One Season in Rocket City
An excerpt from Dale Tafoya’s new book about the 1985 Huntsville Stars
AL West
1980s First Round Ratings
I took a look at every team’s first-round picks over the course of the decade and rated the best and worst.
The Day the World Series Stopped
Jon Leonoudakis was in attendance at Game Three of the 1989 World Series with a VHS camcorder and his still camera. He recently released a film on his experience and gives us a preview.
The Doug DeCinces Trade
The Baltimore Orioles made room for Cal Ripken Jr. by trading Doug DeCinces to the California Angels but the deal almost didn’t happen.
Tom Seaver by the Numbers
Thirteen men threw more than 4,000 innings and finished their careers with an E.R.A. of under 3.00.
Tom Seaver is the only one who threw a pitch after 1930.
7 minutes that explain the greatness of Rickey
A 12-pitch sequence from the 1989 ALCS shows the greatness of Rickey Henderson
Tricky Rickey
Rickey Henderson set a new stolen base record in 1982 but the mark would have come sooner had some shenanigans on the part of Billy Martin been allowed to play out.
That Time I Met Dan Gladden
Note: This is a guest post from Dan Leritz I grew up in Northern Minnesota in a small mining town called Mountain Iron (about an hour from Duluth). I grew up a big Twins fan and attended my first game was in 1982 when I was just 3 years old. For the next 4 years, …
The Incredible Journey of Kirby Puckett
If you weren’t paying attention it would have been pretty easy to miss a key moment in the Minnesota Twins franchise beginning its upswing after years of futility. The date was January 12, 1982, and temperatures in Minneapolis were in the single digits when Major League Baseball held its January draft. A baseball draft during …
16 Ridiculous Nolan Ryan Statistics
How can a man who struck out nearly 900 more batters than anyone else in the history of the game be overrated? When his name is Nolan Ryan. How can a man who walked nearly 1,000 more batters than anyone else in the history of the game be underrated? When his name is Nolan Ryan. …
Missed it By That Much – The Danny Goodwin Story
There were three future Hall-of-Famers picked in the 1971 Major League Baseball draft. Danny Goodwin was selected ahead of all three of them. The 1975 draft featured one future Hall-of-Famer. Danny Goodwin was selected ahead of him, too. Danny Goodwin was a high school superstar; the kind of prospect you build a franchise around. There …
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When Reggie Flirted with Ted Turner
“Reggie Jackson is the ”straw that stirs the drink” on the Yankees now. Unless a serious problem develops in the negotiations of Jackson’s new contract and Reggie feels that George Steinbrenner has adopted Dave Winfield and abandoned him.” -Dave Anderson, New York Times, 12/16/80 When the Yankees signed Dave Winfield, his new teammate Reggie Jackson had a piece …
Chris Browne: A Baseball Life
George Bell made history in 1988 and Chris Browne was there. He had one of the best seats in the house, but you can’t buy the ticket. The seat was reserved for a select few. These days, Chris Browne is the General Manager of the Kansas City T-Bones, an independent baseball team in the American …
The decade begins
The first Opening Day of the new decade brought baseball fans a brand new statistic and the season highlight in an otherwise horrible season for one pitcher. Here’s how things went down on April 9th, 1980. Reds 9, Braves 0 Filling in for an ill Tom Seaver, Frank Pastore draws the Opening Day start for …
7 Amazing Rickey Henderson Stolen Base Facts
Rickey Henderson was the best leadoff hitter in the history of the game and also one of the most exciting. Here are seven things Rickey did that will likely never be done again. 1: From 1970 through 1989, Rickey stole 283 more bases than anyone in baseball. He didn’t make his debut until 1979. Despite …
The Best of 2017 on ’80s Baseball
I started this blog at the beginning of 2016 as a companion to a book I was writing. I’m happy to say the book is finished and should be out at some point in the summer of 2018. I didn’t post on the blog nearly as much as I wanted to this year because I was …
Dream Season: Rickey Henderson
Every player longs for that dream season. The one where they stay healthy and just produce. I’m going to crunch the numbers and create dream seasons for notable 1980s stars. This time I’ll take a look at Rickey Henderson. March/April 1988 By 1988, Rickey was well established as the premier base stealer of the time, …
A Discussion with Sean Kane
Your average fan uses a baseball glove to, you know, catch baseballs. Sean Kane uses them to create amazing pieces of art. For more than fifteen years, Sean Kane has been creating one-of-a-kind painted glove pieces that have earned him national recognition and a sizable following which includes many of the players he features. It all …
(Mark) Clear as Mud
Not many guys can go from getting seriously knocked around in the Appy League to becoming a Major League All-Star in less than five years, but that’s exactly what Mark Clear did. Clear was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies in the 8th round in 1974 and spent his first professional summer with the Pulaski Phillies …
Dream Season: George Brett
Every player longs for that dream season. The one where they stay healthy and just produce. I’m going to crunch the numbers and create dream seasons for notable 1980s stars. Next up is George Brett. March/April 1983 There are quick starts and then there’s the jump George Brett got on the 1983 season. In the …
Gorman Texas Ranger
“They know when to cheer and they know when to boo. And then know when to drink beer. They do it all the time.” –Gorman Thomas on Brewers fans There are players who will always be associated with certain franchises. Gorman Thomas is one of those players. He spent time in Cleveland and Seattle, but …
The Best of 2016 on ’80s Baseball
I started this blog 364 days ago. Since then, I’ve published 64 posts, including guest posts, for which I’m very grateful. It’s been a great year and I thought I’d take a look back at the Top 5 posts of 2016 based (unscientifically) on page views. Number 5: George Brett’s amazing 1980 Brett was absolutely ridiculous …
The Remarkable Rookie Year of Mitchell Page
The Pirates bus sat waiting for a trip to Lakeland when someone told Mitchell Page to report to the team office. “I knew I was being traded,” he said of the 1977 Spring Training deal. “I just prayed it wasn’t to a contender. I wanted to go somewhere that would offer me an opportunity to play.” The …
Missed it By That Much – The Mike Parrott story
Every baseball player has bad years. Both Cy Young and Walter Johnson posted 20-loss seasons. Mike Schmidt hit .196 in his first full year. But few players had a year as miserable as Mike Parrott‘s 1980. Mike Parrott was a first-round draft choice of the Baltimore Orioles in 1973. He worked his way up to …
Rick Langford: Iron Man
Billy Martin strode to the mound at Arlington Stadium to talk to his starter, Rick Langford. “I think it’s time now,” he said. It was September 17th, 1980 and the Oakland A’s were up two in the 9th inning with two outs. But Rusty Staub‘s 2-run homer in the inning was followed by a Bump Wills …
George Brett and the Amazing Summer of 1980
If you’re going to hit .400, or even have a shot, it helps to put together a summer like George Brett did in 1980. The Royals third baseman got off to a slow start, hitting just .259 in the first month of the season. Brett was just starting to get hot in June when …
George Brett: The Pine Tar Game
Note: This is a guest post from Rocco Constantino July 24, 1983 The old baseball cliché is that you see something new at the ballpark every time you go to a game. It could be something as simple as a player recording his first major-league hit or achieving a team record; however, sometimes something so …
Missed it by that Much – The Britt Burns story
“If that kid’s not Rookie of the Year, there’s no such thing,” said White Sox skipper Tony La Russa after Britt Burns made his final start of 1980. “I think (Joe) Charboneau, (Dave) Stapleton and (Damaso) Garcia… had fine rookie years,” he continued. “But there’s no way anyone had a better year than Burns.” Unfortunately …
Missed it by that Much: The Dan Graham Story
If you happened to read the transactions section on December 8th, 1979 you probably would have missed it. The previous day, the Detroit Pistons fired their General Manager, a guy named Dick Vitale. At the winter meetings in Toronto, the Montreal Expos pulled off a big trade for Ron LeFlore, who would lead the N.L. …
The 1980 All-Star Game
There have been 87 All-Star games in major league history. Exactly one of them took place at Dodger Stadium. Watching the game today on YouTube brings you right back to the era, complete with Keith Jackson, Don Drysdale and Howard Cosell in the booth. Love him or hate him, there’s nothing quite like listening to …
Jimmy Piersall Loses It… Again
The summer of 1980 was brutal. A heatwave swept across the southeast which resulted in nearly 150 deaths across seven states. From Alabama to Texas and up to Missouri, people looked for any relief they could find. The search became more difficult when temperatures caused roads to buckle in many states. Wichita Falls reached a record 113 …
That Time I Met George Brett
NOTE: This is a guest post from Tim Harms. Manners matter. More on that in a moment as I share the story of meeting my baseball hero and getting his autograph. My formative years as a baseball fan came in Wichita, Kansas, in the late 1970s. Kansas City is a three-hour drive from Wichita, and …
The weirdest day of the 1980 season
“Is it a full moon or somethin’?” That’s what my mother-in-law says when weird stuff happens. June 20th, 1980 must have featured multiple full moons because some bizarre crap went down. On the field, it began in Boston when the Red Sox hosted the California Angels. The Angels were decimated by injuries but the lineup …
Schmidt & Brett in 1971
The most important day of the 1980 baseball season may very well have taken place in June of 1971. June 8th was draft day. The Chicago White Sox held the #1 pick and chose a high school catcher named Danny Goodwin from Peoria Central High School. Goodwin was the consensus #1 choice, a 6′-2″ 195 …
1980’s Longest Hitting Streak
DiMaggio: 56 Other DiMaggio: 34 Landreaux: 31 Wait… what? From 1941 through 1980, the three longest hitting streaks in the American League belonged to Joe DiMaggio (56 in 1941) , Don DiMaggio (34 in 1949) and Ken Landreaux. The two DiMaggio brothers are household names, but Landreaux, not so much. Ken Landreaux was selected by …
Billy Martin vs. the Marshmallow Man Part II
The story of how Billy Martin lost his job with the Yankees after a fight with a marshmallow salesman in October of 1979 is well known. But there’s an under-the-radar marshmallow story that’s just as good and perhaps even more volatile. In April of 1980, Martin brought his new team, the Oakland A’s, to Bloomington, MN …
Send in the Qs
April 13th, 1980 began like just another day. But by the end of the evening, some 17,000 plus baseball fans could rightly tell their kids they witnessed a major league baseball first. The Kansas City Royals led the Detroit Tigers 1-0 in the 7th inning when KC starter Paul Splittorff began to struggle and was …
Desperado: The Jerry Terrell Story
967-1. That was the vote. On April 1st, 1980, players across the major leagues voted on whether or not to strike that season. Of the 968 votes cast, there was but one dissenter. As spring training wound down, one issue loomed above all others: The threat of a players’ strike. Ever since Peter Seitz’s ruling …
John Wathan and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad May
A great month can make a season. In July of 1980, George Brett hit an amazing .494, en route to leading the major leagues with a .390 batting average. Likewise, some players perform exceptionally well against certain teams. Over his career, Babe Ruth slugged .744 against the Detroit Tigers. Ted Williams hit .374 against Orioles and Ty Cobb …
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