RIP Champ Summers: Gone at 66

I remember watching the brawl as it happened during high school years. Don't mind admitting I was flabbergasted but it was great entertainment. Watched the Pine Tar game live as well. Don't know which seemed craziest, though this brawl, or series of brawls, seemed to go on and on.

Champ Summers always struck me as a scrapper. RIP.

 

Here's a link to a Deadspin look back at that brawl, with a link to an SI recap in the Deadspin story:

http://deadspin.com/5611309/remembering-the-greatest-basebrawl-of-all-time

The funny part, related in the SI story, is how Pascual Perez hid behind Bob Horner in the the dugout once the benches cleared.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1122454/1/index.htm

 

The unexpected humor in responses such as this is one of the things that makes this place so damn golden. Thanks for the morning laugh.

 

Bob Horner wasn't the sharpest knife the drawer. He loved kicking ass. Pascual did the right thing to use him for protection.

 

Pascual did the wrong thing by running away like a little nancy bitch.

 

Pascual only weighed about 150 pounds.

 

I remember the fight in Atlanta. Bob Horner came out of the dugout looking like Dusty Rhodes. I know Steve Bedrosian (one of the braves who was in the battle) and his family and his wife remembers it all too well.

 

It might be in the linked story (haven't checked), but I believe Horner was on the DL at the time, and was actually in the broadcast booth to start the game. After the benches emptied the first couple of times, he decided to go down and get into uniform to be there when things flared up again.

 

If you need more for next winter, I have a stack of those, too.

 

True. From the SI story: "During the fight Perez hid in the dugout, protected by teammate Bob Horner, who (with his arm in a cast) had just come down from the press box and put on his uniform to be ready for hostilities."

 

I'll see your champ summers and raise you a Camilo Pascual. One in every pack.

 

Met him when I was 11 back in '81. My dad knew someone who was somehow connected to the Tigers organization. The guy arranged for us to go into the clubhouse before a game (or at least a visiting area just off the locker room) and a bunch of Tigers like Richie Hebner, Lynn Jones, Tom Brookens, Dave Tobik and Mick Kelleher came through to meet us (we also met Al Kaline). Champ came in wearing only a towel, which was kind of uncomfortable. But he was a nice enough guy. I can't believe he was 66 -- I wouldn't have put him in his mid-30s at the time, though I do remember he said he had a teenage daughter. I also remember him having a pretty big part in another huge brawl when the Tigers were in Chicago in '81. Al Cowens had some kind of vendetta against Ed Farmer stemming from when Al was in Seattle and Ed was in Texas. If I remember right, Farmer walked Cowens his first time up and Cowens took a detour to the mound, went after Farmer and the benches cleared and fists were flying. Summer got some good ones in.

Edit: messed up some details. Brawl was in '80, stemming from a Farmer beanball that broke Cowens's jaw a couple years earlier when Cowens was playing for KC. And he charged the mound on a groundout, not a walk.