J.D. Drew/J.T. Snow...Injury prone 400+ AB guys(never 500 it seems) Both in the 100-RBI club though.
Rich Harden/Danny Haren/Aaron Harang..Joe Blanton too....Not only are all
these guys current young pitchers but are starters and fantasydraftworthy
(nice stats all). Even worse, they all play with Oakland or played there
before. And of course if I drafted the 1st guy (so he was 'mine') and called
him by his nickname and he was pitching that night, I could always say,
Sorry guys, can't go bowling with yuz tonite, I gotta go home and watch my
dick harden.
Deivi Cruz/Neifi Perez...Both infielders and I believe both wildly
inconsistent performers who move around a lot (from team to team)
Rusty Greer/Gabe Kapler/Brad Fullmer..Big power guys with such rock solid
names! I imagine I'll see them after their playing days while I'm thumbing
thru a comic book or flipping channels from one cartoon to the next. There
they'll probably be sidekicks to say...
Clutch Cargo or Johnny Quest or Speed Racer or some other animated hero with
similarly virile appellation.
Miggi Olivo/Miggi Ojeda/Ray Olmedo...The first two are both catchers..and I
think they even got traded for each other! That's quite the Olivo Twist.
Elrod Hendricks/Elston Howard...Both big Afr-Amer 60's catchers for A.L.
East teams. Both highly respected gentleman of the game too. Similar warm,
memorable personalities. Both deceased. Just 2 guys. No 3rd guy to confuse
since lucky for us, Eldridge Cleaver chose a different line of work
Dave Boswell/Dick Bosman/Tom Bosley...For extra credit pick the Happy Days
co-star out of that line-up.
Seriously, the first 2 guys were notable A.L pitchers '60s-'70s. The 1st guy
won 20 games for the Twins in '70 but Billy Martin , famous for blowing out
pitchers' arms, ruined him. They got in a famous fight, another thing Billy
was famous for. Billy got fired after the scuffle and went to Detroit where
he blew out young Les Cain's arm. And he worked against young David Clyde in
his next stop in Texas. And he ruined a whole bunch of arms in Oakland early
80s---McCatty/Langford/Norris etc sort of a prior era Hudson/Mulder/Zito
(Oakland)-and ran plenty of Yankee hurlers into the ground during his many
different NY tenures. I remember poor Hippolito Pena the reliever in
particular. Anyway, I digress. 2nd guy was notable for pitching a no-hitter
and somehow putting up good numbers for bad Senator teams (Big Frank Howard
excepted).
Scott MacGregor/Mike Flanagan/Mike Boddicker....Too many letter M's going
on for me here. All Oriole 20 game winners form the same era to boot.
Sammy Stewart/Tim Stoddard/Don Stanhouse....Hey sports fans. It's All
Orioles All the Time. Weren't they all tall mustachioed relievers too?
Then there's the whole Frank Menechino/Frank Catalanotto/Tony Grafanino axis of evil
Art Howe/Terry Puhl/Ray Knight....Remember the early 80's Astros? Well they
had all these guys with similar short names. They put up similarly solid
though not eye-popping stats too. The real thing of it was that many of the
baseball card photos ('81 Topps in
particular) were action shots (not close-ups) of all these guys. Sometimes I
even got Jose Cruz--another action shot--mixed up with them so my Astros
deck easily became-unthinkable!-out of alphabetical order!
Ah whatever! At least they were all in the same team deck when you really
think about it. A little extra shuffling through the cards to find the guy
you want never killed anybody.
