The Phenom

Over at 30-Year-Old Cardboard, I chimed in on Word Association Wednesday regarding the word "Phenom."  When I was a 9-year-old and really, really into baseball, I recall seeing what I think was an ABC World News story about the new phenom in baseball in 1980 -- "Super Joe" Charboneau.

I have mentioned before how as a teen I seemed to gravitate toward keeping random stuff, and this is another example.  In a box with a bunch of Topps Coins from 1989 were several issues of Baseball Digest Magazine -- including this one from 1980 with Joe Charboneau on the cover.

As was the case for Paul Molitor, I certainly did not recall all the crazy Joe Charboneau stories from that time. According to Wikipedia,

Joe had a tendency to dye his hair unnatural colors, as well as open beer bottles with his eye socket and drink beer with a straw through his nose. Other stories emerged about how he did his own dental work and fixed a broken nose with a pair of pliers and a few shots of Jack Daniel's whiskey, stood out.

And to think I could never understand why Joe never did more than his rookie year and fell victim to one of the hardest falls in his second year ever suffered through by a baseball player (caused in no small part by a bad slide leading to back surgery).