June 30, 1995, 30 years ago today: Eddie Murray of the Cleveland Indians becomes only the second switch-hitter in baseball history to reach 3,000 hits when he singles in the sixth inning of a 4-1 win over the Minnesota Twins. Murray joined Pete Rose, who to this day is the career hits leader with 4,256. Murray, who spent most of his career as a Baltimore Oriole, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2003 in his first year of eligibility. The Hall is something that now may be a possibility for Rose (who passed away nine months ago today).
Murray was aptly nicknamed “Steady Eddie.” He knocked in 996 runs during the 1980s, the most RBI by anybody that decade. Murray never won a Most Valuable Player award, but he finished second twice and placed in the top six every season from 1980-85. Murray’s best shot was in 1983, when he was runner-up with a .306 average, 33 homers and 111 runs batted in. The guy who edged him out? Teammate Cal Ripken Jr., who with Murray led Baltimore to the World Series title.
But switch-hitting is where Murray will always be in rarified air. Murray would hit his 500th career home run in September, 1996, and to this day he’s the only switch-hitter in history to collect 3,000 hits and slug 500 homers. His 504 career round-trippers are second only in that category to Yankees great Mickey Mantle’s 536, and his 1,917 career RBI are a record for a switch-hitter. Murray batted .292 in his career as a lefty (while hitting 365 of his homers) and .276 as a righty.
Murray hit a home run from each side of the plate in the same game 11 times in his career—tying him for a major league record that his since been broken by Mark Texeira, Nick Swisher and Carlos Beltran. If there was a Mt. Rushmore for switch-hitters, it would include Murray, Mantle, Rose and Hall of Famer Chipper Jones (the only player with a .300 career average both righthanded and lefthanded).
The most celebrated switch-hitter in baseball this season is Cal Raleigh of the Seattle Mariners. Raleigh has not only become the fastest player to reach 30 home runs since the height of the steroid era in 2001 (75 games), his 32 homers are a major league record for a switch-hitter over the first half of the season. Raleigh is two homers short of his career-high for a season, set last year. One cool footnote of this run: in May, the “Big Dumper” became the first catcher ever to homer from both sides of the plate in the same game in the 113-year history of Boston’s Fenway Park.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
