6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Frank Bonner BRO b. 1869, played 1896, d. 1905-12-31

Tom Brunansky CAL b. 1960, played 1981, All-Star: 1985. Brunansky was a first-round pick, 14th overall in the 1978 draft, and he must have been a hot one. Richard Nixon, a friend of Gene Autry's, helped to negotiate his contract, which raised a lot of eyebrows: Brunansky got a signing bonus of $125,000, an absurd number for the time. But with Fred Lynn and Brian Downing already in the outfield, and the signing of free agent Reggie Jackson, the Angels' outfield had no room for Brunansky. So, the Halos moved him to Minnesota after only a few games in a 1981 callup, getting back Doug Corbett, a useful and at times phenominal reliever, and Rob Wilfong, a utility infielder whose skills pretty much limited him to second base. Just two years later, Jackson was a full-time DH, Downing was splitting time between DH and the outfield, and the Angels were back to starting nonentities like Ellis Valentine and Juan Beniquez in the outfield. Meanwhile, Brunansky was hitting 28 homers for the Twinkies, a team exactly as terrible as the 70-92 Angels.

De Wayne Buice CAL b. 1957, played 1987-1988. Didn't stick around in the majors very long but he had one streak of brilliance as a 29-year-old rookie in which he struck out nearly a batter an inning, followed by a rapid decline. Signed as an undrafted free agent by the Giants, he was taken in the Rule 5 minor league draft by the A's, and eventually released; he played briefly with the Mexican League before getting a call from the Angels.

One night in 1987, unable to find a Chinese restaurant, he walked into a baseball card store to ask where the place was. The owner immediately recognized him, and offered him 12% of his company on the spot if he would make the appropriate introductions at MLBPA. Buice accepted the deal that gave him a share of Upper Deck, and by 1998, that stake earned him $12 million, far more than he ever made as a player. Pretty nice swag for a chance encounter.

Bill Crouch BRO b. 1910, played 1939, d. 1980-12-26. Son of ... Bill Crouch, and the only father-son duo from Delaware to play in the majors; Crouch fils had a longer career than Crouch pére, three seasons vs. one. Both were pitchers.

Kal Daniels LAN b. 1963, played 1989-1992. Not necessarily an important player in his own right but maybe useful as a mile marker along the way to the Dodgers' late-90's mediocrity. The Dodgers had let Steve Sax go to free agency, Fernando Valenzuela wasn't all that anymore, Eddie Murray was proving susceptible to the rigors of age, and Fred Claire thus traded for Daniels, an above-average but hardly star-caliber outfielder. The cumulative post-1988 baggage dropped the former World Champions down to 77-83 in 1989, and the bumbling 86-76 second-place 1990 finish that ensued seduced Claire into making one of the team's most egregious blunders of all time: the 1991 signing of Darryl Strawberry. Trivia: along with Mike Piazza (1998) and Adrian Beltre (2004), he holds the Los Angeles record for single-season grand slams, with three (in 1990).

Mark Holzemer CAL b. 1969, played 1993, 1995-1996

Mark Langston CAL,ANA b. 1960, played 1990-1997, All-Star: 1987, 1991-1993. Top 100 Angel Langston falls into the Rev's permanent hate list for his complete implosion in the final day of the 1995 season during the one-game playoff for the division. Ironically enough, Langston had broken in with the M's and was used to get the man on the mound for Seattle that day — future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson. A hard thrower once upon a time, repeated injuries reduced him to a Jamie Moyer sort of career. But it's not just Angels fans who hate him; he gave up the winning runs in his only World Series appearance, for the Padres in Game 1 of the 1998 Series.

Al Lopez BRO b. 1908, played 1928, 1930-1935, All-Star: 1934, 1941, Hall of Fame: 1977 (Veterans), d. 2005-10-30. A light-hitting catcher, he broke in to the majors with the Robins barely out of his teens, proving incredibly durable and agile behind the plate. His major league career record for games caught stood for forty years, though some of that was thanks to World War II, when the game needed all the players it could get. As a manager, he later led both the Indians and White Sox to pennants, the White Sox ironically against his old squad, the Dodgers. He hit the last "bounce" homer in major league history in 1930, the year before the rule changed and such hits were classified as ground-rule doubles.

He was eventually traded to the Boston Braves, which turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him; one of the returns on the trade was a fourth outfielder, Randy Moore, who had an uncle in Texas trying to raise money from his teammates for an oil drilling venture he was starting up. They did indeed strike oil, and Lopez became quite wealthy as a result.

At the time of his death, he was the oldest living Hall of Famer, and the last remaining player who had played in the 20's. He passed just after the White Sox won their first World Series since 1917.

Ed McLane BRO b. 1881, played 1907, d. 1975-08-21

Fred Norman LAN b. 1942, played 1970

Lance Rautzhan LAN b. 1952, played 1977-1979