Sports World Nostalgia: Mickey Tettleton

After chastising Mike for overkill on this new feature, I'm gonna cave in and do my own. In fact, let's brand this "Sports Nostalgia Week" as an excuse. But seriously, in the future we'll have to do it on a rotating weekly basis or something so that we don't ruin it.

My first installment: Mickey Tettleton, a.k.a. "The Mick." (To the best of my knowledge, he's the first and only baseball player to have ever sported this nickname.)

Mickey Tettleton played parts of 14 seasons in the majors, most notably and productively with the Tigers and Rangers. He also spent time in Baltimore, where he would first make the All Star team, as well as in Oakland, where he toiled in obscurity.

As a young minor leaguer in the Oakland A's farm system, Tettleton became a prized prospect for his ability to both catch and hit over .200. Playing for the Kingston Klansmen of the Southern League, the young switch-hitter grabbed the eye of coaches and scouts, as well that of a young Toni Basil, who used Tettleton as inspiration for her 1983 chart-topping smash hit "Mickey." (True story according to an unnamed, possibly made-up source.)

Tettleton soon found himself in the majors with Oakland, where he would leave just in time to see the A's make three straight World Series appearances while he blossomed for a shit-hole Baltimore Orioles team. Mickey would leave Baltimore for Detroit after 1990 when Orioles backup catcher Chris Hoiles attempted his murder.

Over time, Tettleton built a reputation for his toughness. Year after year, Mickey valiantly braved the bruises and infertility of the catcher position until managers grew wary of his below-average defensive skills and began to play him anywhere else but catcher. In that time, however, he hit a bunch of homers and stuff. Here's his baseball reference page. You can read.

What we'll remember most about Tettleton, however, were his ridiculous batting stance--a limp-armed grip of the bat projecting all the focus of a surgical patient--and his ubiquitous jumbo wad of chewing tobacco. Both were pretty sweet.