Let's Play Two!

As Ernie Banks would say.  So let's do two baseball posts today.

Just realized Albert Belle turns 60 today.  Was reminded coming across this video (below) titled "Albert Belle Was The Most Un-Hinged Baseball Player of All-Time" by sportswriter Jeff Pearlman.  While a reminder of the craziness of Albert at times (just watch his assault on second baseman Fernando Vina), the title and language are somewhat overhyped as everything seems to be in recent years.  It's worth a watch and has an unexpected and relatively happy ending.  Turns out Albert and his family are neighbors of ours in Scottsdale.

Belle was an incredible hitter.  He only played ten full seasons (1991-2000), retiring just after turning 34, but he could pound the ball.  Over those ten years he averaged per season 38 doubles, 37 home runs, 120 rbi, with a .297 batting average.  At the time he retired Albert had the 10th highest career slugging percentage in major league history.

He was capable of prolonged hot streaks, over the last 90 games of the strike-shortened 1994 season hitting .367, with a OBP of .447, while slugging .757 with 67 extra base hits and 90 rbi.  During the 1995 season, Belle had 103 XBH.  During the final 87 games of the 1998 season his splits were .389/.461/.799, including 63 XBH and 93 rbi. I remember how intimidating he could look at the plate.

As far as being the "most un-hinged" ballplayer, Albert has a lot of competition.  Take Ty Cobb for example.  In my review of Charles Leersehn's revisionist biography, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, I noted:

As Grantland Rice, a friend and admirer, wrote years later:

When I first met Cobb I found him to be an extremely peculiar soul, brooding and bubbling with violence, combative all the way, a streak, incidentally, he never lost.    

Throughout his career, though much less after he retired, he reacted quickly to any perceived insult.  In commenting on his penchant for fighting Leerhsen writes:

. . . he provided such a dizzying array of examples to choose from - fights with complete strangers, fights with teammates, fights with rival players, fights with hotel employees, shopkeepers, and rowdy cranks [fans] . . .

The author goes on to provide an account of his behavior over a short period during the 1916 season; fighting with Buck Herzog of the Giants both on and off the field; an incident in Comiskey Park when, angered by a called third strike, he threw his bat into the stands; flinging a handful of dirt into the face of a Senators pitcher; and being pulled out of stands in St Louis by teammates and police before he could pummel a heckler.

I also quoted Bill Veeck:

"Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils, like the Third Army bustling through Germany".