[Terry D]

Bernie Carbo is a familiar figure to baseball fans over a certain age, and especially to fans of the Reds and the Red Sox. He was a very good player with a lifetime OPS of I think .819. He had an outstanding rookie year in 1970 as an early member of the Cincinnati's Big Red Machine. Carbo was of course most famous for his great performance for the Sox in the 1975 World Series against the Reds, his old team. Good though he was, Bernie was often traded because he was a) a flake, and b) an alcoholic. The Sox dumped him finally because they were fed up both with his drinking and with his participation in the Buffalo Heads cabal against manager Don Zimmer. Bernie continued to play well for a couple of seasons after leaving Boston but he hit the wall with the Cardinals early in 1980, earning his release in May after a miserable 2-for-14 to start the year. After several months out of baseball Carbo got his final shot with the Pirates, joining the Stargell-Tanner Family on September 1st. Bernie made his brief and final comeback a happy memory by going 2 for 6 (.333). Carbo struggled with addiction for years after hanging up his spikes but he finally got sober and converted to Christianity. Now he is an evangelist with a special mission to his fellow addicts, and his story has become a happy one again. The only image of Bernie with Pittsburgh I've ever seen was a small and pretty poor newspaper shot which was posted here many moons ago. It turns out this photo was taken to accompany an AP story about Carbo which appeared in the papers on Sept 11th and 12th 1980. I have found some better versions thereof, and here they are.

Oh, yes, one more note. My favorite comic strip, Jaime Hernandez' "Locas" series in Love and Rockets, has a character named Bernie Carbo in it-- an international adventurer who is the former lover of wrestling queen Rena Titanon. I hope the real Bernie would approve.