Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson, the best-fielding third baseman in baseball history, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 86.
Robinson, whose career stretched from 1955, when he got into six games as an 18-year-old rookie, to 1977, when he lingered to play 24 games as a 40-year-old, was spent entirely with the Baltimore Orioles. This was to the great delight of Orioles’ fans and the envy of every other team’s fan base.
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Known for his defensive wizardry, Robinson won 16 Gold Gloves as the best-fielding third baseman in the league — a record number for any position other than pitcher. Though he had an unspectacular .267 career batting average, he amassed 2,848 career base hits, which was the seventh-highest total in American League history at the time of his retirement. He only batted above .300 in two seasons — one of those in 1964, when he won the league’s Most Valuable Player Award with career highs of a .317 batting average, 28 home runs, and a league-leading 118 runs batted in.
As a young baseball fan back then, I knew that #5 (Robinson’s uniform number) was a constant threat to my beloved Detroit Tigers. Yet I could never muster up a negative feeling about the man. In interviews, it was plain to see that Brooks Robinson was a great human being — modest, friendly, respectful, hard-working, and cheerful. At a time when most major leaguers had very common names — Al, Ted, John, Bill, Tom, Pete, etc. — “Brooks” had a bit of a mystique to it. It connoted “a gentleman,” and Brooks’ behavior validated that sense.
My most vivid memory of Brooks was his performance-for-the-ages in the 1970 World Series against the powerful Cincinnati Reds. In addition to driving in runs in the first four games, Brooks made surreal play after surreal play at third base — absolutely stunning stuff that deflated and demoralized the mighty Reds, leading to a five-game series win for the Orioles. (READ MORE: Goodbye to the Greatest — RIP Vin Scully)
It is an oft-used cliché that when a player performs brilliantly, “he put on a clinic.” That characterization does not do justice to Brooks Robinson’s fielding performance in the 1970 World Series. The fact is that it wasn’t a “clinic,” because despite showing how it could be done, no other human being would have been capable of making all those plays. Instead of a clinic, Robinson’s performance deserves to be called an “exhibition,” comparable to when the world’s great art museums have an exhibit of, say, Leonardo da Vinci. It was a display of pure genius, beyond the reach of other human beings. Brooks was indeed an artist, the Mozart of third basemen.
An interesting historical footnote: As a reward for his preternatural brilliance over the years, and especially in the 1970 World Series, in 1971 Brooks became only the 12th player in major league baseball to receive a $100,000 contract. My, how the game has changed since then!
What makes the passing of Brooks Robinson particularly poignant to me (and, I suspect, to others of my generation) is that he was one of baseball’s brightest stars during what I consider to be the sport’s golden era. The late ’50s to the mid-’70s were special. Major league baseball had finally become racially integrated. Due to air travel and television contracts, it had become a truly national sport. And until the era of free agency was legally decreed in the ’70s, players were bound to one team. That wasn’t fair to the players, but fans sure liked it, because there was continuity from year to year, with some shuffling of team rosters via trades, but a very high likelihood that the home-team star would be back for another season.
That generation of players is thinning out. Players who were in their prime in the ’60s, like Brooks Robinson, are either in their 80s (with a few nonagenarians mixed in) or have passed on. Gone are Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Al Kaline, Yogi Berra, Harmon Killebrew, Ernie Banks, and others. Still with us are other stars of the ’60s, such as Sandy Koufax, Pete Rose, Bob Gibson, Yaz (Carl Yastrzemski), and Brooks’ teammates Boog Powell and Jim Palmer.
The cycles in sports mirror the cycles in life. The timing of Brooks Robinson’s passing calls attention to this fact of life. He passed during the last week of the 2023 MLB season. Future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabrera is about to play his last major league game. Next year will be the first season in the memory of any fan under about 28 years of age without Cabrera playing. But there will be a new generation of baseball fans and a new generation of star players.
Which generation of baseball players is the best? Well, “best” is highly subjective, but my favorite is the Brooks Robinson generation, as, I suspect, is the case for most fans who, like me, are senior citizens. Our most loved heroes tend to be the legends of our youth. Just as most of us baby boomers would rather listen to ’60s oldies than the musical hits of today, so we have fonder, more vivid memories of the Robinsons, Kalines, Aarons, and Mantles than of today’s baseball stars. To each generation its own!
Rest in peace, Brooks. And thank you for the glorious memories.
