Baseball Toaster: Cardboard Gods : Darrel Chaney

Last night I dreamed a guy on my high school ultimate frisbee team was hitting me grounders. He was a coke-doing senior who liked to cacklingly saddle younger students with annoying, inescapable nicknames. (I think he was behind people calling me Beeker.) I don’t know why he was in my dreams, but I was having trouble getting in front of the grounders he was hitting to me. This was always a problem for me in all sports and in life in general—I am a coward. If the rare chance coming my way takes a bad hop I’d rather it not hit me in the chest or face or nuts. I’ll take a swipe at it, but if that doesn’t work I prefer to deal with the consequences: humiliation, disappointment, being disappointing. Unfortunately I have become an expert at numbing all the things that accompany a squandered chance.

On the other hand, Darrel Chaney strikes me as the kind of guy who would stop grounders with his teeth if he had to. It would be difficult to explain his presence for several years in the major leagues otherwise. He lasted for eleven seasons despite batting just .217 with a .288 slugging percentage. Something of a negative image of the best of the all-star Big Red Machine infielders he occasionally spelled, Chaney also augmented a notable lack of power with an inability to steal bases. The back of the card text backs up the theory that his worth resided in his ability to deal effectively with ground balls, describing him as “an outstanding glove man.” (Interestingly, considering a somewhat gruesome aspect of the Mannerist portrait on the front of the card, no mention is made of his throwing arm.)

I don’t know if I would have been able to write about Darrel Chaney if his hard-nosed talents had been better represented by the photo on his card. I realized today that one reason I have written relatively few profiles of Cincinnati Reds players from the 1970s is that I can’t really relate to excellence. So Chaney, a tough, humble, do-anything-to-help-the-team-win utility guy on a couple pennant winners and a World Series champion, would leave me nothing to connect to had he been shown in a photo bravely turning a double play despite the marauding spikes-high efforts of a baserunner. But that is the beauty of my Cardboard heaven. All become strange and failure-laced. Here Chaney stoops like an arthritic amputee with one freakish arm as long as his legs, his eyes mean slits, his skin pale, his lips thin and sour, like those of a corrupt medieval bishop. He reaches for an imaginary grounder, not getting in front of it. He reaches for his shadow. It eludes him. He reaches for his name. He’ll catch a shred of it, the top loop of the D, but no more, as it slides past him and disintegrates. He will remain forever on this side of the white chalk line.

Comments

2008-06-02 11:33:37

1. Bob Timmermann

Darrel Chaney in a recent photo taken at a restaurant called the Beef Baron.
http://www.thebeefbaron.com/HPIM0654.JPG

2008-06-02 11:36:14

2. Josh Wilker

1 : He seems to have grown a right arm, perhaps thanks to all the beef.

2008-06-02 12:56:29

3. Ennui Willie Keeler

Damn, he looks older than 60. He played in the '75 WS. I didn't know that.

2008-06-02 13:30:21

4. philthyrat

Is Darrel Chaney related to Dennis Blair?

2008-06-02 13:42:06

5. Josh Wilker

4 : I don't know, but Chaney's powers were no match for Blair's. Their seven meetings, in chronological order:

Groundout: 1B unassisted
Flyball: CF
Strikeout
Reached on E4 (Ground Ball)
Bunt Popfly: SS
Groundout
Strikeout

2008-06-02 13:46:45

6. Ken Houghton

Al Michaels made a big issue about Chaney's contract: apparently, he was the only player (back in the pre-FA days) who negotiated into his contract that the Reds would pay for his college education after his playing days were over.

The viability of baseball today owes more to Curt Flood, Marvin Miller and Peter Seitz than it ever will to its string of owner-coddling commissioners from Landis onward. (For proof, see the hockey finals--oh, right, you can't.)

2008-06-02 14:06:19

7. Joe Romano

"An outstanding glove man."

It would be funny to turn over a card and see a player described as "a leg man".

2008-06-02 16:15:53

8. Perry534

Chaney actually was the same age and came up at the same time as another SS with the initials DC, Dave Concepcion. And for the first couple of years it wasn't clear that Davey was going to hit any more than Chaney would. In '72 Concepcion figured it out with the stick enough that he got a stranglehold on the job and was on his way to a borderline HOF career, while Chaney never did and was kept around only because he could play 3 infield positions well.

Something similar happened with the Reds in '87 with two young shortstops. One, age 22, hit 258/316/375. The other, a year older, hit 244/306/371. The Reds traded the first guy, Kurt Stillwell, and kept the second guy -- Barry Larkin.

Don't know if I have a point, other than the old one about hindsight.

2008-06-02 16:29:49

9. Josh Wilker

8 : On the subject of the Reds and who to keep and who to let go, I just heard on the radio today that the rationale for letting Josh Hamilton go was that it would open up space for Jay Bruce, so I guess the Reds were sizing up the relative merits of those two. Both are looking pretty great, which I guess raises the painful question, Why couldn't the Reds have had both (and not Cory Patterson)?

2008-06-03 10:34:08

10. Gilberto Reyes

Darrel Chaney puts on his "corrupt medieval bishop" face for his 1975 card. That cracks me up. Can you tell us what the photographer was asking him to do for that shot?

2008-06-03 10:40:23

11. Peanut

Darrel Chaney went to my high school about 25 years before I did. I think he was a star athlete in baseball, basketball, and football, so he had his picture up on the walls near the gym. Somebody had this card, so we kind of knew who he was. The only other names on the wall that we recognized were the ones who became teachers or parents at the school.

2008-06-03 10:57:13

12. Josh Wilker

10 : "Can you tell us what the photographer was asking him to do for that shot?"

I wish I had either A) access to that information, or B) the imagination to come up with a plausible hypothesis. The pose seems like a cross between a pitcher follow-through pose and a more-awkward version of Terry Harmon's (see link in sidebar under Phillies) "waiting to make the catch and apply the tag" pose.

11 : Thanks for that interesting hometown info. Chaney notes that he was an "All-American" high school football player in a Born Again autobiographical piece at the link below:

http://tinyurl.com/6p3und

2008-06-03 13:42:47

13. Perry534

The request was probably "act like you're backhanding one in the hole." But Darrell's heart clearly wasn't in it, probably because it's about 8 am (check that shadow) and he's hung over.

2008-06-04 13:51:51

14. spudrph

"corrupt medieval bishop"-Priceless.

2008-06-10 14:24:08

15. Todd S

9 "Why couldn't the Reds have had both (and not Cory Patterson)?"

Presumably, because trading Hamilton allowed them to have both Jay Bruce and Edinson Volquez.

2008-06-11 04:42:53

16. Josh Wilker

15 : Good point. I was ignorant about the particulars of the Hamilton deal, which is so far looking like a win-win.