On May 21st, 1987, 24-year-old Gene Larkin played in his first Major League game.

I have mentioned here before that I was lucky enough to be at Game 7 of the 1991 World Series where Jack Morris pitched 10 scoreless innings for the Minnesota Twins vs. the Atlanta Braves. The game and the series was won in the 10th inning when Gene Larkin drove in Dan Gladden with a blooper over the pulled-in Atlanta outfielders.

Larkin played his entire 7-year career for the Twins (1987-1993). He played in both the 1987 and 1991 World Series, winning two rings.

Yesterday, I highlighted the first career victory of a Baseball Legend, Roger Clemens. Today I am highlighting the first game of a completely different kind of player. The kind of player that ultimately, I think, determines the success and failure of a team.

I have mentioned here before that I regularly listen to a podcast called Effectively Wild. It is a great podcast if you are a baseball fan. I highly recommend it. My one beef with Effectively Wild though is that I feel at times that their obsession with modern stats like WAR, BABIP, wOBA, etc. quite often misses the point altogether.

Baseball is team sport. The point of the whole things is to win games and ultimately win the World Series. This is why the most important players on the team and field are often players like Gene Larkin, a lifetime .266 hitter with a negative WAR.

Looking at his stats at Baseball Reference his only black ink (a bold-faced stat that signifies that he led the league in a category) is in one category one season, being Hit by a Pitch (HBP). In 1988, Switch-Hitting Larkin got to first by being hit 15 times. I attribute this high number of HBP that year to the fact that in the 1987 World Series run Don Baylor was a teammate of Larkins, and Baylor led the league in HBP 8 times in his career. Obviously Larkin had picked up some tips, from Baylor.

A game, a series, or a season is not merely the accumulation of stats. It is thousands of discreet measurable and immeasurable/intangible things that players do before and during a game, on the field and off the field. It is exactly like life: a lot of luck, work, and mystery that has the capacity of continuously surprise.