Oscar Gamble
American baseball player (1949-2018)
Oscar Charles Gamble (December 20, 1949 – January 31, 2018) was an American professional baseball outfielder and designated hitter who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for 17 seasons from 1969 to 1985 for seven teams: the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees (on two occasions, each); as well as the Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia Phillies, Cleveland Indians, San Diego Padres, and Texas Rangers.
His quote about the Yankees' disorganization and circus-like atmosphere, "They don't think it be like it is, but it do", has also been called one of baseball's "immortal lines" by sportswriter Dan Epstein.
Biography
Gamble was born in Ramer, Alabama, to Sam Gamble, a sharecropper and Mamie Scott, a homemaker. He attended George Washington Carver High School (Montgomery, Alabama) and was discovered playing baseball in a semi-professional league by legendary Negro league baseball player Buck O'Neil, who was working as a scout for the Chicago Cubs at the time. O'Neil convinced the Cubs to draft Gamble, which they did in the sixteenth round.
Gamble played with the Caldwell Cubs of the Pioneer League in 1968 and the San Antonio Missions of the Texas League in 1969, from where he received his call-up to the Chicago Cubs late in the 1969 season.
He was traded along with Roger Freed by the Phillies to the Indians for Del Unser and minor league third baseman Terry Wedgewood on December 1, 1972.
Nicknamed the Big O by Yankees announcer Phil Rizzuto, Gamble was a great baseball player given the amount of time he was allowed to play in the game. Despite the limited playing time, he still hit 200 career home runs in just over 4,500 major league at bats, earning him the moniker "Ratio Man." Oscar's career peaked in 1977 with the White Sox, when he hit 31 home runs and tallied 83 RBI. That year, Gamble hit a home run per 13.2 at-bats, the best ratio in the league. After an ill-fated, injury-plagued year in San Diego, he returned to the American League in 1979 to hit a career-best .358 batting average, slamming 19 home runs with the Yankees and Rangers.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Oscar Gamble” as american baseball player (1949-2018). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american baseball player (1949-2018). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7105993. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 2018, 1969 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oscar Gamble” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.