By A.J. Hayes
In current baseball vernacular, “wearing it” refers to owning up to a hellacious slump, a shoddy performance or bone-headed play sans lame excuse.
“I threw like ass… basically,” former Giants pitcher Sidney Ponson so elegantly put it following a horrible game a few seasons ago. That’s a fine example of “wearing it.”
Blaming a shipment of “soft” bats for a home run drought — as Oakland slugger Jack Cust did this spring — is most assuredly not “wearing it.”
In the late ’70s, much-maligned former Giants shortstop/futility icon Johnnie LeMaster, AKA “Bones,” AKA “Johnnie Disaster,” took “wearing it” to a whole new level.
In one game vs. the Montreal Expos in 1979, LeMaster “wore it” – literally.
A prototypical good field/no hit shortstop during his best days at the park, the super slender LeMaster was enduring a prolonged stretch of through-the-wickets fielding/don’t-even-bother-stepping-into-the-box hitting that had everyone from little kids to blue-haired ladies at Candlestick Park calling for his scraggly ’70s-style mustache.
Razzing LeMaster had become the official second language of the frozen concrete bowl by the freeway.
So without informing the higher ups in the San Francisco front office, LeMaster had his name plate removed from the back of his No. 10 Giants jersey and replaced simply with a three letter word: “Boo.”
“It really caught everyone off guard, in fact when I walked to the plate that night I could hear manager Joe Altobelli say, ‘Why does John have “Bob” on the back of his uniform?’
“That stunt cost me a $500 fine, but it was worth every penny. It won over some of the media and the fans really got a kick out of it,” said LeMaster who was honored by the Giants last weekend as part of the club’s season long 50th San Francisco Anniversary celebration.
It was the Paintsville, Kentucky resident’s first visit to San Francisco’s downtown ballpark.