Your Random Late 80's, Early 90's Baseball Player of the Day: Mickey Tettleton!

Mickey Tettleton was probably best known for his batting stance - some kind of weird upright-standing stance that only broke when he went to swing.


Now, don't get me wrong, I think this makes him pretty cool. That, and the eye-black. Really has a dead-ball era style to it.


However, this is no story of praise. No, this is the story of Tettleton's life - underachievement for the sake of novelty.

Mickey Tettleton had a great eye. Between 1990 and 1995, he walked 642 times. In the strike-shortened 1994 season, Tet pulled a .419 OBP out of a .248 batting average, because of his patience.

Tettleton could also hit for power. He homered 30 times in a season 4 times in his career. If you look at the percentage of his hits that went for extra bases, as a portion of his total hits, the proportion is rather staggering. Tettleton could have been a great player if...

Well, if he had learned a normal fucking batting stance. Now, I can't say I've done a lot of analysis on Tet's swing, but if you have that good an eye, and you can hit the ball that well, my only explanation for why you hit .241 on your career, while striking out every 4th time you go to the plate, is that you're getting too much head movement, and too much body movement. If you've played baseball, you know the first thing that goes on guys who are slumping is the ability to keep their head in one place through their whole swing. Plus, if he cocked as much as I think he did from that weird-ass stance of his, he probably also had issues getting around on hard throwers.

That aside, Tet had two interesting practices/superstitions/whatever. The first involved the greatest fucking cereal on earth, Froot Loops. Now, everyone knows that Froot Loops have been the source of many great people's powers: Robin Hood, John F. Kennedy (Jr.), Suge Knight, Senator Arlen Spector, and most famously, Veruca Salt front-lady Louise Post. However, none of the aforementioned superheroes (either in the literal or figurative terms) actually admitted it. Tettleton, on the other hand, wore the source of his power on his sleeve. Or in his hat, as shown in the picture to the right.

Tettleton was so empowered by the little fruit (froot)-flavored, sugar-covered corn/oat/wheat hoops that www.baseballprospectus.com actually underwent the task of adjusting his stats to a world where Froot Loops did not exist. While the .047 batting average they projected may be a bit pessimistic, it nonetheless shows that Froot Loops really did give him a boost. If only JFK, Jr. had eaten his Froot Loops on the fateful night of July 19, 1999 he would have remembered that the top of the airplane faces up. (Lack of Froot Loops as an option for room service in his penthouse suite at the Plaza Hotel was offered as a possible explanation for anyone could fail the bar 3 times).

However, the whole Froot Loops thing isn't even the most unusual part of the Tet legacy. Mickey Tettleton, according to Wikipedia (which is, as we know, edited by the most serious people on earth, so you know this has to be true), used to carry monkey AND/OR rabbit "balls" in his back pocket for good luck.

Well, I have no idea what the fuck he could be talking about except animal testicles. Although it makes you wonder - I would think that a monkey would have bigger nuts than a rabbit. Maybe I'm wrong, but if you put them side by side, I would just say that monkey balls > rabbit balls. Now, I will admit - there is such thing in certain eastern cuisine as a "monkey ball" which is basically a meatball made with bunches of different kinds of meats. However, I am unable to find any similar type of "rabbit ball" which would explain that instead of animal testicles, Tet only had ground up spheres of cooked (or uncooked?) mystery meat in his back pocket.

I'm really not sure which is weirder.

So, the story we can all learn from Tet is this: with a decent batting stance + Froot Loops + monkey balls = the next Yogi Berra. Without either Froot Loops or Ape Nuts = Chris Bando.

Without further ado:
The Good: Loved the Loops, could hit for solid power from both sides, the good kind of crazy we expect in our catchers (without being the creepy Darren Daulton kind of crazy), played with the most awesomely mediocre set of third basemen ever: Carney Lansford, Craig Worthington, Travis Fryman and Dean Palmer. Awesome.

The Bad: Seriously, shorten your swing and you're golden...guess it's about 15 years too late, huh? Even without the Loops, Post could have written "Volcano Girls".