Chuck “That Old Guy”

Ben Oglivie arrived in this country at 18 and taught himself English out of books. He had a rule about which ones. "Big books, not funny books." He was born in Colón, Panama. His father worked as an oiler on ships, and after he lost him the family left for the Bronx in 1967, where an older sister was already living. He went to Theodore Roosevelt High School there and planned to become an electrical engineer. Then the books got hold of him. Plato. Rousseau. Thoreau. Bruce Lee. He read philosophy for the rest of his life and studied Zen Buddhism on his own. He ended up taking classes at four different colleges. Bronx Community College, Northeastern, Wayne State and the University of Wisconsin. Here is what his Boston teammate Bill Lee said about him. He was "the brightest guy on the club." Mark Fidrych once woke up in spring training to Oglivie playing recordings of philosophy lectures and decided the man was out of his mind. And for years, writers took all that quiet and called it something else. They wrote that he lacked fire. That he was too calm. That he did not seem to care enough. Steve Wulf finally wrote in Sports Illustrated that the charge had more to do with how people talked about Latin American players than with anything Oglivie actually did. The Red Sox took him in the 11th round in 1968 and then could not find room for him. Detroit traded for him and did not trust his glove. Somebody there started calling him Banana Man. Milwaukee got him in December of 1977 for two pitchers. He worked on his fielding with Frank Howard until the glove stopped being the argument. In 1979 he took over left field. Then 1980. He hit .304 with 118 runs batted in and 41 home runs, and he tied for the most in the American League. He was the first player born outside the United States to lead the league in home runs. Two years later came the team Milwaukee still talks about. Harvey's Wallbangers hit everything in sight and went to Game 7 of the World Series against St. Louis. Oglivie tied that game. The Brewers lost it 6 to 3. He never won a championship. Milwaukee has still never won one, and they are playing for it again right now, for the first time since the year he tied Game 7. He kept going anyway. At 38 he moved to Japan and played two seasons for the Kintetsu Buffaloes, where he hit 46 more home runs. He finished with 235 in the majors, which stood as the record for a player born in Panama for a very long time. Then he went back to coaching in the minor leagues, which is where you can find a lot of men who were once the best hitter in a league. A kid got off a plane from Colón with no English and decided the way in was through the thickest books he could find. Fourteen years later he led the American League in home runs. What did you read that changed something for you?