At First, He Knew He Could Succeed

To most of the world, “Who’s on first?” is merely an Abbott & Costello comedy routine that has found its way into baseball lore, in fact, into the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.

To Sid Bream, it represents a lifetime frustration. Sid Bream is a first baseman by trade. One of the best. He has size, he fields well, he’s left-handed--which most managers prefer in their fielding first basemen--and he makes a good target for infielders. At bat, he’s a tough out. He hits mistakes well. It usually takes a good pitch to retire him.

The Dodgers knew all this when they drafted and signed him in the spring of 1981 and assigned him to Vero Beach.

The trouble was, the Dodgers already had a first baseman, fellow by the name of Steve Garvey. What’s more, they already had three other can’t-misses waiting in the wings--Greg Brock, Mike Marshall and Franklin Stubbs. All were pitchers’ nightmares. Marshall had batted .373 at Albuquerque one year with 34 home runs and 137 runs batted in. Brock had weighed in with a 44-homer, 138-RBI year there, and Stubbs had a 32-homer, 93-RBI season.

Sidney Eugene Bream was right on their tails. He hit .370 at Albuquerque one year, .343 another and 32 homers and 118 RBIs in still another.

You would have thought the Dodgers would send a limo with a red carpet for him. He looked like the second coming of Lou Gehrig. Instead, the club concentrated on his faults. He was too much of a line-drive hitter, they complained. First base called for power.

Brock was a better fielder, Marshall was a harder hitter, they said. Stubbs had potential. Potential is like a bad check. You always have it. You just can’t cash it.

So, Sid Bream never really got a shot with the Dodgers. Only 27 games, 49 at-bats one year, 50 games, 148 at-bats the next. He could hardly get on track. At 6-4, 225, Sid Bream is not a part-time player. He needs a lot of on tracking. There’s a lot of him to get loose.

But the Dodgers were up to their hips in first basemen. They could have played first base by committee. They felt confident enough to let Garvey go with a shrug. They were lousy with first basemen, they felt.

Part of the problem was solved when they found Marshall could play the outfield--sort of. So could Stubbs.

So they handed the position to Brock. Handsome, blond, blue-eyed, a stylish swinger, Greg looked like a picture-book ballplayer, born for the position. The only problem was, he never really solved major league pitching. While the home run stroke was still there, the altitude wasn’t. The Dodgers played at sea level, not in the clouds of New Mexico.

But the Dodgers were committed. They let Bream bat a little more often than a relief pitcher. Brock was their future. If he faltered, they could beckon Stubbs or Marshall in from the outfield.

The Dodgers kind of put Bream in the window and with a make-offer sign on him. He was obviously a premium player, but the Dodgers kept putting him on a plane to Albuquerque until his options were worn out, along with two suitcases.

But the league wasn’t fooled. They knew he was a quality ballplayer. The Dodgers were able to get four-time batting champion Bill Madlock for Bream and outfielders R.J. Reynolds and Cecil Espy.

Pittsburgh gave Bream the first base job. And Sid was up to it. He handled the position and the bat. In his first full major league season (154 games), he had 16 homers, 37 doubles, 73 RBIs, 60 walks and he even stole 13 bases. He recorded 166 assists at first base, which broke the National League record for first basemen.

If he didn’t make anybody forget Lou Gehrig at bat, he did off the field. A man of steady habits, Sid makes the team bus, the team meetings and he’s always in shape to play.

He just seems to have trouble convincing people he should. Mike Marshall and Greg Brock are out of baseball, Franklin Stubbs is a part-time player with Milwaukee--and Sid Bream was in a World Series.

He was content in Pittsburgh. “I would even have taken less money to stay there. It was near my home,” he recalls. “I just wanted a no-trade clause for my own peace of mind. I didn’t want more money, just no trade.”

When Pittsburgh declined, Bream opted for free agency. Atlanta signed him.

Bream came out of the box in Atlanta with a .288 average, nine home runs and 34 RBIs in his first 59 games last year, which would have translated into his best year ever. But then, another of his old adversaries--his knees--checked in. Sid has had arthroscopic surgery on both of them to repair torn cartilage. On the night of June 18, as he was rounding third and heading for home, the knee buckled again.

“They removed a bone chip from a previous operation and then it got inflamed again,” he says.

As a result, he never really got back in the lineup in the regular season, but he did return in time to hit .300 and hit a three-run homer in the playoffs against Pittsburgh (for whom he had batted .500 with one homer in the playoffs the year before).

Sid sees himself as a ballplayer who needs 500 at-bats (a figure he has reached only once in eight years in the big leagues) and steady employment to be at his best. “It’s a unique player who can turn it on and turn it off, who can come off the bench to pinch-hit or designated-hit,” he says. “I need to get into my groove. They look at the record and admit I can hit lefties as well or better than righties.”

Nevertheless, they continue to platoon him. “Well, look at it this way,” his manager, Bobby Cox says, “he still gets to play 85% of the time, right? He plays against right-handed pitching, right? And there’s more of them.”

Bream feels that the answer to the time-honored who’s-on-first should be, “A guy named Sidney.” He’d like to play on a team where the answer to “Who’s on first?” isn’t “Everybody!”