[The twenty-third in a series: I’m picking one player that I associate with a team (whether they spent the majority of their career there or not) that I would strongly consider adding to my official want lists. They may not always be superstars, or the most popular, and honestly they may not always be my favorite player from the team, but that’s what will make this fun, no?]
So, the regular season is over and I’m still not done with this series. The playoffs are about to start and I’m still not rooting for the Cubs. I’m planning to watch the playoffs, which will be the first Cubs game I’ll watch since the Chapman trade. I don’t know who to root for, but I just can’t get excited about this team. Maybe the Astros could have been that team, but they missed out on the Wild Card. Let’s see what next year brings for both clubs.
JR Richard has been a mini fascination of mine for a few years. I happened to catch a segment on his life on ESPN a while ago, back when they still sometimes showed things besides football highlights. He started out slow, but then found his groove to reach dominance like you see above. Then a major stroke took him out of the game earlier than anticipated. After baseball, he fell further due to various financial troubles and found himself living under a Houston underpass at one point. Please read up on the details if you haven’t before.
Current player runner-up: Jose Altuve
Was going to be Roy Oswalt but then he went and retired. This club is full of a lot of promising young players, but Altuve is the scrappy type I’m drawn to and a pretty good ball player so far.
Retired player runner-up: Roy Oswalt
This was going to be Glenn Davis until Oswalt retired. I like Bagwell and Biggio (Berkman annoys the piss out of me), but I wouldn’t want to deal with that competition unless I was passionate about the players. Since I’m not, I’d probably pick an easier 80’s-era guy. I was thinking about Mike Scott due to RBI Baseball, but just wasn’t feeling it. Anyway, Oswalt seems like he’d be more fun to collect than Davis due to the variety it offers.
The Series So Far
Angels – (tie) Jim Abbott & Vladimir Guerrero
Astros – J.R. Richard
Athletics
Blue Jays – Carlos Delgado
Braves – Steve Avery
Brewers – Bob Eucker
Cardinals – Jim Edmonds
Cubs
Diamondbacks – Randy Johnson
Dodgers – Jackie Robinson
Giants – Kevin Mitchell
Indians – Jim Thome
Mariners – Felix Hernandez
Marlins – Giancarlo Stanton
Mets – (tie) Darryl Strawberry & Dwight Gooden
Nationals/Expos – (tie) Marquis Grissom & Delino DeShields
Orioles – Adam Jones
Padres
Phillies – Mike Schmidt
Pirates – Andrew McCutchen
Rangers – Nolan Ryan
Rays/Devil Rays – Evan Longoria
Red Sox
Reds – Eric Davis
Rockies – Carlos Gonzalez
Royals
Tigers – Alan Trammell
Twins
White Sox – Paul Konerko
Yankees
Great choice with Richard.
I’ve got a fairly decent JRR collection if you’d like to see it. He doesn’t have that many oddballs and such.
[…] Series So Far Angels – (tie) Jim Abbott & Vladimir Guerrero Astros – J.R. Richard Athletics Blue Jays – Carlos Delgado Braves – Steve Avery Brewers – Bob Eucker Cardinals – […]
[…] Series So Far Angels – (tie) Jim Abbott & Vladimir Guerrero Astros – J.R. Richard Athletics Blue Jays – Carlos Delgado Braves – Steve Avery Brewers – Bob Eucker Cardinals – […]
[…] Series So Far Angels – (tie) Jim Abbott & Vladimir Guerrero Astros – J.R. Richard Athletics Blue Jays – Carlos Delgado Braves – Steve Avery Brewers – Bob Eucker Cardinals – […]
[…] Series So Far Angels – (tie) Jim Abbott & Vladimir Guerrero Astros – J.R. Richard Athletics Blue Jays – Carlos Delgado Braves – Steve Avery Brewers – Bob Eucker Cardinals – […]
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[…] Series So Far Angels – (tie) Jim Abbott & Vladimir Guerrero Astros – J.R. Richard Athletics – Rickey Henderson Blue Jays – Carlos Delgado Braves – Steve Avery Brewers – […]