by David Fleitz

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by David Fleitz

Willie McCovey's 1970 Topps card. He hit 16 pinch homers in his career, only four shy of the record held by Cliff Johnson.

Dave Philley's 1957 Topps card. You probably never heard of him, but in 1958-59 he swatted 9 pinch hits in a row. In 1961 he set a record with 24 pinch hits in a season.

P.S. Ted Williams retired from the Red Sox in 1960. He turned down a contract for $125,000 - a lot of money at the time - to do nothing but pinch-hit for the Yankees in 1961.

P.P.S. Lou Gehrig's 16 pinch-hitting assignments all came early in his career. His last one, in 1925, started his streak of 2,130 consecutive games.

When Ken Griffey Jr. returns to the Cincinnati lineup in a few weeks, he'll have his work cut out for him.

He won't be starting from scratch in the 2001 season. In April, Griffey couldn't play the field, but he wanted to help the team, so he volunteered to pinch-hit while waiting for his hamstring injury to heal.

The result? Sixteen pinch-hitting appearances with no hits. Griffey went 0 for 12 with three walks and one hit-by-pitch. He struck out five times in those 12 official times at bat. When Griffey returns for good, it will take him quite a while to get his batting average out of that 0 for 12 hole.

That got me to thinking. Which stars of the game were good pinch hitters, and which ones were not? If Griffey is so unsuccessful at it, how did Babe Ruth, or Ted Williams, or Willie Mays fare as pinch hitters?

A quick trip to the Baseball Encyclopedia gives this table. These are career totals, and all these guys except Shoeless Joe are in the Hall of Fame:

                         Hits  At Bats  Average
Joe DiMaggio               6      12     .500
Shoeless Joe Jackson       4      11     .364
Tris Speaker              20      60     .333
Frank Robinson            28      87     .322
Al Kaline                 37     115     .322
Red Schoendienst          56     185     .303
Ted Williams              33     111     .297 
Stan Musial               35     126     .278
Eddie Collins             27     104     .260
Willie McCovey            66     254     .260 - 16 home runs
Charlie Gehringer         23      91     .253
Enos Slaughter            77     306     .252
Lou Gehrig                 4      16     .250 
Willie Mays               23      94     .245
Mickey Mantle             25     106     .236 - 7 home runs
Ty Cobb                   15      69     .217
Harmon Killebrew          24     118     .203
Hank Aaron                17      86     .198
Babe Ruth                 13      67     .194
Brooks Robinson            4      31     .129

Pinch hitting is a funny thing. Manny Mota and Dave Philley were great at it, but Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth were surprisingly bad, and Brooks Robinson was terrible. On the whole, most of the biggest stars of baseball have been mediocre pinch hitters. Why?

Here are a few possibilities:

The best hitters spend most of their time as starters. If they were hitting well, they'd be in the lineup every day. When Babe Ruth hit 60 homers, or when Ty Cobb batted .420, they weren't sitting on the bench waiting to pinch hit. They were in the lineup. Pinch hitters are, almost by definition, bench-warmers, whether or not they were stars at one time.

Most stars appear as pinch hitters at the tail end of their careers. By the time they're reduced to pinch hitting duty, their bats have slowed down and their foot speed is mostly gone. Most old stars are pinch-hitting because they can't do much else. It was always painful in the late 1960s to watch the All-Star Game every year and see Mickey Mantle go to the plate, swing and miss three times, and walk back to the dugout.

Pinch hitting is a specific skill, almost like playing a new position. As Ken Griffey Jr. can probably tell you, it's not easy to leave the habits and procedures of the starting lineup behind and assume the role of the pinch hitter. It's not for everyone, and it's as difficult for a starter to learn how to pinch hit as it is for an outfielder to learn how to play third base.