Rock Raines and Dennis Boyd

Raines (MON 1979-1990, CHW 1991-1995, NYY 1996-1998, OAK 1999, MON 2001, BAL 2001, FLO 2002), .294/.385/.425, 2605 H, 170 HR, 808 SB, 7 All-Star Games

Boyd (BOS 1982-1989, MON 1990-1991, TEX 1991), 78 W - 77 L, 4.04 ERA, 799 Ks

A friend asks: Why is Tim Raines, who was almost never referred to as “Rock,” listed as “Rock Raines” on his 1989 Topps card? And why, by extension, is Oil Can1 Boyd identified here as “Dennis Boyd?” Surely neither man was attempting to reinvent his identity the way the artist formerly known as B.J. Upton but now known as Melville Upton Jr.2 appears to be doing. Raines, of course, had once snorted cocaine the way I ate pizza–i.e., we each spent $40,000/year on our vice of choice–but that was many moons before this card dropped. And the great Dennis Boyd, who would sandwich a 2009 comeback between various arrests, admitted in 2012 that two-thirds of the time he took the mound, he was under the influence of cocaine, so it’s unlikely he was trying to separate himself from any past bad choices.3 But like most editorial decisions, including the ones that have reduced my innumerable op-eds to so much pablum, this one was made; and having been made, there it stands, it can do no other.

“Oil can” meaning “beer can,” because that’s the Mississippi slang term for beer, which the substance-abusing Dennis Boyd apparently enjoyed a great deal. This was the sort of detail that should’ve appeared on the back of Boyd’s ‘89 Topps card, but unlike their competitors, the good people at Topps kept it simple: a meaningless statline and maybe, if the economy was particularly good or the editors were in an especially generous mood, a Goofus and Gallant-style cartoon.
Here’s a trend that needs to stop: the superfluous use of a “junior” designation when the “senior” has done nothing to recommend himself (e.g., who the hell was “Roger Mason, Sr.?”). I mean, I’m Oscar Berkman IV, but you don’t hear me going around stumping for the previous three. By way of contrast, lesser versions of golden originals, such as Tony Gwynn, Jr. and Tim “Little Rock” Raines, Jr. definitely warrant such diminutives.
“There wasn’t one ballpark that I probably didn’t stay up all night, until four or five in the morning, and the same thing is still in your system,” Boyd told WBZ NewsRadio 1030’s Jonny Miller in Fort Myers, Fla. “It’s not like you have time to go do it while in the game, which I had done that. Some of the best games I’ve ever, ever pitched in the major leagues I stayed up all night; I’d say two-thirds of them. If I had went to bed, I would have won 150 ballgames in the time span that I played. I feel like my career was cut short for a lot of reasons, but I wasn’t doing anything that hundreds of ball players weren’t doing at the time; because that’s how I learned it.”

–Urville Boatman, with an assist from the Amistad