Who is the man: Rich McKinney had just completed his rookie season with the White Sox in 1970. He played his first games ever at third base during that season.
Can ya dig it: Those three older fellars in the stands seem to be admiring McKinney's ... uh ... moves.
Right on: Rookie card! This is also the only card of McKinney's in which he is not airbrushed into a different uniform. His 1973 Topps card is particularly famous.
You see this cat McKinney is a bad mother: Baseball Digest compared McKinney to Hall of Famer Luke Appling when McKinney came up in 1970. That's about the only time that McKinney was considered a bad mother.
Shut your mouth: McKinney is perhaps most famous for committing four errors in one game while playing for the Yankees against the Red Sox in Fenway Park in 1972. Those four errors led to five unearned runs scoring.
No one understands him but his woman: McKinney was nicknamed "Orbit" by his teammates because of his aloof personality.
(A word about the back): Ah, high school and college highlights. The first refuge of the biographer of a .168 lifetime hitter.
He committed four errors FOR the Yankees? He can't be all bad, even if he did hit .168.
ReplyDeleteFrom his SABR biography...
ReplyDeleteBefore the 1972 season, the Yankees conducted their annual Winter Promotional Caravan. During this weeklong odyssey into parts of Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and upstate New York, the team would offer “meet and greet” opportunities to the local media as a marketing tool. On the first day of the tour, McKinney boarded a bus with general manager MacPhail, public-relations director Bob Fishel, manager Ralph Houk, and other club officials, including assistant PR director Appel. Appel wrote, “Rich was 25, curly-haired. … I introduced myself to him. … It was clear to him, I’m sure ,.. that I was a club official.”11 During their exchange of pleasantries, Appel could not believe it when McKinney asked where he could buy some marijuana. Shocked, Appel could not believe a player would ask a team official for drug advice or tell a team official he smoked grass.