This day in baseball history: Write-in candidate steals show at all-star game
The 1974 all-star game was played on July 23 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Coming into the game, the National League had won 10 of the last 11 contests. On this day in baseball history, the NL made it 11 of 12.
They accomplished this without much difficulty. The final score was 7-2.
Ken Brett (older brother of George) picked up the win. Luis Tiant took the loss. Reggie Smith had the game’s only home run. Steve Garvey was the MVP.
Fifty years later, Garvey is on the ballot in California as the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. But Garvey wasn’t on the ballot in the 1974 fan all-star voting. He won the starting first baseman job as a write-in candidate.
Although Garvey batted .304 in 1973, he had not been a starter for the Dodgers in the first half of the season, and had played only 76 games at first base. Hence, his exclusion from the ballot.
1974 was a different story. By the all-star break, he was batting .338 for the league-leading Dodgers — good enough to edge out Tony Perez in the voting by around 20,000 votes. Garvey was on his way to winning the NL MVP award.
Garvey played the all-star game — all nine innings of it — despite being ill and on antibiotics. He excelled nonetheless.
In the second inning, he singled with two outs off of Gaylord Perry. His teammate Roy Cey drove him home with a double, to give the NL a 1-0 lead.
The AL scored two in the top of the third. Andy Messersmith yielded a double to Thurman Munson. Perry bunted Munson to third (try to imagine a sacrifice bunt in a modern all-star game) and Rod Carew drew a walk.
Carew then stole second base and Munson scored on Johnny Bench’s throwing error, with Carew taking third base. From there, he scored on a single by Dick Allen.
The NL regained the lead in the bottom of the 4th. Again, Garvey was at the heart of it.
Bench and Jimmy Wynn started the rally with singles. Garvey followed with a double that scored Bench and sent Wynn to third. Wynn scored on a ground out by Cey.
NL 3, AL 2.
The Nationals added a run in the fifth, another in the seventh (via Smith’s home run off of Catfish Hunter), and two more in the eighth. The AL did not score again due in part to some nifty defensive play by Garvey.
Another oddity about this game was the fact that the AL manager was no longer in charge of the team that won the pennant the previous year. Dick Williams had quit the Oakland As due to the horrible behavior of owner, Charlie Finley.
Williams had been set to manage the New York Yankees, but he was still under contract with Oakland, and Finley wouldn’t let him take charge in New York. Instead, Williams ended up managing the lowly California Angels — condign punishment, Finley must have thought, for his runaway skipper.
Williams took advantage of being able to manage some of his best As players. Two of the four pitchers he used in the all-star game — Hunter and Rollie Fingers — were mainstays of the great Oakland staff. Unfortunately, they combined to give up three runs (all earned) in three innings.
The two teams combined to use only nine pitchers. Try to imagine a modern all-star game like that.
In all, 18 future Hall of Famers were selected for the 1974 all-star game. The losers had ten: Brooks Robinson, Carew, Carlton Fisk, Reggie Jackson, Perry (all starters), Hunter, Fingers, Carl Yastrzemski, Frank Robinson, and Al Kaline. The winners had eight: Bench, Hank Aaron, Joe Morgan (all starters), Ted Simmons, Tony Perez, Mike Schmidt, Lou Brock, and Steve Carlton. Simmons and Carlton did not play.
Garvey has not made the Hall of Fame. This, despite batting over .300 for seven of the eight seasons from 1973 through 1980 (and missing that mark by only 3 points in 1977); despite driving in more than 100 runs five times; despite the MVP he won in 1974; despite winning a gold glove award in four consecutive seasons; and despite a World Series batting average of .356 (in 90 at-bats) and a League Championship average of .319 (in 113 at-bats).
Modern statistical analysis conspired against Garvey. His lofty batting averages weren’t matched by outstanding on-base percentages because he didn’t walk a lot (normally only about 35 times a season in close to 700 plate appearances). His highest OBP was .363 (in 1976) and his career OBP was only .329.
If Garvey had played a decade or two earlier, this wouldn’t have hurt his Hall of Fame chances. (And if he had run for the Senate in California four decades earlier, he might have become Sen. Garvey.) But nowadays, the value of walks is recognized and OBP is a big deal — and a deal breaker for Garvey’s HoF bid.
Nonetheless, Garvey was an outstanding player, and the bigger the game, the better he was. That was true on this day in baseball history and on many other days, as well.