RIP Lou Brock

When Horton entered the vagabond part of his career, he would take a batting helmet from team to team and paint over the old logo with that of his new team
By the time he got to the Mariners that was about six coats

 

Fucking 2020.

 

"He still ain't touched the plate."


But RIP. He was a hell of a player.

 

Saw interviews with Tim McCarver and Mike Shannon and they both said the team was upset they gave up Broglio. Obviously, things worked out.

 

Thank Tebow I never had to experience the 1969-1981 Cardinals. It's very similar to experiencing the 1997-2048 Cowboys.

 

Must have been around 1986. I got a call in the office from a woman who was a college classmate. She started her own PR company and, somehow, got a contract to do secondary PR for the All-Star Game. She asked me if I could do a feature for something associated with the game. I agreed, because she was classmate. She said she was still trying to work out details, but we set a time where someone would come to my office in suburban L.A. for an interview.
I didn't know who was coming, but I figured I could BS a feature and be done with it, and help out a friend. I'm there at the agreed upon time and in comes Lou Brock. I'm pretty freaking stunned that a Hall of Famer came to my office to see me. Fortunately, I was doing some USC football coverage and his son was on the team. So I tied in the feature with him and his son. Worked pretty well.
Of course, he was pushing Brockabrellas, so there was mention of that, too.

 

The story that Moddy linked in the first post of the thread has some quotes about that. I was kind of surprised to read that because I've had it pounded into me about what a steal that was for the Cardinals; I thought that was the prevailing opinion from the start.
Actually, Brock's stats with the Cubs weren't all that impressive at the time of the trade, but he caught fire as soon as he joined St. Louis and the rest was history.

 

Doyle Alexander for John Smoltz worked out well too - for Atlanta. Alexander did help Detroit make the 1987 playoffs but they lost to the Twins in the ALCS. He went 6-18 the next year and then was out of baseball.

 

It worked out fine for Detroit too: they finished with the best record in MLB and were the playoff favorites. They got Alexander to get them into the playoffs, and he did that.

Over the next 17-18 years, if you look at the records of the Tigers, having John Smoltz (even the HOF Smoltz he became in Atlanta), wouldn't have gotten them into the playoffs -- even once. In most of those 17-18 years they were finishing double digit games out.

 

Other than Dansby Swanson and others for Shelby Miller, most of these one-sided trades didn’t seem so awful when they were made. We can scold teams for not knowing what they had, but Bagwell was well down the Red Sox depth chart at 3B when he was dealt and Pedro Martinez was a fourth or fifth starter when traded for an All-Star in Delino DeShields.

 

there was this guy named Babe Ruth who was pretty good when he got traded.