Remembering a baseball Rob

January 3, 2024

As someone who’s gone through life first as “Robbie” (up to about age nine or so) and then as “Rob” I keep an eye out for others with the same first name as I have. Over the past century, the only more popular male name in this country has been “James.” With Jimmy Buffett, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix among that number, I suppose I can’t complain too much about it.

The first major leaguer named Rob, curiously enough, was not even named Robert, for some strange reason. But until he appeared during the 1965 season, hundreds of “Bobs” and “Bobbys” had graced major league rosters. There was Bob Gibson and Bob Feller and Bob Uecker; there was Bobby Richardson and Bobby Doerr and (later on) Bobby Bonds and Bobby Murcer. But somehow, there was nobody named “Rob” until just a few years before I was born. And today, even the commissioner of baseball is named Rob (even if the signature that adorns all MLB balls is technically “Robert.”)

Rob Picciolo, who was drafted for the fourth and final time out of Pepperdine University in 1975, played the game professionally for ten years, with all but a season and a half for one of the California-based teams. He was born in Santa Monica, after all, and anyone who’s ever encountered the Pepperdine campus in Malibu knows how lovely that place is.

The first thing to notice on Picciolo’s card from the 1978 Topps set is the spelling of his last name. It looks, at first glance, to be “Piccolo” like the musical instrument sometimes referred to as a “baby flute.” I’m sure that lots of people who didn’t give his name a close read made that mistake. I’m sure I probably did this too. But there’s an extra “i” in the middle of his name, splayed across the back of his yellow jersey, that changes the pronunciation entirely. The name is pronounced “PEACHY-ollo” and he was known throughout the game as “Peach.” That he was highly-regarded, by teammates and opponents alike, likely played some part in this, as well.

The second and final card of his from the 70s is pretty much the opposite of the first one. There’s no action pose, just a player looking past the camera and off into the distance. In many Topps cards, which we’ll run into as this project unfolds, the A’s cap (and perhaps the yellow shirt he is wearing) would be airbrushed by an artist to reflect a team which he had never played for before. But in Picciolo’s case, he remained with Oakland through the 1981 players’ strike and into the 1982 season, when he was traded to Milwaukee for a brief period of non-Californianess. He retired as a player after the 1985 season, at the age of 32.

But Rob Picciolo wasn’t done with baseball yet. Quite to the contrary. He spent the next quarter of a century as a coach, mostly in the San Diego Padres system. By all accounts he loved baseball, and was able to remain in the game until 2013.

Picciolo died suddenly of a heart attack on January 3, 2018, at the age of 64. Of all the many tributes made to him, perhaps the most touching was by San Diego’s radio announcer, who said “if you get to heaven and Rob Picciolo isn’t there, you’re NOT in heaven.” May all of us be remembered so fondly when we’re gone.

Picciolo is kept in my Dead Players box with the Order of Lyman Bostock, or OLB for short. He joins the two players I profiled on New Years Day in this regard, since he died before reaching his 70th birthday. While many of the players he competed against in the late 1970s are still with us on this earth, it’s unfortunate that not everyone can be so lucky.

And in the “Happy Birthday” category, because I’m doing that here too, January 3rd is the 75th birthday of Gary Lavelle, a two-time All-Star who retired from the game in 1987,

and it’s also the 74th birthday of Jim Dwyer, who not only won a World Series ring with Baltimore in 1983, but he also hit a home run in his first World Series at bat. Not too shabby!

Until tomorrow….