Hello Baseball Fans,
Editor’s Note: all but the last few lines of this article (including the title) was written on Oct 6, 2023. Somehow it was lost in the VFTD files and was not posted in due time. Since ‘5’ is the subject, it was fitting that this was discovered on 5/25, 2024, thus the added lines and timing to be published. We can’t make this stuff up, although we wish we could!
As the 2023 MLB regular season wound down last week and we readied ourselves for playoff baseball, we unfortunately lost one of our all-time greats. Legendary Baltimore Oriole and third-sacker Brooks Calbert Robinson a.k.a The Human Vacuum Cleaner for his deft skills with the leather, passed away at the age of 86 years old.
Brooks Robinson spent his entire 23 season career in Baltimore from 1955 to 1977, which has always had a special ring to it for us here at the VFTD. He amassed some tremendous hardware throughout the bulk of his time in the majors. After just a few handfuls of big league games in ’55 and ’56, he settled in following the ’57 season after getting 50 games of reps that year. The result? From 1960 to 1975, he made 18 All-Star teams (Two each from ’60 to ’62 as part of the years where MLB had All-Star nods for both the half and full season intervals, which is most intriguing and we’d like to see that again even if the second one was on paper only), SIXTEEN Gold Gloves, two World Series titles, an All-Star MVP, a regular season MVP in ’64, and 1970 World Series MVP as Baltimore atoned for losing to the ’69 Miracle Mets by defeating the infant version of the Big Red Machine out of Cincinnati.
You need an entire ROOM to house all those trophies! As a result of all that and what would later be Brooks’ impressive career WAR (Wins Above Replacement) total of 78.4, he was a first-ballot Hall of Famer with the Class of 1983 and received 92% of the votes. ‘B-Rob’ was part of a monster ‘Hall Class’ that year by joining George Kell (2,054 hits in just 1,795 games), Juan Marichal (243-142 record with 2.89 ERA and 2300+ strikeouts), and Walter Alston (famed Brooklyn and L.A. Ddogers manager who won four World Series titles in his time on both coasts).
Brooks Robinson was a great player on the field and a great ambassador for the game off the field too. One of our all-time favorites here at the VFTD, we always think of Robinson diving parallel to the clay while fully extended to snag a nasty one-hopper to rob a hit away from the rival. Thanks for the memories Fiver, rest in peace.
Later Baseball Fans.