Marty Barrett 1990 Upper Deck

On June 10, 2016, I received the above card in my mailbox. I took to Facebook that day and wrote this:

“Two days in a row for the BCB! This time he goes high class with a 1990 Upper Deck Marty Barrett. 

What the BCB doesn't know is I've harbored a grudge against Barrett since the winter of 1987. He was supposed to be at a baseball card show at Merrimack College signing from noon to 3:00. We showed up at 2:30 and he was gone! 

STICK TO YOUR COMMITMENTS BARRETT!”

I didn’t get how baseball card shows worked when I was a kid. While I still think that Barrett was probably wrong leaving the show early, I think that I would’ve been much more shocked to learn that he expected money for his autograph. That would have driven me to the edge of my prepubescent sanity, “Money for your name? Are you kidding me? How easy is it to write your name? Just do this! What the hell?”

I didn’t know a lot about a lot of things back then.

In the 1980s, Marty Barrett was every mom’s favorite player. He wasn’t a big guy, baseball-reference.com has him at 5’10, 175 pounds (there was also a Marty Barrett who was born in Holyoke, MA who caught and played outfield for the Braves and Indianapolis in 1884). He didn’t have a lot of power, he wasn’t particularly fast either. He played second base and got a lot of singles and doubles. He kicked ass in the 1986 World Series. I know batting average is a lame stat, but he hit .433 against the Mets.

Basically he was the Paul McCartney of the Boston Red Sox.

Aside from the 1986 postseason, where he was voted American League Championship Series MV, Barrett didn’t play like a star. He hit in the .270s and sacrificed a lot. He led the league in sacrifice hits three years in a row.

Barrett even had 18 sacrifices in 1986, which was by far his best year. The Sox second baseman rapped 179 hits that year, including 39 doubles. I’m not sure what Red Sox manager John McNamara was thinking taking the bat out of Barrett’s hands 18 times that year, but man, that was dumb. Though a lot of things John McNamara did in 1986 were monumentally stupid.

Aside from Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens, Barrett was the only member of the 1986 team that didn’t play like he had a hangover in 1987. He hit close to .300 (.293) and continued in his customary second spot in the lineup. 1988 was another good year for Barrett, but beginning in 1989, his numbers faltered and in 1991 he found himself on the San Diego Padres.

The reason for Barrett not playing well after 1989 was that he injured his knee and it never fully healed. He’d end up playing for a bit, his knee would act up and then he’d go on the disabled list for a few weeks. The consistent Marty Barrett, the metronome of the mid 80’s Red Sox, was no more. Unlike Stella, he never got his groove back and according to Wikipedia, his last brush with greatness was this:

“ In his National League debut he was called upon as a pinch hitter to face the San Francisco Giants' Dave Righetti, with two outs in the ninth inning. Barrett, not known for his power stroke, hit the ball into the left field stands for a three-run home run.”

 (This was the only picture of Marty Barrett as a Padre that I could find.) 

After that, it was 11 more National League games for Marty and then he retired.

Marty Barrett was part of a small club of professional baseball players that I longed to be a part of: he and his brother were both major leaguers. Tommy Barrett was a no-hit second baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies in the late 1980s. After he was released from Philadelphia, he spent a few years in the minors before being signed and called up by the Red Sox in 1992. He played four games and got zero hits.

Three interesting facts about Marty Barrett:

•  He scored the winning run for the Pawtucket Red Sox in the longest game ever, which was 33 innings over the Rochester Red Wings.
• With two outs and no one on base, in Game Six of the 1986 World Series, NBC named Marty Barrett the player of the game. This was before everything went to hell.
• Barrett went to Arizona State University as an undergrad. The Red Sox would draft another diminutive second baseman two decades later, Dustin Pedroia

This is a shorter entry because I don’t have much more to say about Barrett. He was a regular dude who started at second base for an all-time, star-crossed Red Sox team. On a team with a lot of oversized egos, Barrett looked like your eighth grade science teacher and just did his job without a lot of fanfare.

That just goes to prove that you don’t have to be chiseled out of iron to be a baseball player. You just have to have some really remarkable hand-eye coordination. There’s something to be said for that, I suppose.

You know what I like most about this card? It looks like the photo was taken late in 1989 during a Saturday or Sunday game. Barrett is in his long sleeves, the sun looks to be high and for some reason it just reminds me of one of those late season games where there's either a lot on the line or nothing left to play for. But it couldn't be, like I wrote earlier, Barrett hurt his knee early on in 1989 and was pretty much out for the year.

Too bad. I love late season baseball games. They're different from games played in the first half of the season because you know that this is most likely the end of the line for your team. Soon players that you rooted for will be on different teams. Guys you boo'ed might join your squad. Even though the years sort of moosh together and teams seem to intermingle, each team has a unique feel to it. September baseball magnifies that feel, I think. Everyone gets old, everyone leaves home. It happens every year.