Steve Balboni “Bye Bye”
Steve Balboni is a near-perfect manifestation of his own name. His body so exquisitely matches his surname that one would expect a rough Italian translation for Balboni to be “husky designated hitter.” Perhaps there is a village—maybe a small timber community in Northern Italy — where prosperous, mustachioed Balbonis have swung felled trees since time immemorial. Even the very sound of the name—with the emphasis on the middle “bo” syllable — conjures the sound of a ball being launched by a powerful man, albeit one perhaps slightly too stout to be a professional athlete. Plus, to a seven-year-old in 1985 like me, the name sounded a lot like a combination of Baloney and Bambino. Which, frankly, just made sense.
Steve Balboni was listed at 6’3” and 225 lbs. This was false. At least it was false at any time beyond when he was a very young man playing minor league baseball for the Nashville Sounds. (As a reference point, the very lithe and athletic Toronto Blue Jay Center Fielder George Springer is listed at the same dimensions. Please feel free to google each as a comparison.). The Balboni I saw as a child was a giant—a plodding, powerful giant. A behemoth before steroids or superhuman men like Frank Thomas would make Balbonis look small. A colossus with an angry, downturned mustache that presumably made him hit the ball harder and farther. Balboni was a man with a name and body designed to hit home runs.
That Balboni did hit home runs—he was fourth in the American League in 1985 with 36 home runs — served as confirmation to me that the universe had internal order. So did the fact that he struck out 166 times, leading the American League. Huge men with angry mustaches swung hard and only connected sometimes. That is how the world worked and the way it would always work.
In 1988, my brother and I got a Nintendo for Hanukkah from our father. And among the first games we received was Nintendo Ice Hockey. The game had a unique feature for early video games that we loved: the player could custom build their four-player lineups by selecting between three different types of men. There were skinny skaters—fast and quick, but weak shooting and easily checked off the puck. There were players with an average build—decent at all aspects of the game, but a standout at none. And then, lastly, there were the round characters: huge and profoundly slow, but with a devastating slap shot the ability to demolish other players with their checks. There were three types of players; three types of men. This was profoundly intuitive to me—and I suspect it was profoundly intuitive to all young boys in the 1980s. Balboni was the Yankees’ big guy player.
Ultimately, the details of Balboni’s career are inconsequential. His offensive WAR (2.7) compared to his defensive WAR (-7.6) are as predictable as they are ultimately irrelevant to this short meditation. Indeed, perhaps the most enduring contribution Balboni had to baseball was a statistical anomaly later dubbed the “Curse of the Balboni.” After Balboni hit 36 home runs for the ’85 World Champion Kansas City Royals, no team with a player who hit more than Balboni’s 36 won the World Series for the next sixteen years – also known as the “Curse of the Balboni.” But World Series championships are frankly a lesser concern given the more important philosophical issue at hand: Balboni was an archetype that helped make a chaotic world digestible to a boy — and frankly, to men as well.
I recently stumbled upon a photo of a smiling, amiable Balboni. He was no longer an onomatopoeia. His name could have been Fletcher or Goldblatt. He seems to have lost weight. His graying mustache was trimmed at the edges to remove any of the menace. He had retreated to the suburbs of New Jersey. He looked like a friendly proprietor of an ice cream store. He was relaxed in his seat. As much as one can tell from a photo, he looked contented. He did not look like he could destroy baseballs — or even that he really wanted to. He was not the plump player from Nintendo Ice Hockey. He was a guy in his late-50s with a house up for sale and a job that had him on the road for a bit. I’m really not sure he signified anything other than Steve Balboni.
My own son is roughly the same age as I was when Steve Balboni helped decode the world for me. It’s hard for me to know who in baseball could possibly serve the same role. Indeed, I’m not sure that the same organizational concepts even work — the world is impossibly more complex. The Twins’ William Astudillo — six inches shorter than Balboni with just as much girth — is a slap hitter with fifteen career home runs while the 5’6 165 lb Jose Altuve has ten times as many dingers. Husky guys with names that sound like Baloney don’t have to hit home runs any more. We live in a fluid world where they can do whatever they want. Balbonis can actualize, defy categorization and just dance. That’s undoubtedly a better world. But a world without anchors like Steve Balboni also leaves me a little terrified.
by Kevin Blake