Dave Rozema pitched for the Tigers in the 1970’s and
80’s. He debuted in 1977, the year after
the Bird. He went 15-7 his rookie year
and It appeared the Tigers were on their way to a great pitching staff with a
one two punch of Fidrych and Rozema. But
after June of 1977 Fidrych would only win four more games in his career and
Rozie would never win double digits in a season again. In 1982 he suffered a serious knee injury
when he tried out his martial arts skills in a bench clearing brawl with the
Twinkies. His skills were a bit lacking
as the only damage he created was to his own knee. Dave stayed on the staff through the 1984 season
when he signed with the Rangers as a free agent. Rozie is also the brother in law of Kirk
Gibson. The two married twin exotic
dancers. I have his shoes from when he
was a Ranger. A friend of mine knew him
and emailed him to confirm that they were his shoes and he replied, yes they
were, but he could not understand why anyone would want those stinky
things. For the record, they do not
give off any odor.
Vic Frazier was a Tiger pitcher who seems to have has his
name spelled FraSier and FraZier. He was born in Louisiana in 1904. He started his pro baseball career in 1928
with the Dallas Steers and in his second year, 1929, he went 16-8 and led the
team with a 2.68 ERA. This drew the
attention of the Chicago White Sox who purchased Vic for $10,000. It took a while for him to pay off for
Chicago. He left training camp and
refused to return. He complained of a
sore know while others said it was in a spat with Sox manager and former Tiger
Donie Bush who had made a disparaging comment of a new suit Vic was
wearing. Commissioner Judge Landis
stepped in and suspended Vic for a year for jumping his contract. Vic came back in 1931 and immediately paid
off for the Sox as he was the Ace of the staff his rookie year going 13-15 with
a 4.46 ERA for a last place Sox team under skipper Bush. In 1932 Vic returned but skipper Bush did
not. He was replaced by player manager
Lew Fonseca. But while Donie Bush was
gone Vic would only win 10 more games in his major league career. Vic had a very poor season in 1932 going 3-13
with a ballooning ERA of 6.23. I have
found one report that says this was due to case of malaria. In 1933 he was 1-1 while still supposedly
suffering from malaria when he was traded to Detroit from the White Sox in a
deal that sent Whit Wyatt to Chicago. He
won 5 of those 10 remaining wins for Detroit in the rest of 1933. Than in 1934 he split the season between the
Tigers, where he was 1-3 and Beaumont of the Texas League where he was
6-3. At the end of the season he was sold to Montreal
of the International League. However, he
did not play a game anywhere in 1935. In
1936 he was back with the Sox in their farm system. He was sold to the Boston Bee’s in 1936. The Boston Braves (later they would become
the Milwaukee Braves and eventually the Atlanta Braves.) were a very bad team and had been for
years. They had one episode where they
painted the stadium seats before opening day but the paint did not dry and the
team had a large cleaning bill for suites of fans. They decided to change their name to the
Bee’s hoping that the change would improve their fortune. It did not.
The Bee’s used Vic in three games and he did not record a decision. They returned him to the Sox where he was 0-1
in 1939, hid final year in the majors. I
have a 1934 Tiger yearbook that has been signed by all the players except Vic
Fraizer. My thought was that maybe Vic
had been sent down to the Tigers Texas League farm team in Beaumont and
therefore did not sign it. But now my
thought is that it actually belonged to Vic as I found another guy who had the
same yearbook I had signed by all the players except Jo-Jo White. The guy who had it stated he got it from the
Jo-Jo White estate sale and it had Jo-Jo’s name and address printed on the
front. This made sense to me as you
probably are not going to sign your own memento. But I doubt I will ever be able to verify
it.
Sam Gibson pitched for the Tigers from 1926 through
1928. While his rookie was his best also
at 12-9, he did manage to win 11 games his sophomore season. But he only managed 9 more for the rest of
his career. He went on to play a couple
seasons with the New York Giants and Yankees but was done in the majors after
1932. But Sam was not done with
baseball. Sam went on to play for years
in the minors. He won a total of 307
games in the minors, most in the Pacific Coast League with the San Francisco
Seals. One of those years, 1941, he was
back under contract with the Tigers. His
last four years he was a player manager.
I do not have Sam’s shoes nor his autograph.
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