A View From the Cheap Seats
ON THIS DAY IN
BASEBALL HISTORY
On July 7, 1923, while pitching for the Red Sox, Lefty O’Doul (who went on to have a bar in San Francisco and create a famous bloody Mary mix) in a game the Sox would go on to lose by the score of 27-3, gave up 13 runs in the sixth inning to Cleveland… in RELIEF! He would end up allowing 16 runs total, a record at the time for most runs allowed in relief. (Perhaps he was already into the bloody Mary mix!)
After that season he was in the minors for the New York Giants until 1928. He was converting to outfielder.
It was a smart decision.
In 1929, six years after that disastrous pitching performance and after moving on to the Philadelphia A’s, O’Doul batted .398.
The next three years he would hit .383, .336 and .368, which led the league and got him his second batting title. (The year he hit .383, three guys batted higher.)
After 9 seasons as an outfielder, Lefty ended his career with a .349 average and a .945 OPS.
Sometimes reinventing yourself is a good thing.
Have a great weekend.
Bill / Bee’s Bombers
Boston University
Assistant Professor
Film and Television
College of Communication
AND YOU THINK YOU'VE SEEN
SOME BAD DEALS?
With the trade deadline upon us, I'm reminded of one of the greatest transactions of all time. June 15, 1976. That's when, for 3 days, Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi were Red Sox and Vida Blue belonged to the Yankees. Fingers and Rudi were sold to the Sox for one million dollars apiece. Vida Blue went for $1.5.
“Commissioner, I can’t sign these guys. They don’t want to play for ‘ol Charlie,” Finley would tell Hall of Fame Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, in a meeting later that Tuesday evening, according to the biography Charlie Finley: The Outrageous Story of Baseball’s Super Showman. “They want to chase those big bucks in New York. If I sell them now, I can at least get something back. If I can’t, they walk out on me at the end of the season and I’ve got nothing. This free agency thing is terrible. The only way to beat it is with young players. That’s where I’ll put the money.”
Kuhn instantly contacted all teams involved and ‘froze’ the trade, until he made an official decision on the transaction.
On June 18, Bowie Kuhn shook the baseball world almost as hard as Finley had days before. He held a press conference telling the media that he was nullifying the trades, citing Article 1, Section 4 of the Major League Agreement, written in 1921, the era of baseball’s first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The section gave the commissioner permission to take “steps as he may deem necessary and proper in the interest in the morale of the game.”
Kuhn elaborated on his decision to rule against the sale, in his autobiography, Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner: “If such transactions now and in the future were permitted, the door would be opened wide to the buying of success by the more affluent clubs, public suspicion would be aroused, traditional and sound methods of player development and acquisition would be undermined and our efforts to preserve the competitive balance would be greatly impaired.” - Bowie Kuhn
A week after Kuhn nullified the trade, Finley decided to file a $10 million lawsuit in federal court against him, on the basis of ‘restraint of trade.’ For nearly two weeks, the Athletics’ owner refused to play Fingers, Rudi or Blue, insisting that they were property of the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.
Pretty bizarre, huh? But fascinating. And just look at what free agency has become. Charlie was right. They chased the big bucks and have been doing it ever since.
Bill / Bee’s Bombers
Boston University
Assistant Professor
Film and Television
College of Communication
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