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Buddy Biancalana was a light-hitting shortstop who batted .188 for the 1985 champion Royals. When the top sports story was Pete Rose's pursuit of Ty Cobb's hit record a daily countdown informed the public of how many more hits Rose needed to break the record. David Letterman upon learning of Biancalana's anemic BA started a countdown and announced each night how many hits Biancalana needed to break Cobb's record. Biancalana took it all in stride and even made an appearance on Letterman's show.
Slugging firstbaseman for the White Sox and Tigers, '58-'74. Put up a good .271-.374-.488 career line, but is remembered for his out of whack explosion in 1961 when he hit .361-.487-.662 with 41 homeruns. After he retired, Cash confessed to having used a corked bat to accomplish his '61 heroics, and appeared in a step by step photo spread in Sport magazine, demonstrating how he drilled and filled his bats.
Chuck Essegian was an outfielder who played for 6 different clubs from 1958 to '63. He was a .255 lifetime hitter who played in 404 games and never had a stolen base attempt.
Mark Fidrych, pitcher. A quirky blond curly haired guy who got baseball fans attention in a huge way. Only had one productive year for Detroit (1976) but what a year it was. He would walk out to the mound and get on his hands and knees and manicure it. He would stand on the mound and look at the baseball and talk to it. He would swat flies on the mound. As quirky as a person can be but the fans and media loved him. So did I.
I still remember the ABC Monday Night Game of the Week with Fidrych facing the Yankees. Tiger stadium was packed and the fans were bonkers the whole night.
The next year he tore his cartilage. Later injured his arm and a promising career was over, just that quick.
Later got into construction, bought a tandem dump truck after retiring from baseball. Sadly was killed in an accident involving his truck a couple years ago.
Ten time All Star firstbaseman for the Dodgers and Padres, won the MVP award in 1974. Garvey was viewed as a better offensive player than he really was because most of his heroics were performed in the age just before sabermetrics caused everyone to start looking at on base percentage. Garvey never walked much, but he was very consistent in putting up good scoreboard numbers, always around a .300 average, with about 20 -25 homeruns and 100 RBI. He also won 4 gold glove awards.
But his on field performance was actually subordinate to his image as Mr. Clean. Garvey became the role model for all that a ballplayer was supposed to be in the minds of moral purists. Religious, married his beautiful childhood sweetheart, perfect family man, never said anything nasty about anyone, nerver cursed, drank or smoked. The result was Garvey becoming a celebrity in a manner which outstripped his deeds. High schools were being named for him, he was a frequent guest on tv shows, it was expected that after baseball, he would enter politics and become Senator Garvey or Governor Garvey.
All of the above fell apart. His wife divorced him and ran off with composer Marvin Hamlish of all people. Later she wrote a tell all book about their marriage which revealed his serial infidelity. Garvey tried to deny his way out of this, but his credibility collapsed when he was hit with two paternity suits in the space of a year. Apparently his marriage bed also had an on deck circle.
All the talk of political office evaporated and Garvey's post baseball career instead has been one of his going around delivering vague motivational talks. He currently works for the Dodgers as someone who slobbers over wealthy season ticket holders.
Garvey's failed marriage gave rise to one of my favorite baseball moments. I attended the first game the Dodgers played in Candlestick Park after the news had come out that Cindy Garvey had left Steve to take up with Hamlish. When the top of the first inning concluded and Garvey trotted out to take his position at first, an entire section of Giants fans nearest the bag rose and began serenading Steve with "The Way We Were."
Granville (Granny) Hamner - Shortstop and 2nd baseman with the Phils, who began his career at the age of 17 in 1944. He was still young enough at 23 to be considered one of the whiz kids of the 1950 team that reached the series. He hit .429 but the Yanks swept. In 1952 he was named captain of the Phillies. When his career began to dwindle in the late 50s he tried his hand at pitching which produced an 0-2 record and a 5.40 ERA. His last game was with KC in 1962. He died in 1993 at the age of 66.
Mel Ingram appeared in 3 games for the Pirates in 1929. He had no plate appearances but is credited with 1 run scored. Baseball-reference.com has no fielding data on him, so it is possible that Ingram's entire career consisted of being a pinch runner 3 times.
Cleon Jones, outfielder 1965 to 1975 with the New York Mets. Jones along with several other members of the 1969 World Series champion club appeared on one of the Everybody Loves Raymond shows from the 1999 season.
Arrived with the Yankees as a much hyped shortstop prospect in 1957, and lived up to it by winning the Rookie of the Year Award. Kubek never made any upward progress after that, through he did play for nine seasons, getting into the World Series seven times. His OPS season to season....716-.612-.704-.713-701-..Kubek was the eternal rookie.
His most famous ML moment was a bad one for Tony, in game seven of the 1960 World Series when bad hop grounder caught him in the throat, leading to a Pirate rally and eventually the Maz homerun.
Kubek went on to a long post playing career as a broadcaster, teaming with Bob Costas on the national game of the week, as well as post season games.
Kubek abrubtly retired in 1994, saying he had grown sick of the game and the changes in it he had seen over the years. He claims to have not watched any MLB since.
J.....
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Chuck Essegian
