The feel good story kept going, and from his debut on August 1, 1974 on through the 1981 season, he stole 427 bases—more bases than any other player during that span. The 1980 Sports Illustrated article “A Leg Up On The League Lead” said “LeFlore usually makes the whole team go”.

He started the 1982 season hot; Through May 18, he was hitting .338/.373/.486, with 14 steals, helping the team to a 23-12 start. The White Sox were just a 1/2 game out of first. He’d scored 28 runs in 33 games played.

Then something changed, and his feel good story starts crashing down hard and fast. From May 18-July 17, he’s only got a .295 OBP, and his BAbip fell from .446 earlier in the year to .327. If their igniter can’t get on base, the team can’t score. This affected the team’s offense terribly, as the team went 22-29 during the two month span. Interestingly, they went 7-7 when Ron wasn’t in the lineup.

The next day, Ron got suspended for 3 games, for missing a special team practice and showing up for the July 18th game just minutes before it started. That didn’t seem to teach him much though, as he was late for the team flight to Detroit later on.

This is a behavior pattern that got fined a lot by Sparky Anderson in Detroit, and annoyed the Expos too. So it’s not really surprising it would get on the nerves of a young Tony LaRussa in Chicago too. He was trouble in the ChiSox clubhouse from midseason onward, and played in his last major league game on September 3, as a pinch runner.

Things only got worse from there as Ron was arrested on September 30, 1982 on drug & gun related charges. By December, the White Sox were trying to unload him, but nobody else wanted him. The White Sox were even willing to pay Ron LeFlore to not play.

Two days before another court date in January ’83, Ron’s infant son dies. His legal issues kept on being drawn out with more and more court dates, as well as the White Sox deciding to just release him and not have to pay him a cent. Of course, the players association helped Ron with that issue.

Eventually, in June, he was acquitted of all the charges. Despite that, the White Sox still didn’t want him. They’d cut him in spring training, which was probably a formality considering they didn’t want him before that anyway. Then they claimed that he’d breached his contract by not being in shape to play and by bad behavior, both of which his contract covered.

Insanely, Ron had more legal troubles a few months later when a man sued him for money the man thought he was owed for discovering Ron LeFlore in prison a decade earlier. Don’t know how that one turned out.

Ron LeFlore doesn’t give up easy though. After the ’83 season, with no teams willing to give him a shot to play, he bolted for the Puerto Rican winter league to show he can still be worth something to a team. He even dropped 23 lbs and made sure he was in better shape.

I remember reading somewhere that he tried out for the Expos in the spring of ’84, but I can’t find that anywhere now. The trail grows cold until 2009, when we find Ron and his wife “living check to check, trying to squeeze every nickel and dime out of Ron’s monthly MLB pension payments”. He can’t even afford the hip replacement he needs.

Sad end to a player who was so exciting and thrilling. A man who’d opened the door when opportunity knocked and got to play with & against some of the greatest baseball players in history.

I also like how he signed his name “Bobby” instead of just Bob or Robert. Makes the card feel more like he’s living out little Bobby’s baseball dreams.

Bobby, wasn’t the best player on the White Sox roster, but he had a good couple of years leading into the ’82 season. In ’81, he started getting used as a pinch hitter a little more than the average player and did petty good at it.

Before the next season though, he was sent from the southside to the northside. The Cubs used him almost exclusively as a pinch hitter for the pitcher and as a late innings defensive replacement, before he was sold to the Phillies at the end August.

He actually hit a lot better for Philadelphia than he did in Chicago, but he was still just a bench player though. At first glance, Bob’s stats look like the description of a player beyond his prime who’s just hanging on by filling out a roster spot. Then I found a very interesting detail to his ’82 stats.

When Bobby came to the plate and there were no runners on the bases, he only hit .119 and got on base at a .190 pace. Just what you’d expect from a player fading into obscurity, but, the real surprise is how he hit when runners were in scoring position (RISP), hitting .350 and getting on base at a .480 clip!

Unfortunately for Bob, 52% of his plate appearances came with nobody on base, dragging down his averages. Only 28% of his PA’s came with RISP. If the manager had used him to pinch hit more when runners were in scoring position, Bobby’s career might’ve lasted longer. He could definitely still get the job done when the moment was important.

Maybe it was the power of the ‘stache.

His talents began to fade in 1980 though. From 1976 through May 8, 1980 he was hitting .321 with a .375 OBP, and slugging at .536, to give him a .911 OPS. Looked like he was having yet another good season for the ChiSox when ’80 started. Nobody knew it at the time, but on May 9 in a game in Texas, Lamar would go 0 for 5 and his career would never be the same. Just look at the sudden difference here, even if we include his not-so-good beginning years—

Period	AB/HR	AVG	OBP	SLG
1974-5/8/80	35.75	.298	.348	.439
5/9/80-1982	57.19	.267	.320	.370

That’s a significant drop in averages there, and a big change in his home run rate slowing down. What’s weirder is that he was just 28 years old, which should be a players prime time (age 27-30ish). Makes me suspect an injury or a batting coach trying to change something about Lamar’s approach at the plate, but I couldn’t find anything to confirm that.

So when Lamar was granted free agency in November 1981, his career was limping on its last leg. In January 1982, he signed with the Rangers. For the first nine games of the season, he hit well and looked like he could be getting a second wind, batting a pretty .375/.423/.583/1.006! But after those nine games, he hit a mere .250 and only got on base at a .318 pace. He probably doesn’t remember 1982 as fondly as I do, since his career was finished that year.

One more thing. Notice on the back of Lamar’s ’82 card that one of the trivia questions is about Jim Kaat. Kaat played with Lamar on the White Sox in ’74-’75. The first time they played in the same game, Kaat won his 19th of the season, 3-1, over the A’s. Lamar provided the 2-run difference in the score by driving in the winning run and scoring one himself earlier.