BUONA PASQUA!

Okay, it's a few weeks early for that. But when Yankee fans hear "Pasqua", of course they think of Dan Pasqua. There was a special feel for the Yankees of the 1980’s – where the hits and home runs were more valuable than the fastball and strikeout. I feel a personal attachment to some of the names of that time, and Pasqua was no exception. He came out of the Yankee farm system as a young power-hitting phenom, and he made strong early impressions.

In his first major league game, manager Billy Martin put him in the lineup in the sixth spot. Clearly, he had confidence that this 23-year-old could hit for power. He rounded out the heart of the lineup that read Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, Don Baylor, and Dan Pasqua. He did not betray his manager’s confidence. In the 5th inning of the game, he drove a ball deep into the right field seats for his first major league hit and home run. He ended up playing 60 games that season, with 166 plate appearances and 9 home runs.

He ended up playing two more seasons with the Yankees. In his time here, he played in 275 games and hit 42 homers in 860 plate appearances – about one home run per 20 plate appearances. He had a batting average of .251 and OPS of .805, which is impressive even by today’s standards. His play in the corner outfields and first base yielded only four errors in his three seasons on the Yankees’ roster.

It was a sad day on November 12, 1987, when I picked up the paper and read that the Yankees traded him, along with pitcher Steve Rosenberg and catcher Mark Salas, to the White Sox for Scott Nielsen and Richard Dotson. By that point, the Yankees realized that poor pitching did not yield much success over 162 games, so they traded some power for some pitching. It is too bad that they did not get much pitching. Dotson, who was past his prime, had a combined 5.13 ERA over 2 seasons with the Yankees. Nielsen’s career 5.49 ERA tells you what you need to know about him.

Pasqua went on to play seven seasons with the Chicago White Sox, before calling it quits early in the 1994 season. He went on to start his own construction company, and later reconnected with the White Sox for various projects (read HERE).  To those of us who remember him in pinstripes, he is a beloved member of the Hall of Bad 80’s Yankees Trades, where he keeps company with Doug Drabek, Jose Rijo, Al Leiter, and many others.

He was a great player, with good power and a good glove, and a guy we all missed as a Yankee.

Also, you can read a very OLD BYB post about Pasqua here... check out: WHY I ROOT FOR THE ITALIANS from June of 2011.

--Ike Dimitriadis, BYB Writer
Twitter: @KingAgamemnon
My blog is: Shots from Murderer's Row

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