Ron Cey played in a couple of giant shadows, one across the diamond in the form of Steve Garvey, the other across the country by the name of Mike Schmidt. With the 5'9", 185-pound, short-striding stature that inspired his “Penguin” nickname, Cey couldn’t help being underestimated. He was the comfy chair in the living room, not the Better Homes & Gardens centerpiece. But so, so valuable.
Many consider Schmidt, who set third baseman records with 548 home runs, a 147 OPS+ and 10 Gold Gloves in his career, the best in history at the position, so it’s understandable that Cey couldn’t compete for headlines on that level. But Cey was too accomplished to be as ignored as he was. He ranks 17th all-time among third baseman with a 121 OPS+. Cey had underrated range defensively, reaching more balls than the league average year for a third baseman after year while at one point setting a record for consecutive errorless games.
Garvey, of course, was first and foremost in people’s minds when it came to the Dodger lineup, wowing Los Angeles with his MVP season in 1974. Yet Cey, while cooling off the more challenging hot corner, was essentially Garvey’s equal offensively, edging him for his Dodger career in OPS+ and TAv. Cey just didn’t have the glamour. He had thick legs instead of thick arms, he lacked the prime-time haircut—but most of all, Cey didn’t have the cachet that 200 hits a year provided Garvey. Cey had more power and more plate discipline—walking more than 1,000 times, but that didn’t matter.
Every so often, though, Cey would shine unencumbered. In June 1974, he drove in seven runs in a game, and on July 31, he topped himself with eight. In April 1977, he set a major league record for the month with 29 RBI (on-base percentage of .543, slugging percentage of .890), igniting the Dodgers’ 22–4 start. That October, he hit an NLCS Game 1 grand slam and outplayed Schmidt, who went 1-for-16 with two walks in the series.
In the 1981 World Series, nearing the culmination of his Dodger career, Cey’s profile took off when he twice hit the dirt. In Game 3, Cey made a diving catch of a sacrifice attempt in foul territory and doubled the runner off first base to protect the Dodgers’ 5–4 lead. In the eighth inning of Game 5, Cey was slammed in the head by a screaming Rich Gossage fastball, yet he came back to play in Game 6, drove in the Dodgers’ go-ahead run in their title-clinching victory and shared series MVP honors with Steve Yeager and Pedro Guerrero thanks to a 7-for-20, three-walk performance. (Surprisingly left off the official thank-yous was Garvey, despite reaching base in nearly half his at-bats.)
Cey once attributed his major league career to ignorance. “If I’d known the circumstances I’d have to overcome, I probably wouldn’t have felt so strongly about it,” he told Sports Illustrated writer Larry Keith about his wish to become a ballplayer while a lad in Tacoma, Washington. “I’m not from a good baseball area, and I don’t have the size or speed of a lot of players. But baseball is all I ever wanted to do, and I was fortunate to make it, even though a lot of people said I never would.” There might have been reason to underestimate Cey as a kid, but there’s no reason to do so now.
Frank Howard
At the time, he was the tallest player in Dodgers history. He was the heaviest player in Dodgers history. But Frank Howard, listed at 6’7”, 255 pounds, was more than just someone you could spot from the moon, more than a candidate for the oddities chapter in the Guinness Book of Dodger Records. As the franchise entered a decade in which they would be starved for runs, Howard was almost the entire power source.
After cups of coffee in 1958 and 1959, Howard became a starting outfielder in May 1960, three months before his 24th birthday. By the end of 1964, he would be gone, traded by the Dodgers to the Washington Senators in the deal that yielded pitcher Claude Osteen. In those five seasons, Howard homered 121 times, more than twice as many as any other Dodger during that run-challenged period except Tommy Davis (83). During Dodger Stadium’s first two seasons, he hit 52 of the team’s 189 homers—28 percent. And Howard, predictably a below-average fielder, didn’t even play every day for the Dodgers (even after winning the 1960 NL Rookie of the Year award), peaking at 141 games in 1962 and averaging 121 per year.
Howard’s on-field legacy really remains in the nation’s capital, where he ended up hitting 237 of his 382 career homers, including more than 40 per year from 1968 to 1970. From Los Angeles’ perspective, Howard’s size was usually the biggest part of his story. “Ever since he first showed up, baseball has taken the position Frank’s real name was ‘Frankenstein’ Howard, that he had been concocted out of a test tube and a machine that shot blue sparks by a mad scientist in bottle-bottom glasses,” wrote Jim Murray after the trade to the Senators, adding that Howard had become “Washington’s second monument.”