Skip Jutze
September 16, 2007
We have been mathematically eliminated. We are playing out the string.
We will be let go. We will be exchanged for other nonentities, or for no one yet named, or left unprotected, or designated for assignment, or cut, or waived. It will happen sooner than we expect.
The seats behind us are empty. We take a swing through the empty air. We look to the empty sky.
Any records left behind will show us as unphenomenal, late to the game, rarely necessary, transient.
Maybe we will have had our day in the sun. We will have hit the first grand slam home run in the history of an expansion team. We will have tagged out a man at home to complete a rare 6-4-3-2 triple play.
But in the end we will be unable to hold back elimination. We will grow a mustache. It will do as much as anything else, which is nothing. We will finish 38 games behind the team that hit into the triple play. We will then be called into an office.
“It is over,” we will be told. “You’ve been released.”
We will wait for a phone call to refute this claim. The phone will not ring.
Cardboard Gods 
1. George Brett batted leadoff in that triple play game.
2. Looks like he did that a fair amount in ’77, actually leading the team in appearances in the lead-off spot (scroll down for “most common” stats):
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/KCR/1977_bo.shtml
3. I really feel like Skip Jutze today.
4. i hope they let him keep the uniform.
5. He looks like Father Guido Sarducci. I recall him having been on the Astros prior to the Mariners. I looked him up and if Wikipiedia is correct he was born in Bayside, NY, is an alumnus of Central Connecticut State University, and taught Junior High School in Dix Hills, NY prior to his debut.
6. Why on earth would the Mariners ever drop such a cool-looking logo?
7. 3 : I’ve found that Sundays are often particularly Skip Jutze-ish.
5 : “He looks like Father Guido Sarducci.”
Good lord, could this mean the chicanery I examined previously on Cardboard Gods (see links for each installment of the 3-part series below) is even more widespread than I imagined?
http://cardboardgods.baseballtoaster.com/archives/609752.html
http://cardboardgods.baseballtoaster.com/archives/609750.html
http://cardboardgods.baseballtoaster.com/archives/609748.html
I saw that great bit about Skip Jutze teaching junior high before playing pro. I also found contact info for Skip Jutze at a Colorado company called Jeffco, which provides “vocational training and job placement assistance for adults with developmental disabilities.”
6 : Boy, that’s a good question.
8. Funny….first thing I thought wasn’t Fr. Guido Sarducci, but that somehow Jim Croce faked his own death and created a new name in order to have a career shift from siger/songwriter to little-used Mariner catcher.
9. I’m proud to live in a world where Skip Jutze has a Wikipedia page.
10. The M’s ditched the upside-down trident logo because it was associated with nearly twenty years of futility. Which is probably why readers of this site like it so much (and why I won’t wear the newer compass rose merchandise).
Hurray for ignoble failure.
11. 6 Marketing, I presume. I miss the Brewers’ “MB Glove” logo, the Expos’ pinwheel caps, and the Orioles’ “smiling Oriole” logo.
12. Good lord, could this mean the chicanery I examined previously on Cardboard Gods (see links for each installment of the 3-part series below) is even more widespread than I imagined?
WOW! That’s pretty scary. The first thing I actually thought when I saw the Skip Jutze was not Guido Sarducci, but Carmen Fanzone!
13. Skip Jutze was my Summer League coach, 40 years ago- fine coach, better person.
Wilker, you got it wrong- he had his years- not just a “day” in the sun, in MLB and other levels of baseball. Also, I believe he was a quarterback in college. Injuries, not lack of talent, ended his career.
14. 13 : Thanks for chiming in, sg schier. I appreciate it. I intended no disrespect to Mr. Jutze, who by making the major leagues obviously surpassed any professional accomplishment I’ll ever attain. These card profiles are generally meant to be extensions of my own doubts and failings and secret joys rather than accurate representations of the figures in the cards.
15. sg – I was a high school teammate of Skip on football and baseball teams. He was a great athlete. He quarterbaked our team to an undefeated season in 1962, led the basketball team to its best record in years in the winter and then was all league in baseball in the spring. While I did not see him play in college, he qb Conn Central State for 2 years.
My brother and I just opened 2 1978 packs and he got this card. Never hit a homer through 75. Then hits the first Mariners Grand Slam in 77. On a different team, he could have been your nemesis, Bucky Dent. Or Ozzie Smith in Game 5 of the 85 NLCS. Go crazy folks!
Any day that features Skip Jutze is a good day.
Somehow I also got the other Mariners’ heavy hitting backup catcher from 1977 – Larry Cox – in the pack. They look like twins, apart from Larry’s painted-on Cubs hat. That guy was painted 2 years in a row. Quite a pack actually – Tim Jones & Juan Bernhardt too. Tim Jones is incredible.
Larry Andersen is on that Jack Morris / Tim Jones card – and then again on Future Stars 2 years later – still with Cleveland. No wonder they were so bad – they were recycling average prospects.
Josh – you need to investigate Pete Vuckovich 1978 with the Blue Jays. Brandon got it in his amazing pack this morning. The only painted card where the player seems painted into the uniform, not the other way around – he’s in the satin team jacket, like they painted over a pitching coach.