Cardboard Gods: Reggie Jackson, 1976

(Note: The following is my farewell to the disbanding Baseball Toaster; the ongoing travelogue-in-cardboard Somewhere I lost Connection will resume at the new location of Cardboard Gods.)
A god stands in a moment of contemplative reflection. Shadows give way to sun as he readies to move into the center of attention, that bright stage he was born to command. Behind him, the faces in the crowd that will watch his every move have been blurred to something like Monet’s lily pads, those hypnotic omens of the inevitable dusk into which we’llall dissolve, as if the card was meant to whisper that all names, even those of the greatest among us, will eventually unravel to silence. In fact, the whole card aches with transience: by the time it thrummed in the palms of the boys of America the superduperstar had moved on, traded to Baltimore, the regal joy of the cards blazing gold uniform a lie. The most magnificent team of the Cardboard God era became an empty golden shell for the remainder of my childhood.

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Somewhere I Lost Connection
(continued from Larry Hardy)

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Somewhere I Lost Connection
(continued from Tom Brunansky)

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Somewhere I Lost Connection

Chapter Two
(continued from Terry Bulling)

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Somewhere I Lost Connection
Chapter One

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How tough are you? Me, Im not so tough.
The tough way: Get on the field. Assume the proper crapping-in-the-woods crouch. Grimace a little if you want to, like Dirty Harry. Say in your mind: Hit it to me. If the ball takes a bad hop and thumps your chest or clips your jaw or drills you in the stones, pick it up and make the play. Spit and punch your glove. Extra points for spitting a tooth. Later, at night, sleep deeply.

Continue reading about Cardboard Gods: Bill Russell »

Reality #1
It is fucking cold here in Chicago, Illinois. Twelve degrees below zero as of this moment. I havent been outside since yesterday, when I put on two pairs of socks, long underwear, my thickest pair of jeans, three shirts and a sweater, a parka, hiking boots, gloves, two wool hats, and a scarf the size of a blanket and walked a few blocks to slide the DVD of Pineapple Express through the return slot at the video store. The digital bank clock by the video store reported that it was minus five. The walk there wasnt so bad, but on the way back I was walking against a stiff wind, which I swore at through my unraveling scarf-blanket as the few inches of exposed skin on my face became increasingly painful.

Continue reading about Cardboard Gods: George Brett, 1978 »

For you youngsters out there, heres a checklist you can use to gain quick, enthusiastic entry into the baseball Hall of Fame:

Continue reading about Cardboard Gods: Lou Brock, ‘77 Record-Breaker in . . . (Yet Another) Nagging Question »

Years ago, back when I lived in Brooklyn, I was staring at the ceiling, listening to the radio, and wondering if it was too early in the day to masturbate. The usual. It must have been a slow news day, because the radio hosts, a short-lived pairing of Suzyn Waldman and Jody MacDonald, started comparing current players to players from the past. I was roused from my torpor by the claim, made by Waldman, that Bernie Williams couldhold his own in a comparison to Carl Yastrzemski. Enraged, I dialed the number that had been ingrained into me from years of lying around and staring at the ceiling and listening to the Fan. Unfortunately, the line was busy. I tried back a couple times. Each time my desire to actually get through waned a little more. Eventually my anger dissipated so much that all I needed to do to spend the remainder of it was to turn the radio off, which I did. Then I lay back down and stared at the ceiling, listening to the traffic out on Metropolitan Avenue.
But then yesterday, I made my second try to join the sprawling, neverending facsimile of a conversation. I turned on the radio to hear the announcement of the new inductees into the Hall of Fame, and after pumping my fist for Jim Rice and whooping a little, I kept the radio on for the rest of the afternoon, tuned to the XM all-baseball station, attempting to bask in the moment as long as possible. Ironically, I first started thinking about calling into the afternoon show (hosted by Rob Dibble and the very same Jody MacDonald from years earlier) when I found myself disagreeing with the hosts comparison of Jim Rice to Reggie Jackson. When I was a kid, I hated Reggie Jackson as much as I loved Jim Rice, but when either Dibble or MacDonald (I forget which one, but they were in agreement on the subject) pointed out as an argumentative trump card that Jim Rices career slugging average was ten points higher than Reggie Jacksons, I sort of wanted to punch the wall. How can you make your living talking about baseball and not be compelled to add when offering this stat that Rice benefited from playing in a great hitters park while Reggie toiled for years in Oakland, one of the worst hitters parks in the league?

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Facts all come with points of view
Facts dont do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Talking Heads, Crosseyed and Painless

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According to the back of this card, Lee May drove in 195 runs for the Houston Astros in 1973, more RBI than anyone has ever produced in a single major league season. More than Lou Gehrig, Hack Wilson, Hank Greenberg, etc. Name a slugger, any slugger. Lee May topped him, according to the back of this card.
But its a mistake, right? If its not, I cant think of a more subtly shattering blow to my sanity than the sudden knowledge that for all these years, my whole conscious life, the subject I know most about includes a glaring absence of knowledge about the all-time single-season RBI champ. It would be like a guy who spent every spare hour birdwatching and reading about birds and studying birdcalls suddenly finding out that there was a bird known as the bald eagle.

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In many ways Ron was the heart of The Stooges, and The Stooges were the creators of punk rock. If you dont understand Ron, you dont understand The Stooges, and if you dont understand The Stooges, you dont understand punk rock. Paul Trynka, author of the 2007 biography Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed

Continue reading about Cardboard Gods: Death of a Stooge (Ron Asheton, 1948-2009) »

We all live for a while in the land of might. We might go anywhere. We might become anything. When do you realize youve been cast out of this land? When does your what if congeal into what is? That moment seems to be happening in this 1979 card, as a melancholy Rick Manning in extreme close-up seems unable to look straight at the viewer, as if in fear that the viewer will start grilling him about why he hasnt become the next Tris Speaker, or at the very least a less hilarious version of Mickey Rivers.
A few years earlier, in his rookie season of 1975, Rick Manning hit .285, which along with his spectacular fielding in centerfield would have earned him the rookie of the year award in most seasons. Unfortunately, he made his debut the same season as 1975 MVP Fred Lynn (not to mention Lynns teammate Jim Rice). The following season, Manning won a Gold Glove, upped his average to .292, and doubled his home run output from 3 to 6. Visions of even better seasons, spangled with a .300 average, 40-50 steals, and double-digit home runs, seemed not only possible but likely. Hes the most exciting ballplayer the Indians have had in many years, his manager Frank Robinson said in 1976, in the June issue of Baseball Digest. I think his potential is unlimited.

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What’d you get?
This is a common question at this time of year among kids, those purest of getters from our getting-crazed society. At a certain point we’re supposed to become givers, I guess, at least for one day a year, but the constant rhythm of getting that riddles the modern world reveals that we’re all still kids at heart, happy and hungry to get.

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When Im not working or sleeping or staring at baseball cards or the television, Im reading or walking to the library to get some more books. I guess there are a couple other miscellaneous activities I engage in now and then, but thats pretty much what my life boils down to.

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Once, during the first December I remember, a car barreled into our yard, tearing up some bushes, and my mom made wreaths out of the wreckage. The wreaths signaled that the big day was getting closer. When Christmas finally came, I got the gift Id been wishing for, from the FAO Schwartz catalogId been using as a prayer book: a fist-sized green metal combat van that shot small yellow rubber missiles from guns in its roof. Freshly unwrapped, it felt heavy, solid. Im tempted to say it felt magic, even holy.
There was nothing better than Christmas. There was nothing better than getting things.

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As a human being they really dont come any better. former teammate Al Oliver on Dock Ellis
Dock Ellis got sober in 1980, the year after his notable major league career came to an end. From what I can gather, he spent his remaining years helping others. In fact he had already begun reaching out to help others during his career, often going into prisons to talk to inmates, where he learned not only that he could get through to people in difficult situations but that it was for him something of a calling.

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Middle row, fifth from the right. I think thats Doug Ault. Its the only trace I have of him in my collection besides his name on the back of this card. Its one of the few names with a blank box next to it. As the summer of 1978 went on and all the other boxes on the back of this card started to fill, I must have begun dwelling on Doug Aults name and the empty box next to it.

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I was born into losing. This may seem like a particularly glum and self-pitying thing to say, but facts are facts: I was the younger sibling of an athletically able boy who would always be older, bigger, and stronger than me. This may not have had such an impact on my sporting won-loss record had my family remained throughout my childhood in kid-glutted suburban New Jersey, where I was born, but just as I was getting old enough to be able to perform sports-related tasks, such as throwing and catching a ball, my family moved to rural Vermont, where the great majority of the time the only game in town was the one that pitted me against an older, bigger, stronger boy.
***

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Sadly, Ben Henry has decided to pull the plug on his site, The Baseball Card Blog, but in a final act of virtuosity and generosity he is providing his readers with the opportunity to take one last memorable journey through the world of baseball cards, a worldhe knows as well as anyone.I suggest that everyone tip an afro-crushing cap to Henry and his blog, as I do, and then settle in to view his last hilarious hurrah, a painstakingadaptation ofCasey at the Batin glorious technicolor cardboard.

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There is actually a good argument that Tom Seaver should be regarded as the greatest pitcher of all time. Bill James
I.
Later, Ill get to the look on the face of the player pictured here, but first I want to talk about the notionor is it an unassailable fact?that we are coming to an end of just about the greatest era for elite pitchers that baseball has ever seen.

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Who is the greatest pitcher of your lifetime?
Im tempted to go with Tom Seaver, because I marveled at his feats as a kid and count a game I saw him pitch at Fenway in his last season among the most memorable games I’ve ever attended.

Continue reading about Cardboard Gods: Greg Maddux in . . . the Nagging Question »

A long time ago I read an article about Frank White that had some information that has stuck with me. White described atime in his playing career when the stress of holding down a major league job began to overwhelm him. He was unable, during down time away from the park, to focus on any one thing. Instead, he would have a magazine open and the TV on and the radio blaring and a record spinning on the turntable, his attention like a hummingbird trapped in an electronics store, flitting from one barren babbling source to the next, never landing anywhere, instead only becoming more and more exhausted. I may be remembering the article incorrectly, but I think Frank White saw that earlier way of living as a time when he was bordering on mental illness. Unfortunately, I cant recall how he pulled himself out of that habit, or even be a hundred percent sure that he was recalling the everything-all-at-once episodes from a remove or rather still trying to find a way out of them. All I know for sure is that Frank White was, as this 1980 baseball card reports, an All-Star. In my mind he was as constant a presence in that annual game as anyone from his era, and since he was not a magnetic superstar such as Pete Rose or Reggie Jackson there was something even more solid about his presence in the midsummer classic than other more well-known perennial all-stars. Superstars werent always super, year-in and year-out, instead rising and falling and rising in magnitude and magnificence, but Frank White was always Frank White, kind of in the background, no national commercial endorsements or magazine cover spreads, a constant presence in the exalted exhibition, his prominence or role never changing. I think the reason I still remember that article that described the way he unraveled into a powerless mess at the mercy of his in-home sources of entertainment is because I am still a little disturbed that the solidity of Frank White was a mirage. Everyone, even Frank White, is clinging to the ledge by their fingernails.

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My fandom has been and most likely always will be one defined in large part by substantial distance.When I was a boy, I used to fantasize that one day the great gap between me and the players I idolized would be closed. The central fantasy in what was actually a foggy cluster of vague fantasies was the one that began when I sent a letter to Carl Yastrzemski, asking for his autograph. As the months and years went by without a reply, I came to accept that a reply would never come while simultaneously fantasizing about a preposterously familiar reply: a long personal letter from Yaz, or a phone call, or even a visit.
As I got a little older, edging into my teen years, my prevailing fantasy shifted to a bizarre hope that one day while shooting baskets alone on the hoop in my familys driveway in rural Vermont, a passing limousine would slow to a stop so that its passenger, Dr. J, could (depending on how deeply I wanted to escape my life at that moment) ask me over to chat for a few minutes orgo have some Burger King with him or sign me up to an NBA contract. Im not really sure why I imagined Dr. J in the limousine and not a member of my favorite team, the Celtics, but it might have something to do with the mythic aura that surrounded the Doctor in my youth. He was a storybook figure, magical and legendary, and slipped easily (much more so than the pasty grunting lurching figures clad in Celtic green) into the realm of fantasy.

Continue reading about Cardboard Gods: Don Stanhouse, 1977 »

I.
When you were a kid, did you dream of an ideal life for yourself in the future? I guess I did, but most of the time only very vaguely. I must have known instinctively that keeping such visions foggy and only partially imagined helps numb the pain when they fail to materialize. I can think of a couple exceptions to this general rule, both having to do with my team, the Red Sox. One dream was actually more of a vow, which perhaps explains why I made sure to make it come true: I decided that no matter where I was when it happened, I would make it to Boston for the victory parade if the Red Sox ever won it all. It was a good dream for me to have, it turns out, for it allowed me to be anything and anywhere, and in fact even implied that my adult life would be one that included rootlessness and drifting. The other dream was in this regard a polar opposite, as its success rested on a sturdy, rooted adult life: I dreamed that one day I would be a season-ticket holder at Fenway.
The dream was born in joy. Do you remember the first time you ever came up the tunnel into the stands at a major league baseball game and caught your first glimpse of the green diamond? Id guess that most baseball fans hold tight to the magic in that memory. My dream of being a season-ticket holder may not have flickered to life in that moment, but when I learned that such a thing as going to every single home game was possible Im sure my enjoyment in fantasizing about doing so was based in part on that first dose of glowing green. A life built on top of that joy: how could it fail to be a good life?

Continue reading about Cardboard Gods: Will McEnaney »

I.
Marc Hill, according to a particularly entertaining entry on BR Bullpen, was a two-sport high school superstar in Missouri. This is no surprise to me; save for one or two oddball late bloomers, everyplayer I’ve droned on about on on this sitemust have been a god in his hometown long before he was ever a Cardboard God. I vividly remember the most celebrated high school athlete in the little town in Vermont where I grew up, Ron Schubach, our all-state basketball star, a quick, smooth guard with a Chachi haircut and an unstoppable pull-up jump shot. I still think of him as the best basketball player Ive ever seen. I know that objectively this cant be true, but to me hepossessed the most magic. It must have been the same for all of these players enshrined in these cards. Odd as it may seem while gazing at this photo of a mouth-breather with an uncomplicated frat-boy glint in his eye, Marc Hillmust have had that Schubachian mythic glow before he ever became a benchwarming journeyman known as Booter.
II.
Mythic glow aside, Marc Hill is surely recalled fondly by more than a few fans. He was a member of the most treasured San Francisco Giants team of the post-Mays, pre-Will-the-Thrill era, the 1978 squad that unexpectedly contended for the division crown. Hill was actually a starter that year, and the next as well, before being sent to the Chicago White Sox. He played for several years for the White Sox, a backup to Carlton Fisk, and was apparently known as a clubhouse joker. He must be more than one fan’s Shlabotnik.

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The baseball hovering above Jerry Roysters left shoulder shows the limitations of language. Defining Jerry Roysters role on a team with a single position, 3B, is like saying that Ben Franklin was a guy who did some newspaper work. Its true Ben Franklin did some newspaper work, but he did a few other things too.
The comparison between Jerry Royster and Ben Franklin breaks down, of course, when you weigh the relative the importance of the many roles they played. Ben Franklin: discovered electricity, invented bifocals, formed the first public lending library, laid the groundwork for a nation, etc. Jerry Royster: subbed for Rod Gilbreath on occasion, laid down the occasional sacrifice bunt, led the 101-loss 1977 Atlanta Braves in steals, etc.

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As implied in yesterdays post on Freddie Patek, everybody loves a short guy. A tall guy? Not so much.

Continue reading about Cardboard Gods: Dave Kingman, 1976 »

In 1971, Bobby Murcer hit .331 with a .427 on-base percentage. He was the most effective offensive performer in the league, evidenced by the statistical measure that best adjusts for league and park conditions, OPS+; Murcer posted a league-high 181 in that category. He also manned one of the games most important defensive positions, centerfield, and presumably did so at a level close to that which would earn him a Gold Glove the following season. Despite all these accomplishments, Murcer finished seventh in the MVP voting. The player directly in front of him in sixth place in the voting, Freddie Patek, hit .267 with a .323 on-base percentage and six home runs. Patek did play one of the only positions on the field arguably more important than centerfield, but he didnt win a Gold Glove at that position in 1971 or in any other year. So how did voters determine that he was more valuable to his team than Bobby Murcer?
Well, I wasnt old enough to be paying attention in 1971, but I do know that when I did get old enough to know who Freddie Patek was, I associated him with one thing, his size. More specifically, as a baseball fan I absorbed and reflected the prevailing attitude of faintly patronizing awe and admiration toward Freddie Patek. Little Freddie Patek! Not even tall enough to ride the carnival rides! But still out there bravely turning double plays with the likes of Don Baylor and Reggie Jackson hurling their hulking frames at the second base bag!

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People ask me if I would go back to the game if I was offered a position, and I dont think that I would, because I wouldnt want the insecurity. Balor Moore, No Moore regrets for first Montreal pick
I.
Balor Moore is shown here throwing a pitch that clearly has very little chance of reaching the mitt of his catcher. I wonder if the catchers body language is similar to that of the figure partially visible at the left border of the photograph. This must be the third baseman, and from the look of it he has no intention of readying himself for a positive conclusion to Balor Moores attempt. As Balor Moore pitches, the third baseman seems prepared only to amble a few steps to his right to cover the bag once the ball is stung on a line deep into an outfieldgap, or better yet prepared to not move at all except to turn his head and watch the soundly hit ball arc high above everyones head before disappearing into the left field stands.

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I.
It must have seemed like it was going to be a blooping basehit, beyond the reach of infielder and outfielder alike. Dick Allen, in the midst of the last of his many MVP-caliber seasons, had been running from second base on the play, and from what Ive read Dick Allen was not just a one-dimensional mangler of pitches but an intelligent player who knew the whole game well. He must have sized up the fluttering wounded quail off the bat of White Sox teammate Brian Downing and been convinced that it would touch down safely in the outfield grass. He must have set his mind on roaring across home plate with the tying run.
Is there anything more exciting than speed? As the ball arced down toward the outfield grass, Oakland As centerfielder Billy North suddenly appeared like a flash of heat lightning. This is how I imagine it happened. One moment no one is there and an eyeblink later Billy North is a green and yellow bolt catching the ball off his white shoetops. His momentum carries him forward, toward the second base bag, and I imagine that he thought about making the throw to the infielder waiting there to double off Dick Allen. Maybe North even cocked his arm to throw. But then North must have seen that Dick Allen had no chance to beat the centerfielder to the bag. (A sign of Allens lack of fleetness came later in the game, when he was pinch run for by Tony Muser, who stole all of 14 bases in his nine-year career.) Billy North hung onto the ball and kept running. With speed like that, speed so transcendent it must have felt exactly like joy, why stop? The outfielder transformed himself into an infielder and stomped on the bag, ending the inning and preserving the lead with what has to be one of the more unusual unassisted double plays ever recorded.

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I.
Last week on the bus a guy in a Cubs hat sitting near me eyeballed my Red Sox hat and we started talking baseball. Its a pretty long ride, and after a while we ran out of things to say. I waited a few minutes to turn to the book Id had on my lap, and not long after that the bus emptied enough for him to move a couple seats away and spread out and stare out a window. He was big guy with a mustache. He wore a windbreaker of a championship 16 softball team (the kind of softball Id never seen until I moved to Chicago). Id thought he was a little older than me, but he was probably the same age. From our conversation Id learned that hed grown up loving baseball players from the 1970s.
II.
Theres something malevolent about Ted Simmons in this 1976 baseball card. Its his long, lank hair, his narrow eyes and vaguely Cro-Magnon jaw and bunched shoulders. He reminds me of the older guys in my high school who drove loud cars and got in fistfights with each other over thin pale girls who smoked cigarettes and wore tight jeans and perpetual sneers.

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I have no memory of anyone named Jeff Terpko. You’d think a baseball player from the 1970s who never registered inthe mind of someone obsessed with 1970s baseball might be somewhat inconsequential, but it turns out this is not the case. In fact, if I had to boil down to one sentence this endeavor of looking for inspiration and amusement in my shoebox of childhood cards, I might say No one is inconsequential. Everyone has astory.Jeff Terpko, for example,had been around for quite a while at the time of this 1977 card, many years and small cities listed in his complete major and minor league pitching record. Right in the middle of Jeff Terpkos long meandering story, after the listings of his stops in Geneva, Buffalo, Pittsfield, Burlington, Greenville, and Burlington again, is a line at Spokane that has no numbers but just the words DID NOT PLAY. Ive seen this before and have never understood what it means, exactly, and have only wondered what life must have been like for those going through years like that. Terpko was 23 in that year, six years into a pro baseball career and without a taste of the majors, six years of making just enough to eat gas station sandwiches during spine-numbing bus rides. But on he went the next year, going in one year from Pittsfield to Spokane to, as the front of the uniform shown here would have it spelled,TexaS. He spent the year after that entirely in Spokane, but then in 1976 seemed to stake his claim on a major league career by pitching solely for the Rangers, appearing in 32 games and posting an admirable 2.38 ERA. That promising number is at the lower right of the back of the card. At the upper left of the card is an enigmatic line that could be interpreted as the opposite of unequivocal promise:
Acq: Traded Player, Retd by Phillies. 4-10-71

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The gripping new novel Dirty Water, coauthored by mystery writer Mary-Ann Tirone Smith and her son, Jere Smith, begins inside Fenway Park in the midst of the Red Sox’ 2007 championship season. I was, of course, instantly hooked. But I cant say that I was surprised. As a grateful fan of Jere Smiths rabidly passionate and generous blog, A Red Sox Fan from Pinstripes Territory, which brings readers along for the ride (with copious photos, videos, and pointed descriptions) every one of the many times he goes to cheer his voice hoarse for the Red Sox, I would have been surprised if the book had opened anywhere but Fenway. (Smith, using the name of his blog as a commenter name, shows up in Cardboard Gods comments from time to time, most fittingly in terms of the discussion here as a keen-eyed detective of the moments depicted in baseball cards featuring action shots.)
From that opening scene, in which a newborn in seemingly dire health is mysteriously abandoned in the Red Sox clubhouse, the well-plotted, plausible novel hurtles forward with the help of well-drawn characters and a deep and satisfying sense of setting. The Red Sox themselves show up periodically to contribute to both of these rich elements of the book. The appearances by the players, which if handled poorly would have doomed the book (at least for baseball fans), is handled by the authors with a pitch-perfect ear for how, for example, Jason Varitek would act when confronted with an ill infant in his clubhouse, or what Big Papi would do if a player in the Sox minor league system came to him for help in a very difficult situation.

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Contrary to my propensity for angry nihilistic self-hating screeds, Im not an altogether hopeless guy. For example, todays a good day, a hopeful day. I feel like I might have a leader. Last night, after the first speech of the new president-elect of the United States, I pointed at the TV and declared to my wife, I want to run through a fucking wall for that man. I really meant it, and felt an emotionaltremble in my voice as I said it, but in truth as a declaration of intentions it was nice and blustery and vague. I didnt actually have to commit to anything. I mean, I could have said, Wheres the nearest Peace Corps induction center? or Get me the number to an organization that sends guys into locked wards to teach the criminally insane to square dance. Since Im kind of a quitter, and dont enjoy quitting, I try to avoid commiting to anything. But here it is the day after and I still feel hopeful and like I want to be part of the Yes We Can battalion instead of continuing on with my usual lonely mantra of No I Cant.
What does this have to do with Bill Stein? Well, not much. But first of all, at the risk of starting the first day of a hopeful new warmly inclusive era on a sour and mean-spirited note: whoo, he ugly. I only say this because I love my baseball cards, every single one of them, but most especially the ones featuring the luckless marginals, the nobodies, the drifters, the inglorious, the big-eared and mush-nosed and chinless and soggily-mustachioed and dim-eyed. The ugly. Hallelujah for the ugly! Today we spread wide our embrace to include every-fucking-body, the excluding myth of the Aryan suburban blond Mr. Joe America fatally punctured, hallelujah. And second of all, I mean the second reason I am talking about Bill Stein on this hopeful Yes We Can day, is that before this day was This Day it was, in the ever-evolving myth of the Cardboard Gods, Expansion Day.

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