Oscar Gamble

Spring training, 1976. Oscar Gamble walks into the Yankees clubhouse and finds an empty locker. No uniform. Nothing with his name on it.

Manager Billy Martin tells him why: owner George Steinbrenner isn't issuing a uniform until Gamble cuts his hair. Not a trim -- his Afro was reportedly ten inches tall, the kind that added four inches to his height and occasionally popped his own batting helmet clean off (no equipment manager in baseball had a fix for that one). Gamble cut it. He also lost a $5,000 endorsement deal with Afro Sheen in the process, which Steinbrenner personally reimbursed. "I feel like I'm naked," Gamble said of the new look.

He was still the same hitter underneath -- a left-handed outfielder who spent seven seasons with the New York Yankees across two separate stints, hit for a .360 on-base percentage in pinstripes, and became one of the most recognizable faces of the 1970s for a photograph that isn't even the real reason he belongs in this conversation. That part tends to get lost.

From Ramer, Alabama, to a Comparison With Willie Mays

Gamble was born December 20, 1949, in Ramer, Alabama, a small town in Montgomery County, and grew up playing sandlot ball for a semipro outfit called the Oakwood Clowns. A Cubs scout named Buck O'Neil -- the old Negro Leagues first baseman and manager -- caught Gamble's bat speed on that field and thought it looked like a young Billy Williams. The Cubs took him in the 16th round of the 1968 draft, hardly a can't-miss pick.

He debuted with Chicago on August 27, 1969, at 19 years old, filling in for an injured Adolfo Phillips. Manager Leo Durocher, never a man who undersold anything, told The Sporting News: "Gamble reminds me of Willie [Mays] when he was breaking in. I know it sounds wild, but this kid compares with Willie when Willie was first coming up. Gamble can run, throw, catch a ball, and he swings a quick bat."

He never became Willie Mays. Almost nobody does. But he did carve out 17 major league seasons, and it started with a trade to Philadelphia that November, then another to Cleveland in December 1972, where he spent three seasons posting an .815 OPS and becoming, for the first time, nationally known for the hair. On November 22, 1975, the Indians sent him to New York for pitcher Pat Dobson. He arrived in the Bronx already famous -- and about to get more famous, for a photograph he hadn't even posed for yet.

Ratio Man

Topps' 1976 Traded set ran a photo of Gamble still in a Cleveland uniform, with a Yankees cap airbrushed on top -- Afro spilling out from underneath on both sides, cap barely containing any of it. He hadn't played a single game in pinstripes when that photo was taken. It became one of the most recognizable baseball cards of the decade anyway, more famous by most measures than anything Gamble did on the field that year, and he did plenty: 17 home runs and 57 RBI in only 340 at-bats as a part-time outfielder and designated hitter, helping the Yankees to their first pennant in twelve years.

They got swept by the Cincinnati Reds in the 1976 World Series. Gamble watched most of it from the bench.

By then his own teammates had started calling him "Ratio Man" -- a nickname he embraced and, by most accounts, coined himself. Over parts of 17 seasons he hit 200 home runs in roughly 4,500 at-bats, a rate that stayed remarkable across an era where he was rarely an everyday player. In 1977 he led the American League with a homer every 13.2 at-bats. He just wasn't in New York to do it.

Traded for a Shortstop, Traded Back for a Center Fielder

On April 5, 1977, the Yankees sent Gamble, pitcher LaMarr Hoyt, minor leaguer Bob Polinsky, and $250,000 to the Chicago White Sox for a young shortstop named Bucky Dent. It worked out for both sides eventually -- Dent became a Yankees fixture and, a season later, a piece of postseason lore. Gamble had the best year of his career on the South Side: .297, a career-high 31 home runs, 83 RBI, part of the beloved "South Side Hit Men" lineup that hung around a pennant race deep into September.

He signed with San Diego as a free agent that winter and hit a wall in the Padres' cavernous ballpark (no place for a lefty pull hitter that decade) -- 7 homers, 47 RBI in 1978. Texas took him off their hands that October. He was hitting .335 for the Rangers in the middle of 1979 when an unrelated mess handed New York a second chance to get him back.

The Yankees had already agreed to send Mickey Rivers to Texas for three minor leaguers, but Commissioner Bowie Kuhn voided the deal -- two of the players hadn't cleared waivers. The two sides went back to the table. On July 30, 1979, the revised trade sent Rivers to Texas and brought Gamble back to the Bronx.

He made the Yankees look smart immediately. Over his final 36 games of the season, Gamble hit .389 with 11 home runs and 32 RBI -- a stretch so hot it produced a 218 OPS+, meaning he was better than twice the league average hitter for that six-week run.

Six More Seasons in the Bronx

Gamble stayed a Yankee through 1984, mostly as a lefty platoon bat and designated hitter, dangerous against right-handed pitching and rarely an everyday name in the lineup card. New York won the AL East in 1980 and got swept by the Kansas City Royals in the 1980 ALCS. In the strike-shortened 1981 season, Gamble hit two tying home runs off Milwaukee's Moose Haas -- one in Game 1, another in Game 5 -- as the Yankees beat the Brewers in a five-game division series, then swept Oakland in the ALCS. New York lost the 1981 World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games. It was the last World Series New York would reach for fifteen years, and Gamble never got a ring to show for either of his two trips there.

The Yankees released him in October 1984. He signed back with the White Sox for one more year, hit .204 in limited action, and Chicago let him go in August 1985. He was 35.

The Legacy

Look at the shape of the whole career and the case for Gamble gets better, not worse, the closer you look. A .265/.356/.454 hitter across 17 seasons and seven organizations, a 127 OPS+ that says he was 27 percent better than league average adjusted for park and era -- and he did it almost entirely in a part-time role, without ever making an All-Star team. His Yankees on-base percentage, .360, is the number that should get more attention than it does. So is the .493 slugging mark, from a guy who rarely started against left-handers and never got 500 at-bats in a season in pinstripes.

None of that is what people remember first. What they remember is the hair -- the card, the helmet that didn't quite fit, the locker with no uniform in it until he agreed to cut it down.

Gamble died on January 31, 2018, in Birmingham, Alabama, of ameloblastic carcinoma, a rare jaw tumor. He was 68. At Yankee Stadium in his playing days, the scoreboard operators liked to flash a shot of that Afro up on the big screen between innings. The crowd always gave him a good hand. He said later he never figured it would get that famous.