The Calm Before the Crazy: Springtime for the '75 Yankees

NO GEORGE. NO BILLY. No Yankee Stadium. No feuding amongst the owner, the manager and the superstar. No fistfights in elevators or with marshmallow salesmen. All those things were still in the future. 

But they did have Bobby Bonds before almost everyone else did.

It was Spring 1975 and strange times for the storied New York Yankees, then deeply entrenched in how the other half lived.

Ephemeral Yankee Bobby Bonds,
from the team's '75 Yearbook

It had been 10 years since their last American League pennant, 12 since the last championship, and it would be the second in which they'd play their home games in someone else's ballpark.

From 1921 through 1964, the Yanks had appeared in an astonishing 29 World Series, winning 20 titles in an era where there was no divisional play and no playoffs. Ten of those championships came in 1947 or later. Their dominance created a cavalcade of household names: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and Casey Stengel.

The Yankees weren't just baseball's best, but in an age when the sport was America's pastime, they were America's best. 

And then they weren't.

Bronx Bummers

In 1965, the Yanks finished sixth in the 10-team A.L. A year later they finished dead last, 26 games behind the eventual champion Baltimore Orioles. The next three seasons saw them finish ninth, fifth and fifth again.

And while they were being mediocre in their decaying stadium, the newfangled cross-town New York Mets went from atrocious to miraculous, winning the World Series in 1969, just their eighth season of existence, capturing the hearts and minds of New Yorkers and the nation. 

The 1970 Mets drew more than 2.6 million fans to their seven-year-old multipurpose stadium in Queens, while the Yankees attracted only 1.3 million to the House that Ruth Built.  

In '72, The Mets drew 2,134,185. The Yanks? Just 966,328.

In '73, managed by Berra, the Mets made it to the series again, losing to the Oakland A's in seven games, and outdrawing the Yankees again, by nearly 700,000.

Forget about being number one in the nation, the Yanks weren't even number one in their home town.

Enter George and Bill

In between their bottoming out at the box office and the Mets' second flag, the Bronx Bombers were acquired by Cleveland businessman George Steinbrenner -- a man who didn't take losing lightly -- and a collection of limited partners. 

Shea Stadium Under-Tenants

Prior to buying them however, Steinbrenner had allegedly made illegal contributions to President Richard Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign and to those of other politicians. In April, 1974, he was indicted on 14 felony counts by a federal grand jury, and later pleaded guilty to two of them. That August he was fined $15,000, his American Shipbuilding Co. hit for $20,000 more.

That November, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspended the Yankees's new principal owner for two years, a punishment later trimmed to 15 months.

Adding to their woes, the Bombers were temporarily homeless. Their stadium, open since 1923, was undergoing a two-year renovation. In 1974 and '75, the Yanks were forced to play their home games in the Mets' ballpark, Shea Stadium, where they'd continue to be outdrawn by its primary tenants.

As the '75 season dawned, the Yankees were led by former Pittsburgh Pirates skipper Bill Virdon. Crowding the owners' box were 15 people not named George Steinbrenner, among them businessman John DeLorean, Broadway producer James Nederlander, former Cleveland Indians star Al Rosen, former Indians general manager Gabe Paul and Mike Burke, who'd ran the Yanks while they were owned by CBS Broadcasting.

Bill, not Billy
from the 1975 yearbook

Photos of the team's limited partners all would appear in the team's yearbook. But the general partner's would not, nor would his name be mentioned. 

The '74 squad had done well, winning 89 games and finishing second in the A.L., just two back of the perennial powerhouse Baltimore Orioles, who copped their fifth division title in six years. 

Virdon was named manager of the year by The Sporting News. Not bad for a consolation prize. Steinbrenner had really wanted Dick Williams, who'd quit the A's after they beat the Mets, because of Oakland owner Charlie Finley's endless interference. 

Finley demanded compensation because Williams was still under contract. So the Yanks settled for Virdon, who'd been fired by the Bucs a year earlier.

Importing Stars

Suddenly not under contract after the '74 season, due to a Finley flub was A's ace Jim "Catfish" Hunter, coming off a 25-12 season where he made 41 starts, hurled 318.1 innings and won the A.L. Cy Young Award.

The Yankees reeled him in for five years and a record $3.75 million.

The Yanks' other big off-season pickup was Bonds, acquired from the San Francisco Giants for home-grown Mantle heir-apparent Bobby Murcer. 

Murcer failed to meet enormous expectations despite finishing in the top 10 of Most Valuable Player voting three years running. He had a sub-par year in '74 and that was that.

From the '75 yearbook

Bonds had a great talent for hitting home runs and stealing bases, but also for striking out. He did that a record 189 times in 1970, a mark that endured until 2004.

He would join the a lineup featuring catcher Thurman Munson, infielders Chris Chambliss, Jim Mason and Graig Nettles, outfielders Lou Piniella, Roy White and Elliott Maddox.

Hunter would lead a pitching staff including Pat Dobson, real life physician George "Doc" Medich, Larry Gura, Rudy May, Tippy Martinez and Sparky Lyle. 

Despite the two marquee additions, the Yanks were a .500 ball club wobbling along at 53 and 51 on August 1. Hunter's record on that date stood a decent 14-10. Bonds was batting .251, with 21 homers, 19 steals and more than a few strikeouts. A change was needed. A catalytic spark.

Exit Bill, Enter Billy

Virdon was sacked in favor of scrappy one-time Yanks infielder Billy Martin, recently pink-slipped by the Texas Rangers.

Though he'd steered Texas to a second place finish in the A.L. West a year earlier, Martin's characteristic combativeness wore out his welcome, just as it had with the Minnesota Twins after a first-place finish in 1969 and in Detroit after an A.L. East title for the Tigers in '72.

Hunter, the Yanks' big catch
from the '75 team yearbook

The Yanks took a while to get going under the new regime, ending August at a flat 67-67. A 16-10 September brought them home at 83-79, a game better than their Shea stablemates. They finished third, 12 1/2 games behind the eventual A.L. champion Boston Red Sox.

Catfish earned his keep, going 23-14 on the year. Leading the league with 328 innings pitched, he finished second in Cy balloting behind Orioles star Jim Palmer. 

Hunter would be back, though in ever decreasing quantities as his workload took its toll. 

So too would Munson, who had driven in 102 runs while batting .318. Other returnees for 1976 included Chambliss, Nettles, White, Piniella, Lyle, a slim rookie left-hander named Ron Guidry, and Martin.

All of them would be part of a team that once again ensconced at Yankee Stadium, and with Steinbrenner back in charge, would win the A.L. flag in 1976 and a drought-ending World Series championship in '77.

Billy and George

After spending just a single season in the Big Apple, hitting .270 with 32 homers, 30 steals and 137 strike outs, Bonds was sent to the California Angels in exchange for CF Mickey Rivers and pitcher Ed Figueroa.

It was the beginning of an odyssey that would see him also play for the Chicago White Sox, the Rangers, the Indians, the St. Louis Cardinals and finally the Chicago Cubs, all by the end of 1981.

Bonds died in 2003, at just age 57, leaving behind a legacy of unfulfilled promise as well as his son Barry, whose career would be greater and more controversial.

The Yankees would win the series again in 1978. Martin -- perpetually feuding with Steinbrenner and resident superstar Reggie Jackson -- would be forced to resign in midseason.

His replacement, Hall of Famer Bob Lemon, would pilot them to the championship, by which time Martin had already been anointed Lemon's successor for 1979.

Both victories were over the Los Angeles Dodgers, who returned the favor in 1981. During that series, the Yankees owner broke his hand in an alleged elevator fight with two L.A. fans. After it was over he apologized to his team's fans for losing. 

Martin did manage the Yankees in '79, then was fired after a fight with a marshmallow salesman. 

He came back again, and stayed, for all of '83 after a three-year tour in Oakland, during which Steinbrenner cycled through Dick Howser, Gene Michael, Lemon again, Michael again, and Clyde King.

Martin would also manage the Yanks for parts of 1985 and '88, but never win another championship. He died a passenger in a one-car accident on Christmas Day in 1989.

-- Follow me on no-longer Twitter @paperboyarchive

The End of the World Series Program As We Knew It

OCTOBER 1974: Gerald Ford was two months into his abbreviated presidency. The Muhammad Ali-George Foreman boxing match in Kinshasa, Zaire -- known as the Rumble in the Jungle -- was set for Oct. 30. 

Earthquake, in Sensurround!, starring Charleton Heston, Ava Gardner, Geneviève Bujold and Lorne Greene would strike America's movie theaters in November.

But something else was afoot, something far more subtle and pernicious, but to those of us of a particular bent: horrifically depressing.

Meh, before meh was even a thing.

Fifty years ago this month, Major League Baseball ended the era of team-produced World Series programs, subbing out the often charming, definitely distinct and occasionally iconic locally-designed and produced magazines for more uniform, corporate and nationally available... blah.

Yes, this is entirely about judging these books by their covers. But you only get one chance to make a good first impression. 

MLB's first cover art was a globe stand where the Earth is replaced by a baseball.

Inspired. Clever. Ooh. In other words, not good.

Who's playing in this series? Doesn't matter. And it wouldn't matter again for about 20 years and even then, well... feh.

Less than a decade earlier and from the same spherical starting point, the Los Angeles Dodgers had produced this bit of Project Gemini-inspired whimsy:

Truly out of this world.

Now artistry was banished in favor of mass produced, mass market product. At least they were up front about it, more or less.

"'1974 World Series marks an all-time first,'" the publication self-referentially declared on its page 3. "Previously the two teams involved in a World Series each published a separate program. '1974 World Series' represents the first joint World Series program. It is designed to tell the story of this year's major league baseball season and features both the East and West Division champions of the two leagues."

Yay.

It's tempting to say at least some of this was in response to frugal Charles O. Finley, then-owner of the then-two time defending champion then-Oakland A's.

The famously skin-flinty Finley just they year before had substantially just repurposed the team's joint scorecard and yearbook as its World Series program,  slapping American League Champions on the top left, New York Mets beneath "Oakland A's" at the top right, and re-labeling the bottom right "1973 World Series Souvenir Scorecard & Program."

The post-season publication was otherwise almost indistinguishable from its regular season predecessor.

 The regular season program

The not-so-different World Series edition

To be fair, the only somewhat less frugal Mets had repackaged one of their regular season game programs as their National League Championship Series program.

But when it came to the World Series, they issued a new magazine with split screen cover, the left side featuring a pensive skipper Yogi Berra, the right a photo of predecessor Gil Hodges and the team riding down Manhattan's Broadway amid a ticker tape parade celebrating their 1969 championship. Now that program was special.

Retro-perspective

And retrospective

More likely, the shift from local pubs to national had to do with the money to be had from national advertisers, and from sales to a national audience to which the new mags could be pitched. 

It wasn't a change for the better. Not for the public and, to be honest, not for those of us who collect, as part of the fun of that hobby is collecting things that are scarce. 

Those home-spun programs spoke of the teams that created them, their personas and places they played. More importantly, they spoke to their fans. 

The new generation shifted the game program vibe from Main Street shop owner to chain store shopping mall: deliberately faceless, representative of any town and any team, one size fits all, or -- in reality -- one size fits none.

Just how generic?

In the early '80s, baseball pulled its own Finley maneuver, taking the artwork created for the 1980 World Series program, a contest between the Philadelphia Phillies and Kansas City Royals, and re-using it three years later for the three-way AAA World Series involving the Tidewater Tides, Portland Beavers and Denver Bears.

From the grand stage...

... to AAA

Yes, the 1980 program artwork got demoted, and they didn't have to change anything about the image to do it.

They never really got better. In fact, as the years wore on, they got worse, more generic and more forgettable even as the digital publishing revolution allowed for tighter deadlines, more content, more recent content, contestant-specific covers and inevitably, higher prices.

Along the way Major League Baseball gained dominion over all the other post-season playoff programs, plus that of its mid-Summer classic, the All Star Game.

Product. Product. Product.

Montreal? Texas? Who knows?

Recognizably Pujols and Big Papi

Nowadays, we're kind of back to where we started: with team-specific looks, but they're soul-less mass produced representations of what once was, some with cover advertisements, and sometimes ironically shadowed by special stadium-only versions attempting to restore some of that old-time collectible exclusivity.

The 2016 Series program,
Wrigley Field edition

The 2019 series program, 
brought to you by YouTubeTV

Handsome zombies. You can buy the one for this year's showdown between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers online, or just look at it for free. 

-- Follow me @paperboyarchive on the social network formerly known as Twitter

Blue Coup de Grace Ends the A's Championship Era

QUALITY OR QUANTITY?  If a team finishes dead last in its division, should it try keep its best pitcher or trade that asset for a cadre of warm bodies to plug its many gaping holes?

For Oakland A's owner Charles O. Finley, the answer was the latter. It was that or nothing.

Not putting star players on the cover means
never having to say you're sorry

Stubborn as the mule he once hired for a mascot, Charlie-O was determined to do thing his way, on his budget. And midway through spring training 1978, as his team readied for the season, he dealt his former champs a long-expected blow, trading star lefty pitcher Vida Blue for seven nobodies.

A three-time 20-game winner, in 1971 Blue started the All-Star Game then captured the AL Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards, heralding an era when the A's were the best team in the world.

As ever, the glory was fleeting.

Though he'd owned Athletics since 1960 and oversaw their transformation from doormats to champions, Finley had no interest in the free agent wars that rewrote baseball's rules in the 1970s.

Though his stars had won five straight division titles and three straight world series, when the bill came due, Charlie came up short.

After they won their last crown in '74, he balked at making promised payments toward a life insurance annuity for perennial 20-game winner Jim Hunter.  The man called Catfish got his contract voided and signed with the New York Yankees.

Unbowed, the A's soldiered on. Led by Blue's 22 wins they won eight more games in 1975 than the previous year and another division title before being swept from the playoffs by the East Division champion Boston Red Sox.

The next season dawned with the dealing of superstar outfielder Reggie Jackson and pitcher Ken Holtzman to the Baltimore Orioles for outfielder Don Baylor plus pitchers Paul Mitchell and Mike Torrez.

Still, Oakland stayed afloat, winning 87 contests and finishing just 2 1/2 games behind the Kansas City Royals. Infielder Phil Garner emerged a star, as did 21-year-old outfielder Claudell Washington. Blue won 18 games, Torrez, 16. Ace reliever Rollie Fingers won 13 more while saving 20.

No Reggie? No Catfish? No problem? Not exactly.

At the June 15 trading deadline, Finley had tried to sell Fingers and another mainstay, outfielder Joe Rudi, to the Red Sox for $1 million a piece. For good measure, he also sold Blue to the Yankees for $1.5 million. But Commissioner Bowie Kuhn voided the deals as contrary to the best interests of baseball and the stars returned to Oakland, though not for long.

Baseball's first genuine free agent class graduated that winter. With labor leader Marvin Miller playing Moses, shouting "let my people go!" A's players fled the Pharaoh Finley in droves. Rudi and Baylor signed with the California Angels. Fingers and catcher Gene Tenace went to the San Diego Padres. Shortstop Bert Campaneris inked a deal with the Texas Rangers and third baseman Sal Bando signed with the Milwaukee Brewers.

The championship core was gone. Blue, who had incongruously signed a three-year contract in 1976, remained, as did outfielder Bill North. He would be dealt to the Dodgers in May 1978 for outfielder Glenn Burke.

Churn, churn, churn. Garner and two others were dealt to the Pittsburgh Pirates for a package that included reliever Doug Bair and prospects Rick Langford, Tony Armas and Mitchell Page.

Even the presence of Page, who was runner-up for Rookie of the Year, and the expansion Seattle Mariners couldn't save the A's from finishing seventh and last in the 1977 AL West.  Blue went 14-19. Attendance fell to 495,599, less than half of what was two years earlier.

Vida Blue, bottom right, in the land of the Giants

They'd gone 63-98.* But for one game not played, it could have been worse.

And then it did get worse.

In Dec. 1977, Finley traded Blue to the Cincinnati Reds for power-hitting minor league first baseman Dave Revering. Again, Kuhn interceded to void the deal. The Reds later swapped Revering for Bair.

Blue, twice traded and twice returned, went into spring training as an A. But not for long.

On March 15, he was traded to the San Francisco Giants for seven players and $300,000 in cash. Oakland got pitchers Alan Wirth, Dave Heaverlo and John Henry Johnson, plus catcher Gary Alexander and outfielder Gary Thomasson. The Giants later threw in infielder Mario Guerrero, whom they'd signed as a free agent only months earlier.

They held the fort until reinforcements could ripen.

By 1980, Langford, together with Mike Norris, Steve McCatty, Matt Keough and Brian Kingman would form an effective starting rotation. Backed by outfielders Armas, Dwayne Murphy and Rickey Henderson, the Athletics went 86-76, good for second in the division behind the Royals again. Also in the line-up, Page, Revering and Guerrero.

Finley, perhaps somewhat vindicated, sold the club in August of that year.

Vida Blue won 18 games in his maiden season in San Francisco, but was never that good again. His declining career intertwined with a trade to Kansas City, drug abuse, a jail sentence, and a brief but respectable comeback. After going 10-10 with a 3.27 ERA and 100 strikeouts in 157 innings for the Giants in '86, he retired.

* An earlier version of this entry contained a typo, asserting the A's had lost 78 games in 1977. They'd lost 98.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Cali Coda: Kingman's Career Flickers Out in Phoenix

FOR DAVE KINGMAN, THE END CAME SUDDENLY, unceremoniously and ignominiously. When he played his last game for the Oakland Athletics in 1986, nobody eligible for baseball's Hall of Fame had hit as many home runs as him, 442, and been denied induction. And nobody had ever hit so many homers in a single season, 35, and not played again in the majors.

1979 -- Kingman's Peak
.288, 48 HRs, 115 RBIs

Surely, there would be another chance for the rangy slugger whose long-limbed upper-cut swing could seemingly send horsehide spheres rocketing into orbit. Besides, when he'd signed with the A's just two years earlier, Kingman had one of his best years, batting .268, blasting 35 homers and driving in a career-best 118 runs.

The home runs kept coming, precisely 100 over three seasons in the East Bay, but that's where the good news ended for the man variously known as Kong and Sky King. As the A's primary designated hitter in '86. he'd batted just .210 and, while he drove in 94 runs, he'd struck out 126 times and had an on-base percentage of just .255.

Kingman, who had a history of stormy press relations,  also sent a live rat, in a pink box, to a female sportswriter. Unamused, the A's fined him $3,500 and threatened to release him if he ever did something like that again. When his contract expired at season's end, Oakland opted to let Kong go, replacing him with another aging slugger, Reggie Jackson, who starred for the A's in the early 1970s.

Surely somebody was in the market for his occasionally electrifying displays of power. But Kingman -- turning 38 and just 58 homers shy of the 500 mark that could potentially punch his ticket to Cooperstown -- had no takers.

Before there were Arizona Diamondbacks...

His 16-year-career, bounding from the San Francisco Giants to the New York Mets, to the San Diego Padres, to the California Angels, to the New York Yankees, to the Chicago Cubs, back to the Mets then to the A's, appeared over.

But not quite yet.

In early July, he signed a minor league contract with his original team, the Giants. Sky King would DH and play first base for their AAA affiliate, the Phoenix Firebirds. There he'd try to rise from the ashes for one more shot at the bigs.

Kong's last call would last about three weeks, during which he'd bat just .203 -- against minor leaguers on the way up and retreads trying to prolong their careers just as he was -- with two homers and 11 RBIs. In 59 at bats, he fanned 12 times.

On Sunday night, Aug. 2, he played first base for the Firebirds as they took on the Los Angeles Dodgers' top farm club, the Albuquerque Dukes, losing 6-5. In what may have been his last at bat as a pro, against former big league reliever Pete Ladd, mighty Kingman struck out. Two days later, having not played again due to a toe injury, he exercised an escape clause in his contract and released himself.

No rising from the ashes on this night.

Done.

Except for this: It was later adjudged the the 86-87 off-season was one in a series where Major League Baseball's owners colluded to hold down salaries and deliberately avoided bidding against each other for free agents.

Though in retrospect, Kingman's career appeared to end on its merits, he was only in Phoenix because no big league team offered to sign a man who'd just finished second in the American League and third in the majors in home runs.

His Firebirds fadeout followed the conspiracy that consigned him there.

In 1995, eight years after his career was euthanized by Pete Ladd in the Arizona desert, arbitrator Thomas Roberts awarded Sky King $829,850 in damages.
_____________________________

In the Summer of 1987, soon after graduating from college, me and my buddy Chris took a baseball tour of California. Mostly baseball at least, and hell of a good time. This is the eighth and last part of a series inspired by those 16 days on the road.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Reggie, The Original Bash Brother, Comes Home

REGGIE JACKSON CAME HOME in the summer of 1987. Not to Wyncote, PA, where he was born 41 years earlier and grew into a prodigal multi-sport star at nearby Cheltenham High School, but to Oakland, CA, where that star became one of the biggest, brightest and brashest in the nation, while playin' for the Swingin' A's.

Between 1971 and 1975, he'd led them to five straight first place finishes, and from '72 to ''74, three consecutive championships, then he was gone, traded just before opening day 1976.

Reggie Jackson of the 1987 Oakland Athletics.

Now he was back, at the end of a career that saw him play for a total of 12 division winners, six pennant winners and five World Series winners (though an injury kept him out of action in the 1972 tilt against the Cincinnati Reds).

Home, after four American League home run titles and the 1973 AL Most Valuable Player award.

Home, after 14 All Star Game selections and two World Series MVP awards, the second of which came after he crushed the Los Angeles Dodgers, hitting three round trippers in three swings to close out the 1977 fall classic.

Home after a year in Baltimore, five in the Bronx and five more in Anaheim, playing for the argumentative Earl Weaver, the tempestuous Billy Martin, the calming Bob Lemon, the defiant Dick Howser and the luckless Gene Mauch. Home after playing for Charlie Finley, George Steinbrenner and Gene Autry.

Home as Mr. October, as the self-proclaimed "Straw that Stirs the Drink." Home as a candy bar.   "When you unwrap a Reggie Bar, it tells you how good it is," his Hall of Fame teammate Catfish Hunter once said. Now, in his final season, Reggie no longer needed to be the bonbon, the straw or even a main ingredient in the Oakland Athletic's potent cocktail, he just needed to be in the mix.

Managed by future Hall member Tony La Russa, the A's franchise was on one if it's periodic upswings, if not yet at its peak. First-baseman Mark McGwire, 23, was in the midst of a freshman campaign that would see him hit .289 with 49 homers and 118 runs batted in, winning Rookie of the Year honors. Behind him, 1986 AL Rookie of the Year Jose Canseco, just 21 and on his way to belting 31 round-trippers and driving in 113. Together they were The Bash Brothers.

McGwire, Canseco and Reggie, men who would combine for 1,608 home runs over their careers, together in one Athletics line up. Surely somewhere Jimmie Foxx was lacing his cleats.

Joining them: 1979 co-RotY shortstop Alfredo Griffin and 1981 AL batting champ Carney Lansford, starting pitcher Dave Stewart -- embarking on the first of his four consecutive 20-win seasons -- and Hall of Fame reliever Dennis Eckersley.

"I think the ingredients are all here for me to have a good year," Jackson, bash brother emeritus, said in one of two features about him in the game program for July 27, 1987, when his team hosted the California Angels at the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum.

The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum,
July 27, 1987

The A's, behind Stewart, cruised to a 6-1 win that night. Only catcher Terry Steinbach homered for the home team. Shortstop Gus Polidor struck a blow for the visitors.

Jackson -- batting sixth -- struck out four times (a drop in his MLB-record bucket of 2597 Ks, which still stands today). He ended the night hitting a discouraging .203. For the year, he batted .220 with 15 homers and 43 RBIs. In 336 at bats over 115 games, he struck out 97 times.

Though La Russa's squad would go just 81-81 that year, the table had been set, the appetite whet. Starting in 1988, the franchise strung together three straight pennants, repeating the feat accomplished by Jackson's A's of the '70s, and won the 1989 World Series.

Reggie finished his illustrious career with a .262 batting average, 563 homers and 1,702 runs batted in. He also had 18 round-trippers and 48 RBIs in 77 post-season games, 10 of those clouts in the series. He made the Hall in 1993.

The Coup

Two weeks before my visit, stop four on my California/ballpark tour, the Coliseum had hosted Major League Baseball's All Star Game, further proof the sometimes moribund A's, whose attendance had dipped to 306,763 for the entire 1979 season, were on the rebound. For those of us who care, the All Star Game program -- in this era before eBay -- was a trophy worth hunting.

The trophy

Mid-game, I chatted up one of the souvenir stand vendors about the ballpark -- better than its reputation -- and the stadium food -- more adventurous than I'd seen elsewhere -- and finally rounded to the subject of the A-S program.

He said he had none and directed me down the concourse, past the first aid station and through a door where I found myself in a souvenir stock room.

"Hi. Mike sent me," I told a woman behind the counter, feigning a casualness I didn't feel. "I'm looking for an All Star Game program."

She dropped back into the steel shelving behind her and reappeared moments later, program in hand.

"Do you work here?" she asked, looking me over.

"No," I replied.

"Five dollars," she said. I handed over the money, suppressed a smile and walked out. Quickly.
_____________________________

In the Summer of 1987, soon after graduating from college, me and my buddy Chris took a baseball tour of California. Mostly baseball at least, and hell of a good time. This is the fifth part of a series inspired by those 16 days on the road.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive