Does anybody remember Amos Otis?

I was watching the ESPN Sunday night baseball game a few weeks back over at CiCi’s Pizza on Battleground and I’m thinking it was one of the inter-league affairs with the Dodgers and the Angels and it got me to wondering who are all of these guys that I’m watching as Jon Miller, Joe Morgan and Steve Phillips were calling out their names.

I remember the days when you picked up the paper every morning and read the baseball box scores without fail. Back in the day, it wasn’t MLB or Major League Baseball, it was just baseball.

You’d find your favorite team and see who beat them the night before and how your guys did and how the comp came out as they just took down your club.

Following the Senators, who became the Rangers, had me watching Frank Howard like he was some sort of national hero and then he paved the way for men like Jeff Burroughs and Mike Hargrove and many others.

Many times, you knew the guys that were beating you as well as you did your own team. The Kansas City Royals could lay a whipping on you and with their guys like center fielder Amos Otis, and infielders Freddie Patek and Cookie Rojas and catcher Darrell Porter(who got his start with the Brewers). They could mash you up pretty bad and lest we forget Big John Mayberry, the BIG first baseman, who was known to hit one or two out on occasion.

The Royals’ manager was Jack McKeon and he had a few other talents you may remember in George Brett, Hal McRae and Tony Solita. I know I’ll never forget those guys.

The Oakland A’s, with skipper Dick Williams, had a who’s who, a real cornicopia of players that ruled the roost back in the early to mid-70’s with Joe Rudi, Gene Tenace, Sal Bando, Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, and you name it, they could bury you. It seems like you can remember all of the names from those days with the A’s.

Jim “Catfish” Hunter, John “Blue Moon” Odom, Dave Duncan, Bert “Campy” Campaneris and the list goes on.

Those names were with you every day as were the Twins’ Rod Carew and Tony Oliva, along with the “Big Red Machine”(Rose, Morgan, Bench, Perez, Concepcion, Foster, Geronimo, Griffey Sr.) and the LA Dodgers from the day, with Garvey, Russell, Lopes and Cey.

Those were the days and bring me back those days! Boy, what a time it was following all of the players back in the day.

The kids today, well how many of today’s Dodgers are household or morning paper/box score names? We don’t even read the paper any more, so there goes the box scores……..(Everything is on-line now.)

One Dodger that will return on Friday will garner much attention and that will be the addition to the LAD lineup that gets some people talking. In fact, they are already talking about Manny’s return.

Joe Torre has been a plus for the Dodgers and Don Mattingly also brings a certain amount of respect to the ball club, since “Donnie Baseball” is a former Greensboro Hornet.

As for the rest of the Dodgers and most of the rest of the MLB guys with the excpetion of a handful of marque players, “do we really know these guys?”

Household names from the Dodgers’ pitching staff?
Brent Leach
Randy Wolf
James McDonald
Clayton Kershaw

Try these on for size:
Sandy Koufax
Don Drysdale
Don Sutton
Andy Messersmith
Claude Osteen

These Dodger players might raise a few eyebrows:
Russell Martin(C)
Rafael Furcal(INF)
Andre Ethier(OF) He’s been killing the ball with 3-home run games and I heard about him on the radio….
Juan Pierre(OF)

But do these LA Angels’ pitchers get anybody’s attention around these parts???
Matt Palmer
Joe Saunders
Rich Thompson
Jered Weaver……..

Maybe we’ve gone to the extreme to prove our point, but we still look at the days of old and ask that crucial question, “Does anybody even remember Amos Otis or do you just sit back and await the return of Manny?”