, Tigers. Get some sleep, get healthy, make some smart off-season moves, and get ready to roar again in the spring. We'll see ya then.
Dan Epstein is the author of Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s and Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76, both published by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press. He writes about baseball, music and other cultural obsessions for a variety of outlets and publications. He lives in Greensboro, NC, and is available for speaking engagements.