I saw this post on Chad Finn’s Touching All The Bases blog titled “Guess That 1970’s Baseball Player”, and the first player listed was none other than Steve Garvey of LA Dodger fame. Chad noted Garvey’s troubles in his post-playing days and it got me to thinking of a random interaction I had with Garvey many years ago.
When I worked in the Advertising industry, I was regularly taken out to lunch or dinner or whatever by magazines and TV networks. Once, the now defunct Sport Magazine took me and a female colleague out to lunch. The Sport Mag rep brought along to this lunch their “honorary” publisher (or whatever his fluff title was) at the time, Steve Garvey. Obviously, Garvey had no flipping idea how to run a magazine and his purpose was nothing more than for publicity and promotions as Sport was trying (and failing) to compete for advertising business against Sports Illustrated.
Now, the female colleague that was also at this lunch was, shall we say, very easy on the eyes. And wouldn’t you know that Garvey could not keep his tongue in his mouth throughout the lunch. When the lunch ended, he gave us each an autographed baseball (a little cheezy, I must say) and I distinctly recall him saying something to the effect of “you sweet young thing” to my colleague.
So when I see all the troubles Garvey has had since leaving baseball, I recall is this incident and say: Why doesn’t this surprise me?