My Favorite Red Sox Players 25-21

 

25. Mike Greenwell

Man, I wanted Greenwell to continue that unbroken Sox left field MVP lineage of Willams, Yaz and Rice. If Canseco didn’t have a monster 1988, it’s probable that Greenwell would have been number four.

But he did (with better living through chemicals), Greenie fell short and ended up as the American League MVP bridesmaid. For ten seasons Greenwell wasn’t a perennial MVP candidate but he was really good. He hit for average, more than a little power and was a fun player to root for.

He wasn’t fast nor could he field the easiest position in the Majors (left field at Fenway) but you could do a lot worse with Greenwell hitting third in the lineup.

He played in Game Six (struck out on three straight pitches), often destroyed centerfield teammate Ellis Burks because he was a disaster in left and got his ass handed to him when he tried to big time Mo Vaughn in the batting cages when the Hit Dog was a rookie. However he was never boring. I like dudes with personality on the Sox.

Fun fact, I personally saw him hit an inside-the-park grand slam against the Yankees. How about that?

24. Roger Clemens

Speaking of better living through chemistry.

Am I a Roger Clemens fan today? No. I can’t say that I am. Do I hate him as much as I did 20 years ago? Also no. But 35+ years ago he was, without a doubt, my absolute favorite player in the world.

These caveats all count for something in the rankings.

We don’t have to go through Clemens’ career high/low lights: MVP and a billion Cy Young awards, two 20K games, a couple of World Series titles, HGH, an extramarital relationship with an underage girl, playing for the Yankees, inability to beat Dave Stewart or Pedro Martinez when it matters, his unique ability to completely psyche himself out on the mound on front of 40,000 people.

It’s all part of the Clemens stew that made Roger, Roger. I don’t know. Aside from 1986 when he came on like a rocket (pun intended), I can’t say that I enjoyed the Roger Clemens experience. I remember making more excuses for him during his Sox career than actually enjoying him pitch.

I guess that’s what you do when you’re young and have sports idols, isn’t it? The ump was obviously squeezing him, his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shoelaces were too tight, the manager removed him from the game against his will, he was just too pumped up for this important game. It was always something.

Rooting for Roger Clemens was never easy as he mixed transcendent dominance with abject frustration and by the time he left I think everyone was just plain exhausted of the rocket ride. If he finished the twilight of his career in Toronto and Houston, I think we all would’ve been okay.

But he didn’t.

Add that to the pile of complexity that is Roger Clemens.

23. Nate Eovaldi

Can a journeyman who pitched one awesome game and lost be a favorite? He can if he’s Nate Eovaldi.

Game three of the 2018 World Series between the Dodgers and the Red Sox was one of the all-time greatest games in Fall Classic history. It took 18 innings, SEVEN hours and 20 minutes and only five runs total were scored.

It was one of the most tense games I’ve ever fallen asleep to. I know that sounds crazy but it started at 8:00 pm and ended after 3:00 am.

Eovaldi was the loser in this game as he gave up a walk-off homer to LA third baseman Max Muncy but he saved the Sox pitching staff that night as he gutted through six (mostly shutout) innings.

The Red Sox went on to take the next two games and won the Series that year. Much like Tim Wakefield taking the bullet for the staff in Game Three of the 2004 ALCS, I don’t think the Sox beat LA without Eovaldi pitching his arm off in this game.

When we think of how we’d be as pro athletes, I think a lot of us would say “I'm a team player” and “I don’t care about my health as long as the team wins” but it’s bullshit. Most people don’t put team first because it’s hard to do that. And a lot of times if you do do that and you get hurt, you’re screwed.

So it’s nice when a player does that. And that’s what Nate Eovaldi did on that October 2018 night. For that he’ll always be one of my favorite players and I wish he was still with the club.

22. Andrew Benintendi

The outfield for the Red Sox in the late teens (Benintendi, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Mookie Betts) is my favorite outfield ever.

They were young and full of promise. They played hard and hit and fielded and were fast but they looked like they had a lot of fun. They epitomized the joy of baseball for me. They reminded me of what it was like to play ball with your buddies.

That’s what I like most about sports, but baseball in general. One of the reasons why you watch the seemingly endless parade of games is because it connects you to something in your past.

Whether it’s at Fenway Park or on the diamond at the Town Park in Amesbury, at its best, baseball is about the relationships you make with your teammates.

The three Bs had that strong bond, or at least it seemed like they did.

Benintendi came up last and had the most hype. He was a high draft pick from the University of Arkansas and he was the kid that might be the best. Mookie had the MVP, Jackie had the highlight reel of unbelievable catches, but Benintendi was going to be the one who outdid both of them.

Fun fact: I saw Benintendi’s first pro homer when he was a member of the Lowell Spinners. He turned on a fastball and launched it out of LeLacheur Park. It was crushed and I thought, this kid’s the real deal.

Unfortunately Benintendi was good (he made the All-Star team after the Sox traded him the Kansas City) and he had his moments (his defense in the 2018 postseason is iconic) but he never quite lived up to the hype.

He’s bounced around the league but by the end of his career there will be nothing to be ashamed of, but that potential of youth. That’s what I’ll remember most.

Again another connection for us all.

21. Don Baylor

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the 1986 Red Sox and how they were the first team that I really was obsessed with. Aside from my obsessiveness, there were a ton of things that I noticed for the first time.

One of these firsts were the first time a player who wasn’t homegrown had a great year for the Sox. That player was Baylor. I was used to players like Jim Rice, Dwight Evans, Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, Rich Gedman, Bruce Hurst and Oil Can Boyd being good for the Sox. They came up through their system and (theoretically) you watched their careers unfold. Since this was my first year of following baseball, I knew that these guys were good because of course they’re good; that's how baseball works. .

But it wasn’t until this year that I fully understood that team actually acquire good players too. When I looked on the back of Baylor’s baseball card (he was pictured as a Yankee!) and saw his numbers, the amount of teams and that he was the 1979 MVP, I was shocked.

“Why wouldn’t you keep a guy like that forever? Why did the Orioles and A’s and Angels and Yankees let him go? He’s good!”

But at the same time, I thought it was awesome that he was good for the Sox. How did we get so lucky? Not only was he good on the field but supposedly he was a good guy in the clubhouse. The papers say he runs the team’s Kangaroo Court.

What the fuck is a Kangaroo Court? Why do they need this? Why don’t we have one of these on my Little League team? It sounded so cool.

Between the bombs, the frozen ropes he hit for doubles and being a Kangaroo Court judge—a role he played on a bunch of other clubs—Don Baylor was built like a brick shithouse and seemed exotic to me because of his well traveled resume. Plus he got hit by the pitch a lot. And it never looked like it hurt him. New guy, awesome guy, tough guy. So cool.

Like I said he produced too. In ALCS Game Five against his old team, it was Baylor who got the ninth inning started with a home run off Mike Witt in the top of the ninth.

Without that dinger, Dave Henderson is just another guy who made a mistake that lost Boston a big game. Baylor was a catalyst in more ways than one and made a lot of things happen in 1986–including a dropped foul pop up in Clemens’ 20K game. If he catches that, Clemens finishes with 19.

Every team should have a Don Baylor type. That's just smart baseball.

Daryl Irvine 1992 Fleer

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

 

 

 

I don’t recall anything about Daryl Irvine’s days in Boston. According to the back of this card, Daryl was “one of the top closers in the minor leagues [and] will try to graduate to the big leagues in 1992.” He played three years in the Bigs (1990, 1991 and 1992) and was the exact opposite of what you want in a closer.

 

In 63.1 career innings, Irvine gave up 71 hits, 33 walks and only struck out 27 batters. Not surprisingly, his ERA was astronomical: 5.68; so not only did he put runners on base, but he let them score too. No matter how good he was in the minors—not good, actually he pretty much had the same kind of issues down there—he wasn’t going to close for anyone unless he missed some bats.

 

When I wrote about Dana Kiecker a few weeks back, we talked about that 1990 team and Irvine was a part of that team, he pitched in 11 games. But the other two years he pitched, the Red Sox weren’t great. They had their moments in 1991, but in 92 the Red Sox were so bad. Tom Brunansky led the team with 15 home runs. Bob Zupcic led the team in batting average: .276, over Wade Boggs who managed to hit .259!

 

The team finished with 73 wins, but if you look at their roster, they should have been able to put something together: Boggs, Mo Vaughn, JodyReed, Tony Pena, John Valentin, Ellis Burks, Mike Greenwell (the latter two were apparently hurt) plus Brunansky. Add in older dudes like Billy Hatcher, Jack Clark plus young kids like Phil Plantier, Scott Cooper and Tim Naehring and I mean, they could have been league average or better, if they hit.

 

The pitching was kind of a mess with solid years from RogerClemens and Frank Viola heading the rotation and Jeff Reardon closing, but everything after that was a complete disaster. Plus they had Butch Hobson managing, who was clearly way, way over his head.

 

Fun fact: 1992 was the only year since 1986 that I haven’t seen a game live at Fenway. I’m not sure why, but I decided to sit this year out; which is odd because I’ve seen some really shitty Red Sox teams play baseball. I wish that I saw the Sox play at least one game that season because it’s easier to say, “I’ve been to Fenway for 37 straight years” instead of “I’ve been to Fenway for 37 straight years, except for 1992. So I guess I’ve only been to the park for 30 straight years.”

 

That’s right, if I had a time machine, I wouldn’t go back and kill baby Hitler; I’d go back and watch the 1992 Red Sox in Fenway Park so that uninteresting personal anecdotes would be easier for me to relay.

 

Anyway Boston was apparently unimpressed with righthander and Irvine was sent to the Pittsburgh Pirates after the 1992 season. This was year one of the Pirates annual depths-of-the-division league tour that they’ve been perpetually on since Barry Bonds took his talents to San Francisco. Andy Van Slyke was still there, as was Jay Bell and Jeff King but other than future Red Sox Tim Wakefield and Stan Belinda, the staff was a complete and total disaster. Irvine should have been used to the chaos.

 

Ultimately it didn’t matter as Irvine was never able to put his chaotic team experience to good use as he never got a call up to Pittsburgh. Through the very perfunctory research that I’ve done, I can’t tell when he retired, but I bet it was pretty soon after that. According to Wikipedia, he lives in Harrisonburg, VA.

 

What does Daryl Irvine do all day? I’m not sure, but the way that his baseball career went, I’d be surprised if he thought about his days in the Major Leagues. I prefer to think about how he was drafted by the Red Sox three times over a couple of drafts—I guess the Sox liked him very much at one point. He probably thinks of his dominance in high school and college and how at one point everyone he knew wanted to be Daryl Irvine.

 

I think that’s what I’d think about as I’m relaxing on my porch in Harrisonburg, VA. I wouldn’t be thinking about the boring-ass drive from Pawtucket to Boston, sitting around in a cramped, sweaty bullpen waiting to get my brains beat in. That’s for god damn sure.

 

Maybe I’d show some neighborhood kids my baseball card if they asked, but I’d say, “that was a long time ago” and dramatically stare off into the distance. That wistful drama is almost cooler than having a lot of success at the Major League level. 

 

Almost. 

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.

 

 

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.

The Wax Pack: a Review

Up until my sixth grade summer there were a few things that were incredibly important to me: comic books, candy and soda. Maybe my computer too. But I had to rely on my parents to a. get me that computer and b. get me games and software to make it do cool stuff. The other three things were stuff that if I had a few bucks and my bike, I could go to the corner store and get without them. 

The summer of 1986 was a transformative few months for me. The Red Sox were really good that year and one star in particular captured the region's imagination like no athlete since a young Larry Bird. His name was Roger Clemens and beginning on that cold April night when he set a Major League record by striking out 20 Seattle Mariners, he was my guy. Even though I've lived in Massachusetts my entire life, on that night, the Red Sox really became my team. Up until then I liked baseball, but that was the summer that I fell head-over-heals in love with baseball. 

The cool thing about baseball--and sports in general--was that even in the mid 80s, you could find more and more information about the game everywhere. The newespapers had daily coverage of the Sox. Magazines had weekly coverage. Local sports anchors were LIVE! from Fenway Park practically every night the Sox were home previewing the game at 6:00 and recapping it at 11:00. Every game was on TV or the radio--there were even stations devoted specifically to sports! Not only that but the library had shelves and shelves of books devoted specifically to the sport. 

 

There was a lot of ways to get immersed in the sport, that summer I practically drowned in baseball. And I did it happily.  

But for a kid with a dollar or two in his pocket, baseball cards were the best way to find out about today's players and ultimately the game. The first baseball cards that I ever bought was a pack from Cumberland Farms, a convenience store only a short ride from my house in Amesbury, MA. Topps was my brand. I remember the electric blue wrapper, the way that word "BASEBALL" was in bright red and the yellow sunburst advertising a contest where the winner gets a free trip to Florida to check out next year's spring training*. 

Even before you got to the cards, you had the hard, pink gum. It tasted awful and it cut up the insides of your mouth, but what kid is going to throw away free gum? After you popped that stick in your mouth, it was time to rifle through the cards and see if you got one of your favorites. Most of the time you didn't--how many Roger Clemens did Topps make anyway--but even the commons (the non-star) players had their own dignity. It was though the commons that you learned about the game. 

* Did anyone ever find out whether someone won that trip? Topps never seemed to publicize it. That seems like something that they'd want to do. Alas. 

The above paragraphs were a very long walk to what I wanted to write about today. Writer Brad Balukjian and I are around the same age and it appears that his first card set was the same as mine too. He wrote a terrific book called "The Wax Pack" which revolves around him buying a pack of 1986 cards recently, going through the cards and then jumping in the car and tracking down the random assortment of players whose cardboard likenesses he had found. 

 

This book was made for people like me. 

From Randy Ready to Jamie Cocanower to Gary Templeton to Don Carmen to Rance Mulliniks and more, Balukjian tracked them down and was able to spend time and talk to the men that were once just names and statistics. Most of the players that he contacted were glad to be remembered. Cocanower* was particularly psyched to talk and invited Balukjian to his home to celebrate the Fourth of July with him and his family. 

* Despite playing less than a handful of years in the Bigs and with a team that was largely anonymous to me (the Milwaukee Brewers) and not having great number, when I was a kid, Jaime Cocanower left a big impression on me and my friends. It was the name. It just seemed so exotic and strange. Did he own cocaine or cocoa? Was his named pronounced JAY-me or HY-may? But we really just loved saying his name, it was so musical. Anyway this book answered a lot of the questions that I carried around with me about Jaime Cocanower. 

The pack isn't just filled with nice guys like the ones named above, but some legit stars like Carlton Fisk and Dwight Gooden didn't comply with repeated requests from Balukjian. And while they're mostly complete assholes, they all have their reasons. These are the chapters that I found fascinating because of how dogged, without being a jerk, Balukjian is about tracking these players down and how incredibly interesting how he writes about the misses. As a former reporter, I could completely sympathize with Balukjian when he wonders why someone like Vince Coleman or Gary Pettis won't return a phone call.

This book is mostly a memoir and Balukjian does a great job of weaving his backstory in with the stories of the ballplayers. There are a couple of clunkers here there--the story about approaching Fisk in Cooperstown is a bit cringe-y and I don't think that the reason why he and his girlfriend broke up is quite as significant as he teases it over the first few chapters--but at 260 plus pages, not every anecdote is going to be a home run. 
 

I know that the cliche says, "You can't judge a book by it's cover" but I did. I had a stack of books that I was going to read before this one, but this book's cover that looked exactly like the 1986 Topps wax pack wrapper and it jumped out at me. The cover filled me with a nostalgic warmth that I haven't felt in such a long time. I couldn't wait to read what this book was about and be transported back to being 11-years-old when discovering who was in a wax pack was my primary concern. As soon as I finished the book that I was currently reading, I immediately started reading this one. 

And I'm glad that I did, because The Wax Pack is an awesome read and it brought me back to 1986 when the men who played Major League Baseball were gods in polyester. In 2020, that's a special gift.

I was sent The Wax Pack free to review and comment on. This did not have any effect on my review. 

Jeff Sellers 1989 Topps

On April 15, 2019 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

I haven't written anything about this card on Facebook, because I'm writing about it here first. Pictured in the above card is former Red Sox prospect Jeff Sellers. 

Was he a real prospect? I'm not sure if he was really a prospect or just a young pitcher who Boston hoped would be the next big thing. I've discussed this before, but after Roger Clemens came along until Aaron Sele, the Red Sox had a dearth of pitching prospects. All of a sudden they couldn't  find a pitching prospect at all, which is weird because there was a pretty good pipeline of Sox hurlers who debuted in the early 80s and went on to have pretty good careers: Clemens, Bruce Hurst, Oil Can Boyd, John Tudor, Bobby Ojeda and Al Nipper. Just look at the starting four of the 86 ALCS team, it was Clemens, Hurst, Boyd and Nipper (with an aging Tom Seaver). That's not a bad rotation at all. All I know is that the Sox front office seemed to pivot from finding pitching to finding hitting sometime in the 1980s -- don't ask me why they couldn't concentrate on both. 

Back to Jeff Sellers. Before we get into the tragedy that was Jeff Sellers' career, guess where he was born? Compton, California. I wonder if he knew Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, MC Ren, Eazy-E and Yella? Even if you hated rap, wouldn't you buy "Straight Outta Compton" because of civic pride?

Anyway. 

I became obsessed with baseball beginning with the 1986 season, but when I opened packs of 1987 Topps, I had no idea who Jeff Sellers was. I don't recall him pitching for the Red Sox in 1986, but it turns out he pitched in 14 games that season and four in 1985--his first start was a win against the Milwaukee Brewers.  Maybe he was some sort of secret rookie, the kind that comes out of nowhere and has a great career, completely flummoxing those whose job it is to know better. 

But he wasn't a ninja rookie. He was just a guy with a perfectly square head who get would get said head kicked in most times he started a game. He didn't have a lot of strikeouts--he was a sinker baller--and his career ERA was a whisker away from 5.00 (it was 4.97). He probably should have been a back-of-the-bullpen, swingman type; but at least according to the back of his baseball card, the Red Sox didn't think so. He appeared in 61 games and started 51 of them. 

In 1988 he, Todd Benzinger and the always-popular Player to be Named Later were sent to the Cincinnati Reds for Nick Esasky and Rob Murphy. Murphy had a real good year coming out of the pen in 1989, but was awful in 1990. Esasky had a monster year for the Sox in 1989, before signing  big deal with the Braves in December 1989 and then contracting vertigo and never playing again. Benzinger played a couple of seasons with his hometown Reds, catching the final out of the 1990 World Series, before bouncing around the league and retiring in 1995. 

After the 1988 season, Jeff Sellers never threw another pitch in the major leagues. With his new team, he got injured in Spring Training with Cincinnati and his arm never healed right. Like his trademate Benzinger, Sellers spent the next few years trying to hook on with the Yankees, Rangers and Rockies before calling it quits in 1994. Unlike Benzinger, Sellers banged around the bushes and played in the minor leagues for those organizations. 

What really must make Sellers angry is that his last game was by far his best. On October 1, 1988, Jeff Sellers had ten strikeouts and a no-hitter through 7 2/3 innings before Cleveland Indian outfielder Luis Medina launched a homer. That was the only run Sellers gave up, but he lost 1-0, former Red Sox manager John Farrell got the victory. That was Sellers' final major league game ever. 

When I started thinking about this entry, the only thing that I remembered about Sellers is the Cincinnati/Boston trade. As I was thinking about it, I started trying to think of angles of how to approach this blog: imagining what it's like to be the "throw-in" in a multiplayer deal or trying to figure out how I would feel about being the fourth best player in a four-person transaction. But after doing a little bit of research, the Jeff Sellers story is bigger than that one transaction. 

It has to suck to be 24-years-old and on the last day of the year, pitch the best game of your life. You spend your entire winter thinking of that last game and how things are going to start changing. Then you get traded. The Reds wanted him, maybe they thought that they'd catch lightning in a bottle with a youngish guy who had already made some mistakes. 

Sellers probably heard this too. You think about how you're starting your prime now and getting a whole new start with a new team in a new league, this is going to be your year. Then, BOOM!, you get hurt. Of all the things that can happen, that's the worst. Especially when your manager is notorious steak head Pete Rose, who was also going through some stuff in 1989. Things were starting to finally line up your way, you know that baseball is full of stories of guys who go to a new team and get a new lease on life, why couldn't you be the next chapter of that story? But instead you got really hurt. 

I wonder how often Jeff Sellers thinks about that moment in 1989 Spring Training? I wonder how many times he talks about how things were this close to changing for him and then he hurt his shoulder, got sent to the minors, tried to pitch through it, hurt his shoulder more, had surgery and was never the same. 

If it was me, I'd probably think about it every single day. 

Mike Boddicker 1989 Topps

Sometime in the last year or so I received this card but I'm not sure if it was from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

On July 29, 1988; Lou Gorman made a trade that worked out well for both teams sending Red Sox prospects Brady Anderson and Curt Schilling to the Baltimore Orioles for veteran right hander Mike Boddicker. Anderson was a big time prospect and broke camp with the big-league at the beginning of the year and was sent back to Pawtucket by May. Schilling was a wild righty with good stuff, but a five-cent brain. At the time, no one really expected Schilling to do anything but Boston fans were nervous about losing Anderson. 

Anderson didn't have his breakout year until four season later in 1992 and became a three-time All Star with O's for the rest of the 1990s. Curt Schilling has a very good shot of making the Hall of Fame (if he can shut his mouth for more than five minutes) but didn't reach his potential until after the Houston Astros (who acquired him from an exasperated Orioles club) sent him to Philadelphia. In the City of Brotherly Love and with the Arizona Diamondbacks and back to the Red Sox, Schilling took off and became a perennial All-Star as well as one of the more dominant pitchers for the next 15 years. He lead his teams to four World Series, winning three of them -- including two all timers in 2001 and 2004. 

Mike Boddicker played with the Sox for two-and-a-half seasons compiling a 39-22 record before signing a free agent deal with the Kansas City Royals in the winter of 1990 and played for the Brewers in his last season. 

Why did this deal work out for both teams? The Orioles received two players that had they used patience with BOTH former Sox prospects would have seen a better return on their investment. But they only stuck with Anderson and he proved to be a player to wait for. Anderson had one of the strangest home run years in 1996 when he 50 round trippers, he never hit more than 24 before or after that year. When the O's began a mini renaissance in the Charm City, Anderson was one of their better players. 

Boddicker was the perfect fit for the Sox needs from 1988 through 1990. In July of 1988, the Sox were hot as hell flushed with Morgan Magic. They had Roger Clemens and Bruce Hurst to lead them, but after that, the pitching staff was pretty bleak. Gorman got Boddicker and he was the perfect third man in the rotation, going 7-3 with a 2.63 ERA for his new team. Not too bad. 

And with Hurst departing for San Diego that winter, he fit in nicely behind Clemens as the number two man on the staff winning 15 and 17 games in the next two seasons before taking off to KC. 

The reason why this trade works out for both teams is because where they were at at the time. The Sox were in the middle of a pennant race and couldn't afford to waste time on players that might be good in two, three or in Schilling and Anderson's case, four to five seasons down the road. Baltimore, on the other hand, had nothing but time. That year they started 0-22 and were in the midst of a full-fledged rebuild--wasting Cal Ripken's prime in the mean time--they had nothing else to do but see if the kids they had in their minor league system would hit. And some did. 

Most of the time, baseball trades aren't that big of a deal, they really don't change a team too much. Every once in awhile there will be a steal of a deal (like when Gorman sent Jeff Bagwell to the Astros for Larry Andersen in 1990) but those are few and far between. Even more rarer are the trades that help both teams, like this one. 

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.