Greg "The Moon Man" Minton

When I set out to build collections of the players I'd admired and followed over the years, for some reason I felt the inextricable pull toward collecting one Greg Minton, the San Francisco Giants and later California Angels reliever famously known as "The Moon Man". Well, I know why, and it wasn't really because he was one of my favorite players while he was around (although he was excellent for the Giants, particularly from 1979-1982).

It was because of this baseball card you see here, which is seriously one of my Top 10 of all time. You may notice that I've been using the image from it as my avatar since this blog started. It's quite possibly one of the worst airbrush jobs in the history of baseball cards. Minton's glasses look painted on. It reminds me of the Spanish woman who tried to personally restore a Jesus Christ fresco in her village several years ago. When I returned to card collecting, I started by ensuring that I had a copy of this 1978 Topps gem, and decided to keep going with Minton from there.

Again, it isn't just because of Minton's doofy card. When I was in my early days of baseball fandom, Minton and Gary Lavelle were our closers, our 8th/9th-inning guys - though I can't remember who really owned the job. By 1980, the job was mostly Minton's; by 1983, he and Lavelle were trading off again to see who'd get the save. For those four years, 1979-1982, Minton kept his ERA under 3.00 all four years and under 2.00 twice. Oh, and he broke a major league record over that time by going 269 and 1/3rd innings without allowing a home run (see "Record Breaker" card below).

Maybe I dug him so much because of the glasses, which I also wore until 7th grade. Here's an excellent 1982 Fleer card showing Greg rocking all four eyes in style. Oh - and the "Moon Man" sobriquet that he collected? Apparently the guy wasn't a weirdo in the Bill Lee mode - he just happened to be really big into pranking his teammates. From an early 80s Sports Illustrated piece by Ron Fimrite:

To his teammates on the San Francisco Giants, Relief Pitcher Greg Minton is Moon Man or Moonie. Minton, good-natured sort that he is, accepts their characterization with only one disclaimer: "I don't do things the same way other people do, but things come out the same anyway." Ah, yes. When Minton dives into a swimming pool, it may be from an apartment-house balcony. When he decides to skateboard, it could well be down the Great White Way. And when he goes courting.... But that's a story for later.

Talk about leaving one hanging! Anyway, I've been doing a good job collecting Minton's cards of late. It's certainly not an expensive endeavor - I just bulked up on his latter-years California Angels cards and got pretty much all of them on Card Barrel for 18 cents each. Here are a few I pulled from the bunch over the course of Greg Minton's 1970s and 80s career.