Word: famers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There used to be no cure for the ennui of the returned hero. Now there is and it is worse than the disease. It is celebrityhood. Last winter a Washington radio station began a news roundup with this: "Joe DiMaggio, baseball hall of famer, former husband of Marilyn Monroe, and also Mr. Coffee, had surgery today." Hero status, unless arrested by artistic device (the fade-out) or tragedy (an early death), decays. There is a trajectory to fame, and it points downward...
...hard as $100 worth of Jawbreakers," Rose says now, proving he is a Hall of Famer. "If you got a good reliever one year," Charlie Dressen used to advise newer managers, "get a different one the next." Only Rose would understand that this applies to similes as well. Approaching 46, the Reds' player-manager had to leave himself off the winter roster in order to protect a younger man, like Pitcher Norm Charlton, whose finger Rose broke with the first fungo of the season...
...union charges collusion, but the thought of these 26 owners doing anything in complete concert seems as preposterous as Ron Guidry lingering on - his tractor over a matter of $50,000 while Steinbrenner replaces him with a pitcher (Tommy John, 46) three years older than Hall of Famer-elect Catfish Hunter. Detroit Manager Sparky Anderson, who ultimately retrieved Morris but lost Catcher Lance Parrish to Philadelphia, is typically philosophical. "Babe Ruth is buried in Baltimore ((Hawthorne, N.Y., to be irrelevantly accurate))," he says, spitting, "and the game goes...
...spare single to start his big-league career one for one. He says, "I'm blessed and thankful to be so quick." He struck out three times the next night, but neither sensation moved him. "I'm not the kind to say, 'Hey look, Steve Carlton, a Hall of Famer.' The only time I ever get that excited is the night before I'm going to go fishing or hunting." Within a few days, he was blithely enjoying two- and four-hit games, and by last week he was crashing home runs, including a 475-footer judged the longest...
Aged pitchers, like old fans, might be expected to minimize Gooden's brief achievements. But not Hall of Famer Robin Roberts. "I think maybe we're the most impressed of all," he says. "We know what he's doing, what a gift he has. It's obvious that his start is better than anyone else's, even Feller's. His control is better than Feller's." A big leaguer at 17, Feller was Gooden's age before he found the plate. "Go up and hit what you see," Bucky Harris used to advise his Washington Senators...