33=60

Baseball, more than any other sport, is a game that honors its numbers.  Fans memorize the back of trading cards and recite the record books.   We can recall decades-old uniform numbers and love unique ballpark dimensions.  As kids we kept scorecards, pored over box scores every summer morning, and grabbed our calculators to extrapolate stats into season-long projections.  The game has become even more stat-heavy with the proliferation  of advanced metrics and the ease of internet research.  Today's relevant numbers, though, are 1,33, and 60.  As in, my #1 favorite player, Baltimore's #33, Eddie Murray, turns, 60 years old today. 

Number crunchers are often dismissive of Murray, calling him a classic compiler, consistently posting pretty good stats, while staying around long enough to finally reach milestones like 500 homers and 3000 hits.  I'm not sure when consistency became a bad word; I'll take Murray's Baltimore production any day.  Over the 13 years he played in Baltimore  (including his 60+ games in his brief 1996 return) Eddie's stats per 162 games included 93 runs, 31 doubles, 29 homers, 105 RBIs, and only 83 strikeouts.  Perhaps not the mammoth numbers of steroid bloat, but damn strong.  He was the 1977 Rookie of the Year, a consistent (there's that word again) MVP vote getter, and earned several Gold Gloves.    He was dangerous when it counted the most (19 career grand slams, among the all-time leaders in sacrifice flies, two homers in the Series clincher in '83).  Former O's lefty Mike Flanagan called Murray, "the best clutch hitter I saw during the decade we played together."

I'll let the sabermetricians have their say because the sum total of Eddie Murray's  career can not be measured in mere digits found at Baseball-Reference.com. For me, and countless Orioles fans my age, Steady Eddie's legend was measured in many other ways.  Like how loud we could chant "Ed-die, Ed-die, Ed-die!" from Memorial Stadium's upper deck.  Or the immense joy we felt when he answered our chants with a moon shot over the centerfield fence.  His impact was measured by how many kids imitated Eddie's low, leaned-back batting crouch during neighborhood wiffle ball games.  It was measured by the length of his sideburns and the cool poof of his afro.  It was measured by how many of his cards I could acquire for my card binder. 

Sure, I'm viewing Murray through my nostalgic, orange-colored glasses, but he represents an era when my baseball fandom took root.  He represented the Oriole Way, which in those days was not a punchline.  He anchored a line-up that, along with solid pitching and a healthy dose of Magic, capped a brilliant run of excellence with Baltimore's most recent World Series championship.  Murray was feared by opposing pitchers, respected by his teammates, and loved by (most of) the fans.    For a decade, during the latter half of which I fell in love with the game, Eddie Murray was among the baddest men in baseball.  For this, I am forever grateful.  Happy Birthday, Eddie.