The Things Worth Knowing
Kelly Dwyer on Mike Laga, foul balls, and knowing things that are worth knowing
By Kelly Dwyer
I can clearly recall my dad coming in from the cold, clutching a rolled Sun-Times.
Chicago Sun-Times. My family is from Chicago but we are St. Louis Cardinal fans. It is strange, I acknowledge it, everyone here including me will have to get over that, none of it is important.
I’ll answer one question about it, then we’re over it.
No, not the NFL team.
Not a bad question.
Anyway, I can clearly recall my dad, coming in from the cold, clutching a rolled Sun-Times. Jack Clark signed with the Yankees, dad noticed it while picking up the paper from the end of the driveway, my father’s trauma reaching its “anger” stage somewhere past the garage door but ahead of the garage’s refrigerator.
I was seven, slurping cereal before school. The rising sun peeked over some leftover snow to fry, dad faked a limp around the kitchen.
It was his Jack Clark impression, the dragged leg, and I was delighted. We hadn’t seen the Cardinals slugger since summer, his injured ankles infamously absent from our TV’s den not only during ABC’s national broadcast of October’s postseason, but WGN’s heavy slate of Cardinal series stretching out another sad Chicago Cubs September.
Amid September’s first row with the Cubs, in Clark’s spot at first base, not panning out, was Mike Laga. Or, as I identified him, a baseball card I had.
That, alone, differentiated him from Lindeman. Jim Lindeman, Clark’s main replacement, was a baseball card I didn’t have. Jim Lindeman was all over ABC in the playoffs, when an injury-wracked Cardinal team with no business competing in an MLB postseason bracket (as Dorrel Norman Elvert "Whitey" Herzog himself noted several times on record) somehow played the most playoff games possible in 1987.
It was Lindeman, not Laga, whom my father mentioned in the kitchen, attempting to cope. A few years later I’d strike the same defensive pose, boarding a bus to eighth grade in the waning warm of early October, cheerily slotting Toni Kukoc into the Chicago Bulls lineup which Michael Jordan abandoned the evening before.
Among that haze, between first and second and seventh grade, we’d be told another thing about Mike Laga. Or, more specifically, we’d be told something about baseball. The sport, the ball. Stadiums. Bats.
At some point it was passed along that Mike Laga hit a baseball out of the stadium. Hit it out of the stadium, but, as a foul ball.
Like, the other way. Backward, and about a billion feet in the air.
So, not only did Mike Laga do that, but baseball players can do that. We know that now, because of Mike Laga.
Kids need to know these things. They’re the ones filling up the rearest seats in the building, sometimes with parents on a budget, sometimes with a little league team in matching shirts. Either way, we’re the ones who need to think a souvenir is coming. Maybe not enough to drag a glove to things, but enough to keep an eye on the ball.
This is a sport where boundaries are finite, but every team gets to pick where to put the wall to hit home runs over. Tell the kids Mike Laga knocks the ball out of every part of the bowl and they’ll want to show up early, no matter where their seats are.
I’m not sure of the Gateway Arch’s specific dimensions, but I am certain I watched Ramon Martinez blank the Cardinals in Busch Memorial Stadium seats some two-to-three hundred feet above the Arch’s top arc. Tourists looked up at me through the clouds from the windows. I saw their faces. One time at a bar in Ohio we won tickets from the bar’s claw machine to basically the same stadium in a different city (Cincinnati), they were stapled to a teddy bear. This was a night game and I think those seats were above the lights.
Laga’s foul ball didn’t skip dimensions, landing on display in Mike Shannon’s restaurant. Which is better than the Baseball Hall of Fame, because any time you order a beer at the Baseball Hall of Fame they look at you funny.
Either way, look out for lefties with late swings.
Heroism established, the Laga candidacy didn’t last past the ‘88 primaries. Soon enough, word hit of “Bob Horner negotiations.”
Now we’re learning all sorts of stuff. First, “Bob Horner,” people can be named this. Good work, people. Secondly, not only is there baseball in Japan, but dudes can just go there, anytime.
Horner left the Atlanta Braves and joined the Yukult Swallows, probably, due to MLB collusion. Horner left the Swallows and joined the Cardinals, and I can’t prove this, but possibly because he learned the Japanese word for “perm” and realized he hadn’t been listening to compliments this whole time.
None of these fellas prevailed. Horner didn’t last the year. In spring training Laga broke his collarbone and separated his shoulder; the front office asked Laga to skip all but a week of his rehab and press into service after Horner’s back gave out. Mike was assured by the Cardinals he’d be characterized by the club as a “defensive replacement,” on account of Laga’s one working arm.
Laga batted .130 in 1988, hitting one homer in 100 at bats, a sharp decline from his (stout) career rate of 3.6 homers per 100, the MLB average is 2.2. Lindeman, ineffective and injured, batted 46 times. I recall thinking John Morris could work first base because “John Morris,” this is a first baseman’s name. Whitey didn’t read it that way, Morris only pawed the outfield.
Later in the summer the Cards acquired Pedro Guerrero — now, that’s a limp — to man first. It worked. Crumbling southern quadrants were probably a prerequisite to play the position, athletes needed a few nerves burned outta action to capably tread Astroturf, the blacktop beneath.
The Cardinals released Laga late in 1988. In 47 further MLB at bats with San Francisco, Laga launched three home runs. Outstanding percentages. Later, he played pro ball in Japan, which, as we now know, is apparently a thing you can do.
Kelly Dwyer is a longtime NBA sportswriter who recently began wasting small amounts of money on baseball cards again. His NBA newsletter is called The Second Arrangement and can be found at tsa.substack.com
sources: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/mike-laga/ , https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/STL/1988.shtml