In baseball, as in life, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and so Robin Yount, who retired last week after a brilliant 20-year major-league career with the Milwaukee Brewers, never received the attention he deserved. He was a rarity, a quiet hero who shunned the limelight.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like sportswriters. I doubt there ever was an angry exchange. But we so-called Boswells discovered early on that Yount never understood why people would want to talk about him. He was sincere in his belief he wasn’t special.
But he was, of course.
“He was the perfect ballplayer,” Tom Trebelhorn said Wednesday from the Cubs’ spring-training camp in Mesa, Ariz. Before joining the Cubs, Trebelhorn managed Yount and the Brewers for six years.
“All Robin wanted to do was to play,” Trebelhorn said. “It may sound corny, but he exemplified what you want any player to be on any team. No complaints. He gets banged up and doesn’t say a word. He went through major surgeries but didn’t miss many games.”
I mentioned that Yount was largely unappreciated-certainly outside of Milwaukee.
“Not by the players and the people in baseball,” Trebelhorn replied. “A true measure of an impact athlete is what his teammates say about him-not only those he performed with 15 years ago but the players he played with the last few years. And they all agree: It was great to be on the same team.”
Almost all players, at one time or another, superstar or otherwise, have an adversarial relationship with the club owner. Yount was among the few exceptions.
Said Bud Selig, the longtime Milwaukee owner:
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“I don’t think many people realize how rare it is for a player to come to a franchise, play two decades and never cause one iota of a problem. He was an athlete who typified dedication, conscientiousness and loyalty. He gave 100 percent in every game he played in. He ran out every groundball.”
Yount’s entire career was with the Brewers.
“Milwaukee was perfect for him,” Selig said. “It was a perfect marriage.”
The principal advantage, for Yount, was the absence of a yellow press where controversy is the constant target. The Milwaukee newspapers do not play sleaze.
“Nobody here ever pushed him,” said Tom Hardricourt of the Milwaukee Sentinel. “We understood he was never comfortable in the spotlight.”
Though Yount was not regarded as a good interview, he wasn’t a marshmallow. For example, last spring in Chandler, Ariz., after I pinned him against the wall, he conceded times had changed since he came up in 1974.
“There used to be a day when the World Series check was the biggest check,” Yount said. “But nowadays, it’s almost like pocket money. Obviously, the main priority is a World Series ring, and I know players still strive for that. But on the other hand ,the greatest monetary reward comes from individual statistics, and because of that, it’s sometimes hard to keep your focus on the team side of it.”
Yount was the consummate team player who did his talking on the field-3,142 hits, 13th on the all-time list. He was also a two-time winner of the American League’s Most Valuable Player award, only the third to win at two positions: as a shortstop in 1982 and a center-fielder in 1989.
A right-handed hitter with good power (251 home runs), Yount was essentially a “gap” hitter and had four seasons with 40 or more doubles. He was the first shortstop to lead the league in slugging percentage and in stolen bases in the same season. He also was the first, in one season, to hit .300, with 20 or more home runs and 100 or more runs.
A shoulder injury forced Yount into the outfield in mid-career. He holds the record for most games at two positions-1,479 at short, 1,150 games in center. He was outstanding defensively, with excellent range. He was, as some players like to say, “smooth to the ball.”
To the end, he was known as “the Kid.” This was because he broke into the big leagues at the age of 18. He was the fifth-youngest player to collect 2,500 hits. The others are all Hall-of-Famers: Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Hank Aaron and Mel Ott.
Born in Danville, Ill., Yount grew up in Woodland Hills, Calif. His older brother, Larry, is a footnote in diamond history. A right-handed pitcher, Larry was with the Houston organization and played three years in the minors, with a cumulative 19-19 won-lost record.
The Astros brought him up in 1971. In the ninth inning of a Sept. 15 game against Atlanta, manager Harry Walker summoned Larry from the bullpen. Thrilled, Larry bounded to the mound. But he hurt his shoulder on his first warmup pitch and never threw another ball in the big leagues. Robin Yount, five years younger, played in 2,856 major-league games.