I never liked Cooper much when I was a kid (I really liked Wade Boggs) but I've been tooling around baseball-reference lately and I was looking at his short career with the Sox.

He seemed like a fairly talented guy (I heard he was known for defense?) who looked like he might be ready to turn the corner in 1994. Then the strike happened, the Red Sox had Tim Naehring and John Valentin and didn't really need Cooper anymore in 1995. (Besides, the Duke brought new management and actually got Cormier and Whitten for Cooper. Whitten never really worked out in Boston, but he didn't get much or a chance in a crowded outfield.)

Was that the whole story though? I heard (but have been unable to verify) that Scott Cooper had some disease that sapped his power. Something to do with digestion or something. Does anyone remember this? Or anything about Scott Cooper in general?

Thanks.

He was only an All Star because they had to put someone from each team on the roster and ther were too many talented 1B in the AL in 93 (Olerud, Fielder, Thomas) and 94 (Thomas, W Clark) for Mo Vaughn to get on.

His being an AS was more a fact of the Sox sucking than his talent. In both seasons his OPS+ was <100 and he was merely average at 3B making quite a few errors (24 in 93 and 16 in 94).

There's a halfway decent interview with Cooper in the revised paperback edition of an obscure book called Interviews From Red Sox Nation...

That's true in 1993, but in 1994 his first-half OPS was .841 with 13 HRs...he posted an April OPS of 1.105 that year. So, based on his early stats that year and his status as the incumbent All Star at his position, his 1994 selection was kind of understandable.

He also hit for the cycle that year, which will generate a lot of attention as well.

I really thought Scott Cooper was going to be awesome. Had a bunch of cards and stuff. Loved that guy.

Same here:

I always called him Scoop. I couldn't believe that nickname didn't catch on.

I was there when Cooper hit his first big league home run, the only game I've ever attended in Oakland.

Totally off topic but...

I was driving to a game in Baltimore's old Memorial Stadium with 2 friends a few days after Mo Vaughn got called up. We knew our seats were in the RF bleachers and on the drive down we talked about how cool it would be to catch his first HR. Once we got there we all realized there no chance he'd hit one to us. We were 17 rows behind the Sox bullpen and it would have taken a mammoth shot to reach us.

As I'm sure some of you remember, we were right... sort of. We did see his first HR, but it landed in the next to last row of the stadium about 25 rows BEHIND us.

I'll never forget the sound in the stadium. Normally when an opposing player hits a HR there is a collective groan. This was a completely different sound. I've never heard 30,000 people all gasp at once before.

I believe Scott Cooper was the player Houston wanted for Larry Anderson to fuel a Red Sox pennant drive. Unfortunately the Sox wouldn't budge and instead sent some guy named Jeff Bagwell.