Five Swings = Five Home Runs = Mr. August
Reggie Jackson might be Mr. October and Derek Jeter is Mr. November. But Lloyd McClendon receives my vote for Mr. August.
1988 Topps #172 RC
Now before you "sheesh" me... hear me out. Back in the summer of 1971, Legendary Lloyd hit five home runs on five pitches during the Little League World Series. He was intentionally walked the other five times he entered the batter's box.
That year, his little league team from Gary, Indiana made it into the championship game where they faced off against Tainan City of Taiwan. McClendon launched a home run on the first pitch he saw, which led to him being intentionally walked his final four plate appearances.
Taiwan which dominated the Little League World Series during the 70's ended up winning the game in extra innings by the score of 12-3.
Since then there have been plenty of former Little League World Series alumni to end up playing professional sports: Chris Drury, Jason Varitek, Gary Sheffield, Pierre Turgeon, Matt Cassel, and Carney Lansford.
But none of the had an August quite like Legendary Lloyd.
On a side note... congratulations to the the kids from Chula Vista, California and Tokyo, Japan! They put on one heck of a championship game.
Happy Sunday and sayonara!
6 comments:
Sometimes I just think there is something fundamentally wrong with intentionally walking a batter every time he comes to the plate.
That's quite the performance, I was unaware of his LLWS background.
Never knew that about Lloyd. Pretty cool. And something to remember him by, besides the weird 2006 Topps card in which he's identified as Pete Mackanin (or vice versa, I forget which).
I'm sure Lloyd agrees with you. I don't think he was happy about it.
Never heard about this either... until I read about it in last month's SI for Kids.
Just looked it up on Google. He's pictured on card #287 as Mr. Mackanin. Shame it wasn't corrected. I love variation cards.
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