He had gone 0-for-54 over two seasons before today’s game, when he came up with his first hit since September 14th of last year! He went on to get two more in the game.
He’s making $23 million per year and still has nearly four years left on his contract.
* In the year before he signed that contract, he hit 47 homers, and that wasn’t even his career high. Here are his homer totals since: 38, 26, 16, 0.
* His batting average has also dropped each year. He batted .262 in his contract year, then .221, .215, .168, .079.
He has simply not found any groove in at least two years. He followed his .168 last year with a .189 in spring training, then started this season 0-for-33 before today’s game.
speaking of baseball, did you know about Fleet Walker?
I didn’t. article about him appeared today
Yes. The 19th century is my specialty, and the Walker brothers were quite well known. But Fleet was not the first. That was William Edward White, a collegiate star who filled in for one NL game in 1879. One of the cooler facts about Mr. White is that he looked like a time-traveling Barack Obama.
Fleet Walker was the first African-American to be a regular player.
Also noteworthy is that Jackie Robinson was not the first black player in the 1940s. He was the first African-American, but there was another black man, an African Cuban named Tomas de la Cruz, who played for the Reds in 1944. oddly enough, he also wore the number 42!