22: 101 things you didn’t know about Ted Simmons!

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by Berigan

Ah, spring is in the air! Winter doth protesteth a bit, but soon, she will make way for the rebirth of….oh who am I kidding, I can’t write that kind of stuff! But, I can write of the eternal hope that spring and spring training bring! And I bet I will be the very first one here to do it!

Hard to believe at one time (back in the day to be precise) teams used to play spring training in south Georgia! Now, teams barely make it north of Orlando. At least, that is what I think is true, but I am far too much of a brick wall to look into it and make sure! Something else this baseball history proves to me is that global cooling is a fact, and anyone that doesn’t recognize that we are in the beginning of a new ice age and that its an indisputable fact, is worse than a Nazi who kicks puppies! Either that, or people were just tougher in olden times. Either way, it’s all good.

As you may know (you may not care, but may know) I grew up a Cardinal fan. That sort of thing happens being born 5 miles south of St. Louis. Missed the glory days of 3 World series in the 60’s, but as a boy in the mid to late 70’s, I got to see Lou Brock Steal 893 (well, a replay on TV the next day – I did hear it though) and other fair to pretty good players like Bob Forsch (2 no hitters in his career), Kenny Reitz AKA the Zamboni machine (great 3rd baseman, hence the nickname, but the slowest runner in the history of the game, and he wasn’t even fat!) and Gary Templeton, who was the most exciting player in the game…for a few years. Honest he was!!! A Coke habit and bad knees don’t go well together. Also on the team of my youth was Keith Hernandez and Silent George Hendrick (he didn’t talk to the media). And of course, batting cleanup, the swellest catcher not in the HOF, Simba, Ted Simmons!!!

Anyway, the team seemed to have more than enough talent to compete; in 1980 the team had 6 guys hit .300 or higher. But, apparently, you also need pitching to complement the hitting! So, one year we’d be a bit above .500, next year below it. And no wildcard back then. Wish there had been, when you know the team is out of it in June, sad to watch the rest of the way. Then I became a Braves fan in the mid 80’s! 😦

But, the real prize was David Green! He was the reason why you trade the best hitting catcher in the game and the guys that would win the Cy Young in 1981 and 1982 (Fingers, then Vuckovich) David Green, we Cardinal fans were told, was not merely the best prospect in the game, he was the best prospect scouts had seen in 15 years! That meant, he was better than Al Oliver, Dave Parker, even Reggie Jackson! You name it, he was better! 5+ tools, fastest guy around, power, just an uber stud. His best year was 1983, when he hit .284 with 8 HR’s drove in 69, and had 34 steals. Whoopty-freakin’-do. He was out of the majors at the age of 26.

So, what happened to these two teams??? The Brewers won their division in 1981 and 1982, going all the way to the World Series in 1982.

And somehow, the Cardinals, doing the new math of addition by subtraction, won the division in 1981 (even though they were in 2nd place in both halves of the strike plagued season) and won it all in 1982 against the Brewers!

So, Lil’ Berigan was a happy camper…right???? Nope!!! I HATED Whitey Herzog! He traded all the players I had grown up with! This wasn’t my team, this was some team calling themselves the Cardinals. He replaced Ted Simmons with Darryl Porter, he of the very thick glasses, and supposedly much better catching skills….and a batting average of around .230 while in St. Louis.

What we had was Whitey ball. It bored me to tears. Take an extra base, pound the ball off the hard astroturf, and beat out an infield hit. Steal a base. Make an out to move the runner to 3rd. Watch the runner score on a fly ball to right. Watching paint dry was more fun, IMHO.

There was no power at all on this team. In 1982, his Porters 12 homers were the second highest next to Hendricks 19! 3rd highest was 7 Homers. Mark McGuire and Bonds both out homered this team’s total of 67. Tommy Herr, the 2nd baseman didn’t even hit a homer til his 4th year with the team!

I became a traitor. My hatred was so complete, I wished, prayed, the Cards would lose, and that Whitey would soon be out of a job. That didn’t happen, but at least when the Harvey Wallbangers of Milwaukee met up with the Cards in the WS, they would show which way of playing was best….I was not happy to see my former team win the WS in 1982. I know, a traitor I was. I was a hurt 14 year old.

Funny, to look back on those teams so many years later. The teams I loved were not championship caliber teams. The teams that did make it to the playoffs and the WS in 1982 and 1985 didn’t look like one of the best teams in baseball (even the baseball pundits of the time said that) but they were. As much as I didn’t like it, Whitey ball DID work, it was winning baseball. As Braves fans, we all know how very important it is to be able to move runners over, then drive them in. If a few Braves teams had a few more guys who could do that we might have had more than one WS ring since 1991.

It also showed me something I love about the game now more than ever. You just never know what will happen! When Spring training rolled around in 1977, ’78, ’79 and ’80, I was sure the Cards would win it all. In ’81 and ’82, clearly those teams were weak hitting teams and ol’ Whitey made trades that looked terrible on the surface and below it as well. Still look like trades made at gunpoint. Yet, somehow, they worked for both teams. Some sort of math that I still don’t begin to get.

The good news for the baseball fan in me was since I was moving out of St. Louis in 1983, I wouldn’t been seeing Cardinal games much anymore, and I got to see the Cubbies, and the team that would become my team, the Braves, via cable.

In 2008, we all hope the trades and signings the Braves made work and we will get back to our rightful place, the playoffs. But, who knows?? Perhaps the weakest looking team in the East, the Marlins will make a run at it. Every team and it’s fans will feel some optimism during spring training. The worst teams will beat the best teams. And, as the season unfolds, teams no experts, no fans can imagine right now will become the Diamondbacks and Rockies of ’07. Reason # 459 baseball is the best sport in the world!!! 🙂

by Berigan

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