Remember when Steve Garvey
was squeaky clean? Remember when he played third base? Back in ’73 most people
didn’t know about the squeaky clean part so that was just beginning. But this
was the final card on which he would be designated a third baseman and Topps
seemed reluctant to let that go because in ’73 Steve actually put in zero time
at that position. Thanks to the near-meteoric ascendency of Ron Cey that year,
third base was finally free of the decade-plus mess of new faces it had been.
And while Steve’s climb to regular status during the year was much more sublime
than Ron’s, it was still impressive in what was an important transitional
season for him. After three years of limited success trying to break into the
line-up at third, the acquisition of Ken McMullen and the call-up of Cey left
Steve without a position to start the ’73 season. He got some April starts in
left field, but after going ofer in the last three of them that quickly ended.
So for the first half of the season Steve was a pinch hitter and he did nice
work in that role, going eleven for 26 for a .407 average in the pinch. That
work got him some starts at first in late June during which he continued to hit
and by early July he had taken over the position, pushing Bill Buckner to the
outfield. On his action shot here Steve appears to have either just whiffed on
a pitch or avoided an inside toss in what I assume is Philadelphia, the site of the other LA away
action shots. Topps gives him an honorary card number which is quite prescient
of them as was giving Steve and fellow ’74 MVP winner Jeff Burroughs an action
shot for their big seasons. I always liked this card as I always liked his ’73
card in which he is nearly obscured by Wes Parker’s back. On that card Wes
appears to be congratulating Steve after the latter guy just scored a run,
possible following a homer. But in a more figurative way it could have been Wes
passing the torch – delayed a year – to the new institution at first base for
the Dodgers.
Steve Garvey was born in the Tampa area of Florida
shortly after his folks had moved down from NY to run a motel. His dad had been
a Dodgers fan and, as luck would have it, by the time Steve was about eight his
dad had shucked the motel biz and become a bus driver. That spring was the
first in which he became the Dodgers spring training bus driver and he
leveraged that position to get his kid in as batboy. From there it was to local
fame as a third baseman and in football first as a halfback and then a
quarterback. His senior year of ’66 he had lots of offers from local schools to
play baseball – he was seen generally as too small for football – and was
drafted by the Twins. But his high school baseball coach was buddies with the
coach at Michigan
State and Steve got a
scholarship there to play both sports. His freshman year he was shut out from
playing football but he had a big role playing ND quarterback in practice the
week before that huge game and in baseball he hit a grand slam in his first at
bat. His sophomore year he was a defensive back and recorded thirty tackles and
in baseball he hit .383 with nine homers and 38 RBI’s to get an All-American
nod. LA nabbed him in the first round and he signed and in Rookie ball that
summer hit .338 with 20 homers and 59 RBI’s in only 216 at bats. In ’69 around
some military time he put up a .373/14/85 season in 316 at bats while playing
both infield corners in Double A. Then in ’70 after a pretty-much hitless month
of April in LA he was part of the wildly loaded Triple A Spokane club for whom
he had a .319/15/87 year while moving back to third base full time. In July he
returned to The Show almost for good.
Garvey had made his MLB debut in April and returned in July of ’70 to try to add his wood to the
line-up. His best shot was at third base, a position which had been in flux
since pretty much the early Sixties. In ’69 Bill Sudakis had settled in there
but his bat went cold and he was needed at catcher so in ’70 new guy Billy
Grabarkewitz pretty much took over. Billy was having a pretty good year but was
putting up high K totals and was also needed elsewhere, he at second base and
shortstop. So Steve got a bunch of starts at third in July and the rest of the
month hit nearly .300. He then lost a bit of time for military stuff and got
squeezed by roster moves back to Spokane,
where he remained until September. He returned to LA to get some more work at
third and pulled his average up another 40 points. In ’71 Billy G was a mess
between injuries and a severely declined offense so Garvey again was the
early-season starter at third and that year he remained pretty much the regular
guy until breaking his hand in early June and then missing nearly two months.
He retained his spot when he returned but his offense was a bit light so for
the immediate future third base was still viewed as a bit open. In '72 Steve did get the Opening Day nod at the
position and never really had a batting slump, but a lack of power and way too
many errors – most of them throwing ones – opened the door for other guys to
put in time there, namely Billy G and Bobby Valentine (though to be fair nobody
performed well at the hot corner that year; the team as a whole recorded 53
errors!). In ’73 Steve finally got a regular gig for real, just on the other
side of the diamond.
In 1974 Garvey began in
earnest his onslaught of NL pitching. As part of an infield that stayed intact
– actually beginning midway the prior season – through ’81, Steve was a huge
offensive gun throughout his time in LA. Over the next nine seasons he would
put up an average of .306 while averaging 198 hits, 22 homers, and 102 RBI’s in
his full seasons (I am discounting the strike year of ’81 though that was a
good one also). He got his MVP in ’74 with a .312/21/111 year while leading LA
to the Series and was an All-Star in eight of those seasons and a Gold Glove
winner in four of them. In ’75 he recorded his higest average - .319 – and hit
total with 210. In ’77 he joined the LA power train, becoming one of four guys
on the team with over 30 homers while recording a career-best 115 RBI’s. In ’78
and ’80 he led the NL in hits, both times with over 200. He had six 200-plus
hit seasons in seven years. Not surprisingly LA was quite prolific
post-season-wise during that span, making the playoffs five of those years and
winning the Series title in ’81. He also put together his record 1,207
consecutive game streak during that time. When his contract expired following
the ’82 season the dismantling of the infield continued – Davey Lopes left
after the ’81 season – as Steve signed as a free agent with San Diego.
Garvey’s signing by the
Padres was viewed as huge though many thought his best days were behind him. He
was still a solid hitter and an excellent defender and would ably serve as a
clubhouse leader. And things went well, at least until a dislocated thumb
suffered at the end of July 1983 ended both his season and that consecutive
game streak. But he still hit .294 in his 100 games and came back strong in ’84
when he helped take San Diego to the Series with a .284 average, 86 RBI’s, an
error-less season at first, and a spanking time against the Cubs in the
playoffs. He returned as the regular guy at first the next two seasons, posting
81 RBI’s in each one though his average slid, especially that second year.
After an ’87 of mostly back-up and pinch hit work he retired. He finished with
a .294 average on 2,599 hits, 272 homers, and 1,308 RBI’s. He upped his stats in
the post-season to hit .338 with eleven homers and 31 RBI’s in 55 games. He is
currently in the Top 100 all-time in hits, singles, total bases, and sacrifice
flies, and just misses that mark in RBI’s. Defensively he is 13th in
putouts, 47th in assists, 23rd in double plays, and
seventh in fielding percentage at first base. At this point he seems about a
push to get in the Hall, though it would have to be through the veteran votes.
Garvey was still a Golden Boy
when he retired. He’d done lots of television work during his career and that
seemed a good fit. There was also lots of speculation about him running for
office (a conservative, he lionized Ronald Reagan). But things got public about
Steve in a bad way when a contentious divorce amidst lots of extra-marital
flings landed him in hot water image-wise. He ended up doing a pretty good
Shawn Kemp impersonation by fathering eight kids with four women which pretty
much killed his shot in politics. But he put together a media company that
specializes in infomercials and has always been big on the corporate lecture circuit,
both of which he has been doing since the late Eighties. He was inducted into
his high school hall of fame in the Nineties and the Michigan State
one in 2010.
Steve gets the offensive and
defensive props on the star bullets. When he was at MSU one of his professors
was Mike Marshall, his teammate on the ’74 pennant winner.
This one is faster than I
would have thought and gets abetted by another ’74 teammate:
1. Garvey and Al Downing ’71
to ’77 Dodgers;
2. Downing and Dave May ’70
Brewers;
3. May and Bill Parsons ’71
to ’73 Brewers.
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