"Toy Cannon" had his number retired yesterday

[PDittie]

The Astros on Saturday retired the number Jimmy Wynn never wanted in the first place. Funny how things sometimes work out.

"I found it hanging in my locker at Colt Stadium a few days before opening day (in 1964)," he said. "I pitched a fit. I didn't want anything to do with that number. I'd worn No. 18 during spring training. That's the number I wanted. They gave it to my roommate, Joe Morgan. But 24, I couldn't wear that one."

To players of Wynn's era, No. 24 belonged to just one player — Willie Mays. To wear it was to invite comparisons with one of the greatest who ever lived.

For a center fielder to wear it, especially a 20-year-old center fielder with nothing on his résumé except dreams, it seemed boastful. And even now Wynn, 63, is anything but boastful.

Wait, it gets better.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/sports/3241236

[PDittie]

1. A couple more posts:

John Brittain:

I’m numb.

We’ve been hearing about steroids, bigger bodies and biceps, longer home runs, Jason Giambi, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds ad nauseum. Is bigger better? Well, I thought for a change of pace, we’d take a quick look at a little guy with big time power. A player who was living proof that….

….good things come in small packages.

Baseball is a sport where change comes slowly. George Toporcer of the St. Louis Cardinals was the first position player to wear glasses (in 1921). Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. Expansion did not come until 1961. The designated hitter arrived in 1973. Relievers were not considered superstars at the pay window until 1979. Still, some prejudices persist to this day. One of those is size. Certain teams passed on Hall of Famers Phil Rizzuto and Whitey Ford because they were thought to be too small to play major league baseball.

Jimmy Wynn’s career began when he signed with the hometown Cincinnati Reds. In 1962, the National League expanded for the first time -- adding two teams. New York finally received a team to replace the departed Giants and Dodgers, who fled the “Big Apple” just a few seasons previously. The other city that received a team was in the state of Texas -- Houston. The Houston National League team was initially dubbed “The Colt 45’s.” Wynn was drafted by the Colt .45s from the Reds in November 1962, in the "first year" draft (a variation of the Rule 5 draft). Wynn’s first two seasons did not give any hint that this smallish outfielder would eventually be nicknamed: “The Toy Cannon.” Wynn, playing part time in 1963 (when he was victimized with the “hidden ball trick” by Mets 1B Frank Thomas) and 1964, did not hit a total of ten home runs in those first two seasons. Wynn also failed to hit any higher than .244. If anything, Wynn looked more like an air conditioner than cannon, as Wynn struck out at an alarming rate.

... and Tom Kirkendall:

Brattain's article points to another reason why the RCAA is particularly valuable to evaluate hitting ability across different eras. RCAA measures the two most important things in winning baseball games – that is, creating runs and avoiding making outs -- by computing the number of outs that a particular player uses in creating runs for his team. RCAA then compares that number to the amount of runs that an average player in the league would create while using an equivalent number of outs. Inasmuch as the hypothetical average player's RCAA is always zero, a player can have either a positive RCAA -- which indicates he is an above average hitter (i.e., Barry Bonds) -- or a negative RCAA, which means he is performing below average (i.e., Brad Ausmus).

Thus, RCAA measures a player's hitting ability against that of an average player each season and, as a result, a player's lifetime RCAA reflects how well that player hit in comparison to an average player during that player's career. Accordingly, Wynn's RCAA reflects how well he compared to an average hitter during his era, just as the current Stros' hitters' RCAA reflects how they measure against the average player in today's era. Inasmuch as Wynn was consistently in the top ten in the National League RCAA during a good part of his career -- which is basically the stature of current players Bags, Bidg and Berkman during their prime seasons -- the Toy Cannon remains one of the best Stros players of all-time.