The 50-100 club? Davis could have done it

“Once you can’t hit any more home runs or strike out any more batters, believe me: They forget about you.”

Eric Davis was speaking with members of the University of Northern Colorado baseball team after a charity event last month in Greeley, Colorado.

After addressing a few hundred people as part of the annual program, which has featured All-Star and Hall of Famers, managers and team officials since its inception in 1989, the former outfielder The 59-year-old was sharing with UNC players some of what he learned during a 21-year career in professional baseball, including 17 seasons in the Major Leagues.

Davis was by no means suggesting that pursuing a baseball career was a bad thing, or not worth the effort. On the contrary: he was warning young people about the dangers of allowing others to dictate their legacies.

“Life is about chapters,” he told them. “How many of you played Little League? That chapter is over. In high school? That chapter is over. This is your chapter now. You are responsible for what you are going to write.”

Davis knows something about chapters. He wrote many, and had to turn the page after many bouts of adversity, from injuries that stole much of what could have turned out to be one of the greatest careers in baseball history, to a life-threatening illness while he was still playing.

Through all of those passages, Davis learned something: You can’t let other people define the word success for you.

“Those are things for you,” Davis said after the event, responding to a question about what might have happened had he stayed healthy throughout his MLB career.

“People are fixated on wailing,” he continued. “If you say, ‘Man, you didn’t end up like Willie Mays,’ that’s up to you. That’s none of my business”.

Davis did not arbitrarily mention Mays’s name.

When the Reds took him in the eighth round of the draft out of Los Angeles Fremont High School in 1980, Davis was gifted with a number of athletic attributes rarely seen even in five-tool players. His combination of power and speed was astounding and comparisons of him to Mays quickly became commonplace.

That’s a lot of pressure for a young player trying to carve out his own path. How does someone in that position manage to handle all of that?

“You don’t,” Davis said. “It’s disrespectful to Willie. And I said that on the radio. I always thought it was disrespectful to Willie. I was just a baby.”

Davis’ production after he turned pro only served to add fuel to the comparisons. In 430 minor league games between 1980 and 1985, he had a .907 OPS with 78 home runs and 213 stolen bases, overcoming a slow start to leave everyone in the Reds organization in awe of his incredible abilities.

Although he made his Major League debut in 1984, it wasn’t until 1986 that Davis became an everyday player for Cincinnati. And he then he started doing things that people who had spent his whole life in the game had never seen before.

“I was looking at some videos of Hank Aaron in his early days the other day,” Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench said in 1987. “Eric has the same strength, the ability to create things at the last second with his bat”.

“He was the complete package,” noted Davis’ teammate and mentor Dave Parker, “there was no one in any league to match Eric Davis.”

Davis’s first pilot, Pete Rose, described it succinctly and succinctly:

“He can do whatever he wants dressed in a baseball uniform,” said the hit king.

There have been 40 players in MLB history who have hit 30 or more home runs and stolen 30 or more bases in the same season. There are four members of the 40-40 club: Cuban José Canseco (1988), Barry Bonds (1996), Alex Rodríguez (1998) and Dominican Alfonso Soriano (2006).

No one has opened the club 50-50. But if anyone was on his way to achieving such an unprecedented feat, it was Davis. Had it not been for injuries, “Red Eric” could well have become the first player in Major League history to hit 50 or more home runs and steal 50 or more bases in the same season.

In a stretch of 162 games from June 18, 1986 to July 10, 1987, Davis batted .307/.405/.629 with 49 home runs and 93 stolen bases. If we tweak the dates a bit, from June 8, 1986, to June 27, 1987, Davis hit 46 homers and swindled 99 bases. He is the only player in MLB history to post those numbers over a 162-game span. A mixture of the two periods is equivalent to 49 stakes and 99 swindles.

The 50-50 club? How about the 50-100.

“I changed the dynamic of how I was seen,” Davis said. “Because Bonds and Griffey and those guys, they didn’t do what I did.”

Davis is right. Not to mention the 50-50 club — even if we were to take every stretch of 162 games in Bonds’ career in which he hit at least 40 home runs and stole at least 40 bases, his highest home run total was 51, but his stolen base figure was 44. Griffey never swindled more than 30 bases in any stretch of 162 games.

In fact, Bonds, the best position player in the ’90s in terms of WAR according to Baseball Reference (80.2) before rewriting the record books earlier this century, could have adopted a lot of his style from Davis.

“I was the one who bought Barry his earring,” Davis said. “The diamond with a hanging cross, is what I used. Everything he did is because he was imitating me. The high heels, all that.”

Davis wasn’t trying to brag. He simply wanted to highlight it as a fact. He knows that he didn’t go on to become one of the greatest players of all time. But for a period of time, he might have been the best and most complete position player in all of baseball.

We’ve mentioned Bonds and Griffey, the best sluggers of their era. But to truly understand what Davis did from 1986-87, we’ll have to look at another legendary player from his era: Rickey Henderson.

The all-time stolen base leader set a record with 130 steals in 1982, and his 1,406 career steals easily made him the greatest base stealer in the history of the game. But to put some more context around Davis’ 99 steals from June 1986 to June 1987, consider that Henderson never stole more than 93 in any 162-game stretch from 1986-87.

Davis was on his way to greatness. He was 25 years old and racking up numbers never seen before. For a moment, “Eric the Red” was a combination of Aaron and Henderson as a player.

Then everything started to fall apart.

On September 4, 1987, Davis injured his ribs crashing into the brick wall on the outfield at Wrigley Field trying to make a catch. It was just one of several examples of his terrific defense in center field, earning him three Gold Gloves. But what was wonderful about his performance was that he was mired in bitterness, with the ailment costing him 17 of the last 27 games in the Bell.

Davis’s hitting was so disappointing when he returned to the lineup wearing a vest to protect his ribs, that as a result, he ended up with “only” 37 homers and 50 steals in 129 games. Still, he posted a 7.9 bWAR and finished ninth in the NL MVP voting.

Later, Davis never played more than 135 games in a season, nor did he manage to play at least 100 games in seven of his last 13 major league seasons. Whether it was hamstring, wrist, knee, shoulder or other ailments, Davis just couldn’t stay on the field. He missed the entire 1995 season due to serious neck discomfort.

In 1996, Davis was recognized as Comeback Player of the Year after posting a .917 OPS with 26 homers and 23 stolen bases during his second stint with the Reds — he signed as a free agent with the Dodgers before the 1992 season, then was traded to the Tigers in mid-1993.

Injuries had become a frustrating issue in Davis’ career up to that point, but in 1997, it wasn’t an ailment that kept him off the field. He was a cancer.

After signing with the Orioles and getting off to a great start at the plate, Davis was diagnosed with colon cancer on May 25. He had a tumor the size of a baseball removed and within four months he was back in the Baltimore lineup.

Davis returned to action despite still undergoing chemotherapy treatments, helping the Orioles win the AL East and reach the AL Championship Series. He then had a strong season in 1998 at age 36, leading Baltimore with a .970 OPS to go along with 28 homers in 131 games.

Despite incredible comebacks, injuries continued unabated, and Davis appeared in just 224 games with the Cardinals and Giants in the final three seasons of his career.

Davis is one of just 16 players in MLB history to hit at least 250 home runs (282) and have at least 300 steals (349). But the “what if” element always forces us to wonder if he would have been in a class apart if he hadn’t been plagued by injuries during his career.

But that question is for the fans. Not for him.

“I know what the reality is,” Davis declared of his spectacular run in the late 1980s. “My contemporaries know it. But I establish what is for me. When we talk about awards and how they see me, you can ask others. I don’t watch myself. I don’t write columns about what I did. I don’t judge myself.”

When speaking to the players at the University of Northern Colorado, Davis didn’t mention injuries. He didn’t talk about his battle with cancer. He didn’t point out the “what ifs” that overshadow his major league career.

What he did emphasize was the definition of “success”.

“Find out what success means to you alone,” Davis said. “Own your own moment. Don’t let someone else do it.”

Davis was the owner of his moment. It was for a very short time, but it was impressive. A long time ago he stopped hitting huge home runs and stealing bases with incredible speed.

But we haven’t forgotten the player who could have been The 50-100 Man.

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The 50-100 club? Davis could have done it