An Appreciation of Jim "Mudcat" Grant, 1935-2021

 

Jim "Mudcat" Grant, firing one in there for the Minnesota Twins.

Jim "Mudcat" Grant, 1935-2021.

Jim “Mudcat” Grant died on June 11, 2021. I never met Mudcat, but he’s always been an important player in the history of the Minnesota Twins. I saw Grant a couple of times, at a reunion of the 1965 Twins in 2005, and at Harmon Killebrew’s memorial service at Target Field in 2011. It was clear that he had a larger-than-life personality, and a charisma that drew people to him.

Mudcat Grant only pitched for the Twins for 3 full seasons, and half of a 4^th, but he’ll always be remembered for his 1965 season, in which he led the American League in wins with 21, and led the league with 6 shutouts. Grant also started 3 games of the 1965 World Series against the Dodgers. In Game 1, in Minnesota, Grant outdueled future Hall of Famer Don Drysdale. (Sandy Koufax famously didn’t start Game 1 because it fell on Yom Kippur.) Drysdale was knocked out of the game in the 3^rd inning, while Grant went the distance, holding the Dodgers to 10 hits and just 2 runs. Game 4 was a rematch of Grant versus Drysdale, this time in Los Angeles. Drysdale emerged the victor, as he pitched a complete game, held the Twins to just 5 hits and 2 runs, and struck out 11. Grant lasted 5 innings and gave up 5 runs. With the Twins down 3 games to 2, Grant came up big in Game 6. On just 2 days’ rest, he pitched a complete game gem, holding the Dodgers to a measly 6 hits and 1 run. In the bottom of the 6^th, with the Twins up 2-0, Bob Allison walked and then stole second base. With first base now open, the Dodgers intentionally walked Frank Quilici, to bring Grant to the plate with 2 outs. Grant made the Dodgers pay, launching a 3-run homer to left-center field. The Series would go to a Game 7. Unfortunately, the Twins had to face Sandy Koufax in Game 7. Working on just 2 days’ rest, Koufax threw his second shutout of the Series, striking out 10 Twins, even though over the last few innings Koufax’s curveball wasn’t working and he was only throwing fastballs.

After the 1967 season, the Twins traded Grant to the Dodgers. Grant pitched all of 1968 for the Dodgers, and then bounced from the expansion Expos to the Cardinals, to the A’s, the Pirates, and then the A’s again. Grant was very effective pitching in relief for the A’s and Pirates in 1970 and 1971, but he was released by the A’s after the 1971 season ended. Grant’s career record was 145-119, with a 3.63 ERA, 18 shutouts and 54 saves.

I knew that Grant won 21 games for the 1965 Twins, but until I read his obituaries, I had forgotten that he was the first Black pitcher to win 20 games in the American League. I thought “That’s a really cool fact.” And then I thought about it more, and it hit me: that was 18 years after Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball. 1965 was the 19^th season played since both leagues integrated in 1947, and it took that long for a Black pitcher to win 20 games in the American League. That’s a very long time.

I’ve known for a long time that the National League was much quicker to embrace Black and Latin players than the American League. This is one of the reasons why the National League crushed the American League in the All-Star Game from 1950-1987, going 33-8-1 over that span. And I’ve known for a long time that it took the Boston Red Sox 12 years after Jackie Robinson’s debut to integrate. Way to go, Boston.

As I was thinking about Grant’s achievement in becoming the first Black pitcher in the American League to win 20 games, I was wondering, who was the Black pitcher who came the closest to winning 20 games in the American League before Grant did it in 1965? I tried to think of Black pitchers in the American League during the 1950’s, and I came up with…not much in the old memory bank. So, I scoured baseball-reference and looked team by team through the AL during the 1950’s. Suffice it to say, there was not a lot of diversity on those teams.

In my searching, I separated players into Black and Latin. This gets a little hazy, especially in the case of someone like Juan Pizarro, a Black Puerto Rican pitcher who won 19 games for the Chicago White Sox in 1964. But I was looking specifically for U.S.-born Black pitchers. What I found was that while there were Latin pitchers like Camilo Pascual and Pedro Ramos who were in the top 10 in the American League for wins, the first U.S.-born Black pitcher to show up in the top 10 in the AL for wins was Connie Johnson, who won 14 games for the Baltimore Orioles in 1957. It was Mudcat Grant himself who was the first Black pitcher in the AL to win 15 games, for the Cleveland Indians in 1961. And that was the closest a Black pitcher in the AL came to 20 wins until Grant won 21 games in 1965.

Reading more about Mudcat Grant made me think a little more about Black players like him, who debuted a decade after Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, but who still had their own barriers to break. Too often with history, we remember the groundbreaking event, but then we don’t follow up on what happened next. “Oh yeah, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and then everything was fine, right?” Nope, not really.

In retirement, Grant wrote a book about the Black pitchers who had won 20 games in a season. The Black Aces came out in 2007, and it tells the stories of Grant, Vida Blue, Al Downing, Bob Gibson, Dwight Gooden, Fergie Jenkins, Sam Jones, Don Newcombe, Mike Norris, J.R. Richard, Dave Stewart, and Earl Wilson. It sounds like a fascinating book, and a fitting tribute to the legacy of the AL’s first Black 20-game winner.

Book Review: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a novel by Quentin Tarantino (2021)

 

The paperback cover of Quentin Tarantino's novel Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 2021. I love that it's supposed to look like a 1970's paperback.

Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was a bonanza for those of us, like myself, who are mildly obsessed with mid-century American pop culture. There have been rumors that Tarantino filmed way more footage than could have fit into a theatrically released motion picture, even with Hollywood running 2 hours and 40 minutes. The first evidence of that comes with the release of Tarantino’s novel of the same title, which greatly expands the story that the movie shows us.

The novel Once Upon a Time in Hollywood tells us way more about the lives of actor Rick Dalton and his stuntman and gofer, Cliff Booth. (Played in the movie by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, respectively.) We also get additional chapters focusing on Sharon Tate, Charles Manson, and the backstory behind Lancer, the TV pilot that Rick Dalton films during the movie. Personally, I found Rick to be a more compelling character than Cliff, in both the novel and the movie. In the movie, I’m pretty sure the only direction Tarantino had to give Brad Pitt was “Look cool in this scene.” Cause that’s all Cliff does. Even when kicking ass, the guy never breaks a sweat. Cliff has none of the self-doubts that plague Rick Dalton—and that makes Cliff far less interesting to me. In the novel, we learn a lot of terrible things about Cliff—he’s a murderer who was involved in illegal dogfights.

The time structure of the novel is odd, and non-linear, as the climax of the film is revealed to us in dialogue about a quarter of the way through the book. There’s also a weird digressive chapter late in the novel about the actor Aldo Ray. But the novel is filled with little eccentricities like that. Also, be on the lookout for all the times women go barefoot in the novel—it seems to be an obsession of Tarantino’s.

There were a couple of little errors I noticed in the novel, such as the mention of “platinum albums” on page 163. Platinum albums were not introduced as a certification until 1976, 7 years after the main action of the film and novel. A tiny detail, sure, but the sort of thing that I’d think a pop culture nut like Tarantino would notice. A more noticeable error is the discrepancy in the number of seasons of Bounty Law, the TV show that catapulted Rick Dalton to stardom. On page 23, Rick says, “I totally pissed away a fourth season of Bounty Law,” meaning that the show ended before the fourth season. Yet on page 11, we learn that Bounty Law went on the air in the fall of the 1959-60 TV season and went off the air in the middle of the 1963-64 season—that would be the middle of the 5^th season. Again, it’s a tiny detail, but in a universe as fully thought out as the one that Rick Dalton inhabits, a noticeable detail.

Sharon Tate plays a slightly larger role in the novel than she does in the movie, but I would have vastly preferred more Sharon and less Cliff Booth. Tarantino is obsessed with the macho world that Cliff inhabits, so that dominates the novel. It could also be that Tarantino finds it easier to inhabit totally fictional characters like Cliff and Rick rather than a real historical person like Sharon Tate.

The novel is steeped in misogyny. It’s tough to say how much of this is Tarantino being “true to the time period” and how much it reflects his own thoughts and attitudes about women. Whatever the case, readers may find it off-putting. There are odd moments that are just jarring, like when Trudi Frazer, the 8-year-old actress who plays Mirabella Lancer on the Lancer TV pilot, tells Rick that she thinks his bad guy character would marry Mirabella, whom he has kidnapped. Rick is appalled by the idea and tells Trudi this. Sure, for Trudi some of this is an acting exercise to think outside of the boundaries of the script, but it’s just creepy.

Cliff Booth is a misogynist through and through. (The novel clears up the mysterious circumstances surrounding his wife’s death.) Cliff likes sleeping with women, but really has little use for them other than sexually. Sample text: “To Cliff, pussy was pussy, but he did have a real fondness for Italian pussy.” Cool, bro. Two paragraphs later, Cliff tells his friends about Rick’s new wife, an Italian actress: “Out of the fucking blue, he fucking married the bitch.” (p.341)

One of the funnier moments of the novel deals with Roman Polanski’s paranoia that Sharon Tate may have slept with Steve McQueen before she was married to Roman. “He’s never confirmed this with Sharon…but McQueen makes a point of it by the way he smirks at Roman. Every glance of those blue eyes and grin of that little mouth seems to say, I fucked your wife.” (p.129) I can see Steve McQueen making that face. Steve McQueen would be a really intimidating guy to be friends with. Because unless you’re Paul Newman, Steve McQueen is always going to be way cooler than you are. Steve McQueen races motorcycles and cars in his spare time. Steve McQueen has piercing blue eyes. Steve McQueen is strong and silent and stoic. Steve McQueen always gets to play the coolest parts in ensemble movies: The Magnificent Seven? He’s the coolest one. The Great Escape? He’s the coolest one. Oh, and when he’s not in an ensemble movie, he’s being cool as hell in movies like Le Mans and Bullitt, where he does his own stunt driving! Or The Thomas Crown Affair, where he even looks cool playing polo. Trust me, you don’t really want your wife spending a lot of time around Steve McQueen. Or Roman Polanski, for that matter.

There’s a very funny scene where Rick Dalton breaks down in detail why he wouldn’t have gotten Steve McQueen’s role in The Great Escape. The rumor around Hollywood is that had McQueen turned down the part, Rick’s name was on a list with “the three Georges.” That would be George Peppard, George Maharis, and George Chakiris. (If you know who those guys are without Googling them, this is the book for you.) Rick tells actor Jim Stacy exactly why each of the three Georges would have been cast ahead of him. For the sake of argument, Rick raises the possibility that horrific accidents might have befallen the three Georges, leaving him as the last name on the list. “Do I get it now?” Rick asks Jim Stacy.

“Of course you get it, you’re the last guy on the fuckin’ list!”

“That’s just my point, Jim. When the fuck do they hire the last guy on the fucking list? When you get to the last guy on the fuckin’ list, you throw out the fuckin’ list and start a new fuckin’ list!” (p.376-7)

In that same scene, look for a cameo appearance by Tarantino’s stepdad, Curt Zastoupil. Supposedly, Tarantino has written a second novel detailing the film career of Rick Dalton. I’m looking forward to reading it. If you’re fascinated by Old Hollywood, and you enjoyed the movie, you’ll love the novel of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Dave Parker, "The Cobra at Twilight"

 

Proof that Dave Parker was a serious badass.

Dave Parker winning the MVP Award for the 1979 All-Star Game.

Dave Parker with his hometown Cincinnati Reds.

I’ve liked Dave Parker for a long time. I wasn’t around for the Cobra’s 1975-1980 heyday, but by the time I started following baseball in 1986-87, he was one of those cool veteran players who seemed larger than life. You know, one of those players whose stat line filled the whole back of the baseball card, leaving no room for extra nuggets of information.

I recently watched the 2019 MLB documentary “The Cobra at Twilight,” an excellent look at Parker’s life and career. Parker was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2013, and the film shows Parker going to the gym and doctor’s appointments. The contrast between Parker’s imposing strength during his prime and how tough it is for him to get around now is sad. However, it’s obvious from the film that Parker’s spirit remains strong.

When I was a kid staring at the back of his baseball cards, Dave Parker’s stats seemed enormous to me: 339 home runs! 1,493 RBI’s! Wow! At the time Parker retired after the 1991 season, he was 32^nd on the all-time list in RBI’s and tied for 47^th on the home run list. He’s now 58^th in RBI’s and tied for 102^nd in home runs.

As I started to follow the Hall of Fame voting more closely, I always thought that Parker was underappreciated by the BBWAA. For the 15 years Parker was on the BBWAA ballot, his highest vote total was 24.5% in 1998, his second year on the ballot. Parker was a player who was regarded as an elite power hitter during his career, but by the time he hit the Hall of Fame ballot, 339 home runs didn’t seem as amazing.

Because Parker didn’t walk a lot, sabermetric stats haven’t helped his Hall of Fame case. Parker’s excellence is captured in the main hitting stats found on the back of his baseball card. Sabermetrics aren’t kind to Parker’s fielding, despite his reputation during his career as an excellent right fielder. The sabermetric community hasn’t taken up Parker’s case with the same fervor that they’ve adopted Tim Raines and Bert Blyleven, to name two contemporaries of Parker’s who saw their vote totals soar and were eventually elected by the BBWAA.

Looking at Parker’s WAR you can see some of the limitations of WAR as a statistic. Look at Parker’s 1986 season. He appeared in all 162 games for the Reds, smacked 174 hits, with 31 doubles, 31 home runs, 116 RBIs, and a .273 batting average. Parker’s OPS+ was 117, and he led the league in total bases with 304. He was 10^th in the NL in slugging, 7^th in hits, tied for 2^nd in home runs, 2^nd in RBIs, and 4^th in extra base hits. According to WAR, that season was worth 0.3 WAR. Parker’s offensive WAR for the year was 2.1, but his defensive WAR was -2.5, which negated most of his value. So, 0.3 WAR means that you could have taken any schlub off the bench at AAA, plugged him into the lineup and he would have produced as well as Parker would have. Okay, I’ll take the leading slugger from the 1986 Denver Zephyrs, Lloyd McClendon. Did McClendon ever hit 30 home runs and have 100 RBIs in the majors? Well, Lloyd did hit 35 home runs and drive in 154 runs, but that was over his entire 570 game major league career. It’s not that easy to replace the Cobra, WAR!

Since his final appearance on the BBWAA ballot in 2011, Parker has appeared on several Era Committee ballots, and I’ve written about Parker in 2017 and 2019. Parker hasn’t been elected to the Hall of Fame yet, but in 2019 he was named on 7 of 16 ballots, falling just 5 votes short of election. For as much as these small committees have been criticized over the years, they’ve also made some excellent selections recently: Ron Santo, Alan Trammell and Ted Simmons, three players who were wrongly overlooked by the BBWAA.

Much like Steve Garvey, Dave Parker has the “fame” part of the Hall of Fame covered. Parker was a 7-time All-Star, won 2 batting titles, was the 1978 NL MVP, won 3 Gold Gloves, had an amazing 1979 All-Star Game, where he threw out two baserunners and was voted MVP, and played on 2 World Series Champion teams a decade apart—the 1979 Pirates and the 1989 Oakland A’s.

At his peak, from 1975-1980, Dave Parker was one of the best players in baseball. As a measure of how contemporary baseball writers viewed him, Parker was listed in the 1981 edition of The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time, by Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig. Ritter and Honig were taking a huge gamble when they chose players who were not even halfway through their careers for the 1981 edition of the book, but it says something about Parker’s stature in the game that he was viewed as an all-time great by two very respected baseball writers and historians. When Ritter and Honig updated their book in 1986, Parker was one of the players who was removed from the book. Other players who Ritter and Honig had second thoughts about were George Foster, Fred Lynn, and Tony Oliva. It also says something about how far Parker’s star had fallen that he didn’t make the 1986 edition.

In the early 1980’s, Dave Parker was clearly a star in decline. Injuries cost him much of the 1982 season, and it seemed like much of the power had been drained from the Cobra’s bat. What we later learned was that Parker had a cocaine problem during the early 80’s. After the 1983 season, Parker signed as a free agent with his hometown Cincinnati Reds, and he came roaring back with a terrific year in 1985. As his drug problems made headlines, Parker was able to maintain focus on the game, and led the NL in doubles, RBI, and total bases, finishing 2^nd in the MVP voting behind Willie McGee.

Dave Parker was a hugely self-confident player, and the film likens him to Muhammad Ali. Whereas now Parker’s braggadocio might look less out of place, in the 1970’s, it was still something of a rarity for a Black player to be so outspoken. Did that influence how the media of the time covered Parker? I’m sure it did.

Parker was very different from the Pirates’ other Black superstars. Roberto Clemente was the humble, graceful, quiet star. (Even so, the press of the time often portrayed him as a hypochondriac.) And Willie Stargell was the chubby and loveable clubhouse leader. Parker was more in the Reggie Jackson mold, telling reporters, “When the leaves turn brown, I’ll be wearing the batting crown.”

“The Cobra at Twilight” tells us that things really changed for Parker after he signed a huge contract during the 1978-79 off-season. The deal averaged out to a little more than a million dollars a year, although some of that was deferred. Adjusted for inflation, that would be like paying Parker $3.6 million a year in 2021 dollars, which would be a steal. Once a player gets a huge contract, it’s easy for the fans to resent them. Especially when Parker gained a bunch of weight. Then it’s easy to paint that player as “lazy” and “unmotivated.” Fans threw batteries and even a bullet at Parker in right field. I was shocked to see some of the editorial cartoons of Parker that ran in Pittsburgh papers at the time. The drawings were racist and insulting.

It’s hard not to want just a little more from Dave Parker’s stats. He was such a great player that you can’t help but want the numbers to be a little bigger. According to Baseball-Reference, over 162 games, Parker averaged 178 hits, 22 home runs, and 98 RBI’s. So, what would happen if we gave Parker his 162-game average for his mid-career decline? I know, this is getting into speculative territory, but stay with me here. I’m not giving Parker extra seasons or theorizing what his stats would be if he could have hit 40 home runs every season he played. Let’s just look at his seasons from 1980-84, plus 1976, the one off-year during his peak. These stats assume that Parker doesn’t get injured, and that there’s no players strike in 1981, so a full season would have been played that year.

So, if Parker could have just played to his 162-game average during those 6 seasons, what career numbers would he have ended up with?

Hits: move from 2,712 to 3,004

HR: move from 339 to 399

RBI: move from 1,493 to 1,686

Obviously, if Parker had those numbers, he’d be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. And really, we can forget about homers and RBIs: once he moves over the 3,000-hit threshold, he would have been in. And you probably don’t have to mess with 6 seasons like I did to get Parker in the Hall. If there’s no players strike in 1981, and he has a decent 1982 season and doesn’t get hurt, let’s add 100 hits to each of those seasons. Now he’s at 2,912 hits. Let’s not even adjust his other numbers. Okay, we’ll give him 10 more RBI, so he gets over 1,500. Does he get into the Hall of Fame with 2,912 hits, 339 home runs, and 1,503 RBI? I would think so.

I know that’s all speculation, but to me it shows how close to being a first-ballot Hall of Famer Dave Parker was. And personally, I would just like to see Dave Parker in the Hall of Fame. Dave Parker was cool. He was a 6’5” badass who had a pierced ear and wore a Star of David. His answer to why he wore it was simple: “My name’s David and I’m a star.” The Hall of Fame would simply be a little cooler if Dave Parker were in it.