The Old Brawl Game

Bill James on Bill Madlock and Rennie Stennett in 1980

The Old Brawl Game

From The San Francisco Examiner, June 27, 1979, page 53

Bill Madlock had a bad week. Actually, you could call it a bad month.

1979 wasn’t a great year for him. It started off poorly, when a Sporting News columnist (Dick Young) accused him of sabotaging the Giants’ efforts to sign Rod Carew during the offseason.

Madlock limped into the summer, hitting below his usual weight. He wound up injured for part of June, and was limited for a while to pinch hitting duties.

From The San Francisco Examiner, June 9, 1979, page 32

However, Madlock’s lack of appearances in the starting lineup were apparently also caused by some kind of run-in he had with team management:

From The San Francisco Examiner, June 19, 1979, page 41

Madlock’s SABR biography also reports that his grandmother passed away somewhere around this time. He was understandably in a pretty bad mood.

And things kind of exploded on June 26.

From The San Francisco Examiner, June 27, 1979, page 53

Madlock was apparently going to miss the games on June 29 and June 30 anyway:

From The San Francisco Examiner, June 27, 1979, page 55

And, as fate would have it, the already injured Madlock wound up knocking himself out of the game on June 27 because of the fight:

From The San Francisco Examiner, June 28, 1979, page 71

Now, I should probably slow down a little bit here.

Madlock was 28 years old in 1979. He had just come off a string of excellent seasons, first with the hapless Cubs and then with the Giants in a tough park for hitters:

Despite his disgruntled antics and injury proneness, it was naturally a surprise when the Giants suddenly traded him:

From The San Francisco Examiner, June 28, 1979, page 69

Now, I’m too young to remember what the late 1970s were like in baseball. However, based on what I’ve seen in these old newspapers, it seems that odd owner antics and sudden trades were the rule, not the exception.

This one, however, is pretty wild in retrospect. I mean — you trade a guy while he’s attending his grandmother’s funeral?

Madlock seems to have taken it well:

From The San Francisco Examiner, June 29, 1979, page 53

By the time 1980 rolled around, the Giants wound up with Rennie Stennett at second base. And Bill James noted in early 1980 the irony behind it all:

From This Time Let’s Not Eat The Bones page 69

What James neglected to mention, of course, is that Madlock didn’t have to be traded. There was probably something or other that the Giants could have done to settle him down.

For one thing, they could have let him play third base again. Bill was shifted to second base in 1978 when Darrell Evans moved from left field to third. I suppose this was in order to get Terry Whitfield in the lineup — which, of course, is ridiculous when you think about it. You make one of your star players get really upset in order to make room for a career .281 hitter in the outfield.

Stennett, of course, was an awful offensive player who was near the end of his career:

There’s more to the story, of course. Whitfield famously went to Japan for 3 seasons after the 1980 season ended. Jack Clark wound up being the only big name from the excellent 1978 Giants team to stick around — and even he left as soon as he could find greener pastures.

There must have been some crazy stuff going on in San Francisco in the late 1970s. The 1978 Giants look like a can’t miss sure fire team on paper, filled with young stars and good pitching — a 24 year old Bob Knepper, a 28 year old Vida Blue who still had his fastball, and so on. But players deserted that sinking ship like it was the Titanic.