#133 -- Joe Keough

Joe Keough



I'm blessed with a last name that's easy enough to pronounce. I can't take any credit for that. We don't get to pick our last names, at least until we get old enough to go down to the courthouse and file for a legal name change or, if you're a woman, old enough to get married. Even then, I think most women pick a husband and get stuck with a name, rather than go out and marry someone to get his last name (except for the gold-diggers who like the last name "Trump", et. al.)

Joe Keough didn't get blessed with a name easy to pronounce. I remember when I was a kid being stumped on this one. KE-og didn't sound quite right. If I looked at it today, it might be pronounced the same as "cough." But, for those of you that don't know, it's pronounced KEY-oh.

Joe was a really talented guy who was drafted in the 2nd round (21st overall selection) out of high school by the old Kansas City A's in 1965. That was the year the draft was begun, so Rick Monday was the A's first draft choice. In the same round, 15 picks later, Johnny Bench went to the Reds.

Joe rose through the A's system fairly quickly. It wasn't difficult then because, although there were guys like Campaneris, Bando, Jackson, Hunter and Fingers coming along, there wasn't much at the major league level blocking him. It wasn't like he was a first baseman in the Cardinal organization. Joe made it up in 1968 after Charlie Finley moved the team to Oakland. He gets to debut as a pinch-hitter in the 2nd game of a double-header in Yankee Stadium leading off the bottom of the 8th with the A's trailing 3-2. This is a pivotal early August game, with the A's holding a 2 1/2 game lead over the Yankees for 5th place. Lindy McDaniel, a pretty good reliever is pitching, but Joe takes him deep to tie the game. At this point, Joe is on pace to break all records with a career OPS of 5.000. (For those that care, the A's went on to win the game on a 10th inning RBI single by Reginald Martinez Jackson.)

Joe only hit .214 that year, but I suppose it was impressive enough to be the #4 selection by the Royals in the expansion draft. Joe spent most of his time with the Royals as a 4th outfielder/pinch-hitter. He hit .322 in 183 at bats in 1970, but quickly tailed off in 1971 and 1972. His playing time tailed off as well. He was traded to the White Sox for Jim Lytle. He played in 5 games, batting once, grounding into a double play.

Joe is probably more famous now for being the brother of Marty Keough and uncle of Matt Keough. Matt followed Uncle Joe into the A's organization and had a few good years as a starting pitcher whose arm Billy Martin could blow out. He then married a 1980 centerfold model (no, it's not a centerfold picture...it's safe to click the link) and moved to a ritzy neighborhood near Irvine and had a short and unceremonious tenure on the Real Housewives of Orange County.

Looking in the background behind Joe and over his left shoulder is a guy wearing what looks like an Oriole hat. Is Dave McNally spying on the Royals?

#109 -- Jerry May

Jerry May






I was at our local AA Texas League team (Springfield Cardinals) the other night when the shortstop came up, hitting about .217, when it flashed on the board that he is hitting .260 at home. The scoreboard told us another player was hitting .278 in the 3rd inning. One of my colleagues was at the game with me and was asking me about those obscure stats and why they put them up. I told him it sounded to me like (unintentionally) damning with faint praise.

I tell that story because of Jerry May's card back. He had significant playing time for the Pirates in the late 70's and was around a half-time catcher for the Royals in 1971, their first really good year. Heck, his first 2 minor league seasons were pretty good. However, Topps chooses to tell us about his 6 American Legion no-hitters, which would have had to have been from 1958-1961. In order to say something nice about Jerry, they had to go back to talk about him no-hitting high schoolers in Virginia in the Eisenhower administration. Jerry must not have hit very well in the 3rd inning.


Jerry was involved in one of those lopsided Royals trades in the early 70's. He, Freddie Patek and Bruce Dal Canton came for Jackie Hernandez, Bob Johnson and a bag of chips. Jerry didn't hang around long with the Royals. He split time in 1971, but his hitting fell off in 1972 and by 1973 they sold him to the Mets and he was released after 4 games in 2 months.

Jerry was a good fielder and kind of got Wally Pipped in Pittsburgh. As mentioned above, he was the Pirates' number one catcher starting in 1967 until crashed into a dugout in Montreal in 1969. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance. The ambulance then had a crash and that injured Jerry's right (throwing) shoulder. Manny Sanguillen replaced him and he was never the same. Talk about circumstances that "verily stinketh."


He also caught Dock Ellis' LSD no-hitter in 1970. Dock said the only thing that let him know where to throw the ball (other than when the ball told him where to throw it) was zeroing in on the reflective tape Jerry wore on his fingers. I suppose he must have been able to surmise Dock's condition and made allowances.


1972 Feature
On June 7, 1972, Pittsburgh and San Diego played a double header that was 2 games of dichotomies. The first game was a slugfest, Pirates got ahead early and pounded the Padres, 12-5. Four Pirates and one Padre had 3 hits. Willie Stargell hit 2 homers and drove in 5. The Padres had to use 5 pitchers just to record 27 outs.


In the nightcap, they went 18 innings before the Pirates were able to push one across and win 1-0. The game only lasted 4:27, shorter than a typical 9-inning Yankee-Red Sox or any playoff game nowdays. Dave Cash and Stargell had 3 hits in both games. Spots 5-9 in the Pirate order went 3-36. The Padres only got 6 hits in 18 innings off 5 Pirate pitchers. Because the Padres had shredded their bullpen in the opener, Clay Kirby went 13 scoreless innings and Mike Corkins pitched the other 5. The Padres never really threatened. The Pirates got a runner to 3rd with less than 2 outs only twice in the first 17 innings. The Pittsburgh Lumber Company scored with some unusual small ball in the 18th. They led off with infield singles by Al Oliver and Willie Stargell. Those 2 "speed demons" then executed a double steal (I'm sure catcher Fred Kendall had to be dumbfounded). Corkins then struck out Richie Hebner and intentionally walked Bill Mazeroski to set up the inning-ending double play. He then walked Gene Alley to force in a run. He got out of the inning by fanning Manny Sanguillen and getting Clemente to ground out, but that was it. What a game.


Also, the Padres first round draft pick, Dave Roberts, who was just drafted a couple of days ago, made his major league debut in this double-header. Don Leshnock of the Tigers played in his only game. He pitched the 9th inning of a 5-1 loss to the Angels. He got Leo Cardenas on a grounder and struck out Nolan Ryan. Sandy Alomar and Mickey Rivers then got base hits before he struck out Vada Pinson. Don can say his K/9IP ratio of 18.00 was even better than Ryan's.

#81 -- Mike Hedlund

Mike Hedlund

I couldn't find a lot about Mike. I know he was a starter early on with the Royals, and was pretty good. What would you say now about a guy that was 15-8 with a 2.71 ERA? However, his BB/K ratio wasn't very good (76/72) and that kind of foretold a down year in 1972. It looks like he just fell off the map after that.

The photo looks like another in a long line of Royals' photos taken at the old spring training site at Terry Park in Fort Myers. The more I see these the more I'm thinking about detouring into that part of town the next time I'm there (and hoping my wife doesn't get scared out of her wits).

Most of what I found about Mike Hedlund came from this great blog post. For those of you that read 100 blogs a day and don't have the time or inclination to spend 3-4 minutes learning about Mike Hedlund, it basically says that his nickname was "Booger Red" (after his hair color) and that he just couldn't make it back in the big leagues after being sent down following the 1972 season and the emergence of Steve Busby in the Royals' rotation. He also missed time recovering from Hong Kong flu contracted playing winter ball in Venezuela after the 1969 season. The thing that impressed me about that post was that supposedly Mike himself read it, created a blogger profile and left a comment indicating it was accurate.

After his career, he spent 35 years as a VP of Human Resources for Texas Trust Credit Union and now lives in Arlington.

#68 -- Jim York

Jim York






Jim's pictured here at the Royals' old spring training location at Terry Field in Fort Myers. I'll occasionally hear Buck Martinez talking about that site on his XM Radio show. From the looks of some of the Florida spring training sites in this set, the teams have certainly gotten an upgrade. Those complexes (a generous word) such as pictured in Jim's card look like nothing more than today's rec league softball complexes. I'd say that only Dodgertown was better than what we see on most of these.

Jim went to UCLA and was on a team that went to the College World Series. As you can see from the stats on the back of his card he flew through the minors and rarely met any resistance. He was also a reliever all the way through. Even if a guy is projected as a reliever, a lot of teams like to have them start through the minors to give them innings, experience and build arm strength.

I hadn't known Jim was a sidearmer, but his card back says that. Funny, because the pose on the front of his card doesn't look like he's finishing a sidearm delivery. That Royals team also had Ted Abernathy, who was a sidearmer, too.

I don't really know much about Jim and wasn't able to find much. He went to the Astros before the 1972 season as the main part of the John Mayberry trade. That trade worked out very well for the Royals because they got a power hitting first baseman that anchored the lineup for most of the 70's and Jim never approached the success he had in 1971 and spent some time in AAA every year for the rest of his career. That's one of the dangers in putting too much value in a middle reliever. Most of them are very up and down from year to year.

Jim made his debut in the second game of a double header against the cellar-dwelling White Sox in Comiskey. He came into a 1-1 game in the 4th and went the rest of the way to earn the win. For some reason when I think of the Royals playing in Chicago, I think of the moron and his son that rushed the field to attack coach Tom Gamboa (No, I don't think all Sox fans are like that. In fact, I've gotten to know some pretty decent Sox fans on here.) However, there wasn't much chance of York getting bumrushed that night. There were only 674 fans in attendance. That was back in the days when they counted actual attendance, rather than the number of tickets sold.

#57 -- Bob Oliver

Bob Oliver

For the 2nd time in the last 3 cards, we've got a player whose son is still pitching in the big leagues. Bob's son is Darren Oliver, who I thought was finished about 5 years ago, but he's lefthanded, so he'll be in the big leagues for another 8 years.

There's no denying Bob in this photo. Where do we start? I may have thought John Ellis was lazy in his posed "first base stretch" photo, but Bob's going all out. Looks to me like he's reaching out to get a throw from Cookie Rojas while the Royals are attempting to double up Bert Campaneris. This was likely taken at the Royals' old spring training home in Fort Myers. From what I've read, it's fallen into disarray, but some college teams use it. From what I could tell of the street view on Google Maps, it's not really anywhere I want to visit the next time I go to Fort Myers.

Then, there's the satin jacket. What's up, Bob? Did you forget to wear your uniform top on picture day? Spill a cherry Kool-Aid on your shirt? Surely it's not that cold in Spring Training. Bob sure does a good job of modeling the Royals' jackets I remember from my youth. Plus, he's featuring the John Olerud style of wearing the batting helmet in the field almost 20 years before Olerud made it fashionable.

Bob was one of the Royals' first big power hitters. He had some of their most memorable "firsts" since he played for the 1969 expansion Royals. He had the first 6-6 game in 9 innings. He also had the first grand slam, on July 4 against Jim Bouton. Imagine that, it took over 3 months for the Royals to hit a granny.

However, when the Royals picked up John Mayberry, Bob was expendable. He mostly played first, but he could go to 3rd or play the outfield without embarrassing himself. The Royals got good production while Bob was there, but they didn't get much for trading him. They picked up Tom Murphy, who spot started some in 1972, then flipped him to the Cardinals for Al Santorini. As a Cardinal fan, Al Santorini couldn't have been taken off our hands too soon. He never played in the big leagues for the Royals. Great. In a matter of 2 deals, they turned Bob into zilch. Bob's career didn't do so great after leaving KC. He did fine in 1972 as the Angels' first baseman, but then his knees started to bother him and he bounced around and slid out of baseball.

Bob is now retired and runs a baseball academy looking to give instruction and opportunities to athletes in Sacramento.