Not many people except some of the more die-hard baseball fans of the 70s and 80s will remember Oscar Gamble. I vaguely remember him but when I came across this outstanding image of one of his baseball cards I totally remembered why. It was the afro. This may have been common for some of the 70s basketball players, but was fairly rare for baseball of any era. It’s kind of a shame that Oscar is most notably remembered for this one aspect of his character. He actually had a fairly accomplished career over seventeen seasons with seven different teams (twice each with the White Sox and Yankees). He had 200 career homeruns with 31 in 1977. Most people will remember 1977 as the year Reggie Jackson became Mr. October, but Reggie only hit one more homerun than Oscar that year. Of course, Oscar didn’t hit three on three consecutive pitches in a World Series game, but he had a solid year nonetheless. After a few injuries in ’78, he came back and hit .358 in ’79 with the Rangers and Yankees. This was the highest average in the league but he didn’t have quite enough at bats to qualify for the title.
If you’re looking for an interesting story about an interesting character, do a quick search on Oscar Gamble. Wikipedia has a nice writeup and you can find several images of his noteworthy afro out there.