Player Profiles - Steve Christmas

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Born on December 9th, 1957 in Orlando, Florida, Steve Christmas had a brief major league baseball career from 1983-86, primarily as a catcher. In high school, Christmas was the quarterback for Orlando Colonial High School. He attended college briefly before being signed by the Cincinnati Reds in 1977.

Christmas worked his way up through the minors over the next five years. His best year came while he was with Indianapolis in 1982. That year Christmas went .306./.341/.452/.793. He was finally called up to the Reds in 1983.

Even though Johnny Bench was playing first or third base by this point in his career, Christmas did not see a lot of playing time since he had to compete with two other catchers, Dann Bilardello and Alan Knicely. Though he was batting nearly .400 in the spring, Christmas was sent down again. Christmas was known as an easy-going, friendly guy, but by his own admission he would sometimes lose his temper. The day he was sent down again, Christmas exploded, barging into the offices of Manager Russ Nixon and GM Dick Wagner.

''I sort of went crazy,'' Steve recalls with a laugh. ''I let them know how I felt. A couple of days later, they gave me a slap on the wrist by loaning me out to Tucson in the Astros' system. That's when I really thought about quitting.” But he didn’t quit. Christmas spend another year in the minors before being traded to the White Sox. Two years were spent there before he was shipped across town to the Cubs.

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Christmas says, “It's so frustrating. You keep thinking, 'Why me?' Or, 'Why not me?' And you think about putting a wife and daughter through the life of a gypsy. This year we were just unpacking in an apartment in Des Moines when I was called up to Chicago. We were in a hotel there, and I was about to get a place when the thing happened with my elbow. We were back in Orlando and then back to Des Moines again.''

Christmas retired from baseball in 1986.

This was back in the day when most Reds games weren't televised, so I don't know if I ever saw Steve Christmas wear his Reds uniform on the field during a game. But I do remember seeing him in the Reds bullpen for years.

Now I know why. :)

I remember the name but not much else. I went to retrosheet to see if that would help me remember. Good reason I couldn't recall much or anything about him. He went 1 for 17 with the Reds and only 6 for 37 for his entire career. You would think he would have gotten a better chance with the Reds considering who was catching those days. But then again you have to remember who was the GM and manager(s) in those days.

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/C/Pchris001.htm

Seems like he would have been a nice platoon with Alan Knicely. A solid lefthanded hitting catcher platooning with a leftkilling righthanded catcher would have made for good production.

The Reds, at that time, were a mess. Decisions were made in a vacuum called "the Reds way" and that vacuum was about 15 years behind the times....and management was proud of it.

At the same time...they produced a ton of talent.

I remember going to an onfield clinic the Indianapolis Indians held in the late 70's and Christmas and Dave Van Gorder ran the catching portion. I was a big fan of Steve Christmas if for the only reasons were his cool name, he ran the clinic I attended and I was about 9 at the time.

Ahem, Steve "Winter Holiday".

I remember going to Indianapolis Indians games and when he came to bat the organist would play Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Time to reread this thread.

What a great, timely thread. Thanks!

I always thought that Bob Barton Terry McGriff and Jesse Gonder were better

According to Harry Carey, Christmas spelled backwards is Samtsirhc.

I think Christmas' win above replacement is similar to Dave Van Gorder, Jerry Zimmerman, Hal Bevan and Sonny Ruberto

So, I suppose his nickname was "Merry"?