Hope and Pinch Hits with Steve Stroughter
How many minor league bus rides can one man and two cheeks endure??
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1982 Topps Traded Steve Stroughter (#114T) - Card of the Day
How long would you keep pushing to achieve your dream?
Typing as a still starry-eyed baseball dreamer, I have to imagine the pull of the diamond is even stronger than many other boyhood fantasies…especially if you’re so close you can smell the fresh-mown outfield grass.
We see it play out in the big leagues, where even the best of the best, worn down by 20+ years of the grind, often want just one more shot.
We see it in local softball leagues when now-middle-aged high school baseball stars blow out a knee or gut-butt-split their pants trying to recapture the glory.
And every once in a while, we see it when a 30-year-old rookie finally makes the big-league cut after enough years in the minors to call it a job.
Such was the case for Steve Stroughter in the spring of 1982. Invited to Spring Training by the Mariners nearly three years after they signed him as a minor league free agent.
Before any of that, though, Stroughter was drafted three times: by the Angels in June 1970, by the Cubs in January 1971, and by the Giants in June 1971. He obviously didn’t sign the first two times, but he did embark on his San Francisco career.
Reporting to the Rookie-level Great Falls Giants that summer of 1971, Stroughter couldn’t have known how many minor league bus rides were in store for him over the next decade.
But five seasons into his pro career, Stroughtiter was still only at Single A when the Angels bought his rights in October of 1975.
So the Halos finally had their man, and they moved him to Double-A El Paso in 1976. Always known for his powerful bat, Stroughter really broke out in 1977, also with los Diablos.
After hitting 25 home runs with 116 RBI and a .336 batting average, Stroughten finally got his shot at Triple A in 1978. Another solid season at Salt Lake City got him…released in April of 1979.
The 27-year-old Stroughten sat on the shelf until June, when the Mariners bit.
He spent the next three summers at the Triple-A level for Seattle — save for a slight detour when the M’s traded Stroughten to the White Sox in December 1980 for Mike Bacsik. No worries, though, because Seattle bought him back the next May.
You could generally count on Stroughten for double-digit home runs, a strong batting average, plenty of strikeouts, and a glove befitting his frequent DH status.
It was all enough to land him in the Seattle camp — finally — in 1982, and then in actual major league games. Mostly, manager Rene Lachemann used Stroughten as a pinch hitter and DH, with occasional reps in left field.
Overall, Stroughten would stick with M’s through July, hitting .170 with a homer and four RBI. From there, it was back to the minors.
But Stroughten stuck around long enough and played enough to impress the good folks at Topps, who saw fit to include his hopeful gazing-to-the-heavens pose in their 1982 Topps Traded set.
Stroughten spent the next year between stints in the Blue Jays system and in Japan ball, and then he was done.
The rest of Stroughten’s life has been chronicled elsewhere and was a mix of heartache, discovery, redemption, and so many other human emotions, trials, and tribulations.
But here on what would have been Stroughter’s 72nd birthday, it’s hard to see much beyond the hope and determination that pushed him toward his dream for more than a decade.
1983 Fleer Gaylord Perry - 300th Win (#630)
Those 1982 Mariners were one of the few not-so-terrible teams in the early years of the franchise, finishing 76-86. They also were witness to a baseball milestone that’s looking more and more like a dinosaur from a bygone era.
On May 6, 1982, Gaylord Perry recorded win number 300, going all nine innings — along with catcher Terry Bulling — in a 7-3 victory over the Yankees.
Fleer commemorated the event with one of their first-ever Super Star Specials to be so labeled. Evidently, the Vaseline jar is in Perry’s left hand, out of frame.
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That wraps up another week here in Dusty Cardboard Land. I hope your weekend is filled with more of the same (dusty cardboard, that is).
Thanks for reading.
—Adam