The Dec. 26 edition of Jim Caple’s CSI: Box Score (spoiler alert!) featured the only home run ever hit by Steve Christmas, who had a brief career as a catcher and first baseman with the White Sox from 1983-86. That got me reminiscing….
I played a lot of Strat-O-Matic Baseball in the late ’70s. In those days, every player card had a base-stealing rating based on his total steals for that year. They ranged from “AAA” (80+ steals, quite rare) all the way down to “E” (“drop anchor”).
When the 1979 set arrived during a cold Michigan winter, my friends and I pored over the cards, scouting for our first draft. One of the best players that year was Bobby Grich, who had smashed 30 HRs in his first big year for the Angels. We knew enough to drool over a long-ballin’, leather-slingin’ second sacker.
But 1979 was also the first year of the stolen-base renaissance: Willie Wilson (83), our hometown hero Ron LeFlore (78) and Omar Moreno (77) all topped 75 steals, matching the total of such feats over the previous dozen years. (The trend would grow the next season, as Rickey Henderson bagged 100, LeFlore 97 and Moreno 96, with 79 apiece for Wilson and Dave Collins.)
So we pre-saberist naifs keenly eyed the “steal” ratings on those ’79 S-O-M cards. My friend Dan, noting the “E” on Grich’s card and invoking his Seussian “namesake,” fired off the best one-liner of our hot stove league that year:
“The only thing he stole was Christmas!”
Maybe you have to be sixteen, but that was killer material. For not the first nor the last time, we were run from our high-school library.
Anyway, perhaps you see where I’m going with this….
Steve Christmas got behind the plate for exactly one career inning against the Angels, on Sept. 16, 1984 — his only catching duty of that year. And sure enough, Bobby Grich was not just in the lineup, he came to bat in that inning, and got on base: Thanks to a two-out steal by Gary Pettis and the presence on deck of .199-hitting Bob Boone, Grich was intentionally walked. So: Two outs, Pettis on second, Grich on first, Angels ahead by 2 in the 8th, and the SB-vulnerable Richard Dotson on the hill….
But they chose not to run. Words can barely sketch my disappointment.
Now, you might think me silly to hope for a double-steal in that situation. But Grich’s final career steal came in very similar circumstances: Fast runner on 2nd, Grich on 1st, Boone at bat, Angels ahead by 3.
Postscript
Grich was notable for not stealing (27 total SB over his last 10 years), but his successors around the Baltimore keystone took it to another level. Rich Dauer, the O’s regular 2B from 1977-85, netted just 6 career steals; he’s the only second baseman in MLB history with four different swipe-free seasons of 400+ PAs. (No other 2B had more than two such years.) And Cal Ripken had zero steals in 1983, his first MVP season — joining Dick Groat as the only middle infielders to win that award without swiping a bag.
Keeping in the strain of this post, given that Rich Dauer was only 6/19 in steals lifetime, had a career OPS+ of 83 with a high of 98, would you say that Weaver was Dour when Dauer came to the plate, or saw the situation as Dire when he would let Dauer loose on the base-paths?
Mike L — Yeah, but Weaver’s attitude did a 180 when he watched Dauer’s soft hands devour those grounders. Thus he came to be known as “The Earl of the Rings: The Two Dauers.”
On the other hand, Sandberg was much more successful at base thievery than Grich and others for the simple reason that middle infielders are wary of putting a tag on a charging Ryno.
Gold star, nsb!
I’ll add another fear of those same keystoners: If an iceberg could sink the Titanic, what might a Sandberg do to them?
I assumed this might be the “Weaver effect” but was surprised to find that Weaver’s Baltimore teams stole more bases than I expected. The ’73 team actually led the AL in steals and only finished two steals behind the NL leading Reds. Grich was a part of that team and stole 17 bases, one of 8 Orioles in double figures (led by Don Baylor’s 32).
Excellent John. Of course with Pettis on, the throw might well have gone to second, and so the Grich might not have stolen Christmas even if he’d tried, which might have made David Justice feel good had he been watching.
Been thinking a lot about stolen bases lately and who really started that whole revolution. I’m thinking Chuck Tanner deserves some real credit for that, beginning with his sole year at the helm of the A’s (1976, in which Baylor, Campaneris and North all stole 50+ and the team was well over 300). His next year, the first of his Pirates run, they stole 260 bags. And certainly Lou Brock’s feat (and feet!) in ’74 must have influenced the whole mind-set at the time.
That 76 A’s team was pretty interesting and gets almost no attention. Catfish, Reggie, Holtzman were all gone, dynasty potentially collapsing, third manager in 4 years, but still won 87 games and finished 2.5 behind the Royals. And they did it by switching to a pure speed game it appears, Bando leading the team with 27 homers. Billy Williams was finishing up his career there, but did very little, and even McCovey was on the team briefly.
Jim, great point about the ’76 A’s. They were already a running team in ’75, ranking 2nd in steals. But in ’76 they almost doubled their total — and came damn close to pulling off a 6th straight division crown, finishing 2.5 games behind the Royals.
Their total of 341 steals is one of the highest in modern times, I believe. I know the 1911 Giants swiped 347, but I don’t know of any other teams with more than 341. As far as the P-I can tell, no team since 1916 had more games with at least 1 steal; the ’76 A’s and the ’85 Cards (314 steals, led by Coleman/McGee) both had 128 such games.
Funny thing, though: The 1976 A’s finished 4 games behind their Pythagorean mark of 91-70. Had they hit that mark, they would have nipped KC for the crown.
P.S. Here’s a running team that surprised me: The 1992 Brewers led the majors with 256 steals, 48 more than the next team. Pat Listach had 54, Darryl Hamilton 41 and Paul Molitor 31, and eight other guys had from 10 to 18. Rookie John Jaha went 10-0; the rest of his career he was 26-17.
Those ’92 Brewers also missed their Pythag by 4 wins. Had they hit the mark, they’d have tied Toronto for the flag.
I’ll add that the ’76 A’s were better hitters than they might seem. They ranked 1st in walks, 4th in HRs and 5th in OBP, and were 3rd in OPS+.
I don’t mean to dismiss the steals, and indeed their 73.5% success rate was excellent for the times (the rest of the AL averaged 64.6%). But they figured to be a good offensive team even without running.
Wow, must’ve been some very low power numbers in the AL in 76 if they were fourth, because only two guys even reached 20.
There were still a number of veterans on that team–Campaneris, Williams, Bando, Tenace, Rudi etc.; that probably helped. Note that Fingers had 24 decisions that year!
Speaking of the A’s and w.r.t. your “twin sons” post, look at the pitching lines for 1968 and 69 for Blue Moon Odom, particularly G, IP and hits.
More proof that Dauer was slow….there are 141 middle infielders with 3,000-5,000 career plate appearances. Only two of them have fewer than 5 career triples. Dauer and Mike Andrews.
That’s some pretty sophisticated company you were keeping there back in the day, John.
At that age besides the usual smart-assed comments the best we could muster up was the occasional fart joke.
And well done on the comments people. You scored a couple of groans out of me.