"(Jay) Buhner was a good prospect, no question about it, but my baseball people loved Ken Phelps' bat. They kept saying Ken Phelps, Ken Phelps!"-"George Steinbrenner", Seinfeld Ken Phelps has the look of the quintessential "80's dad," and reminds me a bit of my cousin's father, my uncle through marriage who was known to wear a beat-up, snap-backed San Francisco Giants baseball cap, and on special occasions a cowboy hat with a feather band not unlike a member of Charlie Daniel's raucous honkey tonk band. Now, every time I see this archaic piece of Americana I can almost imagine the beer bottles breaking against the protective fence set before the band in some small, backwoods shithole in Texas not unlike the scene in the brilliant Patrick Swayze flick, Roadhouse.
I had been to his dad's home on a few occasions and we would play Nintendo or try to quench our biological imperative and devilish curiosity by looking for his porn stash in the grease-caked garage. When bored of that, we would play baseball amongst the cow patties in the fields. (His father lived on a farm) My cousin would get a kick out of me touching the electrical fence, giving me a sudden jolt, although I would balk at "pissing on it" to his dismay. I was always a bit saddened to disappoint his infectious and sophomoric sense of humor, but an electrified dong just didn't sound appetizing.
When you take a look at the last 2 N.L. MVP's (Bellinger and Yelich) and you see a couple of guys you might smoke a doobie with at a keg party; they look nothing like
Phelps who looks like he should be either dishing out benevolent fatherly words of wisdom while gutting a fish or arresting me. He doesn't look like he survived in the league on any sort of pure talent, just the ability to use grown man strength on the occasional fastball. Phelps had only had 12 hits for the Oakland ballclub as he was an aging DH who was nearing the end of his career and had lost the only valuable asset he had-occasional power. Phelp's baseball life was coming to an end as my pre-teen years were just beginning, and until now was relegated to a baseball card tossed in a box. Forgotten until unearthed.
