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Wait til Next Year . . . is making a come back.

I am going to mix a bit of the philosophy of my life into this blog as I continue to highlight some of my baseball card collection. (hoping the card collectors of this world welcome me back)

Its been a tough 18 months for me . . . the Chicago Cubs have had it rough as well.


This site will be devoted to all those who need to define what "wait til next year" means.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Born in 1960: Mike Marshall

for some of you (probably those over 40) I am speaking of the "other" Mike Marshall; not the 1974 Cy Young award winning relief pitcher for the Dodgers. This "other" Mike Marshall, born in 1960, was also a Dodger but throughout the eighties.

This Marshall spent the majority of his playing days in LA (1981-1989), was a one time all-star (1984) as well as earning a world series ring with the 1988 club.

Being born in 1960 is one thing he and I have in common. He was born in Libertyville Illinois and went to the local high school in Buffalo Grove, a town I moved to in 1987. No I never met him nor have anything else in common with him (kind of).


A career .270 hitter with 148 HR's, Marshall "greatest" accomplishment might have been in 1981 as a minor leaguer. He actually won the triple crown for the Albuquerque Dukes, the triple A team in the PCL; hitting .373, blasting 34 HR's and 137 RBI's. From there his promising career turned into a respectable utility role and 11 year MLB career.

A couple of footnotes to his career were:

a) he gained much unwanted "fame" for dating then rock-star Belinda Carlisle of The Go-Go's (most currently of Dancing with the Stars)

b) when Harry Caray said that Marshall needed to get "back to LA to get some cocaine for his foot" . . . quickly corrected by booth partner Steve Stone saying "Harry, that's Novocaine"

c) and, in his very first at bat in September of 1981, he hit a rocket towards (over) the right field wall at Dodger Stadium. Being hit so hard, it bounced off the stairwell and right back onto the playing field where Jack Clark (of the S F Giants) scooped it up, threw it towards the infield and Marshall had a double. Not sure if it was days or years later but Clark did admit to Marshall that his first hit should have been called a homerun !

d) he also is included in my "duplicate initial" archive: M M

So there you have it . . . born in the same year as I, lived in the same town, dated a rock star (my wife was in high school and college theatre !) and hit a "homerun" in his first major league at bat. Not so bad for being the "other" Mike Marshall.

6 comments:

  1. He was a decent player in his own right, but all you heard about in the 80's was that he was dating a Go-Go. That's still the first think I think of when I hear about him is "He's Got Big Feet"

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  2. Mike Marshall was the source of much adolescent/very young adult rage from this commenter. Players like him and Greg Brock and even Steve Sax seemed so useless compared to Cey, Garvey, Lopes, etc.

    Also, this card interests me because it appears both Tom Lasorda and Bowie Kuhn are in the background (was a potential future post, but I guess I've blown that now).

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  3. Yep---for me he is definitely the "other" Mike Marshall. But both of 'em played for the Dodgers so I didn't root for them much.

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  4. i think he missed some games due to 'general soreness' too.

    those aaa stats never converted to ml stats. i expected big things from marshall, brock, maldonado, and billy ashley.

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  5. I had the opportunity to play baseball against Mike Marshall when he was a pitcher/first baseman for his Buffalo Grove High School Team. We faced him in a district playoff game when they were ranked #1 in the state and we were ranked #10. He was a very intimidating and talented pitcher at that time, however we unloaded our offense on him and chased him from the mound after only 4 innings. Because of their ranking and expectations, Mike went directly to the bus to dodge the reporters and scouts as he was visably shaken and upset. He was also a very good basketball player and excellent golfer. As young adolescents we resented the attention he recieved, although some of it was warranted. His athletic status at a very young age created an unfair primadonna and swagger in Mike that now seems unfair. It was probably difficult for him to relate on a normal level to his peers and it seems that his socialability in professional baseball suffered more than it should have.

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  6. Hey, his mother and my father worked together at the secretary of state. Being that I really liked baseball, and my dad would make me go to work with him from time to time, Mike Marshall's mother told me she had a son who played professionally. I didn't really know who he was. She told me his name, and I searched through my endless amounts of baseball cards and found a few of him. A week later, his mom gave all my stuff back to me signed. I had no idea he won the triple crown! AWESOME!

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