Presented by IMAGE 360.
This Day In Sports…September 16, 1955:
The birthday of a Milwaukee baseball icon. Robin Yount, the No. 3 overall pick in the 1973 draft, became the youngest player in the majors the following year when he was named the Brewers’ starting shortstop at the age of 18. Yount had logged almost two full seasons as a regular before he turned 20 and set a new big league record with his 242nd game as a teenager late in the 1975 season, breaking the legendary Mel Ott’s longstanding mark.
Yount’s career began modestly, with good seasons interspersed with injury problems, unhappiness with baseball and even retirement thoughts. He walked out of spring training in 1978 and claimed he was considering a career in professional golf. But Yount’s father talked him into returning to the Brewers and forging ahead with baseball early that season. Yount had put all that behind him when he produced a breakout year in 1980 with 23 home runs and 87 runs batted in.
Yount then led Milwaukee to its first American League pennant with an MVP season in 1982, batting .331 with 210 hits, 29 homers and 114 RBI. In the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Yount became the first player in history with two four-hit games in the Fall Classic. The Cardinals won the Series despite Yount hitting .414. When a shoulder injury clipped his skills at shortstop, he moved to the Brewers outfield in 1985—and in 1989 he captured a second MVP honor as an outfielder, batting hit .318 with 21 homers and 103 RBI.
Ironically, Yount’s 1,000th, 2,000th and 3,000th career hits all came against the Cleveland Indians. His 2,000th came in versus Cleveland at County Stadium in 1986, as Yount was in the midst of racking up more hits—1,731—than any other player in the 1980s. A week ago was the 33rd anniversary of Yount notching his 3,000th career hit against the Indians, again before the home fans, as he became the third-youngest player ever to reach that milestone (he was a week short of his 37th birthday). Yount played his entire 20-year career with the Brewers and was a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 1999. Robin Yount…70 years old today.
(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.)
