Jim Rice 1988 Fleer

 Sometime in January 2023 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

 

 

Jim Rice was my first favorite baseball player. This is strange mainly because I don't ever recall him doing anything really awesome in my formative years as a baseball fan. I became a huge baseball fan in 1986, mostly because Roger Clemens went super nova that spring and summer and the Boston Red Sox were streaking their way to the pennant. 

Prior to that year, I liked baseball, I just wasn't obsessed with it. I played Little League, I watched the Baseball Bunch, I vaguely remember watching the San Diego Padres/Detroit Tigers World Series at my grandparents' place in 1984 and of course, I'd watch a few innings of the Sox when there weren't any cartoons on. 

When I think back to those years, I remember thinking about Jim Rice and how awesome he was. I just can't tell you why I felt that way. I can tell you how mad I'd get when my father would say that his license plate should be: "6-4-3". I can tell you I'd get even more furious when he had to explain the joke. 

Maybe it was because Rice was the de facto star of those early 80s teams and the club seemed to revolve around him. Though it's more likely that to a ten-year-old, Rice seemed impossobly big--almost like a superhero--but one who could hit home runs over the net in Fenway and onto the street. 

 There are human beings that can hit a ball entirely out of a Major League park? And they play for the team that I root for? I thought that he was awesome. 

By the time that this card was released, Rice wasn't hitting that many home runs any more. And the ones he hit were arching parabolas that landed on Lansdowne Street. His last really good year was the aforementioned magical year of 1986 when he finished second in the league's Most Value Player voting to Roger Clemens. 

In 1987 when he was 34-years-old, he was an average ball player. In 1988, below average and in 1989, even worse than that. Baseball is a game where if you aren't downing or injecting enough drugs to power the 1972 East German weightlifting team, the fall from the cliff is swift and far--especially if you were a star. 

There were a lot of whispers that Rice wasn't really motivated to stay in baseball shape (the dude was always pretty cut, so I'm not sure where that was coming from) and preferred to golf rather than work on his swing. Another rumor was that Rice really, really needed eye glasses to pick up the ball and his ego wouldn't allow him to put them on. 

Whatever the reason was Rice was no longer "the most feared hitter in the American League"--a moniker he had in the late 70s through the 80s. In 1987, that entire Red Sox team got a facelift; veterans like Don Baylor, Bill Buckner and Dave Henderson were either traded for parts or released. Kids like Ellis Burks, John Marzano, Sam Horn and Todd Benzinger took their spots in the lineup. New left fielder Mike Greenwell took Rice's position, exiling the former slugger to part time Designated Hitter, a role he shared that season with Horn.

In 1988 the Sox made a surprise run after manager John McNamara got the gate at the All-Star break. Working-class hero Joe Morgan took over the team on an interim basis and the Sox did so well that they found themselves at the top of the AL East standings and Morgan was named full-time manager of the Sox. 

During this streak, every move Morgan made seemed to turn to gold so when he sent up light-hitting shortstop Spike Owen to hit for Rice during a tight ballgame, Rice was pissed. They got into a shoving match in the tunnel to the clubhouse, which was caught by TV cameras and Morgan is quoted as yelling, "I'M THE MANAGER OF THIS NINE!" which is both kind of a badass thing to say to a guy that is strong enough to rip you apart with his bare hands, but also kinda corny too. 

Since Morgan was winning, a local guy (he drove a snow plow during the winter which made the people around here absolutely love him) and was white, Rice got a lot of shit for not being a "team player", playing the game "gracefully" and not following Morgan's orders. BTW, I can't remember what Owen did in that at bat, that 88 team was bananas, so Owen could have taken the guy deep and the Sox might have won. I have no clue. 

BTW, I'm not saying the Morgan was wrong here. Rice should have handled this much better, but the reaction from the fans was a little insane. 

From that point on, Bostonians were done with Jim Rice. He made too much money, he was too old and he was a bit too mouthy. He hung on for another year and during the last weeks of the 1989 season it was announced that Rice was hanging up his cleats. The Red Sox asked him to share a retirement ceremony with long-time teammate Bob Stanley which made Rice angry. 

 I wrote about this in my last entry on Bob Stanley that that was a shit thing for the Sox to do and if I was Rice, I'd be angry too. Hell, if I was Stanley, I'd be pissed. You can have two retirement ceremonies, no one is going to give a shit. Especially for that dead ass team. 

When he was a player, Rice didn't talk too much. He was described by the almost entirely white Boston press corps as "sullen and rude", the guy didn't make their jobs easier. And why should he? As the star of the club (pre Clemens and Wade Boggs), Rice was a lightning rod. Everything he said became 50-point headlines. The amount of unconscious and conscious racism was huge during that time, dating back to when he and Fred Lynn both made their debuts together as the Gold Dust Twins. He was a quiet kid from South Carolina who was thrown into a racial tempest that was Boston in the 1970s. By the 80s, he probably just got sick of the whole thing and it's hard to blame the guy. 

When he retired Rice became the Sox hitting coach (honestly, he wasn't really great -- I don't recall any hitter saying that Rice helped them) and then in a surprise to many he went to NESN and became a Sox commentator. Before and after games he'd talk about what the Sox did and didn't do and he was actually kind of decent. He spoke with a lot of cliches but he looked like he was having some fun and, hey, I still like the guy a lot; so that was cool by me. 

It took Jim Rice 15 years to finally make it into Cooperstown. And for as much as I love the guy, he probably shouldn't be in there. His numbers are good, but are they really good? Compared to other Hall of Famers--as well as guys on the outside looking in like fellow 1978 MVP Dave Parker--he's on the low end of the HoF spectrum. But I'm okay with that. I'm a big Hall guy to begin with, so you can add another 25 guys to the hallowed halls of Cooperstown and I'd be fine with that. 

For as long as I've been aware of baseball, I've liked Jim Rice a lot. For a guy who was so excellent at baseball, he always seemed to me to be a bit of an underdog. Even when he was the unquestioned star, it seemed that the press and the fans were always looking for someone (usually whiter) else to hang their hat on. And I liked those dudes. As far as I'm concerned Jim Rice fucking ruled.

Bob Stanley 1990 Fleer

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.  

 

 

Carlos Quintana 1990 Fleer

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

 

 

When I was younger, I was obsessed with rookies. The promise of a new ballplayer waiting in the minors to ply his trade in the Majors was like catnip to me for a number of reasons. For one thing, I was always one to appreciate the anticipation--the journey--rather than the destination. Christmas Eve was always more exciting to me because of the unknown; maybe Sana would bring me an AT-AT this year or a Millennium Falcon or a 2-XL robot. 

A lot of kids were excited about the minutes after ripping open their presents. The gifts still in the packages, framed by feet and feet of colorful wrapping paper. "What am I going to play with first," they thought. Me? I was always a bit depressed. "Is that it? Do I have to wait another 364 days to get what I really wanted?"

The anticipation was the killer, because reality never was as good as your imagination. 

In the 1980s, rookies were big business in the baseball card world and it was because of the promise of "What if". What if Mark McGwire hits 70 home runs in a year? What if Al Pedrique makes people forget Ozzie Smith? What if Ellis Burks is a perennial All-Star who leads the Red Sox to a World Series? 

And what if I have their rookie cards? Shit. I'll be rich. More than that. I'll be filthy rich. My college expenses? Taken care of--my kids' education too. New car? How about a sweet ride for every day. My parents? They could retire. These flimsy pieces of cardboard were the keys to my financial stability for the rest of my life. The key was that not only did I need to own and keep these cards mint, but the ballplayers on the front of them need to fulfill their promises. 

They'll get rich and so will I. 

So being very keen on rookies was both something that was encoded in my DNA (anticipation of greatness) and was important to my budding financial portfolio. The one thing that ratcheted this up even further was that there was probably 100 rookies making their debut every season. You could collect all of their cards, but you couldn't collect the multitudes of their cards necessary to make you wealthy. So you had to pick and choose. Who had the look of a guy that was going to not only be good, but capture the zeitgeist in a way like Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays did?

You find that guy and not only are you made in the shade, but you can tell everyone how you picked him. You saw the thing that made him special. You're the smartest one in the baseball card shop. It's an ego stroke. 

With that preamble, today's card: Carlos Quintana, I was never a fan of. I can't tell you why, because I was immediately invested in every Red Sox rookie but from the time he was called up to Boston until the day he left Fenway five seasons, I wanted him gone. I don't know whether it was because he didn't have the makeup of what I thought a first baseman or right fielder (his two primary positions) should have: namely power.

For his career Quintana slashed .276/.350/.362 and hit 19 home runs. Total. He played 149 games in back-to-back seasons (1990 and 1991) but I couldn't tell you a single big moment that he came through in. He was just there. There was nothing exciting about him. He hit close to .300 those years, but his power was low (11 homers was his career high in 1991) and he was particularly defensively gifted either. 

At the time I just wanted my stars to be bigger than life: Rickey Henderson, Bo Jackson, Jose Canseco. Dudes who were fast and knocked the ball into next week. Quintana was nothing like that. He'd hit singles and play station-to-station baseball. He was an uninteresting player on a good, but ultimately uninteresting team. 

Watching him every night was anger-inducing. Why does Oakland have all the good rookies? Pittsburgh too. And Cincinnati. And Chicago! They have two teams with two awesome young players (Mark Grace and Frank Thomas). Boston's best rookie is Carlos Quintana. Gross. 

In February of 1992 the most interesting--and worst--thing happened to Quintana. He was in his home country of Venezuela playing winter ball. He had to drive both of his brothers to the hospital, they were both shot. As he was speeding to the hospital, he got into a pretty big car accident and broke his left arm and big toe, while his wife broke both of her legs. He was out for the entire 1992 season.

It was a tragedy that I don't remember anyone ever getting to the bottom of. I think that reporters asked about it, the Red Sox made some statements and then it was dropped. I don't want to say that's how boring Carlos Quintana was but if that happened to Wade Boggs or Roger Clemens or Mike Greenwell, I think people would still be talking about it. 

That injury opened the door for a player who was already pushing Quintana, Mo Vaughn. Vaughn was the rookie that everyone wanted to play. He was loud, he was a big dude, he could hit for power and average, he had presence. I thought that he was the Red Sox version of Frank Thomas. And now he was getting his shot! This was the anticipation that I was talking about!

Handed the first base job, Mo didn't have a great year in 1992 and when I read the reports Quintana was working his way back, I was nervous. Was this going to be like the Christmas days of the past? Not really. Quintana came back and played the 1993season  and he was clearly still hurt. The Sox kept big Mo at first and bounced Q around from first (to give Mo a break) to the outfield, but he wasn't the same player. They released him after the 1993 season and he never played in the Majors again. 

Mo turned into an All-Star, won the MVP in 1995 and had some truly great seasons for the Sox before departing to the Angels for big money. That wasn't his best decision as he was hurt, fat and ineffective for California before getting traded to the Mets and finishing his career. 

At the end of the day, no one really got rich off of baseball cards. I paid my college loans every month, I wasn't able to allow my parents to retire early and my wife and each have a car (not seven). But that anticipation is what keeps you going. You just never fucking know. 

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.

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.

My Brother

 

 

Wednesday was the first day in 15,498 days where the sun rose and my brother, Jason Magrane, wasn’t around to see it. He passed away on Tuesday November 10, 2020 at 12:42 pm at Portsmouth Regional Hospital in Portsmouth, NH surrounded by his mother, father and me.

 

That last sentence is the type of “just the facts” information that I would throw down when I was a reporter writing obituaries. It’s not very personal and it doesn’t give much of a picture of who the deceased was, it was more of a record that this person existed for a time and then departed the world.

 

Like you, I’ve experienced death before, but the passing of Jason has hit me hard. He was much more than a range of dates, he was a father, a son, a husband, a friend, an employee, a boss, but most importantly to me, he was a brother. As I’m writing this blog post on November 12, I can only think of the future and the past. Jay is going to be laid to rest two days from right now but three years ago to the day, I gave the best man’s speech at Jason’s wedding. Below is a portion of what I wrote, this was supposed to be a toast to Jason’s nuptials, never did I envision it becoming part of a eulogy:  

 

“According to Magrane lore, when my mother came home and told me that she was going to have another baby and it was going to be a boy, I was inconsolable. I wanted a sister and the thought of having a brother muscling in on my territory and sharing my toys was too much.

 

Despite my best wishes, Jay never turned into a girl, so I was stuck with a brother for my childhood. And it turned out to be pretty awesome. Growing up, Jay and I were pretty much alone at any extended family gathering—and we used to see our family a lot. I would think about friends who had dozens of cousins and how they’d talk about hanging out with them at family gatherings and it sounded pretty great.

 

But with Jay and I growing up together, we had to be each other’s best friends. Whether it was at my grandmother’s house or Aunty Rita’s or at Cousin Kathy’s in New York, it was just him and me. That meant he and I would play He-Man and GI Joe, read comics, or draw or play Wiffle Ball. It was always Jay and By or By and Jay. With us being together that much, it could have gone a few different ways, but we became close.

 

A few years later, as I got into high school and had my own group of friends; I began to notice that my friends—all of them—took a liking to Jay. Was I happy about this turn of events? No, I was not. It used to drive me crazy that my friends always invited Jay to come with us whenever we did something, whether it was hoops or pond hockey, Indian ball or football, Jay was always a part of the crew. And not only that, but my friends genuinely liked him and respected him.

 

It wasn’t until a few years later that it dawned on me: some of my friends had younger siblings and they were never invited to do stuff with us. Jay was included because he was funny and smart, athletic and loyal; he was included because he was one of us.”

 

It’s funny, when you grow up with a brother, you’re inundated with a lot of media about how close brothers have to be: from Wally and the Beav to Greg, Peter and Bobby to Willis and Arnold, all of those brothers were the best of friends.

 

But real life isn’t like that. Life isn’t scripted, each person doesn’t know exactly what the other person is always thinking and problems aren’t solved in 30 minutes (minus time for commercials). The idea that two people could be complete and total best friends forever and ever and ever without any disagreements is a silly, unrealistic myth.  

 

As we grew into adulthood, Jay and I were close-ish. We were both independent men who had their own life and their own life’s philosophies. Mine was a bit more conservative in regard to risk and rewards. Jay was the opposite. Jay lived his life the way he wanted to live his life, which I found admirable and a little concerning, but that wasn’t how my brain worked. Jay could talk to literally anyone—he had no fear in that department, made everyone feel comfortable—which is an awkward endeavor was for his older brother, was fun, constantly laughing and wondering when the next good time was going to happen.

 

As we grew up we worked through our differences and over the last few years, we began to get closer. While we didn’t agree on everything, I could at least understand why Jay was doing what he was doing. And I think he could see things from my point of view too. Even though we were closer, Jay still wouldn’t (or couldn’t) tell me what was bothering him when asked. And it wasn’t just me, Jay didn’t want to burden anyone with what he considered his “trivial problems”.

 

“By, you have a family, focus on them,” he’d always say. But what I don’t think that Jay got was that even though I have a wife and two children, Jay was my family and I did want to focus on him. But his carefree persona or his pride or whatever he felt at the time wouldn’t allow him to tell me what was really going on. Would I have helped him? Would Jay be here today? I don’t know. Maybe. It’s a question that I’ll have to live with.

 

The thing is, Jason was 42-years-old and you could ask him what’s wrong, I could ask him what’s wrong, Bo Jackson could ask him what’s wrong and Jay wasn’t obliged to give us an answer. Jay’s stubbornness knew no bounds. He was the Michael Jordan of stubborn. Things were easier when we were kids and if I wanted to really know what his problem was, I could jump on him (I always weighed more than him), sit on his chest, put my knees on his biceps and tickle him until he told me his deal. I wish I thought of doing that a few months ago, but that approach seems sort of weird now that I think about.

 

You’re never going to get a straight answer out of tickle torturing someone and just because you ask someone to do something, doesn’t mean that they’re going to do it. For example, Jay went into the hospital last Monday and that prognosis looked grim even back then. While I was putting away that evening’s dishes, I decided to try and honor my brother by playing the Grateful Dead Pandora station. The Dead were Jay’s favorite band (he saw them at the old Boston Garden in 1994) and he was always trying to get me to listen to them. Aside from a few albums and a couple of singles, the Dead and jam bands never appealed to me. But last Monday night, I was going to listen to the Dead in honor of my brother.

 

I made it three minutes. I’m sorry Jay, and I know that you understand, but I just couldn’t do it.

 

Alas.

 

There’s a lot of things that suck about my brother’s untimely passing, but I think that the biggest one is that he and I are never going to get the chance to be as close as we were when we were kids and that truly makes me sad. I was looking forward to the day when Jay and I take our kids to a Sox game. Or he could ask me for the millionth time why I don’t like Bill Simmons anymore. Or when we could have a moment and remember long-passed relatives who seem to exist in the fogs of our minds. Or he could recommend a podcast to me. Or when a tragedy happens and I need someone beside my wife to talk to, so that I can get through the latest malady without losing my mind.

 

All of that has been taken from me and it makes me very sad.

 

Earlier this morning I was thinking about a random memory of Jay and me. It had to be during the spring of 1990 and I was in my room probably obsessing over my baseball cards or reading a magazine while listening to Public Enemy’s newest tape “Fear of a Black Planet”. There’s a song on that album called “Welcome to the Terrordome” and if you know anything about PE—and especially that album—you know that it’s a wall of sound. It’s literally a pastiche of samples and cuts laid upon one another to make new beats.

 

At 1:47 into the song there is a horn that wails unsettingly loud and shrill. That day in 1990, I thought it was my brother calling, “Byyyyyyyyron!” from downstairs. And it wasn’t just that day, for like the first 10 or 15 times I listened to that song, hear that sound, amble over to my stereo, shut off my tape and yell, “WHAT DO YOU WANT JAY?” And he’d always say that he never called me, I’d press play and grumble to myself about Jay being a pain in the ass.

 

Today I listened to that song and in particular that shrill horn and it made me smile and cry. Jay may be gone, but he’ll never be forgotten.