Posted on 08/03/2005 8:34:12 AM PDT by newgeezer
Rick Sutcliffe, the star pitcher for the Chicago Cubs in the late 1980s, recalls the day that teammate Rafael Palmeiro, a first baseman-outfielder, was on his way out of Chicago."It was (general manager) Jim Frey and (manager) Don Zimmer who both said, 'This guy will never hit for power,' " Sutcliffe recalled. "I remember a situation where there was a man at first and nobody out. Zimmer's big deal was to pull the ball as a lefthanded hitter. A base hit to right and you go first to third. A base hit to left, you only go first to second. So, 'Raffy' comes up and singles to left as good as you've ever seen, and it's first and second. Zimmer was so mad, I thought he was going to pinch-run for him."
That day in 1988, it was decided that the Cubs would keep lefthanded-hitting Mark Grace, whom they thought would hit for more power than Palmeiro, and trade Palmeiro, which they did in the offseason of 1988. That year, Palmeiro had hit only eight homers in 580 at-bats for the Cubs. Grace had seven in 486 at-bats.
Palmeiro, who even had named his dog "Wrigley" in honor of Wrigley Field, desperately wanted to remain a Cub and called Sutcliffe, whom he presumed had considerable influence in the organization.
"He said, 'Tell (Cubs management) I promise I will hit for power. Tell them to please don't trade me,'" said Sutcliffe, now an ESPN analyst who was in town this week.
"I called Frey and said, 'I believe this guy. He says he's going to hit for power. Let's hang on to him.' But obviously, they traded him."
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
That's a very good question -- I don't know exactly how MLB computes the minimum requirement, but for some reason I think it's based on 3 or 3.1 plate appearances for each game the team plays during a season. For a 162-game season, that comes to around 485-500 plate appearances. Gwynn finished the 1996 season with about 490, so he was fairly close.
And is this feat unprecedented in MLB history?
As far as I know, this only happened once before -- when Pittsburgh's Bill Madlock won the National League batting title in 1981. I believe this almost happened in 1980 in the American League, when George Brett hit .390 but missed so many games due to injury that he barely met the requirement for minimum plate appearances.
Despite the great success of my Yankees in the last ten years, I've never paid a dime to see a major league game ever since that disgraceful end of the 1994 season.
Ted Williams would have won a batting title that way in 1954, except back then they were more rigid about minimum plate appearance requirements. Bobby Avila got it instead. I think it was another 20 years before they altered the rules for awarding batting championships to the way we have now.
Perhaps the most remarkable all-time statistic that nobody ever talks about is Joe Sewell's career record of one strikeout for every 62+ at-bats. He struck out only 114 times in 14 seasons, including his incredible 1925 season in which he struck out only 4 times in nearly 700 plate appearances.
Thanks for clarifying that. So this type of thing may have happened a few times before they changed the rules to allow that hypothetical adjustment to a player's batting average to determine if he won a batting title.
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