Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Why Kenny Lofton Deserves to Be in the Baseball Hall of Fame

For the next several weeks, I will be publishing articles on this blog to showcase and highlight baseball players not in the Hall of Fame that deserve to be.

The perspectives will be from first hand accounts of baseball experts who have watched these players play the game at an elite level and seen then thrive in their era.


For our second piece, we will be looking at center fielder Kenny Lofton.

Vince Guerrieri of vinceguerrieri.com was kind enough to share his views on Lofton and what made him so special to the game of baseball.

In 1991, the Cleveland Indians moved the fences back at Municipal Stadium, making an expansive field — Babe Ruth said at its debut that outfielders should cover ground on horseback — even more cavernous. They wanted to take advantage of their speedy center fielder, a fan favorite from whom great things were expected: Alex Cole.

 The Cole experiment was a short-lived failure. But the center fielder they were waiting for was in the wings. Kenny Lofton was virtually stolen from the Houston Astros in a trade of back-up catcher Ed Taubensee.

And the Indians were in the cusp of greatness. The team’s offense was a murderer’s row. Albert Belle’s 1995 season was unparalleled — he remains the only player with 50 homers and 50 doubles in a season, and he did it in a strike-shortened year — with only his truculence costing him the MVP award. Eddie Murray was at the end of his career but still a dangerous hitter. The team was so loaded that Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez were relegated to the bottom of the lineup.

And at the top was Lofton, giving the Indians’ offense another dimension. His role was to be the runs batted in that the rest of the lineup earned. He was the right man for the job. A former college basketball player at Arizona (he’s one of just two people to play in a Final Four and a World Series,) Lofton ran like a gazelle and seemed to be capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound (Cleveland IS the birthplace of Superman.)

There’s an old baseball joke that 2/3 of the world is covered by water, and the fleet-footed fielder of your choice covered the other third. That applied to Lofton. He once climbed the center field wall to come down with an out.

He dropped off the BBWAA ballot for the Hall of Fame after only one year. His numbers stand up to scrutiny, but it’s his almost balletic grace stealing bases or patrolling center field that made him so memorable.

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