MLB history: Forgotten stars of the current AL Central teams

We continue our series of forgotten MLB stars by looking around the AL Central.

Here’s a shocker: The negotiations for the start of the 2020 season haven’t gone any better lately, and the start of any baseball season this summer is as unclear as ever. Therefore, it’s clearly time for another in the Call to the Pen series dedicated to forgotten stars of your favorite MLB teams. Today, we will consider five lost luminaries from America’s Heartland, the AL Central.

Clint Hurdle, Royals

Most baseball fans now know CIint Hurdle as a long-time manager of two MLB teams, the Rockies and Pirates, but at this point, few likely recall he was a youthful “phenom,” so anointed by Sports Illustrated in 1978. None other than the venerable hitting coach Charlie Lau called him the best prospect he’d ever seen in Kansas City’s system.

Unfortunately, as a player, Hurdle turned out to be a bit like Billy Beane, a later can’t-miss talent, but not quite so bad as Beane overall. As a player.

In fact, Hurdle had a brief flash of greatness after his build-up. At 22, he had his arguably best season for the AL Champion Royals, a very good team (then in the AL West) featuring George Brett’s .390 season and a .326 season from Willie Wilson.

Hurdle appeared in 130 games that year, almost exclusively in right field. He hit .294 with 31 doubles and 60 RBI. In his team’s eventual loss to the Phillies in the World Series, he hit .417 in four games, stole a base, and scored a run. Unfortunately, this year was the last in which Hurdle played over 100 games.

What exactly happened is a bit mysterious. It may be the Hurdle just hit a wall in terms of how much he was impressing KC management the following year, when he appeared in only 28 games (but hit .329 and drove in 15 runs in only 89 plate appearances). After the season he was traded to the Reds, and then bounced between triple-A and MLB in that organization, as well as with the Mets and Cardinals.

It may be that what Sabr.org calls his off-field “nightlife and the fast lane” had something to do with Hurdle’s stalling out as a player. He is an admitted recovering alcoholic, and is now an advocate for addiction recovery programs.

Clint Hurdle ultimately made a bit more of a mark as a manager, finally winning the NL pennant with the 2007 Rockies. For a brief period, though, he made his money playing the game excellently in a championship season, with several multi-hit games.

A World Series title may well escape him, however, both as a player and manager.