[JON BOIS, narrating]
Hey y'all, before we get this one going, I just want to say two things right off the bat. First, these are true stories, and second, don't worry, nobody dies.
Alright so if you had to name the most fascinating athlete of the 1980s who would you go with? Who's your number one? Uh, mine is Bo Jackson, the hero of my childhood. Uh, after that I would probably say Mike Tyson, second most interesting athlete of the 80s. Uh, third, you could put a whole lot of names there. Michael Jordan, Larry Bird... I'm gonna go with Lonnie Smith. This is kinda out there, uh, and I know I have to explain myself. I don't really know where to start.
"Cause I'm a Man" by TAME IMPALA plays.
[JON BOIS, narrating]
The 1980s were sort of the golden age of the stolen base and Lonnie Smith, during that era, was one of the fastest guys in baseball. In '82 he stole sixty-eight bases. Also, Lonnie was pigeon toed. In other words, when he ran his toes kinda pointed inward toward each other. Like, like that. Now what this means is that sometimes his legs would get tangled up with each other, and when that happened, he ate shit. He became famous for it. He'd be, he'd be running, usually do hard that his helmet fell off, and out of nowhere he'd just go flying like he stepped on a bomb or something.
As a rookie, Lonnie played for the Phillies, which meant the Phanatic was always around, always clowning him for falling down. He'd stand behind Lonnie and stagger around and do all these pratfall routines and Lonnie just kinda had to put up with it. Now a lot of people ask what is the Phillie Phanatic, like what animal is the Phillie Phanatic? Well, he's an asshole, that's what. If you fell down a lot, he made falling down joke. If you were big, he made fat jokes. Here look, there's this cute little piggie chef, in his little piggie chef hat, and the Phanatic is shooting pork products at a pig! That's terrible! But the Phanatic could act with impunity. Nobody stood up to him.
Except for one man. It's 1982, Lonnie Smith plays for the Cardinals now, and during a game against the Phillies the Phanatic is clowning him relentlessly, for the hundredth time, and that y'all, was one time too many.
Straight Outta Compton by N.W.A. plays.
[JON BOIS, narrating]
Now let's be clear, this was not part of a bit, okay Lonnie was not playing around. The guy in the suit sprained both his ankles. He got fucked up.
[LONNIE SMITH]
No one ever realized that I was just naturally clumsy. You can ask my mother, my aunt, who raised me. Uh, I was always knocking over things, falling, my little boy is the same way to this day. Course maybe the drugs probably added in some way, you know, I'm not gonna deny that.
[JON BOIS, narrating]
See, baseball isn't really a sport, it's more of an excuse to get really messed up. Like at first it was booze, lots of players were alcoholics, in the 1800s they would actually had beer at third base and if you made it to third, you'd have a beer, like right then and there on the field. Later it was painkillers and then greenies, of course it was Dock Ellis who pitched that no hitter on LSD, in the 90s it was steroids, and in the 80s it was coke. Baseball players loved coke.
In 1982 the Cardinals suspected that three of their guys were on coke. They were absolutely right. Those three guys were Lonnie Smith, Joaquin Andujar, and Keith Hernandez. The three of them would get together and snort coke on basically a daily basis, so let's see how that impacted their play.
God bless you baseball reference, let's go to the '82 Cardinals and see who the best hitters were. Oh, uh, Lonnie Smith and Keith Hernandez. Okay, um, let's see who the best pitcher was.
"Beehive" by DR. LONNIE SMITH begins playing in the background.
[JON BOIS, narrating]
By a huge margin it's Joaquin Andujar. Um, well, the '82 Cardinals probably just weren't a very good team. Oh, they won the World Series. Does coke make you awesome at baseball? No. No, no, no, no, nope, nope, nope, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE! I'm putting my head in the sand. I refuse to make a twenty-minute ad for cocaine. No, I'm not doing it.
[JON BOIS, in person]
Alright listen if there are any kids watching, I don't want you coming and hollering to your parents like, "Mr. Jon told me doing coke's great I'm gonna go do coke now-" no. That's not what I'm saying, I haven't finished the story yet, the bad part's coming, okay, stick around. By the way this song, you know who does it? Dr. Lonnie Smith.
[JON BOIS, narrating]
But this is a different Lonnie Smith. This Dr. Lonnie Smith is a well-known jazz organist who does some really cool far out stuff so, no this is not the same Lonnie Smith. I mean look at them, they look completely different, they don't look anything alike- okay they might be the same dude.
This Lonnie Smith was not just another cocaine user, he might've done more cocaine than any other baseball player. On at least one occasion he and Keith played a game, went straight to the hotel, did coke all night without sleeping, and went to the park the next day.
"Beehive" by DR. LONNIE SMITH continues to play in the background.
[JON BOIS, narrating]
So back to that night in Philly. I think if a player beat down the Phanatic today he'd definitely be taken out of the game, right? I mean he'd probably be suspended, but Lonnie gets to play like nothing happened. The next inning, he goes out to left field but the fans in the vet are pissed off. They start throwing beer bottles, and this is 1982 so these are glass bottles we're talking about. Kinda heavy especially if they have beer in them, and fans were throwing them from the upper deck. That's at least sixty feet up.
But Lonnie stares them all down. He doesn't take step. He takes a bow. He stretches his arms out, as though say "Go ahead and hit me," and somehow, they never hit him. Lonnie would later say it was a miracle he didn't get hit. He also doesn't remember whether he was strung out that night. He did so much coke back in that day that he doesn't really even remember.
So, consider this, apparently one point two grams of coke are enough to cause a fatal overdose in a first-time user. A regular user who's built up a bit of a tolerance can get away with snorting about five grams in one go. Lonnie buys four eight balls, that's almost fifteen grams, and he does all of it in one night. He's sitting on the floor all night shaking, hearing voices, his nose is bleeding, over the last few months he's felt his muscles deteriorate, he's such a mess that these days he's snorting in front of his kids. Later he said he was amazed that he didn't die that night.
The next day he finally goes into manager Whitey Herzog's office and says he needs help. Whitey picks up the phone, gets him checked into rehab, and Lonnie, thank God, kicks the habit.
In 1985, Vince Coleman arrives on the scene and starts ahead of Lonnie in left field. The Cardinals don't really need him anymore, so they ship him across the state to Kansas City. Lonnie goes to the world series with the Royals where they beat the Cardinals. Now this is kinda crazy, Lonnie has now won his third world series in six years, and they were all with different teams. In '80 he won with the Phillies, in '82 with the Cardinals, and now with the Royals. No other player in history, ever, before, or since, has done that.
But Lonnie doesn't like it in K.C. and he's not shy about it. He was so sad about leaving St. Louis that he almost retired. He's kinda turning into a cranky pants at this point. He hates the American League, he says the pitching is all weird, he actually openly states that he pays attention to his old division more than his new division. He's just having a bad time.
And it just keeps staying bad. Lonnie is summoned to testify at the famous Pittsburgh Drug Trials. Around this time major league baseball was really starting to crack down on its drug abuse problem. Lonnie, for his part, has been clean for a couple years now. He hates coke, and so he tells them everything. As it turns out lots of big players used coke. There was Dave Parker, Tim Raines, Dusty Baker, lots of them. Even the Pirate's parrot mascot was a major dealer, he delt coke to a lot of players. The mascot was a dealer.
Now Lonnie kicked the habit years ago of his own accord, but commissioner Pete Ueberroth suspends him anyway. It's a conditional suspension meaning he can keep playing, he's just supposed to submit to regular drug testing. Ueberroth boasts that, "Baseball will be the first drug free sport," and Lonnie is like, "Bullshit." See, Lonnie wants to be tested, he wants to prove that he's clean, and he says it's all talk, and the suspensions aren't actually happening like they're supposed to be. He's talking shit about Ueberroth in the papers, he's basically like, "This is a serious thing you're playing with here, quit screwing around." Ueberroth's office responds with, "We are not concerned with what he says, only that he stays off drugs." Well okay then, test him, it sounds like bullshit, and by the way around this time Ueberroth says something that is undeniable completely bullshit. He says that the owners are definitely not colluding against the players. "It's impossible," he says. "It's just a conspiracy," he says. As it turns out, Ueberroth actually helped orchestrate collusion. He is completely full of shit.
This, very briefly, is how collusion works. Under normal circumstances, free agent Lonnie Smith can test the open market. Teams compete for his services and that allows him to earn what the market says he's worth, right? But here the owners gang up, and they say, "Hey let's all agree to not compete with each other alright? Let's, let's save some money that way." So, they do Lonnie's old team a solid by refusing to make him offers and Lonnie has to come crawling back to his old team for far less money than he should've made. In retrospect what they were doing was completely obvious.
So, alright, check this out, in 2015, one hundred thirty-two players signed with a new team in free agency. In 1986 there were four. Like y'all are so bad at hiding conspiracies, you should get out of this racket. Anyway, in Lonnie's case he was making one million dollars with the Royals in '86 and in '87, he received one offer from Royals manager John Schuerholz for three hundred thousand dollars. Between the struggle to stay clean, the unfair suspension, and the knowledge that he's completely getting played by the owners, Lonnie's pissed. His stats take a nosedive, and so does he.
"Disappearing" by THE WAR ON DRUGS plays.
[JON BOIS, narrating]
One week later, the phone rings. Lonnie forgets all about his plan. It turns out there are two guys in baseball who still think he's worth something. Braves general manager Bobby Cox and vice president Henry Aaron. They're offering him one last shot to show up in the minors and work his way back.
Lonnie is thirty-two years old at this point. He's out of shape, he's about fifty pounds heavier than he was as a rookie, during practice drills he's throwing up on the field having an awful time, but he keeps working at it, and by the end of 1988, after everyone thought he was done for good, Lonnie Smith is back.
And now we get to talk about one of the craziest most surprising seasons I've ever heard about in my life. We're going to score Lonnie Smith's 1989 season in terms of wins above replacement or "WAR". Basically, this stat is a rough estimate of how many more wins a team would have if they had this player over an average dude, alright? So, for example, if your WAR is three that means that your team won three more games than they would've if you were just some random dude. It's actually a really interesting series of calculations that- blah blah blah. I don't give a shit. I just want to look at some shit and jam some Rafferty, sound good to y'all?
"Baker Street" by GERRY RAFFERTY plays.
[JON BOIS, narrating]
It's 1991, and amazingly, Lonnie Smith has a shot at winning a world series with his fourth team. He is playing his ass off. Yeah, I know, he was out. I don't care. That was the hardest hit I've seen a catcher take, maybe ever. It was one of countless incredible moments from a series that featured two teams, the Braves and Twins, that had finished dead last the year before. This was the greatest world series ever played, before or since, and Lonnie was wrecking shit.
In game three he hit a deciding home run...
[ANNOUNCER]
Lonnie Smith hits it well. There's another run for Atlanta.
[JON BOIS, narrating]
...And another crucial home run in game four...
[ANNOUNCER]
Here's Lonnie [?]! To tie it!
[JON BOIS, narrating]
...And another home run in game five.
[ANNOUNCER]
Lonnie hits it high, hits it deep! There she goes!
[JON BOIS, narrating]
Lonnie is now the second player in history to hit home runs in three consecutive world series games. The other was Reggie Jackson. This is completely ridiculous. Lonnie is not a homerun hitter. He has finished a season with double digit homers in once in his entire career. He only hit seven in the regular season, that's an average one every sixty at bats. During this world season he's averaging one in ten.
But we still have not talked about the part that everybody remembers Lonnie Smith for. They don't remember him for the pigeon toes, the Phille Phanatic, the coke benders, the bottles, all the world series rings, the murder plot, one of the greatest comebacks ever, or the world series homerun record.
Nope it's this shit. Maybe if I try to separate myself a little and walk through a play by play first, I can then watch the video and it'll be easier for me? I'm gonna try that. Okay, so game seven is a scoreless tie, Lonnie Smith leads off the top of the eighth against Jack Morris, who is pitching the game of his life, but Lonnie still manages to hit his way on with a single. Next up is Terry Pendleton the National League MVP and what follows is this agonizingly long at bat. Like it only lasts five pitches y'all but it takes five minutes. If every at bat lasted that long baseball games would take like seven hours to conclude, but finally Terry breaks through and blasts one to deep left center and Lonnie's got wheels. On a hit like this he can round the bases and score easy. He takes off for second and then he, stands there. Lonnie's lost the ball. He doesn't know where it is. The enduring legend is that the second baseman, Chuck Knoblauch, faked like he had the ball. Lonnie's denied this several times over and I believe him, I don't think he was faked out, I mean Lonnie was looking toward the outfield after rounding second, he knew it wasn't in the infield. I mean Lonnie just lost track of the ball that's all. And then he stood there for like eight or nine years, Terry is screaming at him to run, finally he does, but by this time it's too late, he has to stop at third, he can't score.
But hey, y'all know what? It's all good! IT'S ALL GOOD! There's nobody out, there's men on second and third! It's still a tie and the Braves have two guys coming up next who both received MVP votes this year, this is great, they've got this! Fuck, Ron Gant dribbles to first the runners can't advance, David Justice is intentionally walked. Sid Bream grounds into a double play, the inning's over. The game remains scoreless into extra innings. The Twins win it in ten. Atlanta loses the greatest world series that has ever been played.
It is completely unfair that Lonnie Smith goes down in the books as the man responsible, I mean, completely unfair, they should've scored anyway, but, I mean, that was Lonnie's career, right? Struggle after struggle, wrong after wrong, some were his fault, and some were unfair. Sometimes the world just kind of conspired against him.
Okay, let's watch it. Alright, it's a good lead. Good jump. He's gonna go to second. He can r- go GO GO GO! FUCK! GO GO GO GO GO! Shit! Ah holy shit! Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. Fuck. *hits the table* Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Ah fuck. Ahhhh. Oh my god. Oh my god. Hey, did I tell y'all about this part?
[JON BOIS, in person]
Like, the John Schuerholz part? Are you sure we didn't talk about that? We didn't talk about that. Okay, hold on, so, basically, what we've got is John Schuerholz becoming the Braves general manager like two years after Lonnie Smith went to the Braves. So, like, John Schuerholz followed him, and now they're co-workers and nobody knows tried or plotted to murder John Schuerholz.
[JON BOIS, narrating]
So now we've basically got the most awkward work environment ever. Lonnie doesn't want to murder John Schuerholz anymore, he just wants to avoid him. Schuerholz, for his part, has no idea about the murder plot or any of that stuff, but he knows Lonnie doesn't like him at all so, I guess they kinda just stay out of each other's way. But for like two years? How do you avoid talking to your boss for like two years? In interviews since then Lonnie talked about how he'd like duck behind a corner whenever Schuerholz was walking down the hall, if he saw him in a room he'd pull a 180 and go the other way. Break room politics must've been a complete logistical nightmare.
But then, of course, the Braves had to go and clinch the NL west. It's the first time they've had something to celebrate in years and years. So of course, that means a big locker room celebration, everyone's around. Lonnie and Schuerholz pretty much have to be there, and they can't not interact right? Go get him Lonnie.
"Team" by LORDE plays until the video's end.
