Greatest 21 Days Baseball Profiles

Russ McGinnis made the Royals roster out of the abbreviated spring training in 1995, a roster temporarily enlarged by three after the strike. By mid-May, the roster needed to be reduced and McGinnis was among the Royals players looked at for possible demotion . McGinnis hoped he would stay . "I think they will need some right-handed hitting with some pop," McGinnis told The Associated Press as the decision was being made, "and I definitely can do that." McGinnis had plenty of pop, he hit 24 home runs the previous season at AAA Omaha. But he was also older, he was 31. He had also, by May 1995, had spent a decade in the minors , broken only by a 14-game trip to the bigs in 1992 and three games played for the Royals that year in 1995. McGinnis' journey to that point in 1995 began in 1985, when he was taken by the Brewers in the 14th round of the draft. He made single-A Beloit in 1986 and by mid-1987 he was traded. The Brewers sent him to Oakland for Bil...

Going through these packs is always a fun exercise, not really for the cards themselves, but for the stories they uncover. Sort of like the main focus of this blog, not the cards themselves, but the stories behind the players on those cards. The cards just provide the names to be researched. That's especially so because these 1989 Fleer cards don't seem to have the interesting stuff on the back as other cards do. This is the second 1989 Fleer pack from the Dollar Tree packs I picked up recently for my birthday. In this pack, there was a player signed out of the sandlots, an alphabetical home run king, a player linked to an unintentionally funny video and just a sad story about a player's career, and later his life, ending. All of these stories, of course, come courtesy of Baseball-Reference's Bullpen and Wikipedia. There were also two CMC set members in the pack and a soon-to-be Hall of Famer. The CMC set members were Paul Kilgus and Don Gordon, both players I've f...

Home plate umpire Ken Kaiser was quick, Joe Skalski thought he was a little too quick . His Indians down 6-4 in the bottom of the eighth, a Skalski pitch went inside, hitting the Brewers' Charlie O'Brien . The pitch on this night in April 1989 came after the Brewers' starter hit an Indian earlier in the game. Kaiser tossed Skalski. "I thought he (Kaiser) jumped the gun a little bit," Skalski told The Milwaukee Sentinel afterward. The ejection not only made it a quick night for Skalski, it also marked the end of a quicker career. He would play the rest of the season at AAA and return to AAA for one more season . But Skalski wouldn't make it back to the majors. Skalski's professional career began in 1986, taken in the third round by the Indians. Skalski made AA Williamsport in 1987, taking down the Albany Yankees in a late July game by a 4-1 score. He also made the Eastern League All-Star Team . Skalski then got his first taste that year of AAA...

September 1989 was approaching, along with the list of September call-ups. Among those waiting for the call was Angels AAA infielder Pete Coachman . Coachman was concluding his sixth season in the minors, without seeing the bigs . "You sit in your room and think about it, you sit on the bench and you think about it, you stand at your position and you think about it," Coachman told The Los Angeles Times of the possibility of making the majors. "You're thinking more about who's going to get called up than the game." "You try to figure what they're going to do," Coachman added later to The Times , "but you realize you never know and that it's always out of your control." Coachman kept waiting that year, not getting the call. But, come August of the next year, the wait finally ended. He played in 16 major league games for the Angels in 1990, the extent of his major league career. Coachman was drafted by the Angels in ...

Doug Baker was on the bus, headed for Detroit . It was a season after the Tigers won the World Series, Baker helping them get there as an able fill-in, and getting his own ring. Now, he was ready to help the Tigers try and repeat, and help them from the start. Except Baker, and teammate Mike Laga , didn't make it to the airport. They were pulled off in a last-minute roster cut and rerouted to AAA Nashville, The Orlando Sentinel wrote . ''It was embarrassing,'' Baker told The Sentinel the next spring, hoping against a repeat of the previous year. ''We had to go around and get our luggage. Strange things happen in baseball.'' Baker did make back to Detroit in 1985, for 15 games, including three in April after another injury . That season was after 43 games he played for the series-winning team in 1984. It was part of a career where Baker would see time in seven major league seasons. Only once, in 1989 with the Twins, would Baker match his ga...

When I got looking through a big box of cards, it would probably be helpful to have a big CMC checklist right there with me, preferably searchable. Considering there are 880 cards in the CMC set, with closer to 900 total players, that's a lot of names to remember. Especially when I'm searching a box for those players in other sets. I, of course, knew a few by name. There are the more famous ones, like Frank Thomas and Bernie Williams . Those actually are probably the most likely to show up in random dealer's box. But sometimes there's some extra ones, and sometimes there's ones I pick up by accident. I mention this because I'm getting back to our October trip to Cooperstown and the cards I picked up then. There's still a few cards I haven't gotten to yet. These are the CMC players I dug out of of a big box in a shop on Cooperstown's main drag, just down the street from the Hall of Fame. And I dug through this box all while my wife patiently waited o...

The talk was that Lou Thornton might stick around, even when everything was over. The former major leaguer was 31, and he was a replacement player for the Mets . Thornton, though, didn't think so . "I've been out of the game for four years. Am I their guy? No way," Thornton told The New York Daily News . "My expectations haven't changed. The guys (Mets GM Joe McIlvaine) is looking at for the fifth outfielder's job, he knows who they are. They aren't me." The strike over, Thornton wouldn't stick around. It was finally the end of a career that appeared over years before. It was a career that began in 1981, when Thornton was taken by the Mets in the 19th round of the draft. He ultimately played in parts of five major league seasons , his last coming five years before the strike. Thornton spent his first two professional seasons in rookie ball with the Mets, at the Appalachian League's Kingsport team. The next two seasons, Thorn...

Floyd Rayford had waited more than nine years to get a shot at starting regularly in the majors and he came through in 1985, hitting over .300 for the Orioles, and 18 home runs. "I always knew I could play in the big leagues," Rayford told reporters in spring 1986. "I don't know if I would have waited in the minors for 10 years, that's a long time in the minors. But I've been up to the big leagues every year since 1980. I always thought things would turn out my way." Rayford played parts of seven seasons in the majors, six of those seasons with the Orioles. It was a career where Rayford was known for playing multiple positions , including third base, catcher and, the last two decades, as a coach. Rayford, given the nickname "Sugar Bear," was also a player known for his weight, as much as his bat. At one point topping 240 pounds and was sometimes described as " rotund " and having " dough-boy legs ." Speaking to those...

It was May 2007 and New Britain Rock Cat Felix Molina had just won a game on a ninth-inning single, The Hartford Courant wrote , putting the Rock Cats over .500 that late in the season for the first time in three years. Contributing to their success, New Britain manager Riccardo Ingram told The Courant , was hitting coach Floyd Rayford . "Floyd always tells these guys to go to the opposite field and use the whole field to get clutch hits," Ingram told The Courant , "especially with guys in scoring position [and] especially Molina, who can get pull-happy." Rayford was well into his coaching career in 2007, a career that began 17 years earlier as a player-coach with AAA Scranton. It's also set to continue into 2011 , marking his second season as coach for AAA Rochester. Rayford started his coaching career after a playing career that spanned more than a decade, including parts of seven seasons in the majors . Six of those major league seasons were with ...

Tonight's Thanksgiving feature isn't really Thanksgiving-related, it's Floyd Rayford. Rayford was beginning his two-decade-long coaching career in 1990, serving as a player-coach for Scranton. He was also concluding his lengthy playing career, one where he spent parts of seven seasons in the majors, six of those with the Orioles. In researching Rayford, I ended up in a similar position as I did with Dick Bosman . There was a lot available on both his playing and his coaching careers. So I've again decided to split up my research into a feature on his playing days and one on his coaching career. Of course, to do this, my rule is I have to have a card from his playing days. His CMC card wasn't enough, he's listed on there as a coach. I looked through my box of cards I've gotten in the last couple years, nothing. He's in the 1987 Topps set and I got a box of that from my wife two Christmases ago. But Rayford was not one of the cards in the box. Then I remem...

Mets manager Davey Johnson was coming off a world championship in spring 1987, looking for a way that his Mets could repeat. One of Johnson's young catchers vying for a big-league job, John Gibbons , believed Johnson had the temperament to ensure the Mets didn't lose their edge, according to The Miami News . "He's not a real, loud vocal manager," Gibbons told The News . "He's more of the type who lets you do your own thing. He has a different style. It's nice to play for someone like that rather than a guy who's always screaming at you." Gibbons ended up not playing for Johnson that year in Flushing. After a career where he began as a first round pick , and saw him play in just 18 major league games , Gibbons wouldn't make the majors again as a player. But he did make it back, as a manager in his own right. Seventeen years after Gibbons gave his assessment of the Mets manager, Gibbons was named manager of the Toronto Blue Jays. ...

The Yankees had the semblance of a rotation and relief corps going into 1990, thanks to two winter meeting pickups from the Pirates. But they had no closer. To remedy that situation, the White Sox offered up their own , Bobby Thigpen . Chicago just needed a couple prospects in return , one of them being the young Bernie Williams . "They're looking for pitching. They just got some, and they're still looking for it," White Sox manager Jeff Torborg told The Chicago Tribune . "There's no hiding the fact that we're interested in Bernie Williams." That deal, of course, never got done. Nor did any other deals get done as Williams never left the Yankees, then or ever. He ended up spending 16 seasons manning Yankee Stadium's center field, becoming a five-time All Star and a cornerstone on four world championship teams. Williams' career with the Yankees began in 1985, signed as a free agent out of Puerto Rico. His first playing time came in ...