Dennis Lamp 1990 Fleer

On December 14, 2018 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

On Facebook, I wrote: A few days ago I received this illuminating card from the BCB. If you aren’t a fan of the 1985 Toronto Blue Jays, you might not remember Dennis Lamp. However, that was the year he put it all together and allowed him to have a career that spanned three decades. 

2019 Notes: "Illuminating", I've never met a pun I didn't love. I'm shocked that I didn't use the Brick Tamland quote, "I LOVE LAMP!" in this entry. I don't care what anyone says, "Anchorman" is still really funny.

I usually hate doing this because what does any profession really look like, but Dennis Lamp doesn't look like a ballplayer. He looks like a fireman or a driving instructor. I bet that, even now, he could kick my ass in anything athletic.  

In 1977 he made his debut with Cubs as a starter and was traded across town to the White Sox. Funny thing is that the Cubs and White Sox worry less about intercity trades than other franchises — hell, the Sox sent the Cubbies Sammy Sosa for a broken down former member of the 85 Blue Jays, George Bell. 

Tangent: I bet it would be cool to be traded from one side of the city to another. So much less work. You can keep your own house!

Anyway, Lamp went to the White Sox, started a bit and moved into the bullpen. After the 84 season he moved on from the Sox only this time it wasn’t across a city but from one country to another. 

This is when he had his career year going 11-0 with three saves and a 3.32 ERA. Yes, wins are a dumb stat especially for someone coming out of the bullpen, but 11 straight wins is pretty impressive. And it got him some MVP votes, ultimately finishing 20 spots behind winner Don Mattingly. 

The 1985 was the high water mark for Lamp and he never approached those numbers again. Already a journeyman, Lamp bounced around to four different teams before calling it quits in 1992. 

I’m not sure how Lamp had such a magical season in 85. He didn’t have overpowering stuff or a funky delivery. I don’t remember a devastating curve or a wackadoo slider. He was just the best Dennis Lamp he could possibly be that year. 

And when he was with the Red Sox, he was fine. He didn’t inspire dread like Calvin Schiraldi nor did he bring confidence like Lee Smith. Sometimes he’d extinguish the fire but other times, he’d make it worse.

That was Dennis Lamp. And he was okay. 

Sports is unlike most other professions in that one's worth can be measured in neat time capsules. If you have enough good years, people will think you’re good. Have enough bad years and you’re out of a job. But an outlier year like 1985 makes people scratch their heads. And it provides hope for GMs to offer you another job.

“Can he catch lightning in a bottle again and go 11-0? I don’t know. Let’s find out!” 

Lamp played 16 season and finished with a 96-96 record which means that without 1985, he’d be 11 games under .500. And maybe without that amazing year he doesn’t hang on for another seven seasons. 

The moral is all you really need is one really good year to stay employed. And that seems like enough.

2019: Like yesterday's Tom Bolton entry, I don't have a heck of a lot to add. During the last few entries, I guess I was more wordy on the Facebook entries. Aside from the two Sox, Cubs and Jays; Lamp also found his way into the Athletics and Pirates organizations. 

Lamp never made an All-Star team (and if he was, it would be 1985) or pitched in a World Series. 

I know that I spent a lot of words talking about how must've looked at Lamp and wondered if they could recapture his 1985 record, but I wonder when that stopped (aside from 1992 -- his last year in the Majors)? At some point it had to dawn on everyone that Dennis Lamp was who he was, a below .500 pitcher who got really lucky one year. I wonder if in 1985 Lamp thought that he was fooling the league and waiting for the other shoe to drop or whether he thought that he was finally reaching his full potential. 

Knowing that baseball is a game obsessed with pessimism, my thought is that while 1985 looked like a lot of fun for Lamp; I bet that it wasn't. And then spending all winter wondering whether he could keep it going, I bet it drove him nuts. 

Dennis Lamp had to look at himself every day and think, "I'm not an 11-0 pitcher. Nowhere close. Why is this happening to me?" And then the following year when he ended up 2-5, with an ERA almost two runs higher than it was the previous year, he probably had to talk more and more about how 1985 was an anomaly and that he was always who he was. That's a monkey paw wish that must've been maddening. 

"I don't know why people are hitting me so hard. I don't understand why I'm not undefeated. I'm doing all of the same stuff."

Success can be a curse, you guys. 

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.