Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

1957. Let's get that card. If you like Gates Brown, you will LOVE Hurricane Hazle.

41 games. .403/.477/.649. Meh fielder (maybe even BAD fielder).
But uhm, .403/.477/.649

What happened to Hurricane Hazle? Hit by a pitch in the head, hurt a leg, hit by another pitch in the head, never the same, out of ball the following year.

Check out his splits!

[code:1:c9ee13bd8a]
Split G PA AB H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS
vs RHP as LHB 40 149 131 53 12 0 6 26 1 3 15 15 .405 .469 .634 1.103
vs LHP as LHB 5 6 3 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 3 0 .333 .667 1.333 2.000
[/code:1:c9ee13bd8a]

[quote:30cb425ff1="joekendall"]Check out his splits!

[code:1:30cb425ff1]
I Split G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB ROE BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+
vs RHP as LHB 40 149 131 53 12 0 6 26 1 3 15 15 .405 .469 .634 1.103 83 1 1 2 0 4 0 .427 96 188
vs LHP as LHB 5 6 3 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 3 0 .333 .667 1.333 2.000 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 .000 245 481
[/code:1:30cb425ff1][/quote:30cb425ff1]

Between the Gates Brown Rule and the Ken Smith Corollary, he'll cost $15M and have 1 15 game injury with 65 walks vs RHB.

Check:

http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/7ea99404

I had his baseball card too. Unfortunately my mother gave away my cards to a less fortunate relative (who may be more fortunate now than I am, if they sold the cards).

From the Sept 9, 1957 edition of Sports Illustrated:

A curious, erratic force plays through baseball, somewhat as the jet stream does through the upper air. (It may operate in other sports as well, but it isn't so noticeable.) When it catches a baseball player up and takes him for a ride, he starts doing all-but-unbelievable things. The most recent passenger on this lightning express is a left-handed hitter named Bob Hazle, a quiet, easy-drawling young man from Columbia, S.C. who, at the end of July, was batting .279 as an outfielder for Wichita in the American Association. Then the Milwaukee Braves called him up, and toward the end of August he had 32 base hits in 61 at bats and was carrying, like a benevolent monkey on his back, the highest batting average in the majors: .525.

Nowadays, little boys, self-conscious and solemn, offer him their most treasured comic books to be autographed, with fountain pens that go dry in mid-signature. His teammates call him Hurricane, in tribute to his power with a bat and perhaps in memory of the Hurricane Hazel that ripped up the Atlantic Seaboard a few seasons ago. For Bob Hazle it is a sudden and startling transition. Last winter he was selling real estate in Columbia, resting a troublesome knee injury, and wondering if he should give up baseball. He decided to try once more with Wichita this spring, and didn't start hitting until late in June.

"It's fantastic," he said, over a drugstore breakfast one day last week. He was talking about his whole situation, but mostly about the performance he has been turning in with his bat. "I'm just lucky. I'm just swinging, that's all. I know I can't keep going the way I have been. I don't expect to. I just hope I can keep hitting." Dressed in loafers, a sports jacket and the kind of shirt that doesn't need a tie, Hazle looks more like a knowledgeable and well-behaved minor league fan than a sensational major league hitter.

Now 26, Hazle has been in the minors since 1950, with two years out for military service. He has played for Columbia, Tulsa, Indianapolis, Nashville, and Wichita. Cincinnati called him up late in 1955 and he played six games with the Reds before the season ended. Last year Cincinnati, making a trade with Milwaukee, threw him in more or less for good measure. What very good measure it was didn't appear until recently, when Hazle became another of the many blessings that Milwaukee loves to count.

He has a wife back in Columbia, but she keeps close to home with their 3�-year-old son and has never seen her husband play with the Braves. She hopes to, though, whether Hazle continues to ride his .500-plus jet stream or drops back to rejoin the merely mortal.

Yeah, I don't think 58 was gonna be a repeat, but it's possible he was making some kind of 26-27 y.o. leap at the same time as he was hitting only opposite handed pitching, and having some kind of random bump.

This card would be like mashing the Gates Brown card with the Ken Smith card, then flipping it from lefty to righty. 15 game injury, 1 INJ (as Ken Smith and Gates Brown have), where would you price it... I'm thinking about $8M since he can't play a lick of field. The range factor in the field is insanely low.