Motored out to Wrigley Field Wednesday to offer encouraging words to manager Jim Riggleman, the Cubs having lost seven of their last eight games, and at the end of a long and exciting afternoon I wound up in the visiting team’s dressing room waiting for Mike Benjamin, previously an obscure utility infielder with the San Francisco Giants.
“I’ve been around some great hitters,” said Dusty Baker, the Giants’ manager. “But I’ve never seen anybody do that before.”
Neither has anyone else.
Benjamin, a career .186 hitter going into the season, banged out six hits in seven trips against the Cubs. He is the first San Francisco player in 30 years with a six-hit game. But that’s only the prelude to the story.
In his last three games, Benjamin has had 14 hits. No one–not Stan Musial, Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Hank Aaron, et al–ever had 14 hits in three successive games. He was 4-for-5 Sunday, rested Monday, an open date; 4-for-5 against the Cubs Tuesday night; and 6-for-7 Wednesday. “I’m not going to pinch myself for another three months,” Benjamin said. “It hasn’t sunk in yet.”
When an interviewer told him he didn’t seem to be excited, Benjamin concurred.
“That’s what my wife says,” Benjamin revealed. “She’s always yelling at me, `You never react. You never show much emotion.’ “
Before Wednesday there hasn’t been much need. The 29-year-old Benjamin is in his sixth year with the Giants. He has never had more than 106 at-bats in any season. His career high was .258 last year–16 hits in 62 at-bats, only two more hits than in his record three-game outburst. In the three seasons before that with the Giants, all partial, he never had more than three hits.
A slick-fielding shortstop, Benjamin was rushed in to fill a gap due to injuries. In the four games he has since started, he is 15-for-23, a .650 pace; for the season, overall, .441. He is a slender right-handed pull hitter and has been getting good pitches because he bats in the No. 2 spot, ahead of the dangerous Bobby Bonds.
Benjamin was retired only once Wednesday, in the first inning when Kevin Foster got him on a routine fly to right. He delivered his first hit in the second, a line single to left; beat out a groundball to deep short in the fourth; singled to left in seventh, doubled off the left-field wall in the ninth, singled to left in the 11th and then lifted the Giants to a 4-3 victory with an RBI single, also to left, in the 13th.
“The guys were just shaking their heads on the bench,” Baker said. “They couldn’t believe it.”
Turning serious, Baker observed: “That’s the best streak of hitting I’ve ever seen over a three-day period.”
Benjamin soared through the record book. His seventh-inning single was the 12th in the sequence, a three-game accomplishment previously equaled by four players, the last of them Pittsburgh’s Rennie Stennett, who in a nine-inning game against the Cubs once went 7-for-7. No. 13 tied the major-league record set last year by Tim Salmon of the California Angels.
More Top Picks Best Balmuda Kettles
It was a dazzling display and is further evidence that a professional player, regardless of his history, has heroic capabilities. Benjamin, for example, batted .123 in 1991, the fourth lowest average in diamond history for a non-pitcher with 100 or more at-bats.
Pressed by post-game interviewers, Benjamin several times was asked if the streak or his 13th-inning single provided the biggest thrill. “Not the game-winning RBI,” replied Benjamin, the good trooper. “The biggest thrill was just winning the game.”
As I was walking back to the press box, I encountered Paul Runge, the veteran umpire who worked first base.
“He’s a great guy,” Runge said of Benjamin. “He never complains. He just sits on the bench until someone says, `Get in there.’ And he says `Thank you,’ and gives you 150 percent.’ “
Whatever, the Cubs now have lost eight of their last nine. But Riggleman, though disappointed, is not despondent. Better days, I am sure, are ahead. Maybe even Wednesday–if Benjamin takes an 0-for-4 collar.
It’s an unpredictable game.