It's a special weekend for the baseball community, as the Hall of Fame welcomes the class of 2009. The class is headlined by Rickey Henderson, arguably the best lead-off hitter in the game's history and Jim Rice, a slugger for the Red Sox who won the 1978 AL MVP award. Henderson and Rice will be joined by Joe Gordon. If you're scratching your head on Gordon, here's a little information about him.Gordon was a second baseman who played in the bigs from 1938-1950 (mostly with the Yankees) and was the 1942 AL MVP. As a testament to how valuable Gordon was, he beat out Ted Williams for the MVP award in a year Williams won the triple crown. He missed the 1944 and 1945 seasons serving in World War II. A nine-time All-Star, Gordon was a .268 career hitter and was the first second baseman to hit 20 home runs in a season, retiring as the all-time leader in homers by a second baseman, with 246. In addition to these power numbers, Gordon was also a stellar defender, retiring with a .970 fielding percentage. Often lost among his more widely-known Yankee teammates, Gordon will be introduced to a whole new generation of fans this weekend when he is posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
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1 comments:
Jim Rice is way overdo and Ricky is an automatic. With all the steroids in the game today, these two did it the right way. I've had the pleasure of watching Ricky most od his career living in the Bay Area. Matter of fact I played against him in High School one year.We had a pretty good team ourselves, which included the late Larry Groves (Cinncinati Reds "75). But watching Ricky that day was amazing. Fast as he got on first with a walk or hit, he'd be standing on third
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