Commons

This is probably a Buckweaver question, but I wonder who the most average major league baseball player has been.

 

My friends and I still play this game with each other...naming the most obscure role-players from the early to late '80's that we can think of until we're exhausted. We called it 'the Bad-Name Game.'

Examples:
Max Venable
Ed Farmer
Steve Kemp (I'm a life-long Mets fan, yet I used to imitate his swing all the time...no idea why it stuck in my head)
Many of the 1987 'Come to Birdland' Baltimore Orioles, from Floyd Rayford to Mike Young, from Randy 'Moose' Milligan (who lived in my neighborhood growing up) to the one-year wonder, Don Aase.

I could play this game for days.

 

I always loved those players that didn't seem to bring much to the table that seemed to hang on forever. Fred Stanley, Tim Flannery, Mark Belanger, the lefty-middle reliever.

 

Rowland Office, anyone? And sorry, IJAG, but Beau Allred....DAMN, he was bad. How about Turner and Colby Ward? Jack Perconte? Duffy Dyer? As stated before, I think I got a Steve Braun card in every pack of 1985 Topps I ever bought.

 

Went to a Giants-Phillies game at Candlestick as a kid, a Phillie (loved that team - Schmidt, Boone, Bowa, Sizemore, McBride, Luzinski...) was signing near their dugout and got in line, shoved my pad up, he signed, couldn't figure out who it was. Finally deciphered it - it was Rawly Eastwick.

And Bill Almon deserves a mention on this thread.

 

As does Mike Lum

 

Padres and Giants infielder Paul Faries. Seemed to be in every pack I opened of a Fleer '91 box my brother got for me at some card show back then.

 

Larvelle Blanks
Kiko Garcia
Julio and Todd Cruz, The Cruz Connection
Dave Freisleben
Wayne Krencheki
Jim Morrison (of the White Sox, not the Doors)

 

Seems like I had a million of each of the following:

Kal Daniels
Dave Goltz
Bill Nahorodny
Mike Ivey
Chris Speier
Gary Sutherland
Dick Drago
Ron Pruitt
Bill Schroeder
Francisco Barrios
Bruce Bochte (not be confused with future manager Bochy)
Pepe Frias
Sid Monge
Elias Sosa

 

The Phillies also had Shane Rawley. Guess they were required to have a Rawley on their roster at all times in those days.
Speaking of the Phils and the Delaware Valley...

Warren Bruster
Dave Gallagher
Steve Braun
Jay Johnstone