Brooks Robinson had 2,848 hits, 268 home runs and a career batting average of .267. He was the American League MVP in 1964, hitting 28 homers, hitting a league-leading 118 RBIs and batting .317, all career highs. However, he is most famous for his commitment to the field.
Brooks Robinson was named an All-Star every season from 1960 to 1974. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983, his first year of eligibility, with nearly 92 percent of the vote.
In an interview with former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent for his 2008 oral history “We Wouldn’t Bet on Anything,” Robinson recalled that after the 1970 World Series, “all the writers were waiting for me to come to my locker,” but Orioles announcer Rex Barney said : “Well, don’t worry about him.” Just interview his gloves. They are much better and he is the one who does all the work.’
Robinson did not use World Series gloves the following year. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Brooks Calbert Robinson was born on May 18, 1937, in Little Rock, Ark., where his father was a firefighter and also played semipro baseball. Listened to St. Louis Cardinals and decided to become a major leaguer. Hour after hour of throwing tennis balls down the steps of his family home and catching caroms, he learned to field baseballs that come at him from all possible angles.
Signed by the Orioles organization out of high school, Robinson started in 1955 as a second baseman for their farm team in York, Pennsylvania. But he was soon moved to third base, where his amazing reactions allowed him to corral hard-hit balls.
Brooks Robinson got into a few games with the Orioles in 1955 and 1956. In the spring of 1957, Paul Richards, the team’s manager, thought he had found a flaw in Robinson’s backhand mechanics and asked George Kell, the longtime third baseman who closed his major league career with Orioles to make up for it.
But Kell noticed that Robinson didn’t miss a single backhand ball during six weeks of spring training. “He was already so good that I didn’t tell him much,” Kell recalled in a 2004 interview with The Baltimore Sun.
Robinson played in 145 games for the Orioles in 1958 (a disappointing .238), and after serving six months in the Arkansas National Guard and spending most of the 1959 season in the minor leagues, he returned to the Orioles to stay in 1960.
With Robinson at third base and future Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio and later Mark Belanger, both brilliant outfielders, next to him at shortstop for most of his career, the Orioles’ left field provided all the support a pitcher could want.
“I’ve always had great hand-eye coordination and was blessed with an instinct to be where the baseball was hit,” Robinson told Danny Peary for his book We Played the Game (1994).
“I wasn’t fast and I didn’t have great arms,” he added, “but I made up for it by getting my feet in position quickly to throw and get rid of the ball faster than anybody.”
Robinson complemented his natural talent with hard work.
He told Fay Vincent how he “worked on slow hitting, top balls or bunts.”
“I was hitting about 10 or 12 balls in a row,” he recalled. “Just come and pick one up and take another step, pick one up and throw it.”
When Robinson retired, he held the major league records for most games, putouts, assists and double plays by a third baseman, as well as the highest fielding percentage. He later was a television announcer for the Orioles.
Information about his survivors was not immediately available.
Kell, an Arkansas native, was also inducted when Robinson entered the Hall of Fame. (Robinson was selected by the baseball writers, Kell by the Veterans Committee.)
“Is Brooks the best at third? There’s no doubt about it,” Kell told The Sun in 2004.
Sparky Anderson, who managed the Reds in the 1970 World Series, found himself tormented by all the sure hits Robinson turned.
“I’m starting to see Brooks in his sleep,” Anderson told Investor’s Business Daily in October. “If I dropped this paper plate, he would pick it up in one jump and throw me out first.