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.