Keith Hernandez, #17. and Mark Grace of the Cubs, who chose #17 out of respect or to honor Keith, are close. Like Mattingly. Very dependable (none more aggressive than Keith) and I’m pretty sure all of them are honored/retired numbers in their respective home parks yet not HOF IMHO.
My Mark Grace pinstripe #17 is in my wife’s wardrobe in St. Petersburg. Dunno why I never got a real Mets jersey, yet that too would be in the Evil Empire.
Mark Grace’s number 17 isn’t retired in Chicago. Kris Bryant wore it during his time with the Cubs.
Oh well. I didn’t see enough of the Cubs to gauge how good he was a first baseman or hitter. Pretty good yet Hernandez was like a Field Marshall.
When I bought my jersey, I think Kerry Wood - whose Jersey was popular - was pitching that day. And lost.
I’ve seen about eight Cubs games at Wirgley since 2000 and they lost every one. I’d not go to a Cubs/Mets game - too much conflict. But I loved sitting in Fenway’s bleachers as the Sox clobbered the Yankees.
I’ve been a diehard Cub fan since 1984, and every time I go see them at Wrigley, they lose. The only time I’ve seen them win was in Cincinnati.
I had always thought that Hernandez was a notch better than Grace: he had an MVP, a batting title, 11 Gold Gloves, 2 Silver Sluggers, and six seasons where he had a bWAR of 5+. Grace had 4 Gold Gloves, and only once had a bWAR of 5+ (exactly 5.0, in fact).
But that said, Baseball Reference does “similarity scores,” where they try to assess which other players had career performances which were most similar to each player. Grace’s #1 most comparable guy is Hernandez; Hernandez’s #2 most comparable guy is Grace (his #1 is Wally Joyner). Both of them mostly have strong comparisons to other first basemen who are in the “Hall of Very Good”: Joyner, Hal McRae, Cecil Cooper, John Olerud, etc.
Similarity scores are a straight up comparison of raw statistics and don’t consider defense or context.
Grace played in a time when offense got historically high. His 1999 looks superficially similar to Keith Hernandez’s 1980 but in fact Hernandez was substntially better.
In fact I think it was pretty sudden and obviously a pretty terrible situation for him and his wife who announced the pregnancy just this April.
You could be right, but if it was announced on the 23rd that he wouldn’t be on the roster, and she died on the 26th, it would indicate to me that it wasn’t something that happened quickly and unexpectedly. Maybe her passing was, but he knew a few days ahead of time that she was sick/hurt, otherwise his being left off the roaster couldn’t have been announced beforehand.
We know she was in bad shape for at least 3 days, then died. As you say.
But there could have been a growing serious issue for a month or even 6 months before that which finally became acute on the 23rd, or she could have suffered some severe accident on the 23rd and had been totally healthy on the 22nd. Just no way to know from the facts on offer. Yet.
The speculation early on was that it was pregnancy complications. It seems likely that his daughter was either stillborn or died shortly after birth.
I think stillborn is most likely. If they determined the fetus no longer had a heartbeat, they would effectively know the baby was dead but the date of death might be a few days later when the fetus was removed (either medically or naturally).
Yes that’s how I read it. She wasn’t born when he was dropped from the roster.