Baseball History Podcast

Derrel McKinley Harrelson, nicknamed “Bud”, was born on June 6, 1944 in Niles, California.

Harrelson was typical of shortstops of his era: good fielder, poor hitter.  His excellent fielding kept him in the lineup no matter what his average, but he also contributed with his speed on the basepaths and by drawing more than his share of walks.

Welcome to Baseball History Podcast, featuring baseball biographies.  I’m your announcer Bob Wright.

This is game 12 of the 2011 baseball season.

In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 4 week of March.

March 23

1978 The Mets trade popular shortstop Bud Harrelson to Philadelphia for minor league infielder Freddie Andrews.

Derrel McKinley Harrelson, nicknamed “Bud”, was born on June 6, 1944 in Niles, California.

Harrelson was typical of shortstops of his era: good fielder, poor hitter.  His excellent fielding kept him in the lineup no matter what his average, but he also contributed with his speed on the basepaths and by drawing more than his share of walks.  He had a lifetime batting average of .236 but had a lifetime .969 fielding percentage.
Bud’s older brother, Dwayne unintentionally gave his kid brother the nickname Bud.  Dwayne couldn’t pronounce Derrel, so he called him Brother, which morphed into Bud.

After high school graduation, scouts wouldn’t offer Harrelson much because of his size.  He decided to go to college and improve his chances and mature as a ballplayer.  Ironically, he won a basketball scholarship to San Francisco State, but played only baseball.

After his first year of college baseball Harrelson spoke to several scouts, notably from the Yankees, Cubs, and Cardinals.  The Yankees offered him the most, but he didn’t think he would get much playing time.  The Mets, coming off their 40-120 inaugural season, offered a much better opportunity for advancement.  Harrelson signed in June 1963, the day after he turned 19, for a little more than $10,000.  Harrelson said, “I figured I could make that club fast”.  He was right.

He was a September call-up for the Mets in 1965 but started the 1966 season playing for the Jacksonville Suns, the Mets new International League farm team.  There he met future teammate Tom Seaver.  The two Northern Californians became instant friends.  They roomed together on the road with the Mets from 1968 until Seaver’s departure from the club in 1977.

At Jacksonville, Harrelson taught himself to become a switch-hitter.  He was again a late season call up to the Mets in August 1966.
He became the Mets starting shortstop in 1967, already the 18th in the team’s brief history.  That happened after his predecessor and mentor Roy McMillan felt a pop in his shoulder during spring training.  McMillan’s playing career was over.

Harrelson, committed 21 errors in his first month, but made only 11 the rest of the season.  McMillan helped Harrelson work on his fielding, while coach Yogi Berra taught him how to make better contact and use a heavier bat.  Skipper Wes Westrum was pleased with the results, including Harrelson’s .254 batting average and speed.
Harrelson hit first major league home run in August 1967.  He later described the home run, “I hit it right down the line in right field and Al Luplow tried to make a shoestring catch and missed.  It rolled all the way to the wall and then it rolled away from him after it hit the wall.  I kept running and I had an inside-the-parker.  It won the game for us, too.”

Harrelson’s offense fell sharply in 1968, but that wasn’t uncommon in the Year of the Pitcher.  The Mets now had Gil Hodges running the team but Harrelson spent much of 1968 fulfilling a military obligation with the National Guard, dealing with knee problems, and fighting to keep his batting average out of the low .200s.  He finished with a .219 average and then had cartilage removed from his knee.
Harrelson arrived in St. Petersburg in 1969 having spent the winter lifting weights and quitting smoking.  Hodges favored platoons for his club at the corners in the outfield and infield, plus second base.  Catcher, center field, and shortstop were too important to Hodges to tinker with, even though Jerry Grote was no great shakes with the bat and Tommie Agee in center had a lower 1968 batting average than Harrelson.

Harrelson was sorely missed when he had to serve his military obligation starting in July.  He started just one game in a five-week span because of his obligation, and his batting average, which had surpassed .290 at the beginning of June, got over .250 only a couple of times the rest of the season; he finished at .248.  On a team with the pitching the 1969 Mets had, his glove was more important than what he generated with his bat.  Harrelson committed just 19 errors in 119 games at shortstop.

Probably his best remembered play of the season was grabbing Joe Torre’s grounder and starting the double play that clinched the first Eastern Division title in National League history and set off a riot at Shea Stadium on September 24.  Harrelson’s game-winning single the night before against Bob Gibson had set the party in motion by assuring the Mets of at least a tie for the division title.

Harrelson was practically flawless in the field in the miraculous postseason.  His only error in 44 chances came with two outs and no one on in the seventh inning of New York’s 11-6 win over the Braves in Game Two of the National League Championship Series.  Though he was only 2 for 11 in the National League Championship Series, he drove in three runs and both his hits went for extra bases—giving Harrelson, who would have a lifetime .288 slugging percentage, a stunning .455 slugging mark in the Mets’ three-game sweep.  He batted .176 in the World Series against the Orioles, but he had three singles and three walks to give him a .300 on-base percentage.

Harrelson played 157 games for the Mets in 1970 and appeared in his first All-Star Game.  He went 2 for 3 and scored twice in the game.  The season was arguably Harrelson’s best.  He knocked in 42 runs and drew 95 walks, by far the most in either category in his career.  He also had career highs in runs and doubles.  He flexed as much power as he would ever conjure, with eight triples and eight sacrifice flies, to go along with his first career out of the park home run.

He had a good follow-up season in 1971, winning his only Gold Glove, batting .252, and collecting a career-best 138 hits and 28 steals, but after that season Harrelson’s frail frame was seemingly banged up more often than not.  He missed 300 games to injuries over the next four seasons.

In 1973, the Mets almost pulled off another miracle.  They spent most of the year in last place in the National League East and ended the season near the bottom of the league in virtually all offensive categories.  Yet they won the pennant.

The Mets were devastated by injuries as they staggered through much of the first five months of the season.  Harrelson himself went on the Disabled List twice.  He was out of commission with a fractured wrist from June 5 to July 8, and with a fractured sternum in August.  When he returned August 18, the Mets were in last place, 13 games under .500, and were still in the cellar on August 28.  But propelled by their pitching, the Mets went 19-8 in September to win the division at just three games over .500.  Harrelson started every game during the stretch run and batted .280.
The Cincinnati Reds, the West Division winners, were the odds-on favorites to win the best-of-five National League Championship Sereies.  The Mets managed a split at Riverfront Stadium, with Tom Seaver losing a 2-1 game and Jon Matlack following with a two-hit shutout.

Back at Shea, the Mets trounced Cincinnati, 9-2, backed by a complete-game, nine-strikeout performance by Jerry Koosman and two home runs by outfielder Rusty Staub.

The day before, asked by reporters about the way the Reds had hit in the game, Harrelson said, “They all look like me hitting.”  During pregame warmups for Game Three, Reds second baseman Joe Morgan grabbed Harrelson by his uniform shirt and said, “If you ever say something like that about me again, I’ll punch you out!”  Morgan went on to tell Harrelson, “Pete (Rose) is going to use this to get the club fired up.  If he has a chance, he is going to come and get you at second.”

The game was so far gone that Reds relief pitcher Roger Nelson batted for himself and fanned to start the fifth against Koosman.  Batting second was Rose, who singled to center.  The next hitter was Morgan, who hit a ground ball to Milner at first base.  Milner scooped up the ball and threw to Harrelson at second, who fired back to Milner to complete the double play.  In the process, Rose had slid hard into second, hitting Harrelson with his elbow.

The 160-pound shortstop then said to the man 40 pounds heavier, “That was a cheap (bleeping) shot.”  Rose said, “What did you say?“ and Harrelson repeated the words, after which Rose grabbed Harrelson and pinned him to the ground.  Seconds later both benches cleared and the bullpens charged in.

Immediately after the dust had seemed to settle, there was another brief altercation between a Red and a Met.  Mets reliever Buzz Capra was struck by Reds reliever Pedro Borbon.  After that fight was broken up, players from both sides put on their caps.  Borbon put on what another teammate told him was a Mets cap.  Borbon, who earned the nickname Dracula after another incident in 1974, took off the cap and bit a hole in it with his teeth.

Harrelson was left with a bruise over his eye, which he said came from having his sunglasses broken.  Neither Rose nor Harrelson was ejected … and that was a mistake.  The game was nearly called after the Reds took the field in the bottom of the inning.  Rose had taken left field when an array of objects were thrown his way, including a whiskey bottle.  Manager Sparky Anderson took his team off the field as the game was delayed for 20 minutes.  National League president Chub Feeney, who after conferring with the six umpires, the commissioner, and both teams, decided to send out players from the Mets dugout to restore order.  It was only after Willie Mays, Seaver, Staub, Cleon Jones, and Yogi Berra came out to the field to try to calm the fans that play was resumed.

“Being a little guy, I always wore a Superman T-shirt under my jersey,” Harrelson said. “When the reporters came over after the game, I taped (an X) over the Superman logo and said, ‘It looks like Pete had a load of kryptonite today.’”

With Game Three finally in the books, the Mets had an unlikely lead in the series.  Rose came back to homer in the 12th inning of Game Four and even the series.  Game Five was a lot like Game Three, except the riot took place after the game.  The Mets had a comfortable lead and after Tug McGraw squelched a Reds rally in the ninth, the Shea field was instantly filled with people and the players had to run for their lives.

The Mets nearly knocked off another Goliath in the Oakland A’s.  Harrelson batted .250 against the A’s in the World Series.  Harrelson came around to score the go-ahead run in the 12th inning when he led off with a double and Mays singled him home.  The Mets scored three more times and won the game, thanks to two errors that inning.

The Mets dropped the World Series after heading to Oakland leading three games to two.  It was a sour ending to a great run, but it had been so unexpected that it was hard to say it was heartbreaking.
Though Harrelson was injured for much of the four seasons that followed, there was still a core group of the 10 Mets who’d appeared in the 1969 and 1973 World Series.
The night before the trade deadline of June 15, 1977, Harrelson, Jerry Grote, Jerry Koosman, and Tom Seaver all went out together.  Harrelson later recalled, “We were in Atlanta and we went out to dinner, kind of like the Four Musketeers.  Seaver said, ‘Come on, we’re going out tonight.  I will be gone tomorrow.”’  Sure enough, a deal went down right before the deadline.  The Franchise was dealt to the Cincinnati Reds and the Miracle was a distant memory.

Harrelson told a reporter after the trade, “You know you grow close to a guy after playing with him for 10 years.  You’re with him 172 days a year—having hundreds of dinners together, exchanging hundreds of bad jokes.  We were perfect roommates.  Tom did all the reading and I did all the talking.”

In the 1977 offseason the Mets purchased infielder Tim Foli from San Francisco.  The Mets felt Harrelson was done and they handed the job to Foli, and in the words of Daily News beat man Jack Lang, “Harrelson just sat and twiddled his thumbs in spring training.  The Mets weren’t going to use him, and Bud was unhappy with a bench role.”

So at the end of spring training, the Mets sent Harrelson to the Phillies.  Harrelson played second base for the first time in his career and batted .214 overall for the season.  He did not appear in the postseason as the Phillies lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In 1979, Harrelson was joined in Philadelphia by Pete Rose.  The former combatants now played on the same side of the infield, though Rose was in the lineup far more frequently than Harrelson.  They had patched up the ill feelings about their fabled fight years before.
Harrelson wound up hitting .282 for the Phillies with a .395 on-base percentage.  Those were the highest numbers of his career, though the 71 at-bats were his fewest since he debuted in 1965.

Harrelson became a free agent after the season and signed with the Texas.  He returned to shortstop and started 77 games there for the Rangers.  He finished the year with a .272 batting average and finished his career with a .236 career mark.
On November 2, 1981, Harrelson was named first base coach for the Mets under manager George Bamberger for the 1982 season and in 1983, he broadcast games for the SportsChannel cable network.

He became a minor league manager for the 1984 season and then in 1985 managed for 35 games before being promoted to New York to take over for Bobby Valentine as third-base coach after Valentine left to manage the Texas Rangers.

Under manager Davey Johnson, the Mets were suddenly a formidable club again.  The 1986 team was the most dominant in Mets history.  They won 108 games, winning the division by 21½ games, beat the Houston Astros in a thrilling six-game NLCS, and defeated the Boston Red Sox in a World Series that will forever be known for Bill Buckner’s error at first base in the 10th inning of Game Six.  Harrelson, coaching at third, had one of the happiest responsibilities in franchise history, waving Ray Knight home with the winning run and running with him across home plate and into the waiting arms of the entire team.  “They’ve got pictures of me racing home with Ray Knight,” Harrelson said. “I tell everybody, ‘Yeah, actually, I was leading.’ I got so excited I was running until I figured out he had to be the one to touch home plate.”

Harrelson remained a coach for the Mets throughout Davey Johnson’s tenure.

One of his dreams was to manage the Mets and on May 29, 1990, he got that chance when Johnson was fired.  Under Harrelson, the Mets won 10 of 17 games before reeling off 11 straight victories to put them three percentage points ahead of the eventual division champion Pirates.  The Mets slumped in September, but the club stayed in contention until the last week despite a slew of injuries and new players inserted into a ragtag lineup
The media and players sometimes questioned Harrelson’s managing instincts.  Bench coach Doc Edwards was accused by some players of running the team.  During a game, Edwards called a pitchout for David Cone to throw while he was facing the Reds pitcher Kip Gross.  The June 4, 1991, TV broadcast from Cincinnati captured a finger-pointing exchange between Cone and Harrelson over the call.  One player commented, “Buddy has spent the whole season managing like he was everyone’s pal, and that doesn’t work.”

Although the Mets put together a 10-game winning streak to start July of 1991, when the streak was over, the team’s season soon followed.  The Mets were 2½ games behind the Pirates with a 49-34 record, but New York dropped 50 of its last 78 games.  The Mets finished in fifth place, 20½ games out of first place.

Harrelson was replaced as manager in the final week of the 1991 season.  After his firing, he said, “If the public wanted a manager with vast experience, I wasn’t it. … If they wanted somebody who would grow with the organization, I think that was me.”

At the time of his dismissal, he held the second-best winning percentage among Mets managers behind Davey Johnson and even ahead of mentor Gil Hodges.

In the late 1990s, Harrelson was instrumental in bringing minor league baseball to Long Island.  The Long Island Ducks began play in 2000 as part of the independent Atlantic League, with Harrelson as co-owner, first-base coach, and senior vice president for baseball operations.  “It might sound crazy, but this is the best thing I’ve done in baseball,” said Harrelson.
Harrelson and Rusty Staub will always share the distinction of being the first Mets players inducted into the club’s Hall of Fame, in 1986.

A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by Eric Aron.  It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org

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Well, that’s it for today’s Baseball History Podcast.  I’ll see you later at the ballpark.