- 2 days ago
Hello, I'm Jon, and this is the fifth episode of The History of Charging the Mound. You can think of this series as a trail mix. Every time you shake some out, you're bound to get some low-bitrate video of guys taking swings at each other, some baseball history, some broad commentary about the past and present state of the game, and some goofy hijinks.
Well, this one's mostly hijinks. This one's 75% made up of those weird little off-brand M&Ms, and that's all thanks to Dave Rozema, a guy I knew very little about until a few months ago. This guy fit more petty misadventures into a single career than just about any other ballplayer of the last 50 years. I absolutely love this guy, and I hope you will too.
Well, this one's mostly hijinks. This one's 75% made up of those weird little off-brand M&Ms, and that's all thanks to Dave Rozema, a guy I knew very little about until a few months ago. This guy fit more petty misadventures into a single career than just about any other ballplayer of the last 50 years. I absolutely love this guy, and I hope you will too.
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SportsTranscript
00:02Throughout this series I've mapped out mountain charging encounters as constellations that
00:06connect common opponents to one another and illustrate who fought who and when. This is
00:10sometimes pretty handy for establishing pretext. For instance, when Jeff Weaver earned a charge
00:15from Manny Ramirez, it helped to galvanize his reputation as a heel, which factored into Mike
00:19Sweeney's decision to charge him two years later. And when Bruce Keese had moved over to the American
00:23League, he encountered batters who hadn't really seen him much but who had heard tales of him
00:27fearlessly thrown inside on National League batters like Mike Schmidt, tales that put
00:31them on DEFCON 1 and compelled two of them to charge Keeson in the same game. Other times
00:36though, this exercise is little more than a baseball variant of six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
00:41The connections are as arbitrary and loosely justified as the fights themselves can sometimes
00:45be and these constellations are only useful to us as excuses to follow threads and troll
00:50the vaults for good stories. I don't know about you, but that's really the only reason
00:53I need. Sometimes we just have to invent a reason to dig. Whatever gets us digging really because
00:59the stories are there and they want to be found. This is what I have titled the Winfield Constellation.
01:15This is the largest constellation of Mound Chargers and Mound Chargies we have charted so far.
01:20There's only one as-yet-uncharted formation that's going to be any larger than this one.
01:24This one is so named because the four battles involving Dave Winfield serve as load-bearing
01:29pillars of this triple-decker behemoth, one that features nine players and eight Mound Chargers.
01:33There are three no-doubt first ballot Hall of Famers in here, Winfield, Nolan Ryan and George Brett.
01:38Two others, Mike Kruko and Robin Ventura did appear on a Hall of Fame ballot.
01:43I'll give you the grand tour. Chronologically, the origin point of this constellation is this 1974
01:47encounter between Texas infielder Lenny Randall and Cleveland pitcher Milt Wilcox.
01:52Years later, in 1980, Wilcox was charged by George Brett. Meanwhile, Randall again charged
01:57the mound in 1981 to fight Mike Norris. A couple years later, Norris was again charged
02:01by Winfield, who also charged Dave Rosma in the same season. Three years prior, in 1980,
02:07Winfield again double-dipped, running up on Mike Kruko and Nolan Ryan. And finally, in 1993,
02:12Ryan is charged by Robin Ventura. We are going to spend four entire episodes living inside of this
02:18constellation. Originally, I had a script written out that crammed all these stories into one episode,
02:23but then consequently, I found myself speeding through them and leaving a lot of entertaining
02:27stuff by the wayside. When I was done writing, I asked myself, am I here to tell stories or write
02:33encyclopedia entries? I am here to tell stories. So, that is why one episode, which is this episode,
02:39will concentrate primarily on the many antics of Dave Rosma. A second episode will be dedicated to
02:45the adventures of Lenny Randall. A third will unpack the intrigue of this encounter between George Brett
02:50and Neil Wilcox. And a fourth will be all about the big one, Ventura versus Ryan, the most celebrated
02:55mound-charging in the history of the sport. But before all that, let's get to know Dave Rosma,
03:01one of the funniest guys to ever play baseball.
03:14So, when people think oddball Detroit Tigers pitchers from the 1970s, Dave Rosma is not the
03:19name that comes up first. It is Mark the Bird Fidrich, who made his major league debut with
03:24the Tigers in 1976, a year before Rosma. As a rookie, Fidrich turned in one of the most
03:30extraordinary performances in the modern history of pitching. He led the league in ERA, and in
03:34retrospect, Advanced Metrics put his wins above replacement at 9.4. Here is everybody who's managed
03:41at least five wins above replacement as a rookie pitcher within the integration era.
03:45Fidrich stands so far apart here that his inclusion looks like a mistake. It's as though I accidentally
03:50snuck in a season from a first ballot Hall of Famer in his prime. His immediate mastery of the art
03:55of
03:55pitching floored everybody in baseball, but his personality was what made him one of the most
03:59famous men in America for a time. I say this, of course, with love. Mark Fidrich was a complete
04:04weirdo. Out there on the mound, he would pace around, he would talk to the baseball, he would neatly
04:08manicure the dirt on the mound, he would talk to the mound. He was just out there in his own
04:12world.
04:13And then he'd turn around and put his feet on the rubber and just mow down entire American
04:17league lineups like they were nothing. Immediately after the season, one of the most magical individual
04:22seasons ever seen, Fidrich was wrecked by injuries that ensured that it was the only good season he
04:27would ever have. By his mid-20s, he was out of baseball for good. This set the table for what
04:31I feel to be his greatest accomplishment. Throughout this existential, crushing disappointment,
04:36Fidrich continued to radiate positivity like he always did. He was enthusiastic, affable,
04:41exceptionally friendly to every last person he happened to meet. There was no bitterness at all.
04:45Instead, he was just thankful for the chance he got to play the game he loved.
04:50Fidrich, who passed away in 2009, was and is universally adored. Despite everything,
04:56he remains one of the most unforgettable human beings to ever play baseball.
05:05So, how the hell do you follow up an act like that?
05:13It was inevitable that Dave Rosemann's story would wind up completely lost in Fidrich's shadow.
05:18Let's look again at this collection of greatest rookie seasons. This one right here, the one that
05:22immediately follows Fidrich in 1977, belongs to Dave Rosemann. Like Fidrich, Rosemann was an outstanding
05:28rookie. Like Fidrich, Rosemann would never have another season like it again thanks to a series of
05:32injuries. And like Fidrich, Rosemann's story is compelling. Granted, it's a somewhat different
05:37kind of compelling. You see, Rosemann, in this phase of his life, was an airhead. I'd normally avoid
05:43describing somebody like that, but when a sports writer called him an airhead, Rosemann co-signed
05:47enthusiastically. Heh, yep. That's actually pretty accurate. I'm a real big-time dumbass. He loved horsing
05:54around and singing songs during ball games. He would sit in the dugout looking for cute girls in the stands
05:58instead of watching the game. But let's start with the reason he's here. In April of 1983,
06:03the Yankees' Dave Winfield charges them out to fight Rosemann after a probably accidental pitch
06:07flies over Winfield's head. Yes, friends, we got a Dave-off. It's pretty tough stuff to see two guys
06:13with the same name take up arms against one another, but it's one of four times it's happened within this
06:18sample. There was also a 1961 gym-off between Peirce Hall and Bunning, a battle of the Bobs Lee and
06:24Gibson
06:24in 1967, and a good old-fashioned Johnny Brook between Johns, Cangelosi, and Smoltz in 1994.
06:30This fight's pretty ordinary as far as these things go, however. Winfield throws a punch,
06:35Rosemann dodges it, both benches empty and shove each other a little bit, and that's just about that.
06:40This might have been the least disastrous thing that has ever happened to Dave Rosemann.
06:50During the Tigers' 1978 spring training, his teammates locked their wallets and car keys in
06:54the clubhouse safe. There was only one key to the safe. I'll take care of the key, Rosemann said.
06:59I'll make sure nothing happens to it. Shortly thereafter, he somehow broke the key, marooning
07:04the entire team without their cars or money for hours. That same year, Rosemann bought a brand new
07:09Ford Thunderbird. He decided to wash it. He thought, what does my mom use to scrub pots and pans?
07:15Oh yeah, Brillo pads. So he scrubs his entire car with soap, water, and Brillo pads, and it wasn't
07:21until it dried that he realized he had ravaged the unholy hell out of his beautiful new car.
07:26The next season, Rosemann is told to rest up and let his sore arm recover, but it's hard to sit
07:31around.
07:32It's so boring. All of a sudden, the most amazing thing that has ever happened happens. Somebody put
07:38bubbles in the clubhouse whirlpool. It's a bubble bath. Rosemann, unable to contain himself,
07:43dies head first into the tub and somehow doesn't injure himself further. The next thing I knew,
07:48the whole room is full of suds. The whole room, suds were everywhere. I had a good time doing that.
07:53It was fun. What you need to know about this quote is that he gave it seven months later. He
08:00was still
08:00so, so excited about that bubble bath. This man is a protagonist from a battery-powered book with
08:06cardboard pages that make barnyard animal noises when you turn them. We're not done here. We now enter
08:11Rosemann's Bar Disaster Trilogy. This is part one. In 1980, Rosemann oversleeps and misses a team flight.
08:17It is revealed that the night prior he got hammered at a bar while serving as a judge in a
08:21wet t-shirt
08:22contest. His reaction is the funniest reaction he could possibly have. Why does it always happen to me?
08:29Like he was just walking down the street and a dive bar fell on his head. Part two of the
08:33Bar Disaster
08:33Trilogy. In March of 1982, Rosemann is at the bar with his teammate and good buddy Kirk Gibson. The two
08:39start
08:39horsing around and shoving each other and then Gibson says, I'm gonna get you and he pulls Rosemann's
08:44chair out from under him when he's about to sit down. When Rosemann hits the ground, he shatters
08:48a glass bottle of medicine he was keeping in his back pants pocket for some reason and he requires
08:5311 stitches in his ass. Part three of the Bar Disaster Trilogy. About one month later, Rosemann is at the
08:59bar with his teammate and good buddy Alan Trammell. The two start horsing around and shoving each other and
09:04then Rosemann says, I'm gonna get you and he tries to shove Trammell and Trammell ducks out of the way.
09:08And when he does, he slams his face right into a bar glass breaking both the glass and his face.
09:15Blood is everywhere. Trammell requires 40 stitches. This concludes the Bar Disaster Trilogy, but this
09:21and everything that came before it is mere prologue. It is time at long last to clear the decks for
09:27Dave
09:27Rosemann's main event. On May 14th, 1982 in Detroit, Michigan, Detroit's Enos Cabell charges the mound to fight
09:34Minnesota Twins pitcher Ron Davis.
09:40It's the second mound charging of the evening with the Tigers Chet Lemon having previously run up on
09:45Twins starter Pete Redfern in the fourth. Even on paper Cabell vs Davis is interesting for a couple
09:50of reasons. One being that it's an ultra rare extra innings mound charging. It's the bottom of the
09:5511th with the score tied at two. Batters almost never charge in a high stakes situation like this
09:59because you're almost certain to get thrown out of the game and your team can't afford to needlessly
10:03throw a pinch hitter out there to take your place as the game drags on into extra frames.
10:07But if any batter were ever to say the hell with it and charge anyway, it probably would be Enos
10:12Cabell.
10:12In Figure 4, I have charted the careers of every batter within our sample to charge the mound
10:17multiple times. This charge helps to ensure that Cabell will ultimately belong to a very exclusive club of
10:23just nine guys to charge the mound at least three times. And that brings us to the other interesting
10:28thing. This group is populated with names like Reggie Jackson, Galarraga, Winfield, Strawberry,
10:33George Bell, lots of other top-tier home run hitters, superstar sluggers who became targets for
10:38brush backs and thus had a reason to charge a pitcher more often. Not Cabell, who in 1982 will go
10:43on to
10:43hit two home runs for the third consecutive season. Enos Cabell is a controversial figure,
10:49not on account of his fighting or any off-field issues as Cabell is known as a smart player and
10:54a great guy to have in your clubhouse. No, it's because he represents a key theater of battle for
10:59a great conflict that is only now beginning to brew and will be waged for decades. A war between old
11:05school baseball thinking and new school sabermetrics. Here and now, the battlefield is this question,
11:11can Enos Cabell play baseball? Bill James, the father of sabermetrics, says no. It's hyperbole,
11:17of course, but you can see what he means. The metric wins above replacement indicates that in 82,
11:22Cabell is playing at replacement level, in other words, below zero for the fourth consecutive year.
11:27More traditional stats bear this out as well. Lately, he can't hit for power at all and he can't really
11:31hit for average and doesn't draw walks, so he doesn't get on base much and when he does, he gets
11:35thrown out stealing way too often. He's also not a good fielder, so that kind of sticks a fork in
11:41it.
11:41Regardless, these words do come off as unduly harsh, but it should be noted that James
11:45isn't taking potshots at some random guy for sport. He uses sabermetrics to help build salary
11:50arbitration cases for players and help them get fairly compensated, and being honest about who
11:55is great at baseball requires one to also be honest about who is not. Besides, James' beef isn't with
12:01Cabell himself. It's with the manager who sticks with him in the face of all this damning statistical
12:05evidence, Sparky Anderson, who categorically states that yes, Enos Cabell does know how to play baseball.
12:16Sparky loves the guy because he loves players who possess a deep understanding of the game,
12:21even if they can't necessarily leverage that understanding into strong numbers.
12:24He's an unusually bad manager, James says of the skipper who previously won two World Series titles in
12:30Cincinnati, will soon win another in Detroit, and will one day enter the Hall of Fame. And look,
12:35it's entirely possible. You see it in every sport. A coach gets carried to victory by players who play
12:40so well that they offset and camouflage the coach's poor decision making. I'm not really interested in
12:45taking a side here. I'll only say that James has had a great deal to teach us about the game
12:49of
12:49baseball, and so have guys like Sparky. That's the move, by the way, if you're a coward but don't want
12:54to be
12:55seen as such. You just say something nice about everybody. Sparky Anderson is a commanding clubhouse
13:00presence who loves his players, and his players love him. He's also a guy who sticks to his guns.
13:05Aside from his World Series titles, his other crowning achievement, if you ask me, came in 1995,
13:10his final season as Tiger's manager. With the 1994 players strike Dragon into 95, the league made plans
13:16to field teams full of replacement players. A lot of managers around the league were happy to follow
13:20these marching orders, even some who certainly wielded enough clout to take a stand against it.
13:25Not Sparky, who adamantly refused to sell out his players by managing a scab team. For this,
13:31he was scolded by the media, lectured by his friends, and threatened by management,
13:34who placed him on unpaid leave and put his million dollar salary in jeopardy.
13:38It only made Sparky all the more obstinate. Eventually, the end of the strike precluded the
13:42league's ridiculous scheme, and Sparky returned to lead his actual team for one last season before
13:46retiring, still disgusted by what owners were doing to the game. He was a guy who stood firmly on his
13:52principles, and sometimes stuck out like a sore thumb as a result. You might recall from the Jeff
13:56Weaver episode of this series that Sparky didn't merely condone mound charging, he mandated that if
14:01one of their guys was out there fighting, the whole team was to follow suit. Guys in the dugout,
14:06guys in the bullpen, everybody was expected to be out there scrapping. And it would seem his players
14:11hurt him too. Within this sample, the Detroit Tigers have been involved in more mound chargings than
14:15any other team. Part of that's thanks to being locked in the rubber room we call the AL Central
14:20for as long as they have, but I think Sparky had a lot to do with that too. The man
14:24loves a fighter,
14:25and maybe that's another reason he loves Enos Cabell.
14:36Here in the bottom of the 11th, with one out and one on, Ron Davis brushes him back. Cabell gives
14:41him
14:41good old Vaunt is perfect, the universal sign of I'm gonna go out there and beat your ass,
14:45and then he does. But Davis is no pushover either. It's an even fight with no clear champion before
14:51the fog of battle rolls in. There are tons of little goodies in here. Detroit's Larry Herndon
14:55wins fight of the night by first backing up Cabell with a flying elbow on Davis, then he gets up,
15:00gets a couple of blows in on a second guy, wallops Kent Herbeck, then shakes down a takedown attempt
15:04from pitching coach Carl Kuehl. Still fighting with a full tank of gas, Herndon hops around asking who else wants
15:10some.
15:10The Twins appear to shove pitcher Terry Felton out there as a sacrificial offering,
15:14but poor Terry clearly does not want the smoke. He'll get on the main card later this season with
15:19a fight against Barry Bonnell in what will turn out to be his final major league appearance. Felton
15:23will retire with a career pitching record of 0-16. To this day, he holds the all-time record for
15:28most
15:28career losses without a win. Okay, so who does want some of Larry Herndon? Nameless Jacket Guy,
15:34it's your lucky day. Blap! Nameless Jacket Guy is then handed off to Kevin Soche for further punishment.
15:39Soche's experience in these matters. In 1980, he became one of the very few pitchers to ever be
15:44charged by another pitcher, Burt Blatt-Levin. Soche will retire after this season because he's
15:48experiencing such serious control issues with his pitching that he's afraid he might kill somebody.
15:53Soon, a co-main event breaks out between the oddest of dance partners, Richie Hebner, a vet who's been
15:58around since the 60s versus Jesus Vega, a guy who's barely ever appeared in the majors and who Hebner has
16:03almost certainly never heard of. Vega isn't even playing in this game. But that's the beauty of
16:08these brawls. Motives and reasons instantly evaporate and suddenly find yourself beating
16:13on some dude you've never seen before because he's wearing the wrong shirt. Sparky would surely
16:17approve wherever he is. Oh, there he is. Finally, Cabell and Davis, this fight's original contenders,
16:23tie a satisfying bow on things by finding each other once again. And although their rematch is another draw,
16:29I think that after further review, I'm gonna go ahead and elevate the Charger pitcher score of this
16:33fight from a 3 to a 4. The striking is more than just clear. It's impressive that after the two
16:39were
16:39separated, they waded through a sea of teammates and picked up right where they left off. In the
16:43surrounding fight category, the rest of the Tigers and Twins also receive a well-deserved 4. This was
16:49one hell of a fight all around, fellas. Hats off to everybody involved.
16:56And now, it's time to check in on our friend Dave Rosma. You remember Dave Rosma? This is an episode
17:03about Dave Rosma. As of the moment Cabell charges Davis, Rosma is the Tigers' pitcher of record,
17:12having worked three innings of scoreless relief. He might well go out there for a fourth if the Tigers
17:16can't break through here in the bottom of the 11th, so he's gotta keep himself fresh. Surely he'd be
17:21forgiven if he stayed on the bench, or at least tiptoed out there and stayed out of the way.
17:25But you know, the pity is, Sparky did say everybody. He did say explicitly that he wants every last
17:31guy out there mixing it up, and Dave Rosma is that last guy. So, he bravely charges onto the field.
17:38I wasn't able to find footage that caught any of this, but upon entering the fray, Rosma sees a couple
17:43of Twins players beelining right toward him. He attempts to jump out of the way, but comes down
17:47awkwardly on somebody else and injures his knee. At least, that's what he says happened. His own
17:54teammates say nope. No, man. This is what happened. Rosma ran out of the dugout and for some reason
18:02zeroed in on Minnesota's John Castino, who had his hands up to signal that he was not fighting and was
18:08only playing Peacemaker. Rosma attempted to deploy a flying karate kick in Castino's direction. In the last
18:15episode, we studied the phenomenon of batters opening their attacks with a kick when they
18:19charged the mound, but let's now hear from an actual martial artist. Kansas City Royals pitcher
18:24Larry Gura, who holds a green belt in karate. He finally got to apply these skills to his day job
18:29in 1983 when Tim Foley charged him. Gura resorted to deploying a flurry of karate chops that weren't
18:34really that effective because he realized that most of the moves he knew were kicks. And you can't really
18:39kick someone when you're wearing spikes because you could really hurt somebody. You could really
18:46hurt somebody. It's true. Rosma, who I would bet any amount of money has never entered a dojo in his
18:52life, flings himself into the air, sticks his leg out, pretty much completely misses Castino,
18:59and demonstrates such atrocious form that when he comes down on his left leg, he absolutely annihilates
19:05his knee. Whenever you hear about knee injuries, it's usually just one torn ligament. Maybe two or
19:11three if it's an especially devastating injury. Rosma tore eight knee ligaments. I'll be honest,
19:18I did not even know there were that many. The indignity of this was underscored when,
19:23in an era before medical carts, team personnel hauled him off in a stretcher. Usually the move here would
19:28be to give a thumbs up to the adoring crowd as you're sent off, but I think everybody was just
19:33too
19:33confused by what they just saw to react that way. That option's not on the table. Not even
19:38for the winning pitcher. That's right. You see, moments after Rosma was hauled off the field and
19:45play finally resumed, teammate Kirk Gibson hit a walk-off home run. And thus, Rosma was officially
19:51credited with the win. So this was a game in which the winning pitcher was carried off in a stretcher
19:56because he ran out of the dugout and tried to do karate. There are exactly two images of Dave Rosma
20:07that I am licensed to use. Both are black and white. One captures him during a brief minor league
20:12appearance at the end of his career. The other is a considerably grainy zoom in of a Tigers team photo.
20:17Rosma turned in two very good seasons before his abilities abandoned him thanks in part to that very
20:22leg injury and he was out of the majors before his 30th birthday. He never appeared in an all-star
20:27game. He never led the league in anything. He is one of the greatest players of all time.
20:33In the next episode, we will explore the story of another such player, Lenny Randall.
20:54See you then.
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