Join the CWAMB staff in the funk, as we wish a Happy Birthday to former major league outfielder Oscar Gamble, born December 20, 1949.

Gamble got to the majors as a 19-year-old in 1969, and hung around the majors until 1985, playing for the Cubs, Phillies, Indians, White Sox (twice), Yankees (twice), Padres, and Rangers. He hit .265 for his career with 200 home runs and 666 runs batted in. He was never an All-Star, but he did put together a great season for the White Sox in 1977, batting .297 with 31 homers and 87 RBI.

It takes a lot of talent to get to the majors, much less hang around for the better part of two decades, but we don’t remember Oscar Gamble for being fleet of foot (47 career steals) or good with the leather (a subpar .977 fielding percentage), and the annals of major league lore are clogged with average-to-good hitting outfielders. However, we remember Oscar Gamble for the greatest photograph in the history of bubble-gum cards.

Baby, do you feel my funk now? Awwwwww, yeah… (image courtesy of baseball-fever.com, as well as the Topps 1976 “Traded” Series)

When I was a kid, my dad took my brother Rob and I to Yankees Bat Day a couple of times. The first year, which I believe was 1982, the bats that were handed out had players’ names written on them. Both of the bats that came home with us had Oscar Gamble’s signature on it. My dad was a little leery of them… Gamble was a part of the Yankees squad that had lost the World Series in 1976, spent the Yankees’ World Championship seasons of ‘77 and ‘78 in Chicago and San Diego, respectively, and was back for the heartbreaking loss in the 1981 Fall Classic. Of course, we were too young to know any better about such superstitions then, but we had the baseball card pictured above, so he was something of a hero to us based on his hair alone. He wasn’t quite in the Irizarry Household Yankee Parthenon, with Thurman Munson, Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, Willie Randolph, Reggie Jackson, Ron Guidry and Lou Piniella, but he was certainly a lesser god on that Olympus, where he remains with the Mike Pagliarulos and Rick Cerones.

The only question left unanswered by the legacy of Oscar Gamble is: how the hell big is that hat?

Happy 58th, Oscar.