Jay Johnstone

There's absolutely no way that they'd make it a thought-provoking, tear-jerking documentary.

Nope.

Chances are if some Hollywood movie studio ever decides to purchase the rights to Jay Johnstone's life story, they would make it a knee-slapping, side-splitting, fall-out-of-your-chair-laughing animated cartoon.

Ten-to-one odds says that everyone's favorite lovable prankster, Bart Simpson would be chosen for the lead role. Bart is a dead ringer for Johnstone. He even has Johnstone's toothy smile.

As you probably know or perhaps guessed by now, Johnstone was a completely zany, off-the-wall character, who simply loved to play practical jokes on his unsuspecting teammates.

He pulled off a number of infamous pranks during his playing days, including placing a soggy brownie inside Steve Garvey's first base mitt, cutting out the crotch area of Rick Sutcliffe's underwear, dressing up as a groundskeeper and sweeping the Dodger Stadium infield in between innings, and replacing the celebrity photos in Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda's office with pictures of himself, Jerry Reuss, and Don Stanhouse.

Johnstone was also a pretty darn good hitter. But, that wasn't always the case. At least, not at first.

After seven big league seasons, Johnstone sported a rather pedestrian .245 career batting average. The most troubling and frustrating part of his game, was his lack of consistency with the bat. He was as reliable as a local weatherman suffering from dyslexia or an alcoholic with amnesia.

In 1972 Johnstone batted .188 in 107 games for the Chicago White Sox and was subsequently waived.

Ironically, baseball's funny man had been laughed out of the league. His career appeared to be over at the age of 27.

And then the unexpected happened.

Baseball's clown finally started taking the game seriously. During the winter of 1972, Johnstone worked with a batting coach and began the slow and tedious process of remaking what would later turn out to be a picture perfect line drive swing. A veritable workaholic, he seemd to spend every waking moment hitting tennis balls off a tee.

Unfortunately, Johnstone did not see immediate results at the big league level, batting just .107 in 28 games for the Oakland A's in 1973, and was released once again.

However, Johnstone would not be out of work for long.

His hard work, dedication and preserverance eventually paid off. In the ensuing four years, he batted .295, .329, .318 and .284 for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Johnstone was not surprised by his new found success. "You see, the more you practice, the more you can do things without thinking about it," Johnstone explained at the time. "And when you can do it, react without thinking, you cut down on the time it takes the brain to send messages to the parts of your body that has to react. And that little minute time makes all the difference."

A native of Manchester, Connecticut, Johnstone was originally signed as an amateur free agent by the Los Angeles Angels in 1963. He played in the big leagues for parts of 20 seasons with eight different teams, including the Los Angeles Dodgers twice from 1980 to 1982 and again in 1985.

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[1] Girodano, Paul. "Constant Work for Johnstone." Bucks County Courier Times, (Pennsylvania, March 21, 1977, A15.