A couple of days ago, I didn't have terribly nice things to say about the website At Home Plate. To their credit, they've posted this nice article about Brewer hero Gorman Thomas. Go read it yourself...if you insist on skipping it, here's a couple highlights:
But with all of his less than Major League attributes, this guy could knock the stuffing out of the ball. For his career he hit 268 Home Runs in just 13 seasons, and this was in an era before the ball was wound tighter than today's standards. He knocked in 782 RBI, and had a .448 Slugging Percentage. The Slugging should, by all rights, have been higher and would have been if it weren't for his lifetime Batting Average of .225 and 1339 career strikeouts. It wasn't a fluke if he had more "Ks" in a game than the Starting Pitcher, seriously folks. He hit below the fabled "Mendoza Line", less than a .200 batting average, in six of his 13 seasons in the majors, that is just incredible!
Gorman as a Brewer pre-dates my baseball fandom, and no matter how many times I read about him, I'm shocked that he was a centerfielder--and maybe even a good one. As the spiritual predecessor of Rob Deer, Russell Branyan, and Adam Dunn, it just seems wrong that he could cover much ground and move gracefully.
Anyway, nice story; it's great that a guy like Gorman is still in the organization, and that people still write about him.