Tom Bolton 1989 Topps

On December 7, 2018 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

On Facebook, I wrote: New BCB came on Tuesday all the way from the last place the Red Sox played this year, La La Land. 

2019 Notes: In pictures, Tom Bolton always looked nervous to me. Like he somehow conned his way on to the Red Sox and was about to get found out. He never looked relaxed or confident. I will say that the coolest thing about this card is the giant Ferris wheel in the background. You don't see too many Ferris wheels in the background of baseball cards. I don't think that this shot was taken at Winter Haven, so I wonder where it was snapped? 

BTW, back in the day in the background of a lot of Red Sox Spring Training shots there was this gigantic orange dome. I can't remember what its purpose was, but I always imagined that there was some weird orange growing expo happening in there. Like a bunch of Floridians gathered every day to sell their wares beneath the orange dome. "Grab a tasty orange before you watch the game," they'd yell. 

I wish that I had a picture of it. But I don't. 

This entry is about a very forgettable pitcher that toiled for the Sox, Reds, Tigers and Orioles: Tom Bolton. You may not remember Bolton because,quite frankly, he wasn’t very good. And he wasn’t a member of any special teams (someone had to win the AL East and be roadkill for the A’s in the late 80s/early 90s ALCS) that make deities out of the most ordinary players. 

Over eight seasons, Bolton did his job to the best of his ability and more often than not got his head kicked in, his career ERA was 4.56. But there were also games that he pitched well and gave his team a fighting chance. In 1990 he actually pulled it all together for one year going 10-5 with a 3.38 ERA. 

Bolton was traded straight up to Cincinnati for a month long Boston hero (and former World Series MVP and superball supporter) Billy Hatcher. Hatcher stole home in his first couple of games as a Sox and fans acted as if the team won the World Series and got Rickey Henderson at the same time—it was a dark time in the Nation. 

But Bolton and other players like him play an important part in the fabric of all sports. Bolton’s best season was a pretty good first half for teammate and superstar Roger Clemens. I know that using wins and losses to determine a pitcher’s usefulness is primitive and gauche, but I’m making a point here. 

Superstars need the Boltons of the world to make them look good, to make them seem otherworldly. Put it this way, if you faced Tom Bolton in high school, he’d have been the best pitcher you were ever going to face. By a mile. You’d talk about him over beers with your buddies forever. In the majors, he’s just another guy. Less than that, he’s about average (on a very good day). 

The star pitchers of his day, Clemens, Nolan Ryan, Dwight Gooden, Orel Hershiser made it look effortless. And sometimes I don’t think that we all appreciate that, especially in the moment. We like our stars to sweat a bit. But here comes Tom Bolton, beating the odds, making the majors, working his ass off, hanging around for almost a decade and the best he could do was a sub 3.50 ERA and five games over .500. 

That’s something. But it’s also not much of anything. 

To be honest Bolton is more relatable to most of us but at the same time, he’s also more forgettable. That says something about the Everyman. We say we appreciate them but we really don’t. 

But they have their parts to play. 

No. We can’t all be superstars at the highest level. Sometimes our lot in life is to make the truly special shine brighter. Through his inadequacies on the mound, Bolton was able to do that exceptionally.

2019: I don't have a heck of a lot to add to this entry. Tom Bolton was just a dude. A very talented dude in the grand scheme of things, but just a regular dude in his world. I recall reading an interview with a player who said (and I'm paraphrasing here), "the Majors are great for superstars. For the rest of us, it's agony because we're always thinking that we're about to be replaced."

The thought behind that is that whether they get traded or released or benched or sent to the minors, unless you're a superstar (and there are few true superstars), you're job is always in jeopardy. You can't relax, you're always looking over your shoulder. Your boss is telling everyone that he can replace you with someone younger, cheaper and in some cases better. If the job you're in right now was like that, how would you perform?

Yes, the money is better. But for the majority of ballplayers, it's not life changing. And many never reach that pinnacle where they get a ton of money to play ball.

With this much pressure on you, I would think that it would be difficult to do well. But Bolton did pretty well for himself. As good as he wanted to? Probably not. I am sure that when he viewed himself, he saw himself as Roger Clemens with a mustache. But reality is different. So he dealt with his reality and did the best that he possibly could. 

And that will just have to do.