Sports World Nostalgia: Walt Weiss

It’s been a few weeks since our last Sports World Nostalgia, so I figured I would revive it with one that is very appropriate for baseball’s postseason.

Walter William Weiss was born on November 28, 1963 in the swanky town of Tuxedo, NY to a family of tailors, cufflink makers, and penguins. As a child, Walt honed his baseball skills by swinging an old ivory tuxedo cane at a waded-up bowtie his brother Wilbur pitched to him in the warehouse of their father Woodrow’s tuxedo shop, where the two brothers learned the family craft of tuxedory.

By the age of eighteen, however, Weiss decided that the tuxedo business was not for him. He had blossomed into an excellent shortstop for the Tuxedo Central High Well-Dressed Penguins with Monocles and was receiving baseball scholarship offers daily. Also, the foreign tuxedo markets had begun to threaten his hometown’s long-standing economic base, glue-making (Tuxedo's local economy was very complex at the time), so Walt spurned his father’s wishes to continue the family business and instead attended the University of North Carolina.

As a member of the Tarheels, Weiss played like a man determined to have polished his last cufflink. By his sophomore season, Weiss’s slick fielding and solid bunting had earned him the starting shortstop position. During his senior season, Walt caught the attention of Texas Rangers scout Gus “Snarls” McAllister, a racist old coot who loved Weiss for his resemblance—both in name and appearance—to pre-desegregation era players. Unfortunately for McAllister, Weiss caught the attention of many other scouts for his ability to play baseball and was taken 11th overall in the June 1985 amateur draft by the Oakland Athletics.

In 1987, Weiss broke through with the A’s big club, where he would get a cup of coffee, a case of Bazooka Joe, a rookie minimum salary, and 26 at-bats. He appeared in a total of 16 games that year, hitting .462—ironically the highest batting average of his career by 180 points.

Though he could not replicate his gaudy average from ’87, Weiss had a successful rookie campaign in 1988, batting .250, belting out 3 homeruns, stealing 4 bases, and leading the A’s to 104 wins. With possible exception of the Brewers’ Don August (13-7 record, 3.09 ERA), the White Sox’ Dave Gallagher (.305 BA, 5 HR), the White Sox’ Melido Perez (12-10 record, 3.43 ERA), the Red Sox’ Jody Reed (.293 BA), and the Rangers’ Cecil Espy (.248 BA, 33 SB), Weiss easily posted the most impressive numbers of any American League rookie that season and earned himself the AL Rookie of the Year Award, edging out runner-up Brian Harvey (2.13 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 17 SV) by a vote of 103 to 49.

Weiss’s A’s went on to win the AL West and play in the AL Championship Series that season, where they beat the Boston Red Sox in a four-game sweep to advance to the World Series.

Weiss’s first World Series game was one of the most famous in the history of baseball. Walt was standing at shortstop with two outs in the bottom of the ninth during Game 1 of the 1988 World Series when the Dodgers’ Kirk Gibson—battling two injured legs, a nagging thumb injury, prosthetic spine, severe nosebleed, and four bullet holes in his left shoulder—stroked a pinch-hit, two-run, game-ending homerun on an 0-2 slider from A’s closer Dennis Eckersley. Walt was still standing there moments later, as Dodgers’ manager Tommy Lasorda bowled his way toward Weiss to join his players in on-field celebration—a moment Weiss later recalled as “one of the scariest eighteen-and-a-half seconds I’ve ever experienced.”

The A’s went on to lose the ’88 World Series in five games. Immediately following Game 5, Weiss and Eckersley were rumored to have downed an entire handle of Cutty Sark whiskey in less than an hour, after which, according to outfielder Dave Henderson, “Walt was drunker than I’d ever seen him before. And Eck—that was the soberest I’d ever seen him.”

Weiss, and the A’s, bounced back and returned to the World Series the following season, meeting the San Francisco Giants in the first ever matchup between the two Bay Area franchises. The first game of the 1989 World Series also proved memorable, but for more tragic reasons. Just prior to the start of Game 1, a massive earthquake measuring 10.7 on the Richter scale struck the city of San Francisco, canceling the game—to the grave annoyance of A’s manager Tony LaRussa—and sending all of Candlestick Park to a frenzied evacuation.

For all of Weiss’s on-field accomplishments, his greatest heroics came in the moments following the quake. After evacuating the park with the rest of the players—long before the Japanese tourists in the stands were even told what an earthquake was—Weiss selflessly risked his own life to save those of two others. According to eyewitness and A’s pitcher Bob Welch, Weiss—still in full uniform and eye black—leapt a rapidly-parting lava-filled chasm to save a beagle puppy and Giants’ outfielder Kevin Mitchell, both of whom had ended up on the wrong side of a fault after pursuing of still-wrapped package of venison jerky they had spotted on a sidewalk slab.

The moment demonstrated both Weiss’s courage and his sportsmanship, two qualities that would define his career. According to Jose Canseco’s 2005 tell-all, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Self-Promotion, and How I Once Banged Terry Steinbach’s Wife, Weiss repeatedly fought off Mark McGwire’s frequent and unsolicited attempts to inject him with steroids—sometimes with only a wooden cross to defend himself—throughout his time in Oakland.

Weiss’s A’s would return to the World Series one last time in 1990 to play the Cincinnati Reds. Unfortunately, a game of checkers gone-awry claimed Weiss’s left eye for the series, and the A’s, as a result, were swept in four games—thanks to the heroics of a short, squatty guy named Billy Hatcher who hit .750 for the series.

Weiss would spend two more years with the A’s, again returning to the ALCS in 1992. That November, Oakland would trade Walt to the expansion Florida Marlins for two players who would appear in a combined 54 games in their careers. Walt would spend most of 1993 toiling in misery alongside the likes of Dave Magadan, Chuck Carr, and later-beloved ESPN analyst Orestes Destrade for a team that would lose 98 games, or twenty more than Weiss had ever experienced at the major league level.

Weiss was rewarded for his patience in 1994 when he signed as a free agent with the Colorado Rockies. Not only would the signing give Walt the meaningless distinction of being the first ever player to play for both the Rockies and Marlins, it would offer him the opportunity to appear offensively adequate for the first time in his career, thanks to Denver’s thin, mountain air. Weiss, however, would not take advantage and continued to hit substandardly, finishing sixth in the league in outs.

Weiss would reach the postseason with Colorado the next year, but the Rockies—who made the postseason as the National League’s first-ever Wild Card—were swept by the Atlanta Braves.

Weiss spent two more seasons in Colorado before glomming onto the Braves’ gravy train as a free agent in November 1997. With Atlanta, Weiss would appear in three consecutive postseasons, including the 1999 World Series, where the Braves were swept by the New York Yankees.

At the end of the 2000 season, Weiss spit out his trademark wad of chaw for the last time. Walt finished his career with stats.

Walt’s legacy as a player throughout the late 1980s and 90s was a steady-handed, non-threatening whiteguy shortstop who had the luck of playing often in the postseason. Were he around today, however, Yankees fans would no doubt want to trade Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi to acquire his unselfish attitude and proven winning reputation.

So thanks for the memories, Walter William Weiss. URLs everywhere pay subtle tribute to you.