Meet the Brewers #16: John Morris

The final player that Dave Bristol used on the first Milwaukee Brewers Opening Day in 1970 was John Morris. Morris came into the game in the top of the 8th inning with the score standing at 11-0.  He promptly allowed a double to Jim Fregosi, who then took third on an error by rightfielder Steve Hovley. Shortly after that, Morris uncorked a wild pitch to allow Fregosi to score.

Morris settled down after that initial double (and the walk to the next batter, Bill Voss). He induced Jay Johnstone to ground into a double play and struck out Jim Spencer to close out the 8th.  Morris then cruised through a 1-2-3 ninth inning.

1970 McDonald's Milwaukee Brewers

Same card, just autographed. It was autographed when I bought it.

Like a few of his fellow 1970 Brewers, Morris appeared with the Seattle Pilots for a few games in 1969. He was signed initially by the Philadelphia Phillies in 1960 out of high school. He kicked around Philadelphia's minor league system -- appearing everywhere from low-D Johnson City in the Appalachian League to Elmira, Des Moines, Magic Valley, Chattanooga, Arkansas, and San Diego before finally making the major leagues in 1966 for 13 games.  The Phillies were not impressed, apparently, as they did not pitch him in the majors in 1967 and then sent him to the Baltimore Orioles as the PTBNL for Dick Hall.

The Orioles gave Morris a 19-game shot in 1968, and he put up surface stats that looked good -- 2-0, 2.56 ERA, 6.3 K/9 -- but...it was only in 31-2/3 innings and, more worryingly, he walked 4.8 per nine innings.  The Orioles deemed him surplus to requirements and left him unprotected in the 1969 expansion draft, where he was not selected until pick 52 (out of 60 total) by the Pilots. Morris was not exactly a major part of that team either -- he gets mentioned in Ball Four only for when he gets sent down at the end of spring training and, then, immediately called back up when Bill Henry retired a couple of days later.

1971 Topps #721

Morris's time in Milwaukee -- including the 6 games in 1969 with the Pilots -- comprised over half of his time in the major leagues. Still, it was a time of unfulfilled promise. Only 27 at the start of the 1970 season, he pitched out of the bullpen for the first month. He was not happy as a relief pitcher because, as he said after his second start, "it called for too much concentration. A relief pitcher has to always have pinpoint control to be effective, and I knew I didn't always have it."

But, just as he started pitching in the rotation and looking like he might provide a good lefty option, he started to struggle with his stamina and his health. Next thing you know, he's being treated for a kidney ailment at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He spent a month there as the doctors figured out what the problem was and treated it, but he did not make his return to the mound in Milwaukee until after the September roster expansion. 

1971 was not much better for Morris healthwise. He was penciled in to be the only lefty in the starting rotation, but elbow pain shut him down in spring training -- a bone spur.  The newspaper story about his elbow mentions that he was going to see a "specialist in Los Angeles" -- wonder if that was Dr. Frank Jobe? At any rate, that was 3 years before Tommy John underwent the ligament transplant surgery that now bears his name (and I'm guessing that Morris may have had the early stages of the type of elbow trouble that leads to UCL tears), so Morris rehabbed and came back in mid-May as a reliever, starting just one game and even saving a game.

1994 Miller Brewing Milwaukee Brewers

At the end of 1971, Morris was traded to the San Francisco Giants. The trade made big news in Milwaukee for a trivial reason that says a lot about the early days of the Brewers. When he was traded on October 20, 1971, Morris was the final remaining member of the Brewers 1970 Opening Day team and one of just two men from the Seattle Pilots expansion draft still in the organization at that point -- Skip Lockwood, who was in the minors at the start of the 1970 season, was the other.  

Despite a career that featured 132 appearances over 8 different seasons, Morris only has 8 entries at the Trading Card Database (and one of those -- the Miller Brewing set -- was added this morning after I asked for it to be added!).  I have the four shown here (I count autographs as separate items), and I am missing only his 1970 Mike Andersen Postcard, his 1971 Dell Today's Team Stamp, and his 1971 O-Pee-Chee card.

Memorabilia Monday: The Ball that Was My Pride and Joy

I like trivia. I especially like baseball trivia, but really, any trivia will do. Whether it's pub trivia, trivia websites, or trivia TV shows, I enjoy watching and participating in trivia contests. 

This has been true for most of my life. As a young kid subscribing to Baseball Digest, one of my favorite parts of the magazine was to test myself with the trivia questions and answers.  If the trivia related to a team or player I cared about, then there was no question that I would get the question correct.

In 1982, I remember there being one weekend -- perhaps in June, because the weather was not hot outside -- when Jim Gantner was making an autograph signing appearance at a marina in Pewaukee. I think that it was competing with another appearance at a location closer to Milwaukee at which both Paul Molitor and Robin Yount were signing autographs at a shoe store, but I may be misremembering that.

I think that was the case, though, because when we got to the location where Gantner was supposed to be signing, the place was dead. Now, I also seem to recall that Gantner's appearance hours were from 1 PM to 3 PM before a 7:30 PM game, and we were arriving at around 2:45 PM.  So, coupled with the fact that usually, a Brewer making an appearance would draw a line, we (my mom, my older brother [who had to come along], and me) thought that perhaps they had wrapped up the appearance a bit early.

We took a chance and went inside anyway.  We found Jim Gantner standing next to a boat, checking out its dashboard and talking to a salesperson who was pretty clearly his liaison of sorts for this appearance.  When we walked in, we must have looked a bit apprehensive, because the salesperson and Gantner both said, "come on over, good to see you!"

The salesperson then posed a trivia question: in 1980, what Brewer finished second in the American League batting title race with a .352 batting average? Even now, that would be an easy question for me, but for little ten-year-old Tony you might as well have asked for his name, address, and telephone number.  I knew that answer immediately and without missing a beat said quickly, "Cecil Cooper." 

The guy goes, "You're correct! Here's your prize!"

And he handed me a plastic covered baseball with the Brewers team name and logo on it, which Jim Gantner promptly signed.

That ball was my constant autograph companion for the next year or so.

The problem with a plastic covering, however, is the fact that ink fades pretty badly from plastic.  Only a few autographs remain legible.

Anyway, here are some photos of that ball, which I still have today.  It used to be my pride and joy, and in some respects it still is:

The Brewers name.  If you squint, you can see Roy Howell's signature on the left of the team name and a badly retraced Robin Yount signature on the right side.  Underneath the team name is Bob Gibson, the version who played in Milwaukee in the 1980s who was not very good.  On the far left side in black is Charlie Moore.

The fading old Brewers Logo.  The black sharpie signature there is Ted Simmons. Barely visible on the logo itself (and upside down) is Bob Uecker.

On this panel are three Hall of Famers.  Yes, once again, 12-year-old me was disappointed in how much the signatures had faded already at that point and took a sharpie to darken the signatures from Rollie Fingers and Paul Molitor. Under Molitor, of course, is Don Sutton.  Above Fingers in ink is reserve outfielder Mark Brouhard.

Finally, on this part of the ball, you see the badly retraced Robin Yount at the bottom.  Above his signature is now-Commissioner Bud Selig.  Above Selig is fifth outfielder Marshall Edwards, whose twin brother Mike played for the Oakland A's.  Above Edwards is the first ever signature on the ball from Jim Gantner.  Above Gantner is baseball arsonist Ned Yost, the backup to Ted Simmons at catcher in 1982.

Also on the ball but faded so badly I'm embarrassed to show them are Buck Rodgers, announcers Pat Hughes and Steve Shannon, Don Money, Sal Bando, Mike Caldwell, and a couple more that are so faded that I can't read them.

The enjoyment I got in chasing those autographs -- as I got them all in person -- was incredibly high.  I just wish that they were still legible.

Memorabilia Monday: Got More Carters than Carter's Got Liver Pills

I take some pride in having both a depth and a breadth of random trivial knowledge.  I mean, a couple weeks back, a neighbor was cheating at, er, playing, bar trivia and texted me a question saying, "we need the answer quick!"  The question was to me a pretty simple one: Name one of the two pitchers in baseball history who lost over 300 games (answer at the end).  I texted him the answer back immediately and his response was, "you got that text already?"

My foundation of trivial knowledge was shaken slightly today when I named this Memorabilia Monday post. As a little kid in the 1970s (born at the end of 1971), I really would have sworn that the phrase of having more of something than "Carter's got liver pills" referred to then-president Jimmy Carter.  I stuck that phrase confidently into Google and was shocked to find out that it had no such relationship.  Instead, it was some placebo drug from the 1960s that people took just because...sort of like those same people raised kids who took cocaine, just because....but I digress....here's a television ad for Carters Little Liver Pills:

Now that my whole foundation has been rocked, let's get to the memorabilia.  I have mentioned in the past that I bothered Gary Carter frequently for autographs even though I had to come up with Canadian postage somehow to get the SASE addressed properly and with the correct postage.  He was my favorite player, after all, because he seemed like the nicest guy, always had a smile on his face, and he was a catcher like I was.

Don't get me wrong -- I liked the Brewers catchers -- but I had to have a non-Brewer player collection back then so that I could "compete" with my friend who was a Dale Murphy fan. If you would have told me then that only one of them would make the Hall of Fame, I would not have hesitated to say that it would have been Murphy.  But, the 1986 World Series title gave Carter the big victory, and playing catcher made his numbers stand out more than Murphy's numbers did as an outfielder, so Carter was the guy who is now enshrined.

With no further introduction, here are my Gary Carter autographs on regular-sized cards and stickers:

1982 Fleer

1982 Donruss Diamond King

1982 Donruss

1982 Topps Sticker

1980 Topps

1981 Topps Scratch Off

1981 Donruss

1982 Topps Foil Sticker

1981 Topps Scratch Off unscratched

1983 Fleer

1982 Fleer, and what horrible photography this is!

2008 Topps Stadium Club -- the only one I have gotten in a trade

1982 Fleer

1982 Topps

1983 Zellers

1980 Topps

1982 Topps All-Star

1982 Topps All-Star (#2)

I only wish that Gary Carter had not succumbed to cancer as early as he did.  I also wish that I had more of his autographs.

And, for your trivia answer:  the two pitchers who have lost 300 or more games in their career are both Hall of Famers: Pud Galvin and the incomparable Cy Young.

Hopefully tomorrow night I will be doing the finishing touches on my painting job from over the weekend, so that means that on Wednesday I should finally be able to break the suspense on my 2013 Topps Series 2 case break.

Thanks for reading.