Career .213 Batting Average

All I ever kreally new about Jerry Kindall is that he was an ex-Cub and he had a crappy Strat-O-Matic card with the ’65 Twins.  But there proved to be ever so much more.

After reading this week that Kindall had died at the age of 82, I went on baseball-reference.com to look at his stats.  In answer to the question how Kindall lasted nine years in the majors with only a career .213 BA, he was a bonus baby, as they were called back then.  The Cubs signed Kindall June 30, 1956, and he appeared in his first major league game the next day.  According to then-current rules on bonus signings, the player had to stay with the big-league club for two full years, so Kindall was available the next day to pinch run in a Cubs’ 7-0 win over the Braves.

He didn’t get his first at-bat until July 25 in a game against the Pirates at Forbes Field; ironically, it came in the same inning he pinch ran.  Down 4-0 in the eighth, the Cubs scored seven times to take the lead.  Kindall, who ran for Don Hoak who’d started the inning with a pinch single, struck out against Roy Face in his first major league at-bat.  The Cubs being the Cubs back then, they went on to lose the game in the bottom of the ninth on a walk-off, two-run inside-the-park homerun by Roberto Clemente.  At least Kindall took part in an exciting game.

My guess is that Kindall always carried the “bonus baby” promise with him during his stints with the Cubs, Indians and Twins; if nothing else, it probably kept him in the majors long after other .213 hitters would have been sent packing.  Not that Kindall was a baseball bust.  No, he hit his stride when his playing days were over and he became a college coach.

Kindall headed up the baseball program at Arizona from 1973 to 1996, winning the College World Series in 1980.  Indians’ manager Terry Francona played on that 1980 team and told the Associated Press, “In a nutshell, he taught us not only to respect the game of baseball, but respect the people in the game.  That was the most valuable lesson any of us learned.  He taught us how to act and treat people.”

Not a bad eulogy for a career .213 hitter.