Big Hair and Plastic Grass

Mickey, Whitey and Popeye

I watched The French Connection 2 last night for the first time since I was a kid. (Yeah, I know — but believe me, it was just one of many inappropriate films that my folks took me to see while I was in grade school.)

Much as I generally love 70s cop flicks — and specifically love The French Connection — this 1975 sequel turned out to be a real downer in a number of ways. Gene Hackman is great, as always (as with George C. Scott, I have trouble thinking of a film that he was less than excellent in), and mid-70s Marseille looks appealingly grimy, but most of the flick is a turgid mess. The plot is difficult to follow (and to swallow), and the "fish out of water" scenes where Hackman's Popeye Doyle character tries to interact and communicate with French people are almost as agonizingly long as the scenes in which he's (spoiler alert!) trying to withdraw from heroin.

That said, it does contain some snappy hard-boiled dialogue, including a scene where a wasted Doyle tells his uncomprehending French host, Inspector Barthelmy (Bernard Fresson), about his failed baseball career. I couldn't find a clip of the scene on YouTube, but someone has helpfully posted the transcript at IMDB, which I am re-posting here. When it comes to great baseball bits from non-baseball-related films, this scene seems to have largely fallen between the cracks. But as far as I'm concerned, the oft-lauded "1975 World Series" conversation in Good Will Hunting doesn't have a patch on this:

Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: [drunk] You know, I had a tryout with the Yankees. You know what the Yankees are?

Inspector Henri Barthelemy: Yes. As in "Yankee go home."

Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: Yeah. NO! No, uh... Uh... no, the Yankee baseball... baseball team. Yeah, I had a tryout with them and... they sent me down to the... the minors. And the poblem... poblem... problem was that... there was a fuckin' kid there, and he was... the fastest bastard, he was fuckin' FAST. And he... he played shortstop at the time, and he... he could hit the ball a fuckin' ton. A fuckin' TON! You know what "fuck" means?

Inspector Henri Barthelemy: Yeah.

Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: Yeah. Well, I was in spring training... and I saw this kid... and I just immediately took the test for cops. That kid was Mickey Mantle. You know who Mickey Mantle was? You fuckhead?

Inspector Henri Barthelemy: No, I can't say that I know.

Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: You don't know who Mickey Mantle was? Huh? How about Willie Mays? Say hey! Willie Mays! The mighty Willie Mays! See?

Inspector Henri Barthelemy: No.

Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: Max Lanier - a frog. Jean Kiley. You remember Jean Kiley?

Inspector Henri Barthelemy: Gene Kelly?

Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: Gene... Not Gene Kelly! Jean Kiley! The fuckin' skier!

Inspector Henri Barthelemy: Oh - you mean Jean-Claude Killy.

Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: That's what I said! Yes. Fuck, yeah. Good athlete. Well, and... Whitey Ford. Goddamn. You know who Whitey Ford was? Oh... shit. He was a dandy little southpaw. That's what we called him. He was a dandy little southpaw.

Inspector Henri Barthelemy: Southpaw?

Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: Yeah. He was a lefty.

Inspector Henri Barthelemy: You mean a communist?

Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: No, he was a Republican. But he was somethin', I tell you. He was somethin'...

Doin' The Do In Burbank

This is Jim "Mudcat" Grant, 21-game winner for the 1965 AL champion Minnesota Twins, and a man who once sported what were perhaps the greatest pair of muttonchops ever seen on a major league diamond. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting and chatting with Mr. Grant during a 2002 event at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, and will never forget the riotously off-color stories he told me about his old roommate Vic Power. So it pretty much goes without saying that I'm extremely stoked and honored to be appearing with him this October 7 on a panel presented by The Baseball Reliquary as part of their "Baseball in the Swinging '70s" exhibit at the Burbank Central Library, located at 110 N. Glenoaks Blvd in scenic downtown Burbank.

The exhibit, which runs from now til October 30, takes a look at baseball's most colorful, contentious and tumultuous decade through photographs, artwork, and such sacred 70s artifacts as Dock Ellis's hair curlers, (which Dock himself donated to the Reliquary) and charred 45s from Comiskey Park's "Disco Demolition Night". Much of the exhibit's written content has been excerpted from my book Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s. If you live in Southern California and love 70s baseball, you won't want to miss this!

You also won't want to miss the October 7 panel, which will also include Jeffrey Radice, director of the acclaimed new Dock Ellis documentary No No: A Dockumentary, which is now playing in theaters around the country and is also available via iTunes, Amazon Instant, Vudu and On Demand via select cable providers. Dock will understandably be one of the main topics of conversation — Mudcat was his teammate on the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates — but we will be hitting plenty of other 70s baseball topics, as well. The panel will start at 7 p.m. and run for an hour, and I will be signing copies of Big Hair and my new Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76 (both of which will be available for purchase thanks to the fine folks at Skylight Books) afterwards. Hope you can make the scene!

Both the exhibition and the panel are FREE and open to the public. For more info, call the Burbank Central Library at 818-238-5600.

 

The Bad News Bears Meet "Stars And Strikes"!

Whenever I watch the original 1976 version of The Bad News Bears (about once a year, on average), I always try to keep track of how many different brands of beer Morris Buttermaker (as brilliantly played by the late, great Walter Matthau) downs during the course of the film. I inevitably wind up getting distracted by the excellence of the script and the wonderful chemistry between Matthau and the kids on his team (including Tatum O'Neal's Amanda Whurlitzer, above right) and forget to count... but I'll have a pen and notebook with me tomorrow night (Thursday, August 28), when The Bad News Bears will be screened by the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.

That's not all I'll have on hand, however. The fine folks at the American Cinematheque have asked me to introduce the film — a huge honor, especially considering my life was basically changed forever when I saw BNB in a theater in the spring of 1976 — and do a book-signing at the theater for Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76, as well.

So if you're in the LA area tomorrow evening, come on out to the historic Aero Theatre at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, when the greatest baseball movie ever made and the greatest book ever written about the 1976 season will truly be "together again for the first time". The event starts at 6:30 pm; I will be hanging out in the theater lobby to sign copies of Stars and Strikes, which will be available for purchase courtesy of Hollywood's Larry Edmunds Bookshop. The film will be shown at 7:30 pm. Tickets for this special screening are $11; they are $9 for seniors 65+ and students with valid ID, and $7 for members of the American Cinematheque; advance tickets can be purchased HERE via Fandango.

It should be a really fun evening, and I hope you'll join me for it.

Big Hair & Plastic Grass Meets The Santa Monica Little League

You like fresh air? You like 70s baseball? You like watching published authors trying to hold the attention of Little Leaguers? Come on out to my reading/signing event tomorrow (Saturday, April 13) at Memorial Park (located at 16th street and Olympic) in Santa Monica, CA.

That's right, folks: Dan Epstein (dat's me!), author of Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s, will be reading from (and signing copies of) his book between two halves of a Santa Monica Little League doubleheader. Word has it that at least one of the teams will be wearing 70s throwback uniforms — and really, how cool is that?

Reading/signing will happen at noon, following the 8-9 year-olds game. It'll be free, it'll be fun, and I'll be the guy in the Dave Parker jersey. (Here's the link to the Facebook event invite, if you're into that sorta thing.) Thanks in advance to Jay Smith and the Santa Monica Little League for inviting me!

In other writing-related news, my Rhino Single Notes eBook, Honky Tonk Tourist: The Night Buck Owens Almost Got Me Killed, is now available for download from iBooks and the Amazon Kindle store. It doesn't have anything to do with baseball (other than a cameo appearance by the home of the Bakersfield Blaze), but I can promise that it'll be a highly entertaining read, especially for any o' you music geek types out there. Joe Bonomo, author of Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found and Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band, calls it "a bourbon-soaked blast," and he should know!

What We Talk About When We Talk About Dock

Now that I'm back in Los Angeles after a whirlwind Big Hair & Plastic Grass promo trip to New York City, brains scrambled from long flights, too little sleep and (possibly) too much alcohol, I finally have a free minute to look back on this past week, scratch my head and wonder, "Did that all really happen?" And I'm not just talking about Matt Cain's perfecto and R.A. Dickey's one-hitter, either...

It was, by any standards, an incredibly exciting and inspiring week for me, on personal and professional levels alike; but everything kinda peaked on Tuesday night, at my Big Hair reading/signing event at Manitoba's in the East Village. The party was extremely well-attended despite the buckets of rain that started pissing down around 5 pm, and I got a chance to drink and shoot the shit with some amazing people, ranging from high school and college classmates to colleagues, heroes, Facebook friends I'd never met, and just plain diehard baseball fans. Handsome Dick Manitoba (pictured above) was as charming and hospitable a host as I could have hoped for, and he really made me, Miss Howerton, and everyone else in attendance (with the possible exception of Red Sox fans) feel welcome in his watering hole. Baseball love was in the air, as was the heady fragrance of Hebrew National hot dogs and sauerkraut, and the groovy sounds of the 70s as purveyed by DJ Mr. Tim. We even got to see A-Rod tie Lou Gehrig in the all-time grand slam department on the bar TVs; Handsome Dick's eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas (Hannukah?) when he saw it happen...

(Action photo by Joe Bonomo — No Such Thing As Was)

As Tuesday night coincided with the 42nd anniversary of Dock Ellis's LSD-fueled no-hitter, I kept the evening's selections pretty Dock-centric, including a non-Big Hair tribute to the late, great hurler that I'd originally penned following his untimely death in December 2008. Nobody was feeling any pain (least of all your humble author) by the time I hit the mic following a hilarious intro from Mr. Manitoba himself, and there was plenty of hooting and hollering throughout the reading. It was great to read to a crowd like that (Rob Kirkpatrick, my editor at St. Martin's, told me it was the most raucous author event he'd ever attended), but I must admit I was also briefly thrown by the slurred interjections of an extremely wasted young woman who sat near the podium and interrupted me with questions like, "What about Eric Clapton?" I was laughing too hard to come up with a comeback to that one, but when she asked me, "Do you like Paul Simon?", I did manage to shoot back, "I've never met the man"...

One of the amazing things about this past Tuesday was how much Dock love was in the air — not just at Manitoba's, but in the pop cultural firmament in general; even compared to two years ago, when Big Hair first hit the shelves and the 40th anniversary of his no-no was observed by several outlets , Dock is a bigger presence than ever... which is probably a testament to just how ahead of his time Dock was, both as a player and as a human being. Donnell Alexander's mind-blowing multi-media ibook, Beyond Ellis D, has just hit the digital shelves, and I highly recommend it to anyone who owns an iPad; in fact, if I didn't already own an iPad, I would probably run out to buy one right now just so I could enjoy Alexander's work. You've undoubtedly already seen James Blagden's "Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No," clip right? Well, Dock's wonderful narration for that short film was just a snippet from an extended set of illuminating interviews that Alexander did with Dock towards the end of his life, and which form the basis of Beyond Ellis D. Here's another animated clip set to Dock's words, which is part of the iBook...

Also just released this week is the "sizzle reel" for No No: A Doc(k)umentary (About Dock Ellis), a film that has been in the works for sometime, and which — as with Beyond Ellis D — will prove to the world that there was much, much more to the man than that acid-fried day on the mound. The filmmakers need your help to finish it, and they've set up a Kickstarter account in hopes of raising $35,000 by July 17. Full disclosure: I'm one of the interview subjects in this film, but I'd be dying to see the completed version even if I wasn't in it. Watch the preview below — and if it moves you, please consider donating some much-needed moolah to the cause.

 

But wait — there's more! "High and Tight," my weekly column for Rolling Stone Online, vibrates at the intersection of baseball and rock n' roll — and, of course, Dock's lysergic no-no was one of the most rock n' roll things to ever happen on a baseball diamond. So in this week's "High and Tight," our esteemed panelists (including the aforementioned Mr. Manitoba) and I reflect upon Dock's unique achievement, and offer up a ringing riposte to the skeptics who insist that such a thing couldn't have possibly happened...

And speaking of music, one other tremendously cool thing happened this past week — Rhino Single Notes, an e-publishing project I've been managing-editing since last fall, finally launched on Tuesday via Amazon and iTunes. A new line of "quick read" digital books about music and pop culture, Single Notes offers up entertaining and insightful essays on a wide variety of musical topics — as you can probably tell from our first five titles. Dig the Grateful Dead? Check out Gene Sculatti's Dark Stars and Anti-Matter: 40 Years of Loving, Leaving and Making Up with the Music of the Grateful Dead. Ever swooned over Duran Duran? Lyndsey Parker's Careless Memories of Strange Behavior: My Notorious Life as a Duran Duran Fan should stir up some fond (and perhaps mortifying) memories. Christopher R. Weingarten's Every Day I Take A Wee: The Beastie Boys And The Untimely Death Of Suburban Folklore hilariously examines the way an album you hear at an impressionable age can warp you for the rest of your life. Binky Philips' engrossing (and ultimately heartbreaking) memoir My Life In The Ghost of Planets: The Story of a CBGB Almost-Was is set predominantly amid the grit and glamour of the 1970s NYC rock scene, but it will resonate with anyone who's ever tried to "make it" in the music biz. And if you're into Chic (and really, if you love the funky music of the 70s, how can you NOT be?), you've gotta read Michaelangelo Matos' We Won't Settle For Less: Chic at the End of Disco, which makes a watertight case for the profound influence of Chic's 1979 jam "Good Times".

Oh, there's much more to tell, of course — but that's about enough for this week, right? Have a great weekend, and don't take any bullshit from The Man. Dock certainly wouldn't want you to...

 

From Square To Hair

A tip of the Monsanto Toupeé goes out today to Dave Grob, who not only reminded me that today is Reds/Mets infielder Doug Flynn's birthday, but also provided me with this wonderful before-and-after composite pic of Flynn's 'do.

Signed as an amateur free agent out of Lexington, KY by the Cincinnati Reds in 1971, Flynn earned two World Series rings as a role-player on the '75-'76 Big Red Machine squads, but was then shipped to the New York Mets as part of M. Donald Grant's infamous "Midnight Massacre" deal that sent Tom Seaver to the Reds in exchange for Pat Zachry, Dan Norman, Steve Henderson and, of course, Flynn.

As a member of the woeful Mets, Flynn was given ample playing time, and quickly earned the starting gig at second base. If his offensive stats didn't exactly flourish with everyday play (his best season was probably 1979, when he hit .243 with a .265 OBP, 19 doubles, 5 triples, 4 homers and 61 RBI), Doug's white 'fro was free to grow as unchecked as the weeds in Idlewild Park. The Reds, of course, had very specific ideas about personal grooming; the Mets, not so much...

The Reds' front office might have also raised an eyebrow or two at this shirtless, short-shorts-tastic Sports Illustrated pic of Flynn and Mets teammate Joel Youngblood, which makes it looks like the two gents and their prize pooches are spending the All-Star break together on Fire Island. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...)

In other news, the latest edition of High and Tight, my weekly baseball column for Rolling Stone Online, is now up. This week's topic is the best baseball films of all time, and I naturally went for the 1976 classic, The Bad News Bears. Our esteemed rock n' roll panelists — now including George Thorogood and ALICE FRIGGIN' COOPER!!! — came up with some interesting choices of their own, ranging from Eight Men Out (which I clearly need to give another viewing, though the "Say it ain't so, Joe" newsie bit made me want to hurl my mitt at the screen) to such old-school faves as The Pride of the Yankees, It Happens Every Spring and Fear Strikes Out. Check it out!

"A Disaster Combined With A Catastrophe..."

In honor of Opening Day around the league, here's the trailer for 1976's Bad News Bears, still my all-time favorite baseball flick, not to mention my favorite Walter Matthau performance. (And, as a devoted fan of the original The Taking of Pelham 123, that's saying something.) Enjoy...

The Big Kurt

If ye be of the drinkin' persuasion, raise a birthday toast today to actor Kurt Russell, star of such classic early 70s Disney flicks as Dad, Can I Borrow the Car?, The Barefoot Executive and Superdad — all of which I heartily enjoyed as a child — who was born on St. Patrick's Day in 1951.

Though he initially seemed fated to be forever typecast as "that Disney kid," Russell would go on to find fame and respect as a serious actor, thanks to his memorable portrayals of such characters as Snake Plissken in Escape from New York and Elvis in, well, Elvis. But if it hadn't been for a torn rotator cuff, Russell might have had a serious career in baseball.

From 1971-1973, Russell played over a hundred games as a second baseman and outfielder in the California Angels' farm system, including stints with the Bend Rainbows, the Walla Walla Islanders, the Portland Mavericks and (as pictured above) the El Paso Sun Kings. In 1973, he was hitting .563 in six games with El Paso when he hurt his shoulder colliding with a runner while trying to turn a doubleplay.

"I was serious enough to be leading the Texas League (in hitting) when I got hurt," he told ESPN's Jim Caple in 2004. "I made the All-Star team and I was a second baseman who could turn the doubleplay and hit. It was what I did. The fun part of my life was that everyone in baseball knew me from baseball. They didn't understand what I was doing with the acting thing. The acting was what was strange to them."

Future major leaguers among Russell's Sun Kings teammates included Frank Tanana, Sid Monge, Paul Dade, Bruce Bochte, Dave Chalk and Gil Flores. "Most of the ballplayers that I played with, knew me from baseball," he told Caple. The acting thing to them was like, 'Yeah, I don't know why he does that.' Ballplayers used to say, 'You must meet a lot of girls in movies. Can you get me into that?' They always wanted me to get them into it."

Kurt never made it to "The Show," but his nephew Matt Franco — who apparently still holds the major league record for pinch hit walks in a season, with 20 — had a decent career as a utility man for the Cubs, Mets and Braves from 1995 to 2003. Here's a pic of Russell paying Franco a visit in 1994, when the latter was playing with the Iowa Cubs. Russell looks like he could probably still turn two...

Fergie and the Panamanian Flash

This one goes out to a loyal Big Hair & Plastic Grass fan named John, who sent me a nice note yesterday to say how happy he is to see the BH&PG blog up and running again. He closed with, "December 16th is my birthday. Come up with something special."

Well, first of all, funky birthday greetings to ya, John. I wish I could tell you that you share a birthday with a 70s baseball great, but alas that's not the case. You did, however, narrowly miss sharing a birthday with Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins, who turned 69 three days ago; and since today is Adolfo Phillips' b-day, and the two are forever connected in Cubs history, I figured maybe we'd go for a little "two for the price of one" action, as Larry Williams and Johnny "Guitar" Watson might say...

Phillips' parents picked a bad time to name him Adolfo; he was born in Bethania, Panama on December 16th, 1941, just five days after Adolph Hitler declared war on the United States and all its holdings, including the nearby Panama Canal. But if young Adolfo's parents were harboring any Nazi sympathies, history doesn't record it; in any case, a bat and a glove would be his weapons in his quest for greatness, not a Panzer division or V-2 bombs.

Actually, Phillips' most lethal weapon was his speed. Nicknamed "The Panamanian Flash," it was said that the guy could easily go from first to third on an infield grounder, or score all the way from first on a single. In 1962, his second year in pro ball, Phillips stole 46 bases out of 50 attempts for the Magic Valley Cowboys, the Phillies' Pioneer League (Class C) farm team; he also hit .330 with 33 home runs that year. Three more successful seasons in the minors followed, and Adolfo looked like a can't-miss prospect; at least, that's what the Cubs thought in early 1966 when they traded half of their regular pitching rotation — Larry Jackson, who'd led the NL with 24 wins just two years earlier, and former Braves great Bob Buhl — for him, a backup 1B/OF named John Herrnstein, and an inexperienced fireballer from Canada named Ferguson Jenkins.

Touted as "the next Willie Mays" by Cubs skipper Leo Durocher, Phillips did flash some moments of brilliance as the Cubs' starting centerfielder — like the time he hit four homers in a June 1967 double-header against the Mets — but he never showed any consistency at the plate. (It probably didn't help that Leo usually batted him eighth, allowing opposing pitchers to pitch around him; in 1967, he led the NL with 29 intentional walks.)

Phillips was also plagued by stomach ulcers; behind that confident smile (as displayed above on his 1971 Topps card), was a sensitive cat who was literally being eaten up inside by the pressures of playing major league ball. On June 11th, 1969, the Cubs shipped him to Montreal for utility man Paul Popovich. Some folks like to speculate that the Cubs would have "gone all the way" in '69 if Phillips had remained in centerfield, but his stats that year with the Expos — .216/.286/.337 with 4 homers and 7 RBI in 220 plate appearances — don't exactly point to a potential North Side savior. Phillips did a little better in 1970, posting a slash line of .238/.352/.379 with 6 homers and 21 RBI in 254 plate appearances; but he lost his centerfield gig in 1971 to the much-young Boots Day, and spent the entire season in the minors. The lowly Indians picked him up for the '72 season, but even they couldn't find a place in their lineup for the Panamanian Flash. By 1973, Phillips was out of pro ball for good.

The story of Fergie Jenkins, that fireballing throw-in from the Phillies-Cubs deal, turned out much differently, of course. Beginning in 1967, he posted six-straight 20-win seasons for the Cubs, including 1971, when he went 24-13 with a 2.77 ERA; along with wins, he led the NL in games started (39), complete games (30) innings pitched (325), and walks per nine innings (a phenomenal 1.0), numbers which helped net him the NL Cy Young. (Vida Blue won the AL Cy Young that season, making it the first time that two African-American pitchers won the coveted award in the same year.)

Alas, Fergie's impressive streak was broken in 1973, when he went 14-16 with a 3.89 ERA. He bristled at the way that new Cubs manager Whitey Lockman handled the pitching staff; the fact that he only completed 7 games that season (after completing at least 20 the previous six) speaks volumes on that particular issue, as does the fact that — after being traded to the Texas Rangers in the off-season for Bill Madlock and Vic Harris — Fergie rebounded with a 25-12, 2.82 ERA performance in 1974. (He also led the AL in complete games with 29, and finished just a hair behind Catfish Hunter in the Cy Young voting.)

I posted the following clip a few days ago on the Big Hair & Plastic Grass Facebook page, but here's another chance to check it out. It's an amazing hour-long documentary, called King of the Hill; made by the National Film Board of Canada, it follows future Hall of Famer Fergie and his Cubs teammates (including Ron Santo, Randy Hundley, Billy Williams, Don Kessinger and Joe Pepitone) through the ups and downs of the '72 and '73 season, including their transition to the polyester pullover jerseys. No fan of 70s baseball should miss it...

Happy Vida Blue Day!!!

Okay, quick — how many pitchers have won a Cy Young and an MVP award, started the All-Star Game for both leagues, had not one but two funky 70s jams named after them, and appeared in a vintage 70s blaxploitation film?

Just one man: Vida Rochelle Blue, Jr.

Born today in 1949 in Mansfield, Louisiana, Vida Blue just about literally came out of nowhere to capture the imagination of the baseball world in September 1970, when he pitched a one-hitter against the Royals and a no-hitter (with only one walk) against the Twins within just a few weeks of being called up from the A's Triple-A Iowa farm team. By 1971, the high-kicking bad-ass lefty had become a veritable folk hero; on track at one point to win 30 games, he finished the season with a 24-8 record, a league-leading 1.82 ERA, 301 Ks and a .0952 WHIP in 312 innings, and a league-leading 8 shutouts, leading the A's to their first post-season appearance in 40 years. He started the All-Star Game for the American League against Dock Ellis (the first time the Midsummer classic had ever been started by two black pitchers), won the AL Cy Young and MVP award, was featured on the covers of Time, Sports Illustrated, Sport, Ebony and Jet, was immortalized in song by R&B singers Albert Jones and Jimmy Bee, and was even given a small part in a Jim Brown vehicle called Black Gunn.

Unfortunately, while things would continue to improve for the A's — to the tune of three straight World Series championships — things for their own "black gun" quickly became a lot more difficult. A's owner Charlie Finley, who'd unsuccessfully tried to get Blue to change his first name to True, refused his demand for a $100,000 salary (Blue made only $14,750 in '71), and negotiations quickly got ugly; Blue sat out the first part of the '72 season, even announcing at one point that he was quitting baseball to become the VP of Public Relations for the Dura Steel Products company, who sold plastic plumbing fixtures.

There was also talk of him co-starring with Richard Roundtree in one of the Shaft flicks, but Blue finally came back to the team in May, after settling for a $63,000 deal from Finley; he never quite found his groove, however, finishing the year 6-10 with a 2.80 ERA. Blue did bounce back well enough to win 20, 17 and 22 games over the '73-'75 seasons, but he never approached the stratospheric greatness of his '71 season; by now, he was merely a very good pitcher, posting an ERA above 3 each year. As with many of the A's players, dealing with the constant barking and meddling of Charlie Finley had taken a lot of the fun out of it for him. His cocaine use probably didn't help much, either.

The old Vida brilliance flashed a bit in 1976, when he went 18-10 with a 2.35 ERA, 20 complete games, 6 shutouts, and a 1.109 WHIP in 298.1 innings, his best season by far since '71. He might have even ended up in the World Series that year, if Finley had been successful in his attempt to sell him to the Yankees; alas, like the Rudi/Fingers sale to Boston, it was voided by the equally meddlesome Bowie Kuhn. Kuhn would also later scotch Finley's attempt to sell Blue to the Reds for outfielder Dave Revering and $1.75 million in cash, saying that there was too much money involved in the deal "for the good of the game." Finley was finally able to deal Blue away in early '78, sending him across the Bay to the Giants in return for seven mediocre players (including the shaven-headed Dave "Kojak" Heaverlo) and around $390,000 in cash. You see, Kuhn had proclaimed that no more than $400,000 could be involved in a transaction...

Blue had probably the third best season of his career in 1978, his first year with the Giants. He went 18-10 with a 2.79 ERA, was named starting pitcher for the NL in the All-Star Game, and placed third behind Gaylord Perry and Burt Hooton in the year's NL Cy Young balloting. But 1979 was a disaster; though he won 14 games, he posted an unsightly 5.01 ERA, the worst of any full season of his career. He seemed to find his groove again for a few years in the early 80s, but cocaine — which he'd been using with some regularity since the early 70s — finally caught up with him to the tune of jail time, and a suspension for the 1984 season; he finally retired in 1987 after being busted for a probation violation when drug tests turned up more cocaine in his system.

Blue finally got his shit together, thankfully, and has done some great charity work in recent years. But even though he retired with 209 career victories and a lifetime 3.27 ERA, one can't help but wonder how brightly he would have burned if it hadn't been for the dual-pronged negative influence of Charlie O. and, well, "charlie". Still, there's much joy to be had in remembering him in full-flight, like on this "In Action" card from 1972: He seems to be waiting for first baseman Mike Epstein to catch the final pop-out of the game, so he can seal another shutout before hopping in the limo to the Black Gunn set. Or as Albert Jones put it, "Whoo! Vida Blue!"

 

Vida Blue

(Click the bar above to hear "Vida Blue" by Albert Jones.)