The essence of Brewerdom in the 1970s

For about a year and a half, Von Joshua was my favorite baseball player. He had a decent year for the Giants in 1975 and then came over to the Brewers in the middle of the 1976 season and manned center field for them through the rest of that year and 1977. He was a steady, unspectacular player who didn't do anything especially well. The stats show he hit about .260 for the Brewers and hit about 15 home runs over the course of about 1 1/2 seasons. In other words, he was the kind of guy you were looking to replace. And when Larry Hisle arrived in Milwaukee as a free agent in 1978, Von was gone.

Von Joshua became my favorite player because we all had to have one growing up. Unfortunately, the pickings were rather slim among the Brewers in that era. My best friend's favorite player was the aforementioned Bob Coluccio, who was traded to the White Sox in 1975 for some guy named Bill Sharp and then posed for that ridiculous porno star baseball card pose that I posted yesterday. Another good friend chose the immortal Pedro Garcia as his favorite player. Garcia was later traded to the Tigers for a package of Red Man and some of Al Kaline's pocket lint, I believe.

Last I heard Von Joshua was a coach in the Cubs minor league organization. I'm sure he does a fine job. Some 30 years ago, he provided the fans of Wisconsin with some intermittent excitement. Thanks Von, wherever you are.