Dennis Lamp… Mime?

Going through my old baseball cards at my parents home, I stumbled across this one of former White Sox pitcher Dennis Lamp. (He had stops with the Cubs, the A’s and Pirates as well as pitching for 2 Division Winners with the Red Sox and having an 11-0 record with the 1985 Division Champion Blue Jays… but here he is a White Sox pitcher.)

It’s a 1982 Donruss card and frankly I don’t remember ever buying Donruss cards, but here it was in a shoebox.

Dennis Lamp was a good enough player. He pitched for 16 seasons and finished his career with a 3.93 ERA. He saved 15 games for the 1983 Division Champion White Sox.

And he had a kick ass mustache.

There is something odd, however on the back of his card.

Not his stats. Did you check his carrer highlights on the bottom of the card?

Look at the last line…

One of his hobbies is pantomime.

Wait WHAT?

Former White Sox and Red Sox reliever Dennis Lamp was into pantomime?

And what exactly does that mean?

The art of pantomime can refer to a specific form of theater common in Europe. Usually performed in Christmas shows, it involves wildly exaggerated characters, dance and songs.

And lots of the people are dressed in those creepy Harlequin clown costumes that give us all nightmares.

And of course the other possibility is he was a mime.

You know, those guys in the white makeup, dressed like a French stereotype and pretends to be in a wind tunnel or walking invisible dogs.

Either way it is strange.

Either way Dennis Lamp is either dressed in a Harlequin clown suit dancing about… or pretending he is trapped in a box.

Folks, that creeps me out.

If ANYONE has seen Dennis Lamp perform pantomime, please write info@sullybaseball.com

I must get to the bottom of this.

Ron Kittle – Another random card found in my old closet

Rummaging through my old closet, I found this gem from the 1989 Topps Traded Series. Ron Kittle, the 1983 Rookie of the Year, had three tours with the White Sox. One with the horrible SOX across the chest uniforms and the last one with the traditional pinstripe Sox uniform.

This card has him with the totally forgettable cursive C hat after his brief turns with the Yankees and Indians.

I have yet to meet a White Sox fan my age who doesn’t LOVE Ron Kittle. The main reason I included Kittle in my Home Grown vs. Acquired White Sox entry was his special place in the hearts of Sox fans. It could be that he helped homer the Sox to the unexpected 1983 West title as a rookie. It could be that he was a humble midwesterner playing for a midwestern team. The fact that he wore glasses made him seem less like an athlete and more like a regular guy who could hit one out. It could be that he was one of those old fashioned right handed sluggers who was swinging from his heels, struck out a lot but could launch it when he got a hold of one.

Whatever the reason, mention his name to a White Sox fan my age and watch for the inevitable big smile.

We should also think about players like Ron Kittle as this Hall of Fame vote will be announced. No, I am not saying the Kitty Man belongs in Cooperstown. But let’s take a name that is on the ballot. Just a random name… Oh let’s say MARK McGWIRE.

Like Kittle, McGwire exploded onto the scene as Rookie of the Year and helped slug his team to the post season (McGwire did it in his second year.). And McGwire also hit a ton of homers and struck out a lot. By the time Kittle was 28 years old, injuries began to catch up with him. Same with McGwire.

The injuries eventually were too much to overcome and Kittle played his last big league games on August 13th when he played both ends of a double header. He homered off of Mike Henneman that day.

When McGwire was in HIS early 30s, he recovered from his injuries and suddenly became the greatest power hitter of all time and in the Hall of Fame discussion.

Kittle never made a million dollars a season.
McGwire made $11 million his final season alone and earned over $70 million in his career.

Can you imagine if Ron Kittle had injected Lord knows what into his body? If his body were able to recover from his injuries… if his line drives went a little further… if his 20 home run seasons became 30 home run seasons… if he piled up homers into his 30s…

Maybe people would have brought HIS name up in a Hall of Fame discussion. Maybe he could have been cashing $10 million checks.

But then again, nobody looks at HIS stats with suspicion. Memories of HIS home runs are positive.

Nobody questions the validity of his 7 homers that reached the roof top of old Comiskey Park.

Ron now does motivational speaking and now does something super cool.

He makes benches.

I am not kidding, these are cool.

The seats? Made of bases.

The backs? Made with bats connected by baseballs.

And you can design the benches to have which ever team and which ever players you would want to honor.

You can have the benches shipped to you… or if you live close enough, Ron Kittle will deliver it

How unbelievably awesome is that? Having Kittle show up with the new bench!

And no doubt he would be HAPPY to talk about the past.

So I salute you Ron Kittle.
You showed us all terrific home run power and you did it right.

No wonder Kittle will always be loved in the South Side of Chicago.

Harold Baines… 7 hits a year from the Hall of Fame

Remember that scene in Bull Durham where Crash Davis talks about how close he was to being a .300 hitter. He calculated he was a hit a week shy from .300?

“You get one extra flare a week–just one–a gork, a ground ball with eyes, a dying quail–just one more dying quail a week and you’re in Yankee Stadium!”

Well, that applies in a very different way to former White Sox star Harold Baines.

I was looking up some stats about the 3,000 hit club about a post I am going to write about Derek Jeter, who barring injury will join the club sometime in 2011.

I saw that every single player within 200 hits of the 3,000 hit club is either a Hall of Famer or named Barry Bonds.

George Sisler, Charlie Gehringer, Brooks Robinson, Jesse Burkett, Mel Ott, Frankie Frisch, Zack Wheat, Al Simmons, Rogers Hornsby, Wee Willie Keeler, Jake Beckley, Frank Robinson, Sam Crawford, Sam Rice, Bonds and some guy named Babe Ruth all hit between 2,812 and 2,987 hits.

All immortals in Cooperstown or will eventually be after a lot of hand wringing and talk about steroids.

There’s one exception.

Harold Baines, who finished his career with 2,866 hits.

And I have to say, seeing his name on the list kind of stopped me in my tracks. Assuming that the two active hit leaders (Ken Griffey Jr and Derek Jeter) will each get 28 hits and pass Andre Dawson for 45th place on the all time hit list, then each of the top 47 names on the hit list would have had Hall of Fame careers (including Pete Rose and Bonds)… except Harold Baines.

I’ve always liked Harold Baines as a player. He was a good solid if unspectacular hitter. He had a good average, good power (he led the league in slugging in 1984) and was reliable.

He never was a top 5 MVP candidate. He never finished in the top 5 in batting average, on base percentage, OPS, doubles, homers or adjusted OPS.

He finished 5th in hits and 4th in RBIs in 1985, the year he had his personal best showing in the MVP vote. (He finished 9th.)

As I said, Baines was not spectacular but he was steady. He was a DH for more than half of his career. In his last 15 seasons, he played in the field 24 times… TOTAL.

And yet he had that hit total.

He played for 22 seasons, many of them partial injury plagued years towards the end. But he spread his productive seasons out over a long stretch. He was a 25 homer, 105 RBI man in 1982 with the White Sox.

He was a 25 homer, 103 RBI man batting .312 with an OPS of .919 for the 1999 Indians.

He broke in with the White Sox when LaRussa was managing, the team wore lapels and Chet Lemon was in Centerfield. (For a few games he was teammates with Minnie Minoso.)

He finished his career with the White Sox where he was teammates with Paul Kornerko and Mark Beuhrle.

He stretched from the lapels on the uniform era for the White Sox…

To the disastrous SOX across the chest monstrocities…

To the utterly forgettable cursive uniform…

Before finishing his career in the classic ChiSox duds.

He was a respected steady veteran, but not a superstar. Not a dominating force.

And yet he had that hit total.

He has barely survived four Hall of Fame ballots, peaking this last year with 6.1% of the vote… and he doesn’t have a realistic chance of ever being elected.

But just imagine this scenario, similar to Crash Davis’ dilemma.

If Baines got 7 more hits a season… he would be a first ballot Hall of Famer.

7 hits a year over 22 seasons would give him an extra 154 hits… and put his career total at 3,020… and as Stan Ross knows, 3,000 hits equals a ticket to the Hall of Fame.

There would be no denying him. It would be a lock, automatic in the first try.

He would be sitting in the background of Hall of Fame inductions forever with Bob Feller, Willie Mays, Whitey Ford, Hank Aaron, George Brett and Ozzie Smith.

His statue and retired #3 in Chicago would not be a tribute to a respected and loved star but a fitting send off to an immortal…

If he got 7 additional hits a year.

I’ve never met Mr. Baines, but he seems like a nice enough guy through interviews and the fact that teams kept employing him for nearly a quarter of a century.

He had a nice career, played in the post season in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, became a millionaire several times over and earned a World Series ring as a coach with the 2005 White Sox.

But I can’t help but wonder… does he think about those 7 extra hits a year? Does he think about a great catch made on a ball he hit? Does he think about an official scorer ruling a hit of his was actually an error? Does he think about a close call at first base that could have gone either way?

Does he think about games lost to the strikes of 1981 and 1994? Does he think of time lost to injuries later in his career?

A hit here, a hit there… a flare a gork, a ground ball with eyes, a dying quail here and there… and he’d be off to Cooperstown.

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