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By Jon Paul Hoornstra
Contributing Sports Writer
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Dave Schmidt, whose major league career consisted of 15 games with the Boston Red Sox in 1981, died Monday. He was 69.
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Schmidt batted .238 (10 for 42) with two home runs and three RBIs in his brief big league cameo.
That was the peak of an eight-year career in professional baseball — all with the Red Sox — that coincided with a particularly rich time for catchers in the Red Sox system.
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Schmidt was selected by the Red Sox with their second-round draft pick in 1975 out of Mission Viejo (Calif.) High School. Coincidentally, the Los Angeles Dodgers would draft his brother, Eric, out of the same school in the 19th round of the 1976 draft. (Eric Schmidt played four seasons of minor league baseball without reaching the majors.)
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More significantly, the Red sox used their ninth-round pick in 1976 on Arizona State catcher Gary Allenson. Two years later, they signed a local high school catcher, Rich Gedman.
While Schmidt patiently climbed the minor-league ladder, both Gedman and Allenson lapped him on the organizational depth chart and reached the big leagues first.
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Still, in addition to his abilities behind the plate, Schmidt could hit. In 1979 — his last season as a full-time starter at any level — Schmidt slashed .332/.453/.571 in 117 games for Double-A Bristol (Conn.) of the Eastern League. He was voted to the Eastern League’s All-Star team as a designated hitter, and finished the season with 19 home runs, 73 RBIs, and nearly as many walks (83) as strikeouts (89).
After participating in Boston's major league spring training camp, Schmidt spent all of the 1980 season at Triple-A Pawtucket, limited by a broken ankle and a bout with vertigo.
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The 1981 season was interrupted due to a player strike at midseason. Schmidt made the team out of spring training as the backup to Allenson, and got the lion's share of the playing time when Allenson landed on the injured list in May.
But in June the strike arrived. By the time it ended, Allenson's injury had healed, and Schmidt headed back to the minor leagues — for good, as it happened.
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"By 1982, they’d kind of given up on me," Schmidt told biographer Bill Nowlin for the Society for American Baseball Research. "I couldn’t throw the ball anymore. My arm was gone. It’s amazing how many catchers actually go out with arm trouble.”
Schmidt retired to Southern California after spending the 1982 season in Pawtucket. After writing a number of screenplays, Schmidt battled lymphoma and congestive heart failure in his later years, he told Nowlin.
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