So... Alright - Histories Highest Five

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Geoff learns the real story about the first high five, and how it went on to stand for so much more than baseball. Sponsored by Children's Miracle Network Go to http://cmnh.co/0kM to sign up for Extra Life today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, today I want to talk about a subject, actually it was going to be, I was going to do a series of vignettes of like little six or seven minute, like interesting nuggets of information that I thought I would string together into like one episode with like three or four of them. However, the first one I dove into turned out to be so, such a bigger story than I had any idea that it gets its own episode. And that story is, if you're familiar with the other podcast I do, or the main podcast I do, I guess I do a few, then you're probably familiar with the first

High Five. If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's cool. You're probably one of most of the people in the world who just assume that the High Five has been around forever, for thousands and maybe millions of years, something that cavemen were probably doing. But that's not the case. The high five was actually, I guess there's no definitive hard proof evidence that it was never done before this moment. But the high five is considered to have been invented in a major league baseball game in 1977. I was alive. I was two years old when the high five was invented. I lived in a world.

I mean, granted, I was a toddler, but I lived in a world before high fives, which is really hard to accept. hard to accept and uh even as i'm telling you this what i think is gonna it's a pretty interesting story uh and i think it's probably gonna surprise you with the twists and the turns that it takes you might think is bullshit and i don't know that i i mean i'm not gonna try to twist your arm i totally get it it seems once again like something that people have probably been doing for as long as they've been doing any other thing right like it Like it's not, wasn't a lot of technology behind this invention. So, but let's get into it. So Dusty Baker, if you're not familiar with him, he's currently the manager of the Houston Astros. They just got eliminated from the playoffs by the Texas Rangers, eliminated from the playoffs by the Texas Rangers, their cross-state rivals.

However, last year, they won the World Series, and Dusty Baker became a World Series-winning manager. He's a dude who is kind of universally loved throughout baseball. He was a hell of a player, hell of a manager, hell of a role model, hell of a stand-up guy. Really, I don't know that there's many people out there that have bad things to say about dusty baker but i think because dusty is so famous and has had such a long storied career in baseball he uh when you hear about the first high five like it's it's actually referenced in pop culture fairly often that dusty baker invented the high five uh however to have a high, you have to have two hands, right? He wasn't high fiving himself.

And I was thinking about that the other day. I was thinking, you know, there's a lot I don't know about this first high five. Like, for instance, what team did Dusty Baker even play for in 1977? And who were they playing against? And was it a big, important game? Were there playoff implications? Was it during the World Series? Was it a home run? Did he score off of a base hit? What was it, right? So I look into it, and right off the bat, Dusty Baker was playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The story is

immediately interesting. It's October 2nd, 1977. The season is almost over. I believe this is the last game of the season. It is, interestingly, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who Dusty Baker's playing for, facing off against the Houston Astros, who Dusty Baker ends up managing and winning a World Series with. And it gets more interesting. This was a very big game for one specific reason, and it wasn't the high five. In 1977, the Dodgers had a pretty brutal lineup of batters. They had four

dudes who were all belting home runs like crazy. There was third baseman Ron Say, who you might have heard of, right fielder Reggie Smith, first baseman Steve Garvey, who is a story unto himself, which we can talk about in a second. And then, of course, left fielder Dusty Baker. They all had great seasons. They also were on pace to do something that had never been done before in the history of baseball.

All four of those dudes were on pace to hit 30 home runs by the end of the season. So four people on the same team that all hit 30 home runs in the same season. If you're not a big baseball fan, it's a pretty big deal. 30 home runs is considered like the all-star milestone. If you hit 30 home runs, you're probably... It used to be a little bit bigger of a deal back in the 80s and the 90s when I was a kid because I think there was just less power overall in the league. But 30 home runs is always... 30 home runs, 30 stolen bases is always kind of a metric for how we judge whether somebody's an all-star or a power hitter, etc., etc.

So in the 100 years or so of baseball at this point, it had never been done that four people on the same team hit 30 home runs in the same season. Well, Ron Say did it. Steve Garvey did it. Reggie Smith did it. And then with about five games left in the season, Dusty Baker had 29 home runs. And he didn't hit a home run in any of those first four games.

Here we are, last game of the season, playing the Astros. Last chance to hit 30 home runs. Stuck at 29. If he does, if he hits 30, they become the first team in history to achieve that honor, which by the way, I looked it up, has been achieved many times since. Check this out. So this was in 1977. It didn't happen again until 1995. So 18 years later, and then this is what's crazy about it. It happens in 1995,

the Colorado Rockies do it. Then in 1996, the Dodgers do it again. Then in 1997, the Rockies do it again. Also in 1997, I think the Braves do it. Then it happens again in 1998 and then 1999 and then 2000 and then 2000 again, another team and then 2004 and then 2006. The White Sox do it and then 2009. The Phillies do it.

I don't think it's happened since 2009, but it didn't happen at all in the history of baseball. And it happens in 1977. Then just about 20 years later, it happens every year, sometimes multiple times a year

for a couple of years. I'll let you judge what changed in baseball that suddenly a bunch of dudes were hitting a bunch of home runs. I'll give you a hint inning. J.R. Richard is the pitcher for the Houston Astros. He was having an incredible year. He was huge, by the way. He was like six foot eight. So kind of a Randy Johnson figure, definitely looming over the pitcher's mound. Richard gets ahead on the count. It's one and two, which if you're not a big baseball fan, that's one ball. If he throws four balls, which is like a bad pitch, he's out versus two strikes. If you get three strikes, you're not a big baseball fan, that's one ball. If he throws four balls, which is like a bad pitch,

he's out versus two strikes. If you get three strikes, you're out. So anyway, the counts one and two. Here comes the pitch. Dusty Baker connects and hits a 390 foot homer to left center, giving him 30 home runs,

making the 1977 Los Angeles Dodgers the first team to ever, as I said, have four players on the roster hit 30 home runs, making the 1977 Los Angeles Dodgers the first team to ever, as I said, have four players on the roster hit 30 home runs in a single season, something that wasn't repeated again until deep into our steroid era and hasn't been repeated since we closed the door, wink, wink, on our steroid era. So here comes Dusty Baker rounding the bases, tying up the game, historical moment, crosses home plate,

and there waiting for him is the next batter, a guy named Glenn Burke, who is in his first full season of baseball. I think technically he was a rookie the year before, but really cool, by all accounts,

locker room guy. Everybody loved him. People were saying early on that he might be the next willie mays that doesn't happen for some heartbreaking reasons that we'll get into very soon uh he's waiting at home they're both so exuberant burke just leans his hand back he's kind of a tall big dude and and puts it up in the air desi baker doesn't know what to do so he does the same thing and connects bam high five is invented in that moment right there two dudes that were so overcome with excitement they they just expressed it in that brief second

in a way that i guess somehow when all of recorded human history had never been expressed in that way before electric moment burke then hits a solo home run one of only i believe two home runs he had in his career in major league baseball by the way and then rounds the bases, goes into the dugout where Dusty Baker then turns around and gives him a high five. Burke gives the Dodgers the lead. It's now three to two. We've got two high fives, back to back home runs, back to back high fives. It becomes a thing that starts happening around the team. Now the dodgers organization

kind of embraces it uh it i believe enters into the oxford dictionary in like 1980 unfortunately a thing that the dodgers didn't embrace was the fact this wonderful locker room dude 24 year old got just just a bright future ahead him, just happens to be gay and isn't super interested in keeping it a secret. He's not coming out yet, but he's also not necessarily trying to hide it. And why the fuck should he, right? And apparently it becomes an issue with the organization because they're afraid that dads won't want to take their kids to watch gay men play baseball which is i mean it's just so fucking stupid right i just it hurts the brain it's so fucking ignorant and stupid and regressive and and frustrating but the dodgers apparently

find a baseball reason to trade him to the oakland a's and And just kind of out of the blue, this dude that was considered by a lot of people to be the life of the team is now unceremoniously traded out of the blue to the Oakland A's, who barely play him. And apparently not many teams are interested in him, no matter how much potential he has, because they don't want to deal with, I guess, the drama of having a gay player on their team. I mean, I guess we got to remember this is 1977. Still sucks. Apparently, even even the Dodgers owner or general manager, I'm not sure which, The Dodgers owner or general manager, I'm not sure which, offered him a lavish, like an all expenses paid, lavish honeymoon if he would just marry a woman so that, you know, they could put those rumors to rest. He was not interested in that clearly.

Just fucking one kind of beautiful aside is that even though his promising baseball career is incomprehensibly cut short, he decides to retire and live in San Francisco where he his symbol that he does, and that takes on such a life of its own that it becomes the predominant symbol of gay pride in that area, and I guess probably outside of that area. So the high five started on the baseball field as this just like explosion of enthusiasm and excitement in a moment, and then became a part of a movement in gay rights, which I think is just kind of beautiful, you know? Kind of beautiful that it ended up becoming so much more than just two dudes congratulating each other on hitting a ball. Unfortunately, is no longer with us he died in 1995 from aids one uh i guess one at least positive sign of changing times is that when his his battle with aids became public knowledge the oakland athletics organization uh supported him financially

uh which you know i guess is the least they could fucking do um but it is something that they did and uh he he expressed i guess before he died that he had the only real regret he had he didn't he didn't want to hold any grudges and the biggest regret that he ever had was that he never got to pursue a second uh professional sports career in basketball i guess he was an incredibly gifted basketball player as well. And who knows? Could have been Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders before Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders. One thing I should clear up because I think I maybe gave a different impression.

He was openly gay. I don't think that he was trying to hide it. He had talked about it with his teammates. They knew about it. According to him, they had no problem with it. It was the Dodgers organization that had an issue with it. And if it was being kept a secret, I don't think it was being done so by him. But it wasn't until 1999 that Bill Bean revealed that he was also gay and came out as the second Major League Baseball player to come out as gay. Crazy to think that it took 22 more years for another player to come out as gay. Crazy to think that it took 22 more years for another player to come out. Burke, thankfully, has received recognition since his death.

He was in the first class of inductees into the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame. And in 2014, Major League Baseball honored him at the All-Star Game in Minneapolis. Although the Fox broadcast in the U.S. didn't mention it. Then in 2015, the Oakland A's honored him as part of Athletics Pride Night. His brother even got to throw the first pitch at that game, which I think is really sweet. Then in 2021, the A's renamed their annual Pride Night in his honor with the first rechristened Glenn Burke Pride Night to

be held a week later. So I guess now it's still known as Glenn Burke Pride Night. So there you go. A guy who has been enshrined in history for a lot of things, one of them being the high five. And I'm going to endeavor from this point on not to refer to it as Dusty Baker's high five, especially because I watched, and there is a pretty cute little 10-minute ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on the first high five. And Dusty Baker himself says, people need to stop giving me credit for the high five. Glenn invented the high five. I was reacting to him. I was responding to what he was doing. This is Glenn's thing. And so I'm going to refer to the high five from here on out as the Glenn Burke, Dusty Baker high five.

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Kraken's registration details at kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer. But those are just a few of the interesting things that were happening in and around that game and that season and that team. Oh, and by the way, I should mention, because I don't know if I was clear about it earlier, Dodgers lost the game. The Houston Astros won that game. Didn't really matter. The Dodgers were already going to the playoffs.

They'd already secured their spot in the playoffs. They did go on to make it to the World Series that year, where they lost to the New York Yankees, unfortunately. So fell short of the ultimate goal that year, but they got damn close. The team, by the way, was managed by a young first-year manager. Well, I think technically he'd managed a few games the previous year, but this was his first full year as a manager named Tommy Lasorda, a guy who would go on to manage the Los Angeles Dodgers for 20 years from 1976 to 1996. And he only stopped when after a game in 1996, he had abdominal pains. So he drove himself to the hospital after managing a game to find out that he was having a heart attack.

And then he never managed again after that. But he managed the Dodgers through my entire childhood. out that he was having a heart attack and then he never managed again after that uh but he he managed the the dodgers through my entire childhood he was one of the most colorful characters in baseball he has died since had a kind of a lackluster career himself maybe a candidate for worst of all time or woat which is a thing that we're uh we're doing over there on the face podcast let me take a step back tremendous manager tremendous manager uh won i think two world series as manager of the dodgers however maybe not the best pitcher in the history of baseball he was actually drafted by the brooklyn dodgers before they moved to los angeles

so the dude clearly uh loved the dodgers he spent his entire career managing his entire managing career with the dodgers and then was actually drafted by them as a player. I believe his only major league start was for the Dodgers on May 5th, 1955, where he was removed after the first inning for tying a major league record with three wild pitches in one inning. And by the way, he got spiked by Wally Moon in that start as well. If you don't know what that means, it's when a batter is sliding into a base, like in this case, probably home plate, he's probably covering home. And they go in cleats up and then they hit the person that's trying to tag them out. I guess he got spiked pretty hard, got pulled in the first inning.

And that was that was pretty much it for his MLB career, His final stats, one lost record for his career in Major League Baseball is 0-4. His ERA, or earned run average, which is how many runs they attribute to a player, was 6.48, which if you're not big into baseball, is terrible. That's dog shit. He had 37 career strikeouts. However, as a manager, he won 1,600 games. After that, he bounced around the minor leagues as a manager, he won 1,600 games. So, you know. After that, he bounced around the minor leagues for a while before he became a coach. And he actually had a little bit of success in Canada, I should point out. He played for Montreal in the minors from 1958 to 1960. And he was the winningest pitcher in the history of that team.

He went 107-57 and was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, even though he only survived 26 games in Major League Baseball with, like I said, a career of 0 and 4. So great Canadian pitcher, not so great American pitcher. I feel like I should also throw out

another interesting Tommy Lasorda fact. If you were a child of the 80s or the 90s, you might have played on the Sega Genesis Tommy Lasorda baseball, which was one of the first 16-bit baseball games and which I remember thinking was fucking awesome when it came out, but have been reading a little bit about it. And apparently it was not awesome and was released to very mixed reviews and wasn't considered a great game.

Although 14-year-old Jeff thought it was pretty rad. So what are you gonna do? Maybe we'll do a regulation gameplay in Tommy Lasorda Baseball on on face at some point oh uh before I move off of time those sort of one less thing I need to mention that I thought was really interesting so the Dodgers eventually optioned him to Montreal who you know where he played actually very well in the minor leagues up there uh however he was replaced on the roster by the Dodgers by Sandy Koufax Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax. So if you're going to get replaced by anybody, it might as well at least be one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the sport.

Okay, one other name that we discussed in there that I think is interesting and fun to talk about, because he's in the news right now as well. One of the 30 home run guys for the Dodgers that year was Steve Garvey. And if you don't know who Steve Garvey is, he was a very successful MLB player, was kind of a poster boy for like morality and being like upstanding Christian values kind of a guy. I don't know if he was specifically Christian, but I just remember getting that vibe from it. It was very like, you know, you very like an example of a stand-up, respectful, moral person who you wanted to follow. He wasn't out whining and dining women from town to town and boozing and that kind of stuff like a lot of pro athletes were starting to become known for at the time.

Except he was. He had a tremendous career in baseball. So just some of his highlights. 272 home runs, which is pretty solid over a career. Career batting average of 294, so just under that 300 mark. He played for the Dodgers from 1969 to 1982, and then from the Padres from 83 to 87, where he retired. So he retired from baseball. I remember when he retired. It was about three years into my getting into baseball, he retired. He was a 10-time All-Star.

He won the World Series in 1981 with the Dodgers. He was a National League MVP in 74. He was a two-time National League Championship Series MVP in 78 and 84. He won the Gold Glove four times. He won the Roberto Clemente Award. And the Padres actually retired his number. Pretty impressive stats. However, he has never made it into the Hall of Fame.

I think to get into the Hall of Fame, you have to get like 75% of the votes when they submit to this committee. And I don't think he's ever received more than like 42% of the votes. And he's kind of interesting because he actually reminds me a little bit of Jimmy Buffett in that Jimmy Buffett was one of those dudes who he said very famously, you know, like I was an okay musician, but I figured out I was a hell of a businessman. And he ended up merchandising and licensing and turning the Parrothead lifestyle and his music and his whole ethos into a multi multi multi million dollar industry right like very successful well garvey he kind of realized that he you know he had his he had his 20s to his early 30s to be an athlete and then at some point his body was going to break down and then he had the rest of his life to figure out so he started like a media group he would do like

infomercials he does some sort of a sports licensing thing. I don't know a lot about his businesses other than I think they're pretty successful. And he kind of runs them low key and has for a long time until very recently, which is why he's in the news right now. Anyway, he has this apparently very well-crafted, unblemished image and is even, I guess, even on teams in the locker room. And I think it's a bit snide, but they refer to him as the senator because he talked a lot about how he wanted to become a senator and get into politics. And this is back in like the early 80s. Right. And so he's his baseball career is ending or he realizes it's ending. He's starting like Garvey Media Group

while he's still playing for a team, which was sports marketing, corporate branding. And then he has Garvey Communications, which is a television production company that makes infomercials, like I said. He starts doing motivational speaking. He's really crafting this image of this savvy, safe businessman. He starts talking about, before he retires even, about how he wants to leave baseball and become and get into public office. However, got himself into some trouble in his personal life, which when it hit kind of tanked all of that. He was married to a lady named Cynthia Truhan. They got married in 1971. They were kind of a famous power couple in the 70s. She eventually left him for Marvin Hamlisch because he was already having an affair with his secretary at the time, so they divorced in 83. So he continues to see his

secretary, a lady named Judy, but while seeing her, he starts seeing a CNN editor named Rebecca Mendenhall. This is like in 1986, so he's kind of like juggling between his secretary and Mendenhall, this CNN editor. Then he starts dating a third woman who is like a sales rep named Sherrilyn Moulton, and he gets her pregnant in July of 1988. Then, even though he just gets Sherrilyn Moulton pregnant, he proposes to Mendenhall, the CNN editor, in November of 1988, and then impregnates her in January of 1989, even though he's been seeing his secretary, Judy Ross, this whole time and for longer than either of them. So then later, he breaks off the engagement with Mendenhall, over the phone, by the way, which causes her to file a paternity and breach of promise lawsuit against him, which begins a lot of lawsuits and legal trouble for Garvey.

He also at some point gets sued for false representation for a weight loss cure in one of his infomercials, like a big million dollar lawsuit. However, he then sues his ex-wife to gain custody of his two daughters from his first and only marriage at this point. However, the kids give testimony saying they don't want anything to do with him. And so that lawsuit goes nowhere. And in the process of all of this, he's engaged to Mendenhall and then breaks it off. And he's dating Ross while juggling Moulton and Mendenhall, who both of whom are pregnant. And anyway, in the midst of all of that, he marries a lady named Candace Thomas

on February 18th of 1989 after he met her at an event. Anyway, he and Thomas end up being a match made in heaven. They're still married to this day. They end up having, I think, three of their own children together. And then he's got the four kids from the previous three women. And all of this drama serves to tank his reputation as a conservative morality dude

and kind of nips his political aspirations in the bud. I don't know if this is why he doesn't make it into the Hall of Fame or if there are other baseball reasons for that because he had a pretty impressive career but anyway and also none of the stuff he did is is honestly i mean it's all shady and shitty right but it's not like he's doing anything worse than any other athletes were at that time i think it's just that like it hurt him more publicly because he was he had such a like such a well-crafted family morals image. And this was so the antithesis of that that I think people just saw him as a fraud. And so that kind of nipped his political aspirations in the bud, and he retreated into the background to work on his communications group and his media group, and I think is still doing those businesses today and is, by all the accounts

that I read, is very successful at it. However, he just recently surfaced in the news again, because he is announced he's running as a Republican for the Senate seat vacated by Dianne Feinstein in California when she died earlier this year. So I guess enough time has passed. He's in his 50s now. He's put all that stuff in the rearview mirror, and he's finally taken that crack at being a politician. So he is currently running for Senate or has announced a candidacy for Senate in the state of California. beloved and liberal uh diane feinstein it'll be interesting to see if he if a republican conservative morals candidate with uh such a colorful past can can make any headway in in that uh scene will be fun to watch and there might be more colorful characters surrounding this high five but i'll be honest i'm worn out just from reading about those guys so so there you go the first high five was apparently the first high five.

It wasn't just Dusty Baker. It was Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker together. And it went from a moment on a baseball field of excitement and enthusiasm to becoming a symbol for gay pride and acceptance in San Francisco in the 70s.

The manager of that team went on to be a Hall of Fame manager who was universally beloved as kind of a grumpy old man of baseball, very similar to Don Zimmer. And one of their teammates is now running for Senate in California.

Whew! That's a mouthful. Alright. So, okay. I forgot two little things that I just want to tack on here at the end. The baseball game, 1977, where the first high five happens. It's also interesting because a guy named Jose Cruz, who was the leadoff batter for the Astros that year,

he shattered his bat, fouling off the first pitch of the game. And the splintered barrel of the bat struck the catcher of the Dodgers, Steve Jaeger, in the back of the head somehow. And Jaeger had just had barely escaped fatal injury, apparently, a season earlier because he got hit in the neck with the jagged end of a broken bat. And I didn't look up to learn more about that because if you want to tell me it was near fatal

and it was the jagged end of a broken bat and it was his neck, that's all the information I need. Anyway, he got hit so hard with this splintered bat that he was on the ground for minutes before they walked him off and had to be replaced. Yeah, like he was down for a while. Also, there were 46,000 people in attendance for that game.

It was fan appreciation day. so they definitely got a show. And one last thing about Steve Garvey, there is a great angry Samoan song. That's a punk band from the 80s that I used to listen to a lot when I was a kid called Too Animalistic, and it's got a whole little sequence about Steve Garvey in it, and honestly, kind of about Steve Garvey being a piece of shit, at least in the song. I'll throw it up on the playlist. Fun song. And yeah. All right. So I can't believe I'm doing this. This is truly the episode that's never going to end. But two more updates. One, while we were editing this episode, Dusty Baker, manager of the Houston Astros, one-half inventor of the high five, retired from baseball. After 26 years as a manager, he finally decided to ride off into the sunset. So congratulations to Dusty.

And the second thing is, I completely lied when I said I would put that Angry Samoan song up on the playlist. That album is not on Spotify, but you can find the song on YouTube. All right. All right.