Triple Crown Would Fit Bichette Well

All right, students, the subject for today will be “What’s So Smart About Major League Baseball?” We will begin with a little history before we go into the general questioning. Ready? Here goes:

Item: Why did the game let Cecil Fielder drift down to defecting to the Japanese leagues? After all, he had 20 home runs in only 69 games in one minor league town and 19 in only 61 games at another. Yet, Toronto gave up on him, so he jumped to Japan, where he hit 38 homers in 100 games and no one should have been surprised when he jumped back to Detroit and became the first guy in 30 years to hit more than 50 homers in that league.

Item: They thought Babe Ruth was a pitcher and he was. A good one. But shouldn’t somebody have noticed in less than five years that they were looking at one of the greatest home run swings ever perfected? He hit 29 home runs one year as a part-timer in which he started 17 games in the box.

Item: They thought Stan Musial was a pitcher and he might have remained one if he hadn’t injured his arm in spring training one year.

Item: They left Maury Wills in the minor leagues nine years. An embarrassment when you know he came up to the Dodgers and helped them win several pennants and became the first player in history to steal 100 bases in a season.

Item: The Red Sox let Jeff Bagwell go in a trade after he had .309 and .333 in two years in the minor leagues. They traded him for a pitcher named Larry Andersen. I have no idea what happened to him.

Well, I could go on, but you get the idea.

Which brings us to Dante Bichette, an outfielder with the Colorado Rockies. Now, Bichette was the property of the Angels and the Milwaukee Brewers. You think either of those teams couldn’t use a guy who batted .340 last year with 40 home runs and 128 runs-batted-in? He only led the league in both those categories, to say nothing of total bases with 359.

You know the most elusive bauble in the baseball firmament? It’s the Triple Crown--leadership in average, homers and runs batted in for a season. Know how many years it has been since anyone won one? I’ll tell you--29. Carl Yastrzemski won it in 1967. And he tied in home runs. He and Harmon Killebrew hit 44. There have been only 11 Triple Crown winners in baseball, but Dante Bichette finished third in average last year or he might have been the 12th.

OK, Bichette hits in Coors Field, Denver, where the mile-high altitude adds a rocket boost to well-hit balls.

True. But first they have to be well hit, safely hit. You’ve got to get the bat on them. Bichette got his bat on the ball for a hit a league-tying 197 times last year.

Anyway, cozy confines are no novelty to baseball. The great Mel Ott, Giant immortal, hit 511 home runs, most of them at home in the Polo Grounds where the inviting right-field fence was only 258 feet away. To be sure, you had to pull it right down the line, but Master Melvin was crackerjack at that and, in 1943, he hit all 18 of his home runs at home, nary a one on the road.

In 1921, Babe Ruth hit 32 of his 59 home runs at Yankee Stadium, where the right-field fence was 298 feet away; and Hack Wilson, who set the all-time National League record for homers with 56 in 1930, hit 32 of them at home.

It happens. Part of the lore of the grand old game.

I asked Bichette in a locker room the other night why it took so long for someone to notice he was a Triple Crown-threat ballplayer. I mean, today, the game has speed guns, videotape machines, stopwatches, wind sprints, stress tests, batting machines, camcorders and a whole army of scouts trained to evaluate them.

And a Dante Bichette gets traded by Milwaukee to Colorado for someone named Kevin Reimers, whoever he is.

Bichette sighs. “I can’t tell you,” he admits. “In 1990, on the Angels, I had 12 home runs and 42 runs batted in a month before the All-Star game, and they brought in Dave Winfield and I was spot played the rest of the year and was traded to Milwaukee that winter for Dave Parker.”

Parker hit .232 for the Angels and was out of baseball the following year. Winfield was 40 years old that year and given free agency.

It begs the question of the front offices: Whose side are you on?

It’s hard to guess what they couldn’t see in Bichette. He’s 6 feet 3, 235 pounds, no fat, eyes that can see in the dark, a super-fast bat and no liability in the field. In fact, he had 22 outfield assists in the minors one year and twice had 14 outfield assists in the majors. His throwing arm is above average. He was batting .339 with 17 home runs and 80 runs batted in as of this weekend.

But he doesn’t have to worry about Colorado Manager Don Baylor looking to trade him. Baylor had no hesitance in handing him his glove and bat and giving him an everyday position. “He’s one of the most-feared batsman in the league,” says Baylor. “He makes pitchers cringe up there.”

You wonder what the rest of baseball wanted. Maybe they thought he was over-qualified.