I had a George Brett poster in my bedroom as a kid, so of course I enjoyed Joe Posnanski's look back at George Brett's chase for .400 in 1980.
The amazing thing about Brett's season is that he got off to a slow start. He hit .259 in April. By the end of May, the Kansas City Royals third baseman was still hitting just .301. In early June came a torrid stretch of four three-hit games in a six-game stretch and his average climbed to .337 on June 10. Nobody was thinking .400 at that point. You'd certainly think for anyone to hit .400 they would have to start from ahead: A monster April, a hot May, create some cushion for the inevitable regression.
Brett hurt his ankle and missed a month. In the long run, that probably helped; it's obviously easier to hit .400 over a shorter time span than over 162 games. He returned to the lineup on July 10, Charlie Lau-ing the ball over the field: 2-for-4, 3-for-5, 1-for-3, 3-for-4, 2-for-4, 2-for-4, 4-for-5, 0-for-4, 4-for-5, 2-for-5, 1-for-4, 2-for-3, 1-for-4, 2-for-5, 2-for-4. That's .492 over 15 games and his average was up to .379.
Posnanski writes:
George Brett played every single game of 1980 scared out of his mind. What was he scared of? You name it. He was scared that he would let a ball roll through his legs. He was scared that he would drop an easy popup. He was scared he would strike out with the bases loaded. He was scared that he would overthrow the first baseman by 10 feet. He was scared of embarrassment, humiliation, laughter. He was scared that he would let Jimmy down. Who was Jimmy? Jimmy was an imaginary 12-year-old boy Brett had constructed in his mind, an amalgamation of all the 12-year-old kids who had pleaded for his autograph through the years, a huge baseball fan who had come from far away to see his hero play.
Most of all, Brett was scared of that phone call that was coming (it always came) just a few minutes after the ballgame ended.
The call was from Jack Brett, George's father. "Sometimes, at the end of the phone call, Brett would tear the phone out of the clubhouse wall," writes Posnanski. "Other times, he would shake his head and laugh. Most of the time, though, he just listened and stewed because he had been listening to Jack Brett rant all his life."
Brett continued hitting. Another 4-for-5 game. He'd hit in 30 consecutive games. In the 29th game he went 4-for-4 and raised his average to .401. There's a great anecdote about that in Joe's piece.
By now, the media coverage was driving Brett crazy. He fell under .400. But then came a 5-for-5 day in Milwaukee on Aug. 26 and he was hitting .407 and the impossible seemed possible. In June, July and August he played 60 games, hit .459 and drove in 69 runs. He entered September at .403. On Sept. 10 he was hitting .396, but was in the midst of missing nine more games with a wrist injury. I've never read anything about Brett saying the wrist injury bothered him once he came back.
He returned to the lineup and was sitting at .400 after a 2-for-4 day against Oakland on Sept. 19. The Royals had 12 games remaining. A's manager Billy Martin fumed that Brett would never see another fastball from his pitchers. (If only we had pitch-by-pitch data like we do now!) Brett went 0-for-4 against Matt Keough's presumably offspeed stuff, fell to .396 and that was it. Brett finished at .390.
Brett came to the plate 518 times that year and struck out just 22 times. His batting average on balls in play was .368. That's great, but not historic. Rod Carew had a .408 BABIP in 1977, when he hit .388. Manny Ramirez had a .403 BABIP in 2000 and Miguel Cabrera is at .401 this season. It's those 22 strikeouts that allowed Brett to chase .400. He put the ball in play. It's a different game now. Pitchers throw harder, more relievers, infield shifts. Chris Davis struck out 47 times in August alone and 76 players struck out at least 23 times.
You know how many times Brett struck out twice in a game in 1980? Once. Jim Kern of the Rangers got him twice on June 5, the second time looking. It was probably a ball.
