Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Baseball's Bob "Hurricane" Hazle-- Part 3: Batted .556 in First Dozen Games


The first-place Milwaukee Braves swept the second-place St. Louis Cardinals on August 9-11, which went a long way towards sealing the National League pennant for the Braves.  The first two games of the series were blowouts, and Hazle had seven hits and five RBI.  He batted a torrid .556 in his first dozen games.

For the season, Hazle  batted .403 in 41 games, with seven home runs and 27 RBI.  On the next-to-the-last game of the season, he broke  a no-hit bid by Cincinnati's Johnny Klippstein with a two-out eighth inning single.

Then, he appeared in four of the seven World Series games that year, hitting just two hits for an ineffective .154 batting average.  However both of his Series hits came in the seventh and deciding game,  Hazle scored the first run in the 5-0 victory.

Despite having just 154 at bats, he finished  fourth in the 1957 Rookie of the Year voting.

After a bad start in 1958, he was traded to Detroit  After a stint in the minors, he retired in 1960.  he died in Columbia, South Carolina in 1992 at the age of 61.

Well, That Was Quite the Year for Mr. Hazle.  --CootCane

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