Comments on: The rare trade that hurts both players

By: Tom Smith

Tom Smith — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:09:54 +0000

Joe,
I believe I’ve emailed you before about Bobby Bonds but somehow missed this great piece on Bonds and Murcer. Thanks! A few additional details that might be of interest:
In 1975, I was a 15-year-old New Yorker and at the height of my baseball enthrallment, and Bonds was my already favorite player (so he did attract at least some fans!). When I first began following baseball, my hero was Mays (nearing the end of his year), and Bonds was his protege. The Giants had been my team, but when the Yankees traded for Bonds, I instantly became a Yankees fan (still am, with the Giants my NL team). I went to many games at Shea that season. My buddies and I would take the number 7 train out to Flushing several hours before games and I’d watch Bonds in batting practice and warming up in right field, effortlessly launching laser beams from the corner to third base. It was 35 cents for a subway token and a couple bucks to get into the bleachers.
You mention that Murcer loved being a Yankee, which was true — but so did Bonds. It was widely reported that he was reduced to tears after being traded following his one year in NY.
Bonds started 1975 in a terrible slump, but finally caught fire in May. I remember listening to Phil Rizzuto on the radio saying, to my astonishment, that he’d never seen a single player carry an entire team quite the way Bonds was carrying the Yankees — home runs, stolen bases, dominant fielding. Then, in early June at Comiskey, Bonds raced toward center for a long drive, caught his cleats in the chain-link fence, and twisted his knee badly. He played the rest of the season hurt and still had a very good year. Is it unreasonable to suppose that without that injury the Yanks would have done better, Bonds would have finished in the top 5 in the MVP vote (rather than 16th), and very possibly the Yankees would not have traded him? If so, then perhaps he would have had, say, five more great or very good years, rather than two or three, and been a stronger candidate for the HOF. Maybe. Certainly he would have ended up with even more than the 30 HR and 32 SB he had in 1975 while playing on one leg for over half the season. He was apparently pretty brittle emotionally, and the trade from NY may have hurt him the same way it hurt Murcer.
Another note of interest regarding Bonds’ speed, at least prior to his June 1975 injury: in high school he ran the 100 yard dash in 9.5 and long-jumped over 25 feet. I wonder if any other MLBers of his era could match those stats. (Bonds’ sister Rose was a hurdler on the 1964 US Olympic team.)
A final note — SI’s Ron Fimrite had a spring training story on Bonds, 4-8-1974, “Getting it all together.” Worth checking out — odd since it preceded such a sub-par season. Also makes one wonder if he became a more difficult teammate only after the trade from NY.

By: Roger

Roger — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:18:59 +0000

Great article about both players, and as a Giants fan I have many memories of Bobby Bonds but as the article might have implied, few of Bobby Murcer.

First time I saw Bobby he was playing center field no less for the Giants’ then-Class C Fresno farm team. He played in the second game of a “double header” at Candlestick, with the first game featuring the major league team and the nightcap featuring Fresno. Given how few fans the Giants drew at the time, you can imagine how few stuck around for the minor league game.

I wish I could tell you that Bobby showed of the skills that made him such an exciting major leaguer, but all I can remember of the game is the he dropped not one, but TWO fly balls.

I remember watching Bobby’s debut game on TV, a game in which he hit a grand slam homer. As a teammate of Willie Mays, he was by then playing right field, of course. With his head held high, the former high school sprinter looked like a great thoroughbred when he ran.

I believe that the season Bobby fell one home run short of 40/40, he actually had more home runs than steals over most of the season, but fell into a power drought at the end of the season. I think if he had made 40/40, it would have received the applause it deserved. But the world didn’t really reward falling short much in those days, even if it was just short of an earth-shattering achievement. The importance of 40/40 WAS recognized in the Bay Area.

I remember seeing Bobby down at San Jose watching the Class A Giants play during the lockout of 1994. He seemed to be warmly received by those around him.

Perhaps the most poignant memory of Bobby comes from 2003, the year he passed away. Apparently Barry visited his dad for long periods after games, actually sleeping on the floor of Bobby’s hospital room. Barry had a great season in 2003, but it was the least of his four great seasons from 2001 through 2004. Given the physical and emotional circumstances, it is remarkable he performed as well as he did that season.

And my final memory of Bobby came when he was brought in a wheel chair to watch the Giants play from the ramp in back of the dugout. It was obvious to all at that point what Bobby’s fate soon would be, but I’ll bet that was the greatest night of his life, as short as it soon was to be.

By: Keith R

Keith R — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:26:03 +0000

What you said about Bobby Bonds explains much about his son Barry’s nature. He knew his dad had received a raw deal and was always suspicious of the motives of baseball’s executives and fans.

By: Mark Armour

Mark Armour — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:48:18 +0000

I am guessing you are in your early 40s or so. I think your are wrong about the whole Bonds/Murcer thing, mainly because
(according to my guess) your are too young to remember when they were star players.

Bobby Murcer was not underrated. He was a great player, for a couple of years, and everyone knew he was a great player (especially if you lived in the northeast). For the rest of his career he was a good player, and in the middle of his career he was probably overrated. You diss the Yankees for moving Murcer to RF for Elliott Maddox, and also disses Maddox. Maddox was a far better outfielder than Murcer, and a pretty damned good hitter too (who I believer broke his leg in early 1975 and never really got it back together.) This is largely a history gleaned from baseball-reference.com, rather than what you would get from either from living through the time or studying the time.

Bobby Bonds was not underrated at all. Before the 1973 All-Star game there was a pregame show largely devoted the asking the question: who is the greatest player in baseball. The consensus was that it was either Bonds or Cedeno. Bonds was the game’s MVP which kept the stories alive for a while. Bonds got traded not because he was unappreciated, but because his managers
thought he was lazy and a pain in the ass. I expect the teams knew what they were doing.

Murcer and Bonds are just like Vern Stephens or Cesar Cedeno or Albert Belle. They were not at all unappreciated when they played–they were very much appreciated. But because they did not have the career length to mount the counting stats they are not remembered by the casual fans.

By: JO'C

JO'C — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:31:57 +0000

Going to HS in NJ in the early 70’s I used to have endless arguments with my best friend over just how good Murcer was. My buddy was a Yankee fan and thought Murcer was the greatest thing going. I was a Met fan and thought Murcer was over rated and a product of Yankee Stadium. It was apparent to me that Murcer’s home park was a major reason for his success. I watched plenty of Yankee games and it seemed as if every Murcer HR was 5-10 rows into the short RF porch. I used to tell my buddy that if Murcer played in Shea he wouldn’t hit 20 HR’s. Lo and behold I got my wish when the Yankees had to play their home games in Shea in 1974. Murcer only hit 10 HR’s that year with 2 at Shea! Now if only I could get my buddy to pay up.

By: David Purcell

David Purcell — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:29:42 +0000

Your analysis of the trade was excellent and the only point to speculate on would be where Bobby Bonds should have traded instead of New York to help his career. I agree that Bobby Murcer should have stayed in New York. Bobby was and still remains my favorite player and I was devastated when he was traded. I stopped following the Yankees and switched to the Giants and then the Cubs. My first thing after I got out of the Army was to see a Cubs game. On game day I got a seat directly behind home plate(the Cubs attendance was pretty bad then) and I got to watch Bobby Murcer hit. In the bottom of the 7th of a tie game against Gary Lavelle and the Giants, Bobby hit a solo homer that wound up winning the game. They say Billy Williams had a sweet swing, well, so did Bobby Murcer. I can still follow every inch of that swing in slow motion and it seems so controlled and effortless. It seemed to me that, as in the game following Munson’s funeral, that Bobby was nearly always getting a clutch hit or sacrifice fly or moving the runner over when it was needed. Always helping the team in some way. That and his sense of humor were what made him my favorite player. I was always disappointed that he never became a regular after returning to the Yankees. It seemed that Billy Martin was the only manager who played him and who appreciated his hitting. I longed for him to do well and the occasional game winning pinch hit home runs were unsatisfying because he seemed to still be able to contribute full time, particularly as a dh. I don’t even recall a period where he was the regular lefty dh in the final years. His career will always remain bittersweet because there were moments of true greatness and undeniably, the failed expectations and the stats that don’t truly indicate the impact that he had in his prime.

By: Kyle K

Kyle K — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:09:06 +0000

As a Mets fan, one of my early litmus tests of other Mets fans is what they think of Beltran. If they are the kind of “fan” who thinks Beltran is “not clutch” or “doesn’t care” or “doesn’t work hard enough”, it’s a farily safe bet that I won’t think much of that “fan”.

By: Creston

Creston — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:01:08 +0000

FWIW, if Carlos Beltran were short and white, he’d be the guttiest, grittiest cat that ever played baseball, and the BBWAA would write 987,316 articles per year glorifying and annointing him, calling him the Jesus of Baseball and making funny jokes about how they wished their daughters would marry the guy.

By: Creston

Creston — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:58:06 +0000

The problem with Beltran is that he plays effortlessly. Really, that’s all it is. He doesn’t show any kind of strain or effort when he does anything in baseball, and that just really annoys people.

People in general don’t like the idea that someone is much much much much much better at something than they are. If we see a professional baseball player, we like to think we could do that too, if only [fill in favorite excuse du jour.]

So when Beltran clubs a 400 foot homer and it looks like he swung at a whiffle ball thrown by your neighbor’s two year old girl, that wrinkles us. He’ll chase down a fly ball in the gap while running ~ 47mph, and his face has the same slightly bored/slightly disbelieving look on it that I had when I learned that toilet paper now costs $7.75 for 12 Giant rolls.

We don’t want to see that. When a guy chases a gapper down, we want to see his tongue hanging out of his mouth, his face distorted in a deathlike grimace and a giant, pulsing vein sticking out in his forehead. When he crashes to earth, we want him to roll around and act like he just had Mount Rushmore collapse on him. Not just get up, toss the ball to Jose Reyes and casually jog back as if he just walked his dog.

I mean, let’s face it, Eric Byrnes’ “effort” (read : fall over forward when throwing a ball, so it looks cooler) got him a 40+ million dollar contract, when nothing he does deserves even 1/10th of that money. Everyone still loves David Eckstein and Darin Erstad because, by God, when they play baseball you can SEE how much effort they have to put in it. (because they suck, but that’s not here or there.)

And it’s easier to imagine us competing with those guys. Hell, if they have to practically kill themselves to get a single, or throw the ball across the infield, then hey, I could do so too, if only I [insert excuse du jour].

When you watch Carlos Beltran, there is no effort. So you know you can never compete. That makes people angry. And then it becomes a matter of “Well, if the game is so easy for you, Mr Perfecto, how come you’re not hitting 87 homeruns with a 1.700 OPS+, HUH?!”

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:35:35 +0000

This is a great article, Joe, combining stats with heart and an historical perspective. Now that I’ve read it, I plan to look up the rest of your work.