#CardCorner: 1979 Topps Gary Alexander
He was once the main return for one of the most coveted trade pieces of his era, and later was part of a deal that brought back a future Hall of Fame pitcher.
Gary Alexander never fulfilled the promise that seemed to be his destiny. But for a short time, Alexander was thought to be one of the best hitting catching prospects the game had seen.
Born March 27, 1953, in Los Angeles, Gary Wayne Alexander starred for Locke High School in Los Angeles and was selected by the Expos in the 23rd round of the 1971 MLB Draft. He chose to delay pro ball and enrolled at Los Angeles Harbor College, and in the first month of 1972 Alexander was taken by the Giants in the second round of the MLB January Draft for college players.
Alexander soon signed and was sent to Great Falls of the Pioneer League that year, where he hit .206 in 55 games. But after moving up to Class A Decatur of the Midwest League in 1973, Alexander established himself as a top prospect by hitting .261 with 17 homers, 66 RBI and 89 walks in 123 games – virtually all of which came as an outfielder.
He was even better in 1974 with Class A Fresno, hitting .298 with 27 homers and 95 RBI in 103 games as the organization began to transition him to catcher. The Giants brought Alexander to their big league camp in the spring of 1975, then sent him to Double-A Lafayette of the Texas League, where he hit .330 with 23 homers and 81 RBI – eventually earning a spot on the Topps Double-A All-Star team – before a quick stop a Triple-A Phoenix.
On Sept. 12, Alexander made his debut with the Giants, drawing a walk as a pinch hitter against Fred Norman of the Reds and later scoring on a Gary Matthews single. He appeared in two more games that month, then was the talk of Spring Training in 1976 before he was sent to Triple-A Phoenix among the Giants’ last cuts.
Despite missing time with a split finger on his throwing hand, Alexander hit .319 with 17 homers and 76 RBI in 109 games for Phoenix before being called up to San Francisco in September when the rosters expanded. Manager Bill Rigney, who announced near the end of the season that he would resign after the last game, put Alexander in the lineup as the starting catcher and kept him there – and Alexander hit .178 with two home runs in 23 games.
Alexander caught John Montefusco’s no-hitter on Sept. 29, 1976, against the Braves, and the Giants often paired Montefusco and Alexander when Alexander returned to the big leagues midway through the 1977 campaign – after Alexander once again crushed the ball in Phoenix, batting .341 with 55 RBI and a .452 on-base percentage in 59 games.
“Alexander has logged so many miles on the basepaths lately,” Phoenix manager Rocky Bridges told the Arizona Republic, “that Phoenix Transit is thinking about using him for their poster boy.”
The hot streak was enough to bring Alexander to San Francisco less than a week after Bridges’ witty quote, and he went 2-for-3 with three runs scored in his season debut for the Giants against the Pirates on June 19.
“I’m trying to enjoy it while I can,” Alexander told the Republic right before returning to San Francisco. “You never know when you’re going to hit a slump.”
Alexander’s bat was virtually slump-proof that year as he hit .303 with five homers, 20 RBI and 20 walks in 51 games for the Giants. But his defense, which had been an issue since his minor league days, caused him and the team headaches in 1977. He threw out just seven of 53 runners who attempted to steal over 33 games while appearing 19 times as a pinch hitter. In three August games against the Pirates – who stole a league-leading 260 bases that year – Alexander permitted 16 straight steals.
“It’s been a tough, tough year,” Alexander told the Oakland Tribune. “You always hear of hitters going into slumps. Well, I’m in a catcher’s slump. I think it happens to most catchers. At least it makes me feel just a little better to think so.”
But Alexander’s bat kept him in the lineup, and the Giants even tried him in the outfield.
Then on March 15, 1978, the Giants packaged Alexander along with six other players and sent him to the Athletics in exchange for Vida Blue, one of the biggest pitching stars of the era. Athletics owner Charlie Finley had tried twice before to sell Blue’s contract – once to the Yankees in 1976 and again to the Reds in 1977. Both times, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn voided the deals in the “best interests of baseball.”
As a result, Kuhn instituted a limit of $400,000 per transaction, and the Blue-to-the-Giants trade took a while to be approved. But ultimately, the deal was made – and Alexander was seen as the key piece in return for the former Cy Young Award winner and American League MVP.
“I’ll guarantee you Gary will be somewhere in our lineup,” Athletics manager Bobby Winkles told the Peninsula Times Tribune prior to the 1978 season. “If he isn’t catching, he’ll be the designated hitter. I like the way he swings the bat.”
Winkles decided to go with veteran Jim Essian as his catcher and put Alexander’s name in the lineup as the DH – regularly batting him in the cleanup spot. The A’s bolted to a 19-5 start in 1978, with Alexander hitting .269 with eight homers and 16 RBI in that stretch – including two ninth-inning home runs that gave Oakland victories. But the young team, which had seen massive turnover from the Oakland dynasty squads of 1971-75, could not maintain the pace and found itself 32-32 on June 15 when Alexander was traded to Cleveland in exchange for outfielder Joe Wallis, who had come from the Cubs the same day in a deal for Mike Vail.
Alexander’s batting average had fallen to .207 at the time of the trade, and he had only hit two more runs since his hot start.
“You always have to be thinking ‘trade’ with this team,” Alexander told the Boston Globe after learning that he was dealt in the seventh inning of a game against Boston that day and actually grounding out as a pinch-hitter in the ninth after the deal had already been consummated. “I walked through the (clubhouse) door (after the game) and they told me (owner Charlie Finley) wanted to talk to me on the phone. So there it was. I knew it was happening. I just didn’t know where.
“I’m just so glad. I’m going to play every day in Cleveland.”
The Indians already had young catchers Bo Díaz and Ron Hassey but manager Jeff Torborg wasted no time putting Alexander in the lineup behind the plate. Alexander embraced the move.
“I’m only 25,” he told the Akron Beacon Journal. “It’s too early in my career to be a designated hitter and get a label put on me. I didn’t want that to happen.”
Alexander spent most of the rest of the season as Cleveland’s starting catcher, DH’ing occasionally to give him a break behind the plate. He hit 17 home runs and drove in 62 runs in 90 games for Cleveland, finishing the year with a combined 27 homers and 84 RBI to go with a .225 batting average. But he also struck out a big league-leading 166 times, a mark that was the third-highest single-season total in AL history to that point.
In an era where strikeouts were still considered bad form, Alexander was seen by many as an unfinished product.
“Strikeouts (are) part of being a power hitter,” Alexander told the Mansfield (Ohio) News-Journal in Spring Training of 1979. “But I’m not going to let strikeouts bother me this year.”
Alexander had surgery on his right elbow – performed by Dr. Frank Jobe – to clean out some floating cartilage following the 1978 season and reported to Spring Training in 1979 with a solid grip on Cleveland’s starting catching position. The elbow damage, said Alexander, was from a June 30, 1977, game where the Giants played Alexander in right field.
“I made two long throws from right field to home plate,” Alexander said in the spring of 1979. “We were playing the Cincinnati Reds and I was trying to throw out Joe Morgan at home plate. I felt something pop on the first throw. On the second one, I had nothing.
“Now, you’d never know I had any problem. I’m even swinging the bat as good as ever, even better.”
Many pundits predicted the Indians would field an explosive offense in 1979 with Bobby Bonds and Toby Harrah joining Alexander and Andre Thornton in what looked to be a powerful lineup. But while many of his teammates lived up to expectations, Alexander struggled – especially defensively, where he committed 18 errors and threw out only 24 percent of runners attempting to steal.
Cleveland manager Jeff Torborg was replaced by Dave Garcia in July, and Garcia began platooning the right-handed hitting Alexander with the lefty-swinging Hassey.
Alexander finished the season batting .229 with 15 homers, 54 RBI and 100 strikeouts in 110 games.
“I had a bad streak at one point, they called up Hassey and started platooning me,” Alexander told the Akron Beacon Journal. “It’s been a hassle ever since. I hope I don’t have to see this place next year.”
Alexander did return to Cleveland in 1980 but played in only 76 games as Hassey, who hit .318, and Díaz assumed most of the catching duties as Alexander moved to DH while appearing in just 13 games behind the plate. He hit .225 with five homers and 31 RBI, losing many DH at-bats to star rookie Joe Charboneau – and then was traded to Pittsburgh on Dec. 9, 1980, along with Victor Cruz, Bob Owchinko and Rafael Vázquez in exchange for Bert Blyleven and Manny Sanguillén.
“I like Alexander,” Pirates general manager Harding Peterson told the Pittsburgh Press. “He has outstanding power. He strikes out too much, but if he’d play every day he’d hit 15 to 30 home runs.”
But it was not to be. Blyleven, who had asked for a trade due to his desire to pitch more innings, went on to continue his Hall of Fame career over the next decade. Alexander, meanwhile, appeared in just 21 games in 1981, hitting .213 with one home run.
The Pirates waived Alexander on March 29, 1982, and they waived Cruz three days later – meaning none of the players the team acquired in the Blyleven deal were still with Pittsburgh. Alexander would play in the Mexican League in 1982 and 1983 but never again appeared in a big league game.
He finished his seven-year big league career with 55 home runs in 432 games – hitting almost half of those in one season in Cleveland where he traded strikeouts for power in a deal that was ahead of its time.
“Bob Sudyk (a writer for the Cleveland Press) called me the ‘GAS man’ for ‘Gary Alexander Strikeouts,’” Alexander said in the spring of 1979. “It bothered me for a while, but I got used to it.”
Craig Muder is the director of communications for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
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