Dave Rozema--1978
We tend to think of our Cardboard
Gods as intelligent human beings,
who when faced with adversity, can
calculate a way to maneuver out of
trouble. Like MacGyver escaping
certain death using a paper clip,
chop sticks and a cat hairball; we
assume that Dave Rozema was a
smart guy who craftily used his
fastball-change up combination to
fashion a 60-53, 3.47 record during
his 10-year major league career.
Yet research on Tiger right-hander
leads us to believe that maybe it was
just plain dumb luck. Reading a piece
by Peter Gammons in The Sporting
News from Jan. 10, 1983; we learn
that Rozema was anything but a
rocket scientist.
The piece notes that prior to entering
his free-agent year, the Tiger hurler
required 11 stitches in his buttocks,
when he fell off a chair and landed
on a medicine bottle stashed in his
back pocket. Also that he endured a
season-ending knee injury in 1982
with an aborted karate kick in an on-
field mêlée. Then while on the DL, he
once required Coast Guard
assistance when he got lost in the
middle of Lake Michigan in his boat.
Teammate and brother-in-law, Kirk
Gibson said of Rozema in TSN piece:
“He has the kind of mind that takes
an hour and half to watch ‘Sixty
Minutes.”
It just makes us wonder...
(11/14/09)
Gods as intelligent human beings,
who when faced with adversity, can
calculate a way to maneuver out of
trouble. Like MacGyver escaping
certain death using a paper clip,
chop sticks and a cat hairball; we
assume that Dave Rozema was a
smart guy who craftily used his
fastball-change up combination to
fashion a 60-53, 3.47 record during
his 10-year major league career.
Yet research on Tiger right-hander
leads us to believe that maybe it was
just plain dumb luck. Reading a piece
by Peter Gammons in The Sporting
News from Jan. 10, 1983; we learn
that Rozema was anything but a
rocket scientist.
The piece notes that prior to entering
his free-agent year, the Tiger hurler
required 11 stitches in his buttocks,
when he fell off a chair and landed
on a medicine bottle stashed in his
back pocket. Also that he endured a
season-ending knee injury in 1982
with an aborted karate kick in an on-
field mêlée. Then while on the DL, he
once required Coast Guard
assistance when he got lost in the
middle of Lake Michigan in his boat.
Teammate and brother-in-law, Kirk
Gibson said of Rozema in TSN piece:
“He has the kind of mind that takes
an hour and half to watch ‘Sixty
Minutes.”
It just makes us wonder...
(11/14/09)
