Meet the Brewers #36: Dave May

In this series of biographies, I've talked a number of times about how Marvin Milkes seemingly started making moves simply for the sake of making them. Just like the cliched "blind squirrel," it seemed inevitable that Milkes would make a decent move eventually. Perhaps that move came on June 15, while the team was in Baltimore, when, at the trade deadline, Milkes sent minor league pitchers Dick Baney and Buzz Stephen (both of whom had pitched in the majors before) to the Orioles in exchange for Brewer #36, Dave May. The Brewers also optioned outfielder Hank Allen to Baltimore's Triple-A Rochester team on some sort of loan deal.

1971 Topps

David LaFrance May was born in New Castle, Delaware, on December 23, 1943. His parents had nine children in total, and Dave was the fourth. May signed two contracts to play major league baseball -- one with San Francisco and one with Philadelphia. He became a Giant because the Giants were the first to get their contract to MLB. He did not stay in the Giants system for long because the Orioles snapped him up in the old "first-year draft," which allowed teams to draft minor leaguers away from other teams after just one season -- a 249 plate appearance season in the Appalachian League where he hit .379/.457/.561.

1971 Dell Today's Team Stamp

May moved up in the Orioles system fairly quickly thanks to his hitting ability, and he made his major league debut in 1967 at the age of 23. The problem for May was that he was with a team that had the outfield covered quite well already with 23-year-olds Curt Blefary and Paul Blair in left and center and future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson in right. As a result, in 1967 and 1968, May was on the Rochester/Baltimore shuttle, splitting time both years between Triple-A and the majors. 

1972 Topps

May's offense suffered, though, as an Oriole. He was not getting to start many games in the field and was used mainly as a pinch-hitter. As May said in The Sporting News when talking about his trade to Milwaukee, "It was tough playing for the Orioles because when you weren't in there every day, it was hard to get into a groove." Indeed, in the first two-and-a-half months of 1970 before his trade, May had started only two games of his 25 appearances.

1973 Topps

Freed from the Orioles at the age of 26, May was inserted immediately into the Brewers' starting lineup in centerfield. In Milwaukee, May was at home in many respects. He was an All-Star in 1973, which was his best season by far -- he led the American League in total bases and Win Probability Added. Part of that season left its imprint on the Brewers team record book as he hit safely in 24 consecutive games. That streak stayed on the books as the Brewers best until Paul Molitor's 39-game hitting streak in 1987.

1974 Topps

May struggled in 1974. He had the flu in spring training and may not have been right the whole year. It didn't help that Del Crandall decided to move May to right field, ostensibly to help May out after losing weight thanks to the flu. But he never broke out of the season-long funk. As a result, the team decided to trade him away, and May became the answer to a trivia question: Who was the player that the Atlanta Braves received when they traded Hank Aaron to the Milwaukee Brewers?

1974 Kellogg's

May later was traded two years later by the Braves to the Texas Rangers. The Braves sent May, Adrian Devine, Ken Henderson, Roger Moret, Carl Morton, and $250,000 to the Rangers for 25-year-old Jeff Burroughs. Dave spent one year and a month in Texas before he came back to the Brewers in May of 1978. May was nothing more than a bench player behind Larry Hisle, Ben Oglivie, Sixto Lezcano, Jim Wohlford, and Dick Davis -- yes, the team carried six outfielders then -- and ended up having his contract sold to the Pirates in September of that year.

1974 Topps Stamp

By that point, though, May had left his mark on the team record book for the first decade of its existence. Just look at this "team top 10" list from the 1980 Media Guide:

May was 4th in games, 4th in at bats, 4th in runs, 5th in hits, 6th in doubles, 6th in homers, 6th in RBI, 7th in extra base hits, 5th in total bases, and 5th in stolen bases. Yet, in the popularity contest that was the selection process for the 2000 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Brewers All Decades Team for the 1970s, May was overlooked in favor of Larry Hisle, Sixto Lezcano, Gorman Thomas, Hank Aaron, and Tommy Harper. Of those, Aaron was more of a sentimental choice than one actually based on production for the team, and Hisle probably made the team solely due to his being the first big-name free agent to sign with Milwaukee. May deserved better.

1994 Miller Commemorative Set

Dave passed away in October of 2012 at the age of 68. He suffered from diabetes for the last decade of his life after he moved back home to Delaware. May's son Derrick also played in the major leagues in the 1990s, spending 32 games with the club in 1995. 

Just before Father's Day in 2014, Derrick and his older brother David Jr. talked with each other in the form of a wonderful blog post about growing up with dad being a major leaguer on a website called Instream Sports. Derrick and David Jr. were a little more than a year apart in age, so they were partners in crime often. They played catch with the ball that Dave had gotten signed by the entire 1973 AL All-Star Team -- scuffing it up and getting grass stains on it. 

Derrick laughed about riding his bike to the White Hen Pantry and buying Bazooka and Topps baseball cards before going to the games with their dad in Milwaukee. Derrick also recalled one of their early neighbors in an apartment complex in Milwaukee where a lot of pro athletes lived. Their neighbor Lew was a little younger than Dave was, but Dave and Lew became fast friends. Then one day, the boys were told that Lew was no longer Lew -- that he had changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Dave May has 18 cards in the Trading Card Database showing him as a Milwaukee Brewer. I have the 8 shown here. I do not have the two Brewers picture packs from 1970 and 1971, any of his three O-Pee-Chee cards, the 1972 Topps Venezuelan Stamp, the 1973 Jewel Foods photo card, the 1973-74 Linnett Portrait, the 1974 Topps Deckle Edge, or his 1986 TCMA All-Time Milwaukee Brewers card.

Meet the Brewers #27: Skip Lockwood

In the first six weeks of the 1970 season and as one might expect for a second-year expansion team in the pre-free-agent era, the Brewers had struggled. Attendance was not great -- after all, the team had about 5 days to sell season tickets once the bankruptcy court approved Bud Selig's purchase of the team. On May 5, 1970, the Brewers returned to MIlwaukee after a two-coast, 15-game road trip which featured two doubleheaders. On that road trip, the team went 2-13 and got swept in back-to-back four-game series by the Washington Senators and New York Yankees. 

GM Marvin Milkes met with manager Dave Bristol, the coaching staff, and director of player development and procurement Bobby Mattick (who later managed the Toronto Blue Jays in 1980 and 1981) and decided that a few changes needed to be made. The first change that the team made was to call up young starting pitcher Claude (Skip) Lockwood from Portland and, in a corresponding move, the team put Rich Rollins on waivers for purposes of giving him his unconditional release.

1971 Topps

Skip Lockwood was a bonus baby signed by the Kansas City Athletics directly out of his suburban Boston high school in 1964. In his SABR biography, the story is told that the A's came to his house and said they would match any offer for Lockwood to sign with the team. The Colt .45's were the high bidder, agreeing to give a $35,000 bonus. Lockwood -- then 17-years-old -- wrote in an extra "1" in front of the bonus number and asked the A's scout, Pat Friday, if getting $135,000 was okay. Friday made a call, and the A's agreed to the tripling of the bonus. It was, at the time, the largest bonus ever given.

The A's decided that Lockwood would play third base for them. His first step was to travel to Burlington, Iowa, and play in the Midwest League for a while. But, as a bonus baby and under the rules at the time, Lockwood had to spend all of 1965 on the A's bench. He made a total of 42 appearances that season, starting just two games and appearing in the field at third in just 7 games. It took him until June 13 of that season to get his first major league hit, and he only totaled 4 hits in 33 at bats (41 plate appearances) all season.

1972 Topps

In an effort to hide Lockwood away from the Rule 5 draft after the 1966 season, the A's had Lockwood go to the Arizona Instructional League as a pitcher. That worked poorly -- the Astros took Lockwood as a pitcher in the draft. But, the Astros did not see enough that spring of Lockwood as a pitcher, they returned him to the A's. The A's figured out that, perhaps, Lockwood had more of a future as a pitcher and had him split time between pitching and playing third base in the minors in 1968.

Apparently, the A's lost interest, or thought no one would take a soon-to-be-22-year-old without a true position, so they left Lockwood unprotected in the 1969 Expansion Draft. With little to lose, however, the expansion Seattle Pilots selected Lockwood and sent him to Double-A. Near the end of the 1969 season, the team called Lockwood to the majors. In 6 games, Lockwood started three and finished three.

Lockwood's stay in Milwaukee lasted until the end of the 1973 season. The Brewers used Lockwood mainly as a starter until 1973. In his five seasons in the Brewers/Pilots organization, Lockwood posted a 28-55 record in 132 appearances (103 starts). He threw 729-1/3 innings -- nearly 60% of his career total -- with a 3.75 ERA (3.78 FIP). To tell you how bad the Brewers have been at developing pitchers over their 47-season existence, that 3.75 ERA still ranks ninth in Brewers history, his hits allowed per nine innings of 8.638 ranks eighth, and his home runs allowed per nine innings of 0.728 is third.

1973 Topps

After the 1973 season -- at which point Lockwood was still only 27 years old -- Lockwood found himself on the move. The Brewers packaged Lockwood with Ollie Brown, Joe Lahoud, Ellie Rodriguez, and Gary Ryerson, sending that group to the California Angels in exchange for Steve Barber, Ken Berry, Art Kusnyer, Clyde Wright, and cash.

The Angels deployed Lockwood mostly as a reliever, which is where he would find great success going forward. His time in Anaheim, though, was not as successful. He bounced around a bit after 1974, getting traded to the Yankees for Bill Sudakis. The Yankees promptly released Lockwood after spring training in 1975, so he hooked on again with the Oakland A's. The A's didn't need him, so they sold his contract to the New York Mets in July of 1975.

The move to the Mets was exactly what Lockwood's career needed. He pitched extremely well over the last half of 1975 -- 1-3 record but with a 1.49 ERA (2.48 FIP) and 2 saves over 48-1/3 innings, walking 25 but striking out 61. Over the next three years, Lockwood was the Mets closer -- even finishing 2nd in the National League in 1976 in saves with 19 (and doesn't that say how much times have changed?).

Lockwood spent 5 years with the Mets and played out his option in 1979. As a result, his hometown Boston Red Sox signed him to a two-year, $725,000 contract for the 1980 and 1981 seasons with a no-trade clause -- the Red Sox's first-ever free agent. That included a $250,000 signing bonus, a $200,000 salary, and a $125,000 option-year buyout for a third year. Lockwood was not good with the Red Sox and was released after spring training in 1981. He hooked up with the Expos for the 1981 season, but he spent the entire year at Triple-A Denver. 1981 was Lockwood's last in baseball.

1994 Miller Brewing Commemorative Set

During his career, Lockwood worked regularly in the offseason on his college education, eventually graduating with his B.S. in Speech from Emerson College in Boston. He then graduated from MIT with an MBA in 1983, and he added a master's degree from Fairfield University. His post-baseball career has focused on sports psychology and, in his SABR Biography, he expressed his envy he had not gotten his psychology license while former major-league pitcher Bob Tewksbury had and was working (in 2012) with the Boston Red Sox.

These days, Lockwood has a website through which he can be contacted for speaking gigs and corporate motivational speaking. 

Despite spending most of five seasons with the Brewers, Lockwood has just 9 cards in the Trading Card Database of him with the Milwaukee Brewers. I have the four cards shown here, while I am still looking for the corresponding O-Pee-Chee cards of Lockwood from 1971, 1972, and 1973, the 1971 Dell Today's Team Stamp, and the 1973 Jewel Foods photo card of him.

Card Show Purchases, Part 2 -- Glorious Vintage Pickups

Yesterday, I talked about my bargain bin shopping at the first table I stopped at.  Go ahead -- read the post. I'll wait.

If you're impatient and don't want to read yesterday's news, well, don't worry, I'll fill you in on the key details.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I went back to that same dealer's table later in the day.  When I went back, I was intending on more "dumpster diving" in those $1 bins.  I didn't get to do that, though, because by the time I went back the table owner had switched out his bins for his high-end items -- including a Life magazine from 1962 with the Post Cereal card insert with both Mantle and Maris on it...and I'm wishing I had bought that today.  His bottom line on it was $75, which was the starting bid in a higher end online auctions a few years ago.

I don't collect Mantle or Maris or Life magazines or even Post Cereal cards though, so that item was pretty well lost on me, I think.

More my speed was the fact that this dealer also had added about 6 of those 5000-card monster boxes of cards.  Those boxes had a sheet which said that the cards were 25 cents each, but if you got to 200 cards, it would be $20 and each card after that would be a dime as well.  So, basically, once you got to 80 cards, your next 120 cards were free.

Next to those monster boxes, he had a smaller box -- probably a 1000-card box -- filled with baseball and football cards from 1971 through 1975 with a few older baseball cards thrown in.  That's the box from which my purchases today came.

You guys are all aware that I'm a Brewers collector.  Yet, as I got into the range of 150 cards in my stack, I tired of looking through more recent cards (which I'll post later this week) and decided to pull a bunch of these older cards to finish out my 200.  Here's a sampling of what I got:

I picked up the one 1960 Topps card I found:

Those corners are almost sharp.  Seriously, no creases, no scratching, and no abrasions on a 54-year old card pulled from a dime box.  I'll take it.

From 1965 Topps, I picked up a couple of Milwaukee Braves for the complete base set of Topps and Bowman of the Milwaukee Braves (yes, ugh, Aaron rookie....$$$$$$$) I hope to build:

Santos -- a.k.a Sandy -- Alomar Sr.

 

Then, a preview of next year's Topps Heritage set thanks to six New York Yankees cards from the 1966 Topps set I found next to one another in the box:

Yes, more headshots without hats and guys with their hands balled up in their gloves for next year's photos are in store.

There were a fair amount of 1971 Topps in the box, but I only grabbed two of them -- a Ted Kubiak card for my Brewers team set and this little gem:

Similarly, I didn't find a lot of 1972 Topps that I grabbed -- nothing for the Brewers I need, for instance -- but I did pick up these four cards:

The only card of those four with any serious condition issues is that 1971 N.L Pitching Leaders card with three Hall of Famers and Al Downing on it.  That issue is writing on the card, but it's still a really attractive card for a dime.  And, I believe I am correct in saying that the LaRussa card is his only card as a player, so picking up a Hall of Famer for 10 cents isn't too bad either.

(EDIT: Oops, I was thinking of Bobby Cox having only one card.  Tony the Russian has two other cards.)

The box had a lot of 1973 and 1974 Topps in it.  The more I see both of these sets, the more I am thinking about putting them together.  I found one Brewer card from 1973 that I needed -- card #212, Joe Lahoud. But I found a couple of great cards from guys that I am collecting as Brewers-only player collections:

In addition to these two cards, I also picked up these cards from this box:

This one goes into my Eddie Mathews player collection.

It's fun picking up Hall of Famers on 41-year-old cards for a dime, as Eddie Mathews, Jim Palmer, Jim Hunter, and Ernie Banks display to great effect (even if seeing Jim Palmer in a pool float is a bit weird).  And seeing Popeye Zimmer in mustard and brown after so many years of him in Yankee pinstripes and Red Sox whites is a bit jarring but fun.

The big stash, though, came from 1974.  I picked up the unnumbered green team checklist for the Brewers along with George Scott, the Team card (which is miscut, so I can still use a better-centered version), Don Money, Bobby Mitchell, the Rookie Catchers card with one of my player collection guys Charlie Moore on it, the Rookie Pitchers with Kevin Kobel, the Rookie OF with Wilbur Howard, and Steve Barber just for my Brewers collection.  I'm down to just a couple of cards for 1974 for the Brewers as a result.

Here's the team card, which is pretty off-center:

After that, I started pulled other players, managers, and team cards.  There was a future Hall of Famer who also became a Brewer:

There were other future Brewers too:

Some team cards:

Managers:

Yeah, oops.  Grabbed two Weavers. 

I'm thinking I grabbed two Weavers future Brewer manager George Bamberger's inclusion on it.  Or I just lost track.

Finally, other players:

Miscut Maddox

Andre Thornton/Frank White rookie

Play at the Plate!

Two Hall of Famers

Two more Hall of Famers

Freisleben Washington Variation

Finally, there were some 1975 Topps and one 1976 Topps Traded too.  No minis, unfortunately, but definitely cool cards:

As you can see, I camped out in this vintage box to try to find cards I liked, cards I thought you guys and gals would like, and hopefully to pick up some trade bait as well.  If you see something you like, let me know.

And just think -- those cards were just one-third of the cards I dug out of the dime boxes!

Hope y'all have a great Father's Day!