Baseball Remembers: Howard Easterling

Picture in your mind a really good baseball player. Not a big guy at all, under 6 feet tall and less than 180 pounds, but he’s got a bit of pop anyway. Gap power. Let’s say he’s a switch-hitter who plays third base and hits for high averages. A solid defender, too.

You have the picture? Maybe someone like Bill Mueller. Remember him? I mean, he’s sort of hard to forget given this highlight:

Mueller played for 11 years in the major leagues, won a batting title, once hit grand slams from each side of the plate in the same game, and finished as high as 12th in MVP voting one season, but he was never a star. He was a solid player who never made an All-Star team, batted .291 with a 109 OPS+, averaged about 3.2 WAR per season, and rode off into the sunset with a World Series ring and some great memories. He’s not the sort of guy who gets a ton of attention.