In the 5th inning of August 26th’s matchup with the Detroit Tigers in Anaheim, Vladimir Guerrero recorded his 1,000th hit during his nearly 6-year tenure as an Angel.

He becomes the 8th player in club history to have at least 1,000 hits while wearing an Angel uniform.

The 34-year-old free-swinger joins the likes of Garret Anderson (2,368 hits), Tim Salmon (1,624), Brian Downing (1,588), Darin Erstad (1,505), Jim Fregosi (1,408), Bobby Grich (1,109) and Chone Figgins (1,009) who actually reached the mark just 10 days before the Big Daddy notched the Halo millenium hit mark.

Signing with the Angels in 2004 after 8 years with the Montreal Expos, it took Vlad not even 6 years to reach 1,000 hits. 813 games to be exact, which equates to just barely over 5 full seasons of play (that’s averaging just about 200 hits per “full 162 game season”). Pretty impressive stuff, Vladdy.

This isn’t the first big milestone of this year for the Big Daddy. He blasted his 400th career home run back on August 10th at the Big A, almost assuring his career as being officially Hall of Fame-worthy.

He joined an exclusive club by becoming only the 6th player in MLB history to record 400 home runs over the course of his career while maintaining a batting average of .320 or better.

Who else is in that club you may ask?

How about some of the all-time greats.

Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx, and Stan Musial.

Wow. Now that’s some company.

He also joins Hall of Famer Dave Winfield as the only other MLB player to have 1,000 hits in the American and National Leagues.

We all know the great career he’s had, but let’s just reflect on what he’s done in Halo red.

In his 6th season with the Angels, not only has he garnered up an MVP award (2004), but he’s also currently posted 1,000 hits, a .321 batting average, 522 runs scored, 189 doubles, 162 home runs, and 598 RBI. Pretty good for not even a 6-year stint with a ballclub.

Hats off again, Big Daddy Vladdy, you never cease to amaze baseball fans everywhere.

As it turns out, we’re not the only ones who wanted to be Bobby Grich (though this might be the first time we’ve admitted it publicly).

We agree that  Bobby Grich should be in the Hall of Fame.  Seems familiar too. 

Maybe it would help if his number were retired.   Well, it couldn’t hurt.

We know that Tim McCarver’s a blowhard, but we were pleasantly surprised to learn that Bobby Grich has come out of retirement to turn a fictitious unassisted triple play.

Originally published September 24, 2008

On September 24th, 1978, The California Angels were in Chicago to play the White Sox. It was by all accounts a fine late summer afternoon. The stands of Comiskey Park were more empty than full, seeing as how the White Sox were on their way to a 71-90 finish, well out of the American League playoff race. The Angels were on the verge of being eliminated from the post-season as well, they would finish tied for 2nd in the then Western Division, 5 games behind the champion Kansas City Royals.

Talk on both sides had turned to next year, the constant, reliable fair maiden in the heart of every player and fan of a team that does not reach October. While the White Sox had little hope for the following spring, the Angels faithful felt they were but a year away from greatness. Nolan Ryan and Frank Tanana would be back at the front of the rotation, with an up and coming Dave Frost on the verge of a breakout season. The bullpen was getting better, and the Angels played solid defense. The primary reason for hope came from the lineup. Bobby Grich, Brian Downing, Carney Lansford and Don Baylor gave opposing pitchers headaches, the deep, throbbing kind that just won’t go away. And in centerfield was a 27 year old hitting machine from Birmingham, Alabama named Lyman Bostock.

He had raised his batting average to .296 following a 2-4 performance, his career batting average stood at .311, having finished 4th and 2nd in the AL batting race in ‘76 and ‘77 respectively. If it wouldn’t have been for his awful month of April where he hit under .150, he would surely be back at the top of the list once again. Oh well, there’s always next year.

By the time the sun came up over the Chicago skyline the following morning, Lyman Bostock was dead, killed by a shotgun blast to the right temple.

Bostock lived in nearby Gary, Indiana for 5 years as a child. He had relocated there following the break-up of his parents marriage. His father, Lyman Bostock Sr., had played in the Negro Leagues for 17 seasons. Baseball was in his blood. Though he moved to Los Angeles in 1958, he had family and friends back in Gary, and would stop in to visit whenever he was in Chicago. So after the game he travelled back to his old neighborhood with his Uncle, Thomas Turner, for dinner and a bit of reminiscence. At some point after dinner Lyman and his Uncle went to call on an old friend he had not seen in several years, Joan Hawkins. He had tutored her back in school. He did a lot of that. In addition to being a promising young athlete, Bostock was a good student who would go on to attend what is now Cal State Northridge. He shunned baseball his first two years in college, focusing on activism and academics.

Before departing with his Uncle back to Gary and eventually the team hotel, Bostock agreed to give Hawkins and her sister Barbara Smith a ride to a cousin’s house not far away. He had never met Barbara Smith, or her estranged husband Leonard. He never knew Leonard. We know him now as the man who murdered Lyman Bostock.

While stopped at an intersection, Mr. Smith pulled up alongside the passenger side of Thomas Turners car, aimed a shotgun toward the backseat, and pulled the trigger. He had hoped to kill Barbara Smith, whom he believed to be unfaithful and illicitly involved with the man seated to her right. Leonard Smith didn’t know Lyman Bostock, had never met him, never spoken with him. He only knew him as the man with his wife, the man whose head exploded at the end of the barrel of his shotgun.

Bad things happen to good people. It’s true, and we all know it. That night a bad, bad thing happened to a good, good man.

Bostock played his first 3 seasons with the Minnesota Twins, who drafted him in the 26th round of the 1972 amateur draft. He began to reward them for their wise choice in ‘75 when he hit .282 in limited duty. The following spring he was the starting center fielder, playing brilliant defense and upping his average at the plate to .323. He was just getting warmed up. in 1977 he raised his average again, to .336, trailing only teammate Rod Carew for the AL batting crown. He finished in the top 10 in the American League in on-base %, runs, hits, doubles and triples to boot. He made $20,000 a season those first 3 years in the majors, miniscule by todays standards but respectable for a young hitter 30 years ago. Then came free agency. The stars aligned and Bostock became one of the pioneers of baseball free agency, signing a 5 year $2,200,000 contract with the high flying California Angels. The first thing he did upon inking the deal was donate $10,000 to a Birmingham, AL church. This was hardly surprising, he had been giving small bits of his previous small salary to charities for years.

On opening day, 1978 you couldn’t find a bigger smile than the one plastered across his sun laden face. He was 27 years old, entering his prime, making a great living and doing what he loved more than any other thing in this world or any other. A month later, that smile was hidden behind frustration. Through the end of April Bostock had amassed a .146 batting average. He was disgusted with himself. Angels fans were disgusted with this first close-up look at their new superstar. Here he was making all this money and couldn’t even hit his weight. He agreed. So he tried to give it back.

Bostock went to owner Gene Autry and offered to return his April salary, in excess of $40,000. He hadn’t earned it, and didn’t want it. Autry refused, so Bostock gave it away. No one knows how many local charities benefited, but his entire first months salary found its way to people in need. Again, this was nothing new.

His hitting picked up, the team got hot, and by September both were in full stride. Everyone saw this bright kid and this bright team shining in the California sun and couldn’t help but smile. He loved the game of baseball, and it loved him right back. His entire team attended his funeral, along with nearly a thousand strangers. The procession of friends and family stretched 6 city blocks.

Leonard Smith was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. He was tried twice. The first time he walked out free thanks to a hung jury, the second due to his attorneys claim that Smith was insane. He spent 7 months in a California mental hospital. He was declared sane, and released. He lives in Gary, Indiana, in the same ratty apartment he lived in back then. Lyman Bostock lies in the Inglewood Park Cemetary in Inglewood, California. If you get out that way, stop by his grave and pay your respects. I had the opportunity to do so in 2002 while travelling for work. It’s a plain, ordinary grave. It does not mention his batting average. It does not mention his charitable exploits. It only says he is dead.

in 1979 the California Angels won the AL West. In the previous off-season they had acquired Rod Carew, a tremendous hitter and former teammate of Bostock. The Angels went to the playoffs, where they lost to the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Championship Series. Baltimore went on to the World Series, and won. Lyman Bostocks widow went to his grave, and wondered what might have been.

Hazaa

After the triumphant ride through Boston on duck boats, I followed Red Sox personnel into a post-parade reception at Fenway. The place was crawling with familiar faces, but the one I was most eager to meet belonged to former Red Sox catcher, Rich Gedman. Gedman played for the Sox from 1980 to 1990, right in the prime of my Red Sox childhood, when I was between the ages of 12 and 22. I walked up to Gedman because I wanted to tell him that he had had the key hit in the greatest baseball game I’ve ever witnessed in person – and to ask him what he remembered about it. Rich was happy to talk.

After introducing myself, I told Rich that I remember attending an extra-innings game at Fenway in my youth and, when it was over, I proclaimed, “I will never see a game more unbelievable than that for the rest of my life,” and I recall that the opposing team made a couple of big blunders in the last inning to aid a Sox comeback, and that Gedman had the game-winning hit. But that’s all I recall.  

Rich said, “Yes, that was 1986, and it was against California, and we fell behind by three runs in the 12th or 13th inning, and I didn’t get the game-winning hit, I got the game-tying hit – a line drive to right field - then we won the game on a balk.” YES! I said, THAT WAS THE GAME!

We then recalled that Angels 3B Rick Burleson dropped a pop-up that, if it had been caught, would have ended the game. Rich tried to remember the name of the pitcher who balked, but he could not. (Further research reveals that his name was Todd Fischer… more on him later.) And Rich said that part of the reason he remembers the game is that, when the Sox made their miraculous comeback against the Angels in game 5 of the 1986 ALCS (thank you, Don Baylor and Dave Henderson), everyone in the Sox dugout was saying, “This is just like that game we played against them back in July!”

Thanks to Google, I discovered that the game took place on July 10, 1986 (I was 17 years old), and the Red Sox won, 8-7. The entire box score and play-by-play detail is available here. And after reviewing how the game ended, I see why I knew I’d never see a more exciting game. In the 12th inning, the Angels and Red Sox scored a combined total of 7 runs with two outs. Here’s how it happened.

In the top of the 12th inning, with the score tied, 4-4, Sox pitcher Steve Crawford retired the first two batters of the inning (Ruppert Jones and Gary Pettis) and then gave way to lefty Mike Brown to face left-handed hitting Wally Joyner. Mike Brown proceeded to implode. Joyner stroked a triple, then scored on a wild pitch. Unnerved, Brown then walked George Hendrick and Brian Downing in succession and gave up R.B.I. singles to Rick Burleson and Bobby Grich. Tim Lollar relieved Mike Brown and got Dick Schofield to pop out to Gedman, but the damage had been done: three two-out runs for California and an almost certain loss for the Sox.

As a kid, whatever tickets I got my hands on were almost always standing room (which was fine with me). I remember that after that three-run burst, Fenway emptied and my little brother, Ben (16 at the time), and our friend, Sam (13 at the time), and I moved down to the front row behind home plate. We didn’t stay to see a comeback, we stayed because we wanted to experience even a half-inning of Red Sox baseball from the good seats. We were sad the Sox were about to lose, but we were jacked to be sitting in the best seats in the house.

Marty Barrett led off the bottom of the 12th against Angels pitcher Mike Cook with an infield single to the second baseman, Bobby Grich. In the box score it’s called a single, but in my memory, it was a botched play – perhaps it was a bad hop, I’m not sure. Wade Boggs then did something he almost never did – he struck out looking. And after Bill Buckner flied out to left field, with the Sox down to their last out, Jim Rice did something he did frequently – he hit a ball into the screen above the Green Monster for a two-run homer. But when Don Baylor followed with a pop-up above third base, it looked like the game would end — until the ball bonked off of Burleson’s glove and Baylor ended up on first. I remember that well – and I remember that Ben, Sam and I went nuts. Are we going to win this game?? And when Dwight Evans walked, putting the tying run on second base, the 1,000 or so of us left at Fenway jumped and screamed with anticipation. Number 10, Rich Gedman, shook the donut off of his bat and strode to the batter’s box with an expression of total calmness.

And this is what I remember most about that game: seeing Gedman walk to the plate and thinking, “When this half-inning started, there is no way Gedman thought he’d need to walk out onto this field again tonight.” And I remember just praying, praying, praying for Rich to get a hit and continue this amazing comeback. And he did! Line drive, base hit to right field. Baylor scores! YES! YES! YES! TIE GAME! TIE GAME! Again, the loyal few of us left at Fenway, all crammed into the front five rows, romped and cheered like lunatics. RICH GEDMAN IS CLUTCH became a new fact in my baseball-encyclopedic head. And the winning run, in the person of Dwight Evans, stood at third base with two outs.

At this remarkable juncture, with the ever-dangerous Rey Quinones (lifetime batting average of .245) coming to the plate for the Red Sox, Angels manager Gene Mauch removed pitcher Mike Cook from the game and replaced him with rookie reliever, Todd Fischer. It was Fischer’s 9th major league appearance, and it turned out to be his last. And what a way to end a career – before even throwing a pitch, Fischer balked, Evans scored, and the Red Sox won. As Evans ran down the third base line, most of us in the stands didn’t know what had happened for a few seconds, but as the news spread, bedlam ensued. Gene Mauch argued vociferously while the Sox players and fans reveled all around him. As Ben, Sam and I walked out of Fenway that night, we all said to each other, that game will never be topped.

How rare is it for a winning run to cross the plate as the result of a balk? According to Jayson Stark, it’s only happened three times in the last 33 years.

Another interesting postscript to this story: soon after Mike Brown pitched like dog doo vs. the Angels and Rey Quinones stood there and watched the game-winning balk, the Mariners traded 1986 heroes Dave Henderson and Spike Owen to the Sox for Rey Quinones and Mike Brown!  (And the immortal Mike Trujillo.) Thank you, Rey and Mike! And thank you, Rich Gedman, for the chance to reminisce about an extraordinary moment we both witnessed and participated in 21 years ago…. and that we’ll never forget.