Andy Carey was a fine player - heck, he was a major leaguer which is more than 99% of us can say - but never an all-star, never a feared player. He had the good fortune of being drafted by the Yankees and playing for them in the 50s. Which meant, of course, that he was blessed - the Yankees routinely went to, and won, the World Series in the 1950s. Andy played third base on the days that Casey Stengel could remember his name. Strangely, he only played third base for Casey. I say strangely because Casey would take guys like Bobby Brown, Billy Johnson, and especially Gil McDougald and sprinkle them around the infield willy-nilly and expect them all to turn the DP. Which they did for reasons no one really knows . . . some form of Casey magic, I suppose. Anyway, Andy played third, hit .302 one year, hit 11 triples to lead the league another, and only once compiled as many as 500 at bats. To summarize his career, I'll indulge in one advanced metric: his career OPS+, a relative measure of a player's value, was 97. An OPS+ of 100 is the average value. . . Andy Carey was a perfectly ordinary major league baseball player.
Which is my point.
By 1962, Andy was finishing his career in LA with the Dodgers. He was 30 and hit .234 in 111 at bats. Ordinary. Those Dodgers are part of a long-running Strat league of mine and Andy has a card only because I made one for him. I wanted a larger roster than the 20 cards provided by Strat and Andy came to life along with Lee Walls, Tim Harkness, and Phil Ortega. In this league, there are daily and long-term injuries. The Dodgers were sent reeling with long-term injuries to Willie Davis and Ron Fairly and suffered several daily injuries in a 9-game set with the infamously bad 1962 Mets. Every day there were at least three regulars unavailable, forcing me to reach deep into the pile to find Andy Carey.
Andy made cameos in the first two games, pinch-hitting and making out in each game. He started the third game, went 2-3 with a homer, a walk, two runs scored, and three RBIs. Pretty good day for ol' Andy. But he was just getting started . . .
Over the course of the next six games, Andy had a career! He had the mojo workin' . . . Thirteen more hits! Seven more runs scored! Nine more RBIs! And, get this, four more homeruns, one each in the last four games of the series! (Please don't spoil it for him - or me - by pointing out that this was all accomplished while batting against one of the worst teams of all time . . .) Here's his complete line for the nine games:
15 hits in 32 at bats
9 runs scored
12 RBIs
1 double
5 HRs
3 walks
The impact of this week on his seasonal stats (the Dodgers are now 53-44) was to change his slash stats (average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) from .188/.291/.292 to .308/.380/.577 which means, basically, that Ordinary Andy Carey became Willie Frackin' Mays for one glorious week, 53 years after he retired.
On a team with Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Tommy Davis, and Frank Howard, Andy Carey was THE story for a remarkable seven-game run. I like to think that Andy was paying back Casey, sitting in the 1962 Mets' dugout, for not remembering his name more frequently!
No comments:
Post a Comment