May 21, 2013

Baseball ProGUESTus

Dollar Sign on the Glistening Muscle: Scouting Ballplayers in 1980s Playgirl

by Michael Clair

Most of our writers didn't enter the world sporting an @baseballprospectus.com address; with a few exceptions, they started out somewhere else. In an effort to up your reading pleasure while tipping our caps to some of the most illuminating work being done elsewhere on the internet, we'll be yielding the stage once a week to the best and brightest baseball writers, researchers and thinkers from outside of the BP umbrella. If you'd like to nominate a guest contributor (including yourself), please drop us a line.

Michael Clair is a writer and comic. His baseball writing can be found at Old Time Family Baseball and The Platoon Advantage. Find him on Twitter @clairbearattack. 
 

Like any decent American institution, baseball has close connections to sex, from the early 1900s postcards that featured baseball-themed sexual instructions to the salacious sheet music to the scorching hot photograph of five sexy, shirtless shortstops in Sports Illustrated to the amazing collection of baseball erotica that you can find on Amazon and the deepest, darkest corners of the web.

But there is another forgotten relic from baseball’s sexual past. Perhaps lost amidst the frenzy of cocaine, the advent of the CD player, and the soulful tunes of After the Fire, during the early 1980s Playgirl magazine convinced a number of baseball stars to pose seductively within their pages. Many of the photos were thought to have been lost to the sands of time, that cruel mistress washing away all evidence of Steve McCatty in a bathing suit. But thanks to a little archeological digging, today we’re able to rectify that:

But there’s even more to discover beyond blonde-mustachioed men standing near shrubbery. After the stunning debut of the Baseball Hall of Fame’s scouting database, today we are proud to unveil the start of the next great information hub, one highlighting the hard work Playgirl scouts and editors went through when selecting baseball’s hottest hunks. These are those scouting reports.

(A brief word of warning: the images below are work friendly as long as your boss is cool with guys in underwear, towels, and swimsuits. However, any links to image sources are probably not work appropriate.) 

George Brett, July 1984:

‘Disco’ Dan Ford, July 1981:

(Images via AdonisMale)

Phil Garner, July 1984: 

Rickey Henderson, July 1984:

Jerry Remy, July 1984:

Steve Stone, August 1985:

(Images via BlackDogue.net)

Steve Yeager, October 1982:

(Images via BlackDogue.net)