Sometime in October 2022 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):
Bob Stanley never seemed to
quite enjoy baseball.
He wasn’t good enough to be a
curmudgeon like Steve Carlton. He wasn’t like Wade Boggs who was very serious
about his craft, hitting, and his job, baseball. He definitely wasn’t like Ken
Griffey Jr. or George Brett, two players who exuded joy every time they stepped
foot on the diamond.
Stanley appeared to be a dude who would walk around his house and grumble about having to face “the fucking Orioles” this weekend as he stuffed a gym bag full of gear before saying good bye to his wife and jumping in his car. When I was younger, in the mid 80s, Stanley was the dude who got called into a game when the Sox were close or leading and would usually give up the lead. When he was giving post game comments he always had a hang dog expression and was constantly explaining why his off-speed pitches hung and why his fastball was flat.
The only time I saw any joy is when a beachball would leave the bleachers and go into the bullpen or field. Stanley was like a beachball grim reaper as he grabbed a metal rake and popped the offending orb. He was usually greeted with boos, which is something that by that point in his career, Stanley was more than used to.
Stanley wasn’t always the recipient of boos though and a person’s entry into the game and the introduction to its players matters. You see, I always thought that Bob Stanley stunk. To me, his name was synonymous with a blown lead or a horrible loss (see Game 6 of the 1986 World Series), but it wasn’t always like that.
Once upon a time, Bob Stanley was pretty good. Strike that, Bob Stanley was really good. From 1977 through 1985, he was a durable reliever. He didn’t strikeout a ton of guys, but at the same time he didn’t walk a lot of people either. He gave up his fair share of hits, but if he wasn’t walking a ton of folks, they weren’t exactly doing a lot of damage. His ERA was anywhere from the mid twos to the mid threes (except for 1979 when it was 3.99, but he also started 30 games that year) and he made the All-Star team twice in 1979 (kinda ironic) and 1983. He even lead the league in ERA+ (140!) in 1982.
Like I said, he really wasn’t that bad.
But when I entered the baseball universe, it was 1986 and that was Stanley’s first really bad year. He had turned 31 that year and had a ton of innings under his belt, it appears to me that he the end was getting close for the Steamer. This happens all the time now and managers are conscious of what happens when you have a pitchers with a lot of miles on his arm, you provide him with “load management”. In other words, you’re not running him out there every other day like John McNamara did.
Stanley appeared in a career high 66 games (82.1 IP) that year giving up 109 hits, 40 earned runs and surrendering 10 dingers for an ERA of 4.37, which translated into a 96 ERA+ and a 1.59 WHIP. He had 16 saves which suggests that he was the team’s “stopper” before Calvin Schiraldi was ready, but man, Red Sox GM Lou Gorman really needed to get his head of his ass* and pick up someone who was reliable in the bullpen.
* You know what happened in
1986. At the absolute worst possible moment, the bullpen melted down like
Three-Mile Island. All year, the bullpen was an issue and I don’t know who to
blame. Was it Gorman for not getting McNamara more bullpen help during the
year? Or was it McNamara for destroying the arms in his bullpen by pitching the
same few dudes day after day after day?
After 86, Stanely never really recovered. The next year the Sox made him a starter and when Roger Clemens was holding out for more money, he was given the ball on opening day. He got his ass handed to him by the Milwaukee Brewers who promptly swept the Sox in the opening series, setting a tone for the rest of the year for both Stanley and the team. The Sox never got over their World Series hangover and was rebuilding by midseason. Stanley had an awful year going 4-15 with a 5.01 ERA.
* Milwaukee would set an MLB recording by winning 13 games in a row to begin the season but still finished behind the Blue Jays and Tigers in third place with 91 wins. It was a different game, guys.
In 1988 Stanley had a better year (3.19 ERA and 130 ERA+, while appearing in 31 games) and the following year the Steamer just plain ran out of steam. But because of 86 and 87, Stanley’s name was pretty much mud around Fenway and fans were ecstatic that he was gone—finally we can begin the John Dopson and Tom Bolton era. At least that’s how I remembered it.
So maybe he had reason to grumble and be angry about his lot in life. He never really got the respect that he deserved. I’m not sure if it was for his body of work or his body (he retired at 34 and he looked like he was a 54-year-old dentist). Yeah, he’s playing a kid’s game and he got paid handsomely for it (more than $1M a year since 1985) but at the end of the day, baseball can be a job just like any other job. You have your good days and your bad days. But the sucky thing about baseball is that your bad days are played out in front of 30,000 people live—not to mention the thousands of folks watching at home—and the airwaves and newspapers discuss how shitty you did that day.
That has to wear on a guy.
Also, his teammates seemed like absolute dicks to him. When Boggs was caught cheating on his wife with Margo Adams one of the stories that slipped out was how teammates Boggs and others—including Stanley’s bullpen “friend” Steve Crawford—hated how Stanley was faithful to his wife. So they enacted a plan called “Delta Force” where they got Stanley shitfaced, put him to bed, sent a prostitute to his room and then busted in and took pictures of the “affair”. I don’t know what they were going to do with the photos (send it to Stanley’s wife if he didn’t start cheating on her?) but that just fucking sucks.
Fuck you Wade Boggs and double fuck you Steve Crawford. At least Boggs could hit, you just sucked.
The other thing that I remember was that in 1989 both Stanley and outfield Jim Rice were “retiring” after that season—they were probably pushed out by the team. The Red Sox wanted to honor both men and they set up a day at the end of the season where both players would be recognized simultaneously. For some reason, this really made Boston sports fans and writers really angry.
“How could they do this to Jim Rice? He’s given so much to this organization and he has to share his day with Bob fucking Stanley? That’s absolutely ludicrous and the Red Sox should be ashamed!”
I was part of this caterwauling but looking back, why? Yes, Rice had a longer more illustrious career. There’s no doubt about that, but it’s not like Bob Stanley was Tim Lollar or Steve fucking Crawford. He had a lot of terrific moments for Boston and now when he was getting the proverbial gold watch people were trying to stick it to him one last time? It was a bush league reaction. I can’t exactly remember what happened, but I’m pretty sure they gave Stanely his own day and the following day they gave Rice his.
Maybe they should have done that—the Red Sox were notoriously tone deaf about a lot of stuff back then—but jeez, what a shitty way to end your career. At the end of the day, Stanley’s only crime is that he never hid what a grind the Major League Baseball season is and he wore it on his face. People don’t want to come to the park to see that, they want the Pagliacci clown, the guy who’s smiling on the outside and they don’t give a fuck about what’s on the inside.
