On this day: Giants spring training phenom writes another chapter in his legend
Randy Elliott and his prolific hitting during spring training 1977 gave long-suffering Giants fans something to cheer about.
Randy Elliott, everybody’s favorite non-roster invitee, whacked an RBI double as the Giants beat the Indians in a spring training on March 23, 1977, 43 years ago.
Just another day under the desert sun? Hardly.
Elliott was a young man with an old body come the spring of 1977. Drafted by San Diego in 1969, he spent parts of the 1972 and ’74 seasons with the Padres. Along the way he dislocated his shoulder, which was never the same again.
The Giants invited him to spring training, just another face in the crowd.
Until he started off with 13 hits in 18 at-bats, a .722 average. Then he was promoted to a curiosity. When his average sat at .657 on March 27 he began hearing the P-word — “phenom.”
When on March 30, he had two hits and his average dropped to .643, Giants fans, who hadn’t had a lot to cheer about for years, were out of their minds.
Elliott seemed almost bemused. “I used to hit .400 (in spring training) for San Diego, but they didn’t care.”
He finished the spring with a .547 average and 18 extra-base hits. The Giants put him on the roster, where he acquitted himself well. He hit .240 in 1977 with seven home runs — three of them as a pinch hitter and one a grand slam.
On that same day, A’s owner Charlie Finley was attempting to frame the terms by which he would sell his team.
From the Oakland Tribune: “Speaking from his Chicago office, Finley said the A’s are for sale if ‘they will agree in blood’ to keep the A’s in Oakland for ‘at least 10 years.’
“Finley’s statements came amid revelations that a Pennsylvania businessman is trying to buy the Oakland club with commissioner Bowie Kuhn’s cooperation, and baseball owners are interested in purchasing the A’s, too. “They all want to move the team to Washington,” Finley told the Trib.
Finley never had much stomach for free agency and the money he would have to pay his players under baseball’s new economy. In 1976, he sold pitcher Vida Blue to the Yankees for $1.5 million, and outfielder Joe Rudi and reliever Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox for $1 million each. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn voided all sales.
In 1976 Finley traded Reggie Jackson to the Orioles rather than pay him fair market value.