LEGEND BAYLOR LOSES CANCER BATTLE:
Don’s courageous cancer fight reflected toughness
Strong, tough, honest, kind. Don Baylor, who finally surrendered Monday at 68 to the bone cancer that came back to plague him in 2014, 11 years after he was first diagnosed with it, was the rare combination of all those attributes. There wasn’t a stronger man in all of baseball in the 45 years he graced the game as a premier slugger, manager and respected batting coach. Nor was there a tougher competitor, or a more honest and kinder person with the media. His toughness was defined by the fact he led the American League eight times in hit-by-pitches, with 267 all told, and never once gave the opposing pitcher any satisfaction by rubbing his wound.
Gene Michael can testify about that toughness. “This was back in the ’70s when I was with the Yankees and Donny was with the Orioles. I was playing second base instead of shortstop when the ball was hit to (Graig) Nettles at third, who bobbled it, prompting a late throw to me. Here was Baylor barreling down on me and he slid right through me! I turned around he was about three feet past the bag but the umpire called him safe. So I took after him and tagged him out, only to have Donny grab my arm like a vice. He later said he thought I was coming after him to fight him, but I never felt a grip so strong.”
“I kind of idolized Donny,” echoed Kirk Gibson, like Baylor a former MVP winner. “We kind of played similar. Honestly, he may be the toughest guy I was ever around. How he endured with what he had. Yet he was such a giver. Nobody would out-loyal Don Baylor.”
A native of Austin, Texas, Baylor played baseball and football at Stephen F. Austin high and might well have been the first African-American football player at the University of Texas had he not turned down coach Darrell Royal’s scholarship offer to pursue a career in baseball. He came up to the majors to stay in 1972 as part of the last wave of homegrown stars the Baltimore Orioles developed, as baseball’s model franchise that won eight American League pennants from 1966-83.
As he bitterly recounted, those first couple of years with Baltimore he too often fell victim to Earl Weaver’s “matchup cards” in which the O’s manager maintained a shoebox of index cards on his desk that contained the stats of all his hitters against every pitcher. (This was long before Baseball Reference!). “I’d be ready and expecting to play and look at the lineup card and my name wasn’t on it. But when I went into Earl’s office, he’d smile at me and say: ‘Sorry, Donny, the cards got you today.’”
In 1975, playing every day, Baylor had his first big season for the Orioles, batting .282 with 25 homers, but by then he had come up to his free-agent walk year and, fearing they couldn’t compete financially with the larger market clubs to retain him, they traded him to the A’s for Reggie Jackson right before Opening Day 1976.
After the ’76 season, Baylor signed as a free agent with the Angels and in 1979, led them to the AL West division title, batting .296 with a league-leading 139 RBI and 120 runs to earn the AL Most Valuable Player Award. He helped the Angels win another division title in 1982.
He then signed with the Yankees whereupon he took over Reggie’s old DH/ outfield job. In three years with the Yankees, he averaged 25 homers and 90 RBI, and quickly emerged as the clubhouse leader, conducting a “Kangaroo Court” for the first time in their history. He also made no secret of his detest for Billy Martin, which prompted Martin, in 1985, to hire the equally imposing Willie Horton as his “protector” coach.
But playing in the World Series continued to elude Baylor. That all changed in 1986 when, a week before the season opened, the Yankees traded Baylor to the Red Sox for Mike Easler and he went on to help them reach their first World Series since 1967, with 31 homers and 94 RBI as their DH. At the end of the ’87 season, the Red Sox, out of the race, traded him to the Twins where, once again, he found himself in the World Series, batting .385 with a homer and three RBI against the Cardinals. And when, after signing on with the A’s in ’88, he made it to the World Series for the third straight year, the saying around baseball was, “where Baylor, goes, the champagne flows.”
A three-time Silver Slugger, Baylor batted .260 lifetime with 338 homers and 1,276 RBI and later became one of the most respected batting coaches in the game with six different organizations, including the Mets. As the first manager of the Colorado Rockies, from 1993-98, he won NL Manager of the Year honors in 1995 when he led them to the playoffs for the first time in their brief history, and also managed the Cubs from 2000-03.
In the last couple of years, Baylor bravely and quietly endured the pain and anguish from the cancer’s return, although the hint that something was terribly wrong was when he squatted behind home plate to catch the ceremonial first pitch from Vladimir Guerrero at the Angels’ Opening Day, March 31, 2014, and his leg buckled and broke and he had to be carried from the field.
“Don passed from this earth with the same fierce dignity with which he played the game and lived his life,” his widow, Becky, said Monday in a statement Monday.
And so, too, did a whole lot of class pass from baseball.