Eric Hetzel 1990 Fleer

On October 17, 2018 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

On Facebook, I wrote: After an extended vacation, the BCB returned with an Eric Hetzel 1990 Fleer card yesterday. 

To be blunt, Eric Hetzel sucked. This isn’t just my opinion, but that of the good people at Fleer who pretty much said the same thing on the back of his card (it actually said he had the worst ERA on the team). But I remember that even though Hetzel stunk and his numbers in the minors were poor, people were kind of excited about him. 

This is during a time when the Sox couldn’t develop a pitcher to save their lives and dudes like Hetzel and Tom Bolton and Rob Woodward and Jeff Sellers and Steve Ellsworth were considered the next big things. 

In the 80s, Sox minor league system cycled. In the early part of the decade they developed a ton of pitchers: John Tudor, Roger Clemens, Oil Can Boyd, Bruce Hurst and Bob Ojeda. Aside from Wade Boggs and Marty Barrett, no real position players. But after Clemens, the pitching pipeline dried up. From then on, it was all hitters. 

It was in the middle of this fallow pitching period when Hetzel debuted and people thought he might be something. He wasn’t. Though I assume his arm injury that caused him to miss an entire year also had something to do with his poor performance other than just plain ineptitude. 

Too bad Eric Hetzel, if you did well you could have endorsed some knotted bread and we’d all be eating Hetzel’s Pretzels today.

2019 Notes: I think that I was a little rough in my initial post on Eric Hetzel. 

Unfortunately, there isn't much to say about Eric Hetzel. I looked him up on Wikipedia and his entry (yes, he has an entry -- I'd wager that there aren't many professional athletes who do not) said that a shoulder injury forced him out of MLB after two seasons. 

I've written a lot about wondering how athletes feel about being on the downside of their careers. How they have to retire before they were ready to -- I assume that Hetzel didn't want to stop playing baseball after two years in the bigs. But on baseball-reference, I noticed that Hetzel was drafted four different times: once in the fifth round by Boston in 1983, once in the second round of the January 1984 amateur draft by the Pirates, once in the first round of the June 1984 amateur draft (for awhile, there were two amateur drafts, which seems really weird) and finally in the first round of the 1985 June amateur draft by the Red Sox. 

It's not like Hetzel went to a college baseball factory and this sort of stuff happened all the time, he was at East Oklahoma State University when he was drafted by the Royals and Pirates; so I bet that was big news. He then transferred to Louisiana State University for his last year before he was drafted his last time by the Sox. 

But still, at EOSU Hetzel was a big fish. I wonder why he transferred? He was drafted in the first round while at his old school, why go to LSU? You can't get drafted any higher and there's a lot of downside, like what if you get your ass handed to you by the SEC boys. Your stock will plummet. Though I assume that's not how a high-profile athlete thinks. He probably knows that he'll kill it anywhere he goes. 

When I went to Merrimack College, the hockey team stunk. We played in the best league in the country, Hockey East, and the team routinely got their heads kicked in. But there were a couple of guys on the team who were drafted by pro teams and would go to college to get more seasoned. 

One night I was at a party and I started talking to a couple of guys from the team -- this was something that never happened, the hockey team was royalty on campus and I was never in their social orbit. Anyway, I was kind of drunk and I start falling all over myself talking to these guys about how cool it was to get drafted and how that they're going to be pro athletes and how they'll probably play with the famous names on the big club.  They were like, "Yeah, we can't wait!" or something polite and then they excused themselves to talk to someone who wasn't a complete idiot. Even the next day, I was so embarrassed.

Anyway, I'd like to think that somewhere in the early 80s, Eric Hetzel was at a party at EOSU and some drunken dork said something similar to him. Maybe that made him feel good. Maybe when he gets sad about how his pro dreams didn't turn out the way he wanted them to, that there was a time when he was the best pitcher in his league and everyone knew it. And how he went from the fifth round to the second round to the first round (twice!). Also how he went from a small school to a big time baseball factory and still excelled. That's what I would focus on. 

BTW, the two dudes I was fawning over, one made it to the NHL for a handful of games. The other did not, as far as I know. 

Carlton Fisk 1990 Upper Deck

On January 29, 2017 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

2019 Notes: Fisk looks really regal in this shot, huh? Like something happened and he's about to put an end to it. Maybe he's going to fight Deion Sanders for drawing a dollar sign in the dirt every time he comes to the plate? Who knows what this red ass will do!

On Facebook, I wrote: Yesterday I received another BCB card, this time it was from Austin, TX and it was of Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk. 

The greatest catcher the Red Sox and New England ever produced, Pudge Fisk was unceremoniously told to leave because the Boston front office was both cheap and inept. 

Fisk literally changed his sox, going to Chicago and tormenting the AL for another decade plus. And he usually saved his best games to beat his old team. I remember being at a game where Eric Hetzel was dominating the Pale Hose, but the Red Sox couldn't score a run. In the eighth inning he left a ball up in the zone and Fisk hit it to Cambridge. Final score 1-0, Chicago. 

Durable as hell, Fisk also is one of a handful of players to see MLB action in four decades. In short, screw you Haywood Sullivan for letting Fisk go and trying to replace him with your banjo hitting kid.

2019: There's not a hell of a lot that I can add to this entry. I mean there is, but if you know anything about baseball in the last 30 years, there's nothing more than I can add. Carlton Fisk was beloved in New England because he was one of us (born in New Hampshire, grew up in Vermont) and he represented what we all want to be. Fisk was a hard working, no shit taking, tough-ass Hall of Famer who was not only great day in and day out playing the roughest and most cerebral position on the field but rose to the occasion during the big moments (see Game 6, 1975 World Series). 

No matter what we do, we'd all like to think that we're the Carlton Fisk of our jobs. Deep down you know whether that's true or not*.

* It's funny, my dad coached my brother's Little League team and the parent of the worst kid on the team used to call my father after every game and yell at him over the (perceived) lack of playing time the kid got -- BTW, this kid did not like baseball at all. The one thing he'd say to my dad practically every time was, "You're making a mistake [redacted] is the next Carlton Fisk! He should play more!" Even almost a decade after Fisk left Boston and was slinking into the decline of his career, people were using him as the example of greatness. That's how transcendent Fisk was. 

In any event when Fisk left, Red Sox fans were pissed. They were pissed when Lynn and Burleson and Tiant and Lee were all shipped out of town; but they were really mad when Fisk packed up and went to Chicago. And when the Sox said it was a mail snafu, fans were doubly angry. It never should have got to that point, they screamed. And they were right. Haywood Sullivan was a shitty owner and his kid, Marc was an even shittier catcher. I guess it's wrong to blame Marc Sullivan for his spot on the Red Sox roster -- what would you have done? -- but if there was ever a human avatar for the bumbling of the Red Sox front office in the 1980s, it was him. 

Anyway, time heals most wounds and Fisk came back to the Red Sox and has worked with the team in some nebulous front office position. It's kind of how he got his 27 retired. Even though I got into baseball five years after Fisk changed socks and all I knew him was a Chicago guy, I like Carlton Fisk on the Red Sox.