26oct Two early-day Rangers stalwarts who in the minds of some are kind of joined at the hip share a birthday today…one is Toby Harrah, who had 17 years in the majors, 1969-1986, with 3 teams…the Rangers were his first and he did a second stint with them to wrap up his career…Toby moved here from Washington with the team…he signed with Phila as an amateur free agent in 1966 but was taken by Wash the next year in the minor league draft…he debuted in 1969 with 8 games, spent all of 1970 in the minors and in 1971 was Wash’s primary SS…he would assume that role with the Rangers through 1976, moving to 3B in 1977…Toby was a solid grinder who as his career unfolded developed a power element to his game...he was here for the team’s first 7 years and made the All-Star team in ’72, ’75 and ’76…after the 1978 season the Rangers traded him to Cle for Buddy Bell, straight-up, no PTBNLs, no minor leaguers, no cash, no nothing—a pure baseball trade and I bet neither team complained one bit about what they got out of it…in 1982 Toby had probably the best year of his career with Cle, hitting a career-high .304/.398/.490; that slug was also a career high; the OPS was .888, also a career high; he had 25 HR, 78 RBI and played the full 162…all told, he had 5 20+ HR years and 5 years of .800+ OPS—this, from a guy whom no one thought would ever hit very much…he returned to the Rangers in 1985, after playing with NYY in 1984…he was traded along with a minor leaguer for Billy Sample…he was 36 but was the Rangers’ primary 2B that year and got into 95 games in 1986, his last year…he then managed in the Rangers’ minor league system and in 1991 joined the Rangers coaching staff…he took over as interim manager after Bobby Valentine was fired in 1992 and the team went 32-44 on his watch…up until this year he was assistant hitting coach with Det under Jim Leyland but when Leyland stepped away after last year, the new guy wanted his own guys with him and Toby’s contract was not renewed…no doubt he’s itching to get back into the game…he’s 66…the other seminal Ranger having a birthday today is Mike Hargrove, who had 12 years in the majors, 1974-1985, with 3 teams; the Rangers were his first…drafted in the 25th round out of Perryton TX in 1972, he blitzed class A in 1972 and 1973…however, he was on no one’s radar screen in spring training 1974…but Bily Martin saw that even though he was young and very green, he knew how to grind out an at-bat…he made the team, partly because of that and partly because the Rangers of that time had no better option…he was AL Rookie of the Year in 1974, hitting .323/.395/.424 for an OPS of .819, 4 HR, 66 RBI…that was the first of 7 .800+ OPS seasons in his career…they experimented with him in LF that year and the next in an effort to get both him and Jim Spencer on the field but LF didn’t agree with him; they moved Spencer out of here and him to 1B and left him there…the next year he made the All-Star team, going .303/.395/.416 for an OPS of .812, 11 HR, 62 RBI…he led the league in walks with 97 in 1976 and 107 in 1978…along the way he developed this between-pitches ritual, where he would step out of the batters’ box, adjust both batting gloves, his helmet, his waistband, his jersey, re-adjust some of it again, then get back in there and fidget some more…and then and only then was he ready to hit…this was after every pitch and it earned him the nickname of the Human Rain Delay…he was a fan favorite out at the old ballpark…but in 1978 he didn’t have a very good year, hitting only .251, and after that year they traded him, Kurt Bevacqua, and Bill Fahey to SD for Oscar Gamble, Dave Roberts, and $300,000, telling us we would love Roberts’ ability to play anywhere…that may have been true but how much did we really love it if all he was doing was sparing us to death wherever they put him?....Mike got into 52 games with the Padres, then in early June was traded to Cle; he finished out 1979 with them and stayed there for the rest of his career, which ended in 1985…he was a manager for 16 years after his career, managing the Indians from part of 1991 through 1999, leading them to the World Series twice, though they won neither…he managed Balt from 2000-2003 and Sea from 2005 through part of 2007…today he’s back with Cle as a special assistant and he’s 65…Bill Gogolewski had 6 years, 1970-1975, with 3 teams; the Rangers were his first…he was an 18th round draft pick of Wash in 1965, out of high school in Oshkosh, WI…he debuted in 1970 with Wash and moved here with the team in 1972…he got into 36 games that year, starting 21 and went 4-11, 4.24…though none of his other numbers were terrible, I don’t recall him being very good at all; it could be that he was better than I realized at the time…the next year he got into 49 games, all but 1 out of the bullpen, and went 3-6, 4.22, and everything else was more along the lines of what I remember about him…in 1974 the Rangers and Cle made a trade that sent Steve Hargan here for a PTBNL; that PTBNL turned out to be him…his last year was 1975 and he’s 67…Ed VandeBerg was a bats right-throws left bullpen hand, drafted by Sea in the 13th round of 1980 out of Arizona St….he had 7 years in the majors, 1982-1988, with 4 teams; the Rangers were his last…in 1984 Sea had a brief dalliance with the idea of him as starter; he started 17 of 50 games which he got into and those were the only starts of his 413-game career…as a rookie in 1982 he led the AL in appearances with 78…that was probably his best year; he went 9-4, 2.37 with 5 saves and a WHIP of 1.132…he arrived here as a free agent in 1988 and went 2-2, 4.14 and that was it for him…he’s 56…Gil Heredia had 10 years, 1991-2001, with 4 teams; the Rangers were his third…he was drafted by SF in the 9th round, 1987, out of Arizona…his year here was 1996, coming on board as a free agent after having played with Mon the previous 4 years…he was a bullpen hand here and 2-5, 5.89, and gave up a lot of hits and HRs…he stayed in the minors in 1997, then signed with Oak…they used him as a starter for a couple of years and he was not terrible, as he’d been here…whenever you saw him come into a game, chances were that the game was not going well to start with, and it was about to get worse…there was a very fatalistic, uneasy vibe encircling the Temple as he warmed up, and the fans in the bleachers and the home run porch knew to stand by because there was a pretty good chance they were about to see some action…his last year was 2001 and today he’s 49
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 04:22:06 +0000
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