Steve Trout is aware that society would prefer that he not wear those seductive Foster Grants, particularly in mixed company, but he doesn’t much give a damn about that. When a gentleman like Steve Trout walks loins-first into the room, you’re immediately aware of three things: the van is customized, the status is no longer quo, and love is about to be made.
Your Daguerreotype of the Evening is of Steve Trout. He can dance to that.
As a wise man once said, “It’s dangerous to go alone.” Sometimes, however, a man has to break away from his predecessors and forge his own path. He has to challenge the accepted wisdom of their time. He has to fight for the downtrodden, the shamed and ridiculed. But despite his leadership and vision, unlike heroes like Jackie Robinson and John Glenn, one particular man will never have his number retired by major league baseball.
The problem: we aren’t exactly sure who that man is.
The spring of 1956 saw a country still gripped in the fear of the McCarthy era, a culture terrified of deviance. It was the time for keeping one’s head down, maintaining the status quo. And yet two men stood up to the crowd, unashamed of being who they were. Unashamed of being nearsighted. But which umpire bared his soul first?
A daguerreotype for your review …
Survey this man’s bewitching countenance, and you’ll find it inevitable that his name is … Adrian Devine.
There are names so heavy-handed in their suitability that they seem plucked from some Hawthorne novel that the professorial and elbow-patched among us say you must read. So what do you name a man whose aspect suggests a Picaresque life of invading boudoirs and ripping bodices? You name him Adrian Devine. Or Caspian Sexworth. But probably Adrian Devine.
In celebration of last night’s record-setting performance in Arlington, I thought it appropriate to post something appropriate. What’s appropriate in this instance? Players of ball, obviously. And eyewear, natch. And, of course, bewhiskered upper lips. Come with me, won’t you?
Craig Kusick of the Twins …
“Ya see, here at the plumber’s local, we wear Foster Grants. If I was you, I might consider doing the same.”
Dennis Lamp of the Cubs …
“Do cats have grandparents?”
Jeff McKnight of the Orioles …
“Baseball. Pontiac Firebird. Uriah Heep.”
What follows represents the first of hopefully many posts in these pages by Mr. Patrick Dubuque. Mr. Patrick (as he’s called by children of the American South) has contributed to various SB Nation sites (including Lookout Landing and Roto Hardball) and Pitchers & Poets — in addition to work that appears at his own site, The Playful Utopia. Perhaps Mr. Dubuque’s most noteworthy quality, however, is his ability to effect the voice of a 19th c. aristocrat with almost no effort — a trait much sought after in these pages.
Sometimes, there’s almost too much going on in a photograph. There’s the popped collar, a rebellious statement made by someone already forced to wear a late-80s Indians jersey. There’s the playfully cascading mullet. There are the eyes, staring either at a mime beyond the camera or, perhaps, the future. Floating above is the omnipresent visage of Chief Wahoo, whose toothy grin renders the most amiable man dour in comparison. Finally, Mr. Nichols appears to be wearing a pair of eyeglasses.
Nichols was a professional, workmanlike pitcher, one who obviously recognized the importance of reducing glare and expanding peripheral vision on the mound. He also understood the aesthetic appeal of accentuating one’s cheekbones. Such a pair of spectacles makes it nearly impossible, in fact, to judge the proportions of the rest of the face: is his nose too large? Are his lips too thick? We cannot compare them to anything, anything except the glasses. We have lost the essence of Rod Nichols behind these panes of glass. He hides in plain sight.
Once again, reader, we find that Great Moments in Spectacles and our industry-standard Mustache Watch come together in a single shining beacon of masculine masculinity.
The gentleman you see in these (very) collectible trading cards is ex-baseball pitcher Fred Breining, notable not only for posting consecutive two-win seasons in the early 1980s but for possessing a surname that’s also a gerund.
In the left-most photo, Breining models for us the Spectacles/Mustache Package Deal that’s captured our attention of late. Of the right-most photo, reader and muscled philosopher Joe P. makes this observation:
Adding to the glory of Fred Breining’s spectacles here is the “Oh, hey, I didn’t see you there” look on his face, as if we’ve interrupted his afternoon of reading Proust at the ballpark.
If nothing else, reader, you’ll have to agree that these images of Breining represent for us that singular pleasure provided by the remembrance of things past.
The latest Great Moment in Spectacles comes to us via handsome NotGraphs reader Patrick D., who rightfully said, “Ron Kittle demands satisfaction.”
If Bob Hamelin’s Great Moment in Spectacles was, as I put it, “a heinous crime against baseball cards,” Kittle’s is the opposite. Donruss’ Diamond Kings series was the best, Jerry. The best!
Patrick also sent along this gem, via nerdbaseball.com:
True story: I always assumed that if I went to www.nerdbaseball.com, I’d simply be redirected to FanGraphs. You do in fact learn something new everyday.
Anyway, here’s Patrick with the final word:
Remember, certain parts of Ron Kittle’s face may be closer than they appear.
Gracias, Patrick.
You’re damned right I’d follow Billy Martin’s mustache, and his spectacles, into the heat of baseball battle.
Adding to Martin’s lore: Whiskey Slick, his nickname, according to Baseball Almanac. And Whiskey Slick loved an old fashioned fracas, or ten, I learned, after going down the rabbit hole that is Billy Martin’s Wikipedia entry.
Witness:
Martin was well known for drinking to excess and for rowdy behavior when drinking. In 1957, a group of Yankees met at the famous Copacabana nightclub to celebrate Martin’s 29th birthday; the party ultimately erupted into a much publicized brawl when Martin, Hank Bauer, Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra challenged a few drunks who were hurling racial slurs at performer Sammy Davis, Jr. A month later, general manager George Weiss—believing Martin’s nightlife was a bad influence on teammates Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle—exiled him to Kansas City. Martin felt betrayed by Stengel, with whom he had a strong father-son relationship, for failing to prevent the trade, and the two did not speak for years.
Exile in Kansas City. The more things change …
A few years later:
On August 4, 1960, Martin, then playing for the Reds, charged the mound in the second inning after receiving a brushback pitch from Chicago Cubs pitcher Jim Brewer. Martin threw his bat at Brewer, who picked up the bat and started to hand it to Martin as he approached. Martin punched Brewer in the right eye, breaking his cheekbone. Brewer was hospitalized for two months, and Martin served a five-day suspension. The Cubs sued Martin for $1,000,000 ($7,416,009 as of 2011), for the loss of Brewer’s services. While the Cubs dropped their case, Brewer pursued his, and in 1969, a judge ordered Martin to pay $10,000 ($59,909 as of 2011), in damages. When informed of the judgment by the press, he asked sarcastically, “How do they want it? Cash or check?”
Martin’s fights as a player also included bouts with Jimmy Piersall, Clint Courtney (twice), Matt Batts and Tommy Lasorda.
There’s no way you can convince me that Martin didn’t pay his fine in cash.
There’s more:
In 1969, Martin’s only season as manager of the Twins, he won a division championship. He was fired after the season following an August 1969 fight in Detroit with one of his pitchers, Dave Boswell, in an alley outside the legendary Lindell A.C. bar.
Ten years later, Martin hadn’t mellowed:
After the 1979 season, Martin got into a fight with marshmallow salesman Joseph Cooper at a hotel in Minneapolis.
Marshmallow salesmen are the worst.
Moving on:
On September 22, 1985, while at a hotel bar in Baltimore, Maryland, Martin fought one of his pitchers, Ed Whitson, who broke one of Martin’s arms.
And here I thought the 2006 scuffle between then Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons and Ted Lilly was the stuff of dreams.
Finally:
Martin’s sparring opponents as a manager also included two traveling secretaries (Minnesota’s Howard Fox and Texas’ Burt Hawkins) in a fight outside of Howard Wong’s in Bloomington, Minnesota; Jack Sears, a fan outside Tiger Stadium; a Chicago cab driver who preferred soccer to baseball; sportswriter Ray Hagar, in a Reno indoor arena bar; … two bar patrons, in Anaheim and in Baltimore; and two bouncers in an Arlington topless bar.
I shudder to think what might have become of a marshmallow salesman who moonlighted as a cab driver, and who preferred the beautiful game to baseball, had he crossed Billy Martin’s path.
Interesting cat, Billy Martin, to say the least. And I had no idea.
Image courtesy Baseball Almanac, “Where what happened yesterday is being preserved today.” They ain’t foolin’.
We know baseball players have feelings. And we know we have feelings about baseball cards. Maybe it’s not so far-fetched to think that baseball cards themselves have feelings.
We know that baseball players are competitive. And we know that we baseball fans are competitive, even about collecting. So maybe it’s not so far-fetched to believe that if baseball cards have feelings, one of the feelings they have more often than not is one of competitive fire.
All of this necessitates a competition between baseball cards. A seeded tournament.
The learned reader will likely be aware that, as part of our ongoing effort to become the new face of masculinity, we at NotGraphs have slowly but surely taken to cataloging the very best both of mustache- and spectacle-wearing from baseball past and present.
Accordingly, it makes sense that we would be interested in those rare cases where mustaches and spectacles — like two hypothetical trains in an elementary logic problem — meet at a single point.
Thanks to the giant knowledge of reader/commenter/shoulder-brusher-offer Yirmyahu (during today’s occasionally meandering, ever insightful NotGraphs Chat) we are now treated to such a meeting in the person of former major-leaguer Lee Tunnell.
A brief tour of Tunnell’s player page reveals that he was just a moderately successful swingman over parts of six seasons in the 1980s. His life achievements very clearly don’t end there, however.
Image courtesy of Topps via The Baseball Cube.