BALTIMORE ORIOLE EDDIE MURRAY---EDDIE, EDDIE, EDDIE
RICK on EDDIE MURRAY
Eddie was Mr. Oriole as soon as he came on the scene in 1978. His incredible power from both sides of the plate and his piercing scowl as he got set in the batter’s box made him every pitchers worst nightmare. He was the main offensive force behind the Oriole Magic resurgence of the team in 1979. A superstar in every way who always deflected praise away from himself and never relishing the limelight. As the Orioles began to age and underperform in the mid-80s, Murray became many fans scapegoat; which hurt him deeply. The relationship was broken in 1989 when he was traded to his hometown Los Angeles Dodgers, but there was a joyous reunion in 1996 when Murray returned to Baltimore and hit his 500th career home run as an Oriole. What many didn’t know about Eddie was that he would come to the ballpark extra early and spend time with behind-the-scenes Orioles employees; completely devoid of fanfare. The rightfully entered the Baseball Hall of Fame as a Baltimore Oriole; possibly the greatest to ever don the uniform.
The really great ones don't need a whole lot of seasoning. Eddie Murray made the Opening Day roster in 1977 at the age of 21 and never looked back. He won the Rookie of the Year award, one of six Orioles who have done so. That came on the strength of a .283/.333/.470 batting line that included 29 doubles and 27 home runs. Sometimes there are ROY winners who win and it's because he was good for a rookie. Eddie was just plain good.
How often do we hear about doubles power or home run power that's supposed to develop as a player matures? Eddie came with all of that right out of the box. He had at least 20 doubles in all of his 12 full seasons as an Oriole and had 20 or more home runs in 11 of the 12 seasons. That even includes strike-shortened 1981, when he only played 99 games. He still had enough time to hit 21 doubles and 22 home runs.
From a brilliant rookie year, he went on to be one of the best hitters in the American League over the next decade. Over the next eight seasons, he had Most Valuable Player award votes each year, finishing no lower than 11th. This included a streak of five straight seasons - 1981 to 1985 - in which he finished in the top five of the voting. He was the runner-up twice. One of those years was 1983, when he finished second to teammate Cal Ripken. Man, no wonder they won the World Series.
In that five year stretch of top five MVP finishes, Eddie batted a combined .304/.390/.530. He drove in 100 runs or more in each year that wasn't cut short by a strike. He hit for power and average and got on base for good measure. That was good for a 155 OPS+. No one else in Orioles history has had a stretch like that. You know pitchers of the time knew he was good, too. They walked him intentionally 78 times over those five years, topped by an astounding 25 times in 1984.
On Baseball Reference, a player's stat lines are occasionally enhanced with bold or italics to let you know when they led their team or their league in a particular category. The career numbers have gold, bold italics when a player leads all players who ever played in MLB. Eddie has the distinction of hitting more sacrifice flies than anyone else has ever done. He hit 128 over his 21-year career, 77 of which came in an Orioles uniform. That is pretty cool.
Unfortunately, no discussion of Murray's time in Baltimore is complete without a mention of the fact that he was essentially run out of town. This happened over 25 years ago now, long before I had any kind of deep awareness of baseball. It's hard to imagine that the now-docile media contingent was ever capable of running a bad player, manager, or GM out of town, let alone a superstar. What were they doing?
Around the time of Murray's induction into Baseball's Hall of Fame in 2003, Mike Preston wrote a column in the Baltimore Sun in which he argued that Murray was run out of town by racist attitudes. He makes note of an anecdote from August 1986 in which then-owner Edward Bennett Williams proclaimed that Murray "needed to stay in better shape and produce more." Murray batted .305/.396/.463 that season and was named to the All-Star team. What might have possessed the man to say something so ridiculous, I simply couldn't say.
Preston's column also says that racial epithets were hurled at Murray by the home crowd in the mid-to-late 1980s. That's a sad stain in Baltimore sports history. It's hard to imagine something like that happening now, either. That wasn't so long ago. It was within the span of my lifetime. In some ways, we have come far.
Murray was traded to Los Angeles following the 1988 Orioles season of disaster. He was 32 at the time, and while he wasn't producing at the excellent level from when he was 25-29, he was still a good player. He played in 161 games for those cellar-dwelling O's and batted .284/.361/.474. Had to get rid of him, sure!
As it turned out, the O's might have been able to use a Hall of Fame-caliber player the next season. What if Murray had been the first baseman and Randy Milligan the designated hitter instead of Larry Sheets? We will never know.
Some years passed and an Orioles team in the playoff hunt was in need of a slugger for the stretch run. That was 1996. He was 40 by then, closing in on 500 home runs. He played in 64 games for those Orioles. That last hurrah for Baltimore saw him bat .257/.327/.439, nothing special, but enough to help. Something special did happen on September 6 at Camden Yards as Eddie hit his 500th home run.
Whatever enmity was supposedly there from some segment of Baltimore fans or media in 1988 seems to have been gone by the time of this celebration, when he joined the 500 home run club. He is one of only four players to have both 3000 hits and 500 home runs. He got 2084 of the hits and 343 of the home runs as an Oriole.
The last at-bat he ever took as an Oriole came in Game 5 of the 1996 American League Championship Series. He homered off of Andy Pettitte in that at-bat.
Like all of the top five of our greatest Orioles, Eddie won a World Series championship with the team. His runner-up MVP season was a big part of why the Orioles were in the 1983 postseason at all. He had a pair of home runs as the Orioles sealed the victory in Game 5 of the World Series.
The O's honored the 25th anniversary of that 1983 championship team on a random July night in 2008. Probably not many people came out to watch that terrible baseball team, although $5 upper reserve 1983 pricing was a nice deal. Before the game, the crowd was treated to an appearance by many of the players who spent time on that team. When Eddie came out, the crowd broke out in cheers: "Ed-die! Ed-die! Ed-die!" I never even knew he had his own cheer.
Eddie's thirteen Orioles seasons spanned parts of three decades. He finished with the second-most offensive Wins Above Replacement in Orioles history, behind only Cal. He played the fourth-most games (1884) and logged the third-most plate appearances. He's third in categories like runs scored, hits, total bases, doubles, times on base, and RBI. He trails only Cal in home runs.
Whatever happened that led to his departure, Eddie is one of the all-time baseball greats. He was enshrined in Cooperstown in 2003. Even if you never saw him play, or barely remember it, you can puff out your chest and say, "Yeah, he was an Oriole." His number 33 will never be worn again by an Oriole and his statue stands forever out beyond the bullpens at Camden Yards. He is one of ours.
----by Mark Brown of Camden Chat
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
Murray, a native of Los Angeles, CA and high school teammate of future Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith, was selected by the Baltimore Orioles in the third round of the 1973 amateur draft and had several successful seasons in the minor leagues. He debuted at the major league level on April 7, 1977 and played in 160 games for the Orioles in his first season. He won the American League Rookie of the Year award by batting .283, hitting 27 home runs and contributing 88 RBI.
With the Orioles from 1977 until 1988, Murray averaged 28 home runs and 99 RBI and was a perennial candidate for the MVP award, twice finishing second in the voting. His best season was 1983, when he hit .306/.393/.538 with 110 RBI and a career-high 33 home runs; though a spectacular season, he finished second in the MVP voting. The Orioles also appeared in the post-season twice, in 1979 and 1983, and won the World Series in 1983. He won the Gold Glove Award three consecutive times from 1982 to 1984. Murray's close-knit friendship with fellow Oriole Cal Ripken, Jr. was highly publicized in Baltimore at the time.
Murray was traded on December 4, 1988 to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Juan Bell, Brian Holton, and Ken Howell and had three successful seasons with the Dodgers, knocking in 88, 95, and 96 runs. In 1990, Murray led the Major Leagues in hitting, but failed to win the National League batting crown; that went to Willie McGee, who already had enough plate appearances to qualify for it when he was traded from the National League's St. Louis Cardinals to the American League's Oakland A's. McGee won the NL batting crown with a .335 average, but hit only .274 the rest of the season in Oakland, for a season average of .324, .006 lower than Murray's major league leading .330 average.
Prior to the 1992 season, Murray signed a two-year deal with the New York Mets. Murray was one of several acquisitions the Mets made (including Bobby Bonilla, Willie Randolph, and Bret Saberhagen) to try to regain their winning ways. However, in Murray's two years with the team they finished with 90 and 103 losses, respectively. Murray hit his 400th career home run with the Mets early in the 1992 season and finished with 16 for the season, while driving in 93 runs and hitting .265.
Despite the team's struggles in 1993, Murray hit 27 home runs to finish behind Bonilla for the team lead. Murray was one of three Mets to hit twenty or more home runs that year, with Bonilla hitting 34 and Jeff Kent hitting 20. Murray also led the team in RBI with 100. This was the last time in his career that Murray hit the 100 RBI mark.
Murray reached the 3,000-hit plateau as an Indian on June 30, 1995 at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome with a single to right field off Minnesota Twins pitcher Mike Trombley. In the 1995 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves, Murray won Game 3 with a single in the bottom of the eleventh inning off of Alejandro Peña to score Álvaro Espinoza. The hit made the series 2–1, in favor of Atlanta. The Indians traded Murray back to Baltimore on July 21, 1996 for pitcher Kent Merker.
From 1996 to 1997, Murray played for several teams, including the Cleveland Indians (1994–96), the Baltimore Orioles (1996), theAnaheim Angels (1997) and the Los Angeles Dodgers (1997). Although he no longer possessed the presence at the plate he had had in the 1980s, he was a valued and still consistent contributor for these teams. On September 6, 1996, he hit his 500th career home run—fittingly, the home run came as a member of the Orioles, and also came exactly one year to the day that Ripken had broken Lou Gehrig's streak of 2,130 consecutive games played. He retired after the 1997 season with 504 home runs; as of 2011, Mickey Mantle is the only switch-hitter who has hit more home runs (536). Murray hit a home run from both sides of the plate in 11 games; he retired tied with Chili Davis for first place in this category. This co-record has since been broken by Mark Teixeira.
Murray was the third player in history to reach 500 home runs and 3,000 hits Hank Aaron and Willie Mays were the first two.
On Sunday, July 27, 2003, Murray, along with Gary Carter, was inducted into major league baseball's Hall of Fame. More than 30,000 people heard Murray talk about how hard it was to get to the Hall of Fame. He said that he was never about one person, but about the team. He thanked the "sea of black and orange" in the crowd and then pointed to the kids farthest in the back; (more than 300 inner-city little leaguers had come from Baltimore's Northwood Baseball League) and told them that one day "they would be here too".
