Infield: Shortstop Bert Campaneris (1964-83) was one of the first building blocks of the great Oakland A’s teams of the early 1970s, and one of the catalysts of that team as it won three straight World Series titles. Campaneris wasn’t a great offensive player – he had a .259 career average, had very little punch, and didn’t really draw enough walks to bat at the top of the order. But he was a sensational baserunner – 649 stolen bases at almost an 80 pecent success rate – and a great bunter and a fiery presence on the field. He brought a sense of urgency. (During the 1972 ALCS, he was tearing up Detroit’s pitching staff until finally Lerrin Lagrow drilled him. Campaneris immediately responded by throwing his bat at Lagrow’s head.) He was a good defensive shortstop, though he was never able to wrest the Gold Glove away from Aparicio and Belanger. Second baseman Billy Consolo (1953-62) made Campaneris look like Ted Williams at the plate. He had a career average of .221, had no power whatsoever and no speed. First baseman Bud Clancy (1924-34) played mostly for the White Sox, batting .281 with no power, speed or walks. He had a long career in the minors, batting .311 with more than 2,500 hits, but he was nothing special in the majors.Third baseman Bill Coughlin (1899-1908) was a serviceable player for the Senators and the Tigers for almost a decade. He was good enough to star, but he was never a star. (Here’s a sign that your infield isn’t going to hit much: Bert Campaneris hit 79 home runs in his 19-year career; that more than doubles the combined total of the other three starting infielders.)
Outfield: Center fielder Ben Chapman (1930-46) was a good ballplayer, a second-line star on the 1930s Yankees until he was rendered expendable by the arrival of Joe DiMaggio. Chapman was a .300 hitter who drew walks, had line-drive power and led the AL in stolen bases three times. He scored 100 or more runs a half-dozen times and finished his career with 1,144 runs. He also appears to have been one of the more rotten human beings to ever wear a major-league uniform. He used to entertain himself by taunting Jewish fans and opponents, giving Nazi salutes and calling them vile names. Not sure if he was necessarily anti-Semitic, because there is evidence that he was just plain mean to everyone, and that he took great pleasure in spiking pivot men on the double play even when they were friends or former teammates. He was managing the Phillies when the Dodgers broke the color line, and he quickly emerged as perhaps the ugliest heckler that Jackie Robinson had to face. Chapman instructed his pitchers that if they ran a 3-0 count on Robinson, they should throw at his head rather than walk him, and his verbal abuse of Robinson became so nasty that it made national headlines. The backlash was so great that Chapman had to do something to repair his image. In desperation he had to ask Robinson to shake hands for a pre-game photo op, prompting Dixie Walker to observe, “I never thought I’d see ol’ Ben eat shit like that.” Right fielder Bruce Campbell (1930-42) batted .290 for his career, had a good batting eye and line-drive power. He was a solid player, mostly for the Browns and the Indians. Left field will shared by the potentially monstrous platoon combo of lefty Bernie Carbo (1969-80) and righty Bob Cerv (1951-62). Carbo had a sensational rookie year for Cincinnati in 1970, batting .310 with a .454 on-base average and a .551 slugging percentage. He slumped in 1971, and the emergent Big Red Machine had stockpiles of talented outfielders (Rose, McRae, Tolan, Foster, Geronimo, with Griffey on the way), so Carbo was sent wandering around the majors. Playing for the Red Sox in 1975, he went up against his old team in the World Series and hit two pinch-home runs, one of them a three-run shot that tied Game 6 in the bottom of the ninth and set up Carlton Fisk’s legendary game-winning homer in the 12th. Carbo had a long career as a very valuable platoon player, but drug addicition eventually shortened his career and derailed his life. Finally in his 40s, he cleaned up, found religion and started an evangelical baseball ministry. Like Carbo, Bob Cerv came up with a great team (the 1950s Yankees) and struggled to find playing time in a crowded outfield. He always hit well in his limited role, and in 1957 the Yankees sold him to the Kansas City A’s. Given a starting job, he batted .305 in 1958 with 38 home runs and 104 RBI. He eventually went back to the Yankees and his status as a role player. Between Cerv and Carbo, the B.C. team should be outstanding production from left field.
Catcher: Bill Carrigan (1906-16) caught three no-hitters and won three World Series titles with the Boston Red Sox (two of them as player-manager). He was a decent hitter and a respected catcher with a reputation for blocking the plate with tenacity.
Rotation: Bob Caruthers (1884-92) was a major star of the 1880s whose name has been forgotten by all but the most scholarly of baseball history books. A diminutive righty (5-foot-7, 138 pounds), Caruthers had a career record of 218-99, averaging 34 wins per year from 1885-89. He was also a terrific hitter, playing right field when he wasn’t pitching, helping to make the St. Louis Browns one of the dominant teams in the American Association. He was a bit of a dandy and he enjoyed the high life – he like to gamble on poker and billiards – and he staged a dramatic holdout in 1886, communicating by telegram from France and earning the nickname “Parisian Bob.” Bartolo Colon (1997- ) is a 265-pound righty who has has won 161 games in his career, including two 20-win seasons. When he went 21-8 for the Angels in 2005, he was given the Cy Young Award despite the fact that Johan Santana had pitched nine more innings than Colon while giving up 35 fewer hits, 16 fewer runs, and striking out 81 more hitters. Colon then hurt his shoulder and struggled for several years. He appeared to be done, but in 2011 he re-emerged and pitched reasonably well for the Yankees after undergoing a mysterious stem cell surgery on his shoulder. Bert Cunningham (1887-1901) was a contemporary of Bob Caruthers, and about the same size, but he wasn’t nearly as good. He had a career record of 142-167 with a 4.22 ERA. In his best season he won 28 for Louisville in 1898. Bill Carrick (1898-1902) went 63-89 for the Giants and the Senators. (He was known as Doughnut Bill, because there was apparently some sort of rule that all 19th-century pitchers named Bill had to have a nickname that involved putting a random word ahead of the name “Bill.”) Ben Cantwell (1927-37) pitched for bad teams and had a career record of 76-108. Pitching for the godawful Boston Braves in 1935, he went 4-25 despite having the best ERA in the team’s rotation.
Bullpen: Bill “Soup” Campbell (1973-87) will be the primary closer. He was never a dominant pitcher but was generally pretty good, winning 83 games and saving 126 in his career. Pitching for Boston in 1977, he led the AL with 31 saves. Bill Caudill (1979-87) was an eccentric righty who had some very good seasons but rarely put them back-to-back. He saved 106 games in his career. Caudill once delayed the start of a game by stealing the keys to the golf cart that brought the starting pitcher in from the bullpen, and he once took the mound with a full beard and mustache on one side of his face and the other side clean shaven. Bill Castro (1974-83) was a control specialist who had some very good years for the Brewers. Lefty Bob “Sugar” Cain (1949-53) won 37 games as a swingman for three teams. Buzz Capra (1971-77) won 16 games for the Braves in 1974 and led the NL with a 2.28 ERA. In the other seven years of his big-league career, he won a total of 15 games and had an ERA of 4.78. Lefty Bryan Clark (1981-90) was a decent journeyman. Brad Clontz (1995-2000) was a sidearm slinger and was occasionally effective. Lefty Bob “Mr. Chips” Chipman won 51 games for the Dodgers, Cubs and Braves.
Bench: With the Carbo/Cerv platoon combination, there will always be one killer bat on the bench ready to pinch-hit. Utility infielder Billy Cox (1941-55) was a role player on three Brooklyn Dodgers pennant winners. He was a fine defensive player and a popular, respected teammate on the “Boys of Summer.” Shortstop Bobby Crosby (2003-10) was the AL Rookie of the Year in 2004 despite the fact that he batted .239, struck out 141 times and didn’t play particularly good defense. To his credit, he did hit 22 home runs, and in the voters’ defense, it wasn’t a great year for AL rookies. He never hit for that kind of power again, and he had just one season batting over .240. Backup catcher Boileryard Clarke (1893-1905) was a solid, unspectacular catcher for the great Baltimore Orioles teams at the turn of the century. Infielder Buster Chatham (1930-31) did little to distinguish himself in the majors, but he had more than 3,000 hits in the minors. (Mike and Joe like him for a very specific reason, because of a friend who is an old-line baseball man. Every time he sees a batter scorch a line drive right at a defender, this gentleman shakes his head and mutters, “Buster Chatham – hit it right at ‘em.” Works for us.)
Manager: Bobby Cox won 2,504 games, the fourth-highest total of all time. He won 15 division titles, five pennants and a World Series title. He is synonymous with the Atlanta Braves, though he also had a successful run with the Blue Jays as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment