Tough year even tougher with the passing of baseball legends

It's been a tough year for baseball legends. Six of them have died in 2020, five of them Hall of Famers, three of them this month. The latest: Joe Morgan, the best player on two of the greatest teams in history, the 1975 and 1976 Cincinnati Reds, The Big Red Machine. Morgan was voted the National League's Most Valuable Player in both those remarkable years, in which, though standing just 5-foot-7 and weighing 160 pounds, he belted a combined 44 home runs with 205 RBIs, 246 walks and more stolen bases than strikeouts (127 to 93). The other Hall of Famers who have died this year are Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, and Whitey Ford. Gibson, Ford and Morgan all died in the span of 10 days this month. October. The World Series month. The other legend lost this year was former Yankees pitcher Don Larsen. There have been 675 World Series games played since 1901. Only one of them ended in a perfect game. Larsen pitched it, in 1955, Game 5, a 2-0 Yankees win over the Dodgers. In 1955, at age 20, Kaline won the American League batting title with an average of .340, which was more than 20 points higher than anyone else in the league. In 1968 Gibson won the National League Cy Young and MVP awards. He was 22-9, and more than half his wins (13) were shutouts. His ERA was 1.12. He never got taken out of a game in the middle of an inning the entire year. In his last 24 starts he pitched 22 complete games, with a record of 19-4 and a 0.96 ERA. Ford pitched for the Yankees for 16 years, and he started at least one World Series game in all but five of them. In a span of seven years starting in 1969, Seaver won three Cy Young awards and finished second in the voting in a fourth year. All of them are now gone. If baseball means anything to you, there's something sadder than sad when a famous ballplayer dies, especially if you remember seeing him play. Maybe it's because a famous ballplayer in his prime always seemed so indestructible. But, as we all know, none of them, just like none of us, are. Still, when you hear the news that a famous ballplayer has died, if baseball means anything to you, it gives you pause. The memory of that player, his greatness and your recollections of him are all a piece of your youth. Genuine greatness doesn't come along very often. When it does, and then when it leaves, the memories of those who produced those snapshots are instant and lasting. It's not only been a tough year for baseball legends, it's been a tough year for non-legends, or semi-legends, like 160-pound Jimmy Wynn, a prodigious power hitter for the Astros in the 1960s. In 1968 he hit 26 home runs. Nobody else on his team hit more than six. It's also been a tough year for former Indians, 13 of whom passed away, including classy Tony Fernandez. No Indians fan who saw the game will ever forget Fernandez's at bat in the 11th inning of Game 6 of the 1997 ALCS in Baltimore, when he hit one of the most famous home runs in Indians history, a pennant-winning blast in that unforgettable 1-0 victory. We also lost crusty, irascible former Indians manager John McNamara (1990-91), who if he didn't like a question asked in his postgame session with the media would look askance at the asker and ask, "Who you with?" Ed Farmer was known as "Eatin" Ed Farmer as an always-hungry Tribe reliever in the early 1970s. He later made an All-Star team with the White Sox, for whom he eventually became an outstanding radio broadcaster. Ted Cox was supposed to be The Next Big Thing after he hit a combined .338 for the Red Sox and Pawtucket in 1977. The Indians bit and acquired him and three other players from Boston in exchange for some guy named Eckersley. In his two years in Cleveland, Cox hit .224. Johnny Antonelli had a win, a save and a 0.84 ERA in two appearances for the Giants in their four-game sweep of the Indians in the 1954 World Series. Late in his career he was traded to Cleveland and was 0-4 in 1961. Outfielder Carroll Hardy spent three forgettable years with the Indians in the late 1950s before being traded to Boston, where he's best remembered as the only player to ever pinch hit for Ted Williams. All these former Indians left us in 2020. So, too, did even more obscure Indians, such as Ed Fitzgerald, Lou Johnson, Bobby Locke, J.W. Porter, Jim Bolger, Remy Hermoso and Ray Webster, who as a 21-year-old rookie in 1959 once pinch-hit for Tito Francona. That's 12 former Indians players, plus a manager. All gone. It's been a very tough year. Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com.