Ed Romero 1988 Fleer

Sometime in the last two or three months, I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB). By the way, this is a great look at the 75th anniversary patch of Fenway Park  that the Sox wore in 1987:

 

 

 

Even when I was a kid, I knew that not everyone on a baseball team was drafted and brought up through the minor leagues by the team that they now played on. There were agencies to improve teams, like free agent signings and trades.

 

Trades were always the cooler of the two options, any moron could splash a pile of money in front of a guy and say, “Play for us, you disgusting Hessian here’s your filthy lucre.” And nine times out of ten, that player would take the cash. BTW, there is no judgement or shame in the preceding sentences, every single one of us would (and do) the same things every day in our lives.

 

Who doesn’t want to get paid?

 

But trades were a gentlemanly pursuit of excellence, a General Manager needed a bit more deft and cunning to outsmart his cohort. The ability to watch a team other than your own and say, “That chap there looks like he can certainly help our outfit!” and then contact his employer with a proposal to bring him to your team—without sacrificing too much—that takes the steady nerve of riverboat gambler.

 

The ability to really want something, let someone know you really want something and then not give everything you own to have that something—often in a time of extreme need—is a skill that most people don’t possess. If you’ve played cards with me before, you already know that I don’t have it.

 

This is a long road to saying that former Red Sox infielder Ed Romero was one of the first players that I remember seeing in the day’s current set of baseball cards (not this one) pictured for his old team while watching him on TV with his new team. I was well aware that the Red Sox got Don Baylor from the Yankees for Mike Easler in a seldom-seen swap between the two franchises Also add in that it was one-for-one position-for-position trade and this was a landmark deal that weighed heavily for Boston.

 

But Ed Romero? When did we get him? (December 11, 1985) Who did we give up to get him? (Workhorse, but oft maligned, reliever Mark “Big Foot” Clear – I have no idea why they called him that) What is he going to do for us, we already have Marty Barrett and Glen Hoffman plus future shortstop Rey Quinones is rocketing through the minors? Why do we need him? (Because Quinones flopped, Hoffman wasn’t much better when he wasn’t hurt and you need backup infielders because players get tired; though Manager John McNamara might not agree with that last statement)

 

Romero came over to the Sox from the Milwaukee Brewers, the only franchise he had ever known, and was kinda not great for his three-and-a-half years with the team. His totals were .236/.287/.280 with two home runs and two stolen bases (and four caught stealings). For a guy that played 12 years in the bigs (no small feat) but couldn’t really hit (.247/.298/.302) or run, Romero must’ve been a really good glove man.

 

I have no recollection of that. But I mean, he must’ve been. Why would you keep Ed Romero around for more than a decade if he couldn’t do at least one thing well? So let’s assume that he was a versatile (he played every defensive position—including DH!—except pitcher and catcher, according to Wikipedia) glove first ball player.

 

He played on two World Series teams, 1982 with the Brewers (he didn’t play in the Series) and 1986 with the Sox, and lost both of them. I wonder if he thinks about that a lot? I mean it’s cool to say that you were in the World Series, and doubly cool to say that you were in two World Series but the next questions are always: how did your teams do? We lost both. How did you do? I got one at bat in one game and didn’t get a hit.

 

Maybe it’s not something he brings up too often while at dinner parties.

 

The one thing that I remember most about Romero was the Gatorade bucket incident. I didn’t recall all of the particulars, but the Athletic did. Apparently the Sox were playing the Yanks in June 1989 and were getting beat 7-2. All of a sudden things started clicking for the good guys and the score was tied. Romero came to the dish with the winning run on first, facing Dale Mohorcic.

 

The right-handed Mohorcic started the right-handed hitter off with three straight balls when Yankees manager Dallas Green felt like he had seen enough. He summoned another right hander, Scott Nielsen, to try and get the dangerous Romero out. At this point Red Sox Manager Joe Morgan decided it was time to put his genius into action and sent up the left-handed Rich Gedman (who was probably hitting as bad or worse than Romero at the time) to win the ball game!

 

I mean, this is a move straight from Monty Burns. It’s called playing the percentages! It always works—just like telling Daryl Strawberry to hit a homer. Gedman walked, Jody Reed grounded out and the Yankees won after getting a run in the eighth inning.

 

But the big incident was Romero going insane and throwing a Gatorade bucket on the field. He was incensed that Morgan would show him up like that. I remember columnists lit into him and whenever TV stations ran sports bloopers, that was always on one of the reels. 

 

From what I've heard Romero, was a pretty mild-mannered guy, so I wonder what his teammates thought? I know that they called him "Gator" for a bit, which must've made Mike Greenwell mad as that was his weirdo nickname. But I think that they had to have sided with him because that was a bullshit move that Morgan pulled. And I bet Morgan would agree. 

 

Morgan, who was interviewed for the Athletic piece, said that he understood why Romero would react that way but that he (Morgan) “made crazy move (like that) once in a while”, which would’ve have driven today’s baseball fans insane. Morgan said that Romero paid the $50 fine right after the game and they never spoke about the incident again.

 

I recall that Romero was released like a week later, but it was a little longer than that. His employment with the Red Sox ended on August 5, 1989. From there he played with the Braves, the Brewers (again) and the Tigers. Finally retiring in 1992.

 

Romero is a baseball lifer and has been bouncing around various leagues with various jobs, I would assume that he’s retired. But you know who’s not? His son, Eddie. Eddie Romero has been in the Red Sox front office since 2006, currently an executive vice president and assistant general manager.

 

Not a bad deal at all.

Dana Kiecker 1991 Fleer

Sometime in the last two or three months, I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

I bet that you don’t think about the 1990 Boston Red Sox all too much.

 

You're not alone if you don't, they weren't a particularly memorable team. 

 

I mean, they weren’t a bad team, they won the American League East but got mowed down by the Oakland Athletics in the American League Championship Series 4-0. If you remembered this series or this team at all, this was the one where staff ace Roger Clemens talked shit to home plate umpire Terry Cooney in Game Four in the second inning and got himself tossed. Clemens claimed he was talking to his glove, which what?, and Cooney said he was sure that Clemens was talking to him. Clemens had to be dragged off the field (he went crazy), Manager Joe Morgan was ejected as was second baseman Marty Barrett who was so incensed that he started chucking stuff onto the field.

 

Clemens was wound up pretty tight for his Game 1 rematch against Dave Stewart (who almost always kicked his ass).To pump himself up for the do-or-die game, Clemens applied thick eye black and tied his shoes with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shoe laces*. It was dumb.

* I’m not sure why this last bit of information is stuck in my head, nor do I understand how cartoon turtle shoe lacers makes a pitcher pitch better, but it didn’t work. Clemens got bombed, like he usually did against the A’s, and the Sox were swept.

That year’s Sox team wasn’t an all-timer. In the late 80s/early 90s, most of the talent was in the American League West—the 1991 AL West is the only division where everyone finished at or above .500 (the last place Angels were 81-81 that year). The American League East was sort of like the AL Central this year, someone has to win. The Blue Jays were a year away from making the trade that would add the heart and soul of their mini dynasty (Joe Carter and Roberto Alomar), the Yankees sucked, the Indians were young and terrible, the Brewers were mediocre, the Tigers were old and the Orioles were flat-out bad. Thus the Red Sox were the sacrificial lambs that were slaughtered by the A’s*.

 

In the entire series, the Red Sox scored four runs—literally one per game.

 

* I’ve said it before, but I loved those A’s teams. They had pitching, they had hitting, they had power, they had speed and they had duende. The stars that were on that team were amazing: Canseco, McGwire, Rickey, Hendu, Lansford, Baines, McGee, Eckersley, Stewart, Welch, Steinbach. Thirty-three years later and I’m still shocked that the Cincinnati Reds beat them.

 

You might not remember that team too much but you know who thinks about that 1990 Boston Red Sox team a lot? Dana Kiecker. Drafted by the Sox in 1983, the Sleepy Eye Minnesota (and how about that name for a hometown) native spent seven years languishing in the Boston farm system until he got his shot in 1990.

 

And you know what? He wasn’t too bad. He pitched 152 innings, finished 8-9 with a 3.97 ERA and didn’t walk a ton (54) but didn’t strike out a bunch either (93) though he did give up a ton of hits (145). He was a perfectly cromulent fifth starter on a decent team. He wasn’t someone that you’d build your staff around and he wasn’t someone that you could count on for consistently great performances, but it seems that he could play.

 

Only he really couldn’t. He started for the team in 1991 and was hammered: 18 games, 7.36 ERA, 56 hits in 40 innings with 23 walks and 21 strikeouts. The reason for his awful stats may have been due to a sore elbow, which he spent a majority of the year in Pawtucket rehabbing. His year was dreadful and he was never heard from (Major League wise) again. He signed a minor league deal with Cleveland in 1992 and was invited to spring training with his home state Twins in 1993 before retiring due to elbow soreness.

 

Not surprisingly Kiecker’s high water mark occurred in 1990 when he had the best game of his life. Down one game to none, he pitched really well against the A’s in Game 2 in Boston: (5.2IP, 6H, 1R) and left the game with the score tied 1-1 against A’s starter Bob Welch who won 27 games and took home the Cy Young Award that year. The Sox would eventually lose, but it wasn’t through any fault of his. Greg Harris took the loss as the A’s didn’t slam the Sox but instead bled the Boston bullpen on bloops and singles. Death by a thousand papercuts.

 

The one thing that I recalled reading about Kiecker back in the day (and that Wikipedia reminded me) was that he worked for UPS in the offseason while in the minors. After MLB, he went back to UPS and became an Enterprise Accounts Manager and was the pitching coach at Dakota County Technical College.

 

I wonder how many times he told co-workers that he was a Major Leaguer? Better yet, I wonder how many of those co-workers believed him. Maybe he kept this particular card in his wallet and would show it when that wry smile would show up on that face of someone who didn’t trust his word, “Suuuuuurrree you did Dana. And I used to be a running back for the Minnesota Vikings!”

 

But Kiecker lived the dream. Even if it was only for a short time. For one year he gave it his all and he was about as close as you could get to playing in the World Series. A year in the Major Leagues. Even if the price was being awful and hurt the following year it’s a trade any baseball fan would make in a second.

 

How often do you think about that year though? Every minute of every day? What does it feel like to climb that mountain, make it to the top and then have everything come crashing down? I say that I’d make that trade in a second, but the thoughts of that year must be maddening for the rest of your life.

 

I hope that he found some peace and perspective and is able to say that his job never defined him.