August 9- Seattle Pilots

I realize that today’s actual date is November 12^th, so just humor me when you read it. I’ll make more sense if you actually think it’s August 9^th.

There was one game that stood as “the one game I NEEDED to attend in 2012,” but an unfortunate series of events thwarted my efforts. Today the Seattle Mariners played host to the Milwaukee Brewers, a game that most casual baseball fans would chalk up as “another interleague matchup,” but to the borderline psychotic fans like myself, it’s a “Haley’s Comet” of matchups. See, interleague first started in 1997 as a method to not only make the game more entertaining, but it also gave fans a chance to check out teams who they would not normally see at their local Major League stadium, unless of course you lived in Los Angeles, New York, the Bay Area or Chicago. At that time the Brewers were still members of the American League and played the Mariners at least six times a season; typically one three-game series at home and the other on the road since they were in different divisions. Well, all of that changed at the end of the ’97 season as I cataloged in my Brewers post from two days ago. So, with the Brewers now members of the National League their impending visit to Seattle was bound to happen somewhere down the road. What few realized is that “somewhere down the road” turned out to be 16 years later.

Back in 2002 my best friend Sam Spencer and I had talked about this chance meeting while we were sitting in the first base side seats of Safeco Field watching my Oakland Athletics beating the piss out of his Mariners. One thing that never felt right to us was that with every interleague matchup each team had their “rivalry” team. The Athletics have the San Francisco Giants (Battle of the Bay), the Los Angeles Dodgers have the Los Angeles Angels (Freeway Series), the Kansas Coty Royals have the St. Louis Cardinals (I-70 Series), but there are even seemingly odd matchups like the Pittsburgh Pirates versus the Detroit Tigers (dates back to 1909) and the Boston Red Sox versus the Atlanta Braves which makes sense because they both started in Boston. However, the rivalry teams for both the Mariners and Brewers have huge question marks over them. Yes, I understand that the Brewers and Minnesota Twins are rivals, but their series name (I-94 Series) is what they call their matchups with the Chicago Cubs. As for the Mariners, I understand that they share their stadium in Peoria, Arizona with the San Diego Padres and that they both play on the West Coast, but they are the furthest away from one another. How do you call that a rivalry? Sam and I were both intent on the Mariners and Brewers being a legitimate rival for the same reason that the Braves and Red Sox were rivals, except for the fact that the Mariners and Brewers are way more connected than any other rivalry. And of course, Bud Selig is involved.

Back on June 21st I laid out the specifics as to how the Brewers became a team so I will give you the Cliff’s Notes version in just a moment. First I have to talk about the team that started it all, the Seattle Pilots. Actually, it started with the Athletics. Charlie O. Finley, the former owner of the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics had originally bough the team in 1960 under the guise that he wanted to keep the team in Kansas City. Unbeknownst to everyone else, he had been shopping the team around almost immediately after signing the team into his control. Finley had been pressing the city to build him a new baseball stadium, but when the voters finally agreed and a bond measure was put in place, it was too late. Finley and the Athletics were gone. Former Missouri Senator Stuart Symington caused a massive uproar and threatened legal action against Major League Baseball, challenging the antitrust exemption after the AL teams and their presidents Joe Cronin formerly approved Finley’s move of the team. The timing truly couldn’t have been any better/worse, depending on how you look it at, because MLB was in the market to expand the game in order to preserve baseball as the “national pastime” as the National Football League was starting to take over the public interest in 1967. Needing to add two teams to each league in spread out portions of the country, MLB added the Montreal Expos and Padres to the NL and for sure the Royals to the AL to appease Symington and the state of Missouri. The only question left was who the other team was going to be in the AL.

By the 1960s, with Seattle's population growing, the city became the largest to host a Pacific Coast League team, the Seattle Rainiers. The league's stature also declined with the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles and the New York Giants to San Francisco, which caused those cities' PCL teams to fold. In 1964, the city purchased Sick's Stadium for $1.1 million. In 1965, the Rainiers were sold to the Los Angeles Angels, who renamed it the Seattle Angels. The city made several attempts to lure a Major League Baseball team. In 1964, William R. Daley visited the city when searching for a new home for the Cleveland Indians. He was unimpressed with the stadium, citing it as the primary reason to terminate his quest to move his team. Finley also found the stadium inadequate during a 1967 visit, and so rejected Seattle as a potential target for moving the Athletics. Because of this, the city instead tried to lobby for an expansion franchise at the 1967 owner's meetings in Chicago. The delegation also had support from two Congressmen, Henry M. Jackson and Warren Magnuson, the latter of whom was the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, a committee which has "jurisdiction over the Major League’s business activities". Coupled with Symington's threats related to the move of the Athletics, the political influence swayed the AL owners. However, they were reluctant to expand in 1969 without a Seattle stadium bond issue. The Seattle delegation assured the owners that Sick's Stadium could be renovated in five months to fulfill the minimum requirements until a new stadium was built; with this, the owners agreed to a 1969 expansion, and approved the team in Seattle along with Kansas City. In December 1967 at the Winter Meetings in Mexico City, the franchise was officially awarded to Pacific Northwest Sports, which received $5.5 million in funding from Daley, who thus had 47% ownership of the venture. Other owners included Max and Dewey Soriano. The award was contingent on renovation of Sick's Stadium to increase its seating capacity from 11,000 to 30,000 by the start of the 1969 season. The Sorianos persuaded notable athletes to advocate for the $40 million King County stadium bond issue, including baseball players Mickey Mantle, Carl Yastrzemski, Joe DiMaggio, and football player Y. A. Tittle; the bond issue was approved by 62.3% of the electorate. The "Pilots" name originates from the owner's part-time job as a harbor pilot and the city's association with the airplane industry.

The front man for the franchise ownership, Pacific Northwest Sports, Inc. (PNSI), was Dewey Soriano, a former Rainiers pitcher and general manager and former president of the PCL. In an ominous sign of things to come, Soriano had to ask Daley to underwrite much of the purchase price. In return, Soriano sold Daley 47% of the stock, the largest stake in the club. He became chairman of the board while Soriano served as president. However, a couple of factors were beyond the Pilots' control. They were originally not set to start play until 1971 along with the Royals. The date was moved up to 1969 under pressure from Symington who wanted the teams playing as soon as possible. Because the AL didn’t want just one team to enter the league, causing an odd balance, the Pilots were forced to start way ahead of schedule. Also, the Pilots had to pay the PCL $1 million to compensate for the loss of one of its most successful franchises. After King County voters approved a bond for a domed stadium (what would become the Kingdome) in 1968, the Pilots were officially born. California Angels executive Marvin Milkes was hired as general manager, and Joe Schultz, coach of the NL Champion Cardinals, became manager. With the front office, a stadium in the process of being refurbished and a brand new stadium in the future, the Pilots were finally starting to look like a professional ball club.

Schultz and Milkes both optimistically stated that they thought Pilots could finish third in the newly formed, six-team AL West. However, to the surprise of almost no one outside Seattle, the Pilots experienced the typical struggles of a first-year expansion team. They won their very first game, and then their home opener three days later, but only won five more times in the first month. Nevertheless, the Pilots managed to stay in reasonable striking distance of .500. The Pilots were only 6 games back of the division lead as late as June 28. But a disastrous 9–20 July (and an even worse 6-22 August) ended even a faint hope of any kind of contention, though they were still in third place as late as August. The team finished the season in last place in the AL West with a record of 64-98, 33 games out of first. However, the team's poor play was the least of its troubles. The most obvious problem was Sick's Stadium. The longtime home of the Rainiers, it had once been considered one of the best ballparks in minor league baseball; by the 1960s, however, it was considered far behind the times. While a condition of MLB awarding the Pilots to Seattle was that Sick's had to be expanded to 30,000 seats, only 19,500 seats were ready by Opening Day because of numerous delays. The scoreboard was not even ready until the night before the season opener. By June there were finally 25,000 seats in place. Water pressure was almost nonexistent after the seventh inning, especially with crowds above 8,000. Attendance was poor (678,000) and the Pilots lost hundreds of thousand of dollars in their first season. The team's new stadium was slated to be built at the Seattle Center, but a petition by stadium opponents ground the project to a halt.

By the end of the season, the Pilots were gasping. However, Daley refused to put up more financing. It was obvious that they would not survive long enough to move into their new park without new ownership. It was also obvious that such a move would have to happen quickly, as Sick’s' Stadium was inadequate even for temporary use. During the offseason, Soriano made contact with car salesman and former Milwaukee Braves minority owner Bud Selig, who was leading the effort to bring major league baseball back to Milwaukee. They met in secret for over a month after the end of the season, and during Game 1 of the 1969 World Series, Soriano agreed to sell the Pilots to Selig for $10.8 million. Selig would then move the team to Milwaukee. The remaining owners of the Pilots turned it down in the face of pressure from Washington State's two senators, Warren Magnuson and Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, as well as state attorney general Slade Gorton. Local theater chain owner Fred Danz came forward in October 1969 with a $10 million deal, but it fizzled when the Bank of California called in a $4 million loan it had made to Soriano and Daley to finance the purchase of the franchise. In January 1970, Westin Hotels head Eddie Carlson put together a nonprofit group to buy the team. However, the owners rejected the idea almost out of hand since it would have devalued the other clubs' worth. A slightly modified deal came one vote short of approval.

After a winter and spring full of court action, the Pilots reported for spring training under new manager Dave Bristol, unsure of where they would play. The owners had given tentative approval to the Milwaukee group, but the state of Washington got an injunction on March 16 to stop the deal. PNSI immediately filed for bankruptcy, a move intended to forestall post-sale legal action. At the bankruptcy hearing a week later, Milkes testified there was not enough money to pay the coaches, players, and office staff. Had Milkes been more than 10 days late in paying the players, they would have all become free agents and left Seattle without a team for the 1970 season. With this in mind, Federal Bankruptcy Referee Sidney Volinn declared the Pilots bankrupt on April 2, five days before Opening Day, clearing the way for them to move to Milwaukee. The team's equipment had been sitting in Provo, Utah (possibly with Alan Stanwyck’s parents) with the drivers awaiting word on whether to drive toward Seattle or Milwaukee. The move came so late that Selig had to scrap his initial plans to change the team's colors to navy and red in honor of the minor-league Brewers of his youth. Instead, the Brewers were stuck using old Pilots' uniforms, with the team name replaced. One legacy of the Brewers' roots in Seattle is that to this day, their colors are still blue and gold, although the shades have been darker since 2000.

Well, much like what happened with the Royals at the end of the 1967 season, MLB found themselves in hot water again after allowing the Pilots to be relocated after Selig’s purchase. The City of Seattle, King County, and the state of Washington (represented by then-State Attorney General and later U.S. Senator Slade Gorton) sued the AL for breach of contract. Confident that MLB would return to Seattle within a few years, King County built the multi-purpose Kingdome, which would become home to the NFL's expansion Seattle Seahawks in 1976 and the eventual co-habitation for the Mariners when they were introduced in 1977.

In short (way beyond that), it would be way more fitting if the Mariners and Brewers were actually rivals. But getting back to the matter tat hand, today is the day I should have been at Safeco Field for the historic return, but unfortunately not having a car, money or any of the other creature comforts that would have facilitated that dream. It’s very rare that a moment like this comes along. By that I mean having knowledge of a special event, as opposed to it happening by chance. I didn’t cry or anything, but it was certainly a huge disappointment. I was looking forward to wearing this cap to the game, the one symbol that connects both teams to the one that fizzled out before it could take off.

The cap until itself was truly historic as it was the first to feature graphics on the bill as opposed to just within the confines of the front panels. Even though it was only around for one season and one Turn Back the Clock Night on July 9, 2006, this cap is still as popular because of its exclusiveness and short lifespan. One thing that should be noted is that the typeface for the “S” was taken from the Seattle Turks whom I wrote about on July 3rd.

As for the marks, you’d be surprised what I can pull based on a team that was around for one season.

#12- Of all the players to find themselves on the Pilots, Tommy Davis holds the most unfortunate story. See, back in 1956 Davis was singed by the Brooklyn Dodgers, the year after they won their first World Series title in franchise history. Davis bummed around the minors for a bit which included a new team every year as the Dodgers were in the process of relocating to Los Angeles. The move to LA also meant that the team needed minor league facilities closer to Dodgers in case you were wondering what that entailed. On September 22, 1959 Davis made his MLB debut as a pinch hitter. Luckily for Davis he was brought back full-time in 1960 where he would hit .276 with 11 home runs and 44 RBI in 110 games. His effort was good enough to warrant him a fifth place finish for the NL Rookie of the Year. 1961 was a so-so season, but 1962 and 1963 were hands down the best of his career, and no I’m not just saying that.

In 1962 Davis hit .346, the best in the league. He also happened to lead the league in hits (230) and RBI (153), but he only knocked 27 pitches over the wall because some clown named Willie Mays hit 49 that season. But even with his incredible numbers, Davis still only finished third for the NL MVP behind Mays and his teammate Maury Wills who finished the season with a .299 average, six home runs and 48 RBI. Oh! And 104 stolen bases. You might be thinking that Wills also cleaned up in run. He did, with 130; however, that was only 10 more than Davis. Davis should have been the outright MVP that season. The same thing happened the following year when Davis once again won the batting title behind his .326 average, but that year he finished in eighth place for the award. Davis did make the All-Star team both seasons and won his only World Series ring of his career in 1963, but still, he deserved a lot more credit than he got then, AND for the rest of his career.

Davis had a mediocre (by his standards) season in 1964, was hurt in 1965 and picked things back up in 1966. At the end of the 1966 season Davis found himself on 10 different teams in 10 years. Crazy, right!? He was dealt to the New York Mets first for the 1967 season, then to the Chicago White Sox for 1968 only to be thrown into the list of names for the expansion draft where he was selected by the Pilots with the 16^th overall pick. 

Davis was a solid choice. His .271 average was the best amongst anyone who played in over 100 games for the Pilots, but he was dealt to the Houston Astros around the trade deadline. Davis played for seven more seasons and ended his career with a .294 average and 2,121 hits having played in an era that especially favored pitchers. Borderline Hall of Famer for sure, but never got beyond one vote as he received 1.8% in 1982.

#24- Born and raised in Holguin, Cuba, Diego Segui holds the unique distinction of having pitched for both of Seattle's major league baseball teams, the Pilots and the Mariners, in the first game ever played by each franchise (earning a save for the Pilots in 1969, and absorbing the opening-day loss for the Mariners in 1977). Segui played for 15 seasons; his time with the Pilots came after his seventh year in the league as a member of the Athletics as he found his name of the expansion draft list. Segui was picked 14^th overall. His most productive season came in 1969, for the Pilots, when he posted a career-high in wins, with 12, and 12 saves, against only 6 losses. Segui was also the only pitcher to start at least eight games and finish with a record above .500.  At the end of the season, his teammates voted him the Pilots' Most Valuable Player.

His final season was in 1977 as a member of the Mariners. Segui was the starting pitcher in the Mariners' inaugural game in 1977, earning him the nickname "the Ancient Mariner." Although he set a Mariner record against the Boston Red Sox with 10 strikeouts early in the season, he failed to get a win. After compiling a 0–7 record with a 5.69 ERA, he was released at the end of the season. He continued pitching in the Mexican League for another 10 years, tossing a no-hitter for the Cordoba Coffee Growers in 1978. His son David played in the Majors as well from 1990-2004, playing with seven different teams including the Mariners.

#50- Clearly the most notable name of the bunch, Jim Bouton was a well-known relief pitcher and World Series champion with the New York Yankees in 1962. He was also one of the most consistently used pitchers in the league when he was a starter in his first few years before his arm began to wear down. In 1965, an arm injury slowed his fastball and ended his status as a pitching phenomenon. Relegated mostly to bullpen duty, Bouton began to throw the knuckleball again, in an effort to lengthen his career. By 1968, Bouton was a reliever for the minor league Seattle Angels.

In October 1968, he joined a committee of American sportsmen who traveled to the 1968 Summer Olympics, in Mexico City, to protest the involvement of apartheid South Africa. Around the same time, sportswriter Leonard Shecter, who had befriended Bouton during his time with the Yankees, approached him with the idea of writing and publishing a season-long diary. Bouton, who had taken some notes during the 1968 season after having a similar idea, readily agreed. This was by no means the first baseball diary. Cincinnati Reds pitcher Jim Brosnan had written two such books, about his 1959 and 1961 seasons, called The Long Season and Pennant Race respectively. Those books were much more open than the typical G-rated and ghost-written athletes' "diaries", a literary technique dating at least as far back as Christy Mathewson. Brosnan had also encountered some resistance. Joe Garagiola made a point in his own autobiography, Baseball Is a Funny Game, to criticize Brosnan for writing them.

Bouton chronicled his 1969 season with a frank, insider's look at a professional sports team, eventually naming his book Ball Four. The backdrop for the book was the Pilots' one and only operating season, though Bouton was traded to the Astros late in the season. Unlike previous sports publications, Ball Four named names and described a side of baseball that was previously unseen. Bouton did this by writing about the way a professional baseball team actually interacts; not only the heroic game-winning home runs, but also the petty jealousies (of which Bouton had a special knowledge), the obscene jokes, the drunken tomcatting of the players, and the routine drug use, including by Bouton himself. Upon its publication, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn called Ball Four "detrimental to baseball," and tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying that the book was completely fictional. Bouton, however, refused to deny any of Ball Four‘s revelations. Many of Bouton's teammates never forgave him for publicly airing what he had learned in private about their flaws and foibles. The book made Bouton unpopular with many players, coaches, and officials on other teams as well, as they felt he had betrayed the long-standing rule: "What you see here, what you say here, what you do here, let it stay here." Although his comments on Mickey Mantle's lifestyle and excesses make up only a few pages of the text, it was those very revelations that spawned most of the book's notoriety, and provoked Bouton's eventual blacklisting from baseball. Oddly, what was forgotten in the furor is that Bouton mostly wrote of Mantle in almost reverential tones. One of the book's seminal moments occurs when Bouton describes his first win as a Yankee: when he entered the clubhouse, he found Mantle laying a "red carpet" of towels leading directly to his locker in Bouton's honor.

Bouton retired midway through the 1970 season after the Astros sent him down to the minor leagues. He immediately became a local sports anchor for New York station WABC-TV, as part of Eyewitness News; he later held the same job for WCBS-TV. Bouton also became an actor, playing the part of "Terry Lennox" in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973), plus the lead role of "Jim Barton" in the 1976 CBS television series Ball Four, which was loosely adapted from the book and was canceled after five episodes. Decades later, Bouton would also have a brief one-line cameo as a pitching coach in the James L. Brooks film How Do You Know. By the mid-1970s, a cult audience saw the book Ball Four as a candid and comic portrayal of the ups and downs of baseball life. Bouton went on the college lecture circuit, delivering humorous talks on his experiences.

Bouton launched his comeback bid with the Portland Mavericks of the Class-A Northwest League in 1975, compiling a 5-1 record. He skipped the 1976 season to work on the TV series, but he returned to the diamond in 1977 when Bill Veeck signed him to a minor league contract with the White Sox. Bouton was winless for a White Sox farm club; a stint in the Mexican League and a return to Portland followed. In 1978, Ted Turner signed Bouton to a contract with the Braves. After a successful season with the Savannah Braves of the AA Southern League, he was called up to join Atlanta's rotation in September, and compiled a 1-3 record in five starts. His winding return to the majors was chronicled in a book by sportswriter Terry Pluto, The Greatest Summer. Bouton also detailed his comeback in a 10th anniversary re-release of his first book, titled Ball Four Plus Ball Five, as well as adding a Ball Six, updating the stories of the players in Ball Four, for the 20th anniversary edition. All were included (in 2000) as Ball Four: The Final Pitch, along with a new coda that detailed the death of his daughter and his reconciliation with the Yankees. After his return to the majors, Bouton continued to pitch at the semi-pro level for a Bergen County, New Jersey team called the Emerson-Westwood Merchants, among other teams in the Metropolitan Baseball League in northern New Jersey, while living in Teaneck, New Jersey.

Once his baseball career ended a second time, Bouton became one of the inventors of "Big League Chew," a shredded bubblegum designed to resemble chewing tobacco and sold in a tobacco-like pouch. He also co-authored Strike Zone (a baseball novel) and edited an anthology about managers, entitled I Managed Good, But Boy Did They Play Bad. His most recent book is Foul Ball (published 2003), a non-fiction account of his unsuccessful attempt to save Wahconah Park, a historic minor league baseball stadium in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Although Bouton had never been officially declared persona non grata by the Yankees or any other team as a result of Ball Four’s revelations, he was excluded from most baseball-related functions, including Old-Timers' Games. It was rumored that Mantle himself had told the Yankees that he would never attend an Old-Timers' Game to which Bouton was invited (a charge Mantle subsequently denied, especially during a lengthy answering-machine message to Bouton after Mantle's son Billy had died of cancer in 1994. Mantle was acknowledging a condolence card Bouton had sent). Things changed in June 1998, when Bouton's oldest son Michael wrote an eloquent Father's Day open letter to the Yankees which was published in the New York Times, in which Michael described the agony of his father following the August 1997 death of Michael's sister Laurie at age 31. By juxtaposing the story of Yogi Berra's self-imposed exile with that of his father's de facto banishment, Michael created a scenario where not only were the Yankees placed under public pressure to invite his father back, but the article paved the road to reconciliation between Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Berra. In July 1998, Bouton, sporting his familiar number 56, received a standing ovation when he took the mound at Yankee Stadium. He has since become a regular fixture at Yankees Old-Timers' Games.

I read Ball Four for the first time around the age of 14 and once again during my time in New York while I was a member of the MLB Fan Cave, but never in between. Both times I felt a sense of duty surging through me. The first time it was after really understanding my gift of writing. Everything I wrote I wanted to mimic the same honest and tone that Bouton displayed during his time with the Yankees and eventually the Pilots and Astros. When I read it again in New York it motivated me to speak from the heart and not hold anything back in my day-to-day experiences, something that inevitably turned around and bit me in the ass on multiple occasions with the powers that be. In any event, I didn’t care. There’s a part of my banishment from the Fan Cave that came as a result of not knowing when I should have kept my mouth shut. While some would ponder of it for the rest of their days, wishing they had done things different, I take the exact opposite approach. I take solace in what I did. The Fan Cave wasn’t just supposed to be about the nine of us that were brought on to watch all the games and interact with the guests, it was about swapping stories and sharing the experience with anyone who is a fan of the game, a reality that no one else past or present seems to understand with the exception of season one Cave Dweller Mike O’Hara. Without Bouton, I doubt I would be the writer, let alone the person that I am today.

August 8- Seattle Mariners

Back on March 4th I tackled the original trident cap that the Seattle Mariners wore from 1977-1980, but I purposely left out one particular detail as it pertains to the cap that I’m writing about today. The 1979 Major League Baseball All-Star Game was the 50th playing of the midsummer classic between the All-Star of the American League and National League and it took place at the four-year-old Kingdome in Seattle, Washington. The game is perhaps most remembered for the play of Dave Parker in the outfield, as he had two assists on putouts at third base and at the plate. With Parker receiving the MVP award for this game, and teammate Willie Stargell winning the NL MVP, NLCS MVP, and World Series MVP, all four possible MVP awards for the season were won by members of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The game was also notable for the play of Lee Mazzilli, the lone representative from the then-lowly New York Mets, providing the 7-6 margin of victory. In his only All Star appearance, Mazzilli tied the game in the eighth inning with a pinch hit home run off of Jim Kern of the Texas Rangers, and then put the NL ahead for good in the ninth, drawing a bases-loaded walk against Ron Guidry of the New York Yankees. This would be the only time the Kingdome would host the All-Star Game. When it returned to Seattle for a second time in 2001, the Mariners had moved to their new home at Safeco Field. The other important detail from this game is that the Mariners inadvertently created one of the most iconic logos in All-Star Game history which they would ultimately don as the primary logo for their caps and uniforms.

Since the All-Star Game was first played in Chicago at Comiskey Field in 1933 it had become customary for the host team to come up with some sort of a cool logo when advertising for the game. You’re probably thinking that my math is off based in the year of the first game played and how the 50^th game took place in 1979. Well, from 1959-1961 the All-Star Game was played twice per year, typically one in June and the other in July. In 1961, the final double-dip, the second game, hosted at Fenway Park, ended in a tie. Now where have we seen that happen?

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that the logos created are usually only meant for their one-time use at the All-Star Game; however, the Mariners and their fans took quite a liking to the logo they had created for their midsummer classic and decided to make it their official logo for their game caps from 1981 through 1986. With the exception of a few of the teams who incorporated the cap logo into their All-Star Game logos, the Mariners are the only team to do it the other way around.

One of the unfortunate things about this cap is that not a whole lot happened for the Mariners while they wore it with the exception of the players strike which took place in 1981. I don’t know how many times I’ve said it or listed it, but changing uniforms does have a tendency to bring success for a lot of teams, but when it doesn’t, all Hell breaks loose. Besides the strike, this bit of bad fortune befell upon the Mariners: On April 25, 1981, Mariners' manager Maury Wills advised the Kingdome groundskeepers to enlarge the batter's box by a foot. A's manager Billy Martin noticed. Martin showed umpire Bill Kunkel that the batter's box was seven feet long instead of six feet. Martin felt that batters being able to move up a foot in the box could cut at pitches before a curveball broke. Wills was suspended for two games and fined $500. In May, while in Arlington, Texas to play the Texas Rangers, the Mariners' uniforms were stolen. 

On May 28th, this happened...

 

In the sixth inning, Amos Otis of the Kansas City Royals topped a ball down the third-base line. Lenny Randle, the Seattle third baseman, charged the ball, fell on his stomach and appeared to blow the ball into foul territory. Larry McCoy, the home plate umpire, ruled the ball foul, but manager Jim Frey protested. After a discussion, the umpires awarded Otis first base, ruling Randle had illegally altered the course of the ball. Two days later in a game against the Rangers, the Mariners wore their batting practice jerseys, Milwaukee Brewers' caps, and Rangers' batting helmets. The Mariners purchased the Brewers caps at the Rangers' souvenir-stand; the Rangers did not offer Seattle caps for sale.

The only other notable moment came in 1985. On July 9^th, in a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Mariners at Seattle, Jays catcher Buck Martinez executed a double play by tagging out two runners at home plate. In the third inning, Phil Bradley was on second when Gorman Thomas singled. Bradley was tagged out at home, on a throw from Jesse Barfield to Buck Martinez. There was a collision between Bradley and Martinez; Martinez broke his ankle. Martinez was sitting on the ground in agony and threw the ball to third base in an attempt to tag out Gorman Thomas. The throw went into left field and Thomas ran towards home plate. Toronto left fielder George Bell threw the ball back to Martinez. He was still seated on the ground in pain but was able to tag Gorman Thomas for the second out.

Despite having stars such as Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry (nicknamed the "Ancient Mariner"), 1984 AL Rookie of the Year Alvin Davis, two-time All-Star and three-time Gold Glove winner Harold Reynolds, three-time American League strikeout leader Mark Langston, and shortstop and team captain Spike Owen on their rosters, the Mariners teams of the entirety of the 1980s were characterized by perennial non-achievement, gaining a reputation for poor performances, low attendance, and losing records. Moreover, the team's ownership again changed hands after the 1988 season, as then-owner George Argyros sold the club to a group headed by communications magnate Jeff Smulyan. However, the 1989 rookie season of center fielder Ken Griffey, Jr., acquired with the first overall pick of the 1987 amateur draft, gave fans hope that a change of fortunes might be on the horizon.

The Mariners since wore the caps for their Turn Back the Clock nights on June 25, 2010 against the Milwaukee Brewers and July 1, 2011 against the San Diego Padres. With all that in mind, it made my markings a bit of a challenge, but I’m pretty happy with my selections and their place in Mariners’ history.

#12- Born and raised in San Diego, California Mark Langston was a second round draft pick by the Mariners out of San Jose State in the 1981 amateur draft. From then until the end of the 1983 season he came up through the ranks of the Mariners’ minor league system, but bypassed AAA altogether when he made is MLB debut on April y, 1984. His most notable season in the minors came in 1982 when he was with the Class-A Bakersfield Mariners and went 12-7 with a 2.54 ERA and 161 strikeouts in 177 1/3 innings.

Langston served as the team’s ace his rookie season, going 17-10 with a 3.04 ERA and a league-leading 202 strikeouts. He ended up finishing in second place for the AL Rookie of the Year Award thanks in part by his jerk of a teammate Alvin Davis who had a great offensive showing. Either way, the important thing to note from the two finishing one-two for the Rookie of the Year Award is that they both beat out Kirby Puckett and Roger Clemens. 1982 proved to be a pretty rough sophomore season for Langston, but he picked his game back up in 1983 when he led the league in strikeouts again with 245. Unfortunately he also led the league in earned runs with 129 as well. Yikes!

In 1987, of course the first year not wearing this cap, Langston had his best year in Seattle, going 19-13 with a 3.84 ERA and once again leading the league in strikeouts with 262. He also made his first All-Star Game appearance and won the first of his back-to-back Gold Gloves. Langston would win seven for his career. But not to sell him short, Langston also finished fifth for the AL Cy Young Award, the highest finish he garner for his career.

Langston went 15-11 with 235 strikeouts in 1988, but got off to a mediocre 4-5 start in 1989 when he found himself on the trading block in July where he was sent to the Montreal Expos along with Mike Campbell for Gene Harris, Brian Holman and Randy Johnson. Langston pitched for 10 more seasons, eight of which came with the California Angels from 1990-1997 when they changed their name to the Anaheim Angels. In 1998 he was a member of the NL pennant-winning San Diego Padres. Noted for his pickoff move to first base, his 91 career pickoffs were, at the time of his retirement, the most in baseball history. Today, he has the fourth-most pickoffs in baseball history, behind only Kenny Rogers, Terry Mulholland and Andy Pettitte, all of them also left-handed pitchers. Currently, Langston serves as a radio color commentator for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim during Angels home games. Starting in 2013, Langston does radio color commentary for all games and is also a co-host of the Angels post-game call-in show Angel Talk on radio station KLAA. He also appeared as himself in an episode of “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.”

#29- Speaking of players most of you have probably never heard of, Phil Bradley is arguably one of the greatest hitters in the history of the Mariners’ organization. Bradley played high school baseball in Macomb, Illinois for the Macomb High Bombers. Due to his success there, the Macomb High School baseball field was later dedicated in his name. Also a talented football player, he played college football at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri and was their starting quarterback from 1978 through 1980. One of the most decorated athletes in Mizzou history, Bradley lettered in football from 1977-81, and in baseball in 1979-81. Bradley quarterbacked the Tigers to three bowl games. He was a three-time Big Eight Conference "Offensive Player of the Year" and set the conference total offense record at 6,459 yards which stood for 10 years. In baseball, he starred as an outfielder on Mizzou teams that won the Big Eight championship in 1980, and went to the NCAA Tournament in 1980 and 1981.

Bradley was selected in the third round of the 1981 amateur draft by the Mariners and made his Major League debut on September 2, 1983, as a pinch hitter against the New York Yankees. Bradley became Seattle's regular left fielder in 1984, batting .301 in 124 games. In 1985 he hit .300 with career-highs in home runs (26) and RBI (880 in 159 games and was selected to the AL All-Star team. He also finished 16^th for the AL MVP that season. On April 29, 1986, Bradley was Roger Clemens' 20th and final strikeout as the pitcher set a major league record for strikeouts in a game. In December of 1987, the Mariners traded Bradley and Tim Fortugno to the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for Mike Jackson, Glenn Wilson, and minor leaguer Dave Brundage.

Bradley hit a respectable .264 in his only season with the Phillies. Almost one year to the day since arriving from the Mariners, the Phillies, desperately in need of pitching help, dealt Bradley to the Baltimore Orioles for Gordon Dillard and Ken Howell. Back in the more familiar AL, Bradley's batting average rose to .277 in his first season in Baltimore. In mid-season 1990, he was traded to the Chicago White Sox for Ron Kittle. His final major league appearance came on September 29, 1990, as he drew two walks and scored a run in a 5-2 White Sox win over the Seattle Mariners. For the Mariners Bradley his .301 lifetime with 52 home runs, 234 RBI and even stole 107 bases.

August 7- Milwaukee Brewers

If you can’t tell by the expression on my face in the picture above, my head is getting squeezed by the 7 1/8 Milwaukee Brewers cap barely gripping the top of my skull. Someone (@NotYasielPuig) had pointed out a few months ago that I am one of the most awkward people to ever pose in front of a camera based on the intro photos that I have at the top of each post. I’ll be the first to admit that’s true; however, in most cases there is a reason for these this. Photos are a vital piece to a story, especially when the subject matter is completely non-fictional. Fictional stories don’t necessarily need photos because the entire fantasy of what you’re reading is all based on how your imagination works. When something is based on factual evidence it’s usually a smart move to throw a few pictures in to give the reader a frame of reference. After all, what good would it be for me to talk cap baseball caps when you don’t know what they look like? As far as my facial expressions go, I do my best to prepare the reader for the journey they’re about to embark upon. Sometimes the story is happy, sometimes they’re depressing and sometimes it’s me going on a rant. Other times I try to incorporate something in the background to set the mood, kind of like when I spent late night hours in bed trying to hammer a post out. No matter the case there is always a method to my madness at play, and today is one of those posts where it all comes into play.

I should probably start by saying that, unless you’re a New Era cap collector or a Brewers fan, you might not remember this cap. It’s ok, not very many people in Milwaukee even remember this cap existing, but even crazier is that it’s next to impossible to track down. Much like the Brewers cap I wrote about on April 9^th, it falls under the category of “What the f--- were they thinking?” but not because of the uniforms. To be honest, I actually really like this cap. I just hate the history surrounding it. See, back in 1994 is when it all started when the Brewers introduced these uniforms…

Bring an end to arguably one of the greatest uniform sets and caps in Major League Baseball history. But that’s not all. 1994 was the year that MLB decided to expand their playoff format by adding the Wild Card series to the mix. Some of you are probably thinking, “Now Ben, the Wild Card wasn’t added until 1995.” This is true; however, it was supposed to be used in 1994 but the players strike kind of put a halt on things until the end of April the following year. In order to make the Wild Card system work MLB broke up the original two divisions (East and West) and added a third (Central) to each side, moving the Brewers out of the East and into the Central and in turn giving the West four teams each between the American and National Leagues. Originally this should not have worked out, but luckily the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies were added in 1993 to balance the leagues out. So, everything is perfect, right? Nope! MLB had other plans which entailed even more expansion despite the fact that the strike was still in effect in March of 1995. Back then two new franchises (Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays) were awarded by MLB to begin play in 1998. It was decided to add one new team to each league. At the time, however, MLB did not want to have an odd number of teams per league because they would either have to give teams many more off-days than in the past, or interleague play would have to be extended year-round, or both (14 years later however, another realignment would cause there to be an odd number of teams in each league with year round interleague play). In order for MLB officials to continue the existing schedule, where teams play almost every day and where interleague play is limited to a few days per year, both leagues would need to carry an even number of teams. The decision was made to have one existing club switch leagues. This is the moment when MLB went full-retard. The problem that MLB had put them selves in was as a result of their poor planning when they allowed the Marlins and Rockies into the Majors in an attempt to even everything out. The real problem of their addition of the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays is that they made the mistake of adding one too many teams to the wrong division (Devil Rays to the AL East.) How did this happen? MLB made the mistake of keeping the Detroit Tigers in the AL East when the new divisions were set up in 1994. So now there were going to be 15 teams in each league with the NL having five teams per division while in the AL there was one division with four teams and another with six.

It’s funny to look at all of this now because even a group of third graders could have figured out the problem much faster than the owners and executives were able to. In my opinion (which would have been the correct move) MLB should have moved the Kansas City Royals out of their new place in the AL Central and BACK to the AL West where they have had all of their success including a World Series title in 1985. This move would have given each division five teams apiece and an even 15 teams per league. Yes, I understand that MLB was afraid of an odd number of teams in each league; however, look at what we’re dealing with today and how long it took for everyone to realize that 15 teams per league in even divisions is actually a blessing. More important, the shit that actually went down would have never put a dent in baseball’s legacy: REALIGNMENT.

That’s right; one team had to be moved from one league to another to form a balance, something that had NEVER occurred in MLB history. Teams had obviously moved from state-to-state or city-to-city, but nothing like this. The realignment was widely considered to have great financial benefit to the club moving; however, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Commissioner (then-Brewers owner) Bud Selig decided another team should have the first chance to switch leagues. The Royals were asked first, but they decided against it. The choice then fell to the Brewers, who, on November 6, 1997, elected to move to the NL Central Division. At the same time, the Tigers agreed to move from the AL East to the AL Central (to replace Milwaukee). The Devil Rays joined the AL East and the Diamondbacks joined the NL West. Had the Brewers elected not to move to the NL, the Minnesota Twins would have been offered the opportunity next. Even reading my own words absolutely blows my mind that this happened. But what does any of this have to do with the cap? Well…

’97: The Brewers got a lot of flack for the uniforms they introduced in 1994 and wore through the end of the 1996 season. So they decided to correct their mistake and come up with something more appealing to the fans. In the offseason the Brewers introduced these uniforms to be worn for the 1997 season.

From then until the end of the 1999 season the Brewers wore this cap for all of their home game and a similar model with a gold “M” (which I can’t find for sale anywhere) for all of their road games. It is still the only time in MLB history that a cap/uniform has been used in multiple leagues. The cap on my head was purchased while the team was still a member of the AL and in my mind the team will always be an AL team. When time came for realignment once again at the end of the 2012 season MLB could have done the smart thing and looked at my original proposal by moving the Royals to the AL West and moving the Brewers back to the AL Central to even things out, but they once again decided that going full-retard was the most fiscally sound option by moving the Houston Astros to the AL West. Because trying to fix the past is just silly and make too many people happy.

These are obviously not new stories. I’ve touched base on a few of these issues before, but they still drive me crazy. How it’s possible for an old man like Selig to take “something he loves” (baseball) and completely blow it off kilter and be satisfied with himself is beyond me. It’s shit like this why I made the conscious decision to have Bernie Brewer added to the AL side of my body. I figured one baseball-loving person had to have some sense.

As to who the girl is, that’s a gem for another post.

#5: If there was ever a player over the last 25 years or so who made a quiet, yet definite impact for the throughout his entire career, it has to be Geoff Jenkins. Jenkins was a three-sport varsity athlete at Cordova High School in Rancho Cucamonga, California, but elected to pursue baseball full-time after receiving a scholarship from USC. From 1993-1995 he played ball for the Trojans. In his final season, he batted .399 with 78 RBI and a .748 slugging percentage in 70 games, also scoring 75 runs to tie the school record held by Rich Dauer and Mark McGwire; his 23 home runs and 193 total bases ranked second in school history behind McGwire's 1984 totals of 32 and 216. He led the Trojans to the College World Series, where they reached the championship game; Jenkins was named to the all-CWS team, and also earned team co-MVP honors and was named a consensus All-American. In 1996, the year of the CWS' 50th tournament, Jenkins was named to the all-decade team for the 1990s. He finished his USC career with a .369 batting average, 45 home runs (second only to McGwire's 54), a .652 slugging percentage, 180 runs, and school records for runs batted in (175) and total bases (444). Yah, he was kind of a big deal, but he fell to the Brewers in the ninth round of the 1995 amateur draft and didn’t make his MLB debut until 1998.

 Not pictured- Brett Favre

Jenkins played 10 years with the Brewers at the MLB level and was consistently the team’s best player. Twice he led the team in batting average, the first of which came in 1999 when he hit .313 with 21 home runs and 82 RBI. In 2000, he was the Brewers' team MVP. He led the Brewers in batting average (.303) and home runs (34). His 2002 season was cut short when on June 17 in a game against the Astros he suffered a horrific-looking dislocated ankle when sliding into third base feet first during a game. He was safe on the play. He was selected to the NL All-Star team in 2003 via the MLB's All-Star Final Vote contest where a player is selected from both leagues by fans to join their respective team after the initial roster is announced.

Jenkins hit a bit streak of offensive woes starting in the 2006 season and was eventually replaced in his spot in the outfield for Corey Hart. At the end of the 2007 season Jenkins was not re-signed, thus ending his Brewer career with a .275 average, 221 home runs and 733 RBI. But, his baseball career wasn’t over. On December 20, 2007, he signed a two-year, $13 million deal with a vesting option for 2010 with the Philadelphia Phillies. Jenkins returned to Miller Park in a Phillies uniform on April 23, 2008, to a crowd of just over 30,000. He was welcomed back with a tribute video, highlighting his ten-year career with the Brewers, and the standing ovation that followed. He received a second ovation while leading off the second inning. Philadelphia would go on to lose the game, 5-4. He went 0 for 3, with a walk and a stolen base. In the postseason, his only hit came on a leadoff double in the bottom of the 6th in Game 5 of the World Series. His hit set the tone for the finale of the World Series as the Phillies won the World Series and earned Jenkins his first World Series ring of his 10 year career. The Phillies ultimately released him at the end of Spring Training in 2009 and in July he was signed by the Brewers on a one-day contract so he could officially retire with the team.

#20: Jeromy Burnitz played his collegiate ball at Oklahoma State University and played minor league ball with the Welsh Waves and the Buffalo Bisons. He batted left-handed and threw right-handed. He first came up with the New York Mets and exhibited both power and speed, but was traded by them to the Cleveland Indians. Burnitz never really cracked the Cleveland lineup and it was only after his trade to Milwaukee in 1996 that he emerged as an everyday player.

From 1996-2001 Burnitz was an absolute stud for the Brewers. In his first full season, 1997, Burnitz hit .281 with 27 home runs, 85 RBI and even stole 20 bases. His efforts gave him a top-30 finish for the AL MVP. The next season he hit a modest .263 but pounded a career-high 38 home runs and a career-high 125 RBI which ultimately improved his stock with a top-20 finish for the NL MVP. Clearly hitting in the NL improved his power game in just one season. In 1999 he made his first All-Star Game and even started in place of the injured Tony Gwynn, thus becoming the first Brewer to start an All-Star Game since Paul Molitor. In the six years he played in Milwaukee he hit .258 with 165 home runs and 525 RBI.

Burnitz played until the end of the 2006 season with the Mets for a second time (2002-2003), the Los Angeles Dodgers (2003), the Rockies (2004), the Chicago Cubs (2005) and then finally with Pittsburgh Pirates (2006).

August 4- Baltimore Orioles

There’s a particular topic that I was bound to write about for one of my New Era Cap posts and it definitely appears that today is the day. The topic: performance enhancing drugs. For those of you who don’t know, I actually tackled this subject in a rather thorough manner back in July for one of the Web sites I write for, eDraft Sports. In it I detailed the history of steroids, the political links, where PEDs are today and pretty much why Major League Baseball turning a blind eye got us to where we are today. My overall opinion on the matter is that I frankly don’t care if anyone is taking anything to help their game, but I’ll go into more detail on that throughout this piece. Sadly though, most people do care, the most important of which are the baseball writers who have affiliation with the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA).

Since I was a kid, first honing my writing chops, I had always dreamed of being a member of this exclusive club of writers. Why? Because these are the folks that determine who is to be awarded the cache of season-based accomplishments (Cy Young, MVP, Rookie of the Year and Manager of the Year), but more important, this is the group who determines who gets into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. As an avid fan of the game some of the best conversations (arguments) I’ve had with other writers and fans is who should have gotten into the Hall of Fame, who is the best Hall of Famer, who should get in of the folks still eligible, etc. Of course in all of this mess the question of “should anyone for the 1990s on (steroid era) even be considered?” is always a favorite of mine when mixed with a fresh pizza and about a bakers dozen of beers… per person in the discussion. The best part of these moments always comes up about six to eight beers in when the discussion has somehow become a pissing contest and a bevy name-calling has entered the mix along with the occasional sack tap. In the end, no one really wins. All levels of emotion and opinion have been thrown onto the table and all parties involved have either strengthened their original viewpoint or, in some cases, had light shed on a perspective they may nit have though about before. While I don’t doubt that members of the BBWAA have found themselves in similar situations, in my personal dealings I have yet to walk away with the feeling of being above anyone and their stance. Based on what I have witnessed for quite a while on Twitter, I don’t feel that any member of the BBWAA (who use Twitter) can say the same thing.

I will be the first to admit that I’m not the greatest writer in the world, nor will I probably ever be. I am more than skilled in the art of being able to string words together to form sentences which inevitably form sentences displaying my views, opinions and sides of the story, but I’m certainly not the greatest at it. Do it I do it with a little more heart than others, perhaps. At the end of the day I can walk away after putting down the pen or closing my laptop and feel good about what I crafted because I am a man of convictions and I stand by my principles. Can my opinion be swayed or altered, of course, I am human. Free thought is one of many traits that separate us from other members of the animal kingdom, just as accountability and reason are as well. By now you’re all probably wondering what any of this has to do with this Baltimore Orioles cap on my head. Well, it has everything to do with it.

Back in December of 2011 my cap collection was respectable, but still significantly small. I think I was sitting on roughly 18 hats, which is a slight fraction of the roughly 330 I have in my possession today. Yah, two years goes by pretty fast. Anyway, I was visiting my best friend/high school girlfriend Laurin Mitchell in San Luis Obispo, California along with my good friend/college roommate Jared Clark in the days leading up to the 2012 Rose Bowl which featured the Wisconsin Badgers and the Oregon Ducks. We hadn’t seen Laurin since the middle of June when the three of us all took in an Oakland Athletics game at the Coliseum when they played the Kansas City Royals. During one of our days of drinking and touring around SLO we happened to walk past a sports store called The Sports Forum which inevitably peaked my interest as they quite possibly could have had a few caps that I wanted to add to my collection. What I didn’t know at the time was that every baseball item in their store was 40% off for the end of the season closeout special. The only reason I ended up finding out about the sale was because Jared and I went to Pismo Beach on our final day at the coast where one of the store’s other locations are. I of course broke the bank buying hats then, but the location in SLO had a lot more that I really wanted to get my hands on. The one hat that they did have, which happened to be 50% off was this Orioles cap as they were discontinuing it for the 2012 season. Just so you know, this particular cap was used from 2009-2011 for both home and road games, and no, I’m not mistaken when I say this. The Orioles had quite a few caps that featured an oriole that looks similar to this, but I assure you, they’re not the same. For this cap the oriole’s head is lower and the appearance of any kind of a neck is nearly non-existent. The placement of the feet is also another indicator as this logo features the curdled up toes. From 1989-2008 the Orioles went through three previous changes to the logo, all of which I will write about in the future just as soon as I can track any of them down. I have a few leads, but they are incredibly hard (expensive) to find. Getting back to the story, The Sports Forum in SLO happened to have one left in my size so of course I had no objection to paying $17.50 plus an 8.25% sales tax to purchase it. Boom! This cap, for some crazy reason, became one of my favorite caps to wear. I’ve always enjoyed the paring of black and orange, but my loyalty to the Athletics always steered me away from wearing a San Francisco Giants cap. Even though it’s one of the newer caps used by the Orioles, there’s something about the design of the logo that gives it an old-timey kind of feel that I wish was incorporated into more caps.

When I marked this cap, pretty much a few days after I purchased it, I already had firm intentions of what was to be showing, which ultimately leads me back to my rant at the beginning of this piece. 

3020/569: If these numbers are unfamiliar to you, don’t worry; it’s only the fourth time in Major League Baseball history they’ve been paired together. These are the hits (3020) and home runs (569) that Rafael Palmeiro tallied throughout his 20-years career. I’m sure by now everything is starting to make a little bit more sense. Rather than just dive in it’s probably best to start back at the beginning. Back before everything went straight to Hell.

Palmeiro was born in Havana, Cuba, but is not considered a defector due to the age in which he came over the United States, and the label is only used for those who leave willingly due to political-based reasons. His family moved to Miami, Florida where he was raised and graduated from Miami Jackson High School and was drafted by the New York Mets in the eighth round of the 1982 draft, but he didn’t sign. Instead, Palmieiro enrolled at Mississippi State University, where he played college baseball for the MSU Bulldogs in the Southeastern Conference. He is the only SEC player to have ever won the triple crown. On June 11, 1985, Palmeiro signed with the Chicago Cubs as the 22nd pick in the 1st round of the 1985 draft, the year after Seattle Mariners star Jamie Moyer.

Palmeiro debuted on September 8, 1986 in a game between the Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies at Wrigley Field as a left fielder. During his tenure with the Cubs, he normally played left field, though occasionally he would play other outfield positions or first base. Palmeiro was the runner up to National League batting champion Tony Gwynn in 1988 with a .307 batting average, only six points below Gwynn's. He also made his first of four All-Star Game appearances in his career. After the 1988 season, Paleiro was traded by the Cubs to the Texas Rangers along with Moyer and Drew Hall in exchange for Mitch Williams, Paul Kilgus, Steve Wilson, Curtis Wilkerson, Luis Benitez, and Pablo Delgado.

Upon moving to the American League, Palmieiro was primarily used as a first baseman or designated hitter. Palmeiro blossomed as a hitter while with the Rangers, leading the league in hits in 1990 and doubles in 1991, the same year in which he made his second All-Star Game appearance. Palmeiro would stay with the Rangers until the end of the 1993 season, his first of two stints with the team. During his time he finished in the top-20 three times for the AL MVP (1990, 1991 and 1993). He also had time to star in this priceless Coca-Cola advertisement. After he was granted free agency in 1993 he signed with the Orioles for his first of two stints in Baltimore. From 1994-1998 he proved to be one of the team’s most consistent power hitters. Prior to the 1995 season, he had hit more than 30 home runs only once (37 in 1993). Starting in 1995, Palmeiro began a streak of 38+ home run years that continued through the 2003 season. He hit 373 home runs during this nine-season span, while also driving in over 100 runs in each of these seasons. However, Palmeiro never led the league in home runs, and is history's most prolific home run hitter to have never won the home run crown. Palmeiro finished in the top-18 for the AL MVP every year he was with the Orioles, locking up his third All-Star Game appearance as well as two consecutive Gold Gloves at first base in 1997 and 1998. Despite the numbers he was banging out, he was once again allowed free agency and was signed by the Rangers.

In 1999 Palmeiro posted the best season of his career: he hit a career-high .324, career-high 47 home runs, career-high 148 RBI, career-high 1.050 on-base plus slugging percentage, won his third-straight Gold Glove, his second consecutive Silver Slugger Awards, fourth and final All-Star Game appearance and finished in fifth place for the AL MVP as his teammate Ivan Rodriguez took home the prize. Palmeiro’s averaged dipped a bit through the end of his time with the Rangers, but his home runs and RBI production hardly slowed down. On May 11, 2003, his final year with the Rangers, Palmeiro hit his 500th home run off David Elder in a game against the Cleveland Indians, becoming only the 19^th player in MLB history to do so at the time. The feat came roughly a month after Sammy Sosa knocked his 500^th home run of his career with the Cubs.

Granted free agency once again, Palmeiro signed again with the Orioles and posted decent numbers in 2004, .258/23/88. The most important thing to take from that season is that he was only 78 hits away from 3,000 for his career at the age of 40. Palmeiro had a rough 2005 season, but still got the job done. On July 15^th my best friend Samuel Spencer sent me a text around 6:30 PM saying that he was at that night’s Mariners game in which they were facing off against the Orioles. The significance of this night is that Palmeiro was sitting on 2,999 hits and Joel Pińeiro was on the mound for the Mariners. For those who remember Pińeiro’s time with the Mariners in 2005, history was pretty much guaranteed to happen. After walking in his first at-bat and grounding out in his second, Palmeiro walked up to the plate for his third at-bat in the fifth inning. With third baseman Melvin Mora on second base, Palmeiro clubbed a screamer down the left field line, scoring Mora and logging the 3,000^th hit of his career. I was watching the game from home on Fox Sports Northwest and Samuel made sure to take plenty of photos as the Safeco Field crowd gave him a standing ovation. With a quick swing of the bat Palmeiro joined Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Eddie Murray as the only players in MLB history to record 3,000 hits and 500 home runs for their career. No matter what the rest of Palmeiro’s career had in store for him, there was no doubt that he was a lock for the Hall of Fame. Well…

Back on March 17, 2005, Palmeiro appeared at a Congressional hearing about steroids in baseball and, while under oath, denied ever using steroids and stated, "Let me start by telling you this: I have never used steroids, period. I don't know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never." Here’s the full video in case you forgot. The main reason why Palmeiro was put in front of Congress in the first place was because former Rangers teammate José Canseco identified Palmiero as a fellow steroid user in his 2005 book, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big, and claimed he personally injected Palmeiro with steroids. Needless to say, Palmeiro was a bit vehement about the situation and willingly denied any wrongdoing. 

After Palmeiro recorded his 3,000^th hit things went back to normal... for two weeks later. On August 1, 2005, Palmeiro was suspended for ten days after testing positive for a steroid. The Washington Post reported that the steroid detected in Palmeiro's system was a "serious" one. According to The New York Times, Palmeiro tested positive for the potent anabolic steroid stanozolol. In a public statement, Palmeiro disclosed that an appeal of the suspension had already been denied. He released a statement saying, "I have never intentionally used steroids. Never. Ever. Period. Ultimately, although I never intentionally put a banned substance into my body, the independent arbitrator ruled that I had to be suspended under the terms of the program." According to Palmeiro, all of his previous tests over the two years including the 2003 sealed test were negative, and a test he took just three weeks after his positive test was also negative. While a representative from MLB couldn’t confirm or deny Palmeiro’s words, it’s a bit surprising that they didn’t, especially since they were “doing their damnedest” to clean the game up. The House Government Reform Committee would not seek perjury charges against Palmeiro, although they were not clearing him.

Palmeiro returned to Camden Yards following his 10-day suspension; that’s right, 10-day suspension on August 11, 2005, although he did not play in the lineup until August 14. Coincidentally, this was the date that had been planned as "Rafael Palmeiro Appreciation Day" in celebration of his 500-home run, 3,000-hit milestone. It was canceled after Palmeiro’s suspension. The Baltimore Sun reported that Palmeiro never offered an explanation for his positive test to the MLB arbitration panel, which ran contrary to his public statements. ESPN later reported that Palmeiro implicated Miguel Tejada to baseball's arbitration panel, suggesting a supplement provided to him by Tejada was responsible for his positive test. This supplement was supposedly vitamin B₁₂, though it could have been tainted. Tejada and two unnamed teammates provided B₁₂ samples to the panel, which did not contain stanozolol. However, the committee did say they found "substantial inconsistencies between Mr. Tejada's accounts and the accounts of players A and B." Tejada, who said he received shipments of B₁₂ from the Dominican Republic, was later implicated for steroid use in the Mitchell Report.

Palmeiro continues to strongly deny ever having used steroids intentionally, telling The Baltimore Sun in June 2006, "Yes sir, that's what happened. It's not a story; it's the reality of what happened", and "I said what I said before Congress because I meant every word of it." Palmeiro passed a polygraph test in which he was not asked if he ever used steroids, but in which he did state that he unknowingly ingested them via a B₁₂ injection. A 2005 New York Times article expressed one writer's belief that Palmeiro’s story could perhaps be the truth.

In December 2007, Palmeiro was included in the Mitchell Report in which it was alleged that he used performance-enhancing drugs during his career. The report did not provide any new evidence and only recapped allegations made by José Canseco, Palmeiro’s appearance before Congress, and his subsequent failed drug test. The report also details a conversation Larry Bigbie alleges he had with Palmeiro where he claims "Palmeiro asked him about his source of steroids and human growth hormone (the source was Kirk Radomski) and how the substances made him feel." Bigbie also stated that "Palmeiro denied in those conversations that he had ever used performance enhancing substances himself."

Palmeiro finished out the 2005 season, filed for free agency for the final time and was never signed again. The cloud of suspicion, the failed drug test and the fact that he was about to turn 41-years-old proved to be too much for teams to roll the dice to sign him. With his career now over he went back to his family in Texas and loved out the rest of his days, waiting the five-year window until he would become eligible for the Hall of Fame. Palmeiro played in 2,831 major league games, the most by any player who never played in the World Series. When 2011 came around, the first year of his Hall of Fame eligibility, his numbers signified a slam dunk for a first ballot entrance; however, the BBWAA felt the exact opposite. Needing at least 75% of the vote to get in, Palmeiro received a shocking 11.0% of the vote. In case you forgot, Palmeiro is one of four guys to get at least 3,000 hits and crush at least 500 home runs. The other three guys were already in the Hall of Fame. And yet, Palmeiro received a massive slap in the face. In 2012 his vote went up to 12.6% and then took a drop to 8.8% this last January. If the number dips below 5%, he will no longer be eligible.

Palmeiro played 19 seasons without any bit of speculation of being on PEDs. Hell, the man even starred in a series of commercials for Viagra; however, after achieving baseball immortality, Palmeiro’s star took an immediate tumble to Earth. The last two months of Palmeiro’s career was the only time in which he had been called a cheater. The last two months. Really think about that. A kid could have been born, graduated from high school and been in the middle of their second year of college before a problem arose. I fully understand that going before Congress, wagging his finger and ardently denying being on the juice really didn’t help his cause when he failed his drug test, but how can a group of people become some cynical after such a long period of time without any issue. Palmeiro had already locked his Hall of Fame career up and had never failed a drug test, nor did he ever fail another one after the incident occurred after he served one of the shortest suspensions in MLB history, just to show you how much of a non-issue the incident was to an unprepared MLB.

I realize that “rules are rules,” but one cannot be so dismissive as to completely wipe away the career of one of the greatest players in the history of the game after a small mistake near the end of it. Yes, the anabolic steroid (stanozolol) was banned under the MLB’s drug policy, bust it was also one that easy to snuff out. Palmeiro never struck me as a careless guy, not to mention, how is it that he can go 19 ½ years of taking an easily-detected substance without getting pinched especially after having taken multiple drug test in the past, all of which came up clean? Logic has been lost in crucifixion that has become Palmeiro’s career, a truly sad one at that.

I can only hope that some time down the road the BBWAA will come to their senses and have a 12 Angry Men-style discussion over this case. There are way too many holes to simply ignore. Palmeiro is a Hall of Famer in my eyes, the numbers and the talent surely proves that he is worthy. As for the players on PEDs as a whole, I really don’t care. The evolution of what a person can take has changed so dramatically over the years that until everything is banned, there is no sure-fire way of saying who is breaking the rules and who isn’t. As for my role in this and my dream of joining the BBWAA, if it happens, it happens. If it does, I can only hope that I can bring a fresh perspective to the discussion, and not just wave the privilege around like some cool kids club membership. I'm looking at you Jon Heyman!!!