Joe Charboneau - "Super Joe"

"Super Joe"

Charboneau broke out in 1979 with a .352 average for the Indians' AA team in Chattanooga, pacing the Southern League. In 1980, it looked like Joe was headed to AAA Charleston—until Andre Thornton was felled by a knee injury, giving Charboneau his shot at the big leagues.

Trouble continued to follow him; while in Mexico for an exhibition game on March 8, a crazed fan stuck Joe with a pen knife. The knife penetrated four inches and hit a rib, but Charboneau played his first regular-season game just over a month later, on April 11. (The assailant was duly arrested and fined 50 pesos. "That's $2.27 for stabbing a person," Charboneau said.)

Splitting time between left field and designated hitter, Charboneau soon captured the city's imagination, not just with his production (a .289 average coupled with 23 home runs and 87 RBI, leading the team in both categories), but also his eccentricities. Long before Dennis Rodman came on the scene, Joe had a tendency to dye his hair unnatural colors, as well as open beer bottles with his eye socket and drink beer with a straw through his nose. Other stories emerged about how he did his own dental work and fixed a broken nose with a pair of pliers and a few shots of Jack Daniel's whiskey, stood out; by mid-season, Charboneau was the subject of a song, "Go Joe Charboneau", that reached #3 on the local charts.

Despite a few nagging injures late in the season, Charboneau played 131 games in 1980 and won the American League Rookie of the Year award, the first Indian to claim the award since Chris Chambliss in 1971.