With such dire news coming out of the Tribe camp these days, I couldn't resist pulling out a few more items from yesteryear -- when dire news was the order of the day. These photos are from the 1967 Indians yearbook, which was actually a pocket folder with individual color photos of, presumably, the team's top players going into the season. On the backs of the photos were printed the career stats and a brief bio of the players. While there were some solid performers in the bunch, the collection that season was pretty much made up of nobodies and never-would-bes.
Of the nobodies, the name I remember best is that of Gus Gil. When I pitted the Tribe against opponents with my trusty baseball card game during '67, Gil was often penciled in at second base (that is, when I was giving the equally illustrious Vern Fuller a night off). He only lasted one season in Cleveland, thanks to a .115 batting average. He managed to hit .222 with the Seattle Pilots the next season before finishing up with two forgettable seasons with the franchise after they moved to Milwaukee. I love this from his bio: "One of the brightest infielders the Indians have ever acquired is this young second baseman who bears a strong resemblance to all-time Indian great, Bobby Avila." That's the best selling point they could come up with -- that he looked like somebody? Also mentioned: the fact that Gil was a draftsman during the off-season. Players up to and during that era typically held down off-season jobs to make ends meet.
Next up was another light-hitting infielder, Pedro Gonzalez. I guess he wasn't always a light hitter; Gonzalez did bat .277 in part-time duty for the 1964 New York Yankees, who won the A.L. pennant before losing the World Series to St. Louis. He was also a .300 hitter three times in the minors, peaking at .371 with Modesto in 1959. Gonzalez was traded to the Indians early in the '65 season and was out of baseball after the '67 campaign, bowing out with a .244 career average. The bio on the back of Gonzalez' photo described him as "a smiling, polite resident of the Dominican Republic." I wasn't aware that the country was otherwise populated by frowning, rude people, but I guess the Tribe's PR staff felt it was important to point that out. He is also referred to in the bio as "Speedy" Gonzalez. Nothing like trotting out a few stereotypes. This obviously wasn't the era of political correctness.
I have little recollection of Bob Allen, really. A check on Baseball-Reference.com reveals that he was a lefthanded reliever who had experienced modest success as a starter during seven minor league seasons, compiling a 57-46 record during that time. His major league totals in parts of five seasons were 7 wins, 12 losses and a 4.11 ERA. Like Gonzalez, Allen would be out of baseball after this 1967 season, when he was 0-5 despite a 2.98 ERA in 54 innings. In this day and age, a 2.98 ERA would earn a pitcher a lucrative contract, but this was 1967, after all. Of course, in those days players didn't necessarily leave the game because they couldn't cut it anymore. Many left for purely economic reasons, to start other careers while they were still young. That's hard to fathom today, when utility infielders like Jamey Carroll make a million bucks a year, but such was the case in that day and age. Six-figure salaries were rare, and the free agency boom was still several years away.
Equally undistinguished was the career of Steve Bailey, who pitched in 32 games for the Tribe in 1967 -- and one more in a lateseason stint in '68 -- never to see the majors again. He, too, had experienced modest success in the minors, winning 43 games over six seasons. "This high-kicking relief pitcher is a resident of Lorain, Ohio," says his bio, which goes on to document that he pitched his Lorain High School baseball team to the state title his senior year, during which he threw successive no-hitters at one point. Bailey won 2 games and lost 6, with a 3.88 ERA, during his brief time with the Tribe. Of course, this was the era of the pitcher -- Bob Gibson and Luis Tiant posted unthinkable ERAs of 1.12 and 1.68, respectively, in 1968. So ERAs around 4.00, like Bailey's and Bob Allen's, weren't considered to be as impressive as they would be in today's offense-oriented game.Regardless of the less-than-illustrious stats of Tribe players of this era, they were still our heroes, from "Our Tribe," as Pluto dubbed the team in his 1999 book by that name. And they wore what I think are some of the coolest uniforms in team history. Don't ask me why, but I loved the vests, the abundance of red, and the Chief Wahoo emblem sewn on the front. It's probably the connection to my childhood that causes me to recollect them with such fondness, but the uniforms alone made the dog days of the 1960s bearable. After all, the '67 Indians finished in eighth place in the then 10-team, pre-division American League, 17 games behind the pennant-winning Boston Red Sox.
