#656 - Adrian Garrett

Technically, this is the third rookie card for Adrian Garrett, big brother to the Mets’ Wayne. Adrian had a rookie card in the ’71 set and also back in ’66, when he had one under his nickname, Pat. That’s a mighty long gap and I would bet that Adrian had about the longest one between his initial rookie card and his first solo one – eight years – but I have not the time to research that one. This card commemorates his busiest MLB season to date during his second go-round in Chicago. After returning via a sale from Oakland late in ’72, Adrian had a short .377/8/20 line with a .515 OBA in just 53 at bats in Triple A and was recalled for some back-up work. Despite his card’s designation most of his plate time came as either a catcher or pinch hitter; his best offensive work was in the latter role in which he hit .286. Despite the minimal plate appearances to date Adrian was in the midst of a very long baseball career at the time of this card, in which he appears to be squirreled away somewhere in Candlestick. He wouldn’t see another card until ’76 when he would get his final MLB one on a different team and plate appearance-wise he was still a rookie. That, too, has gotta be about the longest run for anyone with that many cards. So in his own way Adrian helps get to the end of the set with some record-type tidbits.

Adrian Garrett was a big deal halfback and baseball player at Sarasota High School when he was signed by the Braves in ’61 and began his career that summer in D ball, hitting .242 for a couple teams. After ramping that up the following year to a .254/19/87 line with a .385 OBA, he would begin a long run at stops with an A at the beginning. He split ’63 between A and Double A, recording a .249/13/60 line in his 277 at bats while missing half the season for his military commitment. ’64 was spent entirely at the higher level where his power was reduced a bunch but his average moved higher in a .280/7/48/.355 season in 477 at bats. In ’65 he moved up to Triple A and earned his first rookie card on the basis of his .224/20/63/.319 season in which he was one of the Braves’ system’s biggest homer producers. But that year, despite his debut in Atlanta, he slumped pretty hard - .196/16/40 in 342 at bats – and he spent most of ’67 in Double A. That year he put up much better numbers with a .257/28/92/.350 line and hit .310 in his few games up in Triple A and also began playing third base in addition to his outfield duties. ’68 was a bit messy as his line slid to .212/12/37 in 363 at bats at both levels. But he enjoyed a big bounce in a ’69 spent primarily in Double A, putting up a .254/24/77/.382 line. After the season he was released by the Braves, picked up and released by the Phillies, and picked up by the Cubs.

With Chicago in ’70 Garrett would get some more MLB at bats and would spend most of his time in Double A where he had a .277/29/86/.365 line while leading his league in homers. He then moved up to Triple A, where he enjoyed his biggest season, posting a .289/43/119/.406 line that drew attention from the vastly improving Oakland A’s. Late that August they picked up Adrian for catcher Frank Fernandez and Adrian spent the balance of the season doing some left field and pinch hitting work for the division champs. He also spent a bit of the summer with the team as well in ’72 but most of the year was spent in Triple A where he posted a .277/12/32.372 line in his 220 at bats. Then came the September sale to Chicago and after his work in ’73 he got a few more at bats up top but spent most of ’74 back in Triple A where he had another big season, in just 318 at bats posting a .280/26/83/.414 line. He pretty much mirrored that success in ’75 when he put up .321/12/48/.380 numbers in half a season before a sale to California, where he finished the year with his best MLB totals by far: a .262 average with six homers and 18 RBI’s in 107 at bats, nearly all at first base or DH. In ’76 he caught a few games for the Angels before a sale to San Diego landed him back in Triple A where he again hit well, with a .310/9/31/.360 line in 126 at bats. That would be it for his time in The States and Adrian finished with MLB totals of a .185 average, eleven homers and 37 RBI’s in his 276 at bats. He also had 87 strikeouts which helps explain why he never stuck. In the minors he hit .259 with 280 homers, 961 RBI’s, and a .360 OBA.

As has been a recent trend, Garrett moved on to Japan after his US playing time ended and had a pretty good run there, pretty much parallel with Gail Hopkins from a few posts back. He spent three seasons with Hiroshima where his first two were by far his best: a .279/35/91/.358 line in ’77; and a .271/40/97/.378 line in ’78. In ’79 his numbers fell to .225/27/59/.326 but that was the year he helped the Carp take the Japanese Series, a fitting way to go out as a player. He then returned to the US, spending a few years in the White Sox system, as a coach (’80-’81); minor league hitting instructor (’85); and manager (’82-’84), going a combined 169-150. After a year off he moved to the Kansas City system where he coached a season in the minors (’87) and then five in Kansas City (’88-’92). Then it was on to the Marlins where he was a minor league hitting coach (’93-’98) and hitting coordinator (’99-2001). After another year off he hooked up with Cincinnati where from 2003 through 2011 he served as the Triple A hitting coach. Since 2012 he has been employed by the Reds as a part time coach. Busy boy.

This being Adrian’s first solo card, he has yet another tidbit of never having his annual minor league stats appear on a Topps card. Expanding on the star bullets, he led four leagues in homers in the US and did so once in Japan. He got into catching in spring training of ’73 when Pete Reiser, a Cubs coach at the time, suggested he give it a shot to help him stick. So he did tons of bullpen and batting practice catching and it would be his primary position in three MLB seasons. Another brother Charlie also played pro ball but he only got as high as Double A as his career was interrupted by two full years of military duty. Adrian has a very expansive “Bullpen” tab on baseball-reference.

Sometimes for these guys with limited at bats these paths can be pretty long:

1. Garrett and Joe Lahoud ’75 to ’76 Angels;

2. Lahoud and Reggie Smith ’68 to ’71 Red Sox;

3. Smith and Mike Tyson ’74 to ’76 Cardinals.

#650 - Mike Epstein

And the penultimate action shot belongs to .... Mike Epstein on his last Topps card swinging away at Yankee Stadium and apparently connecting since it looks like Thurman Munson’s glove is empty. Mike got back to California the hard way – through the Texas Rangers – and by the time this card came out was pretty much done emotionally with his first go in baseball. According to the book “Seasons in Hell” Mike was admittedly mailing it in and was more interested in getting his pilot’s license than in anything going on on the field. Looking at this photo, though, he still seemed to have the ability to uncork a huge swing every now and then. This shot was taken in either early June or September since those were the only two times since Epstein’s acquisition he played in NY for California and I believe this shot is from the same game as the one of Vada Pinson. Mike got with the Angels via a May trade that moved him, Rick Stelmaszek, and Rich Hand for Jim Spencer and Lloyd Allen. That was after the trade that got him out of Oakland initially, when he was sent to Texas rather cheaply for reliever Horacio Pina. That trade was initiated by one of two events, depending on the source: Mike’s o-fer performance in the ’72 Series (A’s owner Charlie O); or Mike’s laying out of Reggie Jackson in the locker room (Epstein). Either way it led to a pretty fast decline for Mike who would go from getting some MVP votes for his ’72 work to being out of the game less tan two years later. But he wouldn’t stay away for too long...

Mike Epstein was a big kid born in the Bronx, NYC. Sometime after he was bar mitzvahed his family relocated to the west coast and Mike went to high school in LA where he was all-area as both a fullback and a first baseman. He then went to Berkeley where he continued to play both sports and after hitting .375 his sophomore year was wooed by the Dodgers via Tommy Lasorda but remained in school at his dad’s insistence. In ’64 he upped his average to nearly .400, made All-American, and was selected to the first ever US Olympic baseball team. He then signed with the Orioles, put in some IL time, and returned to Berkeley to finish his studies. In ’65 he broke in with a bang, putting up a .338/30/109 line in A ball while playing first. In ’66 he jumped to Triple A where his line of .302/29/102 earned him TSN’s Minor League Player of the Year and a brief end of season look in Baltimore. Around then Boog Powell had settled in at first base so Baltimore wanted to turn Mike into an outfielder, which would require more time in the minors. Mike balked and early in June of the ’67 season after barely playing he was sent to DC for pitcher Pete Richert.  He immediately took over first but he was putting up too many K’s and not enough power so by the end of the season he was splitting starts with Dick Nen. After winter ball and a good spring training Mike was back in as the regular guy in ’68 but by mid-May his average was still below .100 so he returned to Triple A for some hitting work where he put up a .400/5/13 line in just eleven games. He was back up top in June and hit .276 with twelve homers and 31 RBI’s the rest of the way.

In ’69 Washington named a new manager in Ted Williams and Epstein would become one of Ted’s star pupils. Pretty much all of Mike’s offensive numbers would rise significantly and that season he sported a .414 OBA as the Nats put up their first winning season in this rendition. Expansion probably contributed to those numbers, though, and the next year Mike fell back to earth a bit. The next year Oakland was looking for a power guy at first and Mike went to the A’s with reliever Darold Knowles for catcher Frank Fernandez, first baseman Don Mincher, and reliever Paul Lindblad that May. He got the lion’s share of work at first the rest of the way, continued to have pretty good OBA numbers, and got his first post-season action. Then in ’72 he led Oakland in homers and got his Series win though he didn’t have such a great time offensively. That November he was sent to Texas and he then finished things early in the ’74 season with California. For his career Mike hit .244 with 130 homers, 380 RBI’s, and a .358 OBA. In the post-season he hit .108 with a homer in his 13 games and in just over two minor league seasons he hit .325 with 64 homers and 224 RBI’s.

As mentioned above, Epstein had sort of moved away emotionally from baseball by the time he retired. He would relocate to Colorado where he had his own ranch and also his own precious metals company for a few years. But the baseball bug never left him entirely. By the early Nineties he was in the San Diego area and coaching, first for a big deal amateur team and then in the Milwaukee system (’93, when he also went 4-7 as an interim manager), for some independent teams (’96-’99), and in the San Diego system (2000). He also coached at San Diego High School in ’95. Since about ’94 he has also run his own hitting school which by now has a sort of national network and has developed a system called rotational hitting. Both Mike and his son are busily involved in the school and if that photo on the site is recent Mike looks damn good.

This is a good swan song card and has some serious star bullets. Per the cartoon, Mike was no Ron Hunt, but every season from ’68 to ’72 he was in the top four in the AL for HBP. After coming across the “Seasons in Hell” book for the Joe Lovitto post I had to hunt it down. It’s a hilarious book with lots of behind the scenes dope of the Rangers from ’73 to ’75. Though Epstein was barely there at the time, he gets lots of mention, especially in a bit in which he pissed off some former teammates after being traded to California by indicating none of them was incentivized to win. Texas then won its next three games against California to kick off its only real winning streak that year.

Another hook-up that takes us through the AL:

1. Epstein and Bernie Allen ’67 to ’71 Senators;

2. Allen and Roy White ’72 to ’73 Yankees;

3. White and Fernando Gonzolez ’74 Yankees.

#649 - Fernando Gonzalez

I know we’re coming down to the wire here and sometimes when that happened Topps was fishing for guys to put on the cards. But two cards for a guy with 51 MLB at bats? That’s a little crazy. In the ’76 set Topps gave rookie Willie Randolph a Traded card but that was actually pretty cool, plus Willie was an integral part of a pennant winner that year. Not so for Fernando here, though his path would sort of follow Willie’s in that he’d get with the Yankees eventually. Here he’s sort of hanging out in Pittsburgh as a seldom-used back-up at third base and a pinch hitter. Unlike Terry Crowley from the previous post Fernando wouldn’t develop into a franchise in that latter role but he would get some time as a regular elsewhere in the infield. Here he poses at Shea, most likely in September since that was the only series in which he played there. He was up top nearly the whole season except for a couple mid-summer months back in Triple A where he put up a nice average with zero power. On his Traded card he looks plain nasty, like he's ready to be cast in one of those Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. This one’s a spring training shot with Al Oliver in the background when hopes should have been high for Fernando since he was probably coming off a pretty good season when this shot was taken but I guess he’s showing his poker face. I think if I saw that mug in a game I’d just fold.

Fernando Gonzalez was signed out of Puerto Rico by the new Seattle Pilots in late ’68. For them he seemed to have hit well enough in A ball but his fielding at his primary middle infield positions was pretty awful and he was released. He spent ’70 playing semi-pro ball in Canada, returned to PR for winter ball where he was managed by Roberto Clemente, and did well enough to get signed by Pittsburgh at the star’s recommendation. Back in A ball he hit a ton and more importantly fielded significantly better while playing primarily shortstop. In ’72 he moved up to Double A where he had another big offensive year and moved to the hot corner on defense before making his debut with the Pirates. After the trade shown here he moved to Kansas City where he got some nominal field time before being sold to the Yankees in May. NY was sort of in a transition mode that year at second base as longtime regular Horace Clarke had been sent to San Diego and Sandy Alomar had yet to arrive from California. So Fernando got his first regular MLB gig at second before his low average allowed Alomar to take over the spot and get Fernando sent back to Triple A where his past offensive success at that level was elusive. During spring training in ’75 he was released.

Gonzalez hooked up with the Poza Rica team in the Mexican League the first half of the ’75 season and in July was re-acquired by Pittsburgh to finish out the season in Triple A, where he hit at a .279 clip while returning to third base. He remained there for all of ’76 where he posted a .321/13/70 line as the regular corner guy. He then returned to the big club in ’77 where he did back-up work at third and in the outfield and put up some respectable offensive numbers with a .276/4/27 line in his 181 at bats. He began ’78 in the same role but wasn’t getting nearly as much work before he was plucked off waivers by San Diego. The Padres were also in a bit of a jam at second as high profile kid Mike Champion didn’t work out and Fernando immediately stepped into the starting role, hitting .250 the rest of the way while providing some pretty good defense. In ’79 he was the starter early in the year and he started strongly with a .300 average the first month-plus but when his streak ran out it did so hard and by the end of the year displaced shortstop – by Ozzie Smith – Billy Almon moved over as the starting guy. Prior to the ’80 season the Padres picked up Dave Cash to take over second full time and Fernando was released. He hooked up with California and that year had a .311/16/70 line in Triple A while splitting time between second and third but didn’t get any call. In ’81 he began the season hitting .274 in the same role but was released and then returned to Mexico to play. He did that the next four years and then in mid-’84 returned to the States to coach and play for the Yankees Double A franchise, hitting .257 in 60 games. That was his final work as a player and Fernando finished with a .235 MLB average on top of his .297 minor league one.

Gonzalez played Senior League ball in ’89 and seems to have worked a bit in Mexico and Puerto Rico as a coach after he played but nothing specific is out there.

Maybe that big ’72 warranted the rookie double card thing. The cartoon was a big help for the bio since everywhere else it just said he was out of pro ball. Despite what I said above Fernando actually had some nice numbers as a pinch hitter. In ’77 he hit .370 in that role with a .429 OBA and nine RBI’s in his 27 pinch at bats and in ’78 he hit .444 with a .500 OBA in his ten plate appearances.

Fernando was part of a pretty big trade and all the other principals have the double cards as well. “Originally drafted by the A’s”, huh? That may be a typo because I have found no relationship between Fernando and Oakland in my research.

These two sure aren’t going to get linked by the teams on their Traded cards:

1. Gonzalez and Rick Dempsey ’74 Yankees;

2. Dempsey and Terry Crowley ’76 to ’82 Orioles.

#646 - George Foster

What we have here is a high-hatted George Foster looking concerned about something, perhaps his career? Two years after coming to Cincinnati to replace the injured Bobby Tolan in center George, bedeviled by a low average and many strikeouts, was in the minors for most of the ’73 season. While his Triple A numbers were by no means eye-popping – a .262 average with 15 homers, 60 RBI’s, and 109 K’s in 496 at bats – his time there certainly seemed to have done the trick. While those K totals weren’t exactly low they were a long way better than his ratio up until then in MLB at bats, which was more than one in four. After about a year-plus of settling in time George would become the biggest slugger in the mid- to late-Seventies version of the Big Red Machine and eventually earn himself a fat payday on the free agent market. So no need for concern, at least not for another decade.

George Foster was born in Alabama but had relocated to California by the time he was in high school. Cut from his freshman team he started lifting weights and made the roster the rest of his HS time and played football and ran track as well. After graduating in ’67 he tried out for the Dodgers but didn’t make the cut and instead went to nearby El Camino College, where he continued to participate in all three sports. In the meantime he’d been selected in the January ’68 draft by the Giants and once his college season ended he signed and hit .277 in A ball with not too much power. In ’69 he put up much better numbers at that level with a .321/14/85 line and a .381 OBA before his successful September debut in a couple games. In ’70 he played nearly the whole season in Triple A where his line was .308/8/66 before he again hit well in some short time in San Francisco. Back then the Giants were awash in young outfielders, fielding two spots on the ’68 Topps Rookie team in Bobby Bonds and Dave Marshall, and also sporting a franchise roster that included Ken Henderson, Bernie Williams, Garry Maddox, and Gary Matthews. In ’71 George was pulled up to San Francisco as one of the bunch and while he hit OK while playing the outfield corners, the Giants decided they needed more help in the infield and traded George that May to Cincinnati for shortstop Frank Duffy and minor league pitcher Vern Geishert. Eventually it would turn into another monster deal for the Reds but at the time they were desperate for a center fielder to fill the spot made open by Bobby Tolan’s pre-season injury. George did not so bad defensively: he had a big arm and covered enough ground but he wasn’t the most accurate thrower. And offensively his power wasn’t too bad but he at times seemed overmatched at the plate and he wasn’t the offensive catalyst Bobby was in ’70. When Tolan returned in ’72 and the Machine made that big deal with Houston, the presence of Tolan and new guy Cesar Geronimo pushed George to a back-up role which didn’t really suit him as his average floundered and he struck out once every three at bats.

After the transitional year of ’73 Foster was back up for good. Tolan was gone, having experienced his own funk in ’73, and the outfield was populated by Pete Rose, off-season acquirees Merv Rettenmund and Terry Crowley, and a bunch of young guys including Geronimo, Ken Griffey, Dan Driessen, and George. For the ’74 season George shared time at the corner spots with Driessen and Griffey while Geronimo took over center field. George hit well enough, posting a .264/7/41 line in his 276 at bats. The Reds continued that system to start the ’75 season but then blew it up a bit in a good way by moving Rose to third base and giving Griffey and George the regular corner spots, Foster taking over left field. His numbers improved markedly to a .300/23/78 line, and he followed up his year with a nice post-season. In ’76, now a regular from day one, he became an All-Star by putting up a line of .306/29/121 while keeping the K’s relatively low and leading the NL in RBI’s which he would also do the next two years. ‘77 was his big MVP season with his .320/52/149 line with 124 runs and a .382 OBA. He led the NL with his totals in runs, homers, and RBI’s, becoming the first NL guy to post over 50 homers since Willie Mays in ’65 and the first NLer with that many RBI’s since Tommie Davis in ’62. In ’78 he again led the league in homers and RBI’s while recording a .281/40/120 line as he continued to do well despite the loss the last two seasons of Tony Perez behind him in the line-up. The next few seasons George would continue to post excellent numbers though they would be discounts to his big three seasons due to various factors: .302/30/98 despite missing over a month in the summer of ’79 due to injury; .273/25/93 after the departure of Joe Morgan and Johnny Bench’s injury meant lots less protection in the line-up; and .295/22/90 while missing about a third of the season due to the strike. By then George was looking for the big bucks and though he departed Cincy in a trade to the Mets for Jim Kern, Alex Trevino, and Greg Harris, it was really sort of his departure to free agency.

The Mets of the late Seventies and early Eighties were a pretty sorry bunch and the acquisition of Foster was hailed as the beginning of a turnaround. But even the post-Morgan, Rose, and Perez line-up of the recent Reds teams was vastly superior to the one George joined in ’82. Young outfielder Mookie Wilson and third baseman Hubie Brooks showed promise but the rest of the batting order was nothing special and the dynamic mound staff was a thing of the past. George had a pretty terrible first year as he put up a line of .247/13/70 while overswinging helped pile up the strikeouts. That didn’t make too many NY fans happy and poor George was christened with the new last name of Flopster. He would recover a bit the next two years to lines of .241/28/90 in ’83 and .269/24/86 in ’84 as some key acquisitions and the development of the young guys put the Mets in the right direction. In ’85 he had a line of .263/21/77 as the Mets moved to the cusp of the playoffs with the acquisition of Gary Carter. Early in the ’86 season George was still getting starts in left but he began to be pushed for time by kids Lenny Dykstra and Kevin Mitchell. When his complaint about playing time – either on his own behalf or that of Mookie Wilson’s, depending on the source – took perceived racial overtones he was released and missed the post-season. After playing a couple weeks with the White Sox he was done. George finished with a .274 average with 348 homers and 1,239 RBI’s. He made five All-Star teams, was a Silver Slugger once, and in 23 post-season games hit .289 with three homers and twelve RBI’s.

Despite the tough times in NY after Foster retired he made the area his home and settled in Connecticut. There he began a ministry and worked with various levels of kids in team and private baseball coaching. He initially ran a non-profit in the Dayton area and since has started his own group that benefits children of military personnel. He continues to coach privately and also does motivational speaking.

An early playoff highlight occupies one star bullet and those four homers are pretty impressive for only 39 ’73 at bats.This card is really off center.

These two were a decade apart as Mets:

1. Foster and Tom Seaver ’83 Mets;

2. Seaver and Ken Boswell ’67 to ’74 Mets.

#633 - Dave Hamilton

I know Dave Hamilton is only chewing on a wad of chaw in this photo but from that expression on his face it appears he may have also been recently engaging another substance. That may explain why he appears to be at about a 45 degree angle with the field behind him. On the plus side Dave breaks a recent string of final cards with his second one for Topps. Dave was in the midst of his first run in Oakland during which he was generally the fifth/spot starter in a pretty loaded rotation. It was a good time to be in that position since in each of his first three seasons Dave’s team won the Series. ‘73 was a bit of a streaky season for Dave. He began the year back in Triple A and had a nice enough run in the rotation to return to Oakland in early June. After a couple sloppy early starts he went on a nice run and by the end of the month was 5-1 with a 2.85 ERA. But July brought three straight bad starts and by mid-August, after being moved to the pen, he was back in the minors. He returned for a couple late games in September but then got shut out of any Series action. Dave tended to be a streaky guy which was part of what delayed his ascension to the MLB level. Here he looks like he needs to get out of the sun in Oakland.

Dave Hamilton grew up in Edmonds, Washington, where he played hoops and baseball. In the latter sport his senior year in high school he went 8-0 with a 1.19 ERA and fanned 114 batters in his 59 innings. Those stats helped make him a fifth-round choice by Kansas City in the ’66 draft. That year in A ball his ERA was a bit high but he got lots of strikeouts. The next year he began his military reserve work, missing a bunch of games, but got his ERA down a bit when he was able to play, keeping the K’s above one an inning. He then split ’68 between two teams at that level, again in the rotation, where he had odd experiences. At his first stop he went 3-5 as his ERA climbed again; at his second he pitched much better ball, lowering his ERA by nearly two runs, but somehow went 0-7. Things got a bit better at that level in ’69 and then more-so in his few starts in Double A so in ‘70 he finally stuck at a higher level as he spent that whole season in Double A. Then in ’71 he put together a nice season as a swing guy in Triple A before kicking off the ’72 season with another excellent record in his eight starts at that level. Late that May he was promoted to Oakland.

In ’72 upon being called up, Hamilton walked smack into a division run and put up a win in his first start. By the end of June he was 5-1 with a 1.30 ERA and got everyone thinking of Vida Blue’s run when he first came up a couple years earlier. July and early August were a bit tougher though and by the middle of the latter month he was in the pen where his numbers got a bit better and he added a save. His post-season numbers weren’t too hot though and in ’73 he pretty much ran the same way, though the ERA was considerably higher. In ’74 he got a few spare innings in the pen until he returned to the rotation in mid-May and went on another of his runs, closing June with a 5-1 record and 2.82 ERA. So far his MLB records through June were 15-3. He then followed suit, cooling off a bit and working out of both the rotation and the pen. In neither that nor the former season did he see any post-season action. In ’75 the A’s weren’t as flexible and while Dave pitched well enough in his first three starts, a couple mediocre ones moved him to the pen by May and in June he was sent to the White Sox with outfielder Chet Lemon for pitchers Stan Bahnsen and Skip Pitlock. There Dave started his first game but then was exclusively a reliever and finished the year 7-7 with a 3.25 ERA and six saves.

With Chicago Hamilton was a reliever nearly all the time and his first full season of ’76 closed most of his games, recording a record of 6-6 with a 3.59 ERA and ten saves. In ’77 he moved to more of a set-up role though his numbers stayed pretty much the same as he went 4-5 with a 3.61 ERA and nine saves. Following that season he and pitcher Silvio Martinez went to St. Louis for reliever Clay Carroll. Things didn’t go too well for Dave in that other league as he went a combined 0-2 with one save and a 4.46 ERA in only 40 innings of work. Following that season he returned to the AL and Oakland as a free agent and in ’79 was a spot guy and reliever as he went 3-4 with a 3.70 ERA and five saves for a pretty poor team. In ’80 some tough times up top got him moved to Triple A for most of the season where he did some OK work out of the pen. After putting in a few innings at that level in ’81 Dave was done. He finished with an MLB record of 39-41 with a 3.85 ERA, four complete games, a shutout, and 31 saves. In the post-season he put up a 27.00 ERA in his three games and was 53-48 in the minors.

Hamilton would settle full-time in the San Ramon area of California where he became a foreman for a roofing contractor company and beginning in ’96 the head baseball coach at that town’s California High School. He was still at that second role through at least 2007 and looks like he put up some pretty good records there.

That is the second or third “most inspirational player” award I have seen on the backs of these cards. My school didn’t have those back then. Maybe it was a more benign title for team mvp? I assume Dave was a guard.

11/17/73 – President Nixon, in a televised meeting with a bunch of Associated Press newspaper editors, discusses Watergate a bit among other subjects. During the speech he utters his famous “I am not a crook” line as he defends his record while in public service.

11/21/73 – By this time the process had begun in summarizing the White House tapes according to the original deal between the Senate Committee and the White House. In the meantime the Supreme Court was still reviewing whether or not to demand a full release of the tapes. On this date the White House reported that two of the specifically-requested tapes were missing. One of the tapes would turn out to be the one in which over 18 minutes of conversation between President Nixon and former White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman was blank. That tape was made three days after the Watergate break-in so it was widely believed that the deleted conversation must have included the break-in as a topic. It was this tape that Nixon’s personal secretary Rose Mary Woods said she must have inadvertently erased as she was transcribing the tapes.

Normally these cross-league hook-ups are tough but one guy helps out huge here:

1. Hamilton and Jesus Alou ’73 to ’74 A’s;

2. Alou and George Culver ’70 to ’72 Astros.

#625 - Ollie Brown

We get away from the final cards with this post but not the air-brush ones as Ollie Brown shows us what may be a smile at what may be Shea Stadium. Ollie’s new uniform, courtesy of the Topps artists, is one in which he never played as he had been sold to Houston before ’74 spring training ended. And if I am correct about the stadium designation then this is another photo at least two years old. Regardless, though Ollie looks reasonably happy, ’73 was a mixed year for him. In his second season with Milwaukee he was named the Opening Day DH and so was one of the first guys to ply that trade. He had a couple of good early games but by mid-May his average had tailed off to Mendoza levels. Then, though his average began to bounce, he was platooned the rest of the way with Joe Lahoud and Darrell Porter. From early June to season’s end he hit well over .300 but continued to be used in only about half the games. After the season he joined Lahoud, Skip Lockwood, and Ellie Rodriguez in a trade to the Angels for Steve Barber, Ken Berry, Art Kusnyer, and Clyde Wright. Ollie joins just about all those guys in being air-brushed into a non-Traded traded card for his new team.

Ollie Brown was born in Alabama but grew up in Long Beach, California, where he was the middle child of three who had professional careers: Willie, after playing at USC, was a running back and returns specialist in the NFL; and Oscar was an outfielder for the Braves. Ollie was a guard/forward in hoops in high school and in ’60 led his school to the California state championship in that sport. In baseball he was a pitcher and an outfielder and the summer after he graduated he was signed by San Francisco and assigned to a D team in Salem, Virginia. But Ollie wasn’t too happy that on that team’s first road trip he and his black teammates couldn’t stay in the same hotel as the white guys so he asked the team to move him. Pretty gutsy move for a kid not hitting terribly well, but the Giants complied and moved him to Decatur, another D team in the Midwest League. There Ollie hit better, raising his average to .230 from .167, and banged out ten homers in 235 at bats from the leadoff spot. In ’63 Decatur became an A-level team and there Ollie moved to the mound, going 9-8 in the rotation, but with high walk totals – over a BB an inning – and a high ERA. He hit better though too, posting a .304 average, and in ’64 he moved out to Fresno, the club’s California League A team, and back to the outfield. Good move by the Giants as Ollie put up a line of .329/40/133 and led his league in just about every offensive category. That was the year he earned the nickname “Downtown” since that’s where a lot of the balls he hit seemed to want to go. In ’65 he moved up to Triple A where he put up a line of .293/27/81 with 15 stolen bases. He led his league in outfield assists as well and then made his MLB debut. In ’66 the trade of Matty Alou helped Ollie stay in San Francisco and he got a bunch of starts in right but when his offense got a bit thin he returned to Triple A for about a month in the summer. After a line of .343/9/29 in just 103 at bats he returned to the bay. Ollie had a huge arm and he came in third that year in assists from right field. In ’68 the emergence of young outfielders Bobby Bonds and Dave Marshall helped push Ollie to a reserve role and some time back in Triple A but the run at the lower level was a big discount to his one in ’66. After the season he was the first pick by San Diego in the expansion draft.

Brown immediately stepped into the starting spot in right field for the Padres and was one of the team’s first most consistent hitters. In ’69 he set PR’s in just about every offensive category and in ’70 he topped nearly all of them as he teamed with Clarence Gaston and Nate Colbert to give San Diego a serious offensive trio. In ’71 Gaston crashed and Ollie, who batted ahead of Gaston, put up discounted power numbers, though he topped out in OBA with a .346. Then in ’72 a slow start at the plate contributed to a May trade to Oakland for Curt Blefary and others. With the A’s Ollie initially got some starts in center and then moved to right as his power depletion continued. In June he was sort of traded to Milwaukee for Billy Conigliaro – check out that card to see that transactional mess – and rediscovered his stroke while platooning in right with Joe Lahoud the rest of the way. The next year he became the first Brewers DH, went to California, and the following spring to Houston. With the Astros Ollie did some reserve work in right while hitting .217 in 23 games. Then he was on the move again, this time to Philadelphia off waivers in late June. With the Phillies Ollie initially got some work in left field, hitting .242 the rest of the way. He then settled in for a three-year run as the team’s fourth or fifth outfielder. In ’75 he had a line of .303/6/26 in 145 at bats and in ’76 .254/5/30 in 205 at bats. His plate time diminished a bunch in ’77, his final season. Ollie finished with a .265 average, 102 homers, and 454 RBI’s and got a walk in his five post-season plate appearances. Defensively he is in the top 100 for assists from right field and twice led his league in double plays from that position.

Brown did some real estate work after he played in southern California. He also formed a marketing company with his wife but was admittedly semi-retired once his playing time was over. He gets some face time in a 2009 interview I managed to find (yes Matt, the Google news feature is pretty much shut down) in which he looks pretty healthy while riding around the Padres field in a convertible with Dave Winfield.

Ollie’s cards’ narratives frequently included mention of his pitching gem and his big ’64 season. He and his brothers attended the same high school later attended by the Gwynns.

Since there are only 35 cards left in the set I think it’s time to pick up the Watergate stuff. By this point in the recap the televised hearings had been going on for a few weeks and much of the testimony was by role players asserting – or not – many allegations made by James McCord earlier in the hearings.

5/22/73 – President Nixon gives a televised statement specifically in regard to Watergate. In it he categorically denies his involvement in any activities related to the break-in and subsequent events related to it. But he then hedges his bets a bit by indicating his involvement in a few activities put in motion to safeguard “national security” including authorizing the group of plumbers established to undertake the suppression of information leaks. He also admitted his involvement in several wire-tapping activities, all of which he declared were legal. He named people involved in plumbers’ activities, none of whom was terribly surprising at this point: Liddy, Hunt, Erlichman, Haldeman, and Dean. He didn’t exactly throw them under the bus – except for Dean – but he didn’t exactly take responsibility for their exploits either. He also initially denied CIA involvement in the whole affair but then rambled on about how one – one meaning he – might have believed the CIA was at the heart of the matter. If the speech was meant to throw off the wolves, it really didn’t do a very good job.

6/3/73 – The Washington Post reports that John Dean was planning on testifying that President Nixon was deeply involved in the cover-up of Watergate and participated in around 35 meetings with Dean and others subsequent to the break-in. Dean did not indicate that Nixon had any knowledge of the break-in prior to the event itself and also indicated all his evidence was authored by himself and was therefore limited to his actual testimony. He also indicated he was never actually asked to run his own investigation of the Watergate affair and that he frequently also met with John Erlichman and H.R. Haldeman with and without the President. The reports came from a few independent sources of Bob Woodward’s and Carl Bernstein’s and also included Dean’s pronouncement to Nixon in April that to save the presidency, he (Dean), Erlichman, and Haldeman needed to come clean regarding their activities to the various investigative bodies. Initially Dean believed the others agreed with that notion; when Erlichman and Haldeman subsequently shot it down Dean believed he would become the scapegoat for the operation and began plans to work out a deal of immunity in exchange for his testimony. He would appear before the Watergate Committee later in June.

This is an easy hook-up because of all of Miller’s travels:

1. Brown and Bob Miller ’71 Padres.

A team card is next up which means a big delay in posts. Everyone who is celebrating have a great Xmas and a Happy New Year.

#624 - Bob Miller

There is a lot to say about this card. First of all it is the third card in a row that represents the subject's final Topps card as a player. Bob Miller had at this point had a pretty long run that began in the Fifties and, especially recently, had covered a whole bunch of teams. Secondly, this is a damn ugly card, which we have happily been without for a long time. Nothing against Mr. Miller, who in younger years was a good looking guy, but he is all of 33 years old at the oldest (see below) in this photo and he looks 20 years older. Plus this must be about the nastiest air-brush job in the set, with Bob’s Pirates uniform being compromised into a Mets one. The neck line is horrific and the hat looks like a pile of atomic waste. Third, the newest this card is is from ’72 and it may even be much earlier because the background is very Forbes Field-ish and that park closed in ’70. So it’s probably a spring training shot. Lastly, and best-ly (I know that’s not even a hyphenated word but you get the drift) it has Roberto Clemente in the background, which is awfully nice and pulls the card back to respectability. Don Leppert appears to be there also over Bob’s right shoulder, but I’m no good with the rest of those guys. ’73 was an all too-typical year for Bob in the Seventies: lots of traveling conjoined with some pretty good pitching. He actually went through nearly all of spring training with Pittsburgh, only to get released right at the end of it. Immediately picked up by the Padres he got off to a pretty good start in relief until some messy outings in May pushed up his ERA. Unfortunately, too, in not one of the San Diego games in which he pitched did the team record a win. So after 18 games he was placed on waivers from which he was again snatched pretty quickly, this time by Detroit. Bob won two of his first three games with the Tigers, threw generally good ball, and added a save through late September. He was then sold to NY for a very short stretch drive, especially for him since he only threw one inning. So Topps really didn’t get much of an opportunity to not airbrush Bob. But it would be nice if they did a better job.

Bob Miller grew up in St. Louis where at Beaumont High School he went 22-1 during his career and 12-0 as a senior. He also led his team to the American Legion national championship and in ’57 was signed as a bonus baby by St. Louis out of high school. Like most players signed under that umbrella Bob rarely played his first year and after the rule associated with those kinds of signings was changed in ’58 he went to the minors. After beginning the year in Triple A with a bit of a fat ERA he moved to Double A where he went 8-11 with a 3.54 ERA in the rotation. The next year he pretty much matched those numbers in Triple A – 8-12 with a 3.50 ERA – before he returned to St. Louis that August, winning his first game in his first start. He threw well the rest of the way but then had an injury-filled ’60 during which he missed most of the middle part of the season and did some Double A rehab time. In ’61 he moved to a reserve role and saw a spike in his ERA – but everybody did that year – and recorded his first three saves. After that season he was one of the early round picks by the new Mets in the expansion draft.

Miller spent most of the ’62 season in the NY rotation but probably wished he didn’t. He lost his first 12 games and didn’t put up his first win of the season until late September. Mercifully he was traded after the season to LA for Larry Burright and Tim Harkness, two infielders. Bob’s timing was pretty good and his first year he worked as a swing guy for the Series winners, getting a save in his relief work. After being shut out of any post-season work he was pretty much strictly a reliever the next few seasons. In ’64 he led the NL with his 74 appearances and recorded nine saves. He hit that save total again in ’65 and then put up five in ’66. Both those years he threw shutout ball in the Series. In ’67 the Dodgers did a fast fade and Bob went right with them as both his record and his ERA deteriorated and he was shut out in the saves department. In ’68 he went to Minnesota in a big trade with Johnny Roseboro and Ron Perranoski for Mudcat Grant and Zoilo Versalles. With the Twins Bob basically did set-up work for Perranoski and over the next two years garnered five saves for himself. In ’69 he added some spot starts which bumped up his innings and returned to the post-season. Then with the beginning of the Seventies came the real onset of his travels. Three years during that decade he played for three teams, beginning in ’70 when prior to the start of the season he was involved in another big trade, going to Cleveland with Dean Chance, Graig Nettles, and Ted Uhlaender for Luis Tiant and Stan Williams. It wasn’t a great year for Bob: as a swing guy for The Tribe, a starter for the White Sox (he went there in June for Buddy Bradford), and a reliever for the Cubs (a sale in September), his work was below par and his ERA escalated quite a bit. But in ’71 after a lousy start for the Cubbies he went to San Diego after being released in May and did some excellent work in the pen, recording seven saves with his miniscule ERA. He continued that after an August trade to Pittsburgh for Ed Acosta and Johnny Jeter. After posting three saves for the Pirates he again got some post-season work, winning another ring. In ’72 he stayed put for a change, adding another three saves, before he did the three team thing again in ’73. In ’74 he finished his MLB time with pen work for the Mets, going 2-2 with a 3.58 ERA and a couple saves in 58 games. Bob finished with a record of 69-81 with a 3.37 ERA, seven complete games, and 51 saves. In his post-season work he was 0-2 with a 3.07 ERA in nine games.

In ’75 Miller returned to the Padres as a player/coach for the team’s Triple A Hawaii franchise. He went 0-1 with three saves in his 15 games and the following year got a straight-up manager gig, going 81-54 for the team’s Double A franchise. In ’77 he was named pitching coach of the new Toronto Blue Jays – so he got a card that year – and retained that role through the ’79 season. After a year off in ’80 he joined the Giants as a minor league pitching instructor from ’81 to ’84 and then returned to The Show with an ’85 stint in San Francisco. After the whole staff was canned following a disappointing season Bob became a scout for the club. He was still doing that when he was killed in a car accident outside San Diego in August of ’93. He was 54.

Bob has zero room for star bullets, mostly because of his travels in the Seventies. Sixteen different managers, huh? Dare I name them? Why not:

Fred Hutchinson (’57 Cards);                                Don Gutteridge (’70 White Sox);

Solly Hemus (’59 -’61 Cards);                               Leo Durocher (’70 –’71 Cubs);

Johnny Keane (’61 Cards);                                    Preston Gomez (’71 Padres);

Casey Stengel (’62 Mets);                                     Danny Murtaugh (’71 Pirates);

Walt Alston (’63 -’67 Dodgers);                            Bill Virdon (’72 Pirates);

Cal Ermer (’68 Twins);                                          Don Zimmer (’73 Padres);

Billy Martin (’69 Twins and ’73 Tigers);               Joe Schultz (’73 Tigers);

Al Dark (’70 Indians);                                           Yogi Berra (’73 –’74 Mets).

Bob also famously roomed with another Bob Miller on the ’62 Mets which was memorialized by a Topps card.

Bob played with everybody apparently except this guy:

1. Miller and Lindy McDaniel ’57 and ’59 to ’61 Cardinals;

2. McDaniel and Celerino Sanchez ’72 to ’73 Yankees.

#621 - Bernie Carbo

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.

#612 - Luke Walker

Luke Walker looks plenty happy showing his form in spring training while his memorial electrical tape patch dances in the wind. On good days that’s what his curve ball did as well. It could be nasty on hitters but also nasty on Luke and unfortunately for him in ’73 it was much more the latter than the former. Back then many writers thought that Luke’s pitching embodied his last name a bit too much. But it wasn’t all his fault. After his big coming out season in ’70 Luke’s career pretty much went in the wrong direction, much of it due to injury. If it wasn’t bone chips in the elbow in ’71 or the bad back that really compromised that curve in ’72 and ’73 then it was the shot to his temple off a Johnny Bench bat early in ’74 that messed up his balance the remainder of the year. So Luke was n full decline mode when this photo was shot but you couldn’t tell that by the big smile. Attitude can be a wonderful thing. The photo from his Traded card appears to be from pretty much the same location as his regular card.

Luke Walker grew up in Dekalb, Texas, a town very close to the borders with Oklahoma and Arkansas. There he played the big three sports in high school where in baseball he threw 12 no-hitters and averaged 16 strikeouts per game with his big heater and curve. After graduation he attended Paris Junior College – in Paris, Texas for you Sam Shepard fans – in ’61 and ’62 and then moved on to Texarkana College from where he was signed as a free agent by the Red Sox in ’63. That summer he pitched well in A ball but then not so hot in Double A. After that season he was taken by Pittsburgh in the first year draft and then in ’64 in Double A went 8-14 with a 3.72 ERA in the rotation. After a poor start in Triple A in ’65 he improved a ton at the lower level, going 12-7 with a 2.26 ERA and 197 K’s in 183 innings. Those numbers got him a short look up top where he remained to start off the ’66 season before returning to Triple A to go 11-11 with a 2.77 ERA. In ’67 he was off to a 3-5 start with a 2.96 ERA when the injuries began with an elbow banged up in a game that killed the rest of his season. But the Pirates had seen enough and in ‘68 he spent the season on the Pittsburgh roster where he took tentative steps back while working in the pen, posting a low ERA and adding three saves while exhibiting pretty good control. In ’69 he moved to what would become a more common role for him as a swing guy, starting 15 of his 31 games and working most of the rest as a set-up guy.

In 1970 Walker had a sort of bipolar season. He began the year in the rotation and was 3-2 by early May when he was moved to the pen. There he had a streaky run and didn’t get his first save until mid-June, though he kept getting wins in his decisions. When he won a rare start in mid-July he was 7-3 and he returned to the rotation full-time in August and threw a shutout. He won his next two, lost three straight, and then won his last five to become the team’s winningest pitcher. He followed that up with a quality start in the playoffs and was ready to win 25 in ’71. But that year the elbow issue returned with the chips and while Luke at least got to stay in the rotation the whole season the results weren’t as good and his post-season was pretty messy though he did get a ring. In ’72 the bad back led to some DL time and back to his swing role. After his messy ’73 Luke was pretty happy to get out of town in the sale to Detroit but it really wasn’t a panacea, especially injury-wise. In an early-season exhibition game against Cincinnati he got nailed in the head by a Johnny Bench line drive which sort of took the wind out of his sails the rest of the season in which he went 5-5 with a 4.99 ERA. He was released early the following season and signed with Houston for whom he went 7-7/4.33 as a starter in Triple A in his final year. Luke went a combined 45-47 with a 3.64 ERA, 16 complete games, seven shutouts, and nine saves for his MLB line and 47-52 with a 3.23 ERA in the minors. In the post-season he was 0-1 with a 6.23 ERA in his three games.

While playing Luke worked off-seasons on a family farm in New Boston, Texas, to which he presumably returned when done playing on a full-time basis.

1965 was probably Luke’s best season in the minors as ‘70 clearly was up top. Chuck Norris would make that surname popular in Texas a few years down the road.

Topps gets the word play going again in the headline. In ’74 Luke joined Mickey Lolich, John Hiller, and Woodie Fryman as lefties on the Detroit roster.

Since Luke doesn’t give us too much to work with post-baseball there is room for more Watergate catch-up stuff:

10/10/12  - The Washington Post released the results of FBI research into the break-in and other action associated with CREEP. The investigation revealed a few of what would become known as the “dirty tricks” enacted by both CREEP and The White House in connection with the ’72 election. Named among the tactics were the stalking of various family members of opposing candidates; the forging of documents purported to be written by opposing candidates on those candidates' letterheads; and the leaking of false information to the press. The best example of the last two was a letter released to a local paper in New Hampshire that claimed that Edmund Muskie had laughed at a derogatory term used in reference to French Canadian-Americans. It was a big deal because there were lots of them in New Hampshire and the letter was sent to the paper a week before that state’s primary. Muskie, who was actually ahead of Nixon in the polls about a month earlier, defended himself outside the newspaper office in what became known as “the crying speech” although the YouTube video doesn’t look that dramatic. The charge and his response contributed to the dismantling of his run. The Post found out that the author of the letter was a White House aide named Richard Clawson who bragged about it while trying to pick up a woman at a bar who happened to work for the paper. Though he later denied it officially the damage was done.

The Post also interviewed three attorneys from around the country who said they were contacted by a California attorney named Donald Segretti who asked them to disrupt various democratic campaigns in their home areas. Segretti was a consultant to CREEP who had also been a lawyer for the Treasury Department. He had served in Vietnam with the three attorneys, all who turned him down. He was financed by a slush fund that amounted to as much as $700,000 controlled by John Mitchell, first as Attorney General and then as the chairman of CREEP.  

That gets us back to where I got the first round.

The hook-up gets a bit tough since Rick Stelmaszek barely played. Let’s go the NL route:

1. Walker and Matty Alou ’66 and ’68 to ’70 Pirates;

2. Alou and Jose Cardenal ’71 Cardinals;

3. Cardenal and Rick Stelmaszek ’74 Cubs.