1991 - A Special Season for The Hawk and Myself

The 1991 season was supposed to be the year the Cubs broke the curse and won the World Series (That's every year to a Cubs fan). With the newly acquired George Bell batting behind Andre, the Cubs were a likely favorite with three former MVPs in the line-up (Dawson, Bell and Ryne Sandberg). However, the Cubs finished with a disappointing 77-83 record, finishing 4th in the NL East. While the Cubs didn't enjoy much success in 1991, Andre did.*

Andre made his eighth and final appearance in the All-Star game, his fifth straight appearance since joining the Cubs in 1987. He finished the first half of 1991 tied for most home runs in the NL with 15 and was sixth in RBI with 52.**

What made 1991 special for me was that I got to attend the final game of that amazing first half. The game was July 7 at St. Louis; we drove from Oklahoma to see it. My family planned our summer vacation entirely around that game, so it was a big deal.

The Cubs won the first two games of the series. In the game on July 6th, Andre went 3 for 5 with a home run and a double to drive in 3 RBIs; Cubs won 12-2. I was hoping he would save some of that offense for the game we would attend the next day.

We brought our home made signs to the game, rooting for the Cubs to sweep the Cards. Of course, we got heckled by the home team fans, but I didn't let that damper my opportunity to see my first Cubs game live and my favorite player in action too.

Andre had one hit that night in four at-bats, but that one hit was a two-run home run. It was a deep left/center field shot off of Ken Hill in the 3rd inning.

The Cubs lost that game 8-7. The game was my first and last time to see Andre play and he didn't disappoint. Sure the Cubs lost, but even at the age of 12 I realized how special it was to have your favorite player come through for you with a home run.

A couple of days later he hit a solo shot over the center field wall in the All-Star game at the Skydome. The blast came in the fourth inning off of Roger Clemens; NL lost 4-2.***

He capped the season off with his fourth Silver Slugger award. It was most deservingly considering he hit two of his six career grand slams that season and his two pinch-hits in 1991 were both home runs.****

Andre finished 1991 with:*
Games - 149
Home Runs - 31 (4th in the NL)
RBIs - 104 (6th and accomplished back to back 100 RBI seasons)
Stolen Bases - 4
Hits - 153
Runs - 69
Avg. - .272
Total Bases - 275 (9th)
AB Per HR - 18.2 (7th)

What's your Andre Dawson memory? Please share with a comment!

* www.baseball-reference.com
** 1991 Upper Deck
*** www.wikipedia.org
**** 1992 Upper Deck

Andre's Ranks at the Time of His Retirement

Since I started this blog, I’ve posted where Andre ranks all-time in several statistics as evidence of why he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. I’ve had a couple of readers suggest that I post what Andre’s ranks were at the time of his retirement.

I love feedback from readers, especially suggestions for blog ideas. I listened, I did the research, here are The Hawk’s ranks as of his retirement after the 1996 season.

Home Runs: 438
Currently - 36th
1996 - 22nd
Difference - +14

Interestingly enough, of the 14 players who have passed Andre since his retirement, 8 either used steroids or was suspected to have used, including: Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro, Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield, and Jose Canseco. The remaining 6 players are: Ken Griffey Jr., Jim Thome, Frank Thomas, Fred McGriff, Carlos Delgado and Jeff Bagwell.

Twenty-second place in 1996 was very impressive. Do you realize that after 100 years of Major League Baseball, only 21 players at the time hit more home runs than Andre?

RBIs: 1591
Currently – 34th
1996 – 24th
Difference - +10

The players that passed Andre after his retirement include: Bonds, Palmeiro, Griffey, Ramirez, Rodriguez, Thomas, Cal Ripken Jr., Sheffield, Sosa and Harold Baines.

Ripken (1695 RBIs) played almost every game of every season during his career so the RBI opportunities were greater of course. He played 374 more games than Andre (3,001 to 2,627) netting 104 more RBIs, which is an RBI only every 3.6 games. Therefore, if Ripken hadn’t been an iron-man, he wouldn’t have passed Andre on this list.

Baines (1628 RBIs) collected 37 more RBIs by playing one more season than Andre. If Andre’s knees could have held up for one more season, Baines wouldn’t have passed him.

If you look at the all-time RBI list pre-1997, you realize that most of the players higher than Andre were part of the dominating line-ups of their times, which the Expos and Cubs teams that he played on were never known for. Were talking about Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Ott, Williams, Mays, etc.

Hits: 2,774
Currently – 45th
1996 – 38th
Difference - +7

I find it interesting that twice as many players have passed Andre in home runs than in hits. Shows you how many big hitters in the past decade have been one-dimensional. The seven include: Ripken, Gwynn, Biggio, Henderson, Palmeiro, Bonds and Baines.


Runs: 1,373
Currently – 93rd
1996 – 72nd
Difference - +21

Pretty obvious that when home run totals increase so will the runs scored. Several players that have passed Andre had some pretty big bats behind them including: Johnny Damon (Manny, A-Rod), Derek Jeter (A-Rod), Kenny Lofton (Thome, Manny) and Biggio (Bagwell, Berkman).

During his days as a Cub, Andre did his job of knocking in the guys in front of him, but he never had that big bat to knock him in as he did at the beginning of his career (Gary Carter, Al Oliver). Keeping that in mind, I think Andre at 72nd in 1996 or 93rd in 2009 is impressive.

Stolen Bases: 314
Currently – 146th
1996 – 125th
Difference - +21

I think this difference shows you either A) players have become more athletic or B) throwing out base runners is less important from the catcher position than his spot in the batting line-up now, hitting over rules defense.

None of the names that has surpassed Andre’s total will surprise you: Roberto Alomar, Eric Young, Delino DeShields, Juan Pierre, Biggio, Chuck Knoblauch, Omar Vizquel, Barry Larkin, Damon, Carl Crawford, Ichiro, Jimmy Rollins, Tom Goodwin, Luis Polonia, etc. (okay those last two might have surprised you).

You know what is striking from that list? None were consider power hitters. Sure Larkin and Rollins could pop-off 20 home runs or so, but few players since Andre have shown the balance of power and speed that he had.

Total Bases: 4,784
Currently – 25th
1996 – 21st
Difference - +4

I saved the best for last! How is it possible that only four players have passed Andre in this category in the past 13 years? That’s how good he was. If he didn’t homer, he would come through with a double (48th all-time). I think you could conclude from this statistic compared to his run total that Andre was indeed left on base a lot during his Chicago years.

The four who have tallied more total bases since are: Bonds, Palmeiro, Griffey and Ripken Jr.

Either way you look at it, Andre was a Hall of Famer at the time of his retirement in 1996 and he is today in 2009.

Andre Dawson by the Numbers

Baseball is relatively an easy game to understand. Two opposing teams get three outs per inning to try to make something happen in order to manufacture runs. After nine innings the team with the most runs wins.

Baseball statistics and how those statistics were evaluated in order to determine if a player should be in the Hall of Fame used to be that simple.

It's crazy all of these new sabermetric statistic-formulas that people have came up with that are now being used to evaluate eligible players for the Hall with. I’ve been reading articles where writers, some of whom are HOF voters, that have been using these type of statistics on why they won’t vote for Andre, “Andre’s win shares are too low,” or “his OPS+ isn’t as high as I would like.”

Win shares? OPS+? Whatever happened to just saying, “This player has X home runs, X runs batted in, X hits, X Gold Gloves, etc.”? “Man, those are great numbers, of course player X is a Hall of Famer!”

Numbers, not formulas.

I understand that win shares and OPS+ and other complicated formula statistics like that have their place in modern baseball, but let’s look at statistics and numbers that everyone can understand when determining how to vote for Hall of Fame candidates.

Here are some numbers on Andre that I believe BBWAA voters should consider:

1 – NL MVP (1987) and NL ROY (1977)
2 – NL MVP Runner-Up (1981 and 1983)
3 – Only three players have at least 400 HRs and 300 SBs, Andre being one of them.
4 – Silver Slugger Awards (1980, 1981, 1983 and 1987)
8 – Gold Gloves and All-Star Selections
118 – Sacrifice Flies (10th all-time)
143 – Intentional Base on Balls (50th all-time)
314 – Stolen Bases
438 – Home Runs (36th all-time)
503 – Doubles (48th all-time)
1,039 – Extra Base Hits (24th all-time)
1,591 – Runs Batted In (34th all-time)
2,774 – Hits (45th all-time)
4787 – Total Bases (25th all-time)

I could keep throwing more numbers at you, but let’s keep this simple.

Leave the formulas to the BCS system in determining the National College Football Championship and vote for one of the best all-around players ever to play the game into the Hall in 2010!

Source - www.baseball-refernce.com