Watching the Orioles game the other day, the announcers started talking about how ballplayers in the past were not allowed (!) to have long hair or facial hair, for fear of not appearing to be All-American youth.
So, I got to thinking about Bo Belinsky.
Bo came out of nowhere in 1962, pitched a no-hitter against the Orioles for the Los Angeles Angels, had a great rookie season, and was washed up within a few years, leaving baseball with a negative won-loss record.
BUT he was the first player to be famous for being famous. Sure, Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle and a million other players were household names back then, but Bo was different, in that he was not a star player, but, instead, a star playboy.
He was more concerned with his tan than with his fastball. He dated Mamie Van Doren (an actress known mostly for being well-known) as well as Ann-Margret, Tina Louise, and Connie Stevens.
He made friends with Walter Winchell, the most important gossip columnist of the day, and so his fame spread through radio, TV, and newspaper mentions...but not for the way he pitched, but for dancing until all hours in nightclubs and driving a red Cadillac and being such good friends with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that when the Angels played the old Senators in DC, Bo was at FBI Headquarters firing a machine gun on the shooting range.
In 1964, Belinsky was 9-8 with a 2.86 earned run average, but he was suspended in August for punching a 64-year-old sportswriter. The Angels let him go, and then he drifted from the Philadelphia Phillies to the Houston Astros to the Pittsburgh Pirates and. finally, the Cincinnati Reds, but he never met with success. His eight-season major league totals: 28 wins, 52 losses.
He died in 2001 following a heart attack. He had dealt with bladder cancer, vascular problems, hip-replacement surgery, and alcohol and drug dependency, but he was sober for his final 25 years.
If there's a lesson from Bo Belinsky's life, it was probably to avoid wasting the talent God gave you.
Toward the end, Bo reflected on what was, and what might have been:
''We spend the first 40, 50 years satisfying our egos and the next 20 or 10 trying to wipe the slate clean,'' he said. ''I'm at that second stage.''