What’s in a name? Shakespeare asked this question in Act II, scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet, with the idea being that just because something has a name, it doesn’t have any bearing on what it really is. After all, a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.
This concept applies to Billy Champion in two distinct ways. The first is that, although he played for eight seasons in the majors, he never played on a winning team. His career, which lasted from 1969-1976, was the beginning of divisional play. At the end of each season, the winner of the Eastern and Western divisions of the both leagues met in the “playoffs” to determine who would then advance to the World Series. It was possible to be a division Champion, a League Champion, and a World Series champion, all in the same season. But alas, Billy Champion never got a whiff of any of these during his career.
But the second way this applies is one that I completely missed back in my youth. Champion spent the first four years of his career with the Philadelphia Phillies, and was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers before the 1973 season. Upon careful inspection, it appears that the cap Champion is wearing in the card above more closely resembles a hat that the Michigan Wolverines might wear. That’s because an artist at Topps had to cover up the red Phillies hat that Champion had previously sported, and replace it with something closer to what he would be wearing with the Brewers, instead. It was an early version of photoshop, really, but it was done via airbrushing. This won’t be the last time we’ll see it here, either.
Billy Champion was released by the Brewers in the middle of the 1976 season, and spent the 1977 season with the Phillies’ AAA affiliate in Oklahoma City before leaving the game for good at age 29. He passed away on January 7, 2017 at the age of 69.
January 7th is also the 74th birthday of Ross Grimsley, a second-generation major leaguer who was known as “Scuz” because of his grooming habits and his refusal to shower during winning streaks.
It’s also the 72nd birthday of Doug Capilla, a Hawaiian-born player who pitched for the Cardinals, Mets and Cubs during his six seasons in the majors. He was also fortunate enough to have pitched during the Cubs’ blue pinstripes era.
Tomorrow will mark the first day of the year without any player deaths (or births) to report, but I’ll have something else here, instead. Until then….