Frank Robinson

In this inaugural His-Story piece, I’d like to educate my readers on one Frank Robinson. To many of today’s fans, the former Cincinnati and Baltimore great is a Hall of Fame ballplayer who had little success as a manager and one of the last sluggers Barry Bonds passed on his way to the seemingly tainted homerun record. While accurate, that doesn’t exactly encapsulate Robinson’s greatness. At the age of 20, the outfielder hit a whopping 38 homeruns in 1956 on his way to Rookie of the Year honors (the most by any first year player until Mark McGwire’s 49 in 1987), won two MVP awards (the first and still only player two win the award in both leagues), finished in the top ten of the MVP vote nine times, captured the triple crown in 1966, was a 12x All-Star, and even more notably was the first black manager in MLB history. Robinson was a member of five World Series teams winning twice, and while he led the majors in homeruns just once (1966 when he hit a career high 49), Robinson finished in the top ten in 15 of his 21 seasons. He was career .294 hitter, clubbed 586 homeruns (fourth most upon his retirement), 1812 RBI (12th most upon retirement), 528 doubles, launched 12 walk off homeruns (tied for the most all-time), was the only player in history to hit a homerun completely out of Memorial Stadium and did this all while playing at a time when the color of his skin mattered to far too many people. At the age of 50 in an old-timers game, after being knocked down on the previous pitch by a hurler whose name escapes me but was only a year removed from professional ball and still throwing hard, Robinson drove the next pitch over the leftfield wall. Considered one of the most under appreciated players of all-time, amazingly, Robinson was not included on the MLB’s All-Century team, which I learned yesterday afternoon. Though not as heinous, Robinson’s omission is just another stain on the Bud Selig era. We thought the commissioner’s dubious handling of the steroids age was botched, but we should have seen it coming when whoever he put in charge of selecting the All-Century team left off one of the all-time greats.

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baseball hasn't had a Triple Crown winner since 1967, when Carl Yastrzemski in 1967, the year after Frank Robinson did the trick. There have been eleven horses to win the Derby, Preakness and Belmont since 1919, an impressive feat, as these are races of three different lengths in a five-week period, and the distances are typically more than the horse has ever run. 

Continue reading "Triple Crowns"