132 -- Joe Morgan

Joe Morgan





When I was a kid, there was always a vacant lot next door. In fact, I had a vacant lot next door to me until I was 27 and bought a house. That meant that a little boy that liked baseball spent a lot of time mowing those vacant lots so he'd have a place to play baseball. I usually didn't have neighbors that played baseball, so I spent a lot of time by myself. I'd throw up the ball, hit it and then use my imagination to fill in the gaps on what happened based on where the ball went. Of course, I'd run through actual lineups, meaning I had to learn to bat left-handed. It also meant that I had to learn batting stances.

Bobby Tolan and Carl Yastrzemski held the bat very high. Roy White started his hands down below his waist when batting left-handed. Willie Stargell whipped his bat around several times.

But there was no more distinctive batting stance than Joe Morgan's chicken wing. I suppose it must have been a timing trigger. But to see a guy standing there pulling his elbow up to his body....I don't know. I know as a 9 year old I thought I'd broken a rib once when I pulled it too far and too quickly.

Morgan gets card number 132. How's that for respect for a future Hall of Famer? And it's not like this is an early card. He was going into his 10th season in the big leagues. But he was a lifetime .263 hitter and his 162 game average was a thoroughly unimpressive 12 HR, 51 RBI with 36 SB and OPS+ of 121. The Cincinnati years (1972-1979) were much better: 162 game average of 22 HR, 86 RBI, 57 SB, .287 average, OPS+ of 147 and 2 MVP awards.

Needless to say, in the 60's, he was seen as just another really good second baseman, but in the 70's, he got better (power increased and strikeout rate decreased) and he was seen as the best second baseman of the decade. What happened? My best supposition could be that he got different coaching when he got to the Reds, but how many 10 year veterans really change much based on what coaching they get? More likely he's hitting 3rd, behind Rose and Griffey and ahead of Bench, Perez and Foster, both of which meant he was going to see more fastballs.

I think Morgan gets a bad rap now. His playing career is largely overlooked and he's just seen as some arrogant broadcaster. He's got reason to be arrogant, but the only complaint I have is that he seems to have developed a Tony Gwynn-like addiction to doughnuts. It's hard to look at either Gwynn or Morgan and believe they stole 50 bases.

There's a bonus player standing in the distance behind Morgan. This is a 1971 regular season shot, rather than a spring training photo. That's Astro catcher Johnny Edwards. The only other possibility is that this is in Cincinnati and that's Red backup catcher Pat Corrales, because the Astro and Red uniforms from a distance were similar. Still, I'm going with Edwards.

#121 -- Ed Sprague

Ed Sprague







Every team has a scouting story about how they found this guy or that guy which is out of the ordinary. Ed would be one of those stories for the Cardinals. Of course, it might have been a better story if he'd made more of an impact on the big league level. Ed couldn't have been scouted the conventional way. Like Sidd Finch, he didn't play high school baseball or college baseball. Somehow a Cardinal scout found him pitching in the Army in Germany and signed him as a free agent in 1966.


OK. That is an unusual story. So the Cardinals get this raw, hardthrowing pitcher and stash him in the low minors to get some seasoning. First year in the minors he gets some innings under his belt and walks a lot of guys. Second year in the minors he pitches a full season at A-ball (California League) and goes 11-7 with a 3.12 ERA and gets the walks under control (the ERA is artificially low as he gave up 83 runs, but only 54 earned....what? was this a team full of scatterarms?). He's looking at a promotion, right? The A's take him in the Rule 5 draft and he spends 1968 learning in the big leagues. He goes a respectable 3-4, 3.28, but his BB/K ratio is 1.0 and he has 6 wild pitches in 68 innings. Still, 4 years removed from an Army base with no baseball background and he's in the big leagues, giving up a homer to Brooks Robinson in his debut (although he did get the other 6 guys out that he faced).


Ed split 1969 between the minors and A's and was then sold to the Reds. He was in the minors in 1970 and came up for a cup of coffee in 1971. He bounced from the Reds to the Cardinals (he only pitched 8 games, but as a young, impressionable Cardinal fan I remember him vividly as one of the guys who couldn't do anything right in the early 70's) and then on to the Brewers. He was off to a 7-2 start in 1974 when he had a knee injury in Comiskey. That messed him up. He came back in 1975 to go 1-7, but what was really telling was walking 40 and only striking out 21 in only 67 innings. He got in 8 innings in 1976 and got shelled. That was it for Ed Sprague in the big leagues until Ed Sprague (his son) made it with the Blue Jays (later to make it in the Mitchell Report).


Remember how the A's noticed him in the California League? After his career was over he went back to California and owned the Stockton franchise.


1972 Feature
A couple of teams went wild on June 19, 1972. Roberto Clemente had 3 RBI on 2 doubles and a homer as the Pirates made up for the previous day's shutout, cuffing the Dodgers 13-3. Reggie Smith homered twice to lead the Red Sox to a 12-0 blasting of the Rangers. But the Game of the Day will feature a couple of hot teams.


The Mets come in having won 3 out of 4 and hanging on to first place in the East by a half-game. A month before they had a 6 game lead, so they need to get things going again. The Astros have won 6 out of 7 and are only a game and a half behind the Reds (who were shut out by Bill Stoneman and the Expos).


We're set up for a pitching duel with Jon Matlack going against Larry Dierker and the game is in the Astrodome. These pitchers don't disappoint. Matlack gets out of a couple of early jams by striking out Jimmy Wynn in the 1st and 3rd. The Astros keep getting guys on base and Houdini Matlack keeps squirming off the hook (like the mixed metaphor?). Finally, in the 7th, the Astros break through for a couple of runs and tack on another in the 8th. What had the Mets been doing? Nothing. Duffy Dyer singled to start the 3rd, but he was erased in a double play. Dierker walked leadoff man Willie Mays a couple of times, but he never got past first and Dierker stops the Mets on a 1-hitter.



Pretty special. Pretty amazing stretch for Astro pitching when you look to see that the day before, Jerry Reuss didn't allow a hit until Larry Bowa doubled to lead off the 9th. It's not like a Johnny VanderMeer thing, but it's not very common for a team to pitch back to back 1-hitters.


With this loss, the Mets fell out of first place and would not again hold sole possession of 1st in 1972.


One other item from June 19, 1972. The Cubs saw the beginning of a long career this day. Rick Reuschel made him big league debut, relieving Billy Hands in the 4th and striking out Bobby Bonds. He was then lifted for a pinch-hitter, but he would go on to win 10 games that year and 214 in a long career. He went on to strike out Bonds 11 more times, but Bobby got the best of it, hitting .350 with 3 homers in his career off Rick.

# 99 -- Ross Grimsley

Ross Grimsley

Ross had a good career through the 70's and was known as a reliable and solid, if not spectacular pitcher. He was good for 14 wins and (when healthy) 240 innings a year. The Reds had a horrible down year in 1971, in between World Series years, but Ross was a bright spot, joining the rotation in mid-May and winning 10 games. Even in the early 70's, everyone loved a lefty. That performance allowed him to win that beautiful gold cup on his card signifying him as a Topps All-Star Rookie.

In 1972 the season started a couple of weeks late because of the strike, but Ross didn't join the Reds rotation until early May. He was solid through the season and stepped up big in the playoffs. The Pirates took a 2-1 lead (best of 5 in those days) into game 4 and Ross threw a 2-hitter at the Pirate lineup (which was heavily left-handed), and then the Reds won Game 5 to go to the Series. He lost Game 2 in the Series by a 2-1 score, which was certainly no disgrace. He pitched out of the bullpen, winning Games 5 & 6 to keep the Reds in it. He wasn't scored on in Game 7, but the A's already had the runs they needed to win it.

Ross was a good free agent sign by the Expos in 1978, winning 20 and making the All-Star team, but that was it. He had arm problems and was out of baseball by 1982.

Being a lawyer, I didn't realize it, but I can appreciate that Ross is famous in employment law circles for an incident in Fenway in 1975. I'll summarize what this blog reports (I recommend clicking the link if for no other reason than to get a great picture of Fenway from behind the right field stands, a view I don't know if I'd ever seen). Grimsley was warming up on September 16, 1975 and some of the friendly Sox fans were heckling him. The visitors' bullpen is available for that. Ross got fed up and threw the ball at the fans. It broke through the netting (prima facie evidence that the netting was defective) and hit a fan. The fan, named Manning, sued Ross and the Orioles. You would think it was pretty obvious that Ross was liable, but the trial court directed a verdict in favor of Ross and the Orioles on the claim for battery and the Orioles were trying to say that when he got mad and threw a ball in the stands he was no longer in the course and scope of his employment. The Court of Appeals felt differently, reversed the trial court and also found that the Orioles were responsible for Ross' toss. The case was remanded to the trial court and I suspect the case settled.

The original blog had a great limerick about this precursor to the Rob Dibble episode:

A reliever awaiting deployment
May act in the scope of employment
If he throws some high heat
At a fan in his seat
Unless for his own sheer enjoyment.

(Side note: Ross didn't make it into that game or any other game the rest of the year. The case wasn't decided until 1981, when Ross was with the Indians, but it didn't stop the O's from picking Ross back up for a few weeks in 1982.)

#80 -- Tony Perez

Tony Perez

There are many of the Topps sets where the player's position is noted on the front. Off the top of my head, it's hard to think of one where it isn't mentioned. The 1972 set doesn't have the player's position on the front, but they do have it on the back. I say that because when I mention "Tony Perez" the position most usually associated with him is first base. At this point, he'd been a regular with the Reds for 7 years, so he was fairly well established.

From 1967-1971, Tony played third base for the Reds. Looking at the stats, he was roughly league average, which surprises me some. I don't remember him being a great fielder, but I suppose this goes to show he was a good athlete. The Reds were playing Lee May at first, and there sure wasn't anywhere else he was going to play. When the Reds made the blockbuster deal with the Astros (May, Tommy Helms and Jimmy Stewart for Joe Morgan, Cesar Geronimo, Denis Menke and Jack Billingham -- who got the best of that?) in addition to picking up a lot of talent, the Reds cleared a spot to move Perez to first.

Tony had great RBI numbers. Of course, he had Pete Rose, Joe Morgan and either Bobby Tolan or Ken Griffey hitting in front of him. I'm convinced Enzo Hernandez could have hit 4th or 5th for the Reds and driven in 80 runs. Tony wasn't a loud guy who called attention to himself. He just went along and did his thing without a lot of fanfare.

The Big Red Machine suffered a blow when the Reds traded Perez to the Expos to open up playing time for Dan Driessen. That was in 1977. The next time the Reds went to the World Series was 1990. Driessen was good, but he wasn't Tony Perez good. It's true that Perez was a 10 year vet at the time and he was going to start winding down, but for the next couple of years his numbers were still better. Woodie Fryman and Dale Murray didn't really do a whole lot for the Reds, either.

I always liked Perez as a player, but I don't think he'd make my Hall of Fame. He had good lifetime numbers, especially RBI, but he just doesn't hit me in the guy as being a Hall of Famer. He was one of those guys, like Ron Santo, Dave Parker and Andre Dawson who was consistently far above average, but not dominating. Oops. I mentioned that I don't think Ron Santo should be in the Hall. I should know better than that with all the Chicago readers I have. Please forgive me guys!

Oh, and Mario had a bad encounter with Tony.