It’s no secret around these parts that we love ourselves some Ron Hunt. Indeed, Hunt is the posterchild for gritty baseball and the trailblazer who made the careers of other gritty luminaries possible. Ever self-aware, Hunt famously stated “Some people give their body to science. I gave mine to baseball.”
With that in mind, we are pleased to induct Ron Hunt as the first addition to the Hall of GRIT’s ranks. Since there’s not really a Hall of GRIT (HOG) building, we can’t offer Ron a formal induction ceremony. But that’s alright because we’re about 99% certain that he would decline our invitation, tell us to shove our imaginary HOG plaque up our ass and get the hell off his lawn (more on that in a bit).
So, who was Ron Hunt and why is he deserving of enshrinement in the newly-created Hall of GRIT? Well, for starters, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
Ron Hunt was about as bad a player as you can be with a .400 on-base percentage. He couldn’t run and he had no power … He was an arthritic second baseman with a poor arm … Hunt was not well liked by fans or by other players … He rarely struck out, but almost never hit the ball hard.
Nevertheless, Ron’s career wasn’t without accolades. Check out the resume:
- Second in the 1963 NL Rookie of the Year voting to Pete Rose.
- 25th place in the 1963 NL MVP race (one vote).
- All-Star selection (1964)
- All-Star selection (1966)
- 15th place in the 1969 NL MVP race (eight votes).
- 26th place in the 1973 NL MVP race (one vote).
- Second prize in a beauty pageant during a hotly-contested Monopoly game with Cleon Jones.
We made up that last one to fill out the list. According this 1964 Sports Illustrated article titled “The Mets’ Throwback To Cobb”, Ron actually hated interacting with people.
Nothing on or off the field ignites a display of emotion in him, and his sad, frozen expression and his somnolent eyes ( Roger Craig used to call him Nap Time) have a way of making a visitor feel uneasy. He makes it plain that it is an imposition to try to open a conversation with him. Talking breeds familiarity, and Hunt does not like to be familiar with people.
“I’m very moody,” he says. “I don’t like people around me. I just don’t have anything to say to them. No, Casey and I don’t talk much. I sit a good distance away from him in the dugout, and I like it that way.”
Holding both the single-season and career records for GRIT3, Hunt’s career statistics are inarguable proof that during the 1960s and 70s, Ron Hunt played Major League baseball. And “Pigpen” didn’t just play the game. He played it the “right way”–as inefficiently as humanly possible.
Offensively, Hunt wasn’t a slugger by any means. Not even the pitching-dominated era (career AIR of 92) during which he played can justify his .347 slugging percentage. But that’s not to say he was particularly good at hitting for average. A career .273 hitter, he managed a .300+ line just twice: .303 for the Mets in 1964, and .309 for the Expos in 1973. He wasn’t very fast. With a four-factor speed score of 4.0 (a loose estimate of speed), Hunt ranks in the bottom half of all players.
Fielding wasn’t really his strong suit either. According to Baseball-Reference, he was worth about 5 runs below average as a second baseman over his career.
So, if not offense and if not defense, what was Pigpen’s value to a baseball team? In short, his abnormally high threshold for pain.
Mets coach Don Heffner assessed Hunt’s game in 1964 for the Sports Illustrated article:
If he has a failing, I’d say it’s the way he makes the double play. He doesn’t do anything mechanically wrong. He has a good arm, and he gets the ball away quickly, but he never tries to avoid the runner. He just stays in there, and he is taking a lot of physical abuse he doesn’t have to take.
Hunt’s masochism wasn’t limited to defense. If there was one area of the game at which he excelled, it was stepping into an inside fastball. During his twelve year career, Hunt racked up a then-record 243 plunkings. During the 1971 season, Hunt made 638 plate appearances–fifty times, he ended up on first due to a HBP. This supernatural talent for baseball magnetism allowed Hunt to extend his career when, by any rational appraisal, he should have been put out to pasture. Hunt’s 50 HBP in 1971 is a modern baseball record, second only to Hughie Jennings’ 51 HBP in 1896.
But Ron wasn’t just a glutton for punishment. The scrappy-go-gutsy second sacker also knew how to use his head. Again, Heffner describes the cerebral secret weapon in Hunt’s gritty arsenal.
“Thinking plays, I call them. Bunting with two strikes. Diving into first. Stealing home at just the right time. That’s the kind of baseball he plays.”
With this unabashed mancrush for gritty baseball, it’s strange that the Mets languished during the mid-1960s. And, while the Mets earned a World Series victory in 1969, Hunt wasn’t a part of the celebration. The Mets shipped Hunt to the Dodgers after the 1966 season. Hunt spent one season in Los Angeles before being shipped to the San Francisco Giants. It was San Francisco where Hunt (probably) got in with the wrong crowd, discovered hallucinogenics and made up his mind to unite his human flesh in eternal matrimony to horse flesh. From 1968 until his retirement in 1974, Hunt lead the NL in HBP.
Toward the end of his career, when asked about his records for being hit by pitches, Ron offered perchance the grittiest words ever uttered: “They may be dumb records, but they’re the only ones I got.”
Congratulations, Ron.