Quote:
Originally Posted by Amazin69
Here's Leon at Cardinals camp in 1977, after the December trade that sent him and Brock Pemberton to the Cards for Ed Kurpiel. And a haircut.
Not a long trip, as the Mets and Cards were still sharing the same spring training complex back then, IIRC. But something messed up his game; neither Leon nor Pemberton ever got back to the Show, and Kurpiel never got there at all.
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Leon failed to impress the Redbirds in '77 because he was playing through hamstring injuries. He "sat out" the '78 season because of "family obligations". In 1979, he signed on with the Miami Amigos of the short-lived Inter-American League. His manager, there, was Davey Johnson and Leon was having quite the season, batting .352 (second in the league), when the league folded. He played with Omaha in 1980 and would have been welcomed back but, by that time, he figured he wasn't getting back to The Show and thought it better to hang it up than to just hang on.
"I got home on a Sunday," Leon remembered. "On Monday, my wife told me 'Get a job!' Federal Express hired me and I was there 28 years until I retired."
I'm a lifelong Mets fan dating back to '62. While other Mets fans may choose Seaver or Cleon or Kranepool or even Marv Throneberry, my favorite Mets of all-time have always been Stork Theodore and Leon Brown. They brought a special kind of enthusiasm to the game--especially Leon who came up in the midst of that moribund '76 season. That's why I was so excited to see him included in the latest TV release. The available pictures of Leon before these have been pretty substandard (and, of course, he never got a card from Topps).
Since 1983, Leon has been volunteering and coaching kids on the fundamentals of baseball in Arizona. He's always cheerful and upbeat and he loves and knows the game.
I was thinking, recently, about Topps Archives--one of their annual products that features past and current players on classic designs. They've got the pictures. Would it really kill them to feature some former players who never got a card in the set? Yes, I know that "customs" abound (I make 'em, too), but wouldn't it be extra cool to pull a '76 Leon Brown or a '69 Seattle Pilots Billy Williams from an actual Topps product? I think it would breathe a lot of excitement into that product. Just sayin'. Make it an insert if you don't want to dilute the main set. Lord knows, they've got hundreds of other useless inserts.
We now return you to the regular business of OOTP.