It was a Sunday in June of 1977 when I attended my first
Major League baseball game. The site was County Stadium in Milwaukee. The
opponent: The hapless Seattle Mariners. The home team Brewers had one of the
worst attendances in the American League, but on this afternoon the stadium seemed
like it was actually half-full; maybe they were giving out free tickets for
bleacher seats. The game wasn’t going
the Brewers way, as they faced a 6-4 defeat as the bottom of the ninth inning
arrived. Things got a bit suspenseful, however, when the bases were loaded.
They were still loaded when Don Money struck out for the second out of the
inning. Up was first baseman Cecil Cooper, and I will never forget what
happened next. Cooper hit a ball that
sent everyone around me to their feet, and the stadium was shaking so badly I
was afraid it was about to collapse under the weight of all that bedlam. Needless-to-say,
Cooper’s walk-off grand slam homerun—his only hit of the night—beat the
Mariners 8-6.
“Coop”—as long-time play-by-play announcer Bob Uecker called
him—was acquired in a trade with the Boston Red Sox that year, and his stat
line didn’t suggest that he was anything but another journeyman stopgap to
fill-in a punchless lineup. But in the whole history of the team, this was the
only trade that paid-off in multiples. At his peak, Cooper was the consummate hitter—for
average, power and run production. He hit .300 or better from 1977 to 1983, and
led the league in RBI twice. His three
200-hit seasons were as many as Hall of Famers Robin Yount and Paul Molitor had
combined as Brewers; his 219 hits in 1980 is still a team record. If there was
another memorable moment in his career, it was his seventh-inning single in the
deciding game of ALCS against California that drove in the winning runs and
sent the Brewers to their only World Series in 1982.
But the thing about the “Coop” was that he actually liked
playing in Milwaukee, and stayed there for eleven years until his retirement. Yount
played his entire career there, and Ryan Braun (if he stays out of “trouble”) is
set through 2020 and poised to break virtually every team hitting record. But Prince
Fielder didn’t want to stay in Milwaukee; he preferred to go to Detroit and
erase the memory of his father there. Another name that comes to mind is Gary
Sheffield.
Oh, I remember Sheff, alright. He had to remind me what a
jerk he was when he appeared on CBS Sports Radio last Saturday, providing the
world the benefit of his peculiar brand of “wisdom.” Sheffield was a first
round pick of the Brewers in the mid-1980s, and it was all downhill after that.
The team actually thought he was going to be their next superstar after Yount;
instead, in four years and 294 games he hit .259, 21 homeruns and 133 RBI.
Worse, he was a head case bar none. He made it clear from the beginning he didn’t
want to be on the team, claimed racism left and right, demeaned the city and
threatened the manager. Nor was the fact that he was a terrible fielder at shortstop
and then third base an “accident”: He would admit years later that he deliberately
played poorly to persuade the team to trade him. And they did—to San Diego, who
tolerated Sheffield through one good season and half the next, when he was sent
off to the third of eight teams he would play for in his career.
After his first season with the Padres, Sports Illustrated published an overly fawning story on Sheffield's “battle”
to “stardom.” The problem was that he had only just “started,” and he had many
more teams willing to tolerate him for a few years before shipping him off so
that he’d be another team’s problem. Even SI
figured him out; in 2005 it published a compendium of some his “wisdom.” Here is a sampling:
"The Brewers brought out the hate in me. I was a crazy
man. . . . I hated everything about the place. If the official scorer gave me
an error, I didn't think was an error, I'd say, 'OK, here's a real error,' and
I'd throw the next ball into the stands on purpose.' "
"It don't make a difference who it is (he’s traded for).
If I didn't choose to go there, things are gonna have to change about my whole
situation, contract, years, everything. Other than that, you might as well not
bother trading for me, cause you're gonna have a very unhappy player. You gonna
inconvenience me, I'm gonna inconvenience every situation there is. I mean, the
only reason I'm playing is 'cause I wanna play for the Yankees."
"What did I do to be a villain?" after punching a
fan in the stands. "Well, I mean you can't look at it that way. I didn't
initiate it. It's a situation where I showed restraint, and I moved on from
there."
''I'm always mad at everybody -- that ain't the case. 'Because
I don't sit here and smile with everybody, that don't mean I'm mad. It's just
my personality. I don't see Randy Johnson smiling, but that don't mean he's
mad.''
In regard to his “treatment” in Milwaukee: "If I don't
see no difference in a month, I want to be out of here. If not, I'll leave. I
want to be treated with respect. I might be 20 years old, but I'm not a little
boy."
"People say money can't make you happy. To me, being a
role model is the same thing. You can't please everybody, especially if you
have to go out and be like an angel in a sense; doing things by the book. I'm
going to have fun in my life. I'm not saying I can't be an angel. I'm just
saying that taking on the responsibility of being a role model is a difficult
assignment."
Sheffield also took to blaming Latino players for “stealing”
baseball jobs from black players. From GQ
magazine:
"What I said is that you’re going to see more black
faces, but there ain’t no English going to be coming out. ... (It's about)
being able to tell (Latin players) what to do — being able to control them.
"Where I’m from, you can’t control us…They have more to lose than we do.
You can send them back across the island. You can’t send us back. We’re already
here.”
Sheffield has since (slightly) modified his idea where blame
lies for the decrease in the percentage of black players. He now claims that
baseball needs to embrace “hip-hop” culture to attract black kids, which is
unlikely to happen in a tradition-bound sport. There are more pertinent
reasons, of course; baseball parks for kids to play in are becoming a rare
commodity in the inner city, which of course may also reflect a decrease in
interest in playing the sport. It is interesting to note that baseball’s new CBA
will make it far more difficult for players from Latin America to play in the
U.S.; whether this will actually increase positions for white players rather
than black players is something that remains to be seen.
Sheffield also contends that he belongs in the Hall of Fame.
Although he has over 500 homeruns and 1600 RBI, some HOF voters may be
suspicious of his output. Although he was tied to the BALCO scandal, Sheffield
claims he didn’t know that “The Cream” had steroids in it. The George Mitchell
report also named Sheffield as a “user.” This is all speculation of course,
since Sheffield never was officially “caught” using steroids (just as Alex
Rodriguez or Mark McGwire never were), but it is interesting to note that like
many players accused of using steroids, his “peak” years (1999-2005) coincided
with the period when steroid use—and power amperage—was at its peak.
In any case, Sheffield continues to promote himself as a baseball
sideshow, if not a clown, since he has always been something less than “amusing.”
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