Originally Posted by
Olympic Fan
I gotta jump in and defend Tommy Tresh.
I understand your distain for Joe Pepitone -- few players have squandered their talent so shamelessly. As I noted earlier in this thread, he was on an early Hall of Fame track, but he threw it away to party and to pout because he didn't like the Yankees straightlaced management. Boo-hoo ...
But Tresh was a different story. He was the son of a former big league catcher (Mike Tresh) and was a tough,. hard-nosed and hard-working player.
In 1962 -- at age 23 -- he was an all-star. He not only won rookie of the year (by a mile), he was No. 12 in the MVP voting,. He hit .283 with 20 HR and 83 RBIs, filling in at SS for most of the season while Kubek was in the Army, then moving to leftfield.
He followed that up with solid seasons in '63 and '64 -- he was the ultimate utility player, filling in a centerfield for the injured Mandle, at short for the banged up Kubek and in left when needed. His averages don't look like much, but remember, that was the era when the pitchers were starting to dominate. He continued to have power with 51 home runs in the two seasons as the Yankees won the pennant each year. He was an all-star for the second time in '63 and finished 11th in the MVP vote.
In 1965 -- the first year of the Yankee collapse, Tresh was the team's best player. He hit .279 with 26 HRs and 74 RBIs -- which again may sound modest, but he was in the top 10 in batting average and HRs (fifth actually in HRs). According to WAR (a stat I'm a little wary of), he was the 10th most valuable player in the AL. He made the all-star game again and was ninth in the MVP vote for a team that finished under .500 He won a gold glove in the outfield (hard for a leftfielder to do in that era, when they usually picked three CFs or maybe a RF with a great arm).
Obviously, no complaints so far -- Tresh was 26 years old and one of the best -- and most-respected -- players in baseball.
What happened next was a tragedy.
In the spring of 1966, Tresh tore up a knee. It might have responded to surgery, but that would have sidelined the Yankees best player for at least half, maybe all of the season. And with the once-great franchise slipping quickly (from 77-85 in 1965, then would drop to 77-89 -- dead last in the AL -- in 1966), management was desperate to keep Tresh in the lineup. They downplayed his injury, rushed him back on the field. Tresh played 151 games and while his average dropped to .233 (again, remember the era) he continued to have power (a career high 27 HRs, ninth in the AL).
But he was crippled and never the same player after playing with his bad knee in '66. His batting declined rapidly and by '69 he was traded to Detroit. He finished up as a spot player there.
The Yankees had a lot of bad actors in the mid- and late 1960s ... but Tommy Tresh wasn't one of them. He deserves better than to be smeared as "Tommy Trash" He's a guy who literally played himself into a cripple to help the team. He'll always been one of my favorite Yankees -- just as I'll always despise the cowardly management types -- Ralph Houk, this means you! -- who encouraged/forced valuable players to destroy themselves by playing with crippling injuries. Tresh in not the only player they threw away in that era -- Jim Bouton was the best young righthander in baseball in 1963-64, but he was done at age 26 after they forced him to pitch with a sore arn in 1965 ... and Roger Maris' case was the worst -- the Yankees actually lied to him about the severity of his wrist injury and smeared him as a malingerer when he tried to stay out of the lineup. It turned out he had bone chips and playing with the wrist led to severed tendons that ended his career as a power hitter.