Otherwise Famous Baseball Players

I have often considered writing a blog or a Twitter feed where I review movies that are older, have been overlooked, or received brutal reviews when they came out but can be appreciated years later. On that last point I'm mostly thinking about Stallone movies. In fact if I were to have such a blog there would likely be a monthly segment called something like "This Month's Under-appreciated 80s Action Movie." I think it would catch on.

The point is that I enjoy writing and I enjoy exploring movies that are under-appreciated or have been buried over the decades by the glut of films available to us consumers. Last night I re-watched one such movie, Mickey Rourke's The Wrestler. Now don't get me wrong, it's not like I stumbled across the Beatles One CD at a thrift store and thought that I had stumbled upon the greatest band of all time that no one's heard of. Rourke, after all, won a Golden Globe for his role as "Randy 'The Ram'" and was nominated for an Academy Award. However, I think there are many casual movie watchers (which is what I would describe most of us as, including myself) who wrote the movie off just because they saw it was about a professional wrestler from the 1980s. In reality, though, it really is one of the best movies I've seen in the 2000s. The story is heartbreaking, the cuts are among the best I've seen and the soundtrack is so creatively integrated that I can't help but appreciate it, even though I typically HATE movies that don't have a happy ending. But I digress, this is not a review of The Wrestler.

As I do with most movies I watch, I tend to explore the main actors and the story behind the movie on IMDB and Wikipedia. I did this with Rourke and found an interesting factoid - that he was a professional boxer before hitting it big as an actor, which got me thinking about baseball. I know it sounds strange, but the link is there, however convoluted it may be. Rourke's careers as a boxer reminded me of several other athlete's-turned-entertainer, the first of which being Macho Man Randy Savage, who was a professional wrestler from the 80s and 90s (I thought of him after watching The Wrestler for obvious reasons) but was also a professional baseball player.

Poffo ("Savage's" real last name) wrestled during baseball's off-season, and experienced modest success in as a switch-hitting catcher in the St. Louis Cardinals organization, hitting .282 at the age of 20 in 1973, splitting time between A-Ball and the Rookie level. He was then converted in to an outfielder in 1974 by the Reds organization where he played for their A-level affiliate. He struggled, however, as an every-day player and left the game for his very successful full-time wrestling career. He finished his ball playing career with a .254 batting average.

After thinking about the "Macho Man's" baseball career, I thought it would be worthwhile to explore a couple of other entertainers who dabbled in baseball before settling on a career elsewhere. Perhaps the most intriguing to me on this (albeit short) list is country and gospel singer Jim Reeves, who was a minor league pitcher with various organizations from 1945 until 1947.

Reeves experienced world-wise recognition in the 1950's and 1960's in his more noted career as a singer before his death in a private plane crash at the age of 40 in 1964. Prior to, and after, his death, Reeves was wildly popular in South Africa and experienced significant success in other countries in addition to being well-liked in the States. Prior to his singing days, however, he played in the now non-existant B, C and D levels of the minor leagues during the pre-television hay day of minor league baseball where hundreds of local leagues and teams were scattered across the country. In those days, especially in the lower leagues, statistics were not kept precisely, and therefore it's tough to say exactly how good Reeves was. However, it we can tell that he experienced great success in his final season, 1947, where he pitched 172 innings with 12 wins and an ERA of just 3.09.

Last on the list is the gruff co-star from the popular 2000s TV show Gilmore Girls, Scott Patterson. I think it's safe to say that Patterson is the best ballplayer of the bunch, as he topped out at the AAA level, and managed to play there for most of his seven season minor league career. Patterson broke in to the minor leagues with the Atlanta Braves in 1980, was traded to the Yankees mid-season in 1982 and stayed with the organization until 1986. It wasn't until 1992, however that Patterson broke in to movies and TV, and he didn't get his "big break" with Gilmore Girls until 2000 (though he put together a pretty respectable career doing small parts on popular TV shows and lead roles in non-notable movies).

As a baseball, player, though Patterson was a solid right handed pitcher who began his career as a starter (winning 14 games in both 1981 and 1983) and spend the final three years of his career as a relief pitcher (where he saw his best year in 1985, winning 12 games out of the bullpen and posting a superb 2.36 ERA). By 1986, though, Patterson began to struggle and ended up calling it quits after posting a 5.13 ERA for the year with the Yankees AAA affiliate.

One thing is certain, though, Scott Patterson was a good pitcher. As an example, in 1981 while playing for the Braves' A affiliate, Patterson was a perfect 9-0 with a 2.11 ERA. This was bolstered with a career best 8.2 strikeouts per 9 innings (totaling 89 punch-outs in 98 innings). That hot start earned him his first promotion to AA. And for his career Patterson recorded a record of 63-52 with a very respectable 4.31 ERA over a total of 965.1 innings. Not a bad career if you ask me.

Do you know of any more ball players who later became famous for something else? The most notable example I know of not listed above is former NBA player (and current Celtics GM) Danny Ainge, who played for the Toronto Blue Jays in the 1980s. But he doesn't really count because he stayed in sports when he "changed" careers.