Shortstop
synonymous with Cleveland....Sometimes an exceptional minor league hitter that
did not translate to the next level....Career can be described as one rookie
campaign (1970) of regular work followed by a chain of call ups and limited
used reserve.....1970 stats represented almost 50% of his playing time.....most of the time BA hovered around .210 mark nothing
remarkable....long ball ability was hit and miss; had 7 out of his MLB career 9
in his rookie season....left Cleveland affter 1974 for short stints in St Louis, New
York Mets, Milwaukee Brewers and the Oakland A’s farm system.
"exceptional minor league hitter that did not translate to the next level" - yep, your typical "4A" player.
ReplyDelete"one rookie campaign (1970) of regular work..." There's a story behind that. In their infinite wisdom, the Indians and GM/Manager Alvin Dark decided to promote anybody who showed any promise to the big-league team and let them learn at the ML level. The next year Dark was fired. Ahh yes that's the team I've loved for nearly 50 years now...
When you have a combo GM/manager I take it the decisions are kind of non democratic (I was going to say autocratic but that's a bit harsh). One thing your post made me look up was how little Heidemann played in 1969 because of military commitments.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely! The GM/Manager role and bringing up any warm bodies were symptoms of a broke franchise frantically trying to conserve money. Besides Heidemann you can probably lump in Eddie Leon, Rich Hand and others.
ReplyDeleteYes there was a whole generation of ballplayers who lost seasons (or parts of) to military service.
It was tough times for Indians. The beginning years of quarter century of futility ending around 1995. It was Sisyphean in pattern, a certain level would be obtained then it would all crumble down to 100 loss season.
ReplyDeleteAll nine of his career home runs came with nobody on base. I wonder who has the record for most career home runs without hitting any with any runners on base.
ReplyDelete