30 June 2009

272 career home runs, plus one biggie

in honor of my 272nd post, i want to pay tribute to steve garvey's 272 career home run total. though not as many as the penguin, or even eric karros, it's a number i respect. funny enough, it doesn't include what was perhaps garvey's biggest home run, depicted here on a 1985 o-pee-chee sticker.
in game 4 of the 1984 nlcs, the padres were down 2 games to 1. they were leading the cubs 5-3 in the 8th inning when goose gossage gave up the tying runs. with one out in the bottom of the 9th, tony gwynn singled and garvey followed with a walk off home run off of lee smith, giving the pads a 7-5 victory. they closed out the series the following day behind more gwynn and garvey clutch hits, and garvey was voted the series mvp.

in all, garvey hit 11 postseason home runs and 2 all star game home runs to go along with the 272 regular season dingers.

if you thought this post was exciting, just wait about 7 years when post number 2599 will celebrate his regular season hit total.

2 comments:

Laurens said...

For a guy associated with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the longest time, it seems more than a little ironic that Steve Garvey's biggest home run in his professional baseball career came as a San Diego Padres' player.

Matt Runyon said...

Interesting. For some reason I thought he had a few more HRs than that.