SFBG: Boo-yah! Johnnie LeMaster returns

Boo Harvey, Boo Dilicious and Boo-Boo Hoff got nothing on the great Boo LeMaster!

So without informing the higher ups in the San Francisco front office, LeMaster had his name plate removed from the back of his No. 10 Giants jersey and replaced simply with a three letter word: “Boo.”

“It really caught everyone off guard, in fact when I walked to the plate that night I could hear manager Joe Altobelli say, ‘Why does John have “Bob” on the back of his uniform?’ “That stunt cost me a $500 fine, but it was worth every penny. It won over some of the media and the fans really got a kick out of it,” said LeMaster who was honored by the Giants last weekend as part of the club’s season long 50th San Francisco Anniversary celebration.

...Though the lithe LeMaster batted just .222 with 22 career home runs in a dozen big league campaigns -11 spent in Orange & Black - he went yard in his first major league at bat with San Francisco, slashing a rare inside the park home run against future Hall of Famer Don Sutton of the Dodgers on Sept. 2, 1975.

“I was a 21-year-old kid and I hit a line drive that hit a seam on the old astro turf at Candlestick Park and it bounced over the center fielders head,” LeMaster recalled in his southern lilt. “I just took off running and running. That’s the fastest I ever ran and the scariest I’d ever been. It’s a memory that will be etched in my mind forever unless I get Alzheimer’s or something like that. And hopefully that won’t happen.”