Don Zimmer 1991 Topps

Sometime in June 2022 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

 

Not only has it been some time since I received any communication from the BCB, but this particular card was sent from Ireland! How about that?

Don Zimmer was a baseball lifer. He famously claimed that he never drew a paycheck from any profession that wasn't baseball related. He was a player (not really good), a manager (not really good), a coach (tough to quantify) and probably a scout (ditto). He spent a lot of time in the majors as a coach and manager and spent a ton of time in the minors as a player. To be fair, while he was a minor leaguer, he was property of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s. "The Boys of Summer" Dodgers. The team that seemingly had a Hall of Famer at practically every position and beginning in 1950 finished second, second, first, first, second, first (World Champs), first, third and then made tracks to Los Angeles. 

 

Maybe if Zimmer had been property of the Phillies, he'd have played more. 

 

Actually. Hold the phone. I'm double-checking his numbers right now. The funny thing is that the more I look at his numbers, he's not really that bad. He made the All-Star team in 1960, he appeared in two World Series and won rings in both postseasons. He had a 12-year Major League career and that's not too shabby. I guess my view of his career was colored by how much he was despised by the Boston players and media when he managed the Red Sox--more on that in a minute. 

There's a lot of stories about Zimmer, some of them have a kernel of truth to them. He was plugged in the head when he was a minor leaguer. The beaning was so bad that he was in coma for close to two weeks. When he was with the Dodgers a few seasons later, he was hit in the face by a fastball and broke his cheek and had a detached retina. The stories that circulated about Zimmer was that it was because of these horrific injuries that he had a metal plate in his head. 

 

He did not. But the thing about Zimmer was that he seemed dim-witted enough that maybe the metal plate was the cause for his slow thinking. 

While in the minors Zimmer got married to his high-school sweetheart during the break between a double header. I'm not sure what his wife Soot (real name Carol Jean Bauerle) thought of that idea, but apparently she couldn't care less because they were together for over 70 years. Imagine loving your job that much that you'd get married at your office? "Yeah honey, I got a sweet deal where we can have the break room for practically nothing during the lunch break. It'll be awesome!"

And that was thing about Zimmer; he seemingly loved baseball more than he loved anything else. And I suppose this is where I'd say that if I were a baseball player, I'd be the same way. Maybe if I was 13-years-old, I might have said that but as an adult; that seems more than a little pathetic. I mean, it's a great that a person loves what he does; but there has to be boundaries, right? Balances? Counterbalances?

Ted Williams loved baseball but the guy could also fly a plane and was a world-class fisherman. Babe Ruth was obsessed with baseball, but he also loved to drink and whore around. I think you need outside interests. Don Zimmer seemed to have one setting: baseball. Even in the winter, when players like Zimmer had to work at auto dealerships or other part-time jobs to make ends meet, he was in the Caribbean either playing or managing in the winter leagues.

 

After he couldn't play anymore, he moved into the coaching ranks hopscotching all over North America in the minors before getting experience in the Majors. That experience paid off when he was named San Diego's newest manager in 1972. But he didn't do so great, going 114-190 with the Padres before getting the axe. 

 

He took over a crazy talented Red Sox team in the second half of 1976 before ripping off win totals of 97, 99, 91 and 82 in four successive seasons in Boston. But that 99-win team is where he gets a lot of shit (and deservedly so). That was the year that Bucky Fucking Dent became an acceptable name for children to say in front of their parents. It was 1978 and the Sox still hadn't won a World Series in 60 years, but this team seemed special. 

They had hitting, they had pitching, good defense, a strong bullpen and they were stomping the crap out of everyone. But as the juggernaut grew, Zimmer couldn't seem to handle it. He fought constantly with a handful of players (Bill Lee, Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins, Bernie Carbo and more--they called themselves the Buffalo Head Society) and to show them who was boss, he either got players traded or buried them on the bench. The crux of this fight (as I understand it) was the Zimmer was a conservative old shit head and these guys were more progressive (Zimmer probably called them hippies) and they clashed. 

But Zimmer was stubborn and despite needing these players, he'd play other guys who weren't as good just to spite them. That stubbornness bit him in the ass because throughout most of the summer the Sox were cruising, but then started to get tired and then hurt and then started to lose games. The Yankees got healthy and then hot and a once insurmountable 14-game lead turned to crap by the beginning of September and the Sox had to play out of their minds to force a one-game playoff between themselves and New York. 

The Yanks won on a pop fly home run by diminutive shortstop Bucky Dent and the Sox were sent into winter with this awful defeat hanging around their necks like a millstone. Aside from not playing men that he didn't like, Zimmer would not give his regulars days off. Third baseman Butch Hobson made 43 errors that year. 43! Mainly because he was rearranging elbow chips between pitches. But Zimmer wouldn't replace him so that Butch could heal up. He just wore players out. The only regular who played less than 145 games was George Scott at 120. Catcher Carlton Fisk played 157! The team should have collectively sued him for medical malpractice that year. It was criminal the amount of time these guys were on the field. 

 

And as the lead started to chip away and the noose tightened, ZImmer got more and more paranoid. He fought with the media daily. They turned him into a cartoon--his nickname was the Gerbil, which he did not like. 

 

Zimmer lasted another two seasons with the Sox before getting fired--which to be honest, is two more seasons that I would have given him. That collapse was an absolute disaster and the majority of the blame is Zimmer's. He royally screwed that entire season up. 

 

The Rangers kept him around for two seasons where he went 95-106 and then at the end of the 80s he joined the Cubs where he went 265-258 over four seasons, bringing his 13 year managerial total to 885-858 with a 1-4 postseason record. Despite being about 30 games over .500, he really wasn't that great of a manager. 

 

After he got the message that he wasn't a manager anymore, he bounced around as a the "wise" bench coach. He came back to Boston for a season when Butch Hobson began his disastrous two-year managerial tour. Then he joined Don Baylor in Colorado for their inaugural season. He got pissed at Baylor when he felt as if he listening more to Art Howe than him and so he quit in the middle of a game. Then new Yankees manager Joe Torre brought him to New York and he hung around there for a bunch of seasons where he was part good luck Buddha and racing pal to Torre. The one thing that Zimmer liked almost as much as baseball was the horses and dogs. 

 

During this tour in NY, the Sox and the Yanks were bitter enemies. This erupted in 2003 ALCS when after a series of brushbacks and beanballs, the benches emptied. It was the typical macho baseball posturing of yelling, being held back and pushing. Until Zimmer went fucking apeshit and started charging Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez. It was almost a Three Stooges skit as a 60+-year-old Zimmer charged the Boston God with his head down, I guess he thought that he was going to tackle him, and Pedro sidestepped the old man and pushed him to the ground. 

New York fans wanted Pedro dead ("HOW DARE HE DO THAT TO AN OLD MAN!") but Boston fans philosophized that Zimmer didn't know how to handle Boston pitchers when he managed here and he still couldn't. To his credit, Zimmer was completely embarrassed and in a next-day press conference apologized and cried. After his tenure in the Bronx ended, Zimmer took his final job in Tampa Bay with new skipper Lou Pinella. I guess the Rays loved him because they retired his number 66 when he finally retired from baseball--eight decades after getting into the sport. 

I don't know what it is about baseball, but there always seems to be a Don Zimmer type in the game at all times. It must be strange to be the lovable grandfatherly mascot in a hyper competitive field. Zimmer had a pretty full baseball life and touched a lot of eras. He knew a lot.

But he still couldn't manage a team worth a shit.