ROD CAREW
Rodney "Rod" Cline Carew, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, is renowned for his hitting prowess. Carew played for the Minnesota Twins (1967-1978), throwing right-handed and batting left-handed.
Rod Carew was born to a Panamanian mother on a train in in the Panama Canal Zone. The train was racially segregated; white passengers were given the better forward cars, while non-whites, like Carew's mother, were forced to ride in the rearward cars. When she went into labor, a Jewish physician traveling on the train, Dr. Rodney Cline, delivered the baby, who was named Rodney Cline Carew in appreciation.
As a Twin, Rod Carew won the American League's Rookie of the Year award in 1967 and was an All-Star in every year but his final one, 1985. In his career, Carew won seven batting titles.
In 1972, Carew led the American League in batting, hitting .318, and remarkably, without hitting a single home run for the only time in his career. In the 1977 season, Carew batted .388, which at the time was the highest since Boston's Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941, and won the American League's Most Valuable Player award.
In 1975, Carew joined Ty Cobb as the only players to lead both the American and National Leagues in batting average for three consecutive seasons. Carew achieved the feat in 1973, 1974, and 1975.
On August 4, 1985, Carew joined an elite group of ballplayers when he got his 3,000th base hit. Coincidentally, Chicago White Sox right-hander Tom Seaver won his 300th career game on the same day. The 1985 season would be his last. After the season, Rod Carew, a free agent, received no contract offers from other teams. Carew suspected that baseball owners were deliberately colluding to keep him from playing. The suspicion was justified; on January 10, 1995, nearly a decade after his forced retirement, arbitrator Thomas Roberts ruled that the owners had indeed violated the rules of baseball's second collusion agreement, which they had previously agreed to abide by. Rod Carew was awarded damages equivalent to what he would have likely received in 1986: $782,036.
Rod Carew finished his career with 3,053 hits and a lifetime batting average of .328.
Rod Carew was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991, his first year of eligibility, the 22nd player so elected. In 1999, he ranked #61 on The Sporting News'' list of 100 Greatest Baseball Players. Rod Carew was inducted into the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum Hall of Fame.
