Never started a game at anywhere but third.

The Orioles post-game show passed along an interesting factoid: Brooks Robinson drove in more runs in 1-0 games than any other player in history.

The Orioles won today 1-0.

RIP Brooks.

Fielding performance in the 1970 series sticks out for me; it would have been interesting had it come against a later LA Dodgers team just to hear Lasanga's opinion of Robinson's performance. Did not realize he had so many top ten MVP performances in addition to his win.

Human Vacuum and Illya Kurayakin in the same week, damn.

Brooks won the 1970 World Series MVP, which in those days meant a convertible from Sport Magazine. Johnny Bench lamented in the losing clubhouse, "If we'd known he needed a new car that badly, we'd have chipped in and bought him one."

These were the expected attendees of this years ceremony. I don't see Brooks on the list. Appears that only Marichal, Kaat, B Williams and Oliva remain from the 60s group. I guess Jenkins too but I think of him as more 1970s




JEFF BAGWELL
HAROLD BAINES
JOHNNY BENCH
CRAIG BIGGIO
BERT BLYLEVEN
WADE BOGGS
GEORGE BRETT
ANDRE DAWSON
ROLLIE FINGERS
PAT GILLICK
GOOSE GOSSAGE
KEN GRIFFEY JR.
RICKEY HENDERSON
WHITEY HERZOG
TREVOR HOFFMAN
FERGIE JENKINS
DEREK JETER
RANDY JOHNSON
CHIPPER JONES
JIM KAAT
TONY LA RUSSA
BARRY LARKIN
GREG MADDUX
JUAN MARICHAL
FRED MCGRIFF
PAUL MOLITOR
JACK MORRIS
EDDIE MURRAY
MIKE MUSSINA
TONY OLIVA
DAVID ORTIZ
TONY PÉREZ
TIM RAINES
JIM RICE
CAL RIPKEN
SCOTT ROLEN
RYNE SANDBERG
JOHN SCHUERHOLZ
BUD SELIG
TED SIMMONS
LEE SMITH
OZZIE SMITH
FRANK THOMAS
JIM THOME
JOE TORRE
ALAN TRAMMELL
LARRY WALKER
BILLY WILLIAMS
DAVE WINFIELD
ROBIN YOUNT

I grew up listening to him on O's TV broadcasts. He was a sweet, funny and humble man. RIP Brooks.

Before my time, but Brooks is considered something of a saint in Baltimore.

I remember Bill James speculating decades ago on who would win a series between a team of players everyone described as a super nice guy, and a team of players no one would describe as a nice guy. Just off the top of my head...

NICE GUYS
C Roy Campanella? Not really sure
1B Lou Gehrig
2B Eddie Collins
3B Brooks Robinson
SS Honus Wagner
LF Stan Musial
CF Richie Ashburn
RF Mel Ott
RHP Walter Johnson
LHP Warren Spahn
RP Mariano Rivera


########
C Thurman Munson?
1B Cap Anson
2B Rogers Hornsby
3B Dick Allen (or Manny Machado)
SS If A-Rod doesn't count then I don't know. Maury Wills? Vern Stephens?
LF Barry Bonds
CF Ty Cobb
RF Ted Williams
RHP Roger Clemens
LHP Lefty Grove
RP Goose Gossage? Or Aroldis, I guess

I wonder if it's meaningful that the Nice Guy team is almost entirely comprised of guys from 50 to 100 years ago.

More recent nice guy team with no research just fan reaction

1b: Votto Maybe Freddie Freeman
2b. Lou Whitaker
Ss: Ripken Jr
3b: Adrian Beltre. Just don’t touch his head
C: Joe Mauer
Lf: Billy Williams. (This is just from what I have been told )
Cf: Ken Griffey Jr
Rf: Tony Gwynn

Wasn’t Hank Aaron a nice guy??

I wonder if it's meaningful that the Nice Guy team is almost entirely comprised of guys from 50 to 100 years ago.

OTOH, no one alive today saw Anson, or remembers seeing Hornsby or Cobb, and very few would remember seeing Willaims or Grove. I also wonder if older players are graded on a different curve - run-of-the-mill jerkness probably wasn't as big of news when they didn't have to fill 24 hours of ESPN programming every day.

And while not as good of a player, Pierzynski has to have been a much bigger jerk than Munson.

Off the top of my head I'd add Pujols and Kershaw to the recent nice guy list. Would add Wainwright too, except that while he's more than nice enough, he's probably not good enough.

Mike Trout should be the center fielder on the Nice Guys team, of course.

And TDF: yeah, that's along the lines I was thinking, too.

Re 11:

Chass: ANSON USED THE N-WORD, MR PRESIDENT

A rather glaring omission at catcher, where America’s greatest philosopher and Yankee legend Yogi Berra clearly belongs on the All Nice Guy team.

Ichiro could be on the nice guy team if he wanted to be.

I remember watching Brooks in the Series in 1969 and 1970. You really had to see him, to appreciate how great he was. I

Dale Murphy and Harold Baines belong on the nice-guy team somewhere.

Do they have to be hall of famers?
If not, then I nominate Frank Howard for sure.

My favorites broadcast team for the Orioles was Cakes doing the play by play and Brooks the color.
Palmer now does about 50% of the games as the color analyst and Brown the play by play.
Both are quite good, as are the games Ben McDonald does as color analyst, but not quite up the efforts of Jim and Brooks circa 1995

James actually posted an updated nice guy team a day or two ago:

C Bench 1B D.Ortiz, 2B N.Fox, 3B Brooks, SS Ripken, LF Musial, CF Torii, RF Ott/Kaline, LHP Koufax, RHP Big Train, MGR Buck O'Neil

Other names I heard bandied about include Ted Simmons and Gary Carter behind the plate, Dale Murphy and McCutchen in the outfield, Thome at first.

I feel mostly unequipped to come up with my own pitches - Votto seems really nice but how much of that is just that he's interesting as a fan?

Can nice guys have the red ass? Asking because I remember Big Papi obliterating a dugout phone with his bat after a called strike three one time in Baltimore. Pedroia was furious because the shards of the phone case almost hit him in the face.

Well, I will say this about Big Papi. Years ago my sister, a big Red Sox fan, had her wedding reception at the same hotel in Boston the Yankees were staying at for the weekend. Papi was sitting at the hotel bar with A-rod, and someone (not me) approached him and asked him if he would be so kind as to pose for a shot with my newlywed sister, and he was really gracious about it and she got her picture.

That same weekend I rode in an elevator with Derek Jeter, just me and him, for a twenty-second brush with greatness.

No no no Tony. When you tell that story, you describe it as his twenty-second brush with greatness.

Bench is outgoing and popular, which isn’t the same as nice.

Bench is outgoing and popular, which isn’t the same as nice.

Yeah. The original concept was "everyone describes as a nice person" and that is definitely not true of Bench. Or Ortiz.

I'm pretty confident is IS true of Mike Trout, though. And was true of Honus Wagner.

nice guys can absolutely have some red ass to them
nice <> friendly <> kind <> popular (etc) <> "good person", whatever that means. (speaking as someone who identifies as the first three and aims for the last one)

i don't understand parts of bj's list either, although i'll note there's a good chance that he knows ortiz and he may know bench.

wasn't part of the narrative of the 86 mets that carter was so "nice" (as opposed to media friendly) that it rubbed some players the wrong way? if true, that says a lot about that team!

I'm actually surprised that Roberto Clemente isn't mentioned by anyone on the nice guy team. Or was he just a hero, not actually a nice guy to hang out with? (Hard to believe.)

#27 He picked up a surly rep with parts of the press after objecting to being called "Bobby".

And in the mid-60s he had a rep as ... well malingerer is too strong, but he had a rep as not wanting to play if he wasn't feeling 100% (and he did consistently miss time -- over 150 GP only 4 times -- and those were consecutive seasons). I suspect you'd find a high overlap between people who thought he was thin skinned for objecting to "Bobby".

That same weekend I rode in an elevator with Derek Jeter, just me and him, for a twenty-second brush with greatness.

He obviously just missed you as you were standing to his left....

I love Ortiz, but I definitely don't think he belongs on the nice guy team.

Also, I'd worry about his ability to stay healthy playing a full season at first for the Nice Guys.

Surprised there's been no mention of Tony Gwynn, even if he's not good enough to supplant Kaline/Ott. Has anyone ever had a bad thing to say about him?

Gwynn sprang immediately to mind for me. I just didn't think he was a better player than Ott.

I think Clemente was best described as "prickly". He could be nice but he could just as easily be upset with some reporter. But not full blow angry or a jerk, just didnt want to give an interview or complained that the press didnt believe him. He was good around kids and patient when he came to our baseball banquet.

One day we had a baseball clinic at our ball field and Ron Perranoski of the LAD was there along with another guy. He made me feel crappy because I couldnt get the hang of kicking my leg to pitch. But imagine just taking an afternoon out of your day just to hang out with some snotty kids. That was really nice of them.

Nominating Albert Belle for ####### roster.

Nominating Albert Belle for ####### roster.

Over Barry Bonds or Ted Williams?

To be clear, I picked the team based on who among notorious ######## was the best player at a given position, not who was the most notorious #######. You're trying to build a team that can beat the best team Connie Mack can put together for the Nice Guys.

Over Barry Bonds or Ted Williams?

DH? bench bat? Belle's ######### qualifications are so impressive, it seems like he belongs on the roster somewhere.

I would even accept "fiery competitor" on the field if the guy had a legitimately nice reputation off the field. Not a lot of overlap, but busting the occasional water cooler wouldn't be an automatic disqualification.

As has been discussed many times before, Pittsburgh and Clemente had a difficult relationship for the first 5 or 6 years.
He was a black Hispanic, neither of which were popular with the European communities surrounding Pittsburgh.
The the language issue made it difficult for both parties to understand nuances in conversations.

Bob Prince, the Pirates lead announcer started to call Roberto, Bobby much to his surprise and confusion
I believe he felt slighted as well as he was a very proud individual.

Long story short, he was seen as prickly by European Americans and his pridefullness was seen as haughty.
After about a dozen years he slowly became revered and appreciated.

Willie Mays would tell you he was a great guy as well as Roberto’s wife who used to cook meals for the black ballplayers quite often when their teams came to Pittsburgh. They felt much more welcome at his home than at the hotels or restaurants in town.

I've read that Willie Mays was a real sonofabitch, but maybe that was not generalized hostility as much as it was loathing for his opponents. I do remember that he had a deep, deep loathing for Hank Aaron for some reason.

#38 Hard to believe now, but at one point Aaron had a reputation as a black athlete who (and I swear this exact phrase was used in a Sporting News or Baseball Digest article) who, "knew his place" (Something I recall because my mother had to explain the significance of the phrase)

It's easy to see how that might not have gone down well with everybody.

It doesn't seem to have been true (when has that ever mattered). Aaron was just quiet and kind of reserved in the early to mid 60s. Didn't really find his voice until later.

Bob Prince, the Pirates lead announcer started to call Roberto, Bobby much to his surprise and confusion

A Pittsburgh reporter said, "Clemente didn't mind that Prince called him 'Bobby,' but you had to keep in mind that Prince also called him 'The Great One.'"

Having just read Crash: The Life and Times of Dick Allen, I'd be very reluctant to put Allen on any "not nice guy" list. The crap he had to put up with in Philadelphia in his first stay there would've tried the patience of any human being. Lots of Black athletes got a "surly" or "bad attitude" label from writers who wanted to peg them into convenient little categories.

And then there are players who put on a good public face, and get along fine with their teammates and other players, but in random confrontations with fans are nowhere near as "nice" as advertised. Mays and Berra are two good examples of that, whereas Ted Williams was the opposite, especially with children. The Brooks Robinsons of the world, completely unpretentious and beloved by everyone who meets them, are a rare breed in any field.

C Roy Campanella? Not really sure

Campy was in the Brooks category, with the only difference being that unlike Brooks, Campy would occasionally let umpires know of their shortcomings. OTOH no umpire ever had a bad word to say about Ted Williams.

2B Eddie Collins

If hard core racists can be "nice guys", then I suppose Eddie Collins would qualify. But Collins was one of the Red Sox executives who steered Jackie Robinson through that phony "tryout" in Fenway Park, and was dead set against the Red Sox signing any African American players.

What are the sources that Carter was nice? Not my recollection of him (although I'm wrong about a ton of things).

Thought he had a reputation for being a jerk, at least while on Expos; great player.

Carter was very good with the media, but came across as too eager to please with a lot of teammates.

no way he qualifies as a "not nice guy" roster member, even if one questions his sincerity overall and whether he earns a "nice guy" slot.

Mays has been known as a prick for his post-career actions behind the scenes for decades.