Like Tom Murphy of the last
post, Bobby Mitchell revives something. With Bobby it’s his own card. After
getting a rookie card in ’71 he got nothing from Topps the next two years and
he returned with this shot in Oakland.
He’d get cards the next two seasons as well and then he wouldn’t get another
one – that I know of – until ’79 and that one was from Japan. But
that’s how things worked out for this guy. It took him a long time to get up
top and he has some pretty big bio holes which will get illustrated below. But
in ’73 he was around a bit. After hitting pretty well in Triple A he returned
to Milwaukee in
early July and then split time between outfield and DH. Bobby wasn’t the best
fielder and he tended to have trouble with inside fastballs which helped contribute
to pretty high strikeout totals. But he was fast and the Brewers weren’t
exactly rife with outfield All-Stars. He’d get increasing at bats the next
couple years and then a lot more after he did his big move overseas.
Bobby Mitchell grew up in Norristown, PA,
and in high school he was a big deal basketball, baseball, and track star. His
senior year of ’61 he was all-state as a guard in hoops with his 13.8 ppg. In
baseball as a shortstop and relief pitcher he was all-district with a .313
average. And in track he broke the school and district record for high jump his
first time out with a 6’4.5” leap. After his graduation he...frankly, I have no
idea. In ’65 he pops up again when he qualifies for the AAU high jump
championship with a 6’9”. And he gets signed by Boston just prior to that summer. He could have
been in school I suppose, though there’s no record of that, or maybe the
military, but that would be an awfully long hitch. The rest of that summer he
played outfield in Rookie ball and did pretty well. In ’66 and ’67 he showed
pretty good speed in Double A, particularly the latter year when he swiped 36
bases. But he was also averaging over 100 K’s a season and in ’68 when he moved
up to Triple A his average fell a bunch and even though he put up some fat
triple and stolen base (42) totals, the Sox left him unprotected in the Rule 5
draft and the Yankees snapped him up. For the next three seasons he stayed in
Triple A for NY. ’69 was a mixed bag because he hit real well but made a slow
recovery from some knee damage the prior year and missed some time. In ’70 he
showed some decent power but his average fell a bunch. He made his MLB debut
that summer. In ’71 it was all Triple A with a revived average until a June
trade sent him to the Brewers with Frank Tepedino for Danny Walton.
Once Mitchell went to the
Brewers he moved to Milwaukee
the rest of the season. He started a few games all over the outfield but
outside of a big day in which he had two homers and five RBI’s his offense was
a tad light and he didn’t get too many looks. After the season he was sent back
down where in ’72 he reported huge numbers in Triple A but missed over five
weeks from a car accident and then more time due to cartilage damage to his
knee. His OBA was a huge .459 but again his high K totals – 76 in 273 at bats –
scared the brass. But he made it back up the next year and stayed in ’74 and
’75. That first year he got a few starts in right and center but was used
mostly as a DH and pinch hitter, raising his average to .243. In ’75 he put in
a bunch of time in left to kick off the season because regular guy Johnny
Briggs was injured. In mid-May he was hitting .333. His power numbers had a
pretty big move up also, but over the course of a bad season for the team, his
average and his playing time fell, the former to .249. He spent ’76 in Milwaukee’s spring training and then shortly after the
season began he moved to Japan
to play for the Nippon Ham Fighters. There he joined Walt Williams for a couple
seasons and Gene Locklear and Sam Ewing for a season apiece. His first two
seasons there he accumulated 57 homers and 141 RBI’s while hitting about .244.
He had his biggest year in ’78 when he led the league with 36 homers and put up
93 RBI’s while hitting .274 in an all-star season. In ’79 he hit 22
out in his last year as a player. Up top he finished with a .235 average in 609
at bats with 86 runs, 21 homers, and 91 RBI’s. In the minors ex-Japan he hit
.286 with 82 homers and over 150 stolen bases.
When Mitchell returned from
Asia he moved to California
where for many years he was a corrections officer. He also led baseball clinics
for local kids and made his high school’s hall of fame. He still resides in
central California.
Bobby could have gone 0 for
47 and still won that batting title. He’s another guy who sort of half scripts
and half prints his signature. I’m sorta dying to know what he did those four
years after high school.
By the time submissions
needed to be made for the baseball centennial of 1976 the Brewers hadn’t really
done very much milestone-wise. Tommy Harper in ’70 had put up the first ever AL 30-30 season which was nice, but Milwaukee opted for a different event from
that year: the return of baseball to the city for the first time since the Braves
split following the ’65 season. They got their big crowd of over 37,000 at County Stadium
and the fans were certainly zealous enough, but the highlights really end there
as the team continued its Seattle
ways and lost its April 7 home opener 12-0 to Andy Messersmith and the Angels.
Steve Hovley had three hits but there was understandably few other big Brewer
moments from that day.
This one’s easy because these
two obviously played together:
1. Mitchell and Tom Murphy ’74
to ’75 Brewers.
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