Eric the Blue

Found myself wondering idly whether Eddie Murray, Oriole star of the ’70s and ’80s, is in the Hall of Fame. What a stupid question. I know now that he’s one of only seven players in the history of the game with more than 3000 hits and more than 500 home runs, so yeah, he’s in the Hall–inducted on his first eligibility, in 2003.

In my memory, he was a “solid” player–his nickname was “Steady Eddie”–and maybe that tricked me into thinking he was less than amazing, stupendous, superlative. Turns out that being “very good” for around 20 years in a row adds up to “very good plus, plus.” It’s kind of fun to root around on Murray’s page at Baseball Reference, finding new ways to convey his stature. No one in the game drove in more runs in the decade of the 1980s. Being in the 3000/500 club with the likes of Aaron and Mays (but not, for example, Ruth, Gehrig, Williams, DiMaggio, Musial, Mantle) is pretty good. He won three Gold Gloves as a first baseman. I’m just going to set down his home run totals for his first twenty seasons in the big leagues: 27, 27, 25, 32, 22, 32, 33, 29, 31, 17, 30, 28, 20, 26, 19, 16, 27, 17, 21 and 22. I know you could do this for yourself, but I’ll call attention to it: in those first 20 seasons–20 seasons!–he hit 33 homers once, 32 twice, 31 once, 30 once, 29 once, 28 once, 27 three times, 26 once, 25 once, and never fewer than 16. (A couple of these seasons were shortened by player strikes.)

Never an eye-popping year, and never a bad one, either. Baseball Reference puts a yearly tally in bold print if it led the league, and Murray’s page doesn’t have a lot of that. He never won the MVP Award. He was second twice, and finished in the top ten of the balloting eight times. One statistical oddity: he holds the major league record for sacrifice flies in a career (128).

Another fun tidbit: he was a high-school teammate of Ozzie Smith, the Cardinals great shortstop. This was in Los Angeles, where Murray was born in 1956. Probably a pretty good high-school team of mainly black kids, assuming they had a pitcher or two who could throw the ball over the plate. Baseball is poorer on account of how African Americans have pretty much stopped playing. I’m one of those who can hardly drive past a ball game in the spring or summer, and I can’t help but notice that the kids playing are almost all white, even though the city is of course racially diverse. The basketball teams aren’t all white! And the quality of the baseball isn’t very high, in my opinion, especially compared to the basketball being played. Pitchers got nothing on the ball, strike everyone out anyway, unless there are four balls before three strikes.