Thirty years ago this month, Lyman Bostock made a move so outrageous and uncharacteristic for a professional athlete that, had the Angels outfielder not been fatally shot five months later, baseball fans might still talk about it.
If not for the tragic way his life ended -- in the wrong place at the wrong time, cut down in his prime -- they might say it was his crowning glory.
In April 1978, Bostock offered to forfeit his salary.
Mired in a horrendous slump after signing a rich free-agent contract with the Angels in November 1977, the former Cal State Northridge and Manual Arts High star told owner Gene Autry, in essence, he didn't deserve to be paid.
"Today," says Dick Enberg, the Angels' announcer back then, "I think we'd all need to be slapped around to wake up if somebody took a step like that."
But this was no stunt.
"What you saw is what you got from Lyman," Bob Hiegert, who coached Bostock at Cal State Northridge, says of his principled former player. "There was nothing hidden about Lyman. He wore his heart on his sleeve."
Son of Lyman Bostock Sr., who played in the Negro Leagues with the Brooklyn Royal Giants and the Birmingham Black Barons, Bostock was 27 and seemingly just reaching his athletic prime when he signed with the Angels. In the last two of his three seasons with the Minnesota Twins, he had hit .323 and .336, finishing among the American League batting leaders each year.
The Angels, winners of a bidding war with the New York Yankees and San Diego Padres, signed him for the then-shocking sum of $2.25 million for five years.
"I think he was offered one of the richest contracts in pro sports and he didn't feel comfortable about it," says Hiegert, who stayed in contact with Bostock after Bostock turned pro. "He was almost embarrassed."
Imagine his emotional distress at the end of his first month with the Angels, when he was batting .147 and buried in a two-for-38 slump.
Pressing, Bostock told reporters he was "hallucinating" at the plate, noting, "I felt myself standing outside my body up there . . . then jumping back into it just before the pitch. Everything was just a big glare in front of my face."
Midway through the slump, he made his offer to Autry.
"He couldn't hit a solid foul ball," recalls Enberg, adding that he and Bostock felt a kinship because Enberg also had spent time at Cal State Northridge -- as an assistant baseball coach in the early 1960s.
