Sports74 Gold: More Baseball

Here's a short section featuring men who were legends of the game by 1974 and naming a few who were on their way to the big time.

Mickey Mantle, "Whitey" Ford, and "Cool Papa" Bell are among the newest members of the Hall of Fame. So is umpire "Jocko" Conlan, with posthumous honors being bestowed upon Jim Bottomley and Sam Thompson.

After the season, Hank Aaron goes to Tokyo for a home-run contest against Sadaharu Oh, the Yomiuri Giants player who will reach one more than Aaron's eventual career mark in '77. Oh hits 9 home runs in 20 tries, and Aaron goes 10 for 18. While he is abroad, the Atlanta Braves carry out Aaron's plans to go back to where he started his career and be a designated hitter for the Milwaukee Brewers next season instead of just being a PR man for the Braves.

Topps issues its first "factory set" of 660 baseball cards instead of releasing it in installments as was done before. This is also the first year of the Topps Traded series.

The champions of the three AAA circuits are the Tulsa Oilers of the American Association, the Rochester Red Wings of the International League, and the Spokane Indians of the Pacific Coast League.

In the I.L., Jim Rice, after batting .337 with 25 home runs and 93 RBI for the Pawtucket Red Sox, is called up to play for the Boston Red Sox, and Gary Carter, with 23 home runs for the Tidewater Tides, makes his debut for the New York Mets.

Eddie Murray bats .289 with 12 home runs and 63 RBI for the Miami Orioles of the Florida State League.

Two more Hall of Famers on the farm: Bruce Sutter, training to be a reliever already, splits the season between the FSL's Key West Conchs and the Texas League's Midland Cubs, while Dennis Eckersley strikes out 163 for the T.L.'s San Antonio Brewers.

The first woman to coach in organized baseball is Lanny Moss of the Northwest League's unaffiliated Portland Mavericks.

In Japan, the 1974 pennant winners are the Lotte Orions of the Pacific League and the Chunichi Dragons of the Central League. The Orions win the Japan Series.

USC wins the College World Series for the fifth time in a row, defeating the University of Miami 7-3 in the championship game. The Most Outstanding Player of the tournament is George Milke.

A team from Kaohsiung -- with a 12-1 win over Red Bluff, Calif., in the championship game -- wins the fourth Little League World Series in a row and the fifth overall for Taiwan (Republic of China). There will be no foreign teams at next year's tournament, suspicion of Taiwanese teams using players from outside their districts being a concern.

The American Legion junior baseball champions hail from Puerto Rico.

Little League Baseball opens the gates for girls June 12 when a New Jersey court finds in favor of the National Organization for Women.

Bob Aspromonte -- who as a Houston Colt .45s player had hit a home run for an Arkansas boy in a local hospital 12 years before -- is blinded by acid from a car battery. He gets a call from that Arkansan (who in 1962 had been blinded by lightning) and eye surgery from the same doctor who had brought back the boy's eyesight.

Dizzy Dean dies July 17. Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times leads with this line: "Well, we're all 120 years older today." The St. Louis Cardinals retire the uniform number 17 in Dean's honor Sept. 22.

Soon after Hall of Famer Sam Rice's death Oct. 13, the contents of a letter about whether the former Washington Senators outfielder had in fact made a certain catch in the 1925 World Series are disclosed.

Reportedly inspired by the WFL, Sean Morton Downey Jr. (yes, that Morton Downey Jr.) is one of the founders of a phantom league called the World Baseball Association. Three-ball walks, the awarding of two runs for late-inning steals of home, and the use of not one but five designated hitters are ideas for this concept for a 32-team operation in the Americas and Asia.

In Peanuts strips for late September, Linus Van Pelt, in his role as statistician, reveals that manager-pitcher Charlie Brown's ERA is around 80.00 and that Lucy Van Pelt has no putouts or assists this season.

Wohlhuter, Vasquez, and Petty. Run, ride, and rev it up. We take it to the track May 3.

MLB First-timers of 1974

With the MLB Draft beginning tonight, now's the time to post something I noticed a while back.

Exactly half of the players who made their major league debuts in 1974 played in the '80s.

Of the 72 who made it past the decade line, 43 were still playing in 1985. Of the 72 whose careers are confined to the '70s, 42 didn't even make it to 1977, when two expansion teams surfaced.

When it comes to rookie seasons (teams with which players made MLB debuts are listed along with most common positions in careers):

• Twenty-seven (including Brewers SS Robin Yount, Rangers C Jim Sundberg, and Rangers 1B Mike Hargrove) went on to be 1974 rookies.
• Forty-two (including Expos C Gary Carter, Cards 1B Keith Hernandez, Bosox LF Fred Lynn, and Bosox DH Jim Rice) were 1975 rookies.
• Twenty-two (including Cards LF Jerry Mumphrey and Cards CF Larry Herndon) were 1976 rookies.
• Nine (including Expos LF Warren Cromartie) were 1977 rookies.
• Six (including Reds 3B Ray Knight) were 1978 rookies.
• Two (Mets LF Benny Ayala and Mets C Ike Hampton) passed the rookie requirements in 1979.
• One (Chisox RHP Jim Otten) finally met the rookie standards in 1980.
• Thirty-five would still be rookies if they suited up today.

The players just getting their cups of coffee were Erskine Thomason, a 26-year-old righthander who pitched the ninth inning for the Phillies September 18, and Rex Hudson, a 20-year-old righthander who put in two innings of mop-up work for the Dodgers July 27.

Yount was the youngest of the 144 and the one whose career lasted the longest; he played for 20 years.

Hernandez, a 42nd-round pick in the 1971 draft, made his debut with the Cardinals August 30, 1974, and played until the middle of 1990, while the Mets' Rich Puig, a fellow infielder and a first-round pick in the same draft, lasted less than two weeks in September.

All of those whose careers ended in 1980 are pitchers; middle infielder Stan Papi, an April call-up for the Cardinals, outlasted Sergio Ferrer -- a fellow middle infielder born just days before Papi and making his debut with the Twins six days earlier -- by two years (Ferrer's last season was '79, Papi's was '81).

Oscar Zamora, the Cuban righthander from Miami whom the Indians signed in 1965, began his career with the Cubs at 29 on June 18 and continued for 4 years. Jesus Hernaiz, the Puerto Rican righthander whom the Cubs signed in 1967, got called up to the Phillies when he was 29 and made his first appearance June 14, but was finished in the majors that year.

The top seven career home run hitters (Rice, Carter, Lynn, Expos C Larry Parrish, Yount, A's RF Claudell Washington, Hernandez) made All-Star teams at least once, as did the top eight in hits (Yount, Rice, Hernandez, Carter, Lynn, C.Washington, Parrish, Hargrove).

Twenty-five of these players made All-Star teams a combined 71 times. Carter, Rice, and Yount are the Hall of Famers in this group of 144, making up 2.1 percent of it (the group of 144, that is, not the Hall of Fame).

Feel free to start here and draw your own conclusions.

I'll have a look at the draft picks of June 1974, regardless of when (or even whether) they made their MLB debuts, sometime very soon.