Author: Mike Saeger

Odd Jobs of Major League Ballplayers

Posted on by Mike Saeger

Major league players have moonlighted in some unusual ways over the years

I recently read about how Padres reliever Mark Melancon moonlights with his own turf installation company. Nowadays, with a minimum major league salary approaching $700,000 a season, there is little need for big-league players to moonlight away from the field. Before the dawn of free agency in 1976, it was pretty routine – and necessary – for most major leaguers to find winter work. For example, the minimum major league salary in 1975, the year before free agency, was $6,000, while the median family income in the United States was $13,720. Data from 2020 shows that the average American family earned just shy of $88,000, or about eight times less than the minimum scale in MLB.

Many players years ago held down typical jobs, such as selling cars or insurance. Here is a shortlist of odd jobs of major league ballplayers that I’ve recounted during broadcasts over the years. 

A Grave Situation

When I was young, I remember hearing about how Richie Hebner, who enjoyed his most significant years with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1970s, worked as a gravedigger in the offseason. It turns out it was a family business that his grandfather started. Hebner spent 35 years digging graves the old-fashioned way – with a pick and shovel. The former third baseman gave new meaning to “digging one out of the dirt.” He was honored many years later with his unique bobblehead (see above).

The Angels had a catcher, Tom Donohue, who had a short-lived major league career with the club in the late ’70s. While playing, Donohue was also studying to become a mortician and would often read his mortician books during team flights. He certainly didn’t lack a macabre sense of humor. According to the story, during a particularly turbulent flight, the backstop regaled his unnerved teammates by reading aloud excerpts from one of his mortician books about preparing the remains of charred crash victims properly. As if that weren’t enough, he reached into his bag and passed out toe tags to his fellow players. 

While we’re on the subject, Hall-of-Famer Waite Hoyt, who led the American League with 22 wins for the 1927 Yankees, considered a career as a mortician at one point. His father-in-law owned a funeral home. On his way to Yankee Stadium one day, Hoyt stopped by a hospital to pick up a corpse, loaded it into his trunk, and drove to the ballpark, where he tossed a shutout. Following the game, Hoyt jumped in his car and delivered the corpse to his father-in-law’s funeral home. Evidently, he decided that tossing shutouts was more gratifying than tossing dead bodies into his trunk.

 

 

There’s No Business Like Show Business

This following snippet isn’t about an odd job of a major league ballplayer but rather that of a legendary manager.

John McGraw was known as the fiery leader of the New York Giants, with the disposition of a wild boar. There was a reason he earned the moniker “Little Napoleon.” McGraw skippered the Giants with an iron hand from 1902 – to 1932, winning more games than any other manager in National League history.

You may not know that the temperamental manager once tried his hand at vaudeville. In 1912, he went on a 15-week tour during the off-season, performing six days a week in numerous cities, including New York. 

While he was no Laurence Olivier, reports are that he was no slouch. However, he wasn’t a huge proponent of rehearsing. As the story goes, the show’s writers would put the skipper in a taxicab and instruct the driver to cruise around Central Park until McGraw memorized his lines.

May I Have This Dance?

Don Rudolph had a relatively obscure six-year major league career, bouncing among four organizations and finishing with an 18-32 record. When discussing the odd jobs of major league ballplayers, Rudolph must be near the top of the list. In the mid-1950s, he and a few teammates decided to pass some time by taking in a burlesque show featuring a popular local stripper named Patricia Brownell, known on stage as Patti Waggin. Rudolph immediately became obsessed with the gal. After turning down numerous advances from Rudolph, Brownell eventually acquiesced and married him. 

Rudolph’s new offseason gig? He worked as his wife’s manager and publicist. During her shows, he was responsible for, among other things, catching her clothes as she flung them offstage during performances.

Today, side jobs are a ritual for minor league ballplayers. Their salaries are a pittance compared to their major league brethren. Many minor leaguers utilize their talent to provide paid pitching or hitting lessons during the offseason to make ends meet. Endorsement deals can sometimes exceed a lucrative major league salary if you’re good enough to reach the major leagues and become a star.

Play It By Ear

The great Christy Mathewson was one of the first major league players to take advantage of his fame. Mathewson spent most of his 17-year career pitching for the New York Giants. His legendary status led to numerous endorsement deals, including shirts, collars, undergarments, and athletic equipment.

Unlike some major league ballplayers, Phil Linz didn’t have an odd job; he had a fortunate incident that led to a lucrative payout. Linz was a backup infielder over his seven-year career. He broke in with the Yankees in 1962. By 1964, Yogi Berra had assumed the role of manager for the Pinstripes.

Late that season, the Yankees team bus was headed to the airport following a four-game sweep by the White Sox. Linz had picked up a harmonica at a local shop during that trip. During the ride to the airport, he sat at the back of the bus while practicing Mary Had a Little Lamb. 

Sitting at the front of the bus, Berra was in no mood for the cacophony behind him. The Yankees manager shouted for the music to stop. 

Linz evidently didn’t hear his skipper and turned to ask Micky Mantle what Berra had said. The veteran Mantle, sensing chum in the water, told Linz that Berra said, “Play it louder.”

Linz continued to blow into his harmonica when Berra angrily rushed to the back of the bus. Yogi knocked the instrument from Linz’s hands and announced that he was fining the infielder $250.

After national story reports began to surface, the Hohner harmonica company offered Linz a $10,000 endorsement deal. For comparison’s sake, that’s equivalent to roughly $85,000 today.

Following his retirement, Linz became a successful business owner, running a popular Manhattan restaurant and club.

So, there you go – a shortlist of some odd jobs for major league ballplayers – and a couple of endorsement deals. By no means a comprehensive report, but a few of my favorites from over the years. If you enjoyed the article, please feel free to click on the comment link below. From there, you can like, share, or comment on the post. If you have any favorite odd jobs of major league ballplayers that you’d like to share,  I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for reading!

 

 

Baseball Life – Travel In The Minor Leagues

Posted on by Mike Saeger

Travel in the minor leagues

During my long career as a minor league play-by-play broadcaster, I was often met with two questions when I would tell strangers what I did for a living: “Oh, so you’re the guy we hear over the loudspeaker when we go to the games,” to which I would always say, ” Uh, actually, no. I call the games on the radio. I’m the play-by-play guy. You’re talking about the stadium public address announcer.” The other question, though not as frequent as the former, was, “So, do you get to fly on all your road trips?”  For most of my career, the answer was no, aside from one season spent in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, in which case we did fly almost exclusively.

Only those who have played the game or served as a broadcaster in the industry can truly appreciate – if that’s even the correct term – the exhausting toll that travels in the minor leagues can exact on one’s mind and body.

Now, depending on which league you worked in, bus travel could be as simple as boiling a pot of water or as grueling and painful as getting your wisdom teeth pulled without novocaine. 

The California League and Florida State League were arguably the easiest bus leagues. Nothing was more than four or five hours away, and most trips were within a couple of hours. It was just enough time to finish some prep work and still feel human when you arrive at your destination. Those leagues were outliers.

Travel in the minor leagues was not as enjoyable if you worked in the Pioneer League, South Atlantic League, or the Texas League (South Division, in particular). There, you would endure some trips that stretched well beyond 10 hours and others that were five, six, or seven hours. There’s a reason they call those trips kidney thumpers. There would be many days when you boarded the bus as a healthy twenty-something or thirty-something and arrived feeling as though you were 85 with two arthritic knees and a hip replacement that didn’t take.

There’s also a unique way to measure time on bus trips. Rather than calculating a journey by time, movies often measure the length of road trips. Yes, movie watching is pretty standard for bus travel in the minor leagues. You could gauge the distance of a trip by how many movies you could squeeze in until you reached your destination: “Yeah, this is about a four-movie ride,” or, “Yippee, we’ve got a two-movie trip, fellas!” A one or two movie trip was like finding a Willy Wonka golden ticket in your chocolate bar. 

When it came to movies, there was usually one player on every team who was the designated flick-picker. His job was to load up on enough DVDs to cover the round trip. If you’re traveling eight hours, you can probably imagine that the flick-picker role came with weighty responsibilities. Sometimes you got lucky, and your flick dude was a regular Siskel and Ebert. You could count on having a plethora of good films to watch while killing time. It helped to take your mind off your aching back and kidneys. Other times you might get a guy who wouldn’t know a good movie if it came up and hit him in the earflap of his batting helmet. Most of the time, the designated flick-picker did a decent job of providing entertainment.

Sometimes, the club manager would have a say in the selection of movies, though in my personal experience, that wasn’t often the case. I remember a fellow broadcaster telling me about a particular manager of his club who was the absolute authority on deciding which movies would be viewed on bus trips, which boiled down to one genre: B-horror films. Talk about making travel in the minor leagues even more appalling. 

There was one time I recall when a manager insisted on a particular movie for a trip. Former major league infielder, Rich Dauer, was the skipper of our Double-A club many years ago.

He had retired from playing in the late ’80s and soon after took a job managing the Single-A team in San Bernardino, California. At the time, actor Mark Harmon was a co-owner of the club. Harmon got Dauer a bit part in his movie, Stealing Home, which also featured Jodie Foster. It’s a coming-of-age baseball movie about a failed ballplayer.

For our final road trip one season, Dauer decided he wanted to have a little fun with his players and play the movie during one of our shorter excursions. Remember that coming-of-age romantic dramas are not exactly at the top of a ballplayer’s list, and our boys weren’t thrilled with the selection. player, played by Harmon. In the end, Harmon’s character, by now in his 30s, joins a minor league baseball team that just so happens to be managed by Dauer, who didn’t have an actual name in the flick.

The best part was at the movie’s end when Dauer had his cameo appearance.

He had been so excited to see the players’ reaction when he showed up on the screen, except none of the players recognized him. After all, the movie debuted about 25 years earlier when Rich had a little more hair and fewer wrinkles.

Rich probably replayed his on-scene appearance two or three times before one of the players near the front of the bus finally asked, “Richie, is that you?” At that point, everyone started to catch on as laughter and shouting began to fill our 45-foot sardine can. We must have watched that scene seven or eight more times.

The absolute worst part about bus travel in the minor leagues is the futility of trying to sleep on those long overnight trips. Have you ever tried to sleep on a bus crammed with 35 to 40 people? 

I’m one of those who has always had trouble sleeping in cars, buses, airplanes; you name it. The only way I can sleep is by lying down. If you’re on a bus, that’s comfortable for about an hour. If the row across from you isn’t empty, you can’t stretch out your legs, so you have to turn yourself into a circus contortionist freak. Even if the row next to you is empty, it’s still not entirely pleasant. I’d love to know who thought it was a good idea to make seats where the inside edges of each one curve up?

What’s wrong with two flat seats? You may as well try sleeping on a roll of quarters. Don’t get me started on those immovable seat belt buckles that make your leg feel like someone is giving you a continuous charley horse or sticking you in the back with a hot poker.

Often, some players will bring one of those roll-up foam mattress pads on the bus and stretch out on the floor. The worst part is when one of them decides to make his bunk on the floor directly next to your seat. Now you’re in trouble, mainly if you can’t stretch your legs across the next row of seats because they’re occupied. That presents a conundrum that would even be challenging for Daniel Browning Smith. Good luck!

That also brings me back to the movies. Have you ever attempted to fall asleep at 2 a.m. with a movie playing and the volume set to ear-bleed level? I eventually wised up and started bringing earplugs in my backpack. That helped mute the sound from the level of a jet engine to that of a chainsaw. If you were fortunate, the movies might cut off around 1 a.m., which would allow you to focus on the seat belt buckles that make your back feel like it was getting an epidural, or on that roll of quarters beneath your leg.

One other warning relating to bus travel in the minor leagues: DON’T attempt to use the bathroom in the middle of the night unless you’re Peter Parker, Peter Pan, or happen to be sitting in the back of the bus.

Trying to maneuver around a maze of stretched-out legs and bodies strewn on the floor makes the World’s Toughest Mudder competition look like a game of first-grade hopscotch. 

If you want to ensure that you tear a hamstring, suffer a Grade 3 groin strain, or blow out a knee, try getting from the front of the bus to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Early in my career, I made the rookie mistake – multiple times – of not monitoring my fluid intake before hitting the bus for extended overnight trips. That was a hard lesson to learn. I was obviously a slow learner. The key to survival is taking small sips of water, just enough to keep you from getting completely dehydrated.

If you like to have a couple of beers before boarding the bus after the game, proceed at your own risk. If you want to tip back a few during a trip, you either have ice water in your veins or a bladder the size of Texas.

I think that most major league organizations now disallow alcohol consumption on bus trips, but that wasn’t always the case. 

So there you go. Now, if you ever run into me,  you know that I wasn’t the PA guy at the local yard. And no, travel in the minor leagues is less than glamorous. However, if you ask me how I enjoyed my years in baseball,  I’ll regurgitate the answer I give everyone – “Hey, I got paid to watch and talk about games all summer. How bad can that be?”

Please feel free to leave a comment, like/dislike, or share the post if you wish. Just click on the comment button below to do so. As always, thanks for reading.

 

She Is Gone

Posted on by Mike Saeger

  Kiss it goodbye

The late baseball commissioner, Bart Giamatti, once penned about baseball, “It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”

Today, my heart is broken. My girl left me. Just like that, it’s over. A good part of a lifetime together, and she’s out the door. She was my favorite hello and my hardest goodbye. She is gone. Don’t pass go, don’t collect $200. The fact is, she is gone. 

This was a scene from Annie Hall: “A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward, or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.” This was Rick Blaine in Casablanca telling Illsa, “I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of.”

Except, there was no conversation. She did leave a note. Like a thief in the night, she stole out on me – took my wallet, car keys, kids, and the dog. 

I recently learned of her plans. In retrospect, maybe I should have acknowledged sooner that this was a possibility. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her forever. There’s always that sliver of hope that things can work themselves out. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” But that infinite hope has been officially dashed. She is gone.

They define denialism as the rejection of undisputed basic facts and concepts. I guess I should have seen the signs. In fact, I was separated from my girl for several months. Pandemics have a funny way of working. I thought that maybe she just needed a break. After all, three decades is a long time to spend together. I just didn’t – couldn’t – know that the separation would be permanent.

She and I had always gotten along well. We never argued. How many couples can make that claim? It seemed like the perfect relationship. I don’t think she initially wanted to separate. I hope she occasionally thinks of me, even though she is gone.

Didn’t the summer trips mean anything? That was a time reserved for traveling together. Oh, did we travel! We were inseparable yet never grew tired of each other. She preferred to choose the destinations. I enjoyed the element of surprise. Every fall, she would lay the summer itinerary before me. I would study it, nod, and begin to count down the days until embarkation eagerly. I didn’t care where we were going, just as long as we were together. Those were glorious months. We often traveled off the beaten path and sometimes stayed in 2-star motels in the early days of our relationship. It didn’t matter because it was an adventure. There were no extravagant trips to the Louvre Museum, taking in the wonderment of Half Dome, or enjoying the beauty of Maui; we liked to hit some of the not-so-hot tourist destinations. Summers will never be the same now that she is gone.

I wasn’t perfect, but I was pretty good. I was a great provider. Like lemmings to the sea or swallows to Capistrano, my girl could count on me. I was consistent. I was always there for her. But now, she isn’t. She is gone.

The worst part is that I’ll never know why she left. All I have is her note. I do know that she’s found someone new. She’s his gain now. I’m left with questions and countless great memories. What’s done is done. No happy retirement together with early evenings spent sipping a smooth cab on the porch while watching the sunset—no retirement trips to the Bahamas or three-week cruises on the Mediterranean.

Let me state that I didn’t quit baseball (and I’m still happily married to my wonderful wife of 21 years). The game decided that it was time to move on from me. I gave it all she’s got, captain!  I do wish her well. Our relationship would have ended at some point – everything does in life. As the great Vin Scully once said about an injured player, “He’s listed as day-to-day. Aren’t we all.” It just wasn’t supposed to end now. The Grand Ol’ Lady had other plans and desires, however. Thirty happy years together – poof! Most marriages don’t last 30 years. My marriage to baseball did. I sure will miss her.

I’ll miss late afternoons of sitting up in the booth, staring out over an emerald-green field of lush grass as the day begins to be swallowed by dusk. I’ll miss afternoon games in the spring, before the summer heat and humidity take over like unwanted in-laws who overstay their visit during the holidays. When you first walk into a stadium, I’ll miss the smell of freshly mown grass that hits your nose like a fine Bordeaux. I’ll miss the roar of the crowd and the crack of the bat. There’s something truly unique and captivating about the sounds of baseball, unlike any other sport.

I’ll miss the travel – sort of – and midnight dinners on the road. I’ll miss scouting towns before a road trip for local craft beer.  I’ll miss the hours spent researching a good story about some centerfielder, whom no one has heard, from some small town in the corner of Kansas.

I’ll miss the rush you get when you slap on the headset just before going on air. Even on those mid-July days when you’re dragging and your body is weary from travel and few off days, putting on the headset is a magical elixir, like a double espresso.

I’ll miss wondering if I might see something that night that I’ve never seen before in a baseball game. I’ll miss the thrill of being on the air in those rare games when a pitcher carries a no-hitter into the ninth inning. I was lucky to have been in the right place for eight of those. I’ll miss the daily chats down in the manager’s office. I’ve gleaned more info on the game’s strategy from those meetings than you’ll ever know.

I’ll miss the satisfaction – and relief – of finally finishing game notes and prep each day, along with the excitement of uncovering a really cool stat that I’ll use on the broadcast: “Did you know the club is 22-3 when so-and-so drives in a run?” I’ll miss the excitement of calling opening day each spring. That never gets old. You always feel like a kid the day before Christmas.

I’ll miss watching a 19-year-old Fernando Tatis, Jr., do things I’d never seen a minor league player do daily. I’ll miss the thrill of a tight 1-0 game and the challenge of having to creatively fill time on the air when it’s 10-0 in the third inning. I’ll miss watching the rare 34th-round draft pick turn himself into a major league prospect. I’ll miss watching a young Chipper Jones, so lost at the plate in the early months of his first year in Class-A ball, transform himself into a future Hall-of-Famer by season’s end.

Even though it was a one-way dialogue, I’ll miss my nightly on-air conversations with the fans. I knew you were tuned in, and I always appreciated that. I hope you know that I always tried my best to bring you a quality broadcast. I’ll miss Baseball America’s annual top 30 rankings of the farm systems and looking to see which top prospects might be on our team this year. I’ll miss getting letters and emails from young, aspiring broadcasters asking for advice or wanting input on their work. And lastly, I’ll miss the camaraderie of my fellow broadcasters and grabbing a bite to eat or a beer after the game. We are kindred souls.

Someone once wrote, “Memories, even bittersweet ones, are better than nothing.” I always thought I’d broadcast baseball games until I was 70 and then walk away. It would be an amicable split, and it would be on my terms. God has a strange sense of humor when you’re busy making other plans.

I’ll always cherish and fondly remember the 30 years we spent together – the game and I. Like knick-knacks and junk in a house, you collect a lot of memories over that much time – too many to mention. I’m grateful we were given 30 years together and saddened that we won’t make it to 31. At least my girl can’t take the memories. Did she have to take the dog? The truth is she’ll always be my girl, even if I’m not her guy.

Former major league pitcher, Jim Bouton, had a great quote at the end of his masterful book, Ball Four. I appreciated what he said when I read the book many years ago, but I truly understand it now: “You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end, it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” 

Sadly, she is gone.

Please feel free to leave a comment, like/dislike, or share the post if you wish. Just click on the comment button below to do so. As always, thanks for reading!

Continue reading “She Is Gone” →

Life in the Minor Leagues

Posted on by Mike Saeger

A Bush League Broadcaster’s Life in the Minor Leagues

I am often asked to name my favorite baseball movie. Considering that I spent most of my working life in the minor leagues, I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s almost like asking someone to name his favorite Beatles song, though, in full disclosure, there are numerous great songs by the Fab Four. Baseball movies? Not quite as many classics, though there are some.

Field of Dreams is a definite classic and is always at or near the top of anyone’s list. I’ve always enjoyed The Natural as an excellent fictional piece of writing and acting. Eight Men Out had solid direction and a strong cast performance; I am a nut about historical baseball movies. The Sandlot is a charming and fun flick, even if it is occasionally overly nostalgic. Major League might not be realistic, but it’s downright funny. How often do we still recite lines from Bob Uecker’s character, Harry Doyle? Juuuuuust a bit outside!

But if I had to choose one, I’d have to go with Bull Durham. It’s a great story, the acting is good, and it’s funny in parts. It is also the most realistic movie about life in the minor leagues. However, I will say that throughout my many years as a minor league broadcaster, I never saw a player try to breathe through his eyelids or wear women’s lingerie under his uniform. I did, however, have a front-row seat to some crazy moments, some of which will remain sealed under oath to protect the innocent.

This is my brief story about life in the minor leagues. I had dreamt of becoming a sports broadcaster as early as age seven. I was enamored with the sounds of baseball on the radio. It was almost like a drug. I was one of those children who would resort to nightly subterfuge by sneaking a transistor radio under the pillow at bedtime and plugging in the earpiece to not alert parents, who had the ears of a bat.

In college (nice hair, dude!!), I worked at the campus radio station, writing news and sports for the station’s hour-long local evening newscast.

I was a field reporter and anchor and even got paid to do play-by-play for a variety of athletic events. I had a college buddy who graduated a semester before me. When he told me he had accepted a job as a news director in some Podunk town for $500 a month, I laughed. How can you possibly live on such a pittance, even in a small town twenty-some years ago? It turns out the joke was on me. I graduated shortly after that and giddily accepted my first minor league broadcasting position for the whopping sum of… $500 a month.

As a broadcaster, you live a nomadic life during the summer, much like the players. Life in the minor leagues entails one bus ride that blends into another. You forget the names of hotels on the road and wake up at 4 a.m., unable to remember where you are for a quick minute. Life in the minor leagues includes eating enough Waffle House and Wendy’s to turn your arteries into concrete Sonotubes. Then you repeat the process over five months. You rejoice when your road hotel offers complimentary breakfast. After all, $15 a day in meal money doesn’t go too far, even in the ’90s.

You deal with all of this because of the steadfast love of the game, not to mention the hope that there might be four or five people tuned into the broadcast that night. Ah, yes. Life in the minor leagues.

When a player retires from a sport, you will often hear them say that they miss the camaraderie with their teammates – the stuff behind the scenes. You make many unforgettable memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

I’ll never forget my first year in the industry. We were on a bus trip a couple of hours from home and a few hours from our destination when the bus was pulled over for speeding. The driver was driving on a suspended license while carrying precious cargo.

The bus company had to send a replacement driver. So, we all piled off the bus and sat there like a house on the side of the road, waiting for a new driver to be shuttled over so we could continue the trip. Smartphones didn’t exist, and laptops were a rare commodity. Even if I had one, wireless internet didn’t exist. We somehow made it to our destination without a minute to spare before the series’ opening game.

A year later, I witnessed a bench-clearing brawl. That isn’t unusual. What was out of the ordinary was a mounted policeman who came onto the field in an attempt to separate the players. I guess the confusion and pile of bodies tossed about didn’t sit well with the horse, which got spooked, reared upon his heels, and came straight down on the thigh of an opposing player. I guarantee you it is the only time in baseball that a player had to hit the DL because of being spiked by a horse.

Baseball fights typically amount to nothing more than a lot of pushing and shoving and myriad dangling participles and split infinitives. I witnessed a couple of doozies, including one that featured more haymakers than all 52 Rocky movies combined. The irony is that this particular melee took place in front of several thousand-grade school kids attending an education day game. They ate it up like Pixy Stix, shouting “fight, fight, fight” in unison. I wonder what they said when their parents asked them how they enjoyed the game that afternoon?

 

 

Life in the minor leagues also allows one to rub shoulders with some pretty famous people. My absolute favorite story involved the inimitable Tommy Lasorda. Tommy was in town to watch our Single-A club for a series. We were a Dodgers affiliate at the time and had a doubleheader one night. I was in the manager’s office that afternoon when Tommy asked if I knew of a nearby chicken joint. He wanted to get a bunch of chicken and sides for the players to eat between games of the twin bill. I knew of a place not far from the ballpark. I had tried unsuccessfully to get them in as a sponsor the prior year.

Lasorda jumped on the phone, called the restaurant, asked to speak with the manager on duty, and proceeded to introduce himself and explain the nature of his call. Listening to his end of the conversation, it was clear – and understandable – that the chicken guy on the other end of the line was not buying a second of it. Would you? Why would the former skipper of the Dodgers be calling a chicken joint in San Bernardino?

The chicken guy asked for the main number of the stadium, which I wrote down for Tommy, and called back to the main switchboard to verify that everything checked out. They transferred a call to the manager’s office a few minutes later. Lasorda hurriedly picked up the phone, exchanged a few pleasantries, and rattled off what he wanted to order for the players. As you might imagine, it was a copious amount of chicken.

 

Then, as only Tommy Lasorda could do, he TOLD the chicken guy that THEY would donate the chicken to the team. In his words, the PR he would provide the restaurant was worth considerably more than the cost of the chicken. Evidently, that sold the chicken guy.

A while later, Tommy grabbed our clubhouse manager, Whiz, and they headed to the restaurant to pick up the order. Whiz said every customer stopped chewing when they saw Lasorda walk through the doors. He went around and said hello to the 10 or 12 diners, signed a few autographs, and then jumped behind the counter and helped bag the order for the team. You can’t make this up!

As the second game of the doubleheader got underway, Tommy walked into my radio booth with a plate full of chicken. He sat next to me, slapped on the extra headset, and took a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. Lasorda had scribbled the names of the employees on the clock when he and Whiz went to pick up the order. I led Lasorda into the story on the air, listening in awe as he seamlessly recounted his trip in detail while rattling off the names of the employees as if he’d known them for years. I probably missed calling an entire half-inning, but nothing on the field could have been as entertaining as what was going on the radio. I was not about to interrupt the silver-tipped tongue of the great raconteur.

The postscript to that anecdote is that Lasorda’s little PR plug worked wonders. I was able to bring the chicken guy on board as a sponsor the following season, and I doubt it would have been possible without the help from one of baseball’s greatest ambassadors. 

Life in the minor leagues. I wouldn’t trade a second of it.

Please feel free to click on the comment link. You can leave a comment, like, or share this post. I would love to hear from you. Also, I’d value your input if you have suggestions for future posts. Thanks for reading!

 

When 300 Innings Was Good

Posted on by Mike Saeger

Hi, baseball fans. With opening day around the corner, you can almost smell the freshly mown grass and the scent of grilled hotdogs wafting through the air. REAL fans are actually attending spring training games, and MLB clubs will be welcoming fans (limited) to the ballpark once the season starts. If there’s anything that gives us a sense of normality, it is the grand ol’ game of baseball. It just feels right, like that favorite worn-out T-shirt or the stuffed animal you carried around for the first eight years of your life. Mine was a bunny.

I recently came across an article about workhorse pitchers. You know, those guys who used to routinely start every fourth day in a time when 300 innings was a good benchmark for a pitcher’s toughness and masculinity? Numerous guys would throw upwards of 300 innings a season. Right! They’ve gone the way of the dodo bird, the Edsel, and the pet rock. Nonetheless, it got me thinking (as usual) about how much the game has changed in a relatively short time. Think about it.

In the last 30 years, we’ve seen the advent of interleague play (gasp!), wild card teams (yowza!), a steroid scandal (eek!), women coaches, trainers, and broadcasters (good!), a 60-game season in the middle of a pandemic (whole other story), and a trial run of the designated hitter in the National League (see “whole other story,” and DH-Coming-To-An-NL-City-Near-You-Soon).

Back to my point about what we used to refer to as a workhorse pitcher – when 300 innings was good.  Nowadays, if a pitcher reaches 200 innings, they say he has the endurance and willpower of Louis Zamperini (excellent book, by the way). I’m talking about a time when a manager wouldn’t relieve a starter unless his arm literally became detached from his body or said pitcher had to enroll in the witness protection program in the seventh inning.

It wasn’t that long ago (we’re counting in dog years) that a top starting pitcher would average at least eight innings a start, and 300 innings was a medal of honor. Tony LaRussa was the manager many people credit or criticize, introducing the defined specialist reliever role, where you had a set closer, a specific setup man, and a couple of guys who would set up the setup man. Hey, you can’t argue too much with his body of work.

Sparky Anderson
(AP Photo/File)

 

In reality, you can trace the beginning of the specialist role back to Sparky Anderson and his Big Red Machine of the 1970s. There was a reason Sparky had the nickname, Captain Hook.

In 1975, the Reds won their first of back-to-back World Series titles. Cincinnati pitcher, Gary Nolan, led the entire staff in innings with just 210 2/3 frames, a solid number by current standards that would warrant a parade in Times Square. Still, Nolan’s innings total fell nearly 120 short of the MLB leader, Catfish Hunter. That season, it was almost 70 innings short of cracking the top-10 in baseball. By comparison, those 210 2/3 innings would have ranked fifth in the majors in 2019, the last time we had an entire season of games.

Sparky did that by design. He knew that he had a deep bullpen and believed that by essentially reducing the game to a six-inning contest (while the starting pitcher was in the game), he had a greater chance to win by bringing in fresh arms to finish off the last few innings. It was hardly a revolutionary theory. The same tactic was employed nearly two centuries earlier under different circumstances by Napoleon Bonaparte. No, they didn’t play baseball back in his time. The French military leader always had fresh soldiers in reserve when going to battle, which gave him a significant advantage over his adversary. His theory usually worked. History tells us he probably overused his bullpen leading into the Waterloo series.

The ’75 Reds had four relievers who averaged more than 1 1/2 innings per outing. Compare that to today’s standards where closers and setup men throw one inning per outing, often less than that. Until they changed the rule last year, forcing pitchers to face a minimum of three batters, baseball was littered with specialists, mainly left-handers, who would be brought in to face one batter. You can’t argue with a team that won 108 games and a championship, as Cincinnati did in 1975. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Sparky had one of the most prolific offenses in the game’s history, one that could routinely bludgeon an opponent at will.

If you flash forward to Cincinnati’s 1976 championship club, you’ll find no Reds pitcher in the top 10 in innings among National League hurlers. Gary Nolan (again) led the staff with 239 innings and was one of only two pitchers on the staff to log 200 or more frames that season. Both Rawley Eastwick and Pedro Borbon finished with more than 100 innings in relief. The Dodgers, who finished second to the Reds in the NL West in 1976, had four starters log at least 200 innings.

 

It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than 40 years since any major league pitcher hit the 300-inning mark when Steve Carlton ate up 304 innings in 1980 for the Phillies. A decade has passed since Justin Verlander became the last pitcher to log at least 250 innings in a single season.

The game has changed and will continue to evolve, as most things do in life. Some changes are hard to accept, particularly for those tried-and-true baseball purists. But change isn’t always bad. Trends also tend to go in cycles. Remember when corduroy pants came back in fashion many years ago?  Will we ever see another season that produces a 300-inning starting pitcher? Highly improbable. However, baseball is essentially the same game played more than a century ago. It was and will continue to be America’s Pastime, despite the saber-rattling between the player’s association and major league owners. Even though the NFL long ago surpassed MLB in the television rating race. It’s a game deeply woven in our country’s fabric, much like apple pie and the American flag or the odor of cigarette smoke in that used car you bought back in 1985.

When you get a chance, pass me one of those hotdogs, please? Also, if you enjoyed this article, please click on the comment link below, from which you can leave your thoughts, like the post, or share it. Thanks for reading!