645
08-19-2004, 11:20 PM
<b><font size=4>Geek Love: Cecil Cooper</font></b>
I get this a lot.
"What's your favorite team?"
"Milwaukee Brewers."
"Oh, you're from Wisconsin?"
"No. Alaska."
"Uhhhh well, your family must be from Wisconsin."
"No. Oregon originally. They moved to Alaska in 1952."
"Well then, how exactly did that happen?"
"Two Words: Cecil Cooper."
And that's it. Cecil Cooper with an assist to Vin Scully.
I became a baseball fan for life with the 1979 World Series. For some reason, watching Willie Stargell launch moon shots into the night against the heavily favored, clean cut white-boy goodness of the marketing department's dream team, Jim Palmer and the Baltimore Orioles, appealed to a 9 year old kid sitting too close to the TV for his own good in Anchorage. Therefore it could be perfectly reasonable to assume I would become a Pirates fan. Didn't happen.
No, the "We are Family" Buccos was just a taste, though I would love Pops Stargell 'till the day he died. It wasn't until the next summer when sitting alone in the basement, pretending to be cleaning, and again far too close to the Radiation King , I would hear the words that would change my life coming through the speaker.
"They're not booing they're chanting Coop!" Vin Scully don't lie. And there on the screen was my first geek love. The living approximation of everything every Mussolini like Little League coach had told me not to do. Cecil Cooper. Bent over, bat waggling back and forth, front foot a tappin'. He then proceeded to launch one into the right field stands at County against the Yankees. (which was why the Crew was on the NBC Game of the Week anyway)
So there it began. I scoured the morning papers for the Brewers box score for more info on Coop's magical season. I began to branch out of Coop's stats. "Ogilvy had another good game too.", "Why is Molitor always hurt?", "Why can't Moose Haas pitch every day?", "Why does Sal Bando play so freakin' much?" Being as I as the only Sports Fan in my family, the dog would usually tilt his head a bit and stare back at me without any decent answers and wondering when we were going to go outside and ride down to the creek to play with a stick.
The Brewers were on three more times on the Game of the Week playing Baltimore, New York and the hated Kansas City Royals. For as much as Coop was having a great season, all anybody could talk about was stupid George Brett. Do everything by the book George Brett. Boring as Wonder Bread George Brett. MVP lock George Brett. At least Vin Scully was with me every time Coop came up. "Cooper is one of the most feared hitters in the league, and one of the most underappreciated." I was appreciating plenty Vin. Even if it was by tape delay.
Still to this day, I think Coop was robbed in the MVP vote. I know the numbers. Brett hit .390 with only 1 fewer HR and 4 fewer RBI in 46 fewer games and 173 fewer AB. And the Royals went to the Playoffs. But explain that to a 10 year old in love. It was a conspiracy. Probably propagated by those white bread folks I was hearing so much about on The Jeffersons.
I not only took my Coop love to heart, but to the plate also. In Little League my swing went through a drastic change. "Stop moving your bat so much! Stand up!" Stalin would scream at me at the top of his lungs from the third base coaching box. No way. That was the way Brett hit. I was a Cooper guy. I walked a lot that year. Slapped a lot of singles and doubles the other way.
The year wound down and the Playoffs were filled with Yankees, Royals, Phillies and Astros. To show you how boring that was to me, I actually had to just look up that the Phillies beat the Royals in the World Series that year in six games. Yawn. Brett vs. Schmidt. Wonder Bread vs. Whole Wheat.
The next season finally rolled around and the Seahawks going 4-12 did nothing to staunch my burgeoning Cooper love. Nor did the strike. It just gave me more free time to be a kid. The dog was plenty happy. Coop still put up great numbers and the Brewers actually made the post-season only to lose the "Qualifying" series to the stupid Yankees, whom I didn't understand at the time, didn't even deserve to be there. Don't get my friend, a steadfast Reds supporter, started about the 1981 Cincinnati squad, who's record was 4 games better than any other NL team and didn't make the playoffs, unless you have an hour or so to kill.
My love now fully ensconced, the team's season was snuffed out by the hated Yankees and motor-mouthed Reggie Jackson. "Wait 'till next year" I shook my fist at the screen, finally giving in to my two sisters' ceaseless demands that the TV be switched to Little House on the Prairie. Nellie Olsen reminded me of Steve Garvey of the eventual champion Los Angeles Dodgers. Boooorrrriiiinnngg.
Then in any Brewer fan's heart, Next Year finally arrived.
The Seahawks had gone 6-10 and shown actual signs of being a football team so my off season hadn't been so terrible. The Brewers opened up lackadaisically with a 22-24 record the first two months. What? Could it be? Could Next Year suck? The Brewers had never regressed since I had gave them my undying attention. Then came Harvey. And the wins. 20-7 in June. I scoured the TV guide for Brewer sightings on Saturdays. And there they came. Coop was in the middle of one of the greatest offenses this side of the '27 Yankees and von Rundstedt marching into Belgium and France. Four players with 100 RBI led by Cooper's 121, Simmons finished with 97, 3 rib eyes short of the record of five players over 100. Go ahead, let Yount steal the MVP this time, at least he was a Brewer, I knew at the heart of it was Cecil Cooper big wagglin' bat.
All that stood in the way was Reggie Jackson's California Angels. He talked enough to be French.
Tommy John kept the Brewers bats quiet in the first game. Worrisome, but being down was more like home anyway. Game 2, another loss. Now announcers were saying it was over that it couldn't be done, just because few teams had. I was unmoved. Cooper had yet to be heard from. Game 3, Brewers win! Molitor homers and the Crew holds the lead. I told you. Still no Cooper sightings though. Hmmm?. Game 4 the Brewers come to life and put a 9 spot on the board, again without Cooper having anything more than a pair of doubles and 2 RBI for the series so far. I was happy, but yet still unsatisfied. How could they win without Cecil?
Then came Game 5. Brewers down 3-2 in the 7 th inning and the bases loaded with two outs when Cooper heads to the plate. He's hitting .105 for the series. The crowd shots showed fans at County worried. I just sat there crowing, two feet in front of the tube. "He's so due." I proclaim to my mother sitting on the couch reading a book. The dogs looks up at me in agreement. He's been sold at least.
And then came the greatest little bloop single the other way that ever was. It made me so euphoric that it clouds my memory. Recently I remembered it as a home run. Perhaps dancing like a fool in the presence of that much radiation has affected my memory centers, or I get it confused with Dave Henderson's shot off Donnie Moore in 1986. But what I do remember at that exact moment was the feeling of pure and utter bliss. Cecil Cooper had come through . Final: Brewers 4, Angels 3.
Here's what he had to say about it.
"I guess God meant it to be like that," Cooper said. "A fastball away, and I hit it to left field. That's what I did as a player, hit the ball the other way."
"It was by far the greatest thing I've ever been able to accomplish in the game," Cooper said. "Playing in maybe the greatest World Series ever in 1975 (as a member of the Boston Red Sox) and being on a few all-star teams was great, but that was probably the biggest moment in my life."
Mine too Coop, mine too.
Imagine Reggie Jackson waxing poetic like that over a dink single.
The World Series came and I had already assumed that the Brewers had won it. Then I took a close look at the Cardinals. They weren't boring. They played defense. You couldn't get more anti-George Brett than Ozzie Smith. Uh-oh. As they said in The Empire Strikes Back , "I have a bad feeling about this." Game 1 came up and we rolled them. 10-0. I was probably the only Brewer fan in America to be worried by that. "We're up? How am I supposed to feel?" worse, despite the 10 spot, Cooper had gone 0-4. I was turning into a Red Sox fan.
Game 2, Coop goes 3-5 and we lose ? On a bases loaded walk? What was that? I still have an ache in my stomach.
Game 3, Cooper hits his first HR of the payoffs and we lose 6-2. At least we're down now so I feel better about that but the Brewers have just wasted possible Cooper dramatics. He's just warming up I tell myself. The dog gives me one of those looks. You know one of those, "yeah, you go with that." looks. My sister asks me when I'm going to be done with the TV and I shout back "November!" I still believe.
Game 4, Faith is fully restored. After being down all game, the Crew puts up a 6 spot in the 7 th to take the lead and tie the series. Cooper had a weak RBI infield single and Gorman got the big hit which was nice. Thomas reminded me of my fun cousin Don, a 30 year old guy who came up to Alaska for the summers to work construction and lived in a camper in our large back yard and drank a lot of Old Milwaukee. These were good omens.
Game 5: We win. Cooper had a line drive RBI single and a defensive gem to save a run. I'm worried again. This should have been game 7. This felt like Game 7. Now we were up again, going back to St. Louis. Cecil had heroics. Again I didn't know how to feel with a series lead.
Game 6. So much for the series lead. The Crew gets pounded 13-1. Cooper goes 0-4. I wonder if somebody has told them this isn't a 5 game series. Some feel anticipation, I feel only dread for . . .
Game 7: We lose. I wish here I could sum up how we lose, other than saying Coop went 1-3 with an RBI, but it's a feeling that I have felt so many times now that this first one just is a blur. I have clearer memories of the Seahawks 1985 AFC Championship loss to the Raiders or the Mariners 2001 ALCS game 6 loss the Yankees or the Anchorage boy Trajan Langdon led Duke Blue Devils' loss to Connecticut. But here it's just a blur. A feeling of doom. In fact I have never felt the reverse of that feeling. I didn't get the Packers' joy of the Super Bowl or anything else. No team I have ever invested my heart in has ever won. I turned the TV off and went to bed. No defiant fist shaking. No hating the Cardinals for beating us. Just sadness.
As it turns out, my lack of defiance and "wait 'till next year" fire was smart on my part. I still held hope in 1983, and Cooper still had a great season that year hitting .307 30 HR 126 RBI, but it felt like their heart was as broken as mine and the team finished 5 th . Little did we know at the time, even that was a great year.
Cooper and the team itself then began it's long slow slide into oblivion. And just as the team began it's little burp of winning in 1987, that was the year Cecil Cooper walked away. I didn't even begin to know how to feel. Yount, Molitor and Gantner were still there, Dale Sveum, Rob Deer and Dean Pleasac sure were fun and I had begun my Glenn Braggs crush. But without Cooper there what did it all mean? And as if to hurt me even more, Greg Brock now stood at first. A player that made even Steve Garvey look exciting. I still rooted and cheered, but my heart wasn't completely in it.
I get this a lot.
"What's your favorite team?"
"Milwaukee Brewers."
"Oh, you're from Wisconsin?"
"No. Alaska."
"Uhhhh well, your family must be from Wisconsin."
"No. Oregon originally. They moved to Alaska in 1952."
"Well then, how exactly did that happen?"
"Two Words: Cecil Cooper."
And that's it. Cecil Cooper with an assist to Vin Scully.
I became a baseball fan for life with the 1979 World Series. For some reason, watching Willie Stargell launch moon shots into the night against the heavily favored, clean cut white-boy goodness of the marketing department's dream team, Jim Palmer and the Baltimore Orioles, appealed to a 9 year old kid sitting too close to the TV for his own good in Anchorage. Therefore it could be perfectly reasonable to assume I would become a Pirates fan. Didn't happen.
No, the "We are Family" Buccos was just a taste, though I would love Pops Stargell 'till the day he died. It wasn't until the next summer when sitting alone in the basement, pretending to be cleaning, and again far too close to the Radiation King , I would hear the words that would change my life coming through the speaker.
"They're not booing they're chanting Coop!" Vin Scully don't lie. And there on the screen was my first geek love. The living approximation of everything every Mussolini like Little League coach had told me not to do. Cecil Cooper. Bent over, bat waggling back and forth, front foot a tappin'. He then proceeded to launch one into the right field stands at County against the Yankees. (which was why the Crew was on the NBC Game of the Week anyway)
So there it began. I scoured the morning papers for the Brewers box score for more info on Coop's magical season. I began to branch out of Coop's stats. "Ogilvy had another good game too.", "Why is Molitor always hurt?", "Why can't Moose Haas pitch every day?", "Why does Sal Bando play so freakin' much?" Being as I as the only Sports Fan in my family, the dog would usually tilt his head a bit and stare back at me without any decent answers and wondering when we were going to go outside and ride down to the creek to play with a stick.
The Brewers were on three more times on the Game of the Week playing Baltimore, New York and the hated Kansas City Royals. For as much as Coop was having a great season, all anybody could talk about was stupid George Brett. Do everything by the book George Brett. Boring as Wonder Bread George Brett. MVP lock George Brett. At least Vin Scully was with me every time Coop came up. "Cooper is one of the most feared hitters in the league, and one of the most underappreciated." I was appreciating plenty Vin. Even if it was by tape delay.
Still to this day, I think Coop was robbed in the MVP vote. I know the numbers. Brett hit .390 with only 1 fewer HR and 4 fewer RBI in 46 fewer games and 173 fewer AB. And the Royals went to the Playoffs. But explain that to a 10 year old in love. It was a conspiracy. Probably propagated by those white bread folks I was hearing so much about on The Jeffersons.
I not only took my Coop love to heart, but to the plate also. In Little League my swing went through a drastic change. "Stop moving your bat so much! Stand up!" Stalin would scream at me at the top of his lungs from the third base coaching box. No way. That was the way Brett hit. I was a Cooper guy. I walked a lot that year. Slapped a lot of singles and doubles the other way.
The year wound down and the Playoffs were filled with Yankees, Royals, Phillies and Astros. To show you how boring that was to me, I actually had to just look up that the Phillies beat the Royals in the World Series that year in six games. Yawn. Brett vs. Schmidt. Wonder Bread vs. Whole Wheat.
The next season finally rolled around and the Seahawks going 4-12 did nothing to staunch my burgeoning Cooper love. Nor did the strike. It just gave me more free time to be a kid. The dog was plenty happy. Coop still put up great numbers and the Brewers actually made the post-season only to lose the "Qualifying" series to the stupid Yankees, whom I didn't understand at the time, didn't even deserve to be there. Don't get my friend, a steadfast Reds supporter, started about the 1981 Cincinnati squad, who's record was 4 games better than any other NL team and didn't make the playoffs, unless you have an hour or so to kill.
My love now fully ensconced, the team's season was snuffed out by the hated Yankees and motor-mouthed Reggie Jackson. "Wait 'till next year" I shook my fist at the screen, finally giving in to my two sisters' ceaseless demands that the TV be switched to Little House on the Prairie. Nellie Olsen reminded me of Steve Garvey of the eventual champion Los Angeles Dodgers. Boooorrrriiiinnngg.
Then in any Brewer fan's heart, Next Year finally arrived.
The Seahawks had gone 6-10 and shown actual signs of being a football team so my off season hadn't been so terrible. The Brewers opened up lackadaisically with a 22-24 record the first two months. What? Could it be? Could Next Year suck? The Brewers had never regressed since I had gave them my undying attention. Then came Harvey. And the wins. 20-7 in June. I scoured the TV guide for Brewer sightings on Saturdays. And there they came. Coop was in the middle of one of the greatest offenses this side of the '27 Yankees and von Rundstedt marching into Belgium and France. Four players with 100 RBI led by Cooper's 121, Simmons finished with 97, 3 rib eyes short of the record of five players over 100. Go ahead, let Yount steal the MVP this time, at least he was a Brewer, I knew at the heart of it was Cecil Cooper big wagglin' bat.
All that stood in the way was Reggie Jackson's California Angels. He talked enough to be French.
Tommy John kept the Brewers bats quiet in the first game. Worrisome, but being down was more like home anyway. Game 2, another loss. Now announcers were saying it was over that it couldn't be done, just because few teams had. I was unmoved. Cooper had yet to be heard from. Game 3, Brewers win! Molitor homers and the Crew holds the lead. I told you. Still no Cooper sightings though. Hmmm?. Game 4 the Brewers come to life and put a 9 spot on the board, again without Cooper having anything more than a pair of doubles and 2 RBI for the series so far. I was happy, but yet still unsatisfied. How could they win without Cecil?
Then came Game 5. Brewers down 3-2 in the 7 th inning and the bases loaded with two outs when Cooper heads to the plate. He's hitting .105 for the series. The crowd shots showed fans at County worried. I just sat there crowing, two feet in front of the tube. "He's so due." I proclaim to my mother sitting on the couch reading a book. The dogs looks up at me in agreement. He's been sold at least.
And then came the greatest little bloop single the other way that ever was. It made me so euphoric that it clouds my memory. Recently I remembered it as a home run. Perhaps dancing like a fool in the presence of that much radiation has affected my memory centers, or I get it confused with Dave Henderson's shot off Donnie Moore in 1986. But what I do remember at that exact moment was the feeling of pure and utter bliss. Cecil Cooper had come through . Final: Brewers 4, Angels 3.
Here's what he had to say about it.
"I guess God meant it to be like that," Cooper said. "A fastball away, and I hit it to left field. That's what I did as a player, hit the ball the other way."
"It was by far the greatest thing I've ever been able to accomplish in the game," Cooper said. "Playing in maybe the greatest World Series ever in 1975 (as a member of the Boston Red Sox) and being on a few all-star teams was great, but that was probably the biggest moment in my life."
Mine too Coop, mine too.
Imagine Reggie Jackson waxing poetic like that over a dink single.
The World Series came and I had already assumed that the Brewers had won it. Then I took a close look at the Cardinals. They weren't boring. They played defense. You couldn't get more anti-George Brett than Ozzie Smith. Uh-oh. As they said in The Empire Strikes Back , "I have a bad feeling about this." Game 1 came up and we rolled them. 10-0. I was probably the only Brewer fan in America to be worried by that. "We're up? How am I supposed to feel?" worse, despite the 10 spot, Cooper had gone 0-4. I was turning into a Red Sox fan.
Game 2, Coop goes 3-5 and we lose ? On a bases loaded walk? What was that? I still have an ache in my stomach.
Game 3, Cooper hits his first HR of the payoffs and we lose 6-2. At least we're down now so I feel better about that but the Brewers have just wasted possible Cooper dramatics. He's just warming up I tell myself. The dog gives me one of those looks. You know one of those, "yeah, you go with that." looks. My sister asks me when I'm going to be done with the TV and I shout back "November!" I still believe.
Game 4, Faith is fully restored. After being down all game, the Crew puts up a 6 spot in the 7 th to take the lead and tie the series. Cooper had a weak RBI infield single and Gorman got the big hit which was nice. Thomas reminded me of my fun cousin Don, a 30 year old guy who came up to Alaska for the summers to work construction and lived in a camper in our large back yard and drank a lot of Old Milwaukee. These were good omens.
Game 5: We win. Cooper had a line drive RBI single and a defensive gem to save a run. I'm worried again. This should have been game 7. This felt like Game 7. Now we were up again, going back to St. Louis. Cecil had heroics. Again I didn't know how to feel with a series lead.
Game 6. So much for the series lead. The Crew gets pounded 13-1. Cooper goes 0-4. I wonder if somebody has told them this isn't a 5 game series. Some feel anticipation, I feel only dread for . . .
Game 7: We lose. I wish here I could sum up how we lose, other than saying Coop went 1-3 with an RBI, but it's a feeling that I have felt so many times now that this first one just is a blur. I have clearer memories of the Seahawks 1985 AFC Championship loss to the Raiders or the Mariners 2001 ALCS game 6 loss the Yankees or the Anchorage boy Trajan Langdon led Duke Blue Devils' loss to Connecticut. But here it's just a blur. A feeling of doom. In fact I have never felt the reverse of that feeling. I didn't get the Packers' joy of the Super Bowl or anything else. No team I have ever invested my heart in has ever won. I turned the TV off and went to bed. No defiant fist shaking. No hating the Cardinals for beating us. Just sadness.
As it turns out, my lack of defiance and "wait 'till next year" fire was smart on my part. I still held hope in 1983, and Cooper still had a great season that year hitting .307 30 HR 126 RBI, but it felt like their heart was as broken as mine and the team finished 5 th . Little did we know at the time, even that was a great year.
Cooper and the team itself then began it's long slow slide into oblivion. And just as the team began it's little burp of winning in 1987, that was the year Cecil Cooper walked away. I didn't even begin to know how to feel. Yount, Molitor and Gantner were still there, Dale Sveum, Rob Deer and Dean Pleasac sure were fun and I had begun my Glenn Braggs crush. But without Cooper there what did it all mean? And as if to hurt me even more, Greg Brock now stood at first. A player that made even Steve Garvey look exciting. I still rooted and cheered, but my heart wasn't completely in it.