Quote:
Originally Posted by LansdowneSt
Rickey accidently reported to the Brewers but says he was happy just to make it. Make it to the bigs? No, make it to the CUF'in pack. Sorry, had a busy couple days at the day job. But off until Monday 
Thanks for your patience, Amazin' |
No problem; the Angels are in Milwaukee right now, after all. Foley just went to the wrong clubhouse, I presume.
Bryan Don Hardy (not to be confused with latter-day 1B Bryan J. Hardy) pitched well enough at Bingham High School (South Jordan, UT) that the Cardinals made him their 7th round pick in 1976. However, like any good son of the LDS church, he was more interested in attending Brigham Young University, and presumably doing a mission overseas. As a result, by the time he was draft-eligible again in 1979, he hadn't actually posted a large resume in Provo, and the Cubs only took him in the 17th round. But Bryan decided that was good enough (he could study in the off-season) and he turned pro.
He overmatched the NY-Penn League in his first half-season (7-1, 2.79, 82 Ks in 84 IP) and moved up to Quad Cities in 1980, alongside Richard Renwick and Mike Thompson, doing well enough (4-6, 2.93) to merit further scrutiny. (The Cubs have called up Hardy in my game because Renwick has been sent back down, and while Thompson has pitched almost 70 innings with a good K/9 rate, his ERA is 5.84)
But then he missed the entire 1981 season (was this the mission year? Was there an injury? Did he go back to school full-time?) and a middling 1982 for Salinas in the Cal League proved the end of the road, professionally.
Not that Bryan minded, I don't think, He had graduated from BYU in the off-season and seems to have gone on to lead a good life working at Deseret Laboratories in St. George UT, and also serving as a teacher and coach. And he had the sort of "be fruitful and multiply" family that the LDS church encourages: 5 children, 16 grandchildren
Unfortunately, he came to the end of the literal road all too soon, as he developed ALS and passed away in 2011 at age 53. I don't know if he ever complained, semi-jokingly, that he shouldn't have gotten "Lou Gehrig's Disease" because he was a pitcher, not a first baseman; that was Bryan J. Hardy who played 1B, so clearly this was a screw-up! (Almost certainly not; Bryan probably wasn't the sort of wiseacre that I am.)
I don't have any pictures of Hardy in his playing days, just later in life. (Even though he was on the same Quad Cities team that got Renwick and Thompson their TCMA cards; apparently TCMA went looking for Bryan J. Hardy or something.)
I don't know if you want to de-age him (and give him back his hairline) or go digging in the yearbooks.
(In all seriousness, one of the tragic things I found in this story was that both of Hardy's parents [who were in their late 70s at the time] survived his passing…and then they both died within five years. So they had to suffer through losing a child to a slow and difficult disease, and then the grandkids and great-grandchildren lost them, fairly soon after. Ouch.)
Thanks in advance.