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Biography
other personsInfobox MLB player|name=Lonnie Smith| image = Lonniesmith1983.jpg|position= Left fielder |bats=Right|throws=Right|birth_date=Birth date and age|1955|12|22|birth_place= Chicago, Illinois |debutdate=September 2|debutyear=1978|debutteam=Philadelphia Phillies|finaldate=August 10|finalyear=1994|finalteam=Baltimore Orioles|stat1label= Batting average |stat1value=.288|stat2label= Home run s|stat2value=98|stat3label= Runs batted in |stat3value=533|stat4label= Stolen base s|stat4value=370|teams=
Major League Baseball All-Star Game|All-Star selection ( 1982 Major League Baseball All-Star Game|1982 )
3× World Series champion (wsy|1980, wsy|1982, wsy|1985)
1989 NL Comeback Player of the Year
Lonnie Smith (born December 22, 1955 in Chicago, Illinois ) is a former Major League Baseball outfielder . He made his debut for the Philadelphia Phillies on September 2, 1978 and later played for the St. Louis Cardinals , Kansas City Royals , Atlanta Braves , Pittsburgh Pirates , and Baltimore Orioles . He overcame bouts with drug abuse to become one of the top stolen base|base-stealer s in baseball during the decade of the 1980s(7th). http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/52531 Who had the most stolen bases during the 1980s? | Answerbag.com He played on five pennant-winning teams, three of which won the World Series .
Philadelphia Phillies
After brief trials with the Phillies in 1978 and 1979, Smith broke into the team's lineup in By|1980, batting .339 in 100 games. The Phillies won the National League pennant and defeated the Kansas City Royals in the 1980 World Series|World Series . Smith's performance was strong enough for him to finish third in the Rookie of the Year (award)|Rookie of the Year balloting following the season. He continued to play well in the strike-shortened By|1981 season, hitting .324.
St. Louis Cardinals
He was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in November 1981.cite news |title=Lonnie Smith to Card, Diaz to Phils in 3-team deal |author= |newspaper=St. Petersburg Times |date=1981-11-20 |url= http://news.google.com/newspapers? id=KPYNAAAAIBAJ& sjid=P3sDAAAAIBAJ& pg=6903,3447922& dq=lonnie+smith& hl=en|page=6C|accessdate=2010-01-05Dead link|date=October 2010|bot=H3llBot Smith continued to hit well in By|1982, and to have a good on-base percentage . In fact, 1982 was a high-water year for Smith in several different ways: Smith was in the MLB All-Star Game for the only time in his career in 1982. He had a batting average of .307, and on-base percentage of .381. He led the National League with 120 runs scored , which was the only time that he scored 100+ runs in a season during his baseball career. Smith also set career highs in 1982 with 592 at-bats, 182 hits, 35 double (baseball)|double s, and 257 total bases during the regular season. He also ranked second in the National league with a career-high 68 stolen base s on the basepaths, but he was also caught stealing a career-high 26 times, since the Cardinals' manager had ordered his fastest players to attempt to steal bases whenever possible as part of his strategy for winning.
All of the above pushed Smith all the way up to second place in voting for the regular-season National League Most Valuable Player for 1982. That season, the outfielder Dale Murphy of the Atlanta Braves won the National League MVP award, tying for the lead in runs batted in and walloping 36 home run s.
Smith batted a healthy .321 during the 1982 World Series , and he helped the Cardinals to defeat the Milwaukee Brewers ("Harvey's Wallbangers"), four games to three.
Smith continued to play well during By|1983, batting .321 (which placed him second in the National League only to Bill Madlock 's .323), but in just 130 games, to again draw some MVP votes. However, this baseball season was struck with his first bout with illicit drug abuse, and that sidelined him for a month at mid-season - though nobody but Smith knew the real reason at the time.cite news|url= http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/20/sports/the-comeback-of-lonnie-smith.html? scp=2& sq=lonnie%20smith%20%20drugs& st=cse|title=The Comeback Of Lonnie Smith|last=Falkner|first=David|date=20 July 1989|work= The New York Times |accessdate=23 January 2010
Smith returned to the Cardinals after his time on the bench in 1983, and he remained with them through the end of the By|1984 baseball season.
Kansas City Royals
Smith was traded to the Royals in exchange for outfielder John Morris (outfielder)|John Morris on May 17, 1985. The Royals were able to fill their left field spot with Smith; they had lacked an everyday player since the departure of Amos Otis two years earlier. Smith's past met his present following the regular season, when he hit .333 in the 1985 World Series to lead the Royals to a seven-game upset of the favored Cardinals. Smith went on to have his best season in three years in By|1986, but saw his playing time reduced during the By|1987 season.
Atlanta Braves
In July 1987, Smith told the Kansas City Times that under his agreement with the Commissioner of baseball he was supposed to be tested six to eight times per-year but had not been tested so far during 1987. More so, he strongly disagreed with Commissioner Ueberroth that professional baseball was free from illicit drugs .cite news |title=Smith blast puts holes in baseball's alleged anti-drug abuse campaign |author= |newspaper=Lewiston (Maine) Daily Sun |date=1987-07-29|page=21|url= http://news.google.com/newspapers? id=_l4gAAAAIBAJ& sjid=YGUFAAAAIBAJ& pg=3373,5161863& dq=ball+park+old+orchard+beach+maine& hl=en|accessdate=2009-01-05 Following the 1987 season, Smith had trouble finding a new team to play with, and he came to think that the Royals General Manager, John Schuerholz , had blackball ed him from the other baseball teams.
By his own account, Smith was Mood disorder|depressed and also addicted to cocaine when he considered murder ing Schuerholz, and had even purchased a pistol for that purpose. However, Smith then had second thoughts about committing such a serious crime, and he dropped that idea entirely.cite news|title=Battle Scars|last=Babb|first=Kent|pages=C1|date=5 November 2005|work= The State (newspaper)|The State |accessdate=23 January 2010
During March of By|1988, the Atlanta Braves team offered Smith a contract to play there. During Spring Training, he made it to the team's 25-man roster, but he batted just .237 in limited playing time that season. However, in 1989 in baseball|1989 , he cracked the starting line-up for the Braves' outfield, and he went on to accomplish one of his best baseball seasons, ever. During that season, Smith had a batting average of .315, and also had a career-high total of 21 home run s. Smith also led the National League with a .415 on-base percentage . Smith finished 11th in the voting of Major League Baseball MVP Award|N.L. Most Valuable Player , and he was awarded the MLB Comeback Player of the Year Award .
Smith continued to be a regular outfielder for the Braves during the next two baseball seasons, batting .305 in By|1990 and .275 in By|1991. Smith's play in 1991 helped the Braves move from last place in the National League West in 1990 up to winning the National League pennant 1991, and playing in the World Series for the first time since 1958, back when the Braves had Milwaukee, Wisconsin as their home city.
1991 World Series
Smith committed a baserunning blunder very late in the Seventh Game of the 1991 World Series , playing against the Minnesota Twins . Smith was on first base with no men out in the eighth inning of this scoreless (0 - 0) game. Then, the Braves' batter Terry Pendleton stuck a line-drive double (baseball)|double to left field . It appeared that Smith should have been able to score following this hit, but as he was rounding second base , he stumbled momentarily, and he stopped at third base . Smith later stated that he had lost sight of the baseball against the ceiling of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome|Minnesota Metrodome stadium , but replays from the TV coverage of the game showed that the Twins' second baseman Chuck Knoblauch had deceived Smith by pretending to receive the baseball thrown in from the outfielder .cite news|title=Smith admins baserunning rrror|url= http://news.google.com/newspapers? id=TLEeAAAAIBAJ& sjid=8M4EAAAAIBAJ& pg=1547,5014486|pages=D1|date=30 October 1991|work= Spartanburg Herald Journal |accessdate=29 January 2011
Regardless of the cause, Smith advanced just to third base. Next, the bases became loaded, and then Smith was forced out at home plate in a double play. The Braves did not score a run during this team at-bat. The score remained (0 - 0), and that was how it remained at the end of the ninth inning.
The Twins went on to score one run in the bottom of the tenth inning, hence winning the game 1-0 and winning the World Series four games to three.
Retirement
Smith remained with the Braves through the end of the By|1992 baseball season, and he helped the Braves win the National League pennant once again, though they lost the World Series four games to two against the Toronto Blue Jays .
Next, Smith departed from the Braves, and he signed up with the Pittsburgh Pirates , where he played one season, and then one more with the Baltimore Orioles , where he played mostly as just a pinch-hitter . Smith played in his final Major League Baseball game on August 10 , 1994 .
After retiring from pro baseball, Smith married once more, and he and his wife returned to Atlanta to reside. They became the parents of three children. Smith very briefly re-entered national attention in 2006, when he told a newspaper from Columbia, S.C. , about his notion (then reversed it) to murder John Schuerholz eighteen years earlier.
Records and achievements
Smith is the only player to be a member of three different World Series winning teams (the Phillies, Cardinals, and Royals) within a single decade, and he did this in a six-year period.
Smith set the franchise record for the St. Louis Cardinals on September 4, 1982, when he stolen base|stole five bases in a single game.
Smith won the National League's runs-scored championship in 1982, when he scored 120 runs for the St. Louis Cardinals . In that baseball season, he led the Cardinals to the National League pennant and also a World Series championship. The was also his only baseball season in which he was selected to play on the Major League Baseball All-Star Game|National League All-Star Team .
Nickname
Smith was branded with the nickname "Skates" due to his somewhat awkward footwork while playing the outfield in baseball. The baseball historian Bill James wrote about this nickname at some length. He wryly stated that Smith should have had a post-retirement career teaching (so-called) "defensive recovery and cost containment", since he had excelled at recovering from defensive difficulties in the outfield.Bill James, The 1986 Bill James Baseball Abstract, page 279.
See also
List of Major League Baseball runs scored champions
List of Major League Baseball leaders in career stolen bases
List of sportspeople sanctioned for doping offences
Major League Baseball Scandals
References
reflist
External links
Baseballstats|br=s/smithlo01
http://www.royalsreview.com/story/2008/1/15/11322/0968 The 100 Greatest Royals of All-Time- #71 Lonnie Smith
s-startsuccession box | before = Tim Leary (baseball)|Tim Leary | title = MLB Comeback Player of the Year Award|NL Comeback Player of the Year | years = 1989| after = John Tudor (baseball)|John Tudor s-end 1980 Philadelphia Phillies1982 St. Louis Cardinals1985 Kansas City RoyalsPhiladelphia Phillies 1st roundNL Comeback Players of the Year Persondata | NAME = Smith, Lonnie | ALTERNATIVE NAMES = | SHORT DESCRIPTION =baseball outfielder | DATE OF BIRTH = 1955-12-22 | PLACE OF BIRTH = Chicago, Illinois | DATE OF DEATH = | PLACE OF DEATH = DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Lonnie Category:1955 births Category:Living people Category:Major League Baseball left fielders Category:Atlanta Braves players Category:Baltimore Orioles players Category:Kansas City Royals players Category:Philadelphia Phillies players Category:Pittsburgh Pirates players Category:St. Louis Cardinals players Category:National League All-Stars Category:Baseball players from Illinois Category:African American baseball players Category:Baseball players suspended for drug offenses Category:Auburn Phillies players Category:Spartanburg Phillies players Category:Oklahoma City 89ers players Category:Omaha Royals players Category:Richmond Braves players Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:People from Atlanta, Georgia
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