Former Mets catcher John Stearns has died at 71, of cancer. A withered, frail-looking Stearns still took his swings in the batting cage at Mets Old-Timers’ Day, three weeks ago. It was characteristic of the approach that earned him the nickname “Bad Dude” as a safety and punter on the University of Colorado football team. In the majors, Stearns was a good player, star-quality when healthy, although his four All-Star appearances owed a good deal to the requirement that at least one player per team be chosen. His 25 stolen bases in 1978 was then a modern record for catchers. Statistically, Stearns from 1976–82 batted .265/.346/.382, good enough for a 105 OPS+ (i.e., 5 percent better than a league-average hitter) and averaged 4.4 Wins Above Replacement and 19 stolen bases per full season. But he played just 105 games a year in that seven-year period, during which time the Mets finished last in a six-team division four times, and fifth twice.
It wasn’t the numbers on the scoreboard that endeared Stearns to Mets fans, who had to be won over after Stearns was acquired from the Phillies for fan favorite Tug McGraw. It was Stearns’s toughness, combative attitude, and utter unwillingness to back down to anybody that made him inspiring to watch on a lot of terrible teams with little to play for. Stearns had a huge 1979 brawl with Gary Carter (then the Expos catcher) after Carter ran into Stearns at home plate. On another occasion, Stearns took off from the bench to fight Expos pitcher Bill Gullickson. In 1980, Stearns ran down the left field line to tackle a fan who ran on the field, and pin him down until the cops got there; he did the same in 1982. He gave the same treatment to mascot Chief Noc-A-Homa, the now politically-incorrect Braves mascot of the era, in 1975 and again in 1981, just for taunting the Mets. As described in Stearns’s SABR bio:
Stearns ran onto the field and tackled the mascot as he pranced through his pregame war dance. “I watched him for three or four years and I said, ‘Someday I’m going to clothesline this guy,’” Stearns recalled in 2010. “One day I took off, running at him like a defensive back. He looked at me like, ‘What is this guy going to do?’ I didn’t really hit him. I kind of dragged him down. It was just a fun thing but Joe Torre was our manager and he didn’t like it.” Torre said later that “[it] was just the Dude being the Dude.”
The most legendary Stearns moment, however, was his 1978 collision at the plate with Dave Parker of the Pirates. Parker was a huge man, 6’5″ and 230 pounds in peak shape at the time, and in 1978 he could still run like the wind. He outweighed Stearns by a good 40 pounds. Parker went on to win the National League MVP Award in 1978. By the time the Mets squared off with the Pirates on June 30, 1978, Parker had established a reputation for barreling into catchers so hard they ended up in the hospital or on the disabled list. That was no mean feat: The National League in 1978 had a lot of very tough catchers, including Stearns, Carter, Johnny Bench, Steve Yeager (nephew of Chuck Yeager), Bob Boone, Ted Simmons, and the Pirates’ own Ed Ott, who ended the career of Mets second baseman Felix Millan in 1977 by body-slamming him breaking up a double play.
As I recall it — I can’t pin this down exactly right now — Parker had already injured two other catchers that season. At any rate, there was a fair amount of anticipation in advance as to what would happen if he tried this on Stearns. As it turned out, the game was on the line: It was the bottom of the ninth, and the Pirates were trailing 6–5 after Parker tripled in two runs off Mets reliever Dale Murray. With one out, Bill Robinson hit a fly ball to Mets right-fielder Joel Youngblood, who had a cannon arm; Parker tagged up and stormed home. Youngblood’s throw beat him, and Parker crashed into Stearns to shake the ball loose — but Stearns hung on, and then some. As Stearns recalled in an interview:
“Obliterated me, actually…I was way back on the Astroturf about 15 feet behind home plate after he hit me. And I had the ball, I held the ball up for the umpire. I put the tag on him and then he hit me. Held the ball for the umpire, and the umpire went, ‘You’re out of there!’ The game was over. We had won the game. [Parker] was lying on the ground, holding his cheek and moaning after it was all over. So I got lucky.”
What happened was that Stearns basically threw a forearm at Parker as he came in, and he broke Parker’s cheekbone. Parker missed two weeks and returned wearing a hockey goalie’s mask for much of the rest of the season, which made him look even more frightening. (It didn’t hurt his hitting — Parker hit .351/.410/.632 the rest of the way). Parker, who now suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, says today that in retrospect he was hurt worse than he knew:
If a catcher blocked home plate, Parker reverted to being the Cincinnati Courter Tech high school running back. He figures there were maybe seven or eight home-plate collisions during his career. Remember the collision at home plate with Mets catcher John Stearns in June 1978? The one that broke Parker’s cheekbone? Stearns held onto the ball, but Parker says he didn’t remember that at first. He couldn’t recall if he was safe or out. In hindsight, Parker insists, he had a concussion. “Nobody diagnosed it then,” he says. “You said his bell was rung, and you moved on.”
Stearns was finished as a ballplayer at 31 due to his injuries. He stayed in the game in a variety of capacities in the decades after that, broadcasting and scouting. It was a tough game, and these were tough guys, and what the game took out of them is part of why pro sports are played differently today. But in his time, nobody played it tougher than John Stearns, and Mets fans will always hold a special place in their hearts for the Bad Dude.