As Ron Blomberg lounges against the exposed brick wall of an oyster bar in north Atlanta indistinguishable from any other modern sports watering hole, he considers his unlikely baseball fate. He doesn't need much time to find the words. His feet are propped on the booth's black pleather as he takes sparse sips of a Diet Coke with lemon, comfortable in his skin, in both tone and body language.
By rough estimate, this is Blomberg's 300th interview since the calendar turned to 2013. Anniversaries bring warranted attention. And for Blomberg, the first designated hitter in baseball, the time lapse of 40 years has brought writers and radio hosts to his flip-phone once more. Not that he minds attention. The native Georgian can answer the decades-old questions with a self-deprecating joke as easily as he can flaunt his assimilated New York accent.
But, by no fault of his own, his career's defining accomplishment has kept him a divisive figure, at least in baseball terms — half-embraced, half-dismissed. It is in this context that Blomberg consistently refers to his fame as "notoriety." He knows there are detractors of the DH. Still, the bat he used in his first plate appearance as a DH is on display in Cooperstown.
So, despite his World Series ring and his schoolboy billing as "the Jewish Mickey Mantle", it is a once-described gimmick position that continues to define him as much as his gray Yankees shirt pressed against the bricks.
"I always said after my career was over with, I would like … for people to call me up and say, 'You were good for the game of baseball,'" he says. "I wanted to leave a legacy."
He's 64 years old now. His blue hat is pulled down to his ears — not unlike Robert Duvall's character in "Days of Thunder," substituting the now-cliche trucker hat for the interlocking 'NY' embroidery — and he's not quite as mustachioed as he was at the height of playing days. Opinionated and affable, Blomberg is not one to mince words.
He sits upright in the booth and plainly says he didn't live up to expectations. He says the unforeseen cruelties of injuries left him depressed during the Yankees' 1977 title run. The No. 1 overall pick in the 1967 draft, his career was over by the time he was 30. The road to Cooperstown is not always paved in accolades and trophies. He never once received an All-Star nod or registered in the MVP voting.
Make no mistake, though, against the long odds of an injury-diminished career, Ron Blomberg has a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
All thanks to one at-bat on April 6, 1973.
No one can ever take that away from him.
"I can't lose," he says, taking another sip of his Diet Coke.
Blomberg's baseball immortality, in many ways, was forged by Charles O. Finley, the part-visionary, part-tyrannic former owner of the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics.
Finley, a former insurance executive who owned the A's for two decades, overseeing back-to-back-to-back World Series titles despite constant strife in his organization, was the loudmouthed outcast owner of baseball in the 1960s and '70s, a man who publicly bickered for sport and persistently sought to change the aesthetic presentation of baseball. Of Finley, Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray once wrote that he "is a self-made man who worships his creator." That basically sums it up. However, the man had an irrefutable penchant for showmanship.
Though most of his eccentric baseball concoctions never gained traction — of note: a mechanical rabbit that delivered balls to the home plate umpire, rainbow-colored bases, animals grazing in the outfield, orange baseballs — some did indeed stick. Finley paved the way to night games in the World Series. He was also largely responsible for the American League's adoption of the DH in 1973, if only for a three-year window.
The A's owner, always a fiscally-driven man, appreciated the entertainment value of offense (See: MLB profits, Steroid Era) and pushed hard for the change as runs remained hard to come by even following offense-friendly rule changes in 1969 (lower mound, smaller strike zone). The final AL vote on the DH passed, 8-4.
And so it came to be that in the first game of the 1973 season, a chilled Opening Day in Boston, New York Yankees manager Ralph Houk chose Blomberg as his first DH, protecting the first baseman's hamstring. He was slotted to hit sixth. Boston's DH — Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, he of the 379 home runs — was to hit fifth for the Red Sox. But the Yanks loaded the bases in the first inning, allowing Blomberg to walk his way (precisely, he drew a 3-2 bases loaded walk) into history.
The Red Sox won 15-5, but who recalls such minor details?
"That created a stir," Blomberg says, back still supported, looking up at one of the 731 TVs mounted on the walls and ceiling. "They made a big deal about it the first time, the first day. After the second day it went away."
It's important to note how close Blomberg came to relative obscurity here, a dangerous proposition for such a man: One out created by the middle of New York's lineup — Matty Alou, Bobby Murcer or Graig Nettles — and perhaps the distinction becomes one of many in Cepeda's already distinctive career. Blomberg's enduring place in history is simply a matter of scheduling, team performance and luck. He knows this; he thanks his old friend for it every time.
"I always tell (Cepeda). I was just with him, we went out to dinner and I say, 'Orlando' and he says, 'Blomy' (pronounced bloom-y)," Blomberg recalls in what is his thickest New York dialect of the day. "He doesn't know anything about the DH. He said, 'It was great for me because it's one of my 400 home runs I hit.' He's a Hall of Fame guy. And I say, 'Thanks for letting me in; thanks for giving me a few accolades.'
"I got in the back door, he walked in the front."
Perhaps this is the most powerful reason behind Blomberg's embrace of his innocuous title: there's a slight undercurrent of fear in his stories, a very human fear of being forgotten. If it weren't for the DH — this unexpected and unconventional claim to lasting popularity — the memories of his career would be different, faded somehow. The DH has served as his career's curator, saving him from an infrequent rattling off of numbers and lists from baseball enthusiasts, a legacy on the fringe.
It pays to be First.
Blomberg Aside, Part One: The 64-year-old now serves as a scout for the Yankees.
On occasion, the club will ask him to take a scouting trip to the youth baseball hotbeds of metro Atlanta: Roswell, Marietta, Walton, Gwinnett. They send him to get his personal take on a certain player. Sometimes, said player is a pitcher, or, at the very least, a pitching prospect the Yankees are looking to acquire.
It is here that Ron Blomberg often tells the organization that his forte is not scouting pitchers. He possesses an unfiltered, simplified view of the game — one could imagine him sitting in for one of the scouts characterized in Bennett Miller's on-screen interpretation of Michael Lewis' "Moneyball." He is unrelenting in his beliefs. And he's (still) a pure hitter. He claims to fully understand only one thing concerning the opposite end of baseball's central mano-a-mano theme: how to hit them.
So, his beloved Yankees send him to the designated site wanting to know whether or not he could hit said pitching prospect.
His thought, always: "I can hit anybody."
When looking through the record books at Druid Hills High School, there is a case to be made for Blomberg being one of the most accomplished athletes in the history of high school sports. A Parade All-American in baseball, basketball and football, his scholarship offer collection read like a mandatory NCAA convention roster. From John Wooden to Bear Bryant, his suitors stretched from ocean to ocean.
In this context — he was eventually taken No. 1 overall by New York, paid pennies on the dollar due to baseball's reserve clause and made his major league debut for the most popular sports team in the world at 21 years old — his career arc is hard to fathom. He was out of baseball before his 31st birthday. There are but 391 hits and 52 home runs to his name.
But some things are out of a player's control.
"When you get injured, there's nothing you can do," he says. His Diet Coke has not been refilled once in hours. It is serving more as a prop at this point, Blomberg fully immersed in his career's recollection. "It was like a domino effect."
Over the course of 10 seasons, Blomberg averaged just 46 games per year. There were shoulder injuries and hamstring injuries (the tender hamstring, of course, leading to his DH designation on Opening Day 1973). He once ripped his pectoral tendon on a home run in Milwaukee that, to his recollection, hit the scoreboard. He dropped to home plate, seeing stars. The doctors on site, not knowing any better, told him to ice and heat it.
That was in 1972, when players still rubbed tobacco on injuries. He missed all but one game in 1975, too.
Then the worst came in spring training, 1977.
Blomberg felt fully recovered from the injuries that had plagued his early- to mid-20s. His manager, Billy Martin, was playing him in left field when Red Sox lefty Carl Yastrzemski — many of Blomberg's career-defining moments came against Boston, as is only fitting for an adopted New Yorker — lined a ball to left that began to fade toward the wall.
Without a modern warning track — "a couple of inches, at most" — or padded walls, Blomberg's left knee met concrete. He's sitting upright in his booth as he tells the story, too much drama for lounging. It hurt, he says matter-of-factly, likely referencing two pains at once. He was on crutches for two months, out for the year.
"I'll never forget it. We took the bus from Winterhaven, where the Red Sox were, to Ft. Lauderdale," he says. "And I remember going to the hospital there and I had wraps on my knee because there were chips coming out of my kneecap. … That killed me."
Under George Steinbrenner's guidance and Martin's managing, the Yankees re-established their dynastic tendencies that season, morphing into a winning machine that doubled as the Bronx Zoo. Blomberg was in the training room (the site of the '70s Yankees' infamous fights) every single day. His knee froze up three times, requiring surgery to break up adhesions. His speed, which, in part, made him one of the most sought-after amateur athletes in the country a decade prior, would never truly return. Depression kicked in.
At this point, though, the dramatic portion of the story has fizzled back to a calm and Blomberg is again propping his still-broad shoulders against the wall. He played for one more season, in Chicago, before retiring. But even if healthy it's unclear if he ever could have succeeded outside of New York. His entire persona is pinstriped. The city and its proud Jewish population raised him in the world of professional athletics (he was twice voted the city's most popular man, edging Joe Namath) and he refers to the Empire State's crown jewel as a collective family member.
It is clear that 1977 was his low. There was no "first-ever DH" celebration to hang his hat on; all he knew was that he was resigned to a trainer's table as his teammates brought home the organization's first baseball title since 1962.
His World Series ring reflects the light of the fading afternoon sun coming into the oyster/sports bar's windows. On it sits the third visible 'NY' logo on his 6-foot-1 frame.
Ron Blomberg is a world champion; just ask him.
"I earned it. I earned it," he repeats. "It's my ring. I earned it. Absolutely. I was on that training table every day. I earned it."
Blomberg Aside, Part Two: Hundreds of limousines shuttle passengers both recognizable and unknown to and from New York City's LaGuardia airport daily. Often, while off to speaking engagements or youth camps or charity functions, Ron Blomberg is such a passenger.
As the former ballplayer exits his flight, the limo driver waits.
The name tag, as expected, reads, 'BLOMBERG.'
By the time Blomberg finds said name tag, there will be, on occasion, four or five autograph-seekers flanking his driver of designation. His name still carries weight. And whether it's because of his Yankees-slash-DH fame or the fans' suspicion of a grammatically-insufficient limo driver, Blomberg always takes the time.
"When I come up they ask one of two things: They ask, 'Are you Ron Blomberg, the former Yankees player and the first DH? And I say, 'Yes I am," Blomberg says. "Or, they ask if I'm related to Mayor (Michael) Bloomberg. And I say, 'Yeah, he's my uncle.'"
Either way, they get his John Hancock.
The legacy of the designated hitter is clearly a divisive one: the National League has yet to adopt the rule absolving pitchers of their duty to sacrifice bunt and aim for a .125 average. After 40 years it's unclear if it ever will. The holdout league's battle cry on the issue for decades has been that it takes the strategic nature out of the game, especially for managers — Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson once lamented with tongue presumably in cheek that, with the DH, no one would know if he could manage or not.
The American League (along with Blomberg) hang their hat on the fact that fans pay ticket prices to see hitters hit and pitchers pitch. There's a certain level of increased entertainment value that Charles O. Finley yearned for years ago. And it's worked: the AL has outscored the NL practically every season since 1973. Past and present stars such as Edgar Martinez, Frank Thomas, David Ortiz, Paul Molitor, Jim Thome and Harold Baines have transformed or extended careers thanks to the rule.
Still, the leagues can not (possibly will not ever) get on the same page.
But if the Father of the Designated Hitter Position is expected to feel apologetic for his "controversial" placement in Cooperstown, he's too busy. He embraces the distinction in every facet of his public life: his book (Designated Hebrew: The Ron Blomberg Story), his website, his public outreach programs. Instead of shying away from self-promotion, Blomberg owns it — perhaps that, in some small way, will help his name live on as well.
"Most of the time, after you've been out of baseball for so many years, people forget who you are," he says. "When you have the Jeters, in 20 years, the majority of the people from Nebraska, California and Texas will maybe know his name but they won't remember all that he's done. But with this thing, just one at-bat, it's always there."
To be clear: Ron Blomberg knows his place in the storied game. In some ways he's still a wide-eyed kid at Yankee Stadium, the mere thought that he's included in Old-Timers' Day with all the past greats makes him shake his head.
He uses names like currency — Satchel and Guidry; Reggie and Cox; Clemente; Aaron; Steinbrenner — as if their mere mention will somehow help compensate for his fortunate, albeit important footnote on the game's story. As if history were not history. As if the Bronx Zoo and Billy Martin's tirades and George Steinbrenner's imperishable desire were alive and well so long as he put their names above his own on the all-time pecking order.
But he does not let anybody define his own success.
He has a clear perspective on his career's highs and lows, but an even clearer opinion on his place in baseball, 40 years later.
"The day they don't call me, the day they don't ask me for an autograph, is the day I'm not successful," he says. "That's how I picture success."
His Diet Coke nearly gone, he takes another indiscernible sip. He's not finished yet.
