Where have you gone, Cecil Espy?

In which I discuss a Pirate of the past and why I loved or hated them so much.

Ahh, now this is more like it. I opened with Doug Drabek, but guys like Espy are who I had in mind for this "Where have you gone..." feature. This is why Espy is important, because he is the first Pirate I ever remember thinking actually sucked. You see, when the Pirates were good, I was quite young. Thus, I had a favorable impression of everyone that wore black and gold in those times, no matter how bad they really were. I would name names, but that would ruin the fun of future WHYG... segments. The point is this: I never, for one second of my life, though Cecil Espy was a good baseball player. And for that, I will never forget the guy.

A more objective glance at Espy's career shows that I was pretty much dead on as a six year old. In two years of partial duty as a Pirate, Espy hit .244/.281/.329 and .258/.310/.340. If you check out his gamelogs on BRef, you'll see that Espy was Chris Duffy before being Chris Duffy was cool. That is, he was a speedy outfielder that Jim Leyland would constantly bat leadoff (that is, when he would start, which wasn't often), despite his general inability to get on base. I do remember Espy being fast, but he only stole ten bases in two years as a Pirate. Of course it's not like he had a whole ton of chances to steal bases since he was a fourth outfielder and terrible at getting on base.

One other fun Cecil Espy fact: the Pirates lost him in the 1986 Rule 5 draft to the Rangers, only to resign him before the 1991 season when he became a free agent. Dave Littlefield wasn't the first Pirate GM to develop huge crushes on players, I guess. As we will see with so many other players that will be featured here, Espy played one short season with the Reds in 1993 after being cut loose by the Pirates, then dropped into baseball oblivion forever. But I'll always remember him as the guy that sucked. I know that sounds harsh, but that's better than him being one of the guys from those teams I don't remember at all... right?