I want to start this post
with a few words about Baseball-Reference since it has been pivotal in making
it difficult for me to post. BR was always a great site and obviously an
excellent source of data for lots of people, including me. But I cannot go on
that site any more without their damn advertising search engines doing a “Big
Brother” on me so it can put up ads on the site as I peruse it that are
apparently tailor made for me. If I am on the site I have to shut down my
browser after about five minutes because all the searches chew up all my memory
and make it nearly impossible to do anything. I don’t know when those guys got
so greedy but it really is a pain in the butt and makes me want to go elsewhere
to look up stats. If anyone else out there regularly uses the site and has the
same issues you have my sympathy. I’d recommend getting AdBlock or a similar
program which seems to help a bit. And to anyone just doing random fly byes of
it you’ve been warned. Now back to real baseball.
For Round 2 or possible Round
3 of baseball players who look like adult film stars, we have Bernie Carbo and
his mustache which I think ranks behind only Dal Maxvill’s combo. Bernie is a
lot more serious than Dal was as he gazes skyward at what appears to be San Diego’s Jack Murphy
Stadium. Topps got him in one of those “looking up” poses and we know what that
means: yup, Bernie was traded. That’s why he’s on an AL card in an NL stadium. Bernie and pitcher
Rick Wise had been sent to Boston from St. Louis for outfielder
Reggie Smith and reliever Ken Tatum and all those guys except for Tatum would
have air-brushed cards in this set but not Traded ones. Bernie probably had
mixed feelings about going to the Sox. A mid-western kid, after a rough start
to the ’73 season he was hitting only .180 halfway through the year, he had a
nice bounce beginning July 4, going .329 with a .433 OBA the rest of the way.
So things were working out pretty well with the Cards as he seemed to recover
fully from his nasty sophomore season. But Boston gave up one of its stars – albeit an
unhappy one who wanted out – to get Bernie so he probably figured he was in for
a bunch of starting time at Fenway. He was right about that and it would also
be where he’d have the game of his career.
Bernie Carbo was a big sports
star in Livonia, Michigan,
a suburb of Detroit,
while growing up and as a senior in high school hit 13 homers while playing a
mean third base. But Bernie had an unhappy home life with a disapproving
abusive dad and by the time he was 16 was already an alcoholic. Still, the Reds
made him a first rounder in the first ever draft of ’65 and that summer, while
Bernie turned in an excellent year at third in A ball, he only hit .219 with no
homers. He improved substantially at that level in ’66 with a .269/15/57 line
but then fell to a .201/2/27 stat line in ’67 in Double A, a year he missed a
bunch of time to military duty. Meanwhile a guy drafted behind him named Johnny
Bench was going crazy and about to win Rookie of the Year when in ’68 Bernie
got a new manager in Double A named Sparky Anderson who rode him pretty hard
but also showed him attention and got nice numbers out of the kid. Bernie had a
.281/20/66 season with 16 stolen bases and a .411 OBA in a year in which he
re-established himself as a prospect. In doing that he also began spending
significant time in the outfield since Tony Perez was blocking him at third base.
Bernie had a monster arm and would generally be among league leaders in assists
from his new position. In ’69 he bumped things up a bunch with a .359/21/76
line with a .452 OBA in Triple A. His numbers were still compressed a bit due
to his missing games for military work – that would continue through ’72 – but
he made his debut late that year and was up for good in ’70.
In 1970 the Reds were on the
cusp of some big things. In the late Sixties they built an impressive infield
but outside of Pete Rose they hadn’t had too much outfield stability and their
pitching was always questionable. Prior to the ’70 season they landed speedster
Bobby Tolan and got some good role players to fill some outfield gaps. They
also got a new manager in Sparky Anderson and a couple exciting kids in Hal
McRae and Bernie Carbo from the minors. Bernie took over left field for Cincinnati and while he
continued to miss some time his numbers – which included a monster .454 OBA -
got him second place in NL ROY voting and a place on the Topps Rookie team as
well as TSN’s Rookie of the Year. But then a post-season in which he went o-fer
presaged a bad ’71 in which too much pressure to help fill the gap left by the
injured Tolan contributed to a definitive sophomore jinx year. By ’72 Bernie was
reduced to a pinch hitting role and had minimal plate appearances before a May
trade sent him to St. Louis
for first baseman/outfielder Joe Hague. In St.
Louis Bernie moved across to right field where he got starts after Matty Alou
had to move to first to replace Hague and Donn Clendenon, who was in retirement
mode. His average got a nice boost but his power numbers stayed low and he
became more of a contact guy while with the Cards. In ’73 he split time in
right with Luis Melendez and Jose Cruz, who did a mid-year swap between right
and left. After the ’73 revival Bernie moved to Boston.
In ’74 Carbo stepped into the
mix of young Boston
outfielders Rick Miller, Dwight Evans, and Juan Beniquez and put in corner
outfield time with the above and veteran Tommy Harper. His K totals were a bit
high and his average slipped to .249 his first year in the AL but in only 338 at bats he put up twelve
homers and 61 RBI’s. In ’75 Bernie realigned his K’s and walks, moved up in the
order, and had a hot start to the season, still hitting around the .300 level
in early July. But then he went into a slump and the Sox now had two new
full-timers in rookies Fred Lynn and Jim Rice so playing time was whittled down
over the course of the year. In September he mostly pinch hit. Still he put up
another pretty solid year with a .259/15/50 line with 64 runs and an OBA that
again reached the far side of .400 in only 319 at bats. He got shut out of any
playoff time and then only got pinch hit roles in the Series. But he maxed those
out big time. In Game 2 he hit one to deep left that got caught on the track. In
Game 3 he homered off Clay Carroll in the seventh inning. In Game 6 he launched
the homer that tied the game Carlton Fisk would win innings later. In Game 7 he
hit a double and overall he put up ten total bases and a walk in his eight
plate appearances. Good stuff but in ’76 he was on the bench nearly the whole
first half and got only 55 at bats before a June trade to Milwaukee for
outfielder Bobby Darwin and pitcher Tom Murphy. Bernie split the rest of the
year as a right fielder/DH for the Brewers but it wasn’t a pretty season. After
that year he was involved in a big trade when he and George Scott returned to
the Sox for Cecil Cooper. Bernie got some stepped up outfield time that season
and in his 228 at bats put up a .289/15/34 line with a .409 OBA. But he also
had 72 K’s and he was now permanently enmeshed on the wrong side of his BB/K
ratio. ‘78 then resembled ’76 in that he moved to another team in June, this
time Cleveland, though his numbers were considerably better with a .282 average
in his 220 at bats. For ’79 he signed with St. Louis as a free agent and was primarily a
pinch guy, with a .281/3/12 line in 64 at bats. He split his final MLB season
with the Cards and the Pirates before signing a Triple A contract with Detroit in ’81 and then
getting released. In ’82 he played his final season in Mexico. Bernie
finished with a .264 average with 96 homers, 358 RBI’s, and a .387 OBA for his
MLB numbers. In the post-season he hit .143 with two homers and four RBI’s in
his ten games.
Carbo would later reveal that
he was pretty much drunk or stoned during just about his whole professional
career. Immediately after he completed a degree program in cosmetology and
opened his own hairstyling place, which he ran for a number of years. He also
did some work at some local baseball schools but his life was in a downward
spiral that bottomed out in ’93 after his mom committed suicide and his own
family fell apart. Former Sox teammates Bill Lee and Fergie Jenkins turned him
on to the Baseball Assistance Team that year and Bernie took control of his
substance abuse issues and shortly thereafter started his Diamond Club Ministry
which makes presentations about baseball, religion, and substance abuse
worldwide. He returned to baseball formally when in 2004 and 2005 he managed
the independent Pensacola Pelicans, going a combined 108-80. He has a SABR page
and quite a few YouTube appearances.
Topps sticks with the minor
league stuff for Bernie’s bullets. Bernie was a colorful guy and was
well-liked. Before the ’75 Series a bunch of his former teammates on Cincinnati, including
Clay Carroll, sent him a signed team photo wishing him well. But after his
first homer off the pitcher Carroll apparently went to Bernie’s locker and tore
up the photo. When he was on deck for the second homer he was pretty sure
Sparky would bring in another reliever to face him and that he’d be pulled for
Juan Beniquez, a righty. But that didn’t happen and the results worked out
pretty well for Bernie.
Shortly after the resignation
and firing of various White House staff members at the end of April, the Senate
Watergate Committee was named. Chaired by Sam Ervin, Senator of North Carolina,
the committee decided to hold its hearings publicly since there had been so
many Grand Jury leaks regarding various testimonies. The hearings would be
televised by PBS and a rotation of the national networks ABC, NBC, and CBS.
5/18/73 – A day after the
committee officially began its proceedings James McCord, a Watergate burglar,
was called to testify. His testimony verified leaks from Grand Jury testimony
attributed to him in which he indicated that various White House staff members
knew beforehand and in fact helped plan the bugging of the Watergate Democratic
Headquarters as well as other establishments. Those named by McCord included
John Mitchell, John Dean, E. Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy
5/19/73 - Archibald Cox, a
Harvard law professor, is named Special Prosecutor to oversee the investigation
into the Watergate affair. Cox, a Democrat, was Solicitor General under the
Kennedy and Johnson administrations before leaving to teach. He was named by
newly-appointed Attorney General Elliott Richardson as his appointee after Richardson interviewed several candidates for the position
including Warren Christopher, who would be a Secretary of State in the Clinton administration.
These two guys played for Milwaukee, but years
apart:
1. Carbo and Tommy Harper ’74
Red Sox;
2. Harper and Al Downing ’70 Brewers.
I haven't noticed the problems with baseball reference, but now all of a sudden I can't do a "google news" search. Has anyone else noticed that one?
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