Former 49er Moffitt Found a New Racket
by Bob Keisser, Long Beach Press-Telegram
June 17, 2005
If not for some silly and ill-conceived notions about the manliness of the sport of tennis in the '60s, Randy Moffitt might have followed his older sister into professional tennis.
Because when the former Poly and Long Beach State baseball standout was in his pre-teens, he spent as much time on the courts as Billie Jean (Moffitt) King, who went on to become the queen of tennis.
"There was some peer pressure out there, because a lot of boys my age thought tennis was a sissy sport," Moffitt said from his home in Arizona. "There was nothing sissy about it, but if you were a young boy back in those days, you were supposed to play team sports."
Tennis' loss became baseball's gain. Moffitt, who will be inducted Saturday into the Long Beach Baseball Hall of Fame in ceremonies at Blair Field, transitioned from tennis to baseball as easily as his sister went from backhand to forehand volleys.
He was a two-time all-Moore League choice at Poly, the team MVP of Long Beach's Connie Mack championship team of 1969, and played at Long Beach State, where he won 18 games in his two varsity seasons for coach Bob Wuesthoff. In January of 1970, the San Francisco Giants made him their first-round pick in the draft (there were two a year back then), and by 1972 he was in the major leagues.
"What I found out was that I loved baseball just as much, even more," Moffitt recalled. "I sometimes wish I would have gotten to baseball sooner than I did."
Moffitt was one of the top closers in the National League during the '70s, even though no one called them closers back then. Between 1973 and 1978, he averaged 61 appearances a year and posted 77 saves. This was in an era when late-inning relief pitchers made more than cameos, too.
"I had a lot of two and three-inning saves back then," he said. "We were just getting specialized, and guys were just starting to be recognized for what they did. Then it sort of exploded in the '80s.
"Those were the 12 best years of my life. I loved it, every day of it. I loved to play."
He might have played longer if his body hadn't bailed on him, a situation that has dogged him long after his playing days.
He came down with a rare parasitic infection in his stomach in 1979 that made eating extremely difficult and literally left him wretching most every day. He was able to control the malady, and had one more good year in the majors. He won six games and had 10 saves for Toronto in 1983.
"I didn't overcome it as much as learn to live with it," he said. "Plus, by then my shoulder was hurting so bad that I realized I couldn't do this anymore, so I hung them up."
He briefly scouted for the Giants before getting a job in public relations with a beer company, a job that required him to thoroughly learn every aspect of the business.
One day, he was in a freezer compartment moving some product when he bent down and didn't get up.
He had ruptured a disc, the first of seven such disc ruptures and surgeries he would have the next few years. That led two a pair of back fusion surgeries that wound up exacerbating his problems.
"I'm not a wah-wah type of person, but it hasn't been easy," he said. "It's been chronic for 20 years. There are good days and bad days, and it varies in degrees. Anyone who has ever had back problems know what it's like."
It's been bad enough that his doctors have suggested he have another surgery to implant a medicinal pump in his stomach.
The pump would be attached to tubes that would direct pain-killers directly to the aching discs. It would get him off the oral pain medications he's on that have their own side effects.
"I really don't want another surgery," he said, "so I'm putting it off as long as I can."
Beyond the back problems, life is good. He moved to Arizona in 1999 to be near his parents, who are in their 80s, and keeps in constant contact with Billie Jean, his two adult daughters, Miranda and Alicia, and his grandson, Miranda's son Evan.
He watches baseball, although not as much as he once did, and keeps up with the tennis world, too, wondering from time to time what might have developed if he had chosen tennis instead of baseball as a career.
"For all the things Billie is known for, her main motivation (as a leader) was to get tennis out of the country club image and into normal sports life," Moffitt said.
"You didn't need a million dollars to play tennis, and we knew that because we played and learned at the parks. We never had a private lesson in our life. Clyde Walker worked for Parks and Recreation and was the only coach we had. He'd give tips at a different park every week and we'd always show up.
"We never thought of tennis as an elite sport. We thought it was for the average Joe."
In his case, an above-average Joe went from baseline to bullpen. |
