“Boy, I hope I never see my name up there.”
Yogi Berra looked up at the jumbotron at Yankees Stadium during the team’s home opener in 2003. The screen showed a list commemorating former Yankees who had passed over the previous year.
Yogi died on Sept. 22, 2015. This year, the mortal 2020, has given him a parade of company, including the teammate to whom he was speaking to that day: Whitey Ford.
This year has, somberly, become the year of the loss. We lost 102 regular season games, we lost fans in the stadiums, and we lost some players to injuries or opting out of a what felt like a shaky and scary season… Many fans simply lost hope, even within the season, as Major League Baseball tried to overcome obstacles with the pandemic. It has been, to say the least, a tough year.
Ultimately, for baseball fans, the losses we felt the most and suffered the worst are the losses of lives. We woke up to many mornings of many mournings.
It started on day one, with Don Larsen passing on New Years Day. Most recently, it was Joe Morgan, who passed this past Sunday.
What has been so important – this year, most especially – is the opportunity to celebrate some magnificent ballplayers and personalities, the people some of us got to experience in person, some through baseball history, and all through the greatness and glory of this wonderful, whimsical, often wild world of baseball fandom.
We have lost an All-Star team this year – here are some of the highlights of a few of their lives.
Don Larsen (Aug. 7, 1929 – Jan. 1, 2020)
Larsen is best remembered for an accomplishment not-yet-matched: a perfect game in the postseason. On October 8, 1956, he pitched perfection for the Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Yet, his 15-year MLB career was much more exciting than a single game. In his rookie year, in 1953, he was first on the St. Louis Browns with 192⅔ innings pitched and seven complete games. He was a workhorse for a team that hardly worked. The Baltimore Orioles shy away from admitting that they were once the St. Louis Browns.
His win-loss record was hardly pretty in his two years with the organization. He was 7-12 in 1953, 3-21 in 1954, when the Orioles only won 54 games. But he always pitched. He always worked. He had no attitude about starting or closing or time off or how many runs he did not get in support.
Once he joined the Yankees, he was making postseason history… with Yogi Berra, appropriately, jumping into his arms at the end of that perfect game.
Al Kaline (Dec. 19, 1934 – April 6, 2020)
“Mr. Tiger.”
If ever a franchise could mark the maker of its mastery, it’s the Detroit Tigers with Al Kaline. He played all 22 years of his career with the Tigers, and he would continue to join them in broadcasting after his playing days. In 1955, he became the youngest player ever to win the American League batting title, and he finished second in AL MVP voting to (who else?), Yogi Berra.
His lone World Series came in 1968, when he spent most of the season recovering from a broken arm. When the Tigers won the pennant, Kaline approached his manager, Mayo Smith, and told him he didn’t deserve to play. Al Kaline batted .379 with two home runs and eight RBI that series.
The humble approach by Kaline is telling of the heavy helping of heart he had for the game. There was so much talent, and so much respect. That is something we see so rarely. It’s usually one or the other. Kaline was a gentleman and a giant, at once.
Kaline completed his career with 3,007 hits, 399 home runs, and a .297 career batting average – facing 20 different pitchers who would be inducted into the Hall of Fame en route to doing so, the most among them – Whitey Ford, 129 times, against whom he batted .339/.419/.500 with just five strikeouts.
Ford’s Manager Billy Martin nailed it: “I have always referred to Al Kaline as ‘Mr. Perfection.’ He does it all – hitting, fielding, running, throwing – and he does it with that extra touch of brilliancy that marks him as a super ballplayer. Al fits in anywhere, at any position in the lineup and any spot in the batting order.”
Tom Seaver (Nov 17, 1944 – Aug. 31, 2020)
Over a month later, the sadness still lingers. What a pitcher, what a player, what a person.
Just like Don Larsen, Seaver was a workhorse. He took some tough losses, but that didn’t hinder him from pitching another ballgame; and he pitched with the mastery of a magician. He never lost his luster. That made him “Tom Terrific.”
He struck out 200-plus batters in ten of 11 seasons from 1968 to 1978, interrupted with only 196 strikeouts in 1977. His 3,640 career strikeouts ranks sixth on the all-time list, and his 61 shutouts ranked seventh. He is, and always will be to me, the real Mr. Met.
Lou Brock (June 18, 1939 – Sept. 6, 2020)
Lou Brock stole the show.
Brock was the eight-time stolen base leader in the National League (1966-1969, 1971-1974). He broke Maury Wills’s previous modern single-season record with 118 in 1974. One-hundred and eighteen. How many teams have that many steals among their entire roster over the course of 162 games? Well, in 2019, the answer was all but one – the Texas Rangers – and Brock did so at 35 years old.
Brock hit over .300 eight times in his 19-year career, and he added separate seasons of .297, .298, .299. He was the talk of the town, of the town that lives and breathes baseball, for the St. Louis Cardinals.
He passed within a week after we lost Tom Seaver. He had faced Tom Seaver 157 times, which is the most of any pitcher he saw.
Said Seaver of Lou Brock, this despite his success against Brock, holding him to just a .250 batting average: “Lou Brock, along with Maury Wills, are probably the two players most responsible for the biggest change in the game over the last 15 years: the stolen base.”
…It’s hard not to get chills.
Bob Gibson (Nov. 9, 1935 – Oct. 2, 2020)
Speaking of the Cardinals and their boasts of the bestial bests… Bob Gibson.
I met Bob Gibson. I get to say that. I have the privilege to be able to say that. It is one of my most prized memories.
…But, at the time, I had no idea who he was.
He released his autobiography in 1994, the year Steve Carlton was inducted into the Hall of Fame. So he was signing autographs while I was in Cooperstown, a seven-year-old who had no idea the history and mystery of this magnificent man.
251 wins. 3,117 strikeouts. 2.91 ERA.
In 1968 – a year oft-mentioned here – he had an ERA of 1.12 with 13 shutouts. In game one of the 1968 World Series, with his Cardinals facing the Tigers, he won by striking out 17. One of them was Al Kaline, three times, who, as we mentioned, was not an easy strikeout.
That was Oct. 2, 1968. I woke up and looked at my baseball history for the morning to see that. Later that day, the news that he passed broke.
He is a triumph in baseball history, a treat in my own.
Whitey Ford (Oct. 21, 1928 – Oct. 8, 2020)
“The Chairman of the Board” was a 6-time World Series Champion. He is the all-time winningest pitcher for the all-time winningest franchise: the New York Yankees. He won 236 games with a .690 winning percentage – a 112 win-per-162 pace. These numbers feel unreal; but they happened!
Whitey pitched for some very good teams, but he was also a tremendous part of why they dominated so definitively. As Brooks Robinson so appropriately put it, “he had great players behind him, but he was the master.”
I didn’t get to see him pitch. I did get to see him join Don Larsen for the last game of the old Yankees stadium, in September of 2008. The two of them scooped up dirt from the pitchers’ mound before they joined Yogi Berra in the booth with ESPN’s Jon Miller and Joe Morgan.
…Which leads me to our most recent loss.
Joe Morgan (Sept. 19, 1943 – Oct. 11, 2020)
What a ballplayer. What a personality. What a loss.
One of the most telling statistics from his playing career distinguishes him from every other Major League Baseball player, and it shook me up when I read it.
Seasons with at least 50 extra-base hits, 50 stolen bases, and 100 bases on balls: Joe Morgan. – 4. The other 19,901 ballplayers in baseball history combined – 0.
Despite this, Morgan was even more incredible than his statistics showed. Even when he was with the Phillies’ “Wheeze Kids” in 1983, toward the end of his career, he was a driving force on a dwindling team. And that fire, that fervor, that fascination with the game transcended into his broadcasting career. He lived and breathed this game, and it was about the game. Not the numbers. In fact, he might actually criticize this article for including numbers under his name.
He was a brilliant ballplayer, an enigmatic color analyst. Sunday Night Baseball with Jon Miller and Joe Morgan was an event in my household. I got through work just to get to my couch and hear them talk baseball. Joe Morgan was a true baseball man; not just on the field, but in the booth, and I imagine, in life.
The losses are many and massive, but the memories are magnificent. Yogi has good company; and now, they’re all scoreboard watching.
