Marley 23 is right about how bad Pete Rose was during his final years. In 1983, his final year with the Phillies, he batted .245 with no homers in 151 games–as a first baseman! It’s mind boggling that he wasn’t benched. In 1985, the year he broke Cobb’s record, he improved :rolleyes: to .264 with two homers in 119 games.
Acsenray , the problem Largent had wasn’t with Rice but the upper management. (I’m getting this account from an sports talk host in Seattle who was talking about Rice’s stint.) The team president told Largent that Rice was demanding the number and thus Largent allowed them to unretire the number. Later on Largent found out Rice didn’t say that and that the team official did it on his own.
Couldn’t have been too bad…they made it to the World Series.
Sure, thanks to a tremendous effort by the pitching staff and Mike Schmidt, the One Man Offense. Rose was probably the worst regular first baseman to ever play for a team that won the pennant; I challenge anyone to find one worse.
Toronto Maple Leafs fans are going to get out their tar and feathers now:
Mats Sundin.
I always make fun of the O’s third base tandem that year (haven’t had much to talk about here in Birdland since '83)…Leo Hernandez and Todd Cruz. Without checking the stats and if I remember correctly, they collectively batted around .220 and had less than 10 homers. But similar to what you said, that team was built the same way…strong pitching and instead of Schmidt, we had Ripken and Murray.
But I digress.
Darrell Waltrip comes to mind, after he spent most of his last three years starting dead last every week and making laps in cars that were mediocre at best (his pinch-hitting stint for Steve Park) and awful at worst (the Tabasco #35).
Other NASCAR wheelmen who should have left it to the younger guys a little sooner: Morgan Shepherd and James Hylton are still trying to compete, although Morgan seems to be “Racing for Jesus” less and less lately; Bill Elliott retired four years ago, but keeps doing more and more races with fewer and fewer good results, and Kenny Schrader and Kyle Petty have been on the wrong side of success for 10 years or more.