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<ol><li>He was the 2005 Southern League Manager of the Year with Charlotte and has gone 508-470 (.519) in seven minor league seasons, numbers I feel confident that Tim Teufel will never sniff.<br></li>
<li>He was managing La Guaira in the Venezuelan Winter League when he got the third-base appointment with the Sox in 2005, at a time when Americans were staying the heck out of Venezuela.<br></li>
<li>Spent parts of 16 seasons in the minor leagues, including nine with the Indianapolis Indians (68 homers). He would become a legend for (and meet Jerry Manuel with) Indianapolis, setting up his offseason home there and eventually being honored with a "Razor Shines Day," unusual in that he was on that day the manager for the visiting Charlotte Knights.<br></li>
<li>Played every position down there except second and short, including catching 1711 games in the minors (but none in the bigs), and pitching three and a third innings in the minors and one in the majors, all scoreless.<br></li>
<li>Reportedly, when once asked by a fan what it's like being in the bigs, he boyishly exclaimed, "My Mama's so proud of me. I'm a Major Leaguer!" He actually had played his last big league game at that point but was in camp with the Pirates and still apparently starstruck.<br></li>
<li>His son Devon was drafted by the White Sox in 2007. (I'm sort of disappointed that he didn't name his son Sun or Monkey or something.)<br></li>
<li>The Baseball Encyclopedia has his name as "Anthony Raymond," as the UMDB does also.
<blockquote>“Wrong,” says Shines. “It’s Anthony Razor Shines. They just assumed my name was Raymond and that Razor was a nickname. Nobody asked me.
“Razor’s a family name. My grandfather was a Razor. He gave that name to my father and he gave it to me. My son’s middle name is Razor. When my son has a boy, if he doesn’t want to name him Razor, well, that’s fine, but I wasn’t going to be the one who stopped it.”</blockquote>You should have asked him, Ben Grimm.<br></li>
<li>He managed the only hit in a Dennis Eckersley one-hitter in 1985.<br></li>
<li>He tried to make it through the Montreal system primarily as a catcher but found his aspirations stymied and the system bottlenecked for catchers by Gary Carter. He eventually switched to third base just in time to get in line behind Tim Wallach. He finally got an opening day start at first in 1985, before learning that he was just keeping the bag warm until Andres Galarraga was ready.
In a funny kharmic turnabout, He now is a roadblock of sorts for Gary Carter's aspirations.<br></li>
<li>He will, in all likelihood, wave home the first ever Mets run at Citi Field.<br></li></ol>Welcome to the Mets, Anthony Razor Shines.
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