Although he never won a home run or runs batted in title, there is little else that George Brett did not accomplish for the Kansas City Royals on his way to the Hall of Fame. George Brett won three batting titles, becoming the only man to ever win one in three different decades. George Brett was the MVP of the American League in 1980, when he flirted with hitting .400. George Brett won a World Series in 1985 and in the post-season hit some of the biggest home runs of his life. A thirteen-time All-Star, George Brett was perhaps the most clutch player of his era, a man so intent on winning that he was quoted as saying, “If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out!”
Born in Glen Dale, West Virginia in 1953, George Brett came from a family that also produced a major league pitcher, his late brother Ken. Two of Brett’s brothers also played minor league ball. George Brett was nothing spectacular in the lower leagues, batting .281 in three seasons and leading the California League in errors at third base in one of them. He was called up to the Royals in 1973, but hit just .125 in forty at-bats. In 1974, at the age of 21, Brett hit .282, but managed only a pair of homers. It was not until the next year that he began to blossom, as he took the advice of legendary hitting instructor Charlie Lau and began spraying the ball to all fields with his left-handed swing.
He hit .308 in 1975, the first of eleven major league seasons that would see him eclipse the .300 plateau. Brett also knocked in 88 runs, and was hitting for more power, with 35 doubles and 13 triples. Kansas City was building a strong team around Brett, and he would become the cornerstone of the franchise, anchoring them for years to come. The Royals won the American League West in 1976, with Brett batting .333, but lost the first of three straight American league Championship Series to the Yankees, despite George hitting .444 with a homer. Brett’s .333 average gave him the batting title that year, but in bizarre fashion. The race for the crown was between Brett, teammate Hal McRae, and Rod Carew. It was so tight that it literally came down to the last at-bat. Kansas City was playing the Twins, and when Brett hit a ball to left that outfielder Steve Brye misplayed into an inside-the-park-homerun, Brett won the batting crown over McRae at .332 and Carew at .331. McRae accused Brye of purposely letting Brett’s ball fall so a white man could win the title; George wisely steered clear of the controversy.
In the 1977 ALCS, Brett hit .300 but the Royals lost to their nemesis, the Yanks, in five games. Brett smashed three homers against the Yanks and Catfish Hunter in Game Three of the 1978 showdown between the two clubs, yet the Royals still lost the game, 6-5 on a Thurman Munson homer, and the series three games to one. Brett had the first of his four one hundred RBI campaigns in 1979, and in 1980 he batted a lofty .390, hitting over .400 as late as September 19th. He played in just 117 games that season, as he battled a bruised heel, tendonitis, torn ligaments, and a sore wrist, but still knocked in 118 runs! His .390 standard was baseball’s highest since Ted Williams’ batted .401 in 1941; for good measure Brett added a thirty game hitting streak into the mix. In the ALCS the Royals finally broke through against the Yanks, sweeping them in three games, the last one clinched by a Brett upper deck home run off of closer Goose Gossage. The World Series came, with Brett saddled with the world’s most famous case of hemorrhoids, and the Phillies burst the Royals’ bubble in six games, with Brett batting .375. In November, George was named the AL’s MVP by a large margin.
Brett went through a period in the middle of his career where he missed big chunks of the season with injuries. He and the Yankees drew national attention in 1983, when in an August contest at Yankee Stadium Brett belted yet another upper deck blast off Gossage to put the Royals ahead 5-4 in the top of the ninth. But when New York third baseman Graig Nettles told Billy Martin to appeal the hit because of pine tar being too far up the handle of George’s bat, the umpires ruled him out and the game apparently went to the Yanks. Brett had an unbelievable nutty, having to be restrained from going after the umpire, and the Royals appealed the ruling. The American League president reversed the decision, and the “Pine Tar Game” was later completed from the point of Brett’s homer; the Royals won the game.
Brett and Kansas City finally won a World Series in 1985, benefiting from a missed call at first base in the ninth inning of Game Six by umpire Don Denkinger that kept a rally alive and winning Game Seven in a rout over the shocked Cardinals. Brett, who had hit .348 with three homers against the Blue Jays to lead Kansas City into the Fall Classic, hit .370 once he got there. Brett would not play in another post-season game after 1985, but in the 43 games he did play in with everything on the line, he batted .337 with ten home runs. Brett even improved his defense at third, his only weakness, to the point where he was awarded a Gold Glove in ’85.
George Brett won the 1990 batting title by a couple of points over Rickey Henderson to give him one in three different decades. On September 30th, 1992 George rapped out his 3,000th base hit. The following May he clobbered his 300th home run, having hit thirty in a season just once. That August he stole his 200th base to join Willie Mays and Hank Aaron as the only members of the 3,000 hit-300 homer-200 stolen base fraternity. Brett retired in 1993 at the age of forty, singling in his final at-bat. The Hall of Fame beckoned to Brett, and he was elected in 1999 on the first ballot, gaining an amazing 98% of the eligible votes.
The star pupil of Charlie Lau, who had passed away in 1984 at the age of fifty, George Brett wound up with a lifetime .305 average and 317 home runs. No player in history can claim this on his resume except for George Brett- 3,000 hits, 300 home runs, 600 doubles, 100 triples, 1,500 RBI and 200 stolen bases. Jim Frey, who managed Brett during his torrid 1980 season when he hovered near .400, gave him this bit of praise once. “George Brett could get good wood on an aspirin.”
