(Sorry, no nickname. This is becoming more and more of a problem as the players get younger.)
Robert James Monday (how do you get Rick from that? You get Rick from Richard; you get Bob from Robert) turns 65 today. A solid outfielder for the Athletics (he was the number one overall pick in the 1965 draft), Cubs, and Dodgers, Monday might be best known for one of the top moments in Major League history that didn’t involved a regulation play on the field.
I love his quote towards the end of the video, regarding what people will remember him for.
Monday also hit a famous post-season homer against the Expos in 1981, knocking them out of their only playoff appearance. He lent his name to the Dodgers’ volume of Sports Publishing Inc.’s series of team anecdotes with Rick Monday’s Tales from the Dodger Dugout (Tales)
Johnstone also turns 65 today. He and Monday were Dodger teammates in 1982.
Johnstone played for eight teams during his 20-year career and published three books. For sabermetricians, that’s a 1.5 BPS (books per season), which is pretty good for a position player who had just one year of more than 130 games.
Known as one of the all-time flakes in the game, Johnstone’s books were mostly funny story about weird happenings, including:
- Over the Edge
- Temporary Insanity
- Some of My Best Friends Are Crazy: Baseball’s Favorite Lunatic Goes in Search of His Peers
is available on Amazon.com,
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Rob Gardner, who played for both the Mets and the Yankees, plus a few other teams, from 1965-1973, is actually named Richard Frank Gardner. I’ve seen his name listed as Richard Frank Gardner, Jr., although it doesn’t appear that way on base…ball-reference.com. He was born in December 1944, and I read once that his father was killed in WWII before he was born. So, I wondered if the plan had been to name him Robert and call him Rob, but after his father’s untimely passing, his mother decided to name him for his father but to still call him Rob.See More
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