The Orioles’ organization was never more loaded than it was in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The major league team reached the World Series four times in six years with a roster so brimming with future Hall of Famers and other stars that generations of younger players were stalled in the high minors, unable to crack Baltimore’s roster. Bobby Grich, Don Baylor, Doug DeCinces and Enos Cabell were among the players whose debuts were delayed — future stars just waiting for a chance.
With the organization so deep in talent from top to bottom, it took a lot for a young, developing prospect to stand out. But Jim Fuller did.
It isn’t a name many fans know well, so you can guess how his career played out. But in a 1999 interview for my book on Orioles history, Ray Poitevint, who worked for the club in those years as a scout and then a scouting supervisor, didn’t hold back in recalling Fuller’s immense potential.
“He had more power than anyone,” Poitevint said. “He should’ve been the greatest hitter of all-time.”
Yup, he said the greatest hitter … of all-time.
A mustachioed strongman from San Diego, Fuller stood 6-feet-3, weighed 215 pounds and exuded strength from every pore. He was a gentle giant, deeply religious, but “anybody with arms like that should be in the circus,” Orioles groundskeeper Pat Santarone once said of Fuller, according to a Society of American Baseball Research biography.
Al Kubski, the Orioles’ West Coast scout in those years, tracked him from high school to junior college, hoping to pounce. The Orioles drafted him with a second-round pick in 1970. They took DeCinces, also from Southern California, in the third round.
“An outfielder. What power,” Kubski said dreamily about Fuller years later in his interview for my book on Orioles history.
In his first full year in the minors, Fuller absolutely battered the Florida State League, hitting .326 with 33 home runs and 110 RBIs.
“That was unheard of in those big ballparks down there. The rest of the team didn’t hit 30 combined. The manager said he was the best ballplayer he’d ever seen,” Kubski said.
From there, Fuller hit 34 home runs between Double-A Asheville and Triple-A Rochester in 1972, then had a monster year for Rochester in 1973 with 39 home runs and 108 RBI. “In back to back games (in 1973),” according to the SABR biography, “he launched two mammoth shots. The first one landed 480 feet away, clearing three decks of signs down the left field line. On the next night, his blast carried 460 feet over the 20-foot high wall in center field. Players on his team and around the league took notice; they predicted Fuller could hit 40 homers a year once he reached the majors.”
It appeared the Orioles would soon be unveiling their next awesome cleanup hitter. Fuller was 22 years old.
“Everything looked great,” Kubski said, “but Jim Frey is the hitting coach at Rochester and [in 1973] he tells me the kid has some holes in his swing and if he doesn’t close them, he’s gonna be in trouble.”
Yes, about those “holes” in Fuller’s swing — i.e., places in the strike zone where a pitcher could get him out if they located their delivery. It was evident Fuller had issues along those lines. While piling up those impressive offensive numbers, Fuller also piled up prodigious strikeout totals. He whiffed 129 times in 141 games in 1971, 165 times in 129 games in 1972, and then, almost unimaginably, 197 times in 144 games in 1973.
“They sent him to Puerto Rico for winter ball [after the 1973 season] and Frank Robinson was managing him down there and playing him in right field,” Kubski recalled. “I went down to scout the league. Frank and I flew back together on the same plane for a dinner, and I asked Frank, ‘Is Fuller going to play in the big leagues?’ Frank says, ‘I don’t think so.’ I said, ‘Frank, you’re a horseshit scout. The guy is our best prospect.’ Frank says, ‘The pitchers have better control in the majors than what he’s hitting. If he doesn’t close those holes in his swing, he ain’t gonna make it.’ I said, ‘Frank, why don’t you help him?’ He said he’d tried. Frank said he’d given him some suggestions, but Fuller said, ‘I tried that and it didn’t work.’ He kind of shut off Frank and Frey.”
After debuting with the Orioles as a September call-up in 1973, Fuller made the club out of spring training in 1974. It was time to see what he could do in the majors. Orioles manager Earl Weaver, never lacking for ideas, decided to play Fuller strictly against left-handed pitching, thinking he’d strike out too much and lose confidence if he batted too much against right-handers.
Weaver’s platoon idea initially worked. Fuller was batting close to .300 in mid-June and not striking out as much. But then he started whiffing and his average plummeted.
In his Bird Tapes interview, Bobby Grich said he spoke to Weaver about Fuller when the young slugger was starting to struggle. Grich recalled having been upset about Weaver giving him the cold shoulder as a rookie. Grich didn’t want another player experiencing that.
“Fuller had a massive body and could hit the ball a country mile, but he was struggling,” Grich said. “I went to Earl and said, ‘If I were you, I would try to support him, call him in, talk to him, try to get him to relax. That would make you a better manager.’ He said, ‘You know what, Bob, I will.’ And he did. I saw Earl talking to Jim, trying to help him. He did everything he could.”
In the end, though, the Orioles sent Fuller back to Rochester. They brought him up again in September, but Weaver had seen enough and didn’t give him many at-bats. Fuller finished the 1974 season with a .222 major league average.
As it turned out, he never played for the Orioles again. Other prospects passed him. Fuller spent the entire 1975 and 1976 seasons in Rochester, putting up decent numbers but growing increasingly unhappy with his circumstances and his contract situation, which wound up in arbitration and effectively ended his tenure with the Orioles. He signed with the Houston Astros in 1977, hoping a change would revive his career, and he made the major league team out of spring training. But he batted just .160 and struck out in 45 of his 112 plate appearances before he was again demoted to the minors.
Plenty of ballyhooed sluggers have flamed out in Baltimore over the years, including Bob “Tex” Nelson, a 1955 bonus baby signee who was nicknamed “the Babe Ruth of Texas” but hit just one major league home run; and Dave Nicholson, who signed a record bonus-baby contract coming out of high school in 1959 and later hit some of the longest major league home runs ever — for the White Sox, after the Orioles grew tired of watching him strike out and traded him.
Fuller had more potential than all of them. He hit so many home runs for Triple-A Rochester than the team put him in its Hall of Fame. And after he retired from organized baseball, he spent a decade playing professional slow-pitch softball, a lower-stress environment in which, according to the SABR profile, he estimated that he hit 3,000 home runs.
He could whack a ball as hard and as far as anyone. Yet he hit just 11 home runs in the major leagues.
“He had those holes,” Kubski said, “and never did correct them.”
BaltimoreBaseball.com is delighted to be partnering with John Eisenberg, the author and longtime Baltimore sports columnist, whose latest venture is an Orioles history project called The Bird Tapes. Available via subscription at birdtapes.substack.com/subscribe, the Bird Tapes is built around a set of vintage interviews with Orioles legends that Eisenberg recorded a quarter-century while writing a book about the team. Paid subscribers can hear the interviews, which have been digitized to make them easily consumable. The Bird Tapes also includes new writing on Orioles history from Eisenberg, who is the author of 11 books, including two on the Orioles. BaltimoreBaseball.com will publish Eisenberg’s new writing.
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Jon Miller
Davey Johnson
Earl Weaver
Fred Lynn
Al Bumbry
Peter Angelos
Rick Dempsey
Elrod Hendricks
Mike Flanagan
Eddie Murray
Ken Singleton
Brooks Robinson
Frank Robinson
Boog Powell
Cal Ripken, Jr.
Paul Blair
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