I can’t claim to understand the psychology of having a favorite player when you’re of a certain age.
I do know that Jerry Seinfeld, speaking more generally about sports fandom, famously said fans root for laundry, and there’s a great deal of truth in that. The guy wearing No. 3 for the Sixers might be Sedale Threatt at a certain point in the team’s history, Dana Barros at another and finally that Iverson fellow. Doesn’t matter; a Sixers fan is gonna root for the jersey, no matter who’s wearing it.
I also unearthed a 2014 Seattle Times piece in which Adam Earnhardt, chairman of the communications department at Youngstown State University and co-author of Sports Fans, Identity and Socialization: Exploring the Fandemonium went somewhat deeper, saying people become fans because it gives them a sense of community.
Revealing, but also a bit too broad. Having a favorite player when you’re a young man is so personal, so (I guess) intimate. (Or at least that was the case for me, back in the day. Now, I suspect, a favorite player represents fantasy points. Whatevs.)
I bring this up because Mel Stottlemyre died Monday. And for a kid growing up in North Jersey and rooting for some mediocre Yankees teams in the 1960s, Stottlemyre, who succumbed at age 77, was The Man.
Certainly he was to me. On teams that trotted out a lineup that was decidedly not Murderers’ Row — for a while it went Clarke–Kenney–Murcer–Pepitone at the top (Horace, Jerry, Bobby and Joe, respectively) — Stottlemyre, a right-handed starting pitcher, was one of the few sure bets.
Known as “Stot” on the back page of the New York Daily News (which my dad invariably brought home from his job at the tobacco warehouse), he went 164-139 with a 2.97 ERA over 11 years, despite pitching for teams that finished above .500 just five times. He was brought up in 1964, dueled heroically with Bob Gibson in a losing World Series against the Cardinals, and was done by 1974, two years before the Yanks made their next trip to the Series.
Guy won 20 three times, lost 20 once and made five All-Star teams. And as it said each year on his bio page in the Yankees Yearbook — the same publication that informed me that Bill Robinson hit “a strong .240” in 1968 — Stottlemyre once went 5-for-5 in a game, and had an inside-the-park grand slam in another.
If I had to guess, I would say he represented something more than a great player. I would say he represented permanence. My mom died when I was in fourth grade, and I lost my dad to some degree as well, to a stepmother who was — let’s cut to the chase — an asshole. Long story short, I wound up at Milton Hershey School, which according to the brochure was (and is) nestled in the rolling hills of Central Pennsylvania.
I’m sure I had trust issues, but I always felt like I could trust Stottlemyre. And sure enough, he kept chugging along. I can remember listening for the baseball scores on the radio as I did morning chores, just to see how he might have fared. I can remember scanning the boxscores, and reading about how he earned his 20th victory in 1969 on a throwing error by Brooks Robinson, of all people.
Permanence? Goodness, yes. Stottlemyre pitched over 250 innings nine straight years, and completed 152 of his 356 career starts. (That includes a ridiculous 24 complete games in that ’69 season.) As evidence of how much the game has changed, consider that the late Roy Halladay, known for his durability, worked over 250 innings just twice in his 16-year career, and completed 67 of his 390 starts.
But Stottlemyre always answered the bell. Did so for me, too.
Can’t thank him enough.
RIP.