Baseball Way Back: A walk down memory lane with Wimpy

As Joe Garagiola used to remind us, baseball is a funny game. Few lived up to that adage the way Tom Paciorek did.

I recently spoke by phone to the man known to Sox fans as Wimpy, who entertained fans as a player and as a broadcaster.

Long before his days as Ken “Hawk” Harrelson’s broadcast partner, Tom, as a player, made some hilarious promotional commercials. In one, he promoted Funny Nose and Glasses Day at old Comiskey Park wearing a Groucho facial get-up.

During our conversation he repeated the Howard Cosell imitation he would use to describe an oversized catcher laboring to score from third: “He … could … go … all … the … way.”

Paciorek grew up in Hamtramck, Michigan, among brothers who became major-leaguers, including John Paciorek, who set a major-league record by batting 1.000 in three at-bats during his brief career with Houston. His brother Jim played with the Brewers and then won a batting title in Japan.

“They just didn’t get the opportunity, I don’t think, like I did to play,” he said. “When I came up with the Dodgers, I had Tommy Lasorda in my corner, and that was a big plus for me.”

As an up-and-coming minor-leaguer with the Dodgers, he was part of an impressive core of a future major-league pennant winner — his teammates included Steve Garvey, Bill Buckner and Bobby Valentine.

Lasorda was his first manager in Ogden, Utah, in 1968, and Tom regarded him as a second father.

“Tommy was really dynamic. I thought this was the way all professional baseball people acted, with his high energy. I found out later that I have yet to meet the second coming of Tommy Lasorda.”

Lasorda gave Tom the nickname Wimpy, a nod to the character in the Popeye cartoons, “because we all went out to eat as a family the first day we got there. They ordered steak and I ordered these double cheeseburgers. And I’ve been branded ever since.”

It was at this time that Tom began to develop his sense of humor, “because I was very shy when I first signed,” but Lasorda encouraged him to come out of his shell.

He was with the Los Angeles Dodgers for parts of six seasons, a stint that included playing in the 1974 World Series. As a pinch hitter in Game 5, Tom hit a double off Vida Blue and scored a run. But Oakland won the series 4-1.

“We didn’t actually realize how good the Oakland A’s were, because we were firmly entrenched in the National League at that time. We may have had better talent, but they performed more as a team than we did.”

Paciorek would go on to become an all-star with the Seattle Mariners, developing an open-stance batting style modeled after Rod Carew.

“Richie Zisk, my teammate from the Seattle Mariners, called it an emergency stance. I was really struggling. I couldn’t make consistent contact. I just changed everything. Instead of standing straight up and wrapping the bat around my head, I was going to point it back towards the catcher and get in a deep crouch. And it really seemed to work. I was able to see the ball better and make more consistent contact.”

The stance saved his career. He said he was on the verge of getting released by the Mariners in 1978 when he went 4-for-4 in the eighth spot as a DH against the Brewers’ Mike Caldwell. The Mariners released someone else instead.

He came to the Sox in 1982, a year when the Sox showed flashes of brilliance with an 8-0 start but finished third.

“I thought we were as good as anybody,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is there were a lot of other really good teams.”

He said he enjoyed playing at old Comiskey “because it was big, and I was not a home-run hitter. So there were a lot of openings to get hits.”

Tom was an important cog in the 1983 Winning Ugly Sox team that won the AL West. In one memorable game against the Angels on Sept. 9. Carlton Fisk, Tom and Greg Luzinski hit back-to-back-to-back homers in the first inning against Tom’s former Dodgers teammate Tommy John.

“The only bad thing that happened is we clinched it too early. We had about three weeks off without playing a real competitive game. That, I think, showed a little bit in that series against Baltimore.”

The Sox announcers were Don Drysdale and Tom’s future booth mate Hawk Harrelson.

“We had a great relationship,” he said. “They were great guys, former players. You could talk to them about baseball. It was like having an extra couple of coaches.”

He said his career in broadcasting was launched when he was ending his baseball career with the Rangers. During lunch with Eddie Einhorn, the Sox co-owner asked if he would be interested in working in TV the following year.

Eventually, Tom was paired with Hawk, and the result was TV magic.

“With Hawk, it was more like two guys just watching a ballgame, having a beer,” he said.

Over the past few years Tom has returned to the Sox broadcast from time to time. But he said his days behind the mic are over.

Looking back on his days as a player and a broadcaster, he said: “I think I had fun. I often said that I never worked a day in my life, because baseball was fun, all elements of the game, and I was able to experience that. For that, I’m really grateful.”