Grid #406
Going for obscurity and missing the mark
Ahoy, readers! Now that Erik has returned to Section 327 with a post yesterday, I thought I would punch up the ol’ Immaculate Grid and see what it’s like now. I’ve not even looked at one since we went on our extended hiatus last fall, so I thought I might be a little rusty, but really how rusty can one get at remembering generally useless information about ballplayers? Turns out, not very.
Of course, today’s Grid did me a favor by including our hometown Mariners as one of the rows. With that advantage given, I went for the low score and chose the most obscure names I could think of that fit the squares. Ended up with a score of 20. Not bad, but disappointing:
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at that 2% for Diego Segui. He is kind of famous for being the only Pilot/Mariner, and plenty of people out there know the Pilots became the Brewers. Maybe I should have gone with Gorman Thomas, my first instinct. I also considered Daniel Vogelbach and Nori Aoki and Brad Miller. Oh, nertz, just now as I typed “Brad Miller” I recalled Nick Franklin—those two were once thought to be the Mariners’ middle infield of the future, then they were dealt away and somehow kept managing to end up on the same team, one of which was the Brewers. He’d surely have been better than 2%. Oh well. I am proud of the Jeff Nelson square at 0.03%. I was always amused when Lou Piniella would do weird things like shift his reliever to the outfield for a batter or two and then bring him back to the mound; you saw that once in a while over in the National League, but it just wasn’t done in DH-ville. I blew it on the Mariners/HOF box, though, because I forgot about Goose Gossage. Sure, Rickey is likely the next-most obscure answer there—only seven possible options—but I only came up with six (Griffey, Edgar, Randy, Beltre, Gaylord Perry, and Rickey).
The Orioles aren’t a strong suit for me, but I managed to drag Schoop out of some synapse or other. Maybe 4% is as good as I could hope for there; it’s not like B.J. Surhoff or Jeffrey Hammonds was going to be better. Orioles/LF of course made me think of that hilarious Tito Landrum/Floyd Rayford deal I’ve mentioned before—Tito was the PTBNL in a midyear trade for Rayford, then the next spring they were basically traded for each other again—but I was hoping for better than 0.2%. And all I could come up with for Baltimore Hall of Famers were big names: your Palmers, your Ripkens, your Murrays, your dual Robinsons. So I went to St. Louis Browns HOFers and Rajah was the only one I could think of (even George Sisler escaped me). I’ll take the 1% and call it a win.
Gotta say, I’m liking the new (to me) “played at least one game at [position]” boxes. I tried to come up with guys who weren’t typical catchers for that row but I only came up with one, obvious to me because ’80s Cardinals. Super-utilityman Oquendo had played eight positions including pitcher in late 1988, and after the Cards were eliminated from the race people brought signs to the ballpark that said “LET JOSÉ CATCH” and similar things; eventually, Whitey put him behind the plate for an inning and there was much rejoicing. Clearly I wasn’t the only one to remember that since he got 3%. Maybe Mike Blowers would’ve been a better choice there.
Since I had no ideas for a Brewer non-catcher that caught, I went for the funniest answer I could come up with in Nottingham. Why funniest? Well, because this:
I dunno, maybe it’s just funny to me. Anyway, less than a percent, so, cool.
As for the final box, I was stumped as to HOFers who maybe played a few innings at catcher, so I went with the guy who started as a catcher and quickly shifted to the infield. And then the outfield. And then back to the infield. (But not back to catcher.) My other thought was Gil Hodges, but I wasn’t sure he ever caught (he did). Might have been the better score. Still, I’m OK with Biggio at 6%, by then I’d burned any hope for an all-time low score and it’s still decent.
This was fun. Let’s do this again in a few days.
Grid 406 mostly reminded me of all the no-name left fielders they paraded through Seattle during the 1990s. It was always Griffey in center, Buhner in right, and … who do we have playing left tonight? Greg Briley? Henry Cotto? Marc Newfield and Mike Felder and Eric Anthony and Greg Litton and Alex Diaz? (Jeff Nelson???? Wow, nice one.) And when we finally brought up a guy that seemed like he’d stick, Jose Cruz, Jr., Woody, of course, had to trade him straightaway for some relief pitching that wasn’t much relief. 1990s Mariners left fielders were basically Spinal Tap drummers. Boom.
We agreed on Segui and Hornsby but I barely remember half your guys. I did remember Goose and Gaylord for M’s HOF, but that was the last one I filled in, and Ted and Nellie had already ratcheted up my numbers, so I decided I’d spend the remainder on a face I’d rather see.
This is the first time, or one of the first times, I’ve seen positions merging: left/catcher. I like it. And while I had to go with my man Cesar Tovar, an early thought revolved around one of the most famous catchers in baseball history who was in left field for one of the most famous plays in baseball history: Yogi Berra, playing left for the Yankees when Bill Mazeroski hit it over his head at Forbes Field to win the 1960 World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates. If Don DeLillo had chosen to write about that game rather than the ‘51 playoff, his preface could’ve been called “Berra at the Wall” rather than “Pafko at the Wall.”