Charlie Manuel, snake-fighting playboy

This has nothing to do with anything, but it’s a slow news day so far and I’ve been having a lot of fun checking out Baseball-Reference.com’s new Japanese League player pages.

Sadaharu Oh’s career numbers are incredible to look at and Tuffy Rhodes’ page is pretty great too, but my favorite is definitely Charlie Manuel’s stats.

Manuel, who apparently went by “Chuck Manuel” while playing in Japan from 1976-1981, had some monster seasons there in his mid-30s. From 1977-1980 he hit .320 with an average of 42 homers per season, including .325 with 48 homers and 129 RBIs as a 36-year-old in 1980.

And then there’s this, from Baseball-Reference.com’s “bullpen” page about Manuel:

The media fed off of Chuck’s playboy lifestyle, where "[h]is escapades allegedly started early in the evening and concluded right up to the pre-game warm-ups.” Chuck even was pictured in Japanese comic books, using his bat to fight giant snakes.

Chuck Manuel, snake-fighting playboy.

(Complicated handshake to the great Grant Brisbee for alerting me to Manuel’s page.)

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