Meet the Brewers #43: Floyd Wicker

On September 4, 1970, two dead-end teams were playing out the string in front of a disinterested collection of less than 12,000 people in an almost entirely pointless one-game series on the Friday before Labor Day in Milwaukee. The 49-90 Chicago White Sox limped into Milwaukee in the middle of what would become the Sox's longest losing streak of the season -- 8 games. For their part, the Brewers were not any great shakes either, as the second year team was carrying a 52-85 record.

Brewer #43, outfielder Floyd Wicker, joined the festivities as a pinch hitter for Bernie Smith in the bottom of the eighth inning; Wicker promptly tapped out to the pitcher for the final out of the inning, stranding Tommy Harper at second and then replaced Smith in RF. Yet, Wicker would eventually be the hero of the game. The slog between the two worst teams in the American League went into extra innings tied at 2, and Wicker broke the tie with a single in the bottom of the 10th to drive in Harper for the walk-off victory.

1971 Dell Today's Team Stamps. Wicker's airbrushed Expos hat is in the Brewers' book.

Floyd Euliss Wicker was born in Burlington, North Carolina in 1943. He went to East Carolina University for one season as a 16-year-old, turning 17 in the fall of that freshman year. As a freshman, his team won the NAIA national championship. According to the ECU yearbook for that year, Wicker was the third baseman for that team. 

The major league rules being what they were at the time, his ability drew attention from scouts and he signed after just one year of college with the St. Louis Cardinals. Wicker did an interview in 2012 on a blog called The Baseball Historian where he stated that he had had the chance to sign as a professional right out of high school, but he chose a year of college near home instead.

He played in the Cardinals system in Classes C and D at the ages of 17 and 18 for his first two years in the minors, and he then moved up to A ball in 1963. At that point, his career was interrupted by two years of military service. He still played three to five games a week in the service, but it is hard to say that he faced the same level of competition there as he would have in the majors. 

1971 Topps/O-Pee-Chee

Wicker came back to the Cardinals organization in 1965. He was pushed to Double-A in 1966 and responded with a big season -- .303/.392/.417. He followed that up with a creditable year in 1967 at Triple-A Tulsa and a good spring in 1968 such that he put himself on the Cardinals radar for when their other outfielders had to serve their military service. As such, in 1968, Wicker made his big-league debut on June 23 as a pinch hitter. He appeared in 5 games for St. Louis in total, all as a pinch hitter or pinch runner.

Apparently, that was not enough for the Cardinals to make sure that Wicker was on their 40-man roster, however, and the Montreal Expos swiped him from the Cardinals in the Rule 5 draft after the 1968 season. The Expos gave him 41 plate appearances -- all but one against right-handed pitching for the lefty-hitting Wicker -- and he struggled mightily with an anemic slash line of .103/.146/.103. In fairness, it's tough enough to hit in the major leagues, but it's even tougher when you only get 24 plate appearances between May 16 and September. On the other hand, you don't help yourself when you fail to get a hit in any of those 24 plate appearances.

That Rule 5 season turned into a lost year for Wicker -- one he never got back developmentally. As soon as the season ended, Wicker was named as the player-to-be-named later in a trade in which the Expos received Marv Staehle from the Seattle Pilots. 

Wicker spent most of 1970 in Portland and had an excellent year in AAA -- .329/.441/.521 with 14 HR and 78 BB in 471 plate appearances. He also featured in a Ray Peters story, in that Ray used Floyd's bat to hit the one and only professional home run that Ray ever hit -- a grand slam for the Beavers the week before Ray got married. 

Thus, Wicker got a call up to the Brewers in September. Wicker then played in 11 games in 1971 starting April 30 and ending May 30 for Milwaukee. Again, he struggled for playing time -- getting only 10 plate appearances and never getting a start for the Brewers. He was then traded on June 1, 1971 to the San Francisco Giants in exchange for utility infielder Bob Heise. 

1994 Miller 25th Anniversary commemorative set

Wicker's professional baseball career ended in 1971. As he detailed in an interview in The Times News (Burlington, NC) in 2012, even though he stopped being a pro, he still loved the game. After he left baseball, he went to work for the United States Postal Service for 33 years, retiring in 2005. During that time, he helped out the Southern Alamance High School and Middle School baseball teams and even coached American Legion ball in the 1980s. 

Wicker still shows up in newspapers in the area of North Carolina where he lives. The 2012 article above was done in conjunction with his receipt of the Distinguished Service in Sports Award that he received from the Alamance County Sports Development Counsel. The article notes his heavy involvement with the North Carolina Baseball Museum and his role in getting two teams from the 1910s from his old high school recognized there as champions. Many of the articles with him involved are for golf tournaments for fundraising for that Museum. 

Floyd Wicker has 4 total cards as a Milwaukee Brewer as shown above. I actually own all of them.

Meet the Brewers #41: Dick Ellsworth

On August 7, 1970, the Brewers purchased Dick Ellsworth's contract from the Cleveland Indians. Ellsworth hurried to Kansas City from Cleveland -- where his final two appearances were both walk-off losses over the previous weekend against the Chicago White Sox. Ellsworth arrived in Kansas City in time to give up three earned runs in mop-up time in the second game of a doubleheader. Luckily for Ellsworth's future employment, however, those would be the final runs he allowed all season as he finished the year with the Brewers on a run of 15-1/3 scoreless innings.

1971 Dell Today's Team Stamp, issued in the Brewers team set.

Richard Clark Ellsworth was born in Lusk, Wyoming, in 1940. Thankfully, Ellsworth has a SABR Biography, so I am drawing liberally from that biography. Ellsworth's family moved to Fresno, California, when he was three years old. Ellsworth grew up there and became the ace for a Fresno High School team that featured (including Ellsworth) three noteworthy future major-league players -- including Jim Maloney and Pat Corrales. Other noteworthy Fresno HS alumni include Frank Chance, Dutch Leonard, Tom Seaver, and former Brewer Sean Halton.

Ellsworth was quite heavily pursued for his signature on a contract out of high school. As his SABR biography quotes him, "Before I graduated I received at least one Christmas greeting from a scout on every major league club." Based on getting a cool $60,000 bonus (nearly $521,000 in today's money), he signed up with the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs decided to start him in their annual crosstown charity event against the White Sox, and Ellsworth promptly pitched a complete-game shutout three days out of high school. So, the Cubs kept him on the roster and let him start against the Reds -- who rocked the kid for 4 earned runs in 2-1/3 innings.

The Cubs were pretty hard up for pitching at that point of their existence, so Ellsworth became a rotation fixture just two years later, in 1960. At the age of 22 in 1962, Ellsworth joined a club of dubious membership -- finishing the season with a 9-20 record (and a 5.09 ERA) for a team that was the first in Cubs history to lose 100 games. 

The next year in 1963, however, the team around him was far better, and Ellsworth got both better run support and super lucky on giving up hits (going from over 10 hits per nine innings to 6.9 hits per nine). He finished 22-10 in 290-2/3 innings pitched and, according to WAR, he edged MVP Sandy Koufax out for being the best pitcher in the NL (Willie Mays beat both of them). The team being better mattered because Ellsworth relied on a sinker as his out pitch, and he learned a slider. Offseason rule changes to expand the strike zone also helped.

1971 Topps

That 1963 season led to Ellsworth being an All-Star in 1964 at the age of 24. He did not get to pitch in a game which the NL won by putting up four runs in the bottom of the ninth inning against Boston's closer Dick Radatz. That 1964 Cubs team came into the season with great expectations that were deflated quickly by the off-season death of Ken Hubbs in a plane crash in Utah (as Ellsworth himself said here). Yet, by far, that 1963 season was the pinnacle of Ellsworth's career.  1965 and 1966 saw the Cubs return to the depths of 1962, and Ellsworth's win-loss records reflected that -- 14-15 in 1965 and another 20-loss season in 1966 (finishing with an 8-22 record).

Since in 1960s baseball being a 20-game loser meant you were morally a bad person -- even if, as Willie McCovey said, the players recognized that Ellsworth's win-loss records was "misleading" -- the Cubs traded Ellsworth to the Phillies in December of 1966 in exchange for Ray Culp and cash. He struggled in Philadelphia, and so he found himself traded again after the 1967 season to the Boston Red Sox. Coming off the "Impossible Dream" season, the Red Sox were trying to improve their pitching, and Ellsworth did exactly that. 

Unfortunately, Boston ace (and future Brewer) Jim Lonborg got injured in a ski accident shortly after Ellsworth was acquired, so Ellsworth ended up as the Red Sox Opening Day starter in 1968. Still, a 16-7 record with a 3.03 ERA (well-deserved, with a 3.04 FIP) despite missing several starts in August thanks to contracting the mumps in August was a good return for the Bosox. But, when it came to 1969, Ellsworth chipped his ankle during spring training. The injury -- along with Boston's self-scouting hinting that he'd lost some speed off his fastball -- led Boston to trade him to Cleveland.

1994 Miller Commemorative Set

Looking at Ellsworth's stats may give a little support for the Red Sox view on his fastball. His strikeouts declined from 4.9 K/9 in 1968 down to 3.2 K/9 in 1969. Then, in 1970 with the Indians, Ellsworth was down to just 2.7 K/9 and up to 2.9 BB/9 prior to his sale to Milwaukee. Ellsworth's great results down the stretch in 1970 did not carry over into 1971, however, and Ellsworth made just 11 appearances for the Brewers in 1971 before he was released at the end of June. He never played in professional baseball again.

But, he was not done with baseball. He was very successful in real estate with Grubb & Ellis/Pearson Realty in Fresno and he is still a Senior Vice President with that company's successor company, Newmark Knight Frank. In fact, he was so successful that he purchased an ownership stake in the Triple-A Fresno Grizzlies. He also had the privilege of getting to see his son Steve Ellsworth make 8 appearances in 1988 for the Boston Red Sox. Steve did not have as long or as successful a baseball career as his dad did, though.

I have three of the four baseball cards that the Trading Card Database has Ellsworth listed as a Brewer. The one I am missing -- and which is missing from here -- is Ellsworth's 1971 O-Pee-Chee card #309. 

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 #35: Bob Humphreys

Marvin Milkes' track record as a General Manager left a lot to be desired. I have noted before how he seemed to confuse activity for progress and began shifting players in and out in Milwaukee and, a year earlier, Seattle like an ADHD kid who didn't take his Ritalin. I mean, Milkes is the guy who decided that Lou Piniella would be of no use to the Seattle Pilots in 1969 and traded him to Kansas City for John Gelnar and Steve Whitaker. Piniella then was named Rookie of the Year for 1969 (even if Ken Tatum and Mike Nagy both probably were better choices).

Another series of transactions in 1970 for Milwaukee might fall under that same category. Milkes chopped and changed out pitchers and hitters seemingly randomly. The team picked up three pinch-hitters (as noted in the Tito Francona post) around the June 15 trading deadline. At the same time, the team sent Ray Peters down to the minors, sold John O'Donoghue to Montreal and Bob Locker to Oakland, and then signed Brewer #35, Bob Humphreys, as a free agent after the Washington Senators released the 34-year-old.

1971 Topps

Robert William Humphreys was born in Covington, Virginia, on August 18, 1935. Covington is in the middle of the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest along Interstate 64, about 15 miles from the West Virginia State Line and about 45 minutes from Lexington, Virginia (the home of Washington & Lee University). His family migrated southward -- moving closer to Roanoke -- where he graduated high school in Montvale, Virginia. He then attended Hampden-Sydney College -- an all-male military college about an hour away -- and starred in both baseball and basketball.

Humphreys is a smaller guy -- under 6' tall -- so he relied on intelligence and guile as a pitcher. He was never a fireballer, and more than once he was told he had no chance to be a major leaguer. In fact, as his SABR biography begins, he once wrote "YOU CAN'T MAKE IT!" on his glove wristband after being told that by a major-league talent evaluator.

But, he did make it. He signed as an amateur free agent out of college in 1958 with Detroit and got to the major leagues in September of 1962 at the age of 27 years old. The next spring training, his contract was purchased by the St. Louis Cardinals. That was fortuitous for Humphreys, as it meant that he got a World Series Champions ring in 1964 as part of the Cardinal team that overhauled Gene Mauch's collapsing Phillies and then beat the New York Yankees in the World Series.

1971 Dell Today's 1971 Milwaukee Brewers

Most of Humphreys's career was spent as a member of the second incarnation of the Washington Senators. He got there by way of the Chicago Cubs, who obtained the rights to his services thanks to a trade with St. Louis in the spring of 1965. The Sens traded for him in April of 1966 and kept him until Humphreys was released on June 13, 1970.

As his career progressed, he suffered through various arm injuries and ailments. For example, in 1965, he hurt his elbow. Rather than that being the death knell for his career, he changed his pitching to incorporate a slider and cutter taught to him by Tigers teammate Frank Lary. Later in his career, when his shoulder started hurting, he learned a knuckleball from a teammate in the Cardinals minor league system, Bobby Tiefenauer. When he arrived in Milwaukee, manager Dave Bristol told Humphreys to rely on the knuckler.

For most of his career, Humphreys was a reliever. He started just 4 games in his career. Oddly enough, one of those four starts was his final appearance as a major leaguer: Game 2 of a doubleheader between the Brewers and the Chicago White Sox before 3,826 of the White Sox' closest friends at Comiskey Park on September 25, 1970. Humphreys pitched five innings and got the win in that game.

He was released by the Brewers at the end of spring training in 1971 before being signed to a minor league contract. He pitched terribly there -- 7.11 ERA in 19 innings (14 walks, 10 strikeouts) -- and asked for his release as a result. That request was granted and that was the end of his playing career.

1994 Miller Commemorative Set

If you have looked at the three cards I have here, you might be wondering why Humphreys appears to be so old on his 1994 Miller Brewing commemorative set card. That would likely be because of what he did after his career ended. He spent five years as the head coach at Virginia Tech before joining the Toronto Blue Jays for five more years as a minor league instructor. 

But then, starting in 1984 and extending all the way through 1995, he was in the Milwaukee Brewers front office. He served through 1994 as coordinator of player development and then two seasons as the coordinator of pitching and field development in 1994 and 1995. As the great St. Louis Cardinals site Retro Simba mentions, Humphreys served as a mentor to long-time Cardinals catcher and current Cardinals manager Mike Matheny while Matheny was coming up with the Brewers. 

Humphreys later coached a year at Hampden-Sydney before returning to the minor leagues with the Cardinals. These days and at the age of 81, he is still involved with teaching youngsters baseball, as he is a pitching mentor with Home Run Club Virginia, an organization owned by one of Humphreys' former Hokie players, Orvin Kiser. Another two familiar names to baseball fans are attached to this organization: former Astros pinch-hitter extraordinaire Denny Walling and former big-league pitcher Tom House.

Based on what Trading Card DB has available, I have three of the four Bob Humphreys cards showing him as a Brewer. I am missing the 1971 O-Pee-Chee card of him.

Thanks for stopping by.

Meet the Brewers #32: Ken Sanders

With the placement of two pitchers on the DL and Marvin Milkes's incessant chopping and changing of the roster, additional bodies were needed in Milwaukee at the end of May in 1970. Thus, a reliever with a checkered history in major league baseball received the call up to the major leagues -- Ken Sanders. Sanders's first game in Milwaukee came on May 30, 1970. 

The Brewers had raced out to a five-run lead in the first-inning of the game -- thanks in large part to a hit by Brewer #30, Roberto Pena...an inside-the-park grand slam home run (a play on which Al Kaline almost choked on his own tongue and died on the field) -- but starter Lew Krausse faltered and gave up 6 runs and the lead. Thus, in the fifth inning, the call to the bullpen for Sanders came. He pitched okay -- giving up one run in 2-2/3 innings -- and the Brewers came back to win the game after that.

1971 Topps/O-Pee-Chee

Kenneth George Sanders was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 8, 1941. He grew up there but signed with the Kansas City Athletics pretty much right after high school in 1960. The A's sent him to the Florida State League and, as an 18-year-old, the A's had him pitch 240-2/3 innings. That year, he lead the FSL in wins (19), innings pitched (by only 9 2/3 innings), and complete games with an incredible 22. Imagine if those numbers got put up now by an 18-year-old kid at any level.

Sanders was not a big man -- standing 5'11" tall and weighing 180 pounds in his heyday with Milwaukee -- and, as a result, he was not a fireballer or ever threatened to lead the league in strikeouts. Indeed, the 22 complete games he threw in the Florida State League represented 44% of all of his career complete games -- all in the minor leagues. He never again threw more than 166 innings in a single season after that, and he never completed more than 8 games in any particular season.

1971 O-Pee-Chee back

Still, Sanders fought his way to the major leagues by 1964. Oddly, between 1960 and his making the major leagues in 1964, he spent only 7 games in Triple-A...and that was in 1962. He didn't stick in the majors in '64, though. In 1964, he spent most of the season in Double-A in Birmingham, Alabama. That team was noteworthy as well -- as being the first integrated sports team in state history thanks to the inclusion of pitcher John "Blue Moon" Odom and outfielder Tommie Reynolds on the team. A book called Southern League was written about the team; oddly enough, Sanders appears to have missed the team photo (probably by being in the majors at the time).

He went back to the minors -- this time to Triple-A -- before being drafted away from the A's by the Red Sox in the Rule 5 draft before the 1966 season. He pitched okay in 24 games in Boston -- 3.61 FIP/3.80 ERA (about league average) in 47-1/3 innings -- before the A's apparently thought, "you know what, we need Sanders back." So, they traded future Seattle Pilot Jim Gosger, pitcher Guido Grilli, and Sanders to the A's for Rollie Sheldon, John Wyatt, and Jose Tartabull. While this was pretty much a trade of spare parts, Tartabull did play 115 games for the Miracle Sox of '67. On the other hand, Sanders pitched the rest of 1966 in Kansas City -- finishing 6th in appearances with 62 -- before spending '67 in the minors.

Dell Today's 1971 Milwaukee Brewers Stamp

Sanders pitched a little bit in 1968 for the A's -- now in Oakland -- but he spent most of 1968 and 1969 at Triple-A. He finally got the break he needed when the still-Seattle Pilots traded for him with Mike Hershberger, Lew Krausse, and Phil Roof in exchange for Ron Clark and Jaybarkerfan favorite Don Mincher. His pitching earned him the nickname in Milwaukee -- perhaps from Bob Uecker -- of "Bulldog" and rightfully so. Brewers manager Dave Bristol stuck Sanders in the bullpen and kept letting him pitch. 

And boy, did Sanders pitch well in 1970. He finished 30 of the 50 games he pitched, throwing 92-1/3 innings. He became the Brewers closer before teams seemed to care about that title. Relying more on pitch movement and location, he still managed to strikeout 6.2 batters per 9 innings while walking only 2.4 and giving up just 1 homer all season.

1972 Topps

By 1971, though, Sanders had become a bona fide stud. He led the American League by appearing in 83 games that season. He threw 136-1/3 innings in relief -- probably burning him out, but what did Milwaukee care, right? -- and had a sparking 1.91 ERA (thought that was a bit of a mirage, since his FIP was 2.97). He also paced the American League in Jerome Holtzman's pet statistic, saves, totaling 31 of them.

Of those 83 games in which he pitched, he finished an incredible 77 of them. That total was, at the time, a major league record by a ways -- by 10 games over the previous record held by Dick Radatz in 1964. It is still good enough for fourth best all-time behind two seasons by Mike Marshall and the 2002 season from Oakland's Billy Koch. To compare, though, Koch's season destroyed him. Koch performed his feat at the age of 27. After that, he pitched in a total of 102 games and was never the same pitcher -- with his walk-rate spiking upward terribly. On the other hand, Sanders -- who was 29 in 1971 -- pitched another five seasons with a 3.50 ERA. It took its toll -- his K-rate dropped propitiously from 6.2/9 in 1970 to 5.3 in 1971 to just 3.8/9 over the rest of its career -- but he still was a lot better than Koch.

1994 Miller Brewing Commemorative

1971 was a tough act to follow, and Sanders struggled some. His ERA went up to where it probably should have been in 1971 -- to 3.12. He appeared in 62 games and threw 92-1/3 innings. After the 1972 season, the Brewers decided to cash in and threw him in a trade to Philadelphia with Ken Brett, Jim Lonborg, and Earl Stephenson in order to get John Vukovich, Bill Champion, and eventual franchise stalwart Don Money.

Sanders never played in Philly, though, as the team flipped him a month later to the Minnesota Twins in a trade. From there, Sanders played just a couple of months in 1973 with the Twins before they waived him and the Indians claimed him. He stuck around in Cleveland for basically a season before being released in June of 1974. 

The California Angels picked him up, and Sanders spent time there and in Triple-A in 1974. In 1975, the Angels traded him to the New York Mets, where he enjoyed something of a late career revival of a 90-inning stretch with a 2.60 ERA (despite 2.4 K/9!). His contract was sold in late 1976 to the Kansas City Royals, who pitched him 3 innings and then released him. He tried to hook on with the Brewers for the 1977 season, but he did not make the team out of spring training. Instead, he spent 30 games in Triple-A Spokane for Milwaukee before finally calling time on his career.

2000 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 1970s All Decades Team

Sanders really was the only real relief ace that the Brewers had before Rollie Fingers joined the team by trade after the 1980 season. He was an easy selection as the relief pitcher on the 1970s Brewers All-Decades Team on the team's 30th anniversary.

Thanks to his Midwestern upbringing, Sanders and his wife Mary Ann felt very comfortable in the Milwaukee area and settled in Hales Corners, Wisconsin, permanently. After his big league career ended, Sanders became a real estate agent. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article from 2013 notes that his claim to fame as a real estate agent was to list and sell the "Field of Dreams" in Dyersville, Iowa.

Again, at least as of 2013, Sanders still golfed every day he could in Wisconsin, which means from late April to early October. He still has the little book he kept on hitters as a pitcher, and, as he correctly notes, his first ever major league strikeout was of Mickey Mantle. When Sanders told Mantle about that fact, Mantle said, "big f**king deal -- you and 1,000 others kid!"

According to the Trading Card Database, Sanders appears on 8 total cards as a Brewer. I have the 6 you see here. I am missing the 1971 Milwaukee Brewers Picture Pack and his 1972 O-Pee-Chee card.

Meet the Brewers #31: Dave Baldwin

When last we visited the 1970 Milwaukee Brewers, General Manager Marvin Milkes had started the chopping and changing of the Opening Day roster -- calling up and trading for a new middle infield. Ten days after Roberto Peña joined the team, the Brewers slipped deeper into their malaise -- running off a streak of 6 straight losses. 

Pitchers John Morris and Bob Meyer both had to be put on the disabled list on May 29. Still, that did not save George Lauzerique, who was sent to Triple-A Portland at the same time. To replace Lauzerique, the Brewers looked to a short reliever there, reliever Dave Baldwin, who was having an excellent first two months -- 27 innings with a 1.33 ERA and 28 strikeouts (with 10 unintentional walks). So, Baldwin got the call and slotted into the bullpen. He didn't stop the losing streak on May 29, but he did pitch right away and held the Tigers scoreless over two innings.

1971 Topps

David George Baldwin grew up in Tucson, Arizona. In the days before professional teams really appreciated college baseball and despite offers to sign a professional contract, Baldwin went to college and pitched in the 1959 College World Series for the University of Arizona. During his time at Arizona and as a sophomore, he suffered an injury that probably was a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. 

Before his injury, he was your typical fireballer. He lost velocity after the injury. Still, he showed enough to get signed by the Philadelphia Phillies in 1959 at the age of 21. He bounced around the Phillies system, reaching Triple-A in 1962. But his results were bad. It looked like he had topped out as a Double-A/Triple-A pitcher by around 1964 after experiments with high-leg kicks and knuckleballs.

1971 O-Pee-Chee (back)

During the 1964 season, Baldwin found himself getting released from Single-A Durham. His manager there, Billy Goodman, told Baldwin that he should keep playing but that he had to come up with a different approach to pitching. Baldwin did exactly that -- becoming a submarine pitcher in an era where that was viewed negatively. 

WIthin two years, Baldwin found himself in the major leagues as a submariner, making his debut at the age of 28 for the Washington Senators. In 1967, in fact, he finished seventh in the American League in saves with 12 in a season in which he appeared 58 times (68-2/3 innings) with a 1.70 ERA and 52 strikeouts. In other words, being a submariner worked.

Baldwin stayed with Washington until after the 1969 season. The Senators traded Baldwin to the Pilots for thirty-five-year-old George Brunet after Baldwin had put up back-to-back seasons with ERAs of over 4.00.  

1971 Dell Today's Team Stamp

Baldwin pitched pretty well for the Brewers -- though his 2.55 ERA masked a FIP of 4.17 thanks to some luck on BABIP (.228). Baldwin missed some time during the season due to a sprained right ankle suffered against the Boston Red Sox. 

Despite the fine season in the previous year, Baldwin was not assured of a roster spot in 1971. That became clear halfway through spring training when new GM Frank Lane decided that the team did not need Baldwin any more and sold his contract to the San Diego Padres Triple-A affiliate in Hawaii. Baldwin kept plugging away, though. He never made it to the majors with San Diego, but he did get one last call-up to the White Sox in 1973 for a 32-game stint. He stuck it out for one more year in the minors at the age of 36 before retiring from baseball.

1994 Miller Brewing Commemorative Set

In retirement from baseball, Baldwin continued to reinvent himself. He went back to the University of Arizona after retirement and finished his Masters of Science in Systems Engineering and, then, his Ph.D. in genetics. As was once written about Baldwin in the May 2000 issue of Scientific American, he is "surely the only person to publish in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington and to pitch for that town's team."

He's an acclaimed poet (under the pen name of DGB Featherkile), and his humorous poems are available in book form from Amazon in a book called Limbic Hurly-Burly: Poems of Humor and Paradox. His memoir about his life is called Snake Jazz and is available directly from the author through his website, www.snakejazz.com.  He's also a painter/artist, and his painting "Fugue for the Pepper Players" is in the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum.

"Fugue for the Pepper Players"

These days, Baldwin describes himself as a contented retiree. He still speaks from time to time, and he is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). As all of this shows, Baldwin is a true Renaissance man.

As far as baseball cards of him on the Milwaukee Brewers go, Trading Card Database shows four total cards of him as a Brewer. As you can see above, this appears to be the first time that I can say that I have literally every card of one of the Brewers I'm profiling. I'm pretty sure that that will not happen often.

Meet the Brewers #30: Roberto Peña

As GM Marvin Milkes began shuffling the cards he was dealt in 1970, one of the casualties was John Donaldson, who spent most of 1969 with the Seattle Pilots after coming over to the Pilots in a trade for Larry Haney, a catcher who came back to the organization in 1977 to play briefly and then stayed for well over a decade as a coach. Donaldson came to the Pilots from Oakland, and it was back to Oakland in 1970 for him in exchange for Brewer #30, Roberto Peña. 

To Oakland, Peña became expendable once Bert Campaneris got back into the lineup starting around May 1 and, at the same time, got his bat back -- in the 14-game stretch bookending Peña's last two appearances with Oakland, Campaneris pushed his numbers from .184/.212/.265 to .252/.302/.402. 

Dell Today's 1971 Milwaukee Brewers

Peña was signed out of the Dominican Republic in 1960 at the age of 23 years old by the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. It would appear that the Pirates thought that Peña was actually 20 years old, and that is the age he claimed at that time. This is based off the fact that, when looking at news stories from later in his career, Peña is credited as being 30 years old when he joined the Brewers when, in reality, he was 33. 

Peña moved up the chain slowly, spending a full season in Class D, a season and a half in Class B, nearly two full seasons in Class AA before spending parts of three seasons in Triple-A.  He did not reach the major leagues until 1965 at the age of 28, meaning that he literally was always older than the average age of players in the leagues in which he was playing.

The Cubs gave Peña his chance in 1965 in what amounted to a challenge trade for Andre Rodgers. Neither team really won the challenge as neither man really did much for their new teams. The one notable event that did occur, though, was that Peña hit homers in his first two major league games, something that did not happen again until 1980. Peña ended up getting set down to the minors early in the 1966 season, and it did not look good for him having a major league career.

1971 Topps

And yet, he stuck with it and, after the 1966 season, he was drafted out of the Cubs organization by the Philadelphia Phillies and handed the starting shortstop job. He had a superficially acceptable season at the plate -- .260 batting average, but with only a .307 OBP and a .300 SLG -- though he was second in the National League in errors committed with 32.

All that was not enough to convince Philadelphia to protect the Dominican from the expansion draft. This was especially true because Philadelphia had a hotshot young prospect that they believed was ready to play -- a guy by the name of Don Money.

The Padres decided to pluck Peña off the Phillies expansion list as the 48th pick of the National League expansion draft. Once again Peña was a regular, but once again Peña's performance led his employer to think, "you know what, we need to upgrade at shortstop." That is why Peña was in Oakland -- having been traded there in spring training in 1970.

Milwaukee plugged the now 33-year-old into its lineup nearly immediately on his arrival. Over two seasons with the club, Peña didn't hit all that well -- .238/.281/.316, an OPS+ of 67 -- but he did fill in at a number of different positions. To tell you how awful those early Brewer teams really were, Peña actually played 52 of his 113 games (only 62 starts total, mind you, but still...) at first base. Yes, a 5'8" first baseman who hit anemically for a shortstop.

1994 Miller Brewing Commemorative

1971 proved to be the end of the line in terms of Peña's major league baseball career. After the Brewers cut bait on him, no one else in the major leagues decided to see if there was anything left in his tank. Peña decided to keep playing, though, and signed on for two seasons with Tampico in the Mexican League followed by one final season with Yucatán in 1974.

I can't find much of anything about Peña after his playing career ended. All I can say, though, is that he died very young -- at the age of just 45 years old -- on July 23, 1982 in Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic. I also don't know how accurate this website is, seeing as it is only available through the Wayback Machine on Archive.org, but according to Aguiluchos.com, Peña died due to alcohol poisoning.

Peña appeared as a Brewer -- or, rather, was featured as a member of the Brewers -- on just five cards or items. These include the three I've shown here that I own. In addition, I do not have Peña's 1971 O-Pee-Chee card, nor do I have the black-and-white photo that the Brewers recycled above for the Miller set that they also used in 1971 for their team picture pack.

Thanks for stopping by. 

A Brewers Lot on eBay, Part One

I haven't gone to as many card shows this year as in years past. I chalk that up to the fact that there just aren't that many Brewers in the current year's sets, which means that the likelihood of me finding cards I actually need is relative low. Instead, I've been trolling on eBay a fair amount. 

One of the most interesting searches I've started using is just "Brewers Lot." Man, does some random stuff show up. Without removing the extraneous categories outside of baseball cards, this search turns up everything from beer bottle label lots of old Indiana beers to four copies of the "Teresa Brewer Hit" of "Anymore/That Piano Man" to coffee for Keurigs.  

A few weeks ago, though, and thanks to looking at items that the same seller in North Carolina had, I happened across three different lots that I could not turn down. In total, the three lots cost me about $200 but I totally think it's worth it.

Lot number one contained four total O-Pee-Chee team sets from the mid-1980s -- 2 from 1984 and one each from 1985 and 1987. Y'all know how I have to have two cards of everything, pretty much, to satisfy my nearly insatiable desire for completeness within both my player collections and my team collections. So, here we go O-Pee-Chee!



Aren't they loverly? 

And no, I'm not sure why my brain went all Cockney/Audrey-Hepburn-in-My-Fair-Lady there. Maybe it's the O-Pee-Chee.

The second lot is actually what led me to this seller in the first place. I've been trying to find a reasonably priced set of 1983 Gardner's Bakery Milwaukee Brewers cards. The only one that's been on eBay lately has been priced at about $35 for one set. That's too high, in my opinion, so I've been holding out. Then, I saw this one, with three 1983 sets, 13 1984 sets, and 2 1985 sets for nearly the same price -- $35.95. 

That's the photo from the auction.

While I don't need 13 sets from 1984 (I needed one to finish off my team collection and upgrade a bunch of them), and I didn't need the 1985 sets, I couldn't turn down the opportunity to close out the Topps versions of the Gardner's cards. Now, all I need are a couple of 1989 sets and I'll be done with that oddball.

The big purchase, though, was this huge lot containing a bunch of programs, yearbooks, and pinback buttons. Let's start with the buttons.

This one is a bit of a mystery to me. It is Paul Molitor, of course, and the pin is not large -- perhaps an inch or a little bit more in diameter. It has a blank back. And, the photo had to be taken some time between 1978 and 1985, because that's the time that Molitor would have been on the team wearing the powder blue away uniforms.

That's all I've got, though. Anyone else have anything to help here?

Ah, Beer Barrel Man. This was the Brewers' main logo from 1970 through 1977. Beer Barrel Man got his start as a mascot named Owgust for the 1940s minor league Milwaukee Brewers. Owgust was redder and bluer, which matched the team's colors at that point. 

I wish I had this -- I found this photo on an Angelfire site. Seriously. Angelfire.

When the Brewers were reincarnated as a major league team in 1970, he got yellowed up to match the new yellow and blue colors the team inherited from the Pilots.

Beer Barrel Man made a return as Barrel Man in 2015 as a full-fledged anthropomorphic mascot.

As if the team needed more mascots, what with the sausages, Bernie Brewer, and a Hank-the-Dog mascot, among others.

Finally, there was this button -- the officially licensed World Series button from 1982. I swear I had one of these already, but I couldn't find it. I want to say that I remember these damn things costing like $5 during the 1982 World Series -- about $12.50 today.

And those were just the little things. Then there were all the scorecards and yearbooks and magazines. Let's close today's post with one that had been elusive to me for quite a while -- the Dell Today's 1971 Milwaukee Brewers.

With little rhyme or reason as to whose stickers went where or even who was included, there's a lot of randomness in these Dell Today's stickers. For instance, why did Floyd Wicker's Montreal logo get removed from his hat while Ellie Rodriguez is in full Royals regalia? For that matter, Wicker hadn't appeared in a game for Montreal since 1969. Add to that the fact that Wicker appeared in a total of 26 games for Milwaukee over 1970 and 1971 (hitting .184/.231/.265) and it becomes even more questionable.

The most questionable inclusion might be Bob Tillman being in this set. Tillman came to the Brewers on December 2, 1970 in exchange for two minor leaguers and Hank Allen. After that trade, the Brewers fired GM Marvin Milkes and replaced him with Frank Lane. One of Lane's first actions as GM was to place Tillman on waivers, leading to Tillman's release on February 10, 1971. So, Tillman never even made it to spring training with the Brewers -- but here he is in this Dell sticker book. Tillman returned to his native Nashville after that, where he passed away at the age of just 63 in 2000.

I have not taken this book apart, and I probably won't. But, I have a question for you other team collectors: do you guys try to find these individual stickers for your team collection? For instance, Night Owl and GCRL and ATBATT -- do you guys try to find that Kosco for your Dodgers' collections? Mark Hoyle -- do you try to find that Tillman for your 1967 Impossible Dream Sox collection? Or that Ellsworth for the general Red Sox collection? 

I know I would try to find Brewers in other team sets if I could.

Thanks for stopping.