Today on the blog, some fun revisiting a 10-year-old
blog post, my 1971 "Nicknames of the 1970s" card for Jim "Mudcat"
Grant, sporting the absolutely fantastic mutton chops that were making
their way back in fashion, and giving us some glorious images of players
breaking away from the humdrum "clean-cut" image we became accustomed
to over the decades:
Just a great "1970s vibe" of an image if there ever was one!
Bad-assery
by one of the early members of the "Black Aces", a group named by Grant
himself celebrating the African-American pitchers who reached 20-wins
in a season during their Major League career.
Here's the original write-up for the post:
"Mudcat" was coming to the end of his career by 1971, pitching for
the Pirates before moving on to the Oakland A's for the last 15 games of
a 14-year career.
Easily his best season was 1965 for the pennant winning Minnesota
Twins, going 21-7 with a 3.30 earned run average, 142 K's and a league
leading six shutouts.
Seems the way he got his now famous nickname was as follows:
"Beginning in
1958, he pitched for Cleveland through part of
1964, with a 15-9 year in
1961. He was the roommate of his boyhood idol
Larry Doby when he first came to Cleveland, and Doby dubbed him
"Mudcat", saying that he was "ugly as a Mississippi mudcat". The
nickname stuck."
Quite an anecdote!
All in all, Grant retired with a career record of 145-119, with a
3.63 E.R.A., 18 shutouts, 53 saves and 1267 strikeouts over 571
appearances, 293 of which were starts.
And dig those crazy side-burns!!!
