Had lunch today with my hero Duane Kuiper, his brother Jeff, and a new favorite, the hilarious Mike Krukow*. What a great time. Stories. Opinions. Jokes. I wonder if they would let me be on that announcing crew just so I could follow them around for a season.
*Nicknamed "The Polish Prince" according to his Baseball Reference page. I did not know that. I should try to get Mike into the Polish Sports Hall of Fame in Troy, Michigan.
I have to share one story. There were about 40 stories I could share, and probably will. But we'll start with one. It's about a plunking -- I'm not entirely sure why old stories about pitchers hitting batters with baseballs make me laugh. But they do.
We started talking about how pitchers can only rarely hit batters on purpose anymore because of suspensions and the way that baseball has tried to lock down on vigilante pitching, and I asked Duane if he thinks he'd ever been hit on purpose. He said that he figured he got hit on purpose a dozen times in his career, maybe a few more. This is Duane Kuiper remember, the nicest guy around, the man with one home run in his career. He remembered one in particular: He had slashed Brian Downing -- by mistake, of course -- and Jim Kaat hit him in the ribs.
"I knew he was going to hit me," he said. I asked what he did. He said: "I went to first. I didn't want him to hit me again."
So then I asked if he had ever asked a pitcher to retaliate for him. He said he never did, but, well, there was the Jim Bibby story. Details are hard to lock down but the story is too good to hold back: The Indians were playing the Twins, and at some point Rod Carew slashed Kuiper in a double play scenario at some point during the series. Duane was furious. He told Carew, "I'm going to come down the line and slash your achilles." Jim Bibby calmed him down.
"Don't worry," Bibby said. "I'll get him for you."
Kuiper said, "OK, fine, you get him." Only, Bibby did not get him. He got pulled before he had a chance to get him. If it's the game I'm thinking, in 1977, Bibby lasted just five innings and Carew actually homered of him. Anyway, the point is Bibby didn't get Carew that day for whatever reason, and unexpectedly that was the last time he ever faced Carew in a big league game. Bibby left Cleveland for Pittsburgh at the end of the season. So the story should be over. Kuiper basically forgot about it.
Only … one day, the Indians are facing Carew's team, probably the Angels by then, and Carew comes over to Kuiper and says, "You little $&#$@$ …"
"What did I do?" Kuiper said.
And Carew said that he was playing an exhibition game in Japan. He stepped in against, yep, Jim Bibby. And suddenly he felt the jolt of a fastball pounding his side … this in an EXHIBITION GAME IN JAPAN.
And he said Jim Bibby flexed and said: "That was for Duane Kuiper."
I don't care if you couldn't pin it down. That's a great story.
ReplyDeleteThe Polish Sports Hall of Fame is in Troy, MI? My in-laws live in Troy, MI. We visit them all the time. I had no idea.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I love a good Jim Bibby story.
@ Mark Daniel. I grew up in Troy. I assume its on the corner of Maple and Dequindre at the Polish American Heritage Center. (Never seen the PAHOF though).
ReplyDeleteHate to say it but it couldn't have happened EXACTLY that way. Here's the game in question: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE197707300.shtml
ReplyDeleteCarew faced Bibby 3 times before Bibby was yanked and went: flyball out, walk & then moved to 2nd on a walk to the #4 hitter, HR. The play in question could have been one of a couple:
- in the 10th Carew drew a walk and was thrown out stealing 2nd
- in the 12th, Carew was thrown out at 2nd on an attempted DP and Kuiper made the play
- in the 14th Carew hit a double so it's possible there was a play at 2nd
So, Bibby was long gone from the game when Kuiper got taken out at 2nd. However that WAS Bibby's last game against the Twins in 1977 and as you noted he went to the Pirates in the NL the next year. He returned to the AL in 1984 but never faced the Angels (Carew's team by then). The Pirates & Twins were both in Florida for spring training in 1978 so Bibby might have gotten a shot at Carew in 1978 (or not given how spring training often goes) but not after 1978 since the Angels are/were in Arizona.
Plus, it was the 2nd game in a 4 game series and there was no such play in the 1st game. The Twins & Indians played 2 games earlier in the year but Kuiper didn't play one of the games and there was no such play in the other.
Someone needs to plunk ethegolfman.
ReplyDeleteThings to ask Krukow about:
ReplyDeleteFirst, I bet if you asked for a Frank Robinson story you'd find yourself gasping for air with aching abs 20 minutes later, especially if Kuiper was there to add in.
Ask about the one time he was charged on the mound -- imagine this, it's Winfield running at him.
Ask about the old lady shooting both barrels at him from behind the dugout at Dodger Stadium.
And if the rest of these hasn't brought him up, ask about Yul Brenner.
Ok ethegolfman, now go back and redo it with Kuiper as the runner.
ReplyDeleteI live in the Bay Area. We get a lot of Kruk and Kuip here. They seem like genuinely nice people. I want so much to like them as broadcasters, but I don't, especially Krukow. He is such a homer, although both have improved in that regard in the last few years.
ReplyDeleteI remember listening to a game on the radio they were doing several years ago. It was July or August. The Giants had just returned from a trip to Atlanta where it had been very hot. This being Summer in San Francisco, and a night game, it was cold and foggy. I'm guessing mid-50s. It is miserable by anyone's standards, even the most die hard San Franciscan. It is particularly miserable because it is Summer.
They come back from a break and Krukow says, unprompted, "I'll tell you what" (Krukow starts a lot of sentences with "I'll tell you what") "after being in Atlanta where it's so hot, it's nice to come back to the fog and cold."
Really? Really Mike? I get that the weather sucked in Atlanta, but you have to home that much that you compliment the different, yet equally lousy weather in San Francisco? They should put you and Hawk Harrelson (who, admittedly, is 10 times worse than Krukow, even on Krukow's worst day) on the same announcing crew.
At least the Giants have Fleming and Miller, who are tremendous.
Ok, Krukow's the homer of the group, but he's tolerably so, especially when you know that going in and can apply that filter to what you're hearing.
ReplyDeleteBut really?!? The weather?!? If Hawk confined his homerism to "I tell you what, no one has a thunderstorm like The South Side, that'd be okay. And it was 115 in San Antonio the day I decided to move to the Bay Area. That 55 and fog is why I came.
Kuiper, to me, is a top shelf broadcaster without any curve for having been a ballplayer. He's got range - he can do the goodtime old ballplayer schtick with a ballplayer stopping by, but he is also a very good play-by-play man with none of that. I think he could do national post-season stuff, as the play-by-play, and do a great job.
And Miller & Flemming are creme de la creme.
@Stephen - Carew was almost exclusively a 1B by 1977 and didn't play the Indians in any of his 4 games at 2B in 1977. Besides, the way the story reads, Kuiper threatens to get back at Carew when Kuiper is running inferring that the play happened with Kuiper in the field.
ReplyDeleteI should add that it doesn't really take away from the story but fact is, Bibby wasn't in the game when the incident happened. The rest of it fits with the historical record though.
I agree that the story could not have happened exactly as retold, but it could have happened that game with only a minor change. Carew could have slashed Kuiper in extra innings and Bibby, on the bench, might have said he'd get Carew for Kuiper. Or, if it wasn't a double play scenario, in the 4th, with Bostock already having stolen second and then been thrown out at third that inning, Carew was on second base, and a pickoff attempt could have led to the spiking.
ReplyDeleteStill a great story. Interesting to note that Carew, a Hall of Famer, had two hits, but Kuiper had more hits than Carew. I bet there weren't many games like that. Of course, Carew had three walks.
I still can see Jim Bibby drenched and dripping of sweat in the first inning of a Pirate game on a cool to cold September evening. That guy could make some gravy and quickly!
ReplyDeleteethegolfman, you may have an impressive ability to speak wise about specific obscure baseball plays, but I see you never learned the difference between 'inferring' and 'implying'. Don't worry, though--I won't pull you away from your research for one second longer by writing anything about it.
ReplyDeleteINFER
ReplyDeleteverb (used with object)
1.
to derive by reasoning; conclude or judge from premises or evidence: They inferred his displeasure from his cool tone of voice.
2.
(of facts, circumstances, statements, etc.) to indicate or involve as a conclusion; lead to.
3.
to guess; speculate; surmise.
4.
to hint; imply; suggest.
Is that the guy who says "Uriiiibeeeeee ouuutttaaaaaa heeerrreeee" Where it sounds like he's choking on a hoagie? Man that is annoying, but i will say that i will take 55F and chilly any day over a humid 100F.
ReplyDeleteLet's cut egolf some slack here. Rob Neyer wrote a whole book chasing down these type of stories. It's not a reflection of Joe's writing, and is not really the same as correcting some random typo.
ReplyDeleteI apologize if I ruffled some feathers. It's not an attack on Joe and as Dinky noted, it probably doesn't change the story a lot and it's still a great story. I'm glad denopac mentioned Neyer's book. I have been fascinated by how the explosion in information has made running down the accuracy of some of these stories actually possible. The article I really remember was David Schoenfield doing a fact-check of Jose Canseco's book Juiced. He obviously couldn't check the off-field steriods stuff but he was able to fact-check incidents that happened during games against Canseco's recollections (something one would think his editors would have done). Turns out there were many, many events in the book that simply could not have happened or happened very differently. Probably the biggest one was the incident with Bret Boone at 2nd in a spring training game - never happened. Couldn't have happened. Just not possible.
ReplyDeleteAbout when the Carew-Kuiper spiking play happened: the evidence actually shows that the play MUST have happened after Bibby was taken out of the July 30, 1977 game in question. Because Carew's last trip to the plate vs. Bibby was a HOME RUN. Now Bibby may or may not have hit Carew if he was trying to...but there's absolutely no way Bibby would have thrown any kind of pitch Carew could drive for a home run, if he was trying to hit him. So the spiking play must have happened after Bibby was out of the game, and the evidence shows multiple such possibilities in extra innings that game. Bibby must have spoken to Kuiper on the bench at that time, intending to hit Carew in a future game. At the time he certainly would have expected to face him again sooner rather than later.
ReplyDeleteHey guys, it should be apparent that MANY stories from athletes and others around the world of sports often fail to live up to the absolute truth when they can be fact-checked. I'd wager that well over 50% of Tommy Lasorda's stories are only based on his imagination and not based on the true facts.
ReplyDelete"I wonder if they would let me be on that announcing crew just so I could follow them around for a season."
ReplyDeleteDon't tease us!
The Polish Sports Hall of Fame is in Troy, MI? My in-laws live in Troy, MI. We visit them all the time. I had no idea.
ReplyDeletePresswire