Steve Crawford 1988 Fleer

Sometime in November 2021 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

I don't know Steve Crawford personally, but if you were to ask me who he was I'd know who you meant. Mustachioed guy who pitched out of the bullpen for the Boston Red Sox in the 1980s. As my brother Jay would say, "I don't know him, but I knooooooow him."

As you can tell, my credentials regarding Steve Crawford are solid.

If you were to ask me how many seasons he pitched in the Majors for, I'd say, "Three, probably. No more than four." But I'd be wrong. Steve Crawford pitched in parts of 11 Major League seasons, starting with a cup of coffee with the Sox in 1980 (two games) and finishing up with 33 games with the Royals in 1991.

That's not bad, he maxed out his Major League pension, which is a success. But was his career a  success? If you're going strictly by the numbers, probably not. When he was in Boston to stay (1984-87) he usually made more than 30 appearances and his ERA hovered around the 4.00 mark, which in the 80s wasn't great. 

But 11 seasons in the Majors is nothing to sneeze at. You don't get that many seasons by being a charity case or completely sucking.

On the other hand, if you look at the numbers Crawford gave up a bunch of hits, he gave up a bunch of walks and he didn't strike too many people out. When the Red Sox went to the World Series, Crawford was mostly used in mop-up duty and got crushed. His World Series 6.23 and gave up two home runs in four innings. He pitched in one game against the Angels in the ALCS that year.

After he bottomed out in 1987 (he was really bad: 5.33 ERA, 91 hits, 32 walks and only 43 strikeouts over 72.2 innings) he was released by the Sox. He was picked up by the Dodgers in 1988 and languished in AAA for the entire year while the big league club won the World Series. He spent his last two season in the Bigs with Kansas City.

I know that I talk about this a bunch in this blog, I'm probably a little obsessed, but I wonder what goes through the minds of players who are stuck on the Albuquerque Dukes (like Crawford was) knowing that you are a big leaguer who can help, but watching as the Dodgers are kicking ass all year. Do you hope they lose? Are you glad they won? Do you root for an injury?

I'm sure it's a bittersweet feeling when your team wins without you. Actually, it's not bittersweet, it sucks. I know that when I see a team that I was once on start to win, I get depressed. "Maybe they won because I was holding them back," I reflexively think. But the professional athlete doesn't think like that. The  professional athlete has confidence to spare. I would bet that they aren't sad, but that they think, "If I was there, we would have swept, not won in five games" or "We would have won 100 games instead of just 99."

For the pro athlete those slights turn into the fuel that they burn for the next year. "I'll show them. I'll be so good that they'll beg for me to come back ... and then I'll stick it up their asses!"

To be a professional athlete you need that chutzpah, that arrogance, than mentality that you--and you alone--can lead your team to victory. I'm sure years and years of being the no-doubt best player on every team you've been on, countless league MVP awards, Player of the Game trophies for every big game you played have stoked this flame (and it's probably why so many athletes are conservative Republicans or Libertarians). My guess is that Steve Crawford felt the same way.

When the professional athlete lets those hobgoblins of doubt creep in--like they do to every other mortal on this planet--that's when they lose their edge. Suddenly the batter didn't get lucky when he hit that homer off you, you start wondering if your fastball was good enough. And that's when you're sunk. You need a short memory and a lot of confidence to perform on the highest level and if you start gaining the former and losing the latter,  forget about it. You may as well start looking for a new job because you're done in the Bigs.

Aside from what I think I know about Crawford and his psyche, about the only other thing that I know about him is that his nickname was"Shag". It's not because he was a lady's man, but because he looked like he always needed a haircut. And with his bushy hair, his equally busy mustache and the reddish-brown color, Crawford also resembled the shag carpeting found in most 1970s dens and rec rooms. On this card, his looks screamed 1970s, despite it being the late 1980s. That's not what you want.

Another thing you don't want is to be part of Wade Boggs' Delta Force. When Boggs' paramour Margo Adams decided to tell all of her secrets, it wasn't just the Boston All-Star third baseman that were parts of her kiss-and-tell article in Penthouse. She talked about other members of the team, one of which was Crawford who along with Boggs and another teammate or two wanted to go back at pitcher Bob Stanley.

Apparently Stanley didn't fool around on the road and stayed loyal to his wife. This bugged Boggs for some reason and so him in the rest of the Delta Force got him hammered and paid a woman to seduce him and bring him back to his room. As Stanley and his lady were getting undressed and ready to rock, Boggs, Crawford and others broke in and started snapping pictures.

I'm not sure what they attempted to accomplish with this "mission" but I guess Stanely was pretty embarrassed. So great job, guys!

Crawford hung up his cleats after the 1991 season. He didn't pitch a ton, but when he did, he got hit hard. I bet those hobgoblins were bugging him big time by this point in his career. 

I'm not sure what the guy has done in the subsequent 30 years, but whatever it is, I'm sure he's doing fine. Whenever he's at his low point, Shag Crawford could always say that he was a Major Leaguer for ten year who got to pitch in the World Series and there is no way that you ever could think about doing that on your best day.

Danny Darwin 1992 Fleer

Sometime in September 2021 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

 

 

 

Danny Darwin's nickname was "Dr. Death" for some reason. It probably had to do with one of his pitches, probably an off-speed cutter or something, but it always seemed like a weird name for him.

Danny Darwin was born in Bonham, TX and looked like he was born in Bonham, TX. He was tall, gangly and had a droopy mustache that perfectly contoured to his long face. If he was in a western movie, they'd nick name him "Slim" (he is listed at 6'3" and 185 pounds) and he'd probably end up getting shot in a bar fight during the first 20 minutes. 

Darwin pitched--are you ready for this, because this is legit surprising--21 seasons in the majors. Even though he looked like he should have spent his entire career with the Rangers or the Astros (he spent eight and six years with each club respectively) he ended up playing for eight teams. 

If you played for 21 years you would at least think that you'd get some sort of team or individual honor in one of those seasons, right? Wrong. Darwin was never on a World Series team nor was he ever an All-Star. What's even more insane is that according to baseball-reference.com, Darwin NEVER, as in not once, ever appeared in post season play. Not once. 

You hear about a person like Derek Jeter who played 19 seasons (not including 1995 when he played 15 regular season games) and was an October participant in 16 of those seasons, and even the reddest of Red Sox fans can appreciate that number. That's a lot. Darwin does him better, only the opposite. Twenty-one years, no October baseball. At all. 

I don't know how he feels about this dubious distinction, but I am completely blown away. That's a lot of shitty baseball that he watched. Day-in and day-out, trudging to work knowing that your team stinks. That has to take a toll on a man's psyche. 

Maybe that's why they called him Dr. Death? Because every team he was on was death. 

In Darwin's defense, he probably wasn't the problem. He never won more than 15 games in a season and he didn't strike out a ton of people, but he didn't walk a lot either, his WHIP was pretty decent (he lead the league twice, once in Houston--which considering he pitched half his games in the cavernous Astrodome seems about right--and once in Boston--which considering he pitched half his games in the bandbox that is Fenway Park seems about wrong) and he lead the league in ERA. 

The year that he lead the league in ERA and WHIP was 1990, which like I said was done in the ultimate pitcher's park, the Astrodome. So of course Lou Gorman signs* him to a crazy four-year deal for big money. For the Sox he was fine. His first year, it looks like he was hurt--he only appeared in 15 games. The second year he operated out of the bullpen, which I'm sure people were going  nuts about "We gave $3 million bucks to a long relievah! Tha fuck?". The third year, he pitched well as a starter (this was when he lead the AL in WHIP)  and the fourth year, he was fine again. 

* This was Lou Gorman's post 1990 shopping frenzy when like in a day, he signed Darwin, a pretty close to past his prime Jack Clark and a pretty sucky Matt Young to big deals. None of them made the impact that Sweet Lou thought that they were.

BTW, Gorman signing Darwin after he had an amazing year in the Astrodome should have been a harbinger of things to come when nine months later he sends New Britain third baseman Jeff Bagwell to the same Astros. Why did Gorman do that? Because he couldn't understand park effects--the Beehive in New Britain was a huge place where hitters "lost" power and pitchers pitched "awesome". It was kinda like a minor league version of the Astrodome and proved that Lou didn't understand park effects very well.

All-in-all Darwin was a meh signing at best. He wasn't going to win you a ton of games and he wasn't a star that was going to get the masses excited either. He was third/fourth starter who could give you innings out of the bullpen. There are a million dudes who can do that. No need to pay them a ton of cash to do that. Maybe throw the whole wad at Kirby Puckett--who the Sox were rumored to be going hard for that offseason. 

After Darwin left the Fens, he bounced around for the rest of his career, a half season in Toronto, back to Texas then to Pittsburgh back to Houston over to the White Sox before finishing up with the Giants. 

According to Wikipedia*, it was with the Giants that he got into a few scuffles. According to Orel Hershiser, when they were teammates there was a benches clearing brawl and Darwin popped Hershiser (who was his teammate, remember) in the face. Orel claims it was because he hit him once when they were facing each other back in the day. Which, take it easy Slim. Shit happens. 

* How great is it that every MLB player has their own Wiki page? What an age we live in!

The second Giant incident occurred when teammate Barry Bonds lollygagged after a ball. Darwin was furious because that lackadaisical play allowed a run to score. I'm sure that Bonds was super apologetic and vowed that it wouldn't do again. 

Darwin has spent his post-retirement years as a minor league pitching coach--except for a few months when he got  the call to the Show when the normal Cincinnati Reds pitching coach needed a replacement. I don't think that team made it to the postseason either. 

Larry Parrish 1989 Fleer

 On April 2, 2021 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

Larry Parrish was one of those guys. You know what I mean, he was the type of guy that was seemingly in every baseball card pack you opened. You looked at the front of his card for a minute, maybe you looked at the back of his card for a half-second and then you shove it back into the pile and keep flipping cards to see whether you got a Wally Joyner or a Bo Jackson or a Roger Clemens.

 

Unless you were a die-hard Expos or Rangers fan*, chances are you don’t remember Parrish all that much. But he was a beefy dude who played fourteen and a half seasons for Montreal and Texas. When I got around to noticing who he was, he looked like a stereotypical designated hitter; giant, slow, with a bit of a belly. Kind of like a softball player, a person who was seemingly born to DH, but at one point in his life, he had the mobility to be a third baseman and outfielder.

 

Life is a lot like that, you run into people at certain points in their lives and you think that’s who they’ve always been, but that’s not true. That Mom who’s always making stuff for the school bake sale? She was the bassist in a pretty decent riot grrrl band back in the 90s. The Dad who coaches your kid’s Little League team? He got black out drunk every weekend in college. You’re the guest star in their story, not that other way around. And that’s how it was for me and Larry Parrish. When he played in Boston he looked like a jacked up Alex P. Keaton; neat, short-haired almost like a Republican. But when he was in Montreal, he looked like Bill Lee's running mate, Grizzly Adams-type with a crazy beard and wild eyes. Beards were scary to me in the 1980s, Jeff Reardon (another former Expo to play for the Sox haunted my nightmares). Compare Parrish's card above to an early 80s card while an Expo below.

 

 

* As a Massachusetts native, I can’t think of no two more seemingly different, but very similar, outposts in Major League Baseball than Arlington, Texas and Montreal. Both teams were very anonymous, but on the fringes of being pretty good—Montreal was really good but they couldn’t put it together. They both wore powder blue away uniforms and crappy stadiums. Both had terrible weather (too cold in Canada, too hot in Texas) and they just seemed like teams that were around to fill out the league so that the Dodgers didn’t have to play the Cardinals every weekend and the Yankees didn’t have to play the Red Sox all the time--yet they were never on TV's Game of the Week. 

 

Did you know that Parrish was a two-time All-Star? It’s true, in 1979 and 1987 he made the mid-summer’s classic. The year after he made his second All-Star Game he was released by the Rangers in July and picked up by the Boston Red Sox about a week later. This was around the same time that John McNamara got canned and interim manager Joe Morgan was expected to keep the manager’s office warm until Lou Gorman could find a replacement skipper.

 

But Morgan kept winning and winning and winning that month, the Red Sox went on a tear and Morgan Magic was born. I remember when the Sox got Parrish he came to town, put on Don Baylor’s old number 25 (which seemed right, he reminded me a lot of a white Don Baylor), stood erect at the plate (he looked like he was seven feet tall and 250 pounds) and just started mashing.

 

In all, he hit seven home runs for the Sox that season and I bet six of them came within two weeks of his signing. After being discarded by the Rangers, all of a sudden he was as hot as the team he joined. You could tell that the Sox had captured the sports zeitgeist because in September, they made the cover of Sports Illustrated and one of the photos was an action shot of the newly acquired Parrish taking a hellacious cut and destroying a ball.

 

As the team lost their otherworldly momentum, so did Parrish. He finished a shade under .260, with seven homers, a .298 OBP (yuck) and a .424 slugging percentage. That wasn’t too bad for a 35-year-old, but I think that everyone knew that Larry was done. The good news was 1988 was Parrish’s second foray into the postseason (he was a member of the Blue Monday Expos in 1981), but the Sox were quickly run over by the Oakland A’s juggernaut and Parrish retired from the game after that season.

 

After he retired, he got back into baseball and was a coach for a few teams. Much like his last skipper, Parrish was named interim manager after his old Ranger pal Buddy Bell got the hook and rode a decent September 1998 (13-12, which was part of their overall 65-97 record) into becoming the new Tigers skipper the following year. The team was abysmal in the year of our Prince, 1999, and finished the season with a slightly better 69-92 record. But it wasn’t enough for the Tiger front office and he was not asked back to manage Detroit into the new Willenium.

 

As one of those guys, you don’t think of a Larry Parrish very much unless he somehow finds his way to your team. Then you think about him a lot. You can’t remember what life was like when Larry Parrish wasn’t holding down the DH position for the local nine. You see that weird stance every night, you open up Sports Illustrated and there he is the crisp, bright white Red Sox uniforms and you’re like “Damn, Larry Parrish was made to be a Boston Red Sock.”* You get all caught up in his hot streak and the team’s scorching three weeks and start believing that maybe Larry Parrish was the x-factor, the guy who the team needed to push them over the top. This is the year that the Red Sox are going to finally get that stupid monkey off their back. 

 

 

* I was so all-in on Larry Parrish that I bought his rookie card that summer. 

 

But, as they say, water finds its level and Parrish turned back into an old pumpkin. However, you still hold out hope that maybe at the end of September and into October, he has just a little more gas in the tank. Maybe he can put the team on his back and carry them for just a few more games—14 at the absolute most.

 

He doesn’t. Everyone knows that he’s cooked and he’s gone at the end of the year without much fanfare. After a bunch of years, you almost forget that Larry Parrish ever had a locker in the home clubhouse at Fenway Park, unless you’re tipping back beers with friends and talking about obscure Sox guys.

 

“How about Larry Parrish!”

“Lance Parrish never played with the Red Sox!”

“I don’t mean the Tigers catcher, I said LARRY Parrish!”

“Oh shit, yeah I remember him. He was pretty good for awhile back in 88, right?”

“Yup. He did some stuff.”

 

As a guy, it’s always good to be remembered for doing some stuff.