Lou Brock has died. He was another of my childhood baseball heroes, albeit one I envied from another team than I rooted for. Again, I am not going to bore you with a recitation of his stat lines, but will offer some recollections.
Brock was a key player for a couple of powerhouse Cardinals teams who won the World Series in 1967 and came a game short in 1968. He was at his best in those two World Series with BA's over .400 and running wild on the bases. He was the embodiment of the "National League Style" of play: Free swinging, free running, using speed to disrupt the concentration of opposing pitchers and create runs with speed. That style has since been largely discredited by advanced statistics, but man, it was sure fun to watch and it was successful for a couple of decades as the NL ran circles around the plodding AL.
I remember a SI article where Brock went into some detail about his base stealing. The two things I recall from that article, and my memory might not be perfect here, is....
1. He didn't like to steal 3B because he did not believe being on 3B gave him a significantly better chance of scoring.
2. He did not like to steal off a given pitcher until he had seen their move to 1B. He specifically mentioned that Giants RHP Jim Barr never threw to 1B so he(Brock) did not try to steal off him.
RIP Lou Brock.
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