Random Baseball Card Of The Day: 1971 Bert Blyleven

Bert “be in”-Blyleven, as Chris Berman nicknamed him, finally made it into the Hall of Fame in 2011 after FOURTEEN years of being dissed in the voting.

He bounced around from team to team, spending most of his career with the Minnsota Twins, who’d retire his number 28. While he never got the hype that the other big-name pitchers of his era got, like Seaver or Guidry or Carlton or Palmer, his stats by the end are just as impressive, if not more so. He never reached the magic 300 win number, but he piled up 3701 strikeouts (Number 5 all time) and an impressive 60 shutouts (Number 9 all time).

Blyleven had the most amazing curve ball I’ve ever seen. The damn thing followed weird arcs that made you think there was some sort of invisible lucite loop between the mound and the plate that Blyleven merely pushed the ball into. It was some “nasty shit,” as we used to say on the field.

Blyleven’s other nasty shit was playing pranks on his teammates, most notably setting their shoelaces on fire.

Hmmm…. is there a hall of fame for that?

Bert has a website – check it out!