Traded to the Colorado Rockies in late 1997, Astacio proved a pitcher could have success hurling half his games in the mile-high hitters’ paradise Coors Field. “I didn’t put doubts in my mind (about pitching in Coors),” said Astacio, who twice led the league in home runs allowed with the Rockies. “Just get the ball, go to the mound, make some good pitches and see what happens.”1 In parts of five seasons in Denver, Astacio won 53 games (which ranked sixth in franchise history as of 2017) despite a 5.43 ERA, and his 17-win, 210-strikeout campaign in 1999 still ranks among the best single seasons in Rockies’ history.

“He’s the pitcher who mentally has not been affected by pitching in Colorado,” said one GM. “Pedro has always tended to throw strikes. He’s aggressive with his stuff and trusts his stuff is good enough.”2 Astacio’s teammates were equally impressed with his dogged determination. “He was a battler,” said teammate Todd Helton. “He wouldn’t back down. He could give up three early runs and you’d never know it.”3

Pedro Julio (Pura) Astacio was born on November 28, 1968, in Hato Mayor, in the eastern Dominican Republic. He grew up on a rural farm between Hato Mayor and coastal San Pedro de Macoris, where his father, Fulgencio, planted crops and tended to livestock on about 100 acres. Astacio’s mother died when he was 8, leaving his father the sole provider for his six children (three boys and three girls). Like almost all boys on the baseball-crazed island, Pedro loved baseball. According to one story, he learned to pitch by using an old tractor tire as a strike zone.4 By the time Astacio was a student at Pilar Rondon High School, he was on the radar of big-league scouts. On November 21, 1987, 19-year-old Astacio signed with legendary Los Angeles Dodgers scout Ralph Avila and Elvio Jimenez.

Astacio’s first taste of professional baseball came a few months later when he donned the uniform of the Tigres de Licey in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Winter League. Though he hurled only one game, he’d return to that club to pitch occasionally for the next eight seasons (through 1995-1996), compiling a 13-10 record.5 In the spring of 1988 Astacio arrived in Campo Las Palmas, at the Dodgers visionary baseball academy Avila founded the year before.6 That camp would serve as a model for almost all other big-league teams and produced dozens of major leaguers, among them Pedro and Ramon Martinez, Raul Mondesi, and Jose Offerman, but Pedro was the first protégé to reach the majors. Astacio’s 4-2 record with 2.08 ERA in the Dominican Summer League earned him a promotion to the Dodgers farm system in 1989.

Over the next three years Astacio progressed through the Dodgers system. He earned All-Star honors in the Rookie Gulf Coast League in 1989 and two years later had advanced to the Double-A San Antonio Missions in the Texas League. Though he struggled (4-11, 4.78 ERA) facing more experienced hitters in the Texas League, the Dodgers were impressed enough to invite him to spring training in 1992.

The 23-year-old Astacio surprised the coaching staff by going 2-2 with a 1.42 ERA in the Grapefruit League.7 Nonetheless, he began the 1992 season with Triple-A Albuquerque, where he was converted into a reliever. Astacio struggled in his new role, yet a series of events conspired to lead to his unexpected promotion to the Dodgers. Following the riots that had engulfed Los Angeles from April 29 to May 4 after four police officers were acquitted of using excessive force against Rodney King, the Dodgers were forced to play four doubleheaders in six days in early July. Desperately needing pitching, the club called up Astacio as an emergency starter. In what was described as the “finest debut in franchise history,” Astacio tossed a five-hit shutout and fanned 10 (a new team record for debuts) to beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-0, in the second game of a twin bill on July 3.8 “It was hard to believe what I was seeing,” said teammate Brett Butler. “[H]e’s toying with major-league hitters.9 Astacio exhibited the kind of enthusiasm and raw emotion that would define his career – on and off the diamond – by jumping around after strikeouts and openly celebrating.

Astacio’s roller-coaster ride was in its infancy. He was returned to Albuquerque after his next start, five days later, then recalled a month later to replace the injured Tom Candiotti. He tossed another shutout in three starts, and despite an eye-popping 1.42 ERA (six earned runs in 38 innings) was demoted again. Back with the Dodgers in September, Astacio was the feel-good story in the Dodgers’ otherwise forgettable season and worst record in the majors. Astacio finished with a 5-5 slate, including four shutouts in 11 starts, and a 1.98 ERA in 82 innings.

Standing 6-feet-2 and weighing about 175 pounds, Astacio had a “good, lean power pitcher’s body with a long trunk,” according to one scout.10 Indeed, Astacio was primarily a fastball pitcher with a bullwhip-like delivery that created late ball movement. Astacio struggled with mechanics his entire career. One scout described them as “poor [because] he hyperextends his elbow which throws off his command” and added “[h]e also arches his head, tightening his back, further contributing to his inconsistent command.”11 Astacio also had a big overhand curve and a changeup, and was never shy to challenge pitchers inside as evidenced by twice leading the league in hit batsmen.

Astacio’s rookie success surprised everyone, yet the Dodgers were careful to temper their expectations in 1993. Slated for the fifth spot in the rotation after a productive spring, Astacio struggled early in the campaign. “It’s his command,” said skipper Tom Lasorda. “He’s not getting the ball where he wants to or where he’s supposed to.”12 By the end of July Astacio’s 4.74 ERA (easily the highest on the staff) threatened his role in the starting rotation. In almost a repeat performance from a year earlier, Astacio caught fire, going 7-3 and posting a 1.82 ERA in 74⅓ innings over the last two months of the season. “He’s not flying off the handle anymore and making dumb pitches,” said catcher Mike Piazza of Astacio’s transformation. “He realizes that every pitch has a purpose.”13 Called the “ace of the staff” by sportswriter Gordon Verrell, Astacio fashioned consecutive shutouts in September as part of a career-best 21⅓ scoreless innings. While the Dodgers split their 162 games to finish in fourth place in the NL West, Astacio led the steam with 14 victories and was the only starter with a winning record, while his 186⅓ innings were just short of the 200-inning barrier his mound mates Orel Hershiser, Ramon Martinez, Candiotti, and Kevin Gross all surpassed.

During Astacio’s remaining tenure with the Dodgers, the right-hander flashed the brilliance that many experts had expected; however, he often struggled mightily, and rarely found a middle ground. Frustrations – by both the pitcher and the organization – grew as Astacio’s inconsistencies baffled his managers. One scout called Astacio “probably the most inconsistent 60-grade pitcher in the game.”14

Astacio had a scare in spring training in 1994, when team physicians detected a heart murmur. Although the diagnosis was ultimately determined to be insignificant, Astacio was sidelined for much of camp. Nonetheless he was ready to start the season and fanned 11 in his debut, a 6-0 loss to Atlanta on April 8. Astacio seemed to catch his stride during a six-start stretch beginning June 14, going 3-1 with a 1.88 ERA and holding batters to a .175 average, and leading sportswriter Tim Kawakami of the Los Angeles Times to declare, “There’s no doubt Pedro has established himself as one of the top pitchers in the division.”15 Such a comment typified glowing perceptions of Astacio. In stark contrast were those voiced just weeks later when he failed to make it through the third inning in consecutive starts. Pitching coach Ron Perranoski said that Astacio’s lack of English made it “difficult to make adjustments” during the game, suggesting that his struggles would continue because of a language barrier.16 The Dodgers were in first place in the NL West when the players union began its strike on August 12, resulting in the cancellation of the rest of the regular season and postseason. Astacio finished with a 6-8 record and 4.29 ERA (highest among the club’s starters) in 149 innings.

While baseball executives and union representatives haggled in the offseason over the future of baseball, Dodgers brass wondered what to do with the erratic, streaky Astacio, whose potential seemed as limitless as his flameout as a starter was likely. One report described Astacio as “teetering this close to mental disaster all the time” during the 1994 campaign, leading many to wonder if the high-strung flinger might be better suited as a reliever.17 Calls for Astacio’s banishment to the bullpen intensified when he went winless in his first five starts of the 1995 campaign before blanking the New York Mets on six hits on May 24, thereby recording his first victory since June 25 of the previous year. Losses in his next five consecutive starts resulted in his demotion. Beat reporter Bob Nightengale of the Los Angeles Times suggested that Astacio’s “emotional fluctuations” and not his ability were the root cause of his “mystery struggles.”18 Used primarily in mop-up and low-leverage situations, Astacio fared better in the bullpen (3.40 ERA vs. 4.82 as a starter), or as team VP Fred Claire said, “had better focus.”19 The Dodgers captured their first division crown since they won the World Series in 1988. Astacio pitched in relief in each contest of the three-game sweep by the Cincinnati Reds, yielding just a hit in 3⅓ scoreless innings.

Astacio arrived at camp skeptical about the Dodgers’ claim that he had a chance to regain a spot in the starting rotation. “They said it’s my job to lose, but that doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “[L]ast year they told me I’d be back in the rotation.”20 After blowing up in his debut, Astacio produced his best and most consistent season in Dodgers blue. Though he didn’t complete any of his 32 starts, he proved to be a dependable workhorse, logging 211⅔ innings with a sturdy 3.44 ERA (including a 2.95 clip over the last three months). Poor run support contributed to his misleading 9-8 record. According to the Los Angeles Times, three factors led to Astacio’s success: He quickened his pace on the mound (he had been one of the NL’s slowest workers), he relied much more on his fastball, and he seemed less demonstrative.21 Astacio joined Hideo Nomo (16-11), Ismael Valdez (15-7), and Ramon Martinez (15-6) to anchor the NL’s best staff (a major-league-low 3.46 ERA) as the Dodgers finished in second place and captured a wild-card berth in Lasorda’s final season in the dugout. The team was once again swept in the NLCS, this time by the Atlanta Braves. In his only appearance, Astacio hurled 1⅔ scoreless innings in Game Two.

The now 28-year-old Astacio arrived in camp in 1997 after yet another offseason filled with trade rumors, and also a new skipper, Bill Russell, who replaced the legendary Lasorda after 21 seasons. Astacio got off to a hot start, winning his first three decisions, while producing a 2.00 ERA a month into the season. In one of those victories, he tossed seven hitless innings against the Mets at Shea Stadium before yielding a leadoff double in the eighth. “He’s one of the most underrated guys in this league,” gushed pitching coach Dave Wallace.22 Astacio then lost his next seven decisions, during which time he had an ugly altercation. Yanked after surrendering five runs in four dismal innings against the Cardinals in Los Angeles on national television, a visibly angered Astacio confronted Russell in the dugout and had to be restrained by third-base coach Joe Amaltifano after a shoving match.23 (Three days earlier Valdes and Russell had a similar dugout confrontation.) Astacio immediately apologized in the press, but his fate was sealed. “When something like that happens in the dugout with the cameras there, you have to pay the consequences,” said VP Claire, who fined Astacio an undisclosed amount.24 Normally a quiet player in the clubhouse, Astacio was considered by some as too emotionally volatile to be consistently successful; on the other hand, some reporters sympathized with the pitcher, suggesting that the Dodgers never helped him settle into a rhythm as a starter and put too much pressure on him to conform to the “Dodger Way.” On August 19, the Dodgers shipped Astacio to the Colorado Rockies for All-Star second baseman Eric Young. “[Astacio] has great ability, character and work ethic,” said Claire about the transaction. “He pitched some outstanding games, (but never with consistency.)”25

Astacio wasted no time proving his worth to Rockies manager Don Baylor following the loss of the fan favorite Young. After fanning eight in a 6⅔-inning no-decision in his debut against the Houston Astros, in the Astrodome, Astacio won five consecutive decisions. Those victories included a career-high 12-strikeout performance in eight scoreless innings against Atlanta and an emotional six-inning outing with nine punchouts versus his former team in Los Angeles. After just six starts, pitching coach Frank Funk pronounced Astacio the best pitcher ever to wear a Rockies uniform.26 The Rockies went 23-14 after acquiring Astacio to finish with a winning record (83-79; third place NL West) for the third consecutive season since they entered the league as an expansion team in 1993. “He came in and really took charge,” said Funk of Astacio (5-1, 4.25 ERA in seven starts), and really fired up our ball club.”27

A hot free-agent commodity in the offseason, Astacio signed a four-year deal worth more than $24 million with the Rockies. “He’s one of our leaders,” said Funk when spring training opened. “He has that aggressive, I-love-to-play attitude. He’s got the work ethic of a high-school kid in his first major-league camp.”28 The Rockies, with the signing of free-agent pitcher Darryl Kile, were expected to challenge the San Francisco Giants and the Dodgers for the West crown in 1998. And then the season started. Astacio struggled mightily, yielding 27 earned runs in his first 20 innings (12.15 ERA). He’s fighting with his control,” said skipper Don Baylor. “He’s up in the (strike) zone, and behind in the counts. You can’t pitch like that.”29 While the Rockies limped to a 77-85 record, Astacio took a beating, producing the highest ERA in the majors among starters (6.23), tied for the major-league lead with 39 gopher balls, and led the NL by hitting 17 batters; still, he went 13-14, made 34 starts, set a new team record with 170 punchouts, and exceeded the 200-inning mark for the third straight season. Nonetheless, rumors swirled that Astacio’s arm was injured – it wasn’t. “[Astacio] bears no resemblance from the nasty right-hander” from 1997, wrote Denver sportswriter Ray McNulty.30 Beat reporter Mike Klis noted that Astacio relied more on breaking balls instead of his heater.31 Like all hurlers, Astacio had to adjust his pitching in Coors Field, with its thin air, where balls flew out of the park at a record pace in an era of home-run records. And that process wasn’t easy, as the split in Astacio’s home and away ERA indicated (7.39 to 4.90).

Astacio reached the heights and depths of his career in 1999, but for vastly different reasons. On the field he enjoyed his best season, consistently pitching deep into ballgames despite yielding a league-leading 38 home runs. His victory against the Milwaukee Brewers on June 6 might best capture Astacio’s career at Coors Field. In 7⅔ innings, he surrendered four round-trippers and five runs while fanning 10 and emerged the victor when the Rockies exploded for eight runs (and also smashed four home runs) in the seventh. On July 6, he took revenge against the Dodgers, tossing a complete game with 10 punchouts and drove in the go-ahead run in a 5-2 victory at Coors Field. Not known as good hitter (.133 career average), Astacio had his most productive season at the plate, collecting 20 hits.

Just as Astacio seemed to realize the potential many had predicted for him, he was arrested on August 12 after a violent altercation with his estranged, pregnant wife, Ana, allegedly striking her in the face.32 (It was his second marriage. His first, to Dorca Garcia Thomas, ended in divorce in 1995.)

Neither suspended nor fined by either the Rockies or Major League Baseball, Astacio took the mound three days after the incident and tossed eight innings, fanning 11 in a 12-4 victory over the Montreal Expos in Denver, where the initial chorus of boos gradually turned to cheers for the pitcher. While the Rockies plunged to a last-place finish, Astacio completed a career year despite his legal distractions. He won 17 games (tying Kevin Ritz from 1996 for the franchise record), and set new club records in innings (232), complete games (7), and strikeouts (210, third best in the NL).

Astacio’s charge of domestic abuse cast a dark shadow over his best season and raised questions about his future. On January 28, Astacio pleaded guilty to third-degree assault and received two years deferred judgment, thereby avoiding jail.33 Soon thereafter the Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) informed Astacio that a felony or misdemeanor involving domestic violence was a deportable offense. (Astacio was a citizen of the Dominican Republic and had since reconciled with Ana.) Apparently unaware of the legal ramification of his plea, Astacio left the Rockies spring training in March and was granted permission to withdraw his guilty plea in an effort to remain in the United States with the formal trial set for early July. (The trial was subsequently deferred to November.) Despite his legal troubles, Astacio was the Rockies’ Opening Day starter. After losing his first two starts, he won his next six decisions. Included was a four-start stretch with at least 10 strikeouts. He fanned 10 or more seven times during the season, and matched his career high of 12 punchouts in seven overpowering innings, yielding just two hits and one run in a 2-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Feld on August 1. Seemingly headed to matching his totals from the previous season, Astacio injured his left oblique on September 1, making only three very brief starts thereafter before he was shelved the last two weeks of the season. He concluded the campaign with a 12-9 slate (5.27 ERA in 196⅓ innings) and racked up 193 strikeouts. Weeks after the season, he underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left knee to remove damaged cartilage that had bothered him for two years.

Astacio’s legal woes were far from over. On November 13, he pleaded guilty to lesser charges, a single count of spousal harassment, and was sentenced to six months’ probation; however, his residency status was still unclear.34 INS eventually abandoned deportation procedures by the beginning of spring training. Astacio opened his 10th big-league season red-hot. On April 22, he tossed two-hit ball over eight innings to beat the Arizona Diamondbacks in Phoenix, 2-1, to improve his record to 3-1 and lower his ERA to 1.93 after four starts. And then the bottom dropped out. He won only three of his next 15 decisions with an ERA well north of 6.00, prompting trade rumors as the Rockies were headed to their second straight last-place finish in the NL West in three years. Despite Astacio’s horrendous numbers, contenders still sought his services. In a cost-cutting move, the Rockies shipped Astacio, due to be a free agent at season’s end, to the Houston Astros for pitcher Scott Elarton. Astacio had a renaissance of sorts (2-1, 3.14 ERA) before shoulder pain ended his season after just four starts.

Astacio was diagnosed with a torn labrum in the offseason, but decided to forgo possible season-ending surgery given his status as a free agent. The Mets took a chance a chance on the 33-year-old hurler, signing him to a two-year contract in January. Reunited with former Dodgers teammate Mike Piazza, Astacio emerged as one of the surprises of the season, winning his first three starts. On April 27, he threw 7⅓ hitless frames against the Brewers at Shea Stadium, ultimately tossing eight innings in a 2-1 victory. Mets beat writer Rafael Hermoso reported that the team was impressed with Astacio’s “maturity” and “preparation” and how he mentored young hurlers on the club.35 Teammates gave him the moniker Mule for his ability to carry them late into innings. On August 6, he tossed a complete-game three-hitter and fanned 10 (the 20th and final time he reached double digits in strikeouts) to beat the Brewers in Milwaukee, improving his record to 11-4 and lowering his ERA to 2.95 before the clock stuck midnight in his fairy-tale season. As the pain in his shoulder intensified, Astacio collapsed in his final nine starts, yielding 54 earned runs in 45 innings (10.80 ERA) while losing seven of eight decisions. Through it all, Astacio still took the mound every five days and never became a distraction for the last-place Mets. On the contrary, Hermoso described Astacio as “one of most jubilant members of the Mets’ clubhouse, joking about almost everything and dismissing poor performances as if he had a bad hair day.”36

Astacio spent four more seasons in the big leagues, battling an array of arm and shoulder injuries, chasing a dream. Occasionally he found lightning in a bottle. He made only seven appearances for the Mets in 2003, signed in the middle of the 2004 season with the Boston Red Sox, making five appearances in September during their historic run to the World Series (he was not on the postseason roster), and made 22 combined starts for the Texas Rangers and San Diego Padres in 2005. His 4-2 slate and 3.17 ERA for San Diego earned him his first and only postseason start. In Game Two of the NLCS he lasted only four innings yielding four runs (two earned) and was collared with the loss, 6-2, to the Cardinals in St. Louis. The 37-year-old Astacio finished his 15-year big-league career with the Washington Nationals in 2006, splitting 10 decisions in 17 starts, one of which was his second two-hitter for his 12th and final shutout, blanking the Braves, 5-0, on August 15 in the nation’s capital.

The typically modest, media-shy Astacio was never an All-Star but he retired as one of the most productive pitchers from the Dominican Republic. At the time of his retirement following the 2006 season, his 129 victories (124 losses) ranked fourth behind Juan Marichal (243) and brothers Pedro Martinez (206)37 and Ramon Martinez (135). (Astacio’s total has since been passed by Bartolo Colon’s 235 and Ervin Santana’s 144, both as of 2017.) Astacio also became just the fourth Dominican hurler to log at least 2,000 innings, joining Marichal, Pedro Martinez, and Joaquin Andujar.

After his active playing days Astacio returned to his longtime residence and ranch in San Pedro Macoris, near where he grew up. In 2013, he donned a big-league uniform for the first time in seven years when he returned to the Rockies as a special assistant coach during spring training. As of 2017 Astacio still resided primarily in the Dominican Republic.

Last revised: March 1, 2018

This biography originally appeared in “Major League Baseball A Mile High: The First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies” (SABR, 2018), edited by Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com, SABR.org, and The Sporting News archive via Paper of Record.

Notes

1 Owen Perkins, “In Camp With Rox as Coach, Astacio Thrilled to Help,” MLB.com, February 28, 2013. m.mlb.com/news/article/42093506/in-camp-with-colorado-rockies-as-coach-pedro-astacio-thrilled-to-help/.

2 Quote by New York Mets GM Steve Phillips in Tyler Kepner, “Astacio’s Health Is a Key Issue,” New York Times, January 18, 2002: D2.

3 Perkins.

4 Randy Franz, “Performance Does the Talking,” Orange County Register (Anaheim, California), March 26 1993: C1.

5 Pedro Astacio page, WinterBall Data, winterballdata.com/.

6 Ken Baxter, “Avila Led the Charge in MLB’s Latin Revolution,” ESPN, October 2, 2006. espn.com/espn/hispanichistory/news/story?id=2607258.

7 Allan Malamud, “(Notes) on a Scorecard,” Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1992: C3.

8 Gordon Verrell, “LA Dodgers. Fly on the Wall,” The Sporting News, July 13, 1992: 21.

9 Ibid.

10 “Scouting Report: Pedro Astacio,” The Sporting News, August 13, 2001: 35.

11 Ibid.

12 Steve Dilbeck, “Astacio’s Having Problems,” San Bernardino (California) Sun, May 11, 1993:  C2.

13 Associated Press, “Astacio, Dodgers blank Marlins,” San Bernardino (California) Sun, September 13, 1993: C2.

14 “Scouting Report: Pedro Astacio.”

15 Tim Kawakami, “Baseball Daily Report,” Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1994: C9.

16 Maryann Hudson, “Baseball Daily Report,” Los Angeles Times, July 24, 1994: C7.

17 “Caught on the Fly,” The Sporting News, March 25, 1996: 5.

18 Bob Nightengale, “Dodgers Reconsidering Astacio’s Starting Role,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1995: C5.

19 Gordon Verrell, “Los Angeles Dodgers,” The Sporting News, February 19 1996: 23.

20 Bob Nightengale, “(Baseball) Daily Report,” Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1996: C6.

21 Bob Nightengale, “He Gets By With Help From Friends,” Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1996: C1.

22 Bob Nightengale, “Los Angeles Dodgers,” The Sporting News, April 28, 1997: 27.

23 Chris Baker, “Call It Dodger Blew – As in a Fuse,” Los Angeles Times, June 9, 1997: C1.

24 Steve Springer, “Dodger Report,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1997: C6.

25 Ross Newhan, “Baylor Looks for a Change From Astacio,” Los Angeles Times, August 24, 1997: C9.

26 Mike Klis, “‘Dodger Way’ Isn’t Working Well,” Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colorado), September 21, 1997: SP 11.

27 Ray McNulty, “A Rockies’ Attitude Adjustment,” Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colorado), February 26, 1997: SP1.

28 Rob McNulty, “Preview,” Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colorado), February 26, 1998: SP2.

29 Tony DeMarco, “Colorado Rockies,” The Sporting News, April 27, 1999: 37.

30 Ray McNulty, “Rockies Better Batters in Beer-League Title,” Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colorado), September 8, 1998: SP4.

31 Mike Klis, “Colorado,” The Sporting News, May 22, 2000: 48.

32 “Rockies’ Astacio Arrested,” CBS News, August 12, 1999. cbsnews.com/news/rockies-astacio-arrested/.

33 “Rockies P Astacio Avoids Prison,” CBS News, January 28, 2000. cbsnews.com/news/rockies-p-astacio-avoids-prison/.

34 Associated Press, “Astacio Sentenced to Supervised Probation,” ESPN, November 13, 2000.  a.espncdn.com/mlb/news/2000/1113/876164.html.

35 Rafael Hermoso, “It’s Astacio’s Turn to Take a Run at a No-Hitter,” New York Times, April 28, 2002: G4.

36 Rafael Hermoso, “With Astacio Hurt, Mets Look to Cone,” New York Times, March 21, 2003: S3.

37 Pedro Martinez was still active at time and had 206 victories; he finished with 219.

Garrett Bernard Atkins was born on December 12, 1979, in Orange, California. He was the older of two children born to Ron and Diana Atkins. Garrett grew up in both a nurturing and disciplined environment. His father was a marketing manager with a schedule that permitted him to spend a great deal of time with his son, much of it as Garrett’s private hitting coach. By contrast, his mother was a no-nonsense assistant high-school principal with a low tolerance for excuses.1

As a young child, Garrett loved baseball and early on his father recognized he had a talent for hitting. He continually reminded Garrett this was a gift to be cherished and developed. When other kids were goofing around and playing video games, Garrett and his father could be found on a baseball diamond honing his swing. During these “coaching” sessions, Garrett’s father emphasized hitting through the middle and driving the ball the other way just like the Padres’ Tony Gwynn, one of Garrett’s favorite players.2

Atkins attended University High School in Irvine, California, from 1993 to 1997. Located adjacent to the campus of the University of California Irvine, University High School is consistently ranked among the top public high schools in the United States, offering a curriculum with a strong emphasis in performing arts.3 In addition to producing a number of actors and entertainers, the institution also produced a number of world-class athletes including former major-league All-Star third baseman Tim Wallach.

Atkins pitched and played outfield and third base in high school. He earned all-league honors in each of his three varsity seasons and helped lead the school’s baseball team to two state championships. During his senior season, he positioned himself as one of the nation’s top high-school prospects when he hit .557 with a school record 13 home runs.4 After his senior season, the New York Mets selected him in the 10th round of the June amateur draft.

At the same time, Atkins was being recruited by baseball powerhouses UCLA, USC, Cal State Fullerton, and Oklahoma State and had a difficult decision to make. Reflecting back on the decision, Atkins said, “My parents were big supporters of me going to college. It was the right thing for me to do. But it was the toughest decision I had to make.”5

Atkins signed a national letter of intent to play baseball at UCLA, where he majored in sociology.6 He and fellow five-star recruit Chase Utley formed the foundation of one of the strongest recruiting classes in the nation. It was also the start of a lifelong friendship when UCLA coach Gary Adams had the two freshmen standouts room together.7 The relationship fueled the two friends to get better. “If he can do it, I know I can do it,” Atkins said. “And it’s the same way with him.” With the two prized recruits pushing each other and the return of seniors Eric Byrnes and Eric Valent, great things were expected of the Bruins.

UCLA had a disappointing 1998 season and finished in fifth place in the Pac 10 conference with a 24-33 record. Atkins, however, was one of the team’s bright spots. After Adams installed him as the starting third baseman, Atkins manufactured a school-record 33-game hitting streak and finished the season with a team-leading .383 average, the ninth highest single-season average in UCLA history. He also set freshmen records for hits (85) and doubles (22).8

UCLA steadily improved over the next two seasons, earning bids to the NCAA Regionals both years and advancing to the Super Regionals in 2000. Atkins was a mainstay in the Bruins lineup, starting every game during his three seasons, and became the Bruins’ first-ever three-time All-Pac-10 performer and All-American. Atkins finished his three-year Bruins career with a .369 average (fourth best in school history) and 276 hits, second only to Byrnes’ 326.9 Adams characterized Atkins as a natural hitter: “I coached at UCLA for 30 years and he’s at the top of the list for fluid swings. He’s a guy who could fall out of bed and hit.”10

After his junior season, Atkins was selected in the fifth round of the June 2000 amateur draft by the Colorado Rockies. Rockies scouting director Bill Schmidt looked at Atkins and saw another UCLA player, 1992 NL Rookie of the Year Eric Karros, who had a long and successful major-league career because of his bat.11 Schmidt believed that Atkins, like Karros, needed to work on his defense.

Atkins opted to forgo his senior year and signed with the Rockies. He was farmed out to the low Class-A Portland Rockies of the short-season Northwest League. In 69 games Atkins, who played both first base and third, finished with a team-leading .303 average, 7 home runs, and 47 RBIs, earning league MVP honors. Despite playing on a team with a roster that included Clint Barmes, Brad Hawpe, and 11 other future major leaguers, the Rockies finished with a 32-44 record in last place in the circuit’s western division.

Atkins spent the 2001 season with the Salem Avalanche of the Class-A Carolina League. The sweet-swinging right-handed hitter was used almost exclusively at first base and hit .325, second in the league to Victor Martinez (.329).  He had 5 home runs, 67 RBIs, a league-leading 43 doubles, and a .421 on-base percentage. He was named both a mid- and postseason all-star, tabbed as the Rockies’ third-best prospect by Baseball America, and honored by the Rockies as the organization’s Player of the Year.

Promoted to Carolina Mudcats of the Double-A Southern League in 2002, Atkins moved across the diamond to third base, where he appeared in 119 of his 128 games. The move to the hot corner may have partially explained his drop-off in average. For the year, he hit .271 with 12 home runs and 61 RBIs. As he was rising through the Rockies’ minor-league system, Atkins was most often compared with Sean Casey and projected as a prospect who could develop into a major-league hitter with 15-home-run power.12

Atkins started the 2003 season with the Colorado SkySox, the Rockies’ Triple-A Pacific Coast League affiliate. He continued to play third base and enjoyed a solid season with the bat and earned two promotions to Denver. The third baseman hit .319 with 13 home runs and 67 RBIs with the SkySox.

Atkins made his major-league debut on Sunday, August 3, 2003, against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park. Starting at third base and batting seventh, Atkins took little time to record his first major-league hit. With the Rockies already ahead 4-0 in the top of the first inning, he shot a groundball double down the left-field line off Jeff D’Amico to plate right fielder Rene Reyes with the fifth run of the inning. Atkins drove in a second run in the seventh when he grounded out to shortstop to score Preston Wilson with the Rockies’ 15th and final run of the game. Atkins finished 1-for-6 with a pair of RBIs.

But Atkins struggled to hit major-league pitching, and was returned to the SkySox. He was recalled when major-league rosters expanded in September. However, it was clear that he was not yet ready to play every day at the major-league level. During his two brief stints with the Rockies, he hit just .159 with 2 doubles and 4 RBIs. After the season he was invited to play for Team USA, which was participating the Arizona Fall League in preparation for the 2004 Olympic Games.

Atkins returned to the SkySox for the 2004 season. Despite missing 15 games in July with an acute viral infection of his lower intestine, Atkins hit a league-leading .366 with 15 home runs and 94 RBIs. He hit a team-high 43 doubles and had a career-high 23-game hitting streak on his way to being named to the PCL All-Star team. Atkins was now viewed as a complete hitter. 

Atkins was once again called up to the Rockies when the rosters expanded in early September and enjoyed more success at the plate than he had a year earlier. On September 11, 2004, he hit his first major-league home run, against the San Diego Padres at Coors field. Pinch hitting for Castilla in the top of the seventh inning, Atkins hit a two-run shot off right-hander Steve Watkins in the Padres’ 13-2 blowout loss to the Rockies. During the month with the parent club, Atkins gave the Rockies a glimpse into the future. In 15 September games he hit .357 with two doubles, a homer, and eight RBIs.

After the 2004 season, Castilla signed a $3 million contract with the Washington Nationals clearing the way for Atkins to become the Rockies’ everyday third baseman. However, two days before the start of the 2005 season, Atkins strained his right hamstring during the team’s final exhibition game and landed on the disabled list. Atkins missed the first 18 games of the season before coming back to have an outstanding rookie season. He played in 138 games (136 at third base) and hit .287 with 13 home runs and a team-leading 89 RBIs. While his RBI total led all NL rookies by 26, Atkins finished a surprising (if not disappointing) distant fourth in NL Rookie of the Year voting behind Ryan Howard, Willy Taveras, and Jeff Francoeur. 

In his second full season, Atkins became the centerpiece of a strong Rockies offense. In 2006 he played 157 games at third base and hit .329 with career highs in home runs (29), runs (117), and RBIs (120). He was one of only four players in the majors who hit better than .320 with at least 20 home runs, 100 RBIs, and 100 runs scored. The others were Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, and teammate Matt Holliday.13 Atkins’ breakout season had many wondering what the future had in store. Rockies manager Clint Hurdle thought there were no limits. “I would not put a ceiling on what kind of hitter this kid is going to be,” Hurdle said.14

Atkins’ consistency during the 2006 season was also noteworthy. His batting average climbed over .300 in the season’s third game and never dropped below that level the rest of the year. Despite the spectacular season, the Rockies third baseman was not named to the NL All-Star team and was again overlooked in postseason award voting.  Atkins finished 15th in NL MVP voting. In the end, the season proved to be not only a breakout year for the 26-year-old, it was also his career peak.

Atkins had another solid year in 2007 as the Rockies captured the NL wild card. He started slowly and hit only .223 in the first two months of the season. However, he eventually found his stroke and finished with a .301 average, 25 home runs, and 111 RBIs, while matching the career-high 157 games he played in the year before. During the Rockies’ magical 15-game run in which they went 14-1 to close out the season, Atkins hit .414 with 3 home runs and 9 RBIs. Unfortunately, he went into a postseason slump. 

The 2007 NLDS between Colorado and Philadelphia offered the interesting subplot of two good friends trying to keep each other from advancing in the playoffs as Atkins and the Rockies squared off against Utley and the Phillies.15 The series was anti-climactic as the Rockies swept the Phillies in three straight. Atkins went 3-for-13 in the series with three runs scored and a lone Game One RBI, a second-inning double that scored the first run of the series. Utley managed to go just 2-for-11.

Atkins’ offensive struggles continued in the NLCS against the Arizona Diamondbacks. The third baseman batted a pedestrian .143 (2-for-14) as the Rockies swept the Diamondbacks to advance to the World Series against the American League champion Boston Red Sox. With the sweep, the Rockies increased their winning streak to 10 games and had won an improbable 21 of their last 22.

The World Series brought with it a change of fortune for Colorado as the Red Sox swept the Rockies in four straight. Atkins went 2-for 13 in the Series. He had double and scored the Rockies’ only run in Game One and homered off Hideki Okajima in Game Four. Atkins, however, was not the only member of the Rockies to struggle. The Red Sox pitching staff limited the Rockies to 10 runs and a collective .218 average in the four games. 

Atkins’ offensive production continued to slightly decline in 2008. In 155 games split between third base and first, he hit .286 with 32 doubles, 21 home runs, and 99 RBIs — perfectly acceptable numbers for a middle-of-the-order hitter. However, the precipitous drop in his OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) from two years prior was a clear indication that he was in decline. Atkins’ career-high .965 OPS in 2006 had fallen to .853 in 2007 and dropped even further to .780 in 2008. 

After the 2008 season, the Rockies and Atkins became involved in an arbitration battle. Jeff Blank, his agent, felt the Rockies’ corner infielder’s numbers compared favorably to the Twins’ Justin Morneau.16 Atkins requested a salary of $7.95 million, while the Rockies offered $6.65 million. The two sides avoided arbitration by settling on a $7.05 million contract for the 2009 season.17

The 2009 season was a struggle for Atkins from start to finish. He started the season with an 0-for-12 skid before breaking out of it with a two-run home run off the Phillies’ Cole Hamels in the Rockies’ fourth game of the season. From May 13 to June 10 he was below the Mendoza line18 and finished the season with .226 average, 12 doubles, 9 homers, and 48 RBIs. As the season progressed, Ian Stewart, who hit a career-high 25 home runs in 2009, saw an increasing amount of time at third base.

Despite Atkins’s disappointing statistics, the Rockies earned their second playoff berth in three years. He was the starting third baseman all four games of the NLDS rematch with Utley and the Phillies. He went 3-for-13 in the series with a pair of RBIs in Game Three. Utley hit .429 for the series with a Game Three homer as the Phillies avenged their 2007 NLDS loss by beating the Rockies in four.

On December 12, 2009, Atkins’ 30th birthday, the Rockies told him they wouldn’t be offering him a contract for 2010. Though an unpleasant message to receive on his birthday, the move was not unexpected. Within a period of 12 months, Atkins had become an underperforming, overpriced veteran. He was the only arbitration-eligible Rockies player not to get a contract offer from the club.19

Ten days later the Baltimore Orioles signed Atkins to a one-year guaranteed $4 million contract with the hope that he could fill a gap they had at first base and return to the 20-homer, 100-RBI form of seasons past. However, Atkins’ stint with the Orioles proved short-lived. After hitting safely in his first five games with the Orioles, Atkins managed to hit only .192 in his final 39 major-league appearances. He batted .214 with one home run and nine RBIs before being designated for assignment on June 26, 2010. The Orioles president for baseball operations, Andy MacPhail, summarized the situation by stating, “We gambled that we could resurrect a bat, and it just wasn’t happening.”20 Atkins was released by the Orioles on July 6 when he refused to accept a minor-league assignment.

Manager Juan Samuel praised Atkins for being a consummate professional in the Orioles clubhouse under difficult circumstances. “He’s a great guy,” Samuel said. “He was professional throughout this whole process and understands why he wasn’t playing. He was very quiet, didn’t cause any issues in the clubhouse. He was just a veteran professional.”21

Not yet ready to call it a career, Atkins signed a minor-league contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates on January 5, 2011. The now 31-year-old veteran was brought into the Pirates camp to compete with Andy Marte, Steve Pearce, and Josh Fields for the team’s backup corner-infield position. The Pirates released Atkins on March 21, 2011, after he hit .129 in 33 plate appearances in 17 Grapefruit League games.22 Rather than continue to pursue the goal of making it back to the major leagues, Atkins retired and started a new chapter in his life.

In an eight-year major-league career, Atkins hit .285 with 169 doubles, 99 home runs, and 488 RBIs.  From 2005 to 2008, he hit .301 and averaged 22 home runs and 105 RBIs per year. Amazingly, he hit only .223 with 10 home runs and 57 RBIs during his final two major-league seasons. While he enjoyed a significantly higher average (.327) and OPS (.892) at Coors Field, Atkins actually hit more home runs on the road (50) than he did at home (48) while playing for the Rockies.

As of 2017 Atkins resided with his wife and son in Castle Pines, Colorado, a suburban oasis about 20 miles southeast of Denver. He said he enjoyed reading, watching TV, skiing, and playing golf — identifying himself as the “Worst Club Champion in the US” for 2017.23 

Last revised: March 1, 2018

This biography originally appeared in “Major League Baseball A Mile High: The First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies” (SABR, 2018), edited by Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker.

Sources

In addition to the Sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 Troy Renck, “With This Sweet Swing, Hits Just Keep Comin’,” Denver Post. March 17, 2007.

2 “Garrett Atkins — Bio,” https://jockbio.com/Bios/GAtkins/GAtkins_bio.html.

3 Actor Will Ferrell and many other notable entertainers are among University High School’s alumni.

4 “Garrett Atkins — Bio.”

5 “Garrett Atkins — My Say,” https://jockbio.com/Bios/GAtkins/GAtkins_mysay.html.

6 Thomas Harding, “Q & A with Garrett Atkins,” Retrieved from mlb.com.

7 Gerry Fraley, “The Friendship Baseball Made: Utley, Atkins Now Aren’t Rooting for Each Other Much,” Rocky Mountain News (Denver), October 5, 2007.

8 “2017 UCLA Baseball Information Guide,” uclabruins.com.

9 Ibid.

10 Troy Renck.

11 Gerry Fraley.

12 Troy Renck.

13 Ibid.

14 “Garrett Atkins — They Say,” https://jockbio.com/Bios/GAtkins/GAtkins_theysay.html.

15 Atkins was the best man in Utley’s wedding in January 2007.

16 Mark Townsend, “Rockslide: Tracking The Decline of Slugger Garrett Atkins,” March 21, 2011. https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/rockslide-tracking-the-decline-of-colorados-garrett-atkins?urn=mlb,wp1023.

17 David Martin, “Colorado Rockies and Garrett Atkins Strike a Deal and Avoid Arbitration,” https://bleacherreport.com/articles/119437-colorado-rockies-and-garrett-atkins-strike-a-deal-avoid-arbitration.

18 The “Mendoza line” is a baseball term for batting around or below .200, mediocrity. The term was coined by George Brett after Mario Mendoza. The term has also crossed over into America’s pop-culture lexicon and is frequently used to describe almost any type of subpar performance, from the performance of stocks and mutual funds to bad grades, and to quotas for salespeople.

19 Thomas Harding, “Rockies Part Ways With Atkins,” mlb.com, December 13, 2009.

20 Brittany Ghiroli, “Orioles Designate Atkins for Assignment,” mlb.com, June 27, 2010.

21 Ibid.  

22 Tim Dierkes, “Pirates Release Garrett Atkins,” March 21, 2011. https://mlbtraderumors.com/garrett-atkins.

23 “Garrett Atkins (@GAtkins32),” Twitter.com

Six weeks later, on May 13, Barmes went 3-for-6, hitting two home runs with five RBIs, raising his batting average back to .400, where it had been hovering since Opening Day. Barmes’ sensational stretch carried into June and was one the best starts to a season any rookie has ever experienced. Although this was one of the major highlights of his 13-year career, teammates, coaches, and managers continuously claim his biggest impact came from the intangible qualities he brought to the ballpark on a daily basis. His legacy in major-league baseball is epitomized by his passion for the game, dedication and hard work, playing the game right, and being an exemplary teammate.

Clint Hurdle, who managed Barmes with the Colorado Rockies and later with the Pittsburgh Pirates, had the ultimate respect for those intangibles and said, “We went our separate ways and were able to reconnect in Pittsburgh. I shared with our GM, Neal Huntington, Clint would be a perfect fit to bring cohesion and collaboration to our club on the field and in the clubhouse. He was an integral part of the Renaissance of Baseball on the North Shore and the Pirates’ return to prominence in major-league baseball.”1

Clint Harold Barmes was born in Vincennes, Indiana, on March 6, 1979, the older of two sons of Barry and Erma Barmes. He was named after his mother’s favorite actor, Clint Eastwood. The Barmes family farmed in Beal, Indiana, outside Vincennes in the southwest corner of the state, until Clint was in the third grade, when the family left the farm and moved into town.2

Clint spent “a lot” of time playing baseball and basketball on the farm with his father. When they moved to town, Barry built a pitcher’s mound in the backyard and Clint spent many hours pitching to his dad. “Dad worked with me all the time,” Clint said. “He was the most impactful person in my life. He coached my teams all the way into high school.” Barry had been a good athlete, having played two years of junior-college baseball and basketball at Wabash Valley College in Mount Carmel, Illinois.3 Clint also had an uncle, Bruce Barmes, who hit .318 in 1,439 minor-league games and had a cup of coffee with the Washington Senators in 1953.

Clint started playing organized baseball in a machine-pitch league at the age of 7. When he was 12, playing in the Bambino League, his team qualified for the Bambino World Series in Pueblo, Colorado. “It was the first time I was ever on an airplane,” Clint said. He pitched and played shortstop and center field for the team, which finished fourth in the tournament. Clint played in the league from age 9 through 12 and made the all-star team all four years.

Jumping the fence at Lincoln High School to hit in the cage was a regular occurrence for Barmes when the field was closed. Throughout high school, he excelled at the plate, in the field as a center fielder and shortstop, and as a pitcher. During an intrasquad scrimmage in college, after walking four straight batters, his coach walked to the mound and advised, “Why don’t you stick with playing the field?” Thus, his pitching career came to an abrupt end.

Barmes also starred on the basketball court. A friend of his had a basketball court in his backyard, where they spent a lot of time honing their skills. “Being from Indiana, basketball was the big sport,” Clint said, “but even though I loved both sports, baseball was actually my number one love.” At Lincoln High School, Barmes made the varsity as a sophomore shooting guard. In the state tournament, his team made the round of 16 in both his junior and senior years.4

After high school, Barmes attended Olney (Illinois) Central College, a junior college 32 miles from Vincennes, on basketball and baseball scholarships. He played both basketball and baseball during his first year, but in his second year Barmes elected to focus solely on baseball and quit the basketball team.5

Playing mostly in left field as a freshman and at shortstop as a sophomore,6 Barmes finished his two-year junior-college career with a .426 batting average, boosted by a .445 sophomore season.7 He graduated from Olney holding eight offensive records8 and as of 2018 still had the single-season record of 105 hits and 81 runs scored in 1999, along with career marks for hits with 172 and triples with 14.9 After his second season he was named a junior-college All-American.10 According to Olney’s baseball coach, Dennis Conley, Barmes had a 35-game hit streak, went hitless in one game, then hit in another 17 straight. “Not only was he the best player, but he was also the best teammate and the hardest worker,” Conley said. “When you wrap that all up you get a pretty special player and person. I have always said if he didn’t go into baseball he would have been very successful at anything he did and that is a direct result of his upbringing.”11

 Barmes had a similar respect for coach Conley, praising him for the major influence he had on his career. “I learned more about how to play the game during those two years from him than any other time up to that point,” Barmes said.

Barmes’ record at Olney earned him a scholarship to Indiana State in the Missouri Valley Conference, where in 2000 he batted.375 with 10 home runs and struck out only eight times in 248 at-bats. He tied the Indiana State record by hitting in 30 consecutive games.12 Barmes commented, “The-30 game hitting streak at Indiana State got me drafted.”13

Barmes, a right-handed batter and thrower, was selected after his junior year at Indiana State in the 10th round on June 5, 2000, by the Colorado Rockies. He signed four days later, receiving a $45,000 signing bonus. He used the majority of his bonus to purchase a 1999 Chevy pickup.14

The 21-year-old shortstop was sent to the Portland Rockies, in the short-season rookie Northwest League. Barmey, as teammates and fans called him throughout his career, and two other players shared a studio apartment and slept on air mattresses. The three lived in this modest arrangement until Barmes was called up to Asheville in the low Class-A South Atlantic League later in the season. He got a base hit in his first professional game, in Boise, Idaho.15

Barmes returned to Asheville for the 2001 season. He broke the hamate bone in his hand and missed three weeks of spring training and the first three weeks of the season, before settling in to the starting shortstop position. After 74 games with the Tourists, he was promoted to Salem of the high-A Carolina League.16 For the two teams, Barmes hit a modest .256, but had only 57 strikeouts in 457 plate appearances. That season, Barmes played with a very tight-knit group of teammates he would eventually spend a major part of his big-league career with as members of the Rockies, including Matt Holliday, Garrett Atkins, Aaron Cook, Brad Hawpe, Cory Sullivan, and Jason Young.17

Promoted again in 2002, Barmes played ball for the Carolina Mudcats (Raleigh, North Carolina). He batted .272 and led the team with 15 home runs despite missing three weeks with a broken hand after getting hit by a pitch.18 He was named to the Southern League postseason all-star team. After the season he played for the Mesa Solar Sox in the Arizona Fall League. During the winter he was named to the Rockies’ 40-man roster for the first time.

The 2003 season brought another promotion, to the Triple-A Colorado Springs Sky Sox. Barmes hit .276 and led the league in doubles with 35. At the end of the season he got his first major-league call-up. When he arrived at his locker, uniform number 12 was awaiting and that stuck with him throughout his career, other than in 2007, when Steve Finley took number 12 and Barmes flipped to 21. On September 5, in the second at-bat of his first major-league game, he got a hit in front of the home crowd at Coors Field in Denver.19 Barmes recalled it: “a single up the middle off (Kazuhisa) Ishii of the Dodgers.”

The 6-foot-1 Barmes, with clean-shaven head, reported to spring training each year at about 215 pounds and came home at the end of the season around 200. His typical playing weight was 205. Reporting to spring training in 2004, he had his first hopes of sticking with the big-league club.20 Despite a good spring, he began the 2004 season in Triple-A with the Sky Sox and had a fine season, hitting .328 with 16 homers and leading the league with 175 hits. He was named to the Pacific Coast League’s postseason all-star team. His achievements over the two years in Colorado Springs earned him the nod for starting shortstop on the Sky Sox team of the decade announced in 2010.21

In August, Barmey was again called up to the Rockies. In his second game after being recalled, he hit his first major-league home run, off the Florida Marlins’ Carl Pavano in Miami. One important learning experience that came out of his month with the big club resulted from splitting time with Royce Clayton, who taught him life lessons he would pass on in future years about positively affecting the career of a person in direct competition for his position. “He taught me a lot of things and took me under his wing. He’s a great guy that I’ve always respected,” Barmes said.

After spring training in 2005, Barmes was the Opening Day shortstop. For Barmes, spring training was productive in more ways than one. On St. Patrick’s Day in Tucson, his manager while with the Carolina Mudcats, PJ Carey, and his wife, Katherine, introduced Barmes to the woman he would marry, Summer Dennison. Summer was from Platteville, Colorado, and had played college softball at Lamar Community College, finishing her degree at the University of Northern Colorado.22

Hitting a walk-off home run off Trevor Hoffman on 2005’s Opening Day made Barmes an instant fan favorite in Denver. “I remember running the bases thinking this can’t be real,” he said. “The next game I was still on cloud nine, but the game slowed down for me after the home run.”23 Barmes finished April hitting .410 with 4 home runs and 14 RBIs and was named the National League Rookie of the Month.24 He was only the third rookie to hit .400 in April with a qualifying amount of plate appearances. By mid-May, Barmes was still leading the major leagues in batting.25

By June, Barmes was not only the front-runner for Rookie of the Year, but was being mentioned as a leading candidate to make the All-Star team. Then the magical start to the season came to a crashing halt on Sunday, June 5, when he had a freak accident, falling while climbing the stairs to his apartment. He broke his collarbone on the fall, which garnered national attention because he was carrying deer meat that teammate Todd Helton had given him after Barmes had spent time on Helton’s ranch riding an ATV.26

The injury placed Barmes on the disabled list until September 2. His batting average at the time of the injury was .327, with 8 home runs and 34 RBIs. After the injury, Barmes said, his swing was affected for the remainder of his career. Before the injury, he would swing and release the bat with his right hand, finishing his swing with the left hand elevated. Afterward he was unable to repeat his swing and his follow-through included both hands on the bat.27

Barmes still finished the season with a respectable .289 batting average, 10 homers, 46 RBIs, and only one strikeout per 10.5 plate appearances. He finished eighth in the National League Rookie of the Year voting.  Clint Hurdle remembers the start Barmes had in ’05. “We started our journey together in Colorado where I witnessed him have one of the best starts ever for a rookie.”28

After the season, Barmes played winter ball in the Dominican Republic.29 He was the first American everyday shortstop to play in the Dominican. This experience had a major impact on improving his defense. He watched the players’ footwork and started playing with quicker hands. It was also a great opportunity for him to gain an appreciation of what the foreign players experience when they come to the United States to play ball. “It was good being in a different country and seeing what they go through when they come to the States,” he said. “The Dominicans took me in and accepted me. I remember what that felt like and I wanted to make sure I treated them the same.”

Barmes started for the Rockies at shortstop for most of the 2006 season, recalling that “I spent most of the year trying to reinvent my swing, but it was my best defensive year up to that point.” He finished second in the NL among all positions with a 3.2 defensive WAR, but he batted only .220 with seven home runs. Always a good bunter, Barmes finished second in the NL with 19 sacrifices. He also led the National League by hitting into only two double plays, the lowest rate in the league.

After the season, Clint and Summer were married in Maui on December 12 (12/12/06), a planned tribute to Barmes’s uniform number 12. They made Denver their home that winter and remained Colorado residents as of 2018.30

The emergence of Troy Tulowitzki as the Rockies’ new shortstop phenom in 2007 forced Barmes to start the year in Colorado Springs. He was moved up and down between Denver and Colorado Springs three times that year, sticking with the Rockies after his August 29 call-up, allowing him the opportunity to be part of the Rockies’ remarkable run for the pennant that became known as Rocktober.

September 18, 2007, was one of the most historic days in Rockies history. In the bottom of the ninth inning of the second game of a doubleheader, with two outs and two strikes, Todd Helton hit a walk-off home run off Dodgers closer Takashi Saito to keep the Rockies in the pennant race. On that same day, Clint and Summer had their first child, a son they named Wyatt. “I remember watching the game from the hospital and holding Wyatt,” Clint said. The day before, the Rockies had started a streak of winning 21 of 22 games, catapulting them to their first appearance in the World Series, in which they were swept by the Boston Red Sox.

Barmes had a good year at Colorado Springs and was hit by a pitch 22 times, which was another intangible part of his game that he excelled at throughout the years. “I always liked the ball inside so I’d crowd the plate, so I’d get hit a lot. I was willing to take the hit by pitch,” Barmes said. He played in only 27 games for the Rockies that year, but played in the Triple-A all-star game. Although Barmes suited up and took batting practice throughout the playoffs and World Series, he was not activated.

Barmes broke camp with the Rockies in 2008 as a utility player, with Jayson Nix named as the starting second baseman. However, with Nix slumping, three weeks into the season Barmes took over the starting role at second base and remained there the rest of the season. He had a good season at the plate (.290, a career-high .790 OPS), but he also teamed with Tulowitzki to create a formidable double-play combo.

Barmes was the Rockies’ everyday second baseman in 2009, playing in 154 games. That season he switched from a 33-30 bat to a 34-inch bat31 and established career highs with 23 home runs, 32 doubles and 76 RBIs. However, his batting average dropped to .245 and he struck out 121 times, the most in his career. He tried at times later in his career to go back to the 33-inch bat he had always used before but was never comfortable with it again.32

The Rockies made the playoffs that season and Barmes had the opportunity to play in his first postseason games. He was hitless in four games as the Rockies lost the Division Series to the Phillies.

After his back-to-back solid seasons, the Rockies signed Barmes to a one-year, $3.325 million contract for 2010. He opened the season starting at second base, but Troy Tulowitzki injured his wrist and Barmes played shortstop during his extended absence. When Tulowitzki returned, Barmes moved back to second. After he went through a slump in August, Eric Young Jr. replaced Barmes as the starting second baseman to finish out the season. Even when not in the starting lineup, he was typically inserted for defensive purposes late in games. Barmes finished the season with a.235 batting average and 8 homers.

It had been a tough year: Barmes learned on June 15 that his father, Barry, had stage-four cancer.33 Jim Tracy and the Rockies organization were understanding and allowed several breaks from the Rockies during the season to visit his father.34 Three days after the end of the regular season, on October 6, Clint and Summer had a baby daughter, Whitney. Seven days later, on October 13, the day of Barry’s 56th birthday, Barry died of lung cancer.35

On November 18, 2010, Barmes was traded to the Houston Astros for Felipe Paulino. The Astros signed him for $3,925,000, another one-year contract. Late in spring training, Barmes broke his left hand when he was hit by a pitch from Ivan Nova of the Yankees.36 The injury forced him to miss the first month of the 2011 season, but upon his return, Barmes took over the starting shortstop position for the remainder of the year. He hit .244 with 12 home runs and was solid in the field. For the second time in his career, Barmes finished second in the National League in defensive WAR for all positions. He enjoyed his season with the Astros. “I loved Houston,” he recalls. “The fans and people were great.”

After the season, Clint had his first opportunity to test free agency. The Pittsburgh Pirates, now managed by Clint Hurdle, Barmes’ manager in Colorado from 2003 to 2009, signed him to a two-year, $10.5 million contract, based on Hurdle’s recommendation.37 He started at shortstop for the Pirates in 2012 and played solid defense. In 144 games, he hit .229. His eight home runs included his first career grand slam, against San Diego.

Barmes started the 2013 season as the everyday shortstop in 2013. By midseason he was splitting time with Jordy Mercer. “I loved working with Jordy,” Barmes said. It reminded me of when I came up and had Royce Clayton working with me. I said to myself at that time, ‘This is exactly how I’m going to treat whoever comes up behind me. Jordy and I ended up having a great relationship.’” The Pirates made it to the playoffs as a wild-card team and lost in five games to the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLDS. Barmes played in all six games of the wild card and NLDS and went 3-for-11.

When Barmes first came to the majors, the Rockies gave him Kenny Chesney’s “Back Where I Come From” as his walkup song, which he kept for a few years. In 2013 he changed his song to “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey, which was his favorite band. His wedding song had been “Faithfully,” by Journey. The song was a hit with the players and fans and became the signature song of the Pirates. When Barmes approached the plate, fans sang along. Barmes also shared another memory, “The team would sing the song as they were landing the plane returning home from a road trip.”38

Barmes was a free agent at the end of the season and re-signed with the Pirates for 2014, a one-year $2 million deal. He understood that his role was to back up Mercer; he seized the opportunity and spent a great deal of time mentoring him on playing shortstop.39 Barmes spent the first half of the 2014 season as the backup shortstop, but pulled his groin just before the All-Star break and played in only seven games after returning late in the season. “I loved Pittsburgh,” he said. “It was a fun environment. The teams were awesome and the fans came out and supported us. I remember how much fun it was to compete there. Everyone was there to win.”40

Just before 2015 spring training, Barmes signed with the San Diego Padres. At age 36, he was still a valuable commodity for teams looking for a good glove in the infield, a strong clubhouse presence, and a good role model for the younger players. By now he had developed a reputation as one of the game’s hardest workers. “I was always early to the field. I’m a big routine guy and wanted to be as ready as I could be,” he said. That season he was hitting .282 at the All-Star break and maintained an average above .250 until an 0-for-15 slump at the end of the season dropped his average to .232.

Barmes liked playing for Bud Black, but the Padres manager was fired a couple of months into the season. Cameron Maybin, who was the Asheville Tourists’ batboy when Barmes played there, was a teammate during spring training, but was traded to the Atlanta Braves before Opening Day.41

A highlight of the season with the Padres came in Barmes’ return to Pittsburgh. On July 7, as he approached the plate, the Pirates exhibited the paramount respect to an opposing player by playing his old walkup song, “Don’t Stop Believing,” a tribute that seldom occurs for the visiting team. The Pittsburgh fans gave him a standing ovation and he responded with a 2-for-4 day.42

Going into the 2016 season, Barmes signed a minor-league contract with the Kansas City Royals. “I had a solid spring and felt like I could help the club,” he said, but he didn’t make the Royals’ roster. Clint played for a while before his body told him he was done.43 He announced his retirement from baseball on May 23, 2016.44 Through exceptional work ethic, dedication, and commitment, being a team player and a great teammate, the small-town kid who struggled to get a baseball scholarship out of high school had achieved 10 years and 122 days of major-league service time.

Barmes finished his career with 89 home runs and a .245 batting average. Asked who the toughest pitcher he faced was, without hesitation he responded, “Brandon Webb’s sinker. At one point I was something like 1-for-15 against him. The one hit was a broken-bat single to shortstop that I beat out.”

As for the pitchers Barmes had the most success against: “I actually had a lot of success against Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke. I also had some of my best stats against Paul Maholm and Noah Lowry.” A deeper look into his stats revealed some lofty numbers against a number of pitchers, including Odalis Perez (.556), Maholm (.417), and Greinke (.368).

Barmes spent his entire career in the National League, but put up some of his best stats facing American League pitching. He had a career OPS of over .900 against five AL teams. The only other team he had an OPS in excess of .900 against was his former Colorado Rockies team. “I always got excited to play against my old teammates and coaches and to play in front of my friends,” Barmes said. “I always felt comfortable at Coors Field. That was always home to me.”

In retirement, Barmes remained a part of the Colorado Rockies family. He was chosen to announce the 2017 Rockies amateur draft picks in New Jersey and was part of a 2017 Rockies 25-year reunion over a three-day weekend in September.

Clint Hurdle, reflecting on the years he managed Barmes, said: “I watched him play a game that he loved and share that love with others to make them better. I watched him grow up, fall in love and get married. I watched Clint and Summer become parents. I am proud of him and happy for him. He made me better.”45

As of 2018 Barmes and his family lived in Mead, Colorado. Taking a page from his father’s book, he enjoyed coaching his children in sports.

Last revised: March 1, 2018

This biography originally appeared in “Major League Baseball A Mile High: The First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies” (SABR, 2018), edited by Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author consulted Barmes’ Hall of Fame player file, Baseball-Reference.com, ESPN.com’s game-by-game stats, Baseballamerica.com, the baseballcube.com, rotowire.com, and the Colorado Rockies official website for statistical data, as well as Foxsports.com for historical transactions.

Notes

1 Clint Hurdle, email correspondence with author, May 8, 2017.

2 Clint Barmes, interview with author, March 8, 2017.

3 Ibid. All quotations attributed to Barmes are from this March 8 interview unless otherwise noted.

4 Barmes Interview.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Official Home of the Olney Central College Blue Knights Baseball Record Book: olneycentralathletics.com/sports/bsb/records.

8 Dennis Conley, telephone interview with author, July 29, 2017.

9 Craig Pearson, “From Terre Haute to the Majors: Former Sycamore Clint Barmes Calls It a Career,” Terre Haute Tribune-Star, May 28, 2016.

10 Official Home of the Olney Central College Blue Knights Baseball Notable Knights: olneycentralathletics.com/sports/bsb/pictures.

11 Conley interview.

12 Pearson.

13 Barmes interview.

14 Barmes interview.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 “Deals and Newcomers, Clint Barmes, SS,” USA Today Baseball Weekly, October 1-7, 2003: 57.  

20 Barmes interview.

21 “Clint Barmes Named Starting Shortstop to Colorado Springs’ Team of the Decade,” May 10, 2010, https://milb.com/milb/news/clint-barmes-named-starting-shortstop-to-colorado-springs-team-of-the-decade/c-9942936?tid=185364810.

22 Barmes interview.

23 Ibid.

24 Thomas Harding, “Barmes Is NL’s Top Rookie,” Colorado Rockies Official Site, May 2, 2005. https://m.rockies.mlb.com/news/article/1036172//

25 Vicki Michaelis, “Rockies Rookie Barmes Hitting It Off,” USA Today, May 12, 2005.

26 Tracy Ringolsby, “It’s a Different Story About Barmes’ Fall,” Rocky Mountain News (Denver), June 10, 2005. 

27 Barmes interview.

28 Hurdle email correspondence.

29 “5 Colorado Rockies, Escaping the Cellar Will Depend on a Young Team’s Rate of Maturity,” Sports Illustrated, April 3, 2006.  si.com/vault/2006/04/03/8373971/5-colorado-rockies#.

30 Barmes interview.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Troy Renck, “Rockies’ Barmes Carries Burden for Cancer-Stricken Father,” Denver Post, August 31, 2010. 

34 Barmes interview.

35 Brian McTaggart, “Barmes finds Peace Thanks to Dad’s Strength,” https://m.astros.mlb.com/news/article/20485970//, June 15, 2011.

36 “Astros Barmes Breaks Left Hand,” Toronto Sun, March 26, 2011.

37 Hurdle email correspondence.

38 Barmes interview.

39 Adam Berry, “Mentoring Newman, Mercer Pays It Forward/Veteran’s Tutelage Can Be Traced Through Long Chain of Shortstops,” MLB.com, February 24, 2017. https://mlb.com/news/article/216924114/jordy-mercer-mentoring-prospect-kevin-newman/.

40 Barmes interview.

41 Ibid.

42 Marty Leap, “Former Pirate Shortstop Clint Barmes Announced His Retirement After 13 Major League Seasons Yesterday,” May 24, 2016, https://rumbunter.com/2016/05/24/paying-homage-to-clint-barmes/.

43 Barmes interview.

44 Charlie Wilmouth, “Former Pirate Clint Barmes Retires,” May 24, 2016,  bucsdugout.com/2016/5/24/11758684/clint-barmes-retires.

45 Hurdle email correspondence.

Don Baylor was a hustling player who ran the bases aggressively and stood fearlessly close to home plate as if he were daring the pitcher to hit him. Quite often they did, as Baylor was plunked by more pitches (267) than any other player in the 20th century, leading the American League eight times in that department and retiring as the category’s modern record-holder (though he’s since been passed by Craig Biggio). Notoriously tough, Baylor wouldn’t even acknowledge the pain of being hit, refusing to rub his bruises when he took his base. “Getting hit is my way of saying I’m not going to back off,” he explained. “My first goal when I go to the plate is to get a hit. My second goal is to get hit.”1

Baylor played for seven first-place teams in his 19 seasons and was a respected clubhouse leader, earning Manager-of-the-Year recognition in his post-playing career. The powerfully built 6-foot-1, 195-pounder hit 338 home runs and drove in 1,276 runs, and clicked on all cylinders when he claimed the AL Most Valuable Player award in 1979. Not only did he lead the California Angels to their first-ever playoff appearance by pacing both leagues in both runs scored and RBIs, he proved unafraid to kick 30 or so reporters out of the clubhouse. After a critical loss in Kansas City late in that season’s pennant race, the press corps made the mistake of asking losing pitcher Chris Knapp about a “choke” within earshot of Baylor, who promptly ordered them to leave.

Baylor broke into the majors with the Baltimore Orioles when the Birds were in the midst of winning three straight pennants. The Baltimore players policed their own clubhouse with a “kangaroo court” that handed down a stinging but good-natured brand of justice for a variety of on- and off-field infractions. Before he’d even played in the majors, a 20-year-old Baylor ran afoul of the court by predicting — even though the Orioles had a trio of All-Star outfielders plus skilled reserve Merv Rettenmund — “If I get into my groove, I’m gonna play every day.” Court leader Frank Robinson read the quote aloud in the Baltimore clubhouse, and shortstop Mark Belanger warned Baylor, “That’s going to stick for a long time.” Indeed, Baylor was known as Groove in baseball circles even after he retired.2

Don Edward Baylor was born on June 28, 1949, in the Clarksville section of Austin, Texas. His father, George Baylor, worked as a baggage handler for the Missouri Pacific Railroad for 25 years, and his mother, Lillian, was a pastry cook at a local white high school. Don had two siblings, Doug and Connie, and going to church on Sundays was a must in the Baylor family.

Baylor was one of just three African-American students enrolled at O. Henry Junior High School when Austin’s public schools integrated in 1962. One of the friends he made was Sharon Connally, the daughter of Governor John Connally, and Baylor would never forget hearing her screams from two classrooms away when Sharon learned over the school’s public-address system that her father had been shot along with President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

At Stephen F. Austin High School, Baylor had to ask the football coach three times for a tryout, but by his senior year he had made honorable mention all-state and got a half-dozen scholarship offers, including ones from powerhouses like Texas and Oklahoma. Baylor also played baseball, as a sophomore becoming the first African-American to wear the school’s uniform, and being named team captain for his senior season. After a tough first year under a coach who wasn’t accustomed to dealing with blacks, Baylor benefited when a strict disciplinarian named Frank Seale, who believed in playing the game the right way, took over the program for his last two seasons. “Frank was not only my coach, but my friend,” said Baylor. “He looked after me and made me feel like I was part of his family.”3 When Baylor finally got to the World Series two decades later, Frank Seale was there.

After suffering a shoulder injury serious enough to inhibit his throwing for the rest of his career, Baylor decided to spurn the gridiron scholarship offers and pursue a career in professional baseball. Some teams, like the Houston Astros (who opted to draft John Mayberry instead), were scared off by Baylor’s bum shoulder, but the Baltimore Orioles selected him with their second choice in the 1967 amateur draft. Scout Dee Phillips signed Baylor for $7,500.

Baylor reported immediately to Bluefield, West Virginia, where he wasted no time earning Appalachian League player-of-the-year honors after leading the circuit in hitting (.346), runs, stolen bases, and triples under manager Joe Altobelli. “Alto taught me the importance of good work habits,” Baylor recalled. “He was a tireless worker himself, serving as manager, batting-practice pitcher, third-base coach, and, when you got right down to it, a baby sitter.”4

The 1968 season started with a lot of promise. In 68 games for the Class-A Stockton Ports, Baylor smashed California League pitching at a .346 clip to earn a promotion to the Double-A Elmira Pioneers of the Eastern League. He stayed there only six games, batting .333, before moving up to the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings. In 15 games against International League pitchers, Baylor batted only .217 and was benched for the first time in his life by manager Billy DeMars. “I felt frustration for the first time in my career,” Baylor admitted. “Maybe DeMars hated young players, period. I also noticed that his favorite targets were blacks like Chet Trail, Mickey McGuire, and a guy from Puerto Rico named Rick Delgado. I felt that DeMars did not have my best interests at heart. I was trying very hard to learn, but I got nothing from him.”5

Nonetheless, the Orioles invited Baylor to his first big-league spring training in 1969, and he got to meet his role model, Frank Robinson. Soon, Baylor was even using the same R161 bat (taking its model number from Robinson’s first MVP season in 1961) that the Orioles right fielder did so much damage with. With it, Baylor began the season by hitting .375 in 17 games for the Class A Florida Marlins of the Florida State League. He spent the bulk of the year with the Double-A Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, hitting .300 in 109 games to earn a Texas League All-Star selection.

After a strong spring training with the Orioles in 1970, Baylor returned to Rochester to bat third and play center field every day. Midway through the season, he reluctantly moved to left field because manager Cal Ripken believed Baylor’s weak arm would prevent him from handling center in the majors. Baltimore’s Merv Rettenmund insisted that Baylor remained a triple threat. “He can hit, run, and lob,” quipped the Orioles outfielder.6 Pretty much everything else that happened that season, however, couldn’t have been scripted more perfectly for Baylor. He was married before a summer doubleheader, and tore through the International League by leading all players in runs, doubles, triples, and total bases. The Sporting News recognized Baylor as its Minor League Player of the Year. He batted .327 with 22 home runs and 107 RBIs, and was called up to the Orioles on September 8. Ten days later, Baylor made his major-league debut at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, batting fifth and playing center field against the Cleveland Indians. The bases were loaded for his first at-bat, against right-hander Steve Hargan, and Baylor admitted feeling “scared to death.”7 He didn’t show it, though, driving the first pitch into right field for a two-run single. In 17 at-bats over eight games, Baylor batted .235.

After the 1970 season Baylor went to Puerto Rico to play for the Santurce Crabbers in the winter league. The manager was Frank Robinson. “There I would get to know Frank even better because he was my manager and hitting guru,” Baylor remembered. “Mostly he taught me to think while hitting. He would say, ‘A guy pitches inside, hit that ball right down the line. Look for certain pitches on certain counts.’ Frank also wanted me to start using my strength more. Frank knew there was a pull hitter buried somewhere inside me and fought to develop that power. In Santurce, Frank worked with me to strengthen my defense and throwing. I wound up hitting .290.”8

With nothing left to prove in Triple-A but no room on the star-studded Orioles roster, Baylor returned to Rochester in 1971 and made another International League All-Star team. He put up strong all-around numbers, hitting .313 with 31 doubles, 10 triples, 20 homers, 95 RBIs, 104 runs scored, 79 walks, and 25 steals as the Red Wings won the Little World Series. The Triple-A playoffs went on so long that Baylor got into just one major-league game after they finished.

He returned to Santurce with the island still celebrating Roberto Clemente’s MVP performance in the 1971 World Series, in which he helped the Pittsburgh Pirates dethrone the Orioles. “When Roberto played in Puerto Rico that winter I got a chance to witness up close what a great player he was,” Baylor recalled. “In a game against Roberto’s San Juan team, I tried to score from second base on a hit to right. I know I had the play beat. I ran the bases the right way; made the proper turn, cut the corner well. But by the time I started my fadeaway slide catcher Manny Sanguillén had the ball. I couldn’t believe it. I was out.”9

Baylor wound up hitting .329 to win the Puerto Rican League batting title. He was confident that he’d be on some team’s major-league roster in 1972, but was shocked when the Orioles cleared a spot for him by dealing away Frank Robinson before Baylor returned from Latin America. The Orioles effectively had four regular outfielders in 1971 (Robinson, Merv Rettenmund, Paul Blair, and Don Buford), so Baylor still had some competition in front of him.

Baylor got into 102 games with an Orioles team that missed the playoffs for the first time in four years. By hitting .253 with 11 home runs and 24 steals, he was named to the Topps Rookie Major League All-Star Team. He became a father when Don Jr. was born shortly after the season ended. Baylor came back from Puerto Rico to get his son, before the family returned to the island together to help him get ready for the next season.

Much like the Orioles, Baylor started slowly in 1973, but heated up when it mattered most. Baltimore was in third place in mid-July, and Baylor was batting just .219 with four homers in 219 at-bats. Starting on July 17, though, he mashed at a .366 clip the rest of the way, contributing seven home runs and 30 RBIs as the Orioles played .658 ball and won the American League East title going away. Baylor batted .273 in his first taste of playoff action before sitting out a shutout loss to Catfish Hunter in the Series’ decisive Game Five.

He played enough to qualify for the batting title for the first time in 1974, batting a solid .272 when the average American Leaguer hit 14 points less. The Orioles were eight games out on August 28, in fourth place, when Baylor and the team caught fire again for another furious finish. Baylor batted .381 as the Birds went 28-6 to finish two games ahead of the Yankees before losing in four games to the Oakland A’s in the American League Championship Series.

Baylor joined the Venezuelan League Magallanes Navigators that winter, displaying good patience and power with seven homers, 32 RBIs, and 29 walks in 56 games while batting .271. When major-league action got underway in 1975, Baylor’s talents continued to blossom. He hammered three home runs in a game at Detroit on July 2, and smacked 25 overall. That made the league’s top 10, and his .489 slugging percentage was also among the leaders. With 32 stolen bases, Baylor cracked the AL leader board for the fourth of what would eventually be six consecutive seasons. Though the Orioles finished second to the Red Sox, Baylor’s name appeared towards the bottom of some writers’ MVP ballots. He was only 26 and going places, just not where he imagined.

Just a week before Opening Day in 1976, Orioles manager Earl Weaver pulled Baylor out of an exhibition game unexpectedly. “When he told me to sit beside him I knew something was wrong, Baylor recalled. ‘I hate to tell you this,’ Earl said quietly, ‘but we just traded you to Oakland for Reggie Jackson.’ I looked at Earl but he couldn’t look at me. I was stunned. I started to cry right there on the bench. ‘Earl,’ I sobbed. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’”10 Weaver believed Groove would one day be an MVP, but the Orioles sent him packing in a six-player deal to land a guy who’d already won the trophy. Other than a career-high four stolen bases on May 17, and his best season overall for swipes with 52, the highlights were few and far between for Baylor in 1976. He didn’t hit well at the Oakland Coliseum, and batted just .247 with 15 homers overall. On November 1, Baylor became part of the first class of free agents after the arbitrator’s landmark decision invalidated baseball’s reserve clause.

Just over two weeks later, Baylor signed a six-year, $1.6 million deal with the California Angels, but he struggled to justify his salary for the first half of 1977. When manager Norm Sherry got the axe midway through the season, Baylor was hitting a paltry .223 with nine home runs and 30 RBIs. Dave Garcia took over as skipper, and hired Baylor’s ex-teammate Frank Robinson as his hitting instructor. Under the Hall of Famer’s tutelage, Baylor broke out to bat .281 with 16 homers and 75 RBIs the rest of the way. He never looked back.

Baylor finished seventh in American League MVP voting in 1978 after a breakout season that saw him smash 34 home runs, drive in 99 runs, and score 103. The surprising Angels logged their first winning season in eight years and remained in the West Division hunt until the final week, but Baylor will always remember that September for one of his saddest days as a ballplayer. Teammate Lyman Bostock made the last out of a critical one-run loss on September 23 in Chicago, then stormed by Baylor ranting and raving before exiting the clubhouse after a fast shower. “Veterans know enough to leave other veterans alone,” Baylor said. “So when Lyman walked by, I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t know there would be no next time for him.”11 Bostock was shot to death that night in Gary, Indiana. The career .311 hitter was only 27.

Baylor propelled the Angels to their first playoff appearance in franchise history in 1979, batting cleanup in all 162 games and earning 20 of a possible 28 first-place votes to claim MVP honors. His totals of 139 RBIs and 120 runs scored led the major leagues, and he added career bests in home runs (36), on-base percentage (.371), slugging percentage (.530), and walks (71) while striking out just 51 times. He batted .330 with runners in scoring position. Baylor struggled while battling tendinitis in his left wrist in June, but sandwiched that down spell with player-of-the-month performances in May and July. He earned his only All-Star selection, starting in left field, batting third, and getting two hits with a pair of runs scored. In his first at-bat, he pulled a run-scoring double off Phillies southpaw Steve Carlton. On August 25 at Toronto, Baylor logged a personal-best eight RBIs in one game as the Angels romped, 24-2.

In the 1979 playoffs, Baylor and the Angels met the same Baltimore Orioles club that developed him, but a storybook ending was not in the cards. Though Baylor went deep against Dennis Martinez in California’s Game Three victory, he batted just .188 as the Angels lost three games to one.

As wonderful as 1979 played out, the 1980 season was a nightmare. The Angels started slowly, and were buried by a 12-28 stretch during which Baylor missed nearly seven weeks with an injured left wrist. He struggled mightily when he returned, batted just .250 with five homers in 90 games, and missed most of the last month with an injured right foot. The Angels went from division champions to losers of 95 games. The next season, 1981, Baylor became almost exclusively a designated hitter, and remained one for the balance of his career. Though he batted a career low (to that point) .239, his totals of 17 homers and 66 RBIs each cracked the American League’s top 10 in the strike-shortened season.

In 1982 Baylor homered 24 times and drove in 93 runs as the Angels made their second postseason appearance in what proved to be his last season with California. After beating the Brewers in the first two games of the best-of-five Championship Series, the Angels dropped three straight and were eliminated. It certainly wasn’t Baylor’s fault; he batted .294 and knocked in 10 runs in the series.

Baylor became a free agent for the second time in November 1982, and signed a lucrative deal to join the New York Yankees. In three seasons with the Bronx Bombers, he was twice named the designated hitter on The Sporting News’ Silver Slugger team (1983 and 1985), and averaged 24 home runs and 88 RBIs. His batting average declined from a career-best .303 to .262 to .231, however, and they were not particularly happy years as Baylor feuded with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. In 1985 Baylor was selected as the winner of the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award, presented annually to a major leaguer of exceptional character who contributes a lot to his community. He was recognized for his work with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the 65 Roses (so-named for the way one child pronounced Cystic Fibrosis) club.

The Yankees traded Baylor to the Boston Red Sox shortly before Opening Day in 1986 for left-handed-hitting designated hitter Mike Easler. Though Baylor struck out a career-high 111 times and managed to bat just .238 in ’86, his 31 home runs and 94 RBIs were his best since his MVP year. He also established a single-season record by getting hit by pitches 35 times. The Red Sox won 95 games to beat out the New York for the American League East title, with Baylor operating a kangaroo court as his mentor Frank Robinson had done in Baltimore. On the night Roger Clemens set a major-league record by striking out 20 Seattle Mariners, Baylor fined him $5 for giving up a single to light-hitting Spike Owen on an 0-2 pitch. In the American League Championship Series, against the Angels, Boston was two outs from elimination in Game Five when Baylor smashed a game-tying, two-run home run off 18-game winner Mike Witt to spark an amazing comeback. Baylor batted .346 in the seven ALCS games, but started only three of seven World Series contests against the New York Mets as designated hitters were not used in the National League ballpark. This time the Red Sox let a Series clincher slip away, losing to New York in seven games.

Baylor turned 38 in 1987, and he posted the lowest power totals since his injury-plagued 1980 campaign, declining to 16 homers and 63 RBIs. He did reach a milestone on June 28, his 38th birthday, when he was hit by a pitch for a record 244th time. “Change-ups and slow curves feel like a butterfly, a light sting,” he said. “Fastballs and sliders feel like piercing bullets, like they’re going to come out the other side.”12 He added that getting hit in the wrist by a Nolan Ryan heater in 1973 was the worst feeling of all.

The Minnesota Twins, making a surprising playoff run, craved Baylor’s right-handed bat and presence and acquired him from the Red Sox for the final month of the 1987 season. Baylor batted .286 to help Minnesota reach the postseason for the first time in 17 years, and his eighth-inning pinch-hit single drove in the go-ahead run in Game One of the ALCS against the Tigers. Baylor batted .385 in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, including a game-tying two-run homer off John Tudor in Game Six, helping the Twins to a comeback victory en route to the title.

Baylor wrapped up his playing career with a return to the Oakland Athletics in 1988. Though he batted just .220 in 92 games, the club won 104 regular-season contests and became the third American League pennant winner in a row to feature Baylor on its roster. Oakland defeated the Red Sox in the ALCS but lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers in an upset, and Baylor struck out against National League Cy Young winner Orel Hershiser in his only at-bat. In the offseason Baylor called it a career after 2,135 hits with a .260 batting average, 338 home runs, and 1,276 RBIs. He stole 285 bases and was hit by a pitch 267 times.

Baylor returned to the big leagues for a two-year stint as the Milwaukee Brewers’ hitting coach beginning in 1990, and spent 1992 in the same role with the Cardinals. In 1993 he was named the inaugural manager of the expansion Colorado Rockies, and earned Manager-of-the-Year honors in 1995 when he led the third-year club to a playoff berth faster than any previous expansion club. Pitching coach Larry Bearnarth observed, “He doesn’t lose his cool very often. On the other hand, he can be intolerant sometimes of people who don’t give their best. He is very direct and he never varies from that, so players are never surprised. If he has something to say, he just says it like he’s still a player, like players used to do to each other.”13

Baylor’s Rockies played winning baseball for two more years, but he was fired after the club fell under .500 and slipped to fourth place in the five-team division in 1998. He turned down an offer to become a club vice president, instead opting to become a hitting coach again with the Atlanta Braves. After earning rave reviews for helping Chipper Jones develop into an MVP candidate, Baylor got another chance to manage in 2000 with the Chicago Cubs. Despite 88 wins and a surprising third-place finish in his second year in Chicago, Baylor was fired after a Fourth of July loss in 2002 with a disappointing, highly-paid club sputtering in fifth place. Overall, he went 627-689 as a major-league manager.

Baylor resurfaced with the Mets the next two seasons, serving as a bench coach and hitting instructor under Art Howe, while battling a diagnosis of multiple myeloma. When the Mets changed managers, Baylor moved to Seattle in 2005 to work with Mariners batters. In 2007 he worked part time as an analyst on Washington Nationals telecasts. After three years out of a major-league uniform, Baylor returned to the Rockies in 2009 as their hitting coach, before moving on to hold the same role with the Arizona Diamondbacks (2011-12).

The Angels brought him back in 2014, but he suffered a freak fracture of his right femur on Opening Day catching the ceremonial first pitch from Vladimir Guerrero, at the time the only other Angels player to win a MVP award.  Baylor came back to serve through the end of the 2015 season before settling into retirement with his second wife, Becky, who he’d married in 1987.

On August 7, 2017, Baylor died from complications in his 14-year battle with multiple myeloma. He was 68. Frank Robinson, Bobby Grich and writer Tracy Ringolsby spoke at his funeral before he was laid to rest at Texas State Cemetery in Austin. 

This biography originally appeared in “Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers: The 1970 Baltimore Orioles” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), edited by Mark Armour and Malcolm Allen. An updated version appears in “The 1986 Boston Red Sox: There Was More Than Game Six” (SABR, 2016), edited by Bill Nowlin and Leslie Heaphy, and “Major League Baseball A Mile High: The First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies” (SABR, 2018), edited by Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker.

Last revised: October 3, 2022 (zp)

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

Daniel Gutiérrez, Efraim Alvarez, and Daniel Gutiérrez hijo, La Enciclopedia del Béisbol en Venezuela (Caracas, 2006).

Craig Neff, “His Honor, Don Baylor,” Sports Illustrated, June 16, 1986.

Notes

1 Jack Friedman, “For Don Baylor, Baseball Is a Hit or Be Hit Proposition,” People, August 24, 1987. 

2 Don Baylor, Nothing But The Truth: A Baseball Life (New York: St. Martins Press, 1990), 47.

3 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 32.

4 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 38-39.

5 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 44-45.

6 Detroit Free Press, March 4, 1980: 42.

7 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 52.

8 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 60.

9 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 68.

10 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 80.

11 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 125.

12 Friedman, “For Don Baylor.”

13 Howard Blatt, “Ultimate Player’s Manager Baylor is Tough But Fair With Rockies,” New York Daily News, July 15, 1995.

Bichette holds a unique place in Rockies lore, having hit the first home run in franchise history and a game-ending home run in the first game at Coors Field, as well as becoming the first Rockies player to hit for the cycle.

What many don’t know about Bichette, who was a four-time All-Star and hit 274 career home runs, is that he was unable to fulfill his full potential because of a knee injury that plagued him for much of his career. He was an avid student of the game, and there is much more to his story than the image of a free-swinging slugger in the hitter-friendly environment of Colorado.

***

Alphonse Dante Bichette was born on November 18, 1963, in West Palm Beach, Florida, to Maurice and Mary Bichette. He was named for his father’s brother, who drowned in a storm as a child.

Bichette was one of seven children (three siblings from his father’s first marriage, and three — two sisters and a brother — from the marriage of his mother and father) and grew up in Palm Beach Gardens. Bichette’s father worked in construction, and his mother owned an antique shop.

Bichette first became enamored with baseball a month shy of his 10th birthday, when he watched on television as Reggie Jackson hit a two-run home run for the Athletics in Game Seven of the 1973 World Series against the Mets.

“For me, that was pretty much the goal after that,” said Bichette. “To hit homers for a living.”1

Bichette asked his parents if he could play baseball, and the next day his father took him to the local Little League field, where he signed up for the Juno Park Braves team. He pitched that very day.

The next year, Bichette was coached by Hondo Wilkes, who would become a lifelong influence, even after Bichette reached the major leagues.

When Bichette tried out for the baseball team at Jupiter High School as a sophomore, he didn’t make it. He tried out again the next year, and made the team, though he mostly came off the bench. In his senior season, he played shortstop and hit four home runs in four games before being suspended for missing too many days of school.

After high school, Bichette, with Wilkes accompanying him, went to Palm Beach Community College to seek a tryout. Wilkes spoke with the head coach, Frank Cacciatore (who would later become a minor-league coach for several organizations). Tryouts had been completed, and Cacciatore said he needed only a catcher.

“So Hondo said, ‘That’s what he is, a catcher,’” recalled Bichette. “I’m 17 years old, and caught maybe twice in Little League. And this is a nationally ranked junior college.”

Cacciatore told Bichette to show up at the field at 4 o’clock the following morning, during the team’s “Hell Week,” for two hours of running laps. Bichette did so, and Cacciatore allowed him to try out during a scrimmage later that day.

Bichette, as would have been expected, did not play well behind the plate. But in his two at-bats that afternoon, he lined out to left and homered. The home run is still spoken of at Palm Beach Community College; it hit the light standard in left field, landing on the adjacent racquetball courts. The prodigious power display landed Bichette a spot on the roster.

With Palm Beach Community College, among other smaller schools, competing against schools like the University of Miami and the University of Florida back then, major-league scouts began to take notice of Bichette’s power.

First-year California Angels scout Preston Douglas was one of them, and being new to the area, he was given a list of players he didn’t really know.

“He told me that when he got his list of players to see, I was 50th of 50 on the list,” Bichette said. “I was just a real raw player at that point. I still hadn’t played any serious baseball — Little League, high school, then junior college.”

The Angels drafted Bichette in the 17th round of the June 1984 amateur draft, 424th overall. He reported to his first professional camp, which was held on the campus of California State University at Fullerton.

Bichette’s first taste of professional baseball was at short-season Low-A Salem, Oregon. The jump from community-college baseball to the professional level was a big one.

“The game was just so fast, and it was every day,” said Bichette. “I was sleeping on a basement floor, not even a bed that year. I was eating at Burger King every day. I didn’t even have a ride to the ballpark. Those growing pains that a lot of young players go through aren’t so much on the field, but how to live off the field.”

In that first season, Bichette batted .232 with 4 home runs in 64 games. He played Class-A ball in 1985 at Quad Cities, Iowa, seeing an improvement in his performance at the plate: He batted .265 with 11 home runs in 137 games.

At Class-A Palm Springs in 1986, Bichette hit .272 with 10 home runs and 73 RBIs in 68 games.

“When I first started really understanding things was in Palm Springs,” Bichette said. “I really found my niche as an offensive player: It was driving in tough runs. It was something I ended up doing my whole career.

“I played for a great coach, Tom Kotchman, who is also a Hall of Fame scout now. He was just good for me. I remember I was a week into that [1986] season, I had just swung at a bad pitch with the game on the line, and we lost the game. But I was hitting like .360, and I didn’t think much of it. And the hitting coach, Rick Downs, comes in the clubhouse and said, ‘You’re not moving any higher than right here until you learn to swing at strikes.’”

It was then that Kotchman saw a rare opportunity, and gave Bichette some homework: to read The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams.

“For player development, you need ‘good cop, bad cop,’” Kotchman said. “It’s not often you get to be the good cop as a manager. It was a chance for me to do that, and it was a book that, it’s not like it’s some guy you don’t know. It was freaking Ted Williams.”2

To that point in his life, Bichette had only his raw talent to guide him, while many of his contemporaries had been exposed to such instruction far earlier in their baseball careers.

“That was the first time in my life that I really started to understand that there was more to hitting than just trying to hit this next pitch over that light over there, or over that scoreboard,” Bichette said. “It’s the first time I went to a two-strike approach, hunting pitches, reading pitchers, picking up release points.”

Midway through the 1986 season, Bichette was promoted to Double-A Midland, where he put up even better numbers: .284 (.335 on-base average, .514 slugging average), with 12 homers in 62 games. By the start of the 1987 season, Bichette was at Triple-A Edmonton in the Pacific Coast League.

“When I got to Triple A, I scuffled a little bit because I was told my mechanics were off,” Bichette said. “That’s where it took me about two years to realize that I’ve got to coach myself, and there’s gonna be too many opinions out there to listen to everybody.”

Even with his early struggles in ’87, Bichette managed to finish the season with a .300 batting average, with 13 home runs in 92 games. In ’88, he hit .267, with 14 home runs in 132 games for Edmonton.

Then came September of that season.

“Tom Kotchman was my manager again at Triple A; he was kind of moving up the chain as well,” Bichette said. “He called me in and told me. I’m glad he was the guy. He just said, ‘Hey, you’re going to the big leagues.’ Just like that. I was stunned.”

On September 5, Bichette made his major-league debut as the Angels played the Royals in Kansas City. He entered as a defensive replacement, going in at center field to start the bottom of the seventh inning.

“I remember going into the game, and the crowd was chanting, ‘Roo-kie! Roo-kie!’” Bichette said. “I couldn’t feel my body from the neck down, I was so nervous.”

Bichette’s first major-league plate appearance came in the top of the eighth. With a runner on second, two outs, and the Angels leading, 3-2, he stepped into the box against veteran left-hander Charlie Leibrandt. Leibrandt got Bichette into an 0-and-2 hole, and Bichette then flied out to Bo Jackson in deep right field.

Bichette got an opportunity in spring training the following year. With outfielders Chili Davis and Claudell Washington both hurt, he stepped in and hit .367 with four homers.3 He impressed Angels manager Doug Rader enough that he wound up making the big-league club out of spring training.4

Bichette got off to a blistering start in the 1989 regular season, hitting .385 and slugging .731 in 29 plate appearances through April 22. But his performance then began to decline steadily, and he was hitting just .195 by June 14. He was sent down to Edmonton a few weeks later, and hit .243 with 11 homers in 61 games before being called back up in September.

Once Bichette returned to the Angels that September, his minor-league days were behind him. And once again, he got off to a hot start at the plate to start the 1990 campaign. Having put on about nine pounds of muscle over the offseason through a weight training regimen, he was hitting .302 with four home runs on May 11.

That day, the Angels traded for future Hall of Fame right fielder Dave Winfield.

“It was frustrating,” Bichette said. “My year was pretty much part-time after that.”

Bichette finished the 1990 season batting .255 with 15 home runs in 371 plate appearances.

“I think what it came down to was that, for Doug Rader, I wasn’t his guy,” Bichette said. “I was a little too much of a free swinger. I’d try to throw behind runners, throw everybody out. And I think he wanted more of a polished player at the time. But sometimes that’s what you get with the young guys.”

That offseason, Bichette was traded to the Brewers for 39-year-old designated hitter Dave Parker. Bichette had proved he could hit at the big-league level, and Milwaukee needed to bolster its outfield defense, having committed 28 outfield errors in 1990.

In Milwaukee, Bichette put up similar numbers in 1991, though his average was down somewhat. He batted.238 with 15 home runs in 134 games.

“I made one of the biggest mistakes of my career in ’91,” said Bichette. “When [Brewers manager] Tom Trebelhorn came to me after spring training, he said, ‘I don’t care how many times you strike out. What I want from you is 20-25 homers and 75-80 RBIs. And you’ll be good. I don’t care what you hit for average.’

“So I made the mistake of getting off my two-strike approach and by the All-Star break, I was hitting like .230 [actually .236] with 12 homers and 40-something RBIs. Right on pace for what they wanted. And they took my job away. I wasn’t mature enough at the time to question it. I just got pissed, as a young player would do, and wouldn’t talk.”

That offseason, something happened that would affect the rest of Bichette’s career, perhaps precluding him from being regarded as one of the best all-around players in the game some years later.

“I was playing flag football, and I intercepted a ball and I was trying to make a cut,” Bichette said. “And I went right and my knee went left, and it swelled up on me. I didn’t think anything of it; I just thought it would heal, like a sprained ankle. About two months later, my knee’s still about as big as my head.”

Bichette called the Brewers, and they flew him in to have his left knee scoped by the team physician. After being evaluated, he was told he had torn the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). The injury would hamper him for the next six seasons.

“The injury actually helped me offensively by shortening my stride so I didn’t jump at the ball,” Bichette said, “but slowly but surely it hurt me defensively.”

To that point in his career, Bichette had not been an everyday player, and had few opportunities to demonstrate his defensive ability. But according to Kotchman, a major-league scout for three-plus decades, Bichette had the raw tools to be a great defensive outfielder.

“I’d have to sit down and go through my rosters over the past 30 or 35 years to see if I had anybody that had as much of a five-tool raw package as him,” Kotchman said.

Kotchman described Bichette’s raw range in the outfield as “solid-average to plus,” noting that while he needed refinement on his routes, he had a rocket for an arm and the underlying tool set to potentially become a Gold Glove outfielder.

Bichette was never able to fully reach his potential defensively because of the weakened left knee; lateral movement wasn’t as much of an issue for him, but his ability to make the necessary cuts to chase fly balls was diminished.

“The reason I didn’t have it reconstructed that year is because I waited too long and would’ve had to miss a season, and I couldn’t afford to miss a season then,” said Bichette. “And I ended up playing seven years without an ACL.”

In 1992, Bichette’s batting average climbed, while his power declined. Once again a part-time player, he hit .287 for the Brewers, but with only 5 home runs in 387 at-bats.

“To hit homers, you have to play every day, and I never was the everyday player that season,” said Bichette. “But I did get back to my two-strike approach. The .287 batting average was actually because I slumped at the end. I was around .315 most of the year.”

Bichette’s stint in Milwaukee lasted just two seasons, but a relationship he developed in that period proved to be perhaps the most important of his career, and one of the most important in his life off the field.

Don Baylor was the Brewers’ hitting coach in 1990 and ’91. And the 1979 American League Most Valuable Player saw potential in Bichette that Bichette didn’t know was in him.

“Don Baylor pulled me over one day, and he said, ‘You don’t realize how good you are. When you figure this league out, you’re gonna run this league,’ Bichette recalled. “I had never had anyone talk to me like that before.”

Baylor was named the first manager of the Colorado Rockies, one of two expansion teams to debut in 1993, along with the Florida Marlins.

On November 17, 1992, the Rockies traded outfielder Kevin Reimer, whom Colorado had selected from the Rangers in the expansion draft the same day, to the Brewers in exchange for Bichette.

“I was the guy he wanted,” Bichette said. “I didn’t realize he believed in me that much.”

On April 5, 1993, as the Rockies prepared to play the New York Mets at Shea Stadium in the franchise’s first-ever regular-season game, Baylor penciled Bichette into the number-3 spot in Colorado’s batting order. It would be only the second time in Bichette’s career he had started a game batting third in the lineup.

While the Rockies were shut out by Dwight Gooden and the Mets on Opening Day, Bichette would make history in the next game. In the seventh inning, he belted a solo home run to left field off two-time Cy Young Award winner Bret Saberhagen. It was the Rockies’ first home run and first run scored.

In a career-high 581 plate appearances during the 1993 season, Bichette posted the best offensive numbers of his career, batting .310 with 21 home runs, 14 stolen bases, and a 117 park-adjusted on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS+). With the league average OPS+ set to 100, Bichette was 17 percent above average at the plate even considering he played his home games in the thin air of Denver.

That year was monumental for Bichette off the field, as well. He married his wife, Mariana, in 1993 after they had dated for two years. Baylor was a central figure in bringing the two together.

When Baylor and Bichette were together with the Brewers in 1991, Milwaukee was in Boston to play the Red Sox for a three-game series in May. Bichette’s routine while in Boston was to work out at a Gold’s Gym across the street from Fenway Park, just behind the Green Monster. After taking early batting practice before one game, he walked over.

“I walk in, and this girl is walking away from me. And she turns around, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow. I could marry this girl,’ Bichette recalled. “I never said anything to her. I was too scared.”

Bichette walked back to Fenway, where he saw Baylor.

“I said, ‘Don, I just saw a girl I could marry.’ And he said, ‘Did you ask her out?’” Bichette remembered. “I told him I didn’t, that I was too scared.”

Baylor made Bichette walk back over to the gym and ask Mariana out. They celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary in 2018.

“God bless him. I owe Don Baylor a lot,” said Bichette of his friend and former manager, who died on August 7, 2017. “He was put into my life for a reason.”

That offseason, Bichette’s salary more than tripled, from $230,000 to $735,000, as a settlement after Bichette filed for salary arbitration.

In 1994, Bichette turned in another strong campaign, albeit shortened by the strike that canceled the season in mid-August, as well as the postseason. Bichette hit .304 (111 OPS+) with 27 homers and 21 steals in 116 games, earning his first career All-Star selection.

The Rockies combined to go 120-159 (.430) in their first two seasons, but set a single-season major-league attendance record in 1993 (4.48 million, which remains a record as of 2018) and drew another 3.28 million to Mile High Stadium in the strike-shortened ’94 campaign.

Meanwhile, construction of a new ballpark was underway in Lower Downtown Denver. Coors Field was scheduled to open the following season, but only after the strike ended.

Bichette’s contract had expired at the end of the ’94 season, and he was a free agent. That November, the Rockies made Bichette a three-year, $10 million contract offer, which he declined. There were no further developments on contract negotiations that winter, and Bichette began weighing an offer to play in Japan.

The Rockies, meanwhile, signed free-agent right fielder Larry Walker, who was coming off a career year for the Expos (.322, with 19 home runs in 103 games). At that point, having been Colorado’s everyday right fielder the previous two seasons, Bichette figured his time with the Rockies was at an end.

“It was really a frustrating time,” Bichette said. “We were working on a multiyear deal, and they weren’t serious about it. At the last second, the only reason I signed back with the Rockies was Don Baylor called me personally, and I owed Don Baylor. He gave me the opportunity to play. There was no way I wasn’t coming back to play for him when he called.”

The strike ended in late March of 1995, and the regular season began in late April. The mood at 20th and Blake Street, site of the Rockies’ new ballpark, was celebratory when the gates officially opened on the evening of April 26.

That night, the Rockies hosted the Mets. At first pitch, 5:38 P.M. Mountain Time, the temperature was 42 degrees.

In a seesaw affair, the teams were tied, 7-7, going into extra innings. In the 13th, each team scored to push the contest into the 14th. In the top of the 14th, Joe Orsulak’s RBI double put the Mets on top, 9-8, setting the stage for one of the greatest finishes in Rockies history.

Rockies catcher Joe Girardi singled to open the bottom of the 14th, with the game now well into its fifth hour. Walker came to the plate next, and struck out. First baseman Andres Galarraga followed with a groundball that Mets third baseman Tim Bogar misplayed. With runners at first and second and one out, Bichette strode to the plate.

He faced left-hander Mike Remlinger, and worked the count to two balls and a strike. The game was nationally televised by ESPN, with Jon Miller providing the play-by-play, and Joe Morgan providing color commentary.

“Two and one to the dangerous Dante Bichette,” Miller said as Remlinger came set. The next pitch leaked out over the plate, and Bichette hammered it.

“A high drive, way back, and there’s the storybook ending for the Rockies!” Miller exclaimed as Bichette’s blast landed halfway up the bleachers in left-center field to send Colorado to an 11-9 victory.5 Immediately after making contact, Bichette dropped his bat with a flourish, turned toward the home dugout and pumped his right fist as he began his trot around the bases.

“It could’ve been the World Series for me,” said Bichette. “It probably was, for me. It was the most exciting homer I hit in my career. It was so exciting to open the new stadium like that.”

The way Bichette dropped the bat after hitting the iconic homer became a signature move of his, but it wasn’t premeditated.

“The name of that is ‘the Shucky Ducky,’” said Bichette. “(Teammate) Marvin Freeman gave it that name. He’d say, ‘OK, go and Shucky Ducky one for me here.’”

Bichette was an avid foosball player, beginning when as a boy he played at his older brother’s fun and games shop at the mall. He even toured the country a notch below the professional level during the offseason of the strike year.6

“The signature shot is a move similar to my home-run swing,” Bichette said. “The next time I picked up a bat, and hit a homer, I just reacted exactly like I did on a foosball table. It was the weirdest thing.”

Opening Day in 1995 was a sign of things to come for the Rockies and, in particular, Bichette. That season became Bichette’s finest, and he helped lead Colorado to its first postseason berth via the new wild-card position.

Bichette batted .340 with 40 home runs in 139 games, finishing second to Reds shortstop Barry Larkin in that season’s National League MVP voting.

But by the middle of that season, many observers dismissed Bichette’s surge as largely due to his home ballpark, and the mountain air that enables baseballs to travel farther.7 Those detractors had plenty of ammunition: By July 24, all 17 of his home runs on the season had come at Coors Field.

“It was totally getting in my head,” Bichette said. “I didn’t even realize it until the media got ahold of it, and man, the next thing I know, Don Baylor wants me to talk to a sports psychologist. It was like, ‘Oh man, I better figure this out.’”

From that point forward, nine of Bichette’s remaining 23 homers in the season came on the road, beginning with a five-day binge on the very next road trip, during which he hit three.

“It’s so easy to be good in Coors Field, and it’s so difficult to make that adjustment to go on the road,” Bichette said. “When you go on the road and see a good breaking ball for the first time in two weeks [because of how the elevation flattens breaking balls at Coors Field], by the time you start getting used to it, you go back home and it’s a vicious cycle.

“And playing at altitude is a drain on the body, there’s no doubt about it. You get dehydrated, and you can never get loose.”

Like any other player who spends most of his career playing home games in the altitude of Denver, Bichette’s offensive statistics can be deceiving. But that goes for both home numbers and road numbers.

“I’m not saying I’m as good as my Coors Field numbers. Heck, nobody’s that good,” said Bichette. “But I’m not as bad as my road numbers were, either. I was somewhere in between. I felt like I was a .300 hitter, a 25-30 homer, 100-RBI guy. I didn’t have the plate discipline to do more than that. If I had the plate discipline, I really could’ve been something with the power numbers.”

With Bichette, Walker, Galarraga, and third baseman Vinny Castilla, the Rockies had four players in the middle of their lineup in 1995 who hit more than 30 homers, joining the 1977 Dodgers as the only major-league team with that distinction (Steve Garvey, Reggie Smith, Dusty Baker, and Ron Cey). Collectively, they came to be known as the Blake Street Bombers, a reference to the Blake Street address of Coors Field.

Bichette actually coined the term along with then-Rockies radio broadcaster Wayne Hagin. Hagin said it was really Bichette’s brainchild.

“We got to Coors Field, and anytime the Rockies did anything late in a ballgame, I would use the phrase ‘LoDo magic’ (for Lower Downtown Denver),” Hagin said. “But I do recall in the clubhouse, talking with Dante, and I remember him saying, ‘We need to come up with something.’ And Dante was just a creative sort.”8

The quartet of sluggers helped lead Colorado to a 77-67 record in the shortened season, earning the franchise’s first postseason berth. Castilla remembered that time fondly, as well as the work ethic he saw in Bichette.

“He was in the cage every day for hours and hours,” said Castilla. “He was always in the media room checking out all the pitchers. It’s not easy to hit 40 home runs, man. I don’t care if you’re hitting in Little League or the majors. We did a couple of times. It was a lot of fun to celebrate that together and be teammates back then.”9

The Rockies faced the Atlanta Braves in the 1995 NL Division Series, which meant facing the best starting rotation in baseball. It also meant facing a powerhouse that had reached the World Series twice in the previous three seasons (not counting ’94, when there was no postseason), but had yet to win a championship.

In a best-of-five series, with a 2-3 format in which the lower-seeded Rockies hosted the first two games, Coors Field was electric for Game One on October 3, the first postseason game in franchise history. Colorado lost Game One, 5-4, and Game Two, 7-4.

As the scene shifted to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Game Three was tied, 5-5, entering the 10th inning. With two outs and nobody on, Bichette doubled to left field off Braves reliever Mark Wohlers. Walker was intentionally walked, and Galarraga followed with a single to score Bichette. The Rockies won, 7-5, in 10 innings.

In Game Four, the Braves gave the ball to the best starting pitcher of the decade, right-hander Greg Maddux. The future Hall of Famer had won three consecutive NL Cy Young Awards, and was on the precipice of winning his fourth straight. Though the Rockies would lose that game, and the series, it was Maddux who was on the mound when Bichette’s signature postseason moment took place.

With two on and one out in the third inning, Bichette stepped to the plate against Maddux in a scoreless game.

“The first pitch was a sinker inside that was a total ball that the umpire called a strike,” Bichette recalled. “Most pitchers won’t get that strike, but Greg Maddux gets that strike.

“I stepped out, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘If he threw that pitch to get me out, I’m in trouble. But if he threw that pitch to set up the breaking ball away, I can hit that pitch. And I thought a little more: If Greg Maddux is gonna throw the breaking ball away, he’s gonna hit the glove four to six inches off the plate and get the call.”

The next pitch was a breaking ball just off the plate, away. Bichette lined it deep down the right field line and over the fence for a three-run homer.

Overall, Bichette hit .588 (10-for-17) with three doubles and that home run for the series. Four of the hits came off Maddux, and three apiece came against John Smoltz and Tom Glavine. The trio of Braves hurlers combined for seven career Cy Young Awards, and each is in the Hall of Fame.

Bichette referred to the at-bat against Maddux as “a Ted Williams at-bat.” Ever since being presented with Williams’s The Science of Hitting instructional for the first time in 1986, Bichette devoured the book every year, as he did with numerous other instructionals on hitting.

It was in February of 1996 that Bichette first met Williams, at the annual Ted Williams Hitters Hall of Fame dinner in Citrus Hills, Florida. Bichette was one of a handful of contemporary hitters invited to the event, which was held to honor new inductees Josh Gibson, Chuck Klein, Harmon Killebrew, Duke Snider, and Willie McCovey.

Williams quizzed Bichette, asking him questions about how to approach certain pitches and how to deal with slumps at the plate.

“He’s only been around a few years,” Williams told columnist Hal Bodley afterward. “He knows how he has to hit. I asked him a lot of questions. He answered them all. I’ve asked 500-home run hitters about inside-out hitting and they haven’t answered as well.”10

Williams invited Bichette to breakfast at his home the next day.

“I got to spend an hour with Ted in his kitchen, just me and him,” Bichette said. “It was the neatest thing ever.”

Following Bichette’s big 1995 campaign, the Rockies signed him to a three-year, $11.1 million contract. When he arrived three hours late to the first full-squad workout in February of 1996, with shoulder-length hair that was in violation of Baylor’s dress code, Bichette was viewed by some as having become smug after finishing runner-up in the MVP voting.11

Bichette had missed a flight to Arizona, resulting in the tardiness. And the haircut wasn’t new, nor was the controversy over it.

“My haircut was always an issue when I came to spring training,” Bichette said. “The long hair was a little taboo back then. Baylor wasn’t about to put up with that. He asked me to cut it, and I cut it, no problem.”

Bichette also struggled in that spring training, further emboldening his critics.

“I’ve gotta admit,” Bichette said, “that spring training, I was absolutely burned out, because the year before, I absolutely grinded. I could never get up for the games in spring training [in ’96]. And going into the regular season, a lot of people were pissed at me. It wasn’t players or anything, but I had some people really kind of frustrated. And then by the All-Star break, I was hitting [.335].”

Bichette had a stellar first half in ’96, even better than his first half during the prior season. By the All-Star break, he was batting .335 with 17 home runs and 14 steals. He was voted an All-Star for the third consecutive year, and for the first time as a starter.

Bichette not only put up big numbers at the plate in ’96, he also stole 31 bases in 43 attempts to join the 30-home run/30-steal club. And he did so despite his left knee.

“I was still fairly fast straight on,” Bichette said. “With an ACL tear, you can accelerate but you can’t decelerate, and you can’t cut left or right. But the reason I was able to steal bases was I had really strong legs to get a good jump. The first two or three steps were good, and I took pride in reading pitchers.”

The Rockies finished the ’96 season with a record of 83-79, third place in the NL West. That offseason, Bichette would finally have reconstructive surgery on his left knee.

Bichette’s production at the plate dipped somewhat 1997; he posted a 103 OPS+, his lowest park-adjusted OPS since being traded to the Rockies. Colorado finished with an identical record and standing that season, at 83-79 and third place in the division.

Bichette bounced back in 1998, leading the majors with 219 hits and raising his OPS+ to 108, but his power numbers were down: his 22 homers were the fewest he had hit in a single season since 1993 (21).

“I got big that offseason (entering spring training at 263 pounds), but every bit of weight I put on was fat,” Bichette said. “I got to camp and I realized I was way too fat. And by the time the season started, I was at 244, which was pretty much around my usual weight.”

By the end of April, Bichette was red-hot, hitting .415. But he had only homered once.

“I’m thinking, ‘This ain’t OK,’” Bichette recalled. “But then I started thinking, ‘OK, what’s going good? I’m hitting .387 [by May 4]. So I just beared down and decided to see how many hits I could get.”

In August of 1998, Denver Post columnist Mark Kiszla had his Rockies credentials removed after he was seen taking a bottle of supplements out of Bichette’s locker. The supplements were androstenedione, the same used by Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire as he broke Roger Maris’s single-season home-run record of 61 with 70 homers that season.12

Kiszla saw the bottle in Bichette’s locker a week after Associated Press reporter Steve Wilstein noticed a bottle of the supplement in McGwire’s locker, sparking a national story over whether his pursuit of the record was tainted.

Though the fallout over the McGwire story really wouldn’t come for several years, Bichette would come to a crossroads in his own career shortly after.

“I’m no saint. I would’ve done the steroids very quickly, with no hesitation,” Bichette said. “Because so many people were doing it and they were making gazillions of dollars and putting up huge numbers. And it was getting to the point where something’s gonna come to a head, and you’re gonna have to do them if you’re gonna play in this game.

“So I was looking for a way to compete, and tried the androstenedione. It was legal at the time, I got it at GNC. And it didn’t help me any. I tried my best, but it was getting crazy. McGwire was freaky large. And Sammy Sosa, I’m not sure he plays any longer and then I saw him that spring and it’s like, ‘Whoa, this is crazy.’

“Someone actually gave me the steroids, and my wife said, ‘Absolutely not. I’m not going to be married to a druggie.’”

Bichette finished the ’98 campaign with a .331 batting average and a career-high 48 doubles. He earned his fourth All-Star selection in five years, and on June 10 against the Rangers at Coors Field, he became the first Rockies player to hit for the cycle. After starting the game 0-for-2, he doubled, homered, tripled, and hit a walk-off single in the 10th.

That September, Bichette signed a three-year, $21 million extension with the Rockies.

But the 1999 season would be Bichette’s last in Colorado. He batted .298, hitting 34 home runs in 151 games. That September, Dan O’Dowd, who had been the assistant general manager for the Cleveland Indians, took over as Rockies GM.

O’Dowd said that offseason that he wanted the Rockies to become “more athletic and more versatile.”13 Bichette waived his no-trade clause and accepted a trade to the Cincinnati Reds on October 30. In exchange, the Rockies received right-hander Stan Belinda and outfielder Jeffrey Hammonds.

“The honeymoon was over,” Bichette said of the situation in Colorado. “It was just a little different feel at that time. That was Don Baylor’s final year, too. I had no reason to stick around.”

Bichette was traded to Cincinnati at an exciting time for that franchise. The Reds would soon acquire one of the best all-around players of his generation in center fielder Ken Griffey Jr, whom the Mariners traded to Cincinnati the next February.

Hitting cleanup for Cincinnati, behind Griffey, Bichette batted .295 with a 103 OPS+, with 16 homers in 125 games. With the Reds out of postseason contention, they traded Bichette to the Red Sox on August 31, in exchange for minor-league pitchers John Curtice and Chris Reitsma.

Bichette put up those impressive numbers with Cincinnati despite a slow start: Through May 19 (40 games), he was hitting just .213. From May 20 through August 31, when he was traded, Bichette batted .331 with 11 homers.

Bichette produced in his lone month with Boston that season, batting .289 with seven homers in 30 games. The Red Sox finished 2½ games behind the Yankees in the AL East and missed the postseason. In 2001, Bichette posted a 104 OPS+ with 12 home runs in 107 games for Boston.

With the Reds and Red Sox, Bichette played his home games closer to sea level. He didn’t have to contend with the effects of leaving the thin air of Denver to play on the road, and the toll it took on his body.

Over those final two seasons, at age 36 and 37, Bichette hit .291. While some might argue that he was playing his home games in the hitter-friendly Cinergy Field and Fenway Park, his park-adjusted OPS was 104. During his seven seasons with the Rockies, Bichette’s road OPS was .734. Over the final two seasons of his career, it was 37 points higher.

After the 2001 season, Bichette still felt, as evidenced by his production, that he had more in the tank. He signed a minor-league contract with an invitation to spring training with the Dodgers.

But just prior to the beginning of the regular season, Bichette made the decision to retire from professional baseball.

“I kind of saw that my time was gonna be reduced with the Dodgers, and I had just missed my oldest son’s first home run in Little League,” Bichette said. “I just pulled off to the side of the road on my way to a spring-training game one day, and said to myself, ‘Why am I playing now?’ I wanted to be with my boys. I didn’t want to miss any more home runs.”

Bichette became the coach for his oldest son Dante Jr.’s Little League team, guiding it all the way to the semifinal round of the Little League World Series in 2005.

“That was the coolest thing I have ever done in baseball, period,” said Bichette.

Both of Bichette’s sons, Dante Jr. and Bo, were in major-league farm systems in 2018. Dante Jr., a corner infielder, signed a minor-league contract with the Rockies in December 2017. Bo, a middle infielder, was the Blue Jays’ number-2 prospect per MLB.com.14

Bichette served as the Rockies’ hitting coach in 2013, but decided not to return the following season because he wanted to continue coaching his boys.

“It’s been a blast, and it’s allowed us to really develop our relationship even further,” he said. “I can’t tell you how precious it is to me that I have that relationship with them. I’m glad God blessed me with kids who love baseball, and I can pass that on to them.”

Bichette passed to his sons a baseball legacy that is founded on a passion for the game.

“You know, I tried to model my game after my father,” said Bichette, who never spent a day on the disabled list. “I never remember my dad missing a day’s work. And he was always there when it counted. I felt like I was a clutch hitter, and came through with an at-bat when the team needed it.”

The league batting average with two strikes during Bichette’s career was .188. His average in that situation was 31 points higher. In “late and close” situations, defined by Baseball-Reference.com as seventh inning or later while tied, ahead by one or with the tying run on deck, Bichette batted .301.

Bichette was also at his best against the game’s elite pitchers. He hit .478 (11-for-23) against Roger Clemens, .381 (8-for-21) against Trevor Hoffman, .327 (17-for-52) against Glavine, and .319 (15-for-47) against Maddux.

After a 14-year major-league career, Bichette passed the torch to his sons. But as one of the Blake Street Bombers, he is revered in Colorado for his place in Rockies history.

“I was blessed with a really quick bat and great hand/eye coordination,” said Bichette. “I was never a five-tool player, but I had all five tools at some point in my career. I’m thankful that Colorado is where I got my opportunity. If I got my opportunity somewhere else, maybe it would’ve been different. But that’s where I got my shot, and I had to make the most of it.”

Last revised: March 1, 2018

This biography originally appeared in “Major League Baseball A Mile High: The First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies” (SABR, 2018), edited by Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker.

Notes

1 Personal interview conducted with Dante Bichette, October 16, 2017. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations attributed to Bichette are from that interview.

2 Personal interview conducted with Tom Kotchman, December 5, 2017. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations attributed to Kotchman are from that interview.

3  The Sporting News, April 3, 1989: 21.

4 Tom Singer, “Bichette Gets Reprieve,” The Sporting News, March 27, 1989.

5 youtube.com/watch?v=TVFO_BhUOHk.

6 Tim Kurkjian, “Mere Child’s Play,” Sports Illustrated, July 3, 1995.

7 Greg Guss, “Bichette Happens,” Sport Magazine, June 1996

8 Personal interview conducted with Wayne Hagin, December 15, 2017.

9 Personal interview conducted with Vinny Castilla, June 20, 2017.

10 Hal Bodley, “Idol Talk: Bichette, Williams Hit It Off,” USA Today, February 28, 1996.

11 Tracy Ringolsby, “Bichette Eager to Lighten Mood at Rockies’ Camp,” Rocky Mountain News (Denver), February 24, 1996.

12 Rod Beaton, “Columnist Caught Raiding Bichette’s Locker,” USA Today, August 12, 1998.

13 “Reds-Rockies Trade: Bichette Is Dealt to Cincinnati,” Associated Press, October 31, 1999.

14 toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/mlb/news/prospects/index.jsp?c_id=tor.

Ellis Rena Burks was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on September 11, 1964. When he was 3 his family moved to the state capital, Jackson, where he completed elementary school and his father worked as an electrician. As a child in Jackson he had no real opportunities to play organized sports but he learned to love baseball by playing sandlot games with his cousins. He was not particularly skilled at the game as a child, however, and his cousins used to tease him because he batted cross-handed and they liked to inform him, “You don’t know how to play, Ellis, you don’t know how to play.”1

At 10, the family moved to Fort Worth, Texas, and Ellis started to get serious about baseball, playing in a summer league after his freshman year at O.D. Wyatt High School. His varsity baseball coach, Bill Metcalf, would become an important influence upon him. As a sophomore, Burks was more than happy just to earn a varsity letter but Metcalf conveyed to the 15-year-old that he had uncommon instincts for the game and could become a special player.2 As a senior, Burks transferred to nearby Everman High School, the local baseball powerhouse. He had an outstanding senior season at Everman, playing for coach Jim Dyer. It was at Everman that Burks adopted the batting stance of his favorite major leaguer, Jim Rice. “I tried to look exactly like that in high school,” he once said. “I had his number, 14. I adopted his stance. My feet were pretty much placed the same as his in high school, junior college, and the minor leagues.”3

Despite a torrid senior season at the plate, college scholarship offers were slow to materialize. On one occasion his grandmother, Velma Burks, asked him about his college plans and Ellis informed her that he would be going to Ranger Junior College, although the coaches at Ranger had not yet contacted him with an offer to play baseball.4 He also entertained the thought that he might be selected in the major-league draft, but he escaped the notice of scouts despite the fact that he capped his impressive senior season by being the first high-school player to hit a ball out of Arlington Stadium.5 (He did it in a high-school all-star game.) His grandmother died in March of his senior year but Ellis honored his promise to her and committed to Ranger even after other schools began to show interest.

At Ranger Junior College, Burks played for coach Jack Allen. Allen was a master of homespun homilies delivered to full effect with a Texas drawl and he had quite the influence on the 18-year-old Burks. On one occasion, Burks hit a routine groundball to shortstop and was running to first at slightly less than full speed. Allen surprised Burks by inquiring if he was, perhaps, nursing an injury of some sort. When Burks informed him that he was fully healthy, Allen lectured him in no uncertain terms and stated, “By golly, I don’t care if you can throw a strawberry through a battleship or run a hole in the wind … on this team we play at full speed!”6 It was a lesson Burks would never forget and his hustle became a trademark of his professional career. The Ranger team was a real powerhouse during Burks’s freshman year and he led the parade by tearing the proverbial cover off of the ball throughout the fall season. He was excited because a number of scouts planned to attend a coming game, and he was shocked when game day arrived and Allen told him he wouldn’t be in the lineup because the coach was afraid the scouts would see him and that Allen would lose Burks, his best player, in the coming January draft. Burks assured his coach that, even if drafted in January, he would not sign with a pro team until the end of the spring season and Allen relented and allowed Burks to play the game.

Indeed, the scouts had a very favorable opinion of Burks and on the advice of scout Danny Doyle, he was selected by the Red Sox with the 20th overall pick of the January 1983 draft. Five of Burks’s teammates were also selected in that draft, including future major-league pitchers Mike Smith and Jim Morris. As Burks had promised Coach Allen, he did not sign with the Red Sox until the end of the spring college season.

Burks made his first stop in professional baseball with the Elmira (New York) Pioneers of the New York-Pennsylvania League as an 18-year-old playing short-season A ball in 1983. At the plate he hit just .241 that season with two home runs but demonstrated his range of abilities as he stole nine bases and contributed five outfield assists. He was promoted to high-A ball at Winter Haven in the Florida State League the following season where he was a full three years younger than the league average but displayed a mature set of skills. In 112 games for Winter Haven, he stole 29 bases and contributed 12 outfield assists. Burks had the good fortune of meeting his idol, Jim Rice, then still with the Red Sox. “I met him in spring training. I was in ‘A’ ball, and I got called up for a split-squad game. He was in the clubhouse. I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Rice, my name is Ellis Burks. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I know who you are, kid.’” Burks added, “I was like, whoa, how does he know who I am?” I happened to sit beside him on the bench that day. I was pretty much in awe. I was too scared to ask him any questions. The next year, I was on the roster, and he told the spring-training clubhouse attendant to put my locker next to his. It was unbelievable to grow up idolizing a guy, and now he wanted my locker next to his.”7

Burks spent the 1985 and 1986 seasons at New Britain in the Double-A Eastern League and it was here that he really caught the attention of the big club. Red Sox coach Johnny Pesky became an admirer and declared that Burks “can run, hit, throw, and catch the ball. He may be ready for the big leagues sooner than people may think.”8 Burks’s ascent through the Red Sox system was slowed slightly by two right-shoulder injuries but his power began to blossom with 24 home runs over the course of the two seasons. It was the 31 stolen bases that he collected during the 1986 season in New Britain, however, that really caught the attention of the Boston front office. The Red Sox system had many promising young hitters in addition to Burks, including Mike Greenwell, Brady Anderson, Todd Benzinger, and Sam Horn, but it was the baserunning abilities Burks displayed that made him stand out from the other quality hitting prospects as the big-league club was sorely deficient in basestealing. (The 1986 Red Sox finished a distant last in the major leagues in stolen bases with just 41, of which six were by 36-year-old first baseman Billy Buckner.)

Burks made a strong impression on the Red Sox with an outstanding spring training in 1987. He was the team’s last cut, optioned to Triple-A Pawtucket.

The Red Sox did not have a strong sense of urgency to bring up their younger players to start the 1987 season; the team was coming off of a tremendously successful and memorable 1986 season in which they won their first American League pennant since 1975, and a heartbreaking seven-game loss to the New York Mets in the World Series. Lofty expectations for the 1987 Red Sox were misplaced as the team floundered to open the season. In late April, they had a 9-12 record and were in fourth place, 9½ games behind the high-flying Milwaukee Brewers. The Red Sox suddenly looked like a team that was past its prime and needed contributions from some of its talented prospects.

Burks had played a mere 11 games at the Triple-A level for Pawtucket when he was summoned to the big-league club. On the night of April 30, 1987, Boston manager John McNamara inserted 22-year-old Burks into the starting lineup as the Red Sox center fielder. Burks was batting ninth as the Red Sox faced pitcher Scott Bankhead and the Seattle Mariners in the Kingdome. Burks was hitless in three at-bats in a career that began with a weak groundball back to the mound, followed by a strikeout and a foul popup. He also dropped a line drive on which he had attempted to make a diving catch during the 11-2 Mariners victory. The game marked the first occasion that Burks had played on artificial turf,9 a circumstance that contributed to a base hit skipping past him in the outfield. Burks reflected great dismay and determination. “I felt bad after that first game. Everything happened so fast and I was not happy at what happened. I just wanted to come right back in my next game and show it wasn’t me,” he told a sportswriter.10  Skipper McNamara assured Burks that he would be in the starting lineup again the next game.11 The next night in Anaheim brought out the “real” Burks as he collected his first major-league hit in the second inning, a double down the right-field line off Urbano Lugo that brought home two runs. He went 3-for-3 as he shook off the jitters. In that series against the Angels, he showed a dazzling display of speed by sprinting from shallow center field to haul in a drive hit by Gary Pettis. Burks apparently liked Angels pitching because he connected for his first major-league home run, against future Hall of Famer Don Sutton, in the third inning of a game back in Boston on May 10. He later hit five home runs during a single road trip and brought his home-run total to 10 by June 18. When he hit a go-ahead home run off the Yankees’ Bob Tewksbury on June 21 it was the third time the rookie had provided the Red Sox with a game-winning blast.                                    

Burks’s success fueled the Boston youth movement. In short order, Todd Benzinger, Sam Horn, and Jody Reed were promoted to the big-league club to join Burks and Greenwell and the look of the team began to change. Burks split time in center with Dave Henderson and they became close friends rather than rivals. In fact, Henderson provided great help to Burks in outfield positioning and in reading hitters and Burks later identified Henderson as one of his greatest influences and closest friends in the game.12 The front office liked what it saw from Burks so much in center field that it traded Henderson to Oakland on September 1. General manager Lou Gorman said, “Henderson’s home run put us into the World Series. He did everything we asked of him, but Burks just came along and took his job.”13 Don Baylor, who had provided enormous offensive and leadership contributions during the previous season, was also traded, to Minnesota.  The 1987 Red Sox finished 78-84 but the infusion of young talent brought great excitement to Beantown.

Burks’s 1987 batting line exceeded all expectations with 20 home runs and 27 stolen bases to accompany 59 runs batted in and a .272 batting average. He became only the third Red Sox player to total 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases in the same season. He had 15 outfield assists, which as of 2017 remain the most in a season for a Red Sox center fielder. But Burks stood out for his entire game and his unusually refined skills, such as the ability to correctly read the flight of the ball off the bat. These defensive skills caught the attention of Lou Gorman who stated that Burks reminded him of a young Amos Otis.14 Don Baylor was notably impressed by Burks’ defensive prowess and paid him the highest of compliments by comparing him to Paul Blair.15

The young but talented Red Sox entered the 1988 season with high hopes. Burks set a personal goal of 40 stolen bases.16 However, a bone chip in his ankle required offseason surgery and he was unable to open the season with the team. Upon returning, he compiled six multihit games in his first nine games. A jammed left wrist slowed him temporarily but he finished the 1988 campaign with a .294 average, 18 home runs, 92 runs batted in, and 25 stolen bases. On September 4, the Red Sox assumed a permanent hold on first place in the American League East on their way to an 89-73 record and the American League East title. Postseason play was less noteworthy as the Sox were swept in four games by the Oakland Athletics as former Red Sox pitcher Dennis Eckersley saved all four games and Dave Henderson threw some salt in Boston’s wounds by going 6-for-16 with a home run. Burks was 4-for-17 in the series.

The 1989 season proved challenging for the team and for Burks. The team stumbled out of the blocks and was slow to recapture its form from the previous season. On April 30, the Red Sox faced the Texas Rangers in a game at Arlington as Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens faced off on the mound. It was not much of a homecoming for Burks as a Ryan fastball in the first inning glanced off his shoulder and caught him behind the left ear. He was removed from the game and was not pleased with the situation. Burks said, “Why should I be when a guy who throws 100, throws one at my head?”17 The same two pitchers were matched up in their next start, at Fenway Park on May 5. This time Burks exacted some revenge against Ryan and the Rangers by going 3-for-4 with a stolen base. In the seventh inning a Ryan fastball zipped under Burks’s chin, causing Ellis to glare out at the mound and Ryan to take a step toward home plate. “I was making a statement,” Burks commented.18 In return, Ryan said, “Everyone was on edge because of what’d been said or written after the incident in Texas.”19 When order resumed, Burks fouled off a couple of pitches and then singled home Jody Reed to give the Red Sox the lead for good in a 7-6 victory.

New Red Sox manager Joe Morgan was very impressed with Burks and considered him to be highly capable in every aspect of the game. “He’s way above average in everything,” Morgan said. “Hitting, hitting with power, throwing, running, catching the ball. Everything. And he’s a good fellow. The other day I yelled out to him, ‘Burks, I hope you never change,’ and he said, ‘I won’t change.’”20 The biggest challenge Burks faced seemed to be staying healthy. While attempting to make a diving catch in a game against Detroit on June 14, he tore cartilage in his left shoulder. He underwent surgery and missed the next 41 games. The season came to an abrupt end for Burks during a September 6 game in Oakland in which Burks had gone 3-for-3 before he suffered a shoulder separation in a collision with Mike Greenwell in the outfield and surgery became necessary. Burks was limited to 97 games in the 1989 season, batting .303 with 21 stolen bases.                                                                               

Burks completed a strong 1990 season that led to some overdue recognition as one of the top players in the game. He batted .296 and contributed 21 home runs and 89 runs batted in as the Red Sox compiled an 88-74 record and won the AL East Division title. His clutch hitting was particularly important as 23 of his first 43 runs batted in were delivered with two out. Against Cleveland on August 27, he became the 25th major leaguer to hit two home runs in one inning. The team’s stay in the postseason was again brief; they fell once again in four straight games to the Oakland Athletics in the ALCS. Burks went 4-for-15 in the series. Burks received a Silver Slugger Award as a recognition of his excellence over the 1990 season. He was the only 20-home-run hitter that season for a Red Sox franchise traditionally known for its power. He also earned his first Gold Glove Award, joining fellow outfielders Ken Griffey Jr. and Gary Pettis. He was selected for his first All-Star team although he did not play in the game due to injury. Burks finished 13th in the American League MVP voting.

The subsequent two seasons in Boston brought a steady diet of frustration. The 1991 season was seriously compromised by tendinitis in both knees and continual back pain. The tendinitis disrupted Burks’s timing and power at the plate and he had only two home runs in his first 29 games. The back pain increased over the course of the year and kept him out of the lineup for 11 games during a key late-September stretch run. The back problems proved to be a persistent foe over the coming years and Burks was later diagnosed with a bulging disk. His totals for the season reflected the extent to which he played hurt as he had only a .251 average with 14 home runs and 56 RBIs. A better reflection of the effects of the injuries was his uncharacteristically poor success rate on the bases with only 6 stolen bases in 17 attempts.

Trade talk percolated after the 1991 season but new Red Sox manager Butch Hobson was committed to Burks and batted him primarily in the leadoff spot in 1992. The knee problems compromised Burks’s speed and these issues were compounded when he played on artificial turf. The back problem did not respond to rest and medication and his season was limited to 66 games and 235 at-bats, which yielded an uncustomary .255 batting average with 8 home runs and 30 runs batted in. The Red Sox did not tender Burks a contract for 1993 and he was left off the team’s original 15-man protected list for the expansion draft, only to be pulled back when the Rockies selected Jody Reed.21 Nonetheless, the Red Sox made no effort to sign him.

The Chicago White Sox emerged as the club with the greatest interest in Burks and he signed with the team in early January of 1993. The White Sox had assembled a talented and experienced team, and in spring training, GM Ron Schueler commented, “ … Right now, Ellis looks as good as I’ve seen him look since I was scouting him years ago. If we can keep him going, he would give us a whole added dimension.”22 On April 16, and in his ninth game as a member of his new team, Burks made his return to Fenway Park. Facing Danny Darwin in his first at-bat of the game, Burks turned on a 3-and-2 pitch and launched a shot well over the left-field wall. As he rounded the bases, Burks received a standing ovation from the 26,536 fans. He commented, “It hasn’t been an easy transition. … I gave it a lot of thought this winter how it would be in this game. In spring training it hit me — I was wearing different colored socks.”23 The 1993 season marked a strong return to form for Burks. He batted .275 with 17 home runs and 74 RBIs. More importantly, he was able to stay free of serious injury and played in 146 games. The White Sox realized expectations in winning 94 games against 68 defeats and claimed the American League West title. They met the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series but fell, four games to two. Burks went 7-for-23 with a home run.

Burks became a free agent after the season and all indications were that he would re-sign with the White Sox, where he felt wanted and appreciated. “I’ll take anything — three years, five years, ten years — whatever they want,” he said. “It’s been great here. One of the reasons I wanted to come here in the first place was a chance to win, and we’re doing that.”24 But the White Sox offered only a two-year deal and wanted Burks to play right field25 and so he was willing to consider other offers. The Colorado Rockies sorely needed a quality center fielder and offered Ellis a three-year, $9 million deal, which Burks accepted.

A new chapter in Burks’s career began when he signed with the Rockies but the story had some familiar elements. In Colorado he was reunited with two teammates from his rookie year in Boston in manager Don Baylor and hitting coach Dwight Evans. Playing for the Rockies had an additional allure as the franchise had just set a major-league attendance record in their inaugural season by drawing nearly 4.5 million fans to Mile High Stadium. Playing there was a hitter’s dream and a pitcher’s nightmare as the altitude and reduced air resistance translated into additional carry on batted balls. Defense became a priority in this park, and particularly in the outfield, where outfielders needed speed and arm strength to handle the largest outfield in the majors. Playing 81 games a year in Denver also came with costs, including the physical demands of playing long games and chasing down a lot of batted balls yielded by a pitching staff that had the National League’s highest ERA during the previous season.                                                                         

The 1994 season was the second and final season for the Rockies at Mile High Stadium. They moved to Coors Field in 1995. Burks began the 1994 season just as he and the Rockies had hoped. He hit a home run off Curt Schilling of the Philadelphia Phillies in his first at-bat at Mile High Stadium and he was batting a lofty .354 with 12 home runs through his first 34 games. However, in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 17 he tore a ligament in his left wrist on a checked swing. He missed the next 70 games and when he returned to the club, every swing of the bat proved to be painful. He was limited to 42 games but still managed to hit .322 with 13 home runs. The 1994 season was shrouded by the specter of labor unrest and there was little movement in talks between owners and players as the season progressed. Indeed, the players union struck and the season concluded for the Rockies and all of the other major-league teams on August 11, and the 65,043 fans in attendance that night witnessed the last major-league baseball game to be played in Mile High Stadium, an otherwise forgettable 13-0 pasting of the home club by the Atlanta Braves. The Rockies finished 53-64 in their abbreviated season. Burks underwent surgery immediately after the season ended and his wrist remained in a cast for three full months following the surgery.                                           

Resolution of the labor dispute was not reached until April 2, 1995, after a 232-day work stoppage that wiped out all 1994 postseason play. After an abbreviated spring training, the Rockies opened the 1995 season on April 26 in their brand-new ballpark, Coors Field. The 1995 lineup featured the “Blake Street Bombers,” so named because Blake Street bordered the new ballpark on the east side and the lineup contained an assemblage of certifiable sluggers that included Burks, Andres Galarraga, Dante Bichette, and Larry Walker. Vinny Castilla proved to be an unexpected but formidable additional power source and became the fifth member of the brigade. On April 26, the Rockies baptized their new park in unforgettable fashion as Bichette hit a three-run walk-off home run in the 14th inning off Mike Remlinger of the New York Mets to provide the 47,228 fans with an 11-9 victory. Burks was not able to join the fun until May 5 when he came off of the disabled list. The strong play of Mike Kingery in center field in his absence, and the presence of Bichette in left field and Walker in right field resulted in limited playing time for Burks for the rest of the season. His first home run of the season did not come until June 2 when he launched a walk-off pinch-hit three-run homer against Dan Miceli to beat the Pirates. Burks was able to play in only 103 games with 14 home runs and a .266 batting average to show for his injury-limited 1995 season. The team finished just one game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West and they earned their first postseason berth courtesy of the wild-card spot. The Rockies lost three games to one in the first round of the postseason to the eventual champion Atlanta Braves as Burks went 2-for-6 in limited postseason playing time.        

Burks arrived at spring training three days early in 1996 knowing that quality preparation and good health were going to be the keys to his success during the coming campaign. “For years I’ve just been trying to stay healthy and to get rid of that stereotype that I can’t stay away from injuries,” he said.26 More than anything, he was determined to erase the memories of 1995 when he was relegated to a role as the Rockies’ fourth outfielder. He was slotted to spend more time in left field during the season as manager Baylor wished to minimize the wear and tear on Burks and to see if center field might be a fit for the athletic Larry Walker.

A full season of good health enabled Burks to have a remarkable turnaround in 1996 and he carried the Rockies offensively as injuries to Walker and Bichette severely affected the team’s attack. Burks played in a career-high 156 games, and 129 of those games were spent in left field. His .344 batting average was second in the National League only to Tony Gwynn’s .353 mark, and he led the league with 142 runs scored and also drove in 128 runs. Burks’s 93 extra-base hits, 392 total bases, and  .639 slugging average all led the league. Although some skeptics attributed his numbers to the “Coors Field Effect,” his road statistics were more than sufficient to reject that notion. Away from home, Burks hit .291 with 17 home runs and had 49 runs batted in with a .903 OPS in 75 games.

As Burks went, so went the Rockies in 1996. He batted .413 with 10 home runs when leading off an inning. He hit .362 with runners in scoring position and .369 with two outs and runners in scoring situations that year. Against the vaunted Atlanta Braves staff that featured three future Hall of Famers (Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz), Burks hit .380 (19-for-50).  His 32 stolen bases were more than he had compiled in the previous five seasons combined. He joined Henry Aaron as the second player in history to record 40 home runs, 200 hits, and 30 stolen bases in a season. He finished third in the NL MVP voting behind Ken Caminiti and Mike Piazza and he received his second Silver Slugger Award. His WAR of 7.9 led the Rockies. Galarraga (47), Burks (40), and Castilla (40) became the first trio of teammates to reach 40 home runs in a season since Davey Johnson, Darrell Evans, and Henry Aaron accomplished the feat for the 1973 Atlanta Braves.         

Burks became a free agent but was re-signed by the Rockies for the 1997 and 1998 seasons with an $8.8 million deal that included incentives. Burks had no regrets about re-signing and commented, “I signed early because I knew what I wanted. I’m sure I could have gotten a lot of money elsewhere. But money isn’t the main issue with me.”27 Preseason expectations were high for the club in 1997 as Walker and Bichette were expected to make stronger contributions after their previous injury-plagued seasons. In fact, Walker contributed even more than expected with 49 home runs, 140 RBIs, and 33 stolen bases to accompany a .366 batting average that earned him the National League MVP Award. Burks began 1997 slowly but his first four hits were home runs. His biggest nemesis during the season was a groin injury that caused him to miss a full month and he reinjured the groin in his second game back. He also had wrist and ankle injuries that lingered throughout the season and limited him to 119 games. Nonetheless, he batted .290 with 32 home runs and 82 RBIs and had a .934 OPS. His season total of just seven stolen bases, however, was evidence of the physical limitations he encountered during the year.                                                          

As the 1998 season opened, Burks said he felt he could not continue to play center field beyond the current season due to the effects of the hamstring, back, and knee problems that continued to limit his mobility.28 One of the major highlights of his season occurred on April 2, when he connected off the Diamondbacks’ Brian Anderson for his 100th home run in a Rockies uniform. The Rockies fell from contention early in the season and they made a move to fill their need for a younger center fielder capable of patrolling spacious center field at Coors. At the July 31 trading deadline, they sent Burks to the San Francisco Giants for center fielder Darryl Hamilton and minor-league pitcher James Stoops. They later received another minor leaguer, Jason Brester, to complete the deal. Burks concluded his time with the Rockies with a .306 batting average and 115 home runs in 520 games, and his 1996 season will be remembered as one of the greatest individual seasons in Rockies history.

Burks was a solid contributor to the Giants, batting .306 with 5 home runs and 8 stolen bases as the team went 31-23 following his arrival to conclude the 1998 season in second place in the National League West. Manager Dusty Baker planned to play him in right field during the 1999 season and to provide Burks with scheduled rest days to reduce his injury risk. Two offseason knee surgeries resulted in pain and soreness that compromised his power as he began the season. As the season progressed, Burks began to drive the ball into the gaps. Despite playing just 120 games in 1999, he concluded the year with 31 home runs and 96 runs batted to go with a .282 batting average and a .964 OPS. He nearly became the first National League player to drive in 100 runs in fewer than 400 at-bats as he fell just four short of 100 in 390 at-bats. The Giants once again finished second in the NL West.

The 2000 season marked a strong return to excellence for Burks despite two additional knee surgeries in the offseason. He batted.344, which equaled his best mark, set in 1996 with the Rockies, and he complemented the high average with 24 home runs and 96 RBIs. Burks’s contributions in San Francisco were duly noted as the team had the best record in the National League with a 97-65 mark and won the NL West title by 11 games over the Dodgers. They fell in four games to the New York Mets in the National League Division Series, in which Burks was 3-for-13 with a home run.

Burks became a free agent after the season and the American League seemed like the logical destination: He could serve as a team’s designated hitter and limit his time in the field to accommodate the knee issues. In only 284 games in a Giants uniform, Burks had hit .312 with 60 home runs and 214 runs driven in. Remarkably, Burks had a better OPS with the Giants (.971) than he had in his previous five seasons in Colorado (.957).

The Cleveland Indians signed the 36-year-old Burks to a three-year, $20 million offer in 2001 with the hope that he could play 100 to 120 games a year. Burks broke his right thumb in mid-July but still hit 28 home runs and drove in 74 runs with a .290 batting average. The Indians won their division with a 91-71 record and headed to the ALCS, where they faced a Seattle Mariners team that had compiled an all-time major league record of 116 wins. Burks went 6-for-19 in the series with a home run but the Mariners prevailed in five games.  

Burks assumed the designated-hitter role for the Indians during the 2002 season and showed what he could do when provided a full season with the bat. He played 138 games and had 32 home runs and 91 runs batted in to accompany a .301 average. He completed his fourth consecutive season with an OPS above .900 (.903) with each coming after the age of 34. After the season, Burks required surgery on his left shoulder but he was in the Indians’ starting lineup again on Opening Day in 2003. He began the season well and continued to drive the ball with authority through the early part of the year. However, right elbow pain hampered his swing and he was required to end his season on June 7 in order to undergo ulnar nerve reconstruction surgery. In his abbreviated third season with the Indians, Burks batted .263 with 6 home runs and 28 RBIs. The Indians released Burks after the season, but he was not yet ready to retire from the game.

Burks’ career came full circle when he signed with the Red Sox as a free agent on February 6, 2004. At a press conference he said, “I can let you know that I will retire a Red Sox.”29 He was attracted to Boston by his wish to finish out his career where it had started and also felt that the team had a chance to reach the World Series. In turn, the Red Sox felt that Burks’s leadership abilities provided an important contribution to a team hoping to finally end their World Series drought.

Burks appeared in nine of the team’s first 17 games but underwent additional knee surgery in late April. Although he was unable to resume playing for many months, Burks remained with the team and even accompanied the Red Sox on road trips as he recovered from his injury. His commitment to the team was duly noted and appreciated by his teammates and Burks later commented that he wanted to contribute in whatever way that he could to a team that he felt was destined to win the World Series.30 After missing nearly five months with the injury, he returned to the lineup on September 23. In the season’s next-to-last game, at Camden Yards in Baltimore on October 2, manager Terry Francona inserted Burks into the lineup for his 2,000th major-league game. Batting fifth and in the DH role, he singled in his first at-bat in the second inning of that game for his 2,107th and final career hit. In the bottom of the fourth inning he was replaced by rookie Kevin Youkilis. The Red Sox capped their dream season with their first World Series title since 1918 by sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series although Burks was not on the roster for the playoffs.

The 2004 World Series title vanquished the bitter memories of previous seasons and will always be regarded as one of the greatest accomplishments in Boston sports history. A largely unknown part of the story involves the team’s triumphant return home from St. Louis. As the plane approached Boston, Pedro Martinez asked for everyone’s attention and delivered an impromptu speech in which he recognized the contributions of the players on the field in contributing to the historic accomplishment. As Martinez continued, he singled out “The Old Goat” in reference to Burks and provided special praise for the teammate who had remained with the club and who had contributed his knowledge and leadership over the five long months of his injury rehab. At the request of Martinez and his teammates, Burks led the team down the steps of the plane to the tarmac at Logan Airport carrying the World Series trophy overhead.31

Ellis Burks retired after the 2004 season with a .291 lifetime batting average to go with 352 home runs. He is one of just a few major-league players to have hit 60 or more home runs with four separate teams. Injuries robbed Burks of the opportunity to put up even more impressive numbers and a possible berth in the Hall of Fame, but he looked back on his career with no regrets and said that he “loved every minute of it.”32 Burks received the respect of his peers for his professionalism and his willingness to play with pain. He remained in the game, working for the Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies, and San Francisco Giants.

The Ranger College baseball team now plays at Ellis Burks Field. As of 2017 Burks worked for the San Francisco Giants as an instructor, scout, and talent evaluator. He, his wife, Dori, and their daughters, Carissa, Elisha, and Breanna, resided in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. His son, Chris, began his own professional career in the Giants’ minor-league system in the summer of 2017.

Last revised: March 1, 2018

This biography originally appeared in “Major League Baseball A Mile High: The First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies” (SABR, 2018), edited by Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 Mel Antonen, “Red Sox Ellis Burks Steals Into the Spotlight: Fastest Player on the Team Learns by Survival,” USA Today, April 8, 1991.

2 Author interview with Ellis Burks, November 20, 2017 (Hereafter cited as Burks insterview).

3 Ellis Burks, as told to Matt Crossman. “My Idol,” The Sporting News, July 6, 2009.

4 Burks interview.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ellis Burks, as told to Matt Crossman.

8 “Minor Leagues,” The Sporting News, May 20, 1985.

9 Ibid.

10 Joe Giuliotti, “Burks Brings Raw Speed to Red Sox,” The Sporting News, May 18, 1987.

11 Burks interview.

12 Ibid.

13 Joe Giuliotti, “In Boston, the Spotlight Shifts,” The Sporting News, September 14, 1987.

14 Moss Klein, “AL Beat,” The Sporting News, May 25, 1987.

15 Ibid.

16 “AL East: Red Sox,” The Sporting News, February 22, 1988. 

17 “AL East,” The Sporting News, May 15, 1989.

18 Phil Rogers, “Ryan-Roger Rematch Not So Hot,” The Sporting News, May 15, 1989.

19 Ibid.

20 Jerome Holtzman, “Red Sox’s Burks Really on His Way,” Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1989.

21 Joe Giuliotti, “Boston Red Sox,” The Sporting News, November 30, 1992.

22 Peter Pascarelli, “Bo or No, White Sox Look Like Contenders,” The Sporting News, March 9, 1993.

23 Joe Goddard, “Burks Homers in Homecoming,” The Sporting News, April 26, 1993.

24 Joe Goddard, “Burks Should Be Back in ’94,” The Sporting News, September 20, 1993.

25 Joe Goddard, “Chicago White Sox,” The Sporting News, November 29, 1993.

26 Tom Verducci, “The Best Years of Their Lives,” Sports Illustrated, July 29, 1996.

27 Tony DeMarco, “Colorado Rockies,” The Sporting News, December 30, 1996.

28 Tony DeMarco, “Rockies,” The Sporting News, March 23, 1998.

29 David Heuschkel, “Burks’ Return: It’s Been Ages,” Hartford Courant, February 6, 2004.

30 Burks interview.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

Vinicio “Vinny” (Soria) Castilla, born on July 4, 1967, in Oaxaca, Mexico, was a right-handed-hitting shortstop and third baseman who played for the Atlanta Braves, Colorado Rockies, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Houston Astros, Washington Nationals, and San Diego Padres over his 16-year major-league career. He is primarily known for his time with the Rockies. The 6-foot-1, 175-pound infielder was a two-time All-Star and three-time Silver Slugger recipient.

Typically, athletes in Mexico are drawn to playing soccer rather than baseball, but Castilla cited his father’s experience playing amateur baseball in Mexico as a driving force influencing him and his brother to choose baseball over soccer as their desired sport.2 In fact, most schools in the region did not even field baseball teams, and for boys like the Castillas who desired to play baseball, they would have to seek out leagues outside the school system.3

Growing up in Oaxaca, Castilla attended high school at Carlos Gracita Institute, and once he completed his education there, he attended Benito Suarez University, also in Oaxaca. Castilla was the first, and as of 2018 the only major-league baseball player to attend the university.4 (In fact, he and Geronimo Gil are the only Oaxacans to make it to the major leagues.5)

In 1987 the 19-year-old Castilla began playing for the Saltillo Saraperos in the Mexican League. He played in the Mexican League for three seasons, 2½ with Saltillo and half of the 1988 season with the Monclova Acereros. After his 1989 season with Saltillo, the Atlanta Braves purchased his contract from the Saraperos for $20,000, of which Castilla got $17,000. The Dodgers, Reds, and Pirates had also showed interest in Castilla. At the time, he was a skinny shortstop with a wild swing and an uncanny ability to hit a fastball. He was projected by most scouts to be no more than a utility infielder rather than the slugging third baseman most fans remember from the 1990s and 2000s. Castilla took the criticism in stride and sought to prove the naysayers wrong. “No one gave me a chance,” he said. “When they told me I was nothing but a utility player, I said, ‘Fine, I’ll be the best utility player in the league.'”6

The Braves assigned Castilla to the Class-A Sumter (South Carolina) Braves for the 1990 season. In 93 South Atlantic League games he showed decent power, with 9 home runs and with 14 doubles. Castilla’s defensive acumen was still developing and he made 23 errors. (He and seven teammates made the major leagues (Ryan Klesko, Tyler Houston, Melvin Nieves, Tony Tarasco, Eddie Perez, Ed Giovanola, Mark Wohlers), all with the Braves in the early to mid-1990s. Late in the season Castilla was promoted to the Greenville Braves (Double-A Southern Association), where his power tailed off a bit, but his errors subsided a bit as well.

On a personal level, the 1990 season was tough for Castilla. He was in a foreign country, away from his family, riding a bus from town to town, with the realization that this would be his life for the foreseeable future, even if he progressed quickly through the minors. Castilla had his doubts about pursuing his baseball dream and contemplated quitting and returning to Mexico. He was getting paid $800 a month in the United States versus the $2,000 a month he had made in Mexico. Castilla did not speak English well enough to order a burger from McDonald’s, and he could not find any decent Mexican food in Sumter.7 Then a letter from his father reminded him of his abilities and that the Braves had signed him based on his abilities. “I thought, ‘This is my dream. If I go back, it will never happen,’” Castilla said.8 He decided to stick it out and despite some struggles, he was able to sustain a successful major-league career.

Castilla began the 1991 season back in Greenville, where his offensive production was up from his previous season in Greenville, and his defensive production remained steady. He was not the highest-ranked prospect in Greenville, this honor going to Ryan Klesko, but Castilla did get promoted to the Triple-A Richmond Braves, while Klesko finished the season in Greenville. The The 23 pitchers who toiled for the squad all made it to the major leagues. Castilla’s defense remained constant on defensive and he declined a bit on offense, but not enough to deter the Braves from calling him up at the end to season to receive his first taste of major-league action.

Castilla made his major-league debut on September 1, 1991, when he came into a home game at shortstop against the Philadelphia Phillies in the bottom of the ninth. His first at-bat came three days later in Montreal when he popped out to second in the ninth inning. Castilla’s first start and first hit, a line-drive single, came against the Houston Astros on October 6, 1991, the last game of the regular season for the Braves.

Castilla opened the 1992 season back in Richmond, where he played until another late-season call-up. His home-run production fell off from 14 to 7 in nearly twice as many at-bats. Castilla’s defense regressed; he made 31 errors. During his call-up he played third base as well as shortsop.

During the expansion draft after the season, the Braves left Castilla unprotected, and he was selected by the new Colorado Rockies. Years later he was philosophical about having been “cast aside” by the Braves: “It was a new opportunity. There weren’t many chances for me to play in Atlanta.”9

Castilla debuted for the Rockies at his natural position of shortstop in 1993, playing in 104 games while splitting time with Freddie Benavides. Reflecting on his career with the Rockies, he said many years later, “This team picked me in the expansion draft in 1992 and gave me my first real, honest opportunity to play at this level. I played for other organizations, but the purple stripes have always felt better on my body.”10 But in his first season, Castilla still had not developed into the power hitter many Rockies fans remember him to be, and finished with just nine home runs and .686 OPS. (He did hit a career-best seven triples.)

That year was one of transformation for Castilla off the field as well. While purchasing a cell phone, he was enticed to sign a contract with the promise of a date with the salesperson’s sister, Samantha Owen. Despite some reservations about dating a baseball player (“I said, ‘He’s a baseball player? I don’t think so.’ I had heard stories”) the pair eventually did go out on a date, which led to more dates, and they were married the following year.11

Castilla opened the 1994 season as the recently signed free agent Walt Weiss’s backup at shortstop, hoping to build upon his previous season and earn more playing time. He played sporadically during the first month of the season, and was sent down to the Triple-A Colorado Springs Sky Sox, where he received consistent playing time and much-needed at-bats. Castilla returned to the Rockies in a utility role, seeing playing time at all four infield positions. In his return to the majors, Castilla flourished, and he batted.331/.357/.500 in the strike-shortened season.

When the 1995 season began, Castilla became the starting third baseman, replacing the departed Charlie Hayes.12 The transition to third base did not intimidate Castilla; he felt that his time at shortstop would only help his ability to play third base. “If you can play shortstop, you can play any position in the infield,” Castilla said later about his transition.13 Castilla flourished at third base and became a charter member of the Blake Street Bombers, the quintet of sluggers also including Ellis Burks, Dante Bichette, Larry Walker, and Andres Galarraga.14

The 1995 season was one to remember for Castilla and the Rockies. They earned the first-ever National League wild card after winning 77 games in the truncated season, finishing second in the National League West. Castilla earned his first of two All-Star Game selections, and first of three Silver Slugger Awards. The Rockies finished first in the National League in runs, hits, triples, home runs, batting average, and slugging, helped by Castilla’s breakout season at the plate. He finished the season with an impressive slash line of .309/.347/.564, and 32 home runs, 34 doubles, and 90 RBIs. The Rockies lost to the Braves, three games to one, in the Division Series. Castilla performed well, batting .467 with three home runs and six RBIs. Castilla later cited the Rockies clinching a playoff berth in 1995 as his favorite baseball moment.15

Castilla was quick to thank Art Howe, the Rockies’ hitting coach in 1995, for his emergence at the plate. “He really taught me a lot,” Castilla said. “Before, I tried to pull everything; I’d hit either a home run to left or a weak ground ball to short. Art taught me to go the other way, and I learned how to hit for power to the opposite field.”16

The 1995 season was the start of something special for the Rockies, and Castilla was a vital part of the impressive era of offense-minded baseball. “Man, I love the name Blake Street Bombers, it just sounds so good,” he reflected during the celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the Rockies franchise. “That name stuck with the fans and the organization. I’m so proud that I was a part of it. What a great experience.”17

After his strong 1995 season, Castilla continued his ascension to the top ranks of major-league third basemen. His 1996 and 1997 seasons were nearly identical,.304/.343/.548 in 1996 and .304/.356/.547 in 1997, with 40 home runs and 113 RBIs in each season. Despite those numbers, Castilla did not make an All-Star team either year, but he did take home his second Silver Slugger Award in 1997. Castilla’s rise as a power hitter, whether fueled by the thin air of Denver or not, surprised talent evaluators in Atlanta. Chuck Lamar, assistant general manager of the Bravesin the early to mid-1990s, said, “No one in the organization predicted [Castilla] would ever hit more than 15 home runs.”18 The uninspiring scouting reports for Castilla were not reserved for the Braves organization. One of his future managers, Clint Hurdle, predicted while managing the Triple-A Norfolk Tides, “Nothing special. … Might make it as a utility player.”19

Castilla and his Samantha’s first son, Vinicio Jr., was born on March 12, 1996.20

The 1998 season was Castilla’s best as a professional. It was the only one in which he played in all 162 games, and he had career highs in hits (206), runs (108), home runs (46), RBIs (144), batting average (.319), on-base percentage (.362), and slugging percentage (.589), as well as his second All-Star Game appearance and his third Silver Slugger Award. Even with his impressive stats in 1998, the results for the Rockies were beginning to decline. The team didn’t fare as well, and despite a string of great offensive seasons by Castilla and other Rockies, the 1995 Division Series was the team’s only postseason appearance during Castilla’s nine-year tenure with the Rockies.

The Rockies and San Diego Padres opened the 1999 league in Monterrey, Mexico, the first time an opener had been played outside the United States. Back in front of his countrymen, Castilla shined by going 4-for-5 and helping the Rockies win, 8-2. After the game, he said, ”I tried my last two at-bats to hit a home run. It didn’t happen, but I’m happy for the win.”21

That season was solid in many ways for Castilla, but it did not compare to the results he had enjoyed from 1995 to 1998. His numbers declined in almost every meaningful statistical category, and the team lost more games than in the previous year. After the season, Castilla was traded by the Rockies to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for Rolando Arrojo and Aaron Ledesma. After a lackluster performance in 2000, he was released on May 10, 2001. He was still a desired commodity. The Cubs and Astros both pursued his services, and Castilla chose the Astros, who planned to play him on a regular basis. “The Cubs didn’t want me as an everyday player,” Castilla said. Castilla performed well for the Astros, clubbing 23 home runs and driving in 82 runs for the NL Central champions. Castilla enjoyed his second trip to the playoffs, but this trip again ended in defeat by the Braves in the NLDS. On a happier note, he and Samantha welcomed their second son, Dalton Samuel, on November 22.22

Castilla was a free agent after the season and signed a two-year, $8 million contract to return to the Braves. On paper, this union did not make sense as the Braves already employed a perennial All-Star playing third base in Chipper Jones, but Jones willingly moved to left field to strengthen the team. Jones said, “We’ve gone out and gotten a top-notch third baseman and I’ll move.” The idea was that the value Castilla provided was in line with a top-tier outfielder at a fraction of the cost.23 And if Castilla had performed anywhere close to the way he had for the Rockies, or even for the Astros the previous season, the signing would have been beneficial for the Braves. Instead, Castilla managed only 12 home runs in a dismal 2002 season as well as his worst career slash line,.232/.268/.348. Castilla rebounded slightly in 2003, hitting 22 home runs and seeing improvements in virtually every offensive category.

But Castilla did have the chance to play in the postseason both seasons in Atlanta. Again, his team was unable to advance past the NLDS either time, and never again reached the postseason.

The 2004 season saw a reunion with the Rockies. It was preceded by the birth of Castilla’s third son, Cristian, on February 20.24 His return to the Rockies apparently rejuvenated him, and along with 35 home runs, he had a league-leading 131 RBIs, even though the team’s results were not that great. (They went 68-94.) It was as if Castilla was in the midst of his Blake Street Bombers Rockies teams once again. The offensive resurgence showed that Castilla still had some ability to hit a baseball, and earned him one more contract before he retired.

Castilla left the Rockies after the 2004 season, signing a free-agent contract with the Montreal Expos, who became the Washington Nationals a few weeks after he signed a two-year, $6.2 million contract. Castilla was the starting third baseman for the Nationals in 2005, but his production declined drastically from his 2004 renaissance. He finished the season with just 12 home runs and 66 RBIs. After the season, the Nationals traded Castilla to the San Diego Padres for Brian Lawrence and cash. The Padres released Castilla in July 2006, and the Rockies signed him for one last hurrah with the team. In his 15 games to close out the season, Castilla had only four hits. He was released after the season.

The 2006 season was not all disappointment for Castilla. He was elected the captain of Team Mexico in the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006. Team Mexico finished sixth in the tournament with a record of 3-3, and won Pool B by virtue of beating the United States head to head. Castilla cited his experience in the 2006 WBC as his impetus to stay involved with baseball as a manger and/or executive after retirement.25

Castilla announced his retirement in February 2007 after playing first base for Mexico in the Caribbean Series at Carolina, Puerto Rico. He retired as a hero to many players and fans in Mexico. “Vinny is a hero, there’s no doubt about it,” Mexican League manager Lorenzo Bundy said. “There’s not going to be anybody that comes close to what he’s done offensively.”26 Castilla retired as the all-time leader among Mexican-born players in career home runs, RBIs, extra-base hits, and total bases.27 Castilla joined the Rockies’ front office as a special assistant to GM Dan O’Dowd, a position he still held as of 2018 despite a 2014 change in general managers.28

In addition to his front-office duties, Castilla also managed the Mexican national team in the 2007 Pan American Games, held in Brazil. O’Dowd said managing would be “another great experience for him. And it’s good for us, too, to expose him to that and for him to see players from around the world a little bit. He’ll do some scouting for us and I think that only benefits us.”29 Castilla also served as player-manager of the Hermosillo Naranjeros of the Mexican Pacific League from 2006 through 2010, and in 2008, it was announced that Castilla would be the manager for Team Mexico in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. “I like it. …  I like it a lot,” he said. “I love the game. It’s my life …  it’s my passion. I want to be involved somehow with the game. I like managing. It’s tough  …  it’s not easy, but I enjoy it.”30

In 2014, Castilla, along with Moises Alou, Bert Campaneris, Omar Moreno, and Ozzie Virgil Sr. was inducted into the Latino Hall of Fame.31 In 2016, he was one of six athletes, and the only major-league baseball player, inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame.32

Castilla’s longevity with the Rockies has been viewed as an asset for the team, both by the players and the front office. He drew on his successful career in the majors, specifically his time in Colorado and playing at the high altitude of Coors Field, and his Latin heritage to relate to and encourage players. Singing his praises, All-Star third baseman Nolan Arenado said, “Vinny brings energy every day and he brings happiness, if you want to put it that way. When you are down, he’s always there for you. He always brings positive energy to the ballpark. I’ve never seen Vinny down or bummed out. I mean, he’s great at trash talking, but it’s all in fun. He’s awesome.”33

Castilla also began to give back to the community as an advocate for organ donation34 and education.35

Last revised: March 1, 2018

This biography originally appeared in “Major League Baseball A Mile High: The First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies” (SABR, 2018), edited by Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker.

Notes

1 “Vinny Castilla,” IMDB.com. https://imdb.com/name/nm1758753/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm.

2 Owen Perkins, “Q and A With Vinny Castilla,” Rockies.com, September 16, 2006. https://colorado.rockies.mlb.com/news/print.jsp?ymd=20060916&content_id=1666489&vkey=news_col&fext=.jsp&c_id=col’

3 Matt Krupnick, “A Baseball Academy in a Talent-Poor Part of Mexico,” New York Times, May 23, 2013.

4 According to baseball-refence.com.

5 Krupnick.

6 Gerry Callahan, “Vinny, Vidi, Vici He Doesn’t Get the Ink of a McGwire or a Griffey, But in Only Four Seasons Vinny Castilla of Colorado Has Gone From Utilityman to the Man,” Sports Illustrated, May 11, 1998.

7  Ibid.

8 Chris Bolin, “Vinny Castilla, Mark Jackson Discuss Their Pasts at Friends of Baseball’s Breakfast of Champions,” Greeley (Colorado) Tribune, January 28, 2018.

9 Irv Moss, “Vinny Castilla’s Ability to Hit Fastball Helped Him Into Colorado Sports Hall of Fame,” Denver Post, April 22, 2016.

10 Patrick Saunders, “Vinny Castilla’s High-Octane Energy Still Driving Rockies After 25 years,” Denver Post, May 13, 2017.

11 Mike Klis, “Trade Talk Impacts Wife, Too,” Denver Post, August 1, 1999.

12 Tony Almeyda, “Braves Rewind: Whatever Happened to …Vinny Castilla?” TalkingChop.com, April 18, 2016. https://talkingchop.com/2016/4/18/11447772/braves-rewind-whatever-happened-to-vinny-castilla

13 Moss.

14 Patrick Saunders, “Blake Street Bombers Left Unforgettable Impression in Rockies’ First 25 years,” Denver Post, July 22, 2017.

15 Patrick Saunders, “2016 Inductees,” Colorado Sports Hall of Fame, April 19, 2016. https://coloradosports.org/index.php/2016-04-19-23-18-38/item/330-vinny-castilla

16 Callahan.

17 “Blake Street Bombers Left Unforgettable Impression.”

18 Jonathan Weeks, Latino Stars in Major League Baseball: From Bobby Abreu to Carlos Zambrano (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 228.

19 Callahan.

20 IMDB.com.

21 Associated Press, “Bichette and Castilla Spark Rockies in Opener in Mexico,” New York Times, April 5, 1999.

22 IMDB.com.

23 Morris News Service, “Chipper to move to left field,” Augusta Chronicle, December 10, 2001.

24 IMDB.com.

25 Perkins.

26 CBC Sports, “Vinny Castilla Retires, Joins Rockies Front Office,” https://cbc.ca/sports/baseball/vinny-castilla-retires-joins-rockies-front-office-1.690370, February 7, 2007.

27 IMDB.com

28 CBC Sports.

29 Associated Press, “Vinny Castilla to Manage Mexican National Team,” ESPN.com, February 28, 2007. https://espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=2783482

30 Bill Mitchell, “Castilla Mentors Mexican Prospects: Former 3B Managing in Winter Ball,” Baseball America, December 16, 2008.

31 Thomas Harding, “Rox Will Be Represented by Castilla In HOF Classic: Former Player Set for First Trip to Cooperstown for Memorial Day Weekend Event,” MLB.com, May 23, 2014. https://mlb.com/news/former-rockies-player-vinny-castilla-to-represent-club-in-hall-of-fame-classic/c-76501512.

32 Saunders, “2016 Inductees.”

33 “Vinny Castilla’s High-Octane Energy.”

34 Brandon Rivera, “An Interview With Vinny Castilla,” La Voz, April 29, 2015.

35 “Game Plan for Success,” https://educatorsforhighstandards.org/game-plan-for-success/.

“My teacher didn’t understand,” Cook recalled. “She said, ‘You can’t do that, you have to do something serious.’ I said, ‘I want to be a professional baseball player.’”1

Cook grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, where his father worked in the local paper mill. Garry Cook, Aaron’s father, offered support to his son by coaching his teams as often as he could. Garry mentioned a pivotal moment when young Aaron was one out away from defeating the New England Mariners at a national AAU tournament in Des Moines, Iowa, “Aaron motioned for me to come out to the mound. Keep in mind he was just 13. I thought he wanted me to take him out. Instead, he said ‘I just need a minute here to calm down.’ On the way back to the dugout, I thought, ‘He’s actually got a chance to do something big with baseball.”2 Aaron added, appreciatively, “He was always there for me. He never missed a tournament or anything until I was 16. He helped me chase my dreams.”3

Aaron’s mother, Veronica, left when he was 15, after a divorce. Aaron’s best friend growing up was Curtus Moak. As Patrick Saunders wrote, “Cook and Moak competed against each other in Little League before becoming best friends the summer before their sophomore year at Hamilton High. Because Cook’s house was far out of town, he often spent the night at Moak’s house. ‘We’d sleep in these bunk beds and we’d talk for hours,’ Moak recalled. ‘We became like brothers. My mom became his second mom.’”4

The two Hamilton High teammates helped lead the team to two statewide baseball titles. Moak, a left-handed pitcher, later played for the University of Cincinnati and in 2001 was drafted in the 25th round by the Cincinnati Reds. He played four years in the minors, but never rose as high as Double A.

As a young teenager, Cook threw a fastball in the low 80s. By the time he was 18 years old he had harnessed a 90-mph fastball with exceptional control. On June 3, 1997, the high-school senior was drafted by the Colorado Rockies in the second round of the amateur draft. He grew to 6-feet-3 and was listed at 215 pounds.

The Rockies placed Cook in Mesa, pitching Rookie-league ball in the Arizona League; he was 1-3 in 46 innings of work, with a 3.13 earned-run average. He devoted five years to development before rising as high as Double A. In 1998 he was with the Portland Rockies (Northwest League), and in 1999 he pitched ball for the Asheville Tourists in the Class-A South Atlantic League. There he might have felt discouraged, winning only four games against 12 losses and with an ERA of 6.44. Asheville finished in last place in the six-team league. But Cook kept working, trying to hone his craft.

In 2000, his second year with Asheville, he began to turn things around and, though the Tourists still had a losing record at 66-69, Cook improved dramatically in his control, converting his 1.74 strikeouts/walks ratio to 5.13, halving his walks to 23 while striking out 118. His ERA dropped to 2.96 and he was 10-7 in wins and losses.  He spent part of the season in high A ball, pitching for Salem (Virginia) Avalanche in the Carolina League. He was overmatched (1-6, 5.44), but once more he improved with experience, and in 2001 he started 27 games for Salem and worked to a 3.08 ERA. He was 11-11 for the 70-68 Avalanche.

In 2002 Cook climbed the ladder rapidly. First, in Raleigh with the Double-A Southern League’s Carolina Mudcats, he was 7-2 (1.42); and then in Triple A with the Pacific Coast League Colorado Springs Sky Sox, he held his own (4-4, 3.78).

Cook got the call to come to the big leagues. On August 10, 2002, at age 23, he made his debut for the Rockies against the Chicago Cubs. After five innings, the Cubs were winning 14-1, and manager Clint Hurdle called on Cook as the third of five Rockies pitchers that day. The first batter he faced was Cubs left fielder Moises Alou, who homered to make it 15-1, but Cook retired the next three batters. He also worked the top of the seventh, giving up a leadoff single but then getting the next three batters. On August 26 he was given his first start, against the visiting San Francisco Giants, and acquitted himself well enough, working six innings while giving up three runs, in a game the Rockies ultimately lost. Cook gave up three runs again, working seven innings in San Diego in his second start, but lost his first decision; the Rockies were shut out, 3-0. Cook then won back-to-back starts, against the Padres in Denver and the Astros in Houston. He finished the season appearing in nine games, five of them starts, with a record of 2-1 and a 4.54 ERA in 35⅔ innings.5

In both 2003 and 2004, Cook spent some time on Interstate 25 traveling the hour or so between Colorado Springs and Denver and working for both teams, though the lion’s share of his time was with the big-league club in 2003, when he pitched in 43 games, 16 of them starts. Cook’s ERA was a disappointing 6.02 and his final record 4-6, but the Rockies kept the faith.

By the 2004 season, Cook had developed full trust in his sinkerball, one he worked diligently to develop with Rockies minor-league pitching coach Bryn Smith.6 His sinker developed from his straight fastball. Eventually, a conventional grip of two fingers on both seams was tweaked and became one finger across one seam to become his signature sinkerball.

Bob McClure of the Rockies’ minor-league pitching staff taught Cook that contact was OK. “One thing I give Bob McClure credit for is teaching me how to pitch to contact and trusting that I can get guys out with groundballs,” said Cook. “Swings and misses, for me, are more of a timely thing – certain situations with guys on, less than two outs, less than one out, that’s the time I really try to go for the strikeouts. But other than that, I really try to make guys mis-hit the ball, hit pitches that I’m trying to make.”7 Once Cook trusted contact, he went from throwing 110-115 pitches per game to around 80. His sinkerball technique in combination with a pitch flying at upward of 90 mph made his pitches unhittable.

After beating the Diamondbacks with a complete-game 10-2 win on August 1, 2004, Cook was feeling good about himself; he was 25 years old and seeing the fruits of his technique training. Six days later, on August 7, Cook took the mound against the Cincinnati Reds at Coors Field. After three innings, 10 batters and five hits, Cook complained of dizziness and shortness of breath. He left the mound and was taken to Rose Medical Center, where he was diagnosed with pulmonary embolisms, a sudden blockage of the arteries, in both lungs. Doctors, medics, and the Rockies medical team all told Cook later that it was a miracle he was alive. Indeed, he told the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo several years later, “I had the paramedic and doctor telling me as I was lying on the stretcher that I should be dead,” Cook recalled. “At that point, I’m fighting for my life. I wasn’t thinking about baseball. I was thinking about my family and my health and whether I was going to make it.”8

Cook had essentially gone from the peak of his young career to a debilitating condition. “I had experienced trouble breathing for a couple of days before that start,” Cook said. “I don’t think I could have thrown another pitch in the game.”9 The clots originated near his first rib, constricting flow against his collarbone. He had two surgeries; his top rib was removed to correct the problem that was causing the clots. After rehabilitation lasting the better part of a year, Cook got back to baseball.

It was a bit of a slog to get back in the big leagues after recovery, and in 2005, Cook pitched for four minor-league teams. First he pitched in two games for the Tri-City Dust Devils (Pasco, Washington) of the Northwest League. Then he advanced to the Modesto Nuts (Class-A California League) for one game, then on to the Double-A Tulsa Drillers for one game, then to the Triple-A Sky Sox in Colorado Springs for three games. In late July he was deemed ready for the Rockies.

Cook was activated from the disabled list in time to start on July 30 at Coors Field against the visiting Phillies. It did not go well; he was hit for seven runs, all earned, in 4⅓ innings. But he had made his way back to big-league baseball and was pitching from a major-league mound. Next time out, on August 5, he yielded only one run in six innings. Then he won six games in a row. He took one more loss, and then added another win. By the end of his half-season, Cook was 7-2 with an ERA of 3.67. It was a remarkable recovery after a near-fatal illness.

Bob Apodaca, the Rockies’ pitching coach, commented on Cook’s dedication after his surgeries: “I think that changed him. … Any success he is getting now is the result of pure hard work. Before, I think he did rely on pure ability. I think that’s why we would scratch our head and wonder, what kind of pitcher he would be? Now we don’t have to wonder any more. He’s shown us.”10

In January 2006 Cook was given the Tony Conigliaro Award for his quick comeback and dedication to the game. The day after receiving the award, he signed a two- year, $4.55 million contract with the Rockies.

Cook had 32 starts in 2006, winning nine and losing 15 with a 4.23 ERA. That he had worked 212⅔ innings was a testament to his having regained full health.

In 2007 Cook worked a full load through August 10, when he suffered an oblique injury that kept him out for the rest of the regular season. He was 8-7, 4.12.That was the year the Rockies caught fire and won 14 of their last 15 games, earning them a wild-card slot in the postseason. Cook was not on the postseason roster for either the Division Series, which they swept in three games from the Phillies, or for the NLCS, which they swept in four from the Arizona Diamondbacks. With the back-to-back sweeps, the team had now won 21 of its last 22 games and was headed to the World Series against the Boston Red Sox. Cook was with the team in Phoenix and enjoyed the champagne the Rockies sprayed on one another.

Cook was activated for the World Series, and he started Game Four at Coors Field. The pendulum of sweeps had started to go the other way, with Boston taking the first three games of the World Series and on the brink of a sweep if Cook couldn’t stop them. It could hardly have been a more emotional time for a return. Rockies manager Clint Hurdle said, “The opportunity to tell him, ‘You’re going to get the ball in Game Four’ was very special. And it was meaningful, but again, for all the right reasons. If it was about sentiment, he would have pitched in the NLCS, and he understood that.” For his part, Cook said, “I feel ready to go. I feel as strong as ever.”11

Game Four was, as the New York Times observed, “a duel of survivors. [Red Sox pitcher Jon] Lester fought his way back after offseason treatment for lymphoma, and Colorado’s Aaron Cook once missed almost a year with blood clots in both lungs.”12

Both pitched good games. Cook gave up a leadoff double to Jacoby Ellsbury, who moved to third base on a grounder by Dustin Pedroia, then scored when David Ortiz singled to right field. In the top of the fifth, the score still 1-0, Mike Lowell doubled to lead off and Jason Varitek singled him in. Lowell homered leading off the seventh, making it 3-0 Red Sox, and Hurdle brought in Jeremy Affeldt to take over from Cook. Lester had departed after 5⅔ innings. The Rockies came back with a run in the bottom of the seventh. Boston’s Bobby Kielty pinch-hit for Mike Timlin in the top of the eighth and homered, so when the Rockies got two more in the bottom of the eighth, they still trailed, 4-3, and that was the final score. Cook bore the loss.

Cook had his winningest season in 2008. He was 11-5 through July 1, and had won six consecutive starts from April 13 to May 9. Cook was named to the National League All-Star team. He pitched three scoreless innings, the 10th, 11th, and 12th. In the 10th he faced a bases-loaded situation with no outs after second baseman Dan Uggla made back-to-back errors, and Carlos Guillen was walked intentionally. Cook worked his way out of the jam, inducing three groundouts, the first two resulting in forces at home. It was said that he could have been named the game’s MVP had the National League won,13 but AL prevailed in 15 innings, 4-3.

Cook finished the 2008 season 16-9 (3.96). In 2009 he was 11-6 in 27 starts with a 4.16 ERA. He had also enjoyed the day on May 29 when he attended the dedication of a “Field of Dreams” baseball complex in Windsor, Colorado, a facility for which he had been a major donor.14

In 2009 Cook had another opportunity to play postseason baseball. The Rockies were the wild-card team again after Clint Hurdle (18-28) was replaced as manager by Jim Tracy (74-42). They faced the Phillies in the Division Series, and Cook started and won Game Two, 5-4, giving up three runs in five-plus innings of work. All three runs scored in the top of the sixth, when he allowed two singles and a double without securing an out. The two runners inherited by reliever Jose Contreras both scored, but then the bleeding was stopped and Cook got the win, the only game Colorado won in the NLDS.

In 2010 Cook started 23 games and was 6-8 (5.08), while in 2011 he had another subpar year (3-10, 6.03), his most disappointing year, after accidentally breaking his index finger in a screen door during spring training. He said, “I couldn’t pick up a baseball for four weeks after I broke my finger.”15

The Rockies granted Cook free agency after the season. With the Rockies he had been 72-68 over the course of 10 seasons, as of 2016 second only to Jorge de la Rosa in wins among Rockies pitchers.

The Red Sox took a chance on Cook, signing him to a minor-league deal in early January 2012. The incoming Red Sox pitching coach was Bob McClure, who had tutored Cook as Cook was ascending through the minors.

After arriving in Boston, he spoke about receiving the Tony Conigliaro Award. “It was an honor to be recognized for what had happened to me and that I was able to overcome what happened to me to resume my career,” Cook said. “I grew up in church, and what happened to me renewed my faith in the Lord. He got me through a challenging time in my life, and the whole experience made me stronger as a person. It’s allowed me to put everything in perspective. I know what’s important. I know better what things I need to worry about and what things I have no control over. But it’s made me stronger. No doubt about that.”16

With the Red Sox Cook was 4-11, 5.65, pitching in only three games before July 4. He was 3-0 in Triple-A Pawtucket, but working in the majors in what proved to be his last season in the big leagues was difficult. In his four wins combined, he allowed a total of only four earned runs, but the rest of the time he was challenged.

A free agent after the season, Cook signed with the Phillies for 2013, but was released in spring training and later signed a minor-league contract with the Rockies. With Colorado Springs he added a cutter to his repertoire, but finished 0-5 with an 8.15 ERA.

In 2014, as a free agent, Cook decided to put a hold on his career, recuperate from repeated instances of severe inflammation in his elbow, and focus on getting himself in front of major-league teams for the 2015 season. He was unable to find a team willing to take a chance.

Longtime friendships and strong faith have supported Cook. A longtime member of the Hamilton Christian Center,17 he met his wife, Holly there, and counted as one of his best friends Curtus Moak, youth pastor at the church.18

Cook and Holly have three children – daughter Alexis and sons Elijah and Colton. When he realized in 2013 that retirement might be in his future, he said, “I’d be a better dad with my summers open.”19

Last revised: January 5, 2018

This biography originally appeared in “Overcoming Adversity: The Tony Conigliaro Award” (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Clayton Trutor. It also appears in “Major League Baseball A Mile High: The First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies” (SABR, 2018), edited by Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the authors also consulted baseball-almanac.com and baseball-reference.com.

Joy dedicates this article to her father, Gary, born with cerebral palsy in the 1940s, long before he could benefit from the Americans with Disabilities Act; the ADA specifies that students with disabilities must have the same opportunities to participate in sports and activities as anyone else.    

Notes

1 Patrick Saunders, “Aaron Cook: Midwestern Success Story,” Denver Post, July 12, 2008. 

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Baseball-almanac.com, Aaron Cook 2002 Game-by-Game Pitching Logs.

6 Alex Speier, “Outlier: Why Aaron Cook Is a Pitcher Like Few Others,” WEEI.com, May 5, 2012. weei.com/sports/boston/baseball/red-sox/alex-speier/2012/05/05/outlier-why-aaron-cook-pitcher-few-others.

7 Ibid.

8 Nick Cafardo, “Cook’s Story Is Stirring,” Boston Globe, March 1, 2012: C1.

9 Irv Moss, “Colorado Classics: Aaron Cook, Colorado Rockies’ Winningest Pitcher,” Denver Post, May 28, 2013. 

10 Saunders.

11 John Powers, “Game 4 Is on Cook’s Menu,” Boston Globe, October 28, 2007: F7.

12 Tyler Kepner. “Red Sox Coronation,” New York Times, October 29, 2007: D1.

13 “National League All-Stars vs. American League All-Stars,” ESPN, July 15, 2008. 

14 Colorado Rockies press release, May 27, 2009.

15 Cafardo.

16 Ibid.

17Associated Press, “Blood Clots Unable to Block Cook’s Faith,” ESPN, July 29, 2005.  espn.com/espn/wire/_/section/mlb/id/2119671

18 Ibid.

19 Moss.

Coors Field opened for baseball on April 26, 1995. The Colorado Rockies had joined the National League two years earlier. They played their first two seasons in Mile High Stadium while Coors was being built.

When the National League got the OK in 1985 to expand by two teams, several cities, including Buffalo, Denver, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Washington, expressed interest in getting a franchise. One of the stipulations for being considered was having plans to build a ballpark. Denver and the state of Colorado showed that they were serious by forming the Denver Metropolitan Major League Baseball Stadium District in 1989.1

Voters in the six counties that made up metropolitan Denver approved a 0.01 percent sales tax for funding the new ballpark in 1990. This would eventually provide $168 million, or 78 percent of the cost of the ballpark. The remaining $47 million, or 22 percent, would come from the Rockies owners.2 In June of 1991, franchises were awarded to Denver and Miami.

Construction of Coors Field began on October 16, 1992. While fans waited for the new ballpark to be completed, the Rockies played at Mile High Stadium. Fans were so excited about the arrival of baseball in the mile-high city that they played to packed houses most of the first season. The original plans for Coors Field called for a seating capacity of 43,000. But after 4,483,350 people poured through the Mile High turnstiles in the first season, the club announced in October 1993 that the Coors seating capacity would be increased to 50,000.3

When Coors Field was being built, it was the first baseball-only ballpark built for a National League team since Dodger Stadium was completed in 1962.4 It was also the National League’s first new ballpark since Montreal’s Stade Olympique opened in 1977 upon the completion of the 1976 Olympics there.

Coors Field was designed by HOK Sports, later known as Populous. The company had sparked a resurgence in ballpark design with the construction of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which opened in 1992. Its design for Camden Yards incorporated the B&O warehouse building beyond the outfield and ended the generic “concrete doughnut” trend that had dominated baseball in the 1970s and 1980s.5

The design of the Coors Field recalls the same images evoked at Oriole Park. It is an industrial-strength steel and red-brick structure that incorporates an old brick building to enhance the overall atmosphere. The design provides a dramatic view of the Rockies in the distance, much as Camden Yards showcases the skyline waterfront of Baltimore.

HOK Sports wanted spectators to feel as if they were watching a game in one of the ballparks built in the 1920s and ’30s. Hand-laid brick was used for the outer façade. A clock tower was built above the ballpark’s main entrance. Adding to this “retro” feel are the asymmetrical dimensions of the outfield. These features along with the ballpark’s location near the Union Pacific railroad tracks give it the feel of a 1920s ballpark. But once fans entered Coors Field, they could enjoy all the modern amenities and conveniences they were accustomed to.

Fans meet up below the clock tower. When they enter the ballpark, they notice that the ballpark sits below street level. This was done to help it blend in with the features of the surrounding neighborhood. Although most of the seats are green, a band of purple seats along the 20th row of the upper deck makes note of the one-mile location above sea level.

During the construction of Coors Field, crews found bones on the site. They were similar in size to the ribs of plant-eating dinosaurs like Triceratops, a dinosaur that was common in Colorado in the Cretaceous period, which ended 66 million years ago. Coloradans reveled in the find. A year later, when the Rockies revealed their mascot, it was a fuzzy Triceratops named Dinger.6

One of the distinctive features of Coors Field is the Rockpile. The name is meant to remind visitors of the Rocky Mountains, which are visible in the distance. The 2,300-seat section is located in deep center field, in the upper deck, about as far from home plate as you can get inside the ballpark. (Mile High Stadium also had a Rockpile.) At first Rockpile seats were priced at $1, but that price was later available only to youngsters and seniors, everyone else pays $4.

Ballpark designers had speculated that Coors Field would see a lot of home runs. Located at 5,200 feet above sea level, it is the highest-elevation park in majors-league baseball. Designers knew that the low air density at such a high elevation could result in balls traveling farther than in other parks. To compensate, they place the outfield fences farther from home plate. The deepest part of the field is right-center, which is 424 feet from home plate.

The first game at Coors Field was played on April 26, 1995. It also turned out to be the first extra-inning game in the new ballpark. The Rockies played the New York Mets. Brett Butler of the Mets was the first batter. Bill Swift was the Rockies pitcher. Butler hit Swift’s first pitch for a single to right field for the first hit at Coors Field.

Naturally, the game was filled with other “firsts.” The Mets’ Rico Brogna hit the first home run at the ballpark when he powered a line drive over the fence against Swift in the fourth inning. The Mets’ Todd Hundley hit the first grand slam two innings later. The Rockies’ Dante Bichette eventually won the game, 11-9, with a three-run walk-off homer in the bottom of the 14th inning. These home runs were harbingers of the future.

Although the game took 4 hours and 49 minutes to complete, it was not the longest game at Coors Field. But there were other firsts that night. The first run scored (Walt Weiss in the first inning), the first batter to be hit by a pitch (Roberto Mejia in the sixth inning), the first strikeout (Swift striking out David Segui in the second inning), and more.

Other firsts occurred in rapid succession during the club’s first month at Coors Field. The following night Eric Young had the first stolen base and Andres Galarraga hit the first triple. By the end of the inaugural season, most of the “firsts” had been accomplished. One had to wait until the ballpark’s second season: On September 17, 1996, Hideo Nomo pitched the first no-hitter at Coors Field as the Dodgers beat the Rockies, 9-0. (On May 11 that season the Rockies were also the victims of the first Florida Marlins no-hitter when Al Leiter beat them 11-0.)

The last notable “first” at Coors came on April 29, 2007, when Troy Tulowitzki made the first unassisted triple play there. Tulowitzki caught a Chipper Jones line drive for the first out, then tagged Kelly Johnson out at second and caught Edgar Renteria near second after he had run on the pitch and could not get back to first in time.

In 1993 the Rockies named Don Baylor as the inaugural manager of the expansion team. He turned out to be a good choice; he led the Rockies to the postseason in just three years, faster than any previous expansion club. Baylor’s teams had records of 67-95 in 1993 and 53-64 in 1994 before the Rockies turned things around in Coors Field’s inaugural year. Their 77-67 record made them the National League wild-card team. It also earned Baylor Manager-of-the-Year honors.

The Rockies played the Atlanta Braves in the National League Division Series. In Game One, on October 3, before a crowd of 50,040, the Rockies led 3-1 after four innings, but eventually lost, 5-4, on Chipper Jones’s ninth-inning solo home run.

Coors Field was packed the following night as the Rockies tried to even the series. After the Braves took a 1-0 lead in the first, the Rockies tied the game in the sixth when Larry Walker hit a three-run home run off starter Tom Glavine. But once again the Braves won in the ninth inning when they scored four runs off the Rockies bullpen to win, 7-4.

The Rockies won the third game but eventually lost the series, three games to one. It was the last time Coors Field hosted a postseason game until 2007, when the Rockies not won the NL pennant and brought the World Series to Coors Field.

In their march to the World Series the Rockies first swept the Philadelphia Phillies in three games in the Division Series. Coors Field hosted the clinching third game. Jeff Baker singled in the winning run in the bottom of the eighth inning and Manny Corpas earned his third save in as many games to help the Rockies move on to the Championship Series. They swept that series, too, against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Coors Field hosted the final two games. In Game Three, a packed ballpark watched the Rockies win 4-1. A three-run homer by Yorvit Torrealba in the sixth inning was the difference.

Coors Field was also filled to capacity the following night to watch the Rockies clinch the National League championship. A six-run fourth inning allowed the home team to hold off the Diamondbacks, who came close with three runs in the top of the eighth inning. The final score was 6-4. The Rockies were heading to the World Series for the first time in their short history.

Although the Rockies swept through the National League playoffs, they were not so fortunate in the World Series. When Coors Field hosted its first World Series game, on October 27, 2007, the Boston Red Sox had already taken a commanding 2-games-to-none lead in the Series. The temperature when the game started was a brisk 45 degrees. Almost 50,000 fans showed up hoping to see the Rockies rebound. But the Red Sox won, dominating the hometown team, 10-5.

With their backs to the wall, the Rockies took the field the following night with their hopes clinging to a thread. Although it was late October, temperatures at game time were a balmy 68 degrees and fans were not quite as bundled up as the night before. The Red Sox jumped out to a 3-0 lead before the Rockies were able to score a run in the bottom of the seventh inning.

After the Red Sox scored another run in the top of the eighth, the Rockies made one final attempt at a comeback. Garrett Atkins’ two-run homer brought the Rockies to within one run. The hometown crowd finally had something to cheer about. With everyone on their feet and hoping for a miracle, Boston’s Jonathon Papelbon shut down the Rockies in the ninth for his fourth save in as many games. The Red Sox had swept the Rockies and 50,041 fans quietly left Coors Field with their mile-high dreams vaporized into Denver’s thin air.

After it opened, Coors Field quickly earned a reputation as a hitter-friendly ballpark. As early as the first season, people were talking about the number of home runs. After watching homer after homer in the Dodgers’ first visit in 1995, broadcaster Vin Scully commented that any hitting record set by a Colorado player should automatically be accompanied by an asterisk.7

Early on, Coors Field earned the nickname “Coors Canaveral,” a reference to the US astronauts’ launching site.8 This reputation as a launching pad for home runs was firmly planted in the public’s mind in 1999 when the Rockies and their opponents hit a major-league-record 303 home runs.

The California Angels (then the Lost Angeles Angels) held the previous record, 248, set in 1961, their first year of existence, in their original home, Wrigley Field in Los Angeles.

In Coors Field’s first year, the home run total fell just seven short of that mark, even though the team lost nine games from the home schedule due to the players strike, which forced a late start to the 1995 season. The next season, 1996, when the Rockies played a full schedule at the ballpark, the record fell when 271 home runs were hit at Coors Field. That mark was broken with 1999’s total of 303, the record that still stood as of 2017.

No matter what index is used, Coors Field is recognized as a hitter’s ballpark. Alan Nathan, a physicist, showed that a baseball would travel 5 percent farther at Coors Field than Fenway Park. Based on his analysis, baseballs that would travel 380 feet at Fenway Park would travel 400 feet at Coors Field.9

After several years of extraordinary home-run production, the Rockies installed a humidor to help bring production back to Earth. The idea came from Rockies employee Tony Cowell, who had observed that his leather boots dried faster at a high altitude and figured that baseballs would do the same. Cowell figured that the baseballs would not travel as far if they were slightly moist.

Cowell thought that if the baseballs were kept in a humidor, they would lose some of their bounce. He tried an experiment of sorts to see if he was correct, dropping baseballs off a third-deck ramp down to the concrete. “The results were pretty striking,” Cowell said.10

With the permission of Major League Baseball,11 the Rockies installed an $18,000 humidor, a giant version of the container that keeps cigars moist. It quickly made a difference when home-run production fell from 268 in 2001, the most in the major leagues, to 185 in 2007, ranking 10th. The Elias Sports Bureau also found that runs scored per game were down as well, from 13.4 in 2001 to 10.6 in 2007.12

The humidor at Coors Field keeps balls from drying out and shrinking. It is set at 40 percent humidity to compensate for Denver’s low humidity. Rawlings, the manufacturer of baseballs, suggests humidity of about 50 percent and a 70-degree temperature.13

The longest measured home run at Coors was hit by Hall of Famer Mike Piazza on September 26, 1997, when he was with the Dodgers. Piazza’s home run was measured at 496 feet. His home run beat out the 494-foot blast by Larry Walker of the Rockies a month earlier. Giancarlo Stanton tied Walker’s mark when he hit one out of the ballpark on August 17, 2012.14

But these are just the ones that have been measured since they were hit during a game. Walt Weiss claimed he “saw Mark McGwire [hit one] off the facing of the Rock Pile. As we sit here (in the dugout) and look it doesn’t seem possible, but I was there and I saw it.”15 McGwire also hit a ball that went 510 feet during the first round of the 1998 Home Run Derby. It was the longest of the 53 home runs hit in that round.16

In recent years, fewer home runs have been hit at Coors Field but it has remained the most hitter-friendly ballpark in the major leagues by a wide margin. From 2012 to 2015 the Rockies led the league in runs scored in home games.17

Two of the highest-scoring games in modern baseball history were played at Coors Field. On May 19, 1999, the Rockies and Cincinnati Reds engaged in a 36-run slugfest. Cincinnati led 6-4 after the first inning. The Rockies tied the game in the second, but the Reds went on a scoring spree starting in the fourth inning. Cincinnati scored 17 runs from the fourth to the seventh inning. The Reds’ Sean Casey finished the game by going 4-for-4 with three walks while scoring five runs while his teammate Jeff Hammonds cleared the fences three times. The Rockies’ 12 runs were enough to win most games, but not this one; Cincinnati got 24.

Nine years later, the Rockies got into another hitting contest and come out on top. On July 4, 2008, the Rockies and Florida Marlins celebrated Independence Day with plenty of fireworks. The two teams combined for 43 hits and 35 runs. Colorado’s first four batters went a combined 16-for-22 with five homers and 13 runs. The Rockies entered the ninth inning trailing 17-16 but scored two runs on four singles in the ninth for a walk-off win.18

Over the years, many baseball players have knocked the ball out of Coors Field. The Rockies player with the most home runs there is Todd Helton. During his tenure with the Rockies, Helton hit 227 home runs at the ballpark. Barry Bonds hit 26 home runs at Coors Field and holds the record for the most home runs by an opposing player.19

Naturally, the accomplishments of pitchers at Coors Field tend to be overlooked. As of 2017, there has been just one no-hitter there, by Nomo in 1996. Nomo shut down the home team before 50,099 spectators, the largest crowd to watch a no-hitter in an existing ballpark as of 2017.20

The longest game in Coors Field history was not a high-scoring game. The Rockies beat the Giants, 4-3, on July 4, 2010. By the time the home team won in the bottom of the 15th inning, 5 hours and 24 minutes had passed. Jason Hammel started for the Rockies while Matt Cain took the mound for the Giants. Both pitchers threw seven strong innings.

The Rockies took the lead after Dexter Fowler tripled in the third inning and scored on Jonathan Herrera’s sacrifice fly. The Giants’ Travis Ishikawa singled home Pablo Sandoval to tie the game in the top of the eighth. From that point on both teams were scoreless for the next seven innings. Over those seven innings the Rockies left 15 runners on base. They left the bases loaded in the 10th, 13th, and 14th innings. Fowler hit his second triple of the night as he led off the 15th inning. Todd Helton then hit a fly ball deep down the left-field line and Fowler scored to end the game.21

It did not take long after the ballpark opened for a player to hit for the cycle. John Mabry of the Cardinals accomplished this feat on May 18, 1996. Mabry singled in the second inning, doubled the fourth, tripled and scored in the Cardinals’ four-run fifth, and in the seventh, he launched the ball over the center-field wall for a home run to become just the 11th major leaguer to hit for a natural cycle (single, double, triple and homer in that order). Mabry’s achievement came in a losing effort; the Rockies won, 10-7.

Two years after it opened, Coors Field hosted the All-Star Game on July 7, 1998. After the US Air Force was honored in pregame celebrities, the game literally took off. The American League beat the National League, 13-8, in a game that saw both teams collect 31 hits. Three home runs were hit during the game, including a solo shot by Roberto Alomar that cemented the American League’s lead and earned Alomar MVP honors.

Coors Field’s location has allowed it to host some interesting events. The coldest baseball game since baseball began recording such things in 1991 took place on April 23, 2013. The day started ominously for a baseball game. Grounds crews began clearing several inches of snow from the playing surface at 6 A.M. Although the field was clear when the game started, some parts of the ballpark remained closed, including the Rock Pile section. Workers made sure the batters eye background in center field was green by hosing off the snow on the stand of evergreen trees behind the wall.

The temperature at game time was 23 degrees. Although most players bundled up, Atlanta pitcher Mike Minor chose to wear short sleeves. He told reporters after the game that he felt restricted with long sleeves. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t notice the temperature. He said: “The biggest thing was grip, just being cold and dry. I pretty much just battled through it.” At one point, Minor said, he got so cold that he had a trainer rub his back, arms, and thighs with a heating ointment.22

The Braves won, 4-3. Some 19,124 fans showed up for the game but there is no record of how many stayed for the entire 2 hours and 37 minutes that it took to finish it.

Although Coors Field is the most hitter-friendly ballpark in the major leagues, there have been a few moments when the pitchers took command of the game. On July 9, 2005, in its 10th year, the ballpark finally had its first 1-0 game. Before that the ballpark had witnessed three 2-0 games. The 1-0 game (won by the Rockies) came in Coors Field’s 847th regular-season game, the most games played at any major-league ballpark before its first 1-0 game.23

Jason Jennings pitched seven scoreless innings before getting a little help from his bullpen. Brian Fuentes, the Rockies closer, escaped a bases-loaded jam in the ninth to earn a save. Colorado got its run in the sixth when Aaron Miles beat out a bunt and scored on a double by Luis Gonzalez.

When he was asked about the win after the game, Rockies manager Clint Hurdle laughed and reminded reporters that his pitching staff had allowed 12 runs the night before. “What a difference 22 hours makes,” Hurdle said.24

In subsequent years, there were eight more 1-0 games at Coors Field. The last time (as of the end of the 2017 season) that fans witnessed one was on June 12, 2010. On that day, Jason Hammel pitched eight scoreless innings and scored the lone run of the game in the sixth inning. He walked to lead off the inning, went to third base on a single by Todd Helton, and scored on a sacrifice fly by Carlos Gonzalez. After the game, Hammel joked with reporters, “I’ve got to do everything here.”25

Although low-hitting games are rare at Coors Field, the Rockies have been successful in such contests. They are 6-3 in the nine 1-0 games at the ballpark.

Another interesting game at Coors Field took place on August 22, 2000, against Atlanta. With the game tied, 3-3, in the 11th inning, John Wasdin came into the game as the Rockies’ seventh pitcher. He was the last man out of the bullpen but manager Buddy Bell figured that Wasdin would be good for a few innings since he had not pitched for a few days. Wasdin confounded Bell’s strategy by hitting hit the first batter he faced and was ejected.26

Bell was forced to bring in a starting pitcher, Brian Bohanon, who retired the Braves, throwing 10 pitches. Bohanon had thrown 99 pitches the night before and was spent. After the Rockies failed to score in their half of the inning, Bell turned to backup catcher Brent Mayne. “Can you pitch?” Bell asked. “Yeah, I can pitch,” Mayne replied.27

Mayne retired the first two batters, Tom Glavine on a grounder and Weiss on a fly ball. But Rafael Furcal singled and went to second on a wild pitch as Mayne worried that “I didn’t want to balk. I was thinking what is the balk (rule)? Can I go into the glove and take the ball out of my glove? That was probably the most nerve-wracking thing.”28 But Mayne recovered and got Chipper Jones to ground out.

The Rockies hit back-to-back singles in the bottom of the 12th inning. Suddenly it was Mayne’s turn to bat but he had an injured wrist. Bell pinch-hit Adam Melhuse, who singled in the winning run. Mayne was credited with the win, the first time a catcher was credited with a win at Coors Field.29

The ballpark has witnessed several other notable achievements. On August 7, 2016, Ichiro Suzuki, playing for the Marlins, got his 3,000th major-league hit, a triple in the seventh inning to become the 30th player to reach that milestone. As Suzuki arrived at third, third-base coach Lorenzo Bundy hugged him and the Marlins streamed out of the dugout to congratulate him. Always modest, he waved his helmet to acknowledge the cheers at Coors Field.

Rockies pitcher Chris Rusin said after the game that he was fine with being a part of history. “Congratulations to him. All I ask for is a signed bat in return. It’s crazy to be a part of.”30

At 42 years and 290 days, Suzuki was the second oldest player by three days over Rickey Henderson to reach the milestone. Only Cap Anson, who was 45 when he got his 3,000th hit in 1897, was older.

As of 2018 only one Rockies player has had his number retired, Todd Helton. Helton played for the Rockies from 1997 to 2013 and his number 17 was retired on August 17, 2014. Helton was the Rockies’ first-round pick in the 1995 first-year player draft. He debuted with the Rockies on August 2, 1997, and played the next 17 years in a Rockies uniform.

Rockies owner Dick Montfort explained the decision to hang Helton’s number from Coors Field’s rafters: “Seventeen years is the first thing. No one else has been here that long and for his whole career. He was one of our earliest top draft picks. He holds a lot of team records. With his play and his leadership, it was just natural [to retire his number].31

Coors Field hosted its first concert on July 3, 2015. More than 42,000 people packed the ballpark to hear the Zac Brown Band. Seats and a dance floor were placed on the field. A large stage was placed against the center-field wall to allow the sound from the band to echo throughout the ballpark.

“This is a very, very special night to be the first band to play in this stadium. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” said Brown as he returned to the stage for an encore.32 The crowd cheered and Brown didn’t even bother to sing the chorus to his final song, “Chicken Fried.” Instead he just watched from the stage as thousands roared out the words in unison. The band returned to Coors Field on July 29, 2017, for another concert.

Coors Field hosted several hockey games in 2016. The first was played on February 20. A hockey rink was set up to allow the University of Denver to play Colorado College. The two teams had played each other for 66 years but this was the first time that they played in a ballpark.33

Denver University coach Jim Montgomery lined up for television interviews in front of a large photo of a Larry Walker, a former hockey player. “I want to stand by Larry Walker. He’s Canadian. He’s the pride of Canadian baseball,” Montgomery said.34  A crowd of more than 35,000 watched Denver University win 4-1 in balmy 50-degree weather.

A week later, the National Hockey League held its annual Winter Classic hockey game at the ballpark. The Colorado Avalanche lost to the Detroit Red Wings, 5-3.

Coors Field is sure to continue as a focal point for the Denver sports fans in years to come. The ballpark is located in the “LoDo” area of downtown Denver. This part of town is Denver’s answer to New York’s Soho. It is a rejuvenated area containing art galleries, small shops, and artists’ lofts.35 With so much excitement surrounding it, Coors Field brings even more excitement as the home team plays for the opportunity to bring another World Series to the city.

This biography appears in “Major League Baseball A Mile High: The First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies” (SABR, 2018), edited by Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also utilized the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for box scores, player, team, and season pages, pitching and batting game logs, and other material pertinent to this biography. FanGraphs.com provided some statistical information.

Notes

1 “Coors Field,” BallparksofBaseball.com, accessed August, 22, 2017.

2 Paul Munsey, “Coors Field,” Ballparks.com, June 2007.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Allison Mast and Kevin D. Murphy, “The Rebirth of the Ballpark Could Be Baseball’s Saving Grace,” BaseballInsider.com, April 9, 2017.

6 James Hagadorn, “Fossils Underfoot,” Front Porch (Northeast Denver), June 1, 2014.

7 Mike Downey, “Nursing a Denver Hangover,” Los Angeles Times, May 10, 1995.

8 Patrick Saunders, “Tony Cowell’s Humidor Brought Rockies Baseball at Coors Field Back Down to Earth,” Denver Post, May 13, 2017.

9 Alan Nathan, “Baseball at High Altitude,” Physics of Baseball, accessed August 24, 2017.

10 Saunders, “Tony Cowell’s humidor.”

11 Hal Bodley, “Baseball Gives Rockies’ Humidor Its OK,” USA Today, June 14, 2002. MLB said, “We’re satisfied with what (Cowell) saw and feel the matter in which the balls are stored is consistent with what would probably be recommended if we were to make such a recommendation.”

12 Saunders, “Tony Cowell’s Humidor.”

13 Ibid.

14 “Coors Field Home Runs: Who Hit the Longest, and Who Hit the Most,” Denver.CBSLocal.com, June 10, 2015.

15 Ibid.

16 Jayson Stark, “25 Greatest Home Run Derby Moments,” ESPN.com, July 12, 2010.

17 “How Do Ballpark Factors Affect Batters for MLB DFS?,” DFS Strategy.com,  March 24, 2016.

18 Ibid.

19 “Coors Field Home Runs.”

20 Graham Night, “No Hitters Thrown by Ballpark,” Baseball Pilgrimages.com, accessed September 4, 2017.

21 Ryan Freemyer, “A Look at the 3 Longest Games the Colorado Rockies Have Ever Played,” Purplerow.com, September 16, 2015.

22 Ibid.

23 “Rockies’ 1-0 Victory a First in 11-Year History of Ballpark,” ESPN.com, July 10, 2005.

24 Ibid.

25 “Rockies’ Hammel Tosses 8 Shutout Innings, Scores Game’s Only Run,” ESPN.com, July 13, 2010.

26 Grant Brisbee, “The Time a Catcher Pitched at Coors Field and Won,” SB Nation.com, August 21, 2015.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 “Rusin Gives Up Ichiro’s 3,000th Hit; Rockies Lose to Marlins,” USA Today.com, August 7, 2016.

31 Thomas Harding, “Helton Calls No. 17 Jersey Retirement ‘Very Special,’” MLB.com, February 6, 2014.

32 Evan Semón, “Zac Brown Band Plays the First Major Concert at Coors Field,” Denver Post, July 4, 2015.

33 Nick Groke, “Big Hockey Crowd at Coors Field Sees Denver Play Like Kids vs Colorado College,” Denver Post, February 20, 2015.

34 Ibid.

35 Herbert Muschamp, “A Wonder World in the Mile High City,” New York Times, May 7, 1995.

Jeffrey William Francis was born on January 8, 1981, in Vancouver, British Columbia. When he was two weeks old, his grandfather William Francis nicknamed him Boomer (actually he was called Boom-boom, then shortened to Boomer).¹ Jeffrey attended Burnsview Junior Secondary School and North Delta Senior Secondary School in North Delta, British Columbia. It was there that his good childhood friend, Gary Moraes, noticed that he had a future in physics, and in baseball. “His ball had so much movement and it would banana into me,” Moraes said.²

After his senior year Francis played on the Canadian Junior National Team, where he went 3-1 with a 1.71 ERA. After playing for the North Delta Blue Jays of the B.C. Premier Baseball League, the highest-caliber junior league in British Columbia, Francis went undrafted and so went to the University of British Columbia. It was there that he brought his knowledge of physics into his world of baseball, pursuing a major in physics and a minor in astronomy while playing for the UBC Thunderbirds. Jeff would constantly think about physics during his baseball career. “I think all baseball players, whether they’re superstars or not, are aware of certain physical aspects of the game by just being around baseball and observing,” he once said.³

During his sophomore year, 2001, Jeff went an impressive 13-2 with a microscopic 0.92 ERA and was named Canadian Baseball Network Player of the Year and a member of the CBN all-Canadian First Team. In his 15 starts, he had eight complete games, a 46-inning scoreless streak, 118 strikeouts in 98⅓ innings, and only 15 walks. He was also named NAIA Region I Player of the Year. In 2002, during his junior year, Francis went 7-2 with three complete games, a 1.93 ERA, and 101 whiffs in 74⅔ innings. He again earned first-team honors on the Canadian Baseball Network All-Canadian team and again made the NAIA all-region team.

After his junior year, before the June 2002 amateur draft, Francis headed north to Alaska to pitch for the Anchorage Bucs, where he threw a club-record six shutouts, finishing 7-1 with a 1.20 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 76 innings. He was named Alaska Player of the Year and was invited by the league winner, the Anchorage Pilots, to pitch in the National Baseball Congress tournament in Wichita, Kansas. He was named the tournament MVP after hurling 14 shutout innings, becoming a tournament all-star and being tabbed “best pro prospect.”⁴

The Colorado Rockies originally wanted to draft outfielder Denard Span with their first-round pick in 2002, but could not reach a preliminary agreement with him before the draft. Instead the Rockies selected Francis in the first round (ninth pick overall).

In his first year of minor-league ball, Francis made three starts for the Tri-City Dust Devils (Pasco, Washington) of the low Class-A Northwest League and four starts for the Asheville Tourists of the Class-A South Atlantic League. Over the seven starts and 30⅔ innings, he had no decisions and a 1.17 ERA. His season was cut short by an injury caused by a foul ball.

In 2003, while pitching for Visalia in the Class-A California League, Francis went 12-9 in 27 starts with an ERA of 3.47 and two shutouts including a no-hitter.

Moved up to Double-A Tulsa in 2004, Francis was 13-1, a record that earned him a promotion to Triple-A Colorado Springs, where he was 3-2. Overall he had an ERA of 2.21 and 196 strikeouts in 154⅔ innings pitched. He had more strikeouts than hits (108) and walks (29) combined. Francis was named Minor League Player of the Year by both Baseball America and USA Today, becoming the first player in Rockies organization to win either of the awards and the fourth player to be honored in the same season by both publications, joining Andruw Jones (1995, ’96), Rick Ankiel (1999), and Josh Beckett (2001).

The 6-foot-5, 200-pound left-hander was called up by the Rockies in August and made his major-league debut on August 25, 2004, against the Atlanta Braves, losing an 8-1 decision. He pitched five innings, allowing six runs (on three home runs), walking one and striking out eight. He earned his first major-league victory on September 5 against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park, tossing 5⅓ scoreless innings in a 5-2 game. Francis finished with a 3-2 record and a 5.15 ERA for the Rockies. Francis was unhappy that the Rockies wouldn’t let him pitch for Team Canada at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, where he would have been the team’s number-1 starter. “Regrettably I didn’t get the chance to pitch,” he said in 2016. “I made it a goal to pitch for Team Canada again.”⁵   

Francis would soon get another chance to represent his country, when he played for Canada in the 2006 World Baseball Classic. In his only game, against Mexico, he fared poorly, retiring only four of the 11 batters he faced as Canada lost, 9-1. (Canada lost out in the second round to Mexico and the United States on run differential.)

In 2005, Francis led the also-ran Rockies (67-95, last place in the NL West) with a 14-12 record, the only pitcher with double figures in wins. But his ERA was 5.68 and his WHIP was at 1.62 as he allowed 228 hits in 183⅔ innings.

Francis finished the 2006 season with a record of 13-11 and an ERA of 4.16, more than a run lower than in 2005. On September 23 he defeated Atlanta for his 30th win with the Rockies, passing Brian Bohanon to become the left-handed pitcher with the most career wins for the team.

After the 2006 season Francis signed a four-year deal worth $13.25 million with a club option for a fifth year at $9 million. Under MLB rules, the option year would be his first year of eligibility for free agency. The contract would allow Francis and the Rockies to avoid going to arbitration every year.

For the 2007 season, Francis had a career year while leading the Rockies into the postseason for the first time since 1995. He finished the season with 17 wins while pitching over 200 innings for the first time in his career. On October 3 Francis became the first Canadian starting pitcher to win a postseason game by beating the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-2, in Game One of the National League Division Series. It was his first postseason appearance. He also won the first game of the NLCS, throwing 6⅔ innings against Arizona while allowing just one run.

On October 24 Rockies manager Clint Hurdle gave Francis the start in Game One of the World Series against the Boston Red Sox. He thus became the second Canadian starting pitcher to pitch in the World Series. He struggled, lasting only four innings and allowing six runs.⁶ The Rockies lost the game, 13-1, and the Red Sox swept the Series. Although the Series did not have a happy ending for Francis, he did not let the outcome ruin his experience. “It was special to be able to be a champion,” Francis said in a 2016 interview with MLB.com. “I know we didn’t win it all, but that was a team that came together, even though I don’t know what was expected of us. We did special things in dramatic fashion.”⁷

Like many of his Rockies teammates, Francis struggled to replicate his 2007 success during the 2008 season. He finished the year with a 4-10 record and a 5.01 ERA in 24 starts, although he reported pitching through shoulder soreness for much of the season. What Francis didn’t realize at the time was that because of his passion for physics, when he started to experience shoulder discomfort in mid-April, he was altering his motion and release point to adjust to the soreness. At that point, soreness and discomfort led to pain. His shoulder refused to let his arm get his fingers in the proper position on top of the ball, causing his changeup to cut instead of fade, his sinker to stop sinking, and his control to evaporate. “As much as I [would] think of throwing it the proper way, I think my body does it by itself,” Francis said. “[That] summer, my body wouldn’t turn the ball over because it knew it was going to hurt.”⁸

Francis tried to work through the pain during the offseason and spring training, but when it did not subside, he had it looked at, and turned out he had a torn labrum. He underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left shoulder on February 25 and missed the entire 2009 season. While rehabbing, Francis found himself reverting back to his knowledge of physics. It didn’t matter if he was using an upper-body ergometer while doing throwing motions, or in the pool punching forward using vented paddles, he would analyze the motions using Newton’s third law.⁹ But when Francis took it all out to the field, especially for throwing sessions at Coors Field, physics knowhow was no match for the subconscious pulleys that act on every pitcher.¹⁰ Pitching in 2010 the way he once did would require months more of exercise whose physics he understood. Such is the curse of a physicist.

Francis began the 2010 season on the disabled list, but was able to get back to pitching by late May. In his first game back, he pitched seven innings, allowing two walks and seven hits in a 2-1win over the Washington Nationals on May 16. Francis pitched in 20 games that season, posting a 4-6 record with a 5.00 ERA.

After the 2010 season the Rockies chose not to exercise Francis’s option and he became a free agent. From then on his career resembled that of a typical journeyman pitcher. In January 2011 Francis agreed to a one-year contract with the Kansas City Royals for $2 million plus performance bonuses. He became Kansas City’s number-two starter and led the staff in most pitching categories throughout the first half of the year.

Francis was 3-7 at home for the Royals with an ERA of 4.18, and 3-9 on the road with a 5.48 ERA, for a 6-16 record. After the season, he again became a free agent.

In January 2012, Francis agreed to a minor-league contract with the Cincinnati Reds. Assigned to Triple-A Louisville, Francis exercised a June 1 opt-out clause, and on June 8 he agreed to a major-league deal with the Rockies. The next day, he started against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Francis finished the season in the rotation with a 6-7 record and an ERA of 5.58.

Again a free agent after the season, Francis re-signed with the Rockies. He pitched half the 2013 season out of the bullpen, making only 12 starts in his 23.  He finished 3-5 with an ERA of 6.27, his worst in the major leagues.

Once more a free agent, Francis signed a minor-league contract with Cincinnati for 2014 with an invitation to spring training. He started the season with Louisville and was called up on May 15. He was designated for assignment the next day after allowing San Diego three runs in five innings to pick up the loss.

On May 18 Francis was claimed off waivers by the Oakland Athletics. He was designated for assignment on July 3. On July 11 the A’s traded him to the New York Yankees, who released him on August 5 after two relief appearances.

In October 2014 Francis signed a minor-league contract with the Toronto Blue Jays that included an invitation to spring training. On the eve of the 2015 season, he was assigned to Triple-A Buffalo. Called up on April 19, he made his Blue Jays debut that day, and in pitching to Russell Martin, formed the first all-Canadian battery in the Blue Jays’ history. Francis was outrighted to Buffalo on May 20. On September 1 he was called up again. He made a total of 14 relief appearances for the Blue Jays in 2015.

In the summer of 2015, Francis was selected for the Canadian team in the Pan American Games, held in July in Toronto. Having not been allowed by the Rockies to play for Team Canada in the 2004 Olympic Games for fear being injured, Francis took pride in his selection. He made three appearances, including a start in the Gold Medal Game against the United States. He pitched seven innings and gave up eight hits and four earned runs, striking out seven. Canada won, 7-6 in 10 innings. As a Canadian, Francis was especially proud to have one last shot to go out as a champion. “We know how important Canada’s program is, and we try to put back into it what we get out of it,” he said. “We know if we can give the program notoriety, it can continue and keep producing prospects. To repeat (Pan Am Gold), and to do it at home, was special and hopefully Canadian kids were watching.”¹¹

That was enough for Francis. On December 15, 2015, he announced his retirement. For his 11-year career, he won 72 games and lost 82 with an ERA of 4.97.

In January 2016, Francis was honored by Baseball Canada as the eighth member of the Baseball Canada’s Wall of Excellence.

Francis and Allison Padfield were married on December 31, 2005, in London, Ontario. As of 2018 they lived in the Denver area (during the baseball season), and in London, with their daughter, Cameron (born in 2009) and son, son, Miles (2011). While the couple were expecting their first child in 2009, Jeff was still thinking about ways to introduce not only the world of baseball, but also the world of physics. “I hope my interest in physics and science is something I can pass on,” he said. “If my kid doesn’t like baseball, maybe that’s something I can mentor them in. Now that I think about it, I just bought a mobile for the crib.”¹² So what is it? Baseballs? Gloves? Bats? …“Nope […] the solar system.”¹³

After retiring as a player, Francis got involved with a number of causes, including a Wiffle Ball tournament benefiting a charity that brings used computers and other technology devices to underprivileged people in Canada.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the footnotes, the author also utilized baseball-reference.com.

Notes

¹ Bob Elliot, “Things to Know About Jeff Francis,” Independent Sports News, November 12, 2014. independentsportsnews.com/2014/11/12/things-to-know-about-jeff-francis/.

² Bob Elliot, “Ex-UBC, Blue Jays Pitcher Jeff Francis Honoured by Baseball Canada,” Vancouver Province, June 17, 2016.

³ American Physical Society, “Jeff Francis and the Physics of Baseball,” Symmetry, June/July 2016.

⁴ Bob Elliot, “Things to Know About Jeff Francis.”

⁵ Bob Elliot, “Ex-UBC, Blue Jays Pitcher Jeff Francis Honoured by Baseball Canada.”

⁶ Reggie Cleveland of the Boston Red Sox was the first Canadian, when he started Game Five of the 1975 World Series against Cincinnati.

⁷ “Jeff Francis Calls It a Career,” Baseball Canada, December 16, 2015. baseball.ca/jeff-francis-calls-it-a-career.

⁸ Alan Schwarz, “While Recovering, Rockies’ Francis Revels in Physics of Pitching,” New York Times June 27, 2009.

⁹ Ibid. Newton’s Third Law states: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Baseball Canada, “Jeff Francis Calls It a Career.”

¹² Alan Schwarz, “While Recovering, Rockies’ Francis Revels in Physics of Pitching.”

¹³ Ibid.