Colorful Baseball Memories

I was watching the end of a Cincinnati Red game earlier this year just as closer Aroldis Chapman stuck out the final batter. Well, the next thing I know, Chapman starts doing these silly looking somersaults towards homeplate. I can understand an imptomtu celebration of some sorts, but somersaults?

Chapman's latest antics immediately brough back memories of other ball players who I had seen doing peculiar things through the years. I would the say the wackiest player that I ever saw was Former Detroit Tiger's pitcher, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych. When Fidrych would go out to the pitcher's mound, he would get down on his hands and knees and "manicure" the dirt. Then, as he prepared for the opposing batter, he would talk to the baseball, sometimes aiming it like a dart. And when he wasn't talking to the ball, he would talk to himself. He would sometimes ask the umpire to remove a ball from the game because it "had hits in it". And after outs, Fidrych would strut around the mound. Surprisingly, Fidrych was a great pitcher. He went 19-9 with a 2.34 ERA in 1976 earning him the Rookie of the Year award and coming in second only to Jim Palmer in the Cy Young Award voting. Fidrych's career was cut shirt injuries and sadly, he died in a mechanical accident in 2009.

Perhaps somewhat less dramatic, but still strange nonetheless, was Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan. Now, Morgan was gifted player who is considered one of the best second baseman ever. However, when he would bat, he would flap his back arm like a chicken wing I used to really get a kick out of watching him bat when I was a kid. At first appearance, you would have thought that Joe might have had a bit of Tourettes. But in reality, early in Joe's career he had a bad habit of dropping his back elbow. So, in an effort to remind him to keep the elbow up, teammate Nellie Fox advised Joe to flap his back arm. And he continued to flap it for the rest of his career. It turned out to be good advice as Morgan, a ten-time All-Star, went on to win two National League MVP awards and collected two World Series rings with the Cincinnati Reds.

Somewhat along the same lines is former San Francisco outfielder, Jeffrey Leonard. I can remember watching Leonard in the 1987 NL Championship Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. He had a phenomenal series including four home runs. After hitting a homerun, Leonard would take what seemed like forever to round the bases. It was described as the "Cadillac" home run trot. This really got under the skin of the Cardinals. So, to add fuel to the fire, Leonard later introduced his "one flap down" trot. He would circle the bases with one arm pinned to his side. This of course, was to symbolize that the Cardinals were going down in the series. In retaliation, St. Louis pitcher Bob Forsch drilled Leonard in the back in game three which prompted the St. Louis press to start referring to Leonard as "two flaps down".

There was also former Red Sox pitcher, Luis Tiant. He would go into his wind up and then do a 180 degree spin until he was facing center-field and then turn back around and fire the ball towards home plate. I don't know how he never fell off of the mound.Can you imagine if infamous Dodger coke-baller Steve Howe had ever tried this?

Then was slugger Lee May who played first base for the Orioles before Eddie Murray came to town. May would stand at the plate while rapidly shaking his bat over his head. From what I remember, he also shuffled his feet. I could never figure out how he could hit a 90 mph fastball with all of that extracurricular activity. But he must have known what he was doing as he finished his career with 354 homer runs.

Growing up as a huge Orioles fan, I saw many games at Baltimore's old Memorial Stadium. It was during a rain delay at one of those games that I got to experience catcher Rick Dempsey's illustrious "rain delay theater". Dempsey would come out of the dugout with his shirt stuffed to give the appearance of a huge beer belly. Then he walk up to homeplate in his socks (which was cover with the rain tarp) and pretend that he was batting. He would go through motions until he would finally get a hold of one and "knock it out of the park". Then, he would round the tarp covered bases in the pouring rain to the cheers of the fans who remained in the stands. His "home run trot" climaxed with a huge belly flop in the puddles of water near home plate. Baltimore fans adored Dempsey and still do!

kw