Greg Weeks said…
Great metaphor. The Kingmans, Thomases, and Luzinskis of baseball were more fun to watch than most other players precisely because they were always swinging for the fences.

12:48 PM

MIL said…
I’m so sorry, I can’t get past the dead bird. Probably cause i’m a girl.

2:55 PM

Michael said…
It was a rat, but, whatever.

6:23 PM

mbtn01 said…
Dave Kingman was a bad fielder, but in a versatile way. He played third base, first base, the outfield and even pitched a few times. Though every terrible thing they said about him was probably true, you always stopped what you were doing and watched when Dave Kingman was at the plate.

Kelly Riley can bite my ass.

10:04 AM

Anonymous said…
If it makes you feel any better, Michael Mejias and Kelly Riley are functionally illiterate.

12:00 PM

Kevin said…
I always wondered about his 1977 season when looking at Mr. Kingman’s cards. Why did he get traded so much in 1977?

1:18 PM

pete millerman said…
When the towering, glowering, and generally unpleasant Kingman lumbered to the plate it truly was an all-or-nothing proposition.

King Kong at bat was the living embodiment of an odds/even, now-or-never, go-for-it-all gestalt, a moment that usually produced a palpable tension, hush, and alertness in the stands at Shea.

An inhuman moon launch of a Home Run, entering orbit somewheres out by the Whitestone Bridge, or an ugly whiff at a slider four feet outside the strike zone…those were the options. When Kong swung and missed, as he did often and eagerly, you could feel the resulting breeze up in the mezzanine level.

We loved Kingman because he was exciting. Every at-bat held possiblility and promise. Even if the denoument ended in an ignominious trudge back to the dugout, for those moments when Dave Kingman was at the plate, you didn’t leave your seat to get a Rheingold.

For a franchise that hadn’t had a genuine slugger since Frank Thomas declared war on the short left-field porch at the Polo Grounds, this was, in a way, enough.

When Kingman was summarily purged and excommunicated by Chairman Grant on the same infamous June 1977 day as Tom Seaver, it was a lesser loss, but one that subtly resonated…
Of course no one could ever replace Tom Seaver, our HEART and SOUL and SPIRIT. This shall always be true.

But things were sure as hell alot less exciting around Flushing without that mean-spirited, poor fielding, OBP-challenged lout around to lay it all on the line.

Maybe Josh has it right. Maybe we should swing for the fences. Stop emulating Charlie O’Brien and Doug Flynn. Take our cuts. All or nothing. But it takes a leap of faith… bunting is so much easier.

Kingman actually played in all four major league divisions during that ’77 season (…I wonder if he has one-twentieth of a ring from his clipped Yanee tenure.) Till the end he was still clubbing a pre-steroidal 35 dingers a year and racking up the ‘Ks’ with astonishing aplomb when he packed it in (or, given the patience of most MLB executives was packed) in the ’80s…

It puts one in the mindset of Warren Oates’ downtrodden character in Sam Peckinpah’s classic film “Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia.” That sooner or later, it’s time to say F- it all on life’s merry-go-round, and go for that gold ring. It’s a sobering premise.

But what the hell..if you’re going to bat .204 in the game of life anyway, why not take a few big swings on the way?

1:44 PM

Josh Wilker said…
pete millerman said: “I wonder if he has one-twentieth of a ring from his clipped Yanee tenure.”

From baseball-reference.com (http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Dave_Kingman):

“Won a World Series Ring with the New York Yankees in 1977 (he did not play in the 1977 World Series)”

Pretty generous of the Yankees, considering The Sky King only played 8 games for the Yankees. But maybe he helped them win a game or two in a very tight pennant race with the O’s and Red Sox. Even if he didn’t he certainly packed the whole Dave Kingman experience into his short tenure in pinstripes, minus the dead rat: in 24 at bats he had 13 strikeouts and only 6 hits, but 4 of them were home runs.

2:34 PM

The Navigator said…
Josh,
I salute and admire your determination. Others have probably said this before, but: you should explore making this blog the subject of your first book. I love what you’re doing here, and it might just be an easier sell – more obvious hook – than a novel by an unknown, first-time author. I guess you’d have rights issues with Topps, but those could probably be worked out.

4:13 PM

El Person said…
Kingman and Thomas are the two best HR hitters ever not to be in the HoF.

7:12 PM

Josh Wilker said…
Navigator: Thanks for the encouragement. I’ve considered both the book idea and the copyright issues, but, true to form, I haven’t yet looked into either.

el person: My favorite pure homer guy not in the HOF is Steve Balboni. Bill James, in his entry on Dave Kingman in Historical Abstract, identified Balboni as having the highest percentage of his worth coming from home runs of anyone in history. Kingman’s percentage was 77% (I don’t know how this was tabulated, but it sounds about right), which was the highest of anyone profiled in James’ book, but Balboni’s was a staggering 93%!

8:40 AM

mbtn01 said…
It’s my understanding you may use baseball cards to illustrate a book without clearance from Topps, provided they are your own baseball cards. That’s whyt you see so many sports books illustrated with them.

9:32 AM