me too. Bagwell’s career really fits the guys whom I really consider to be the embodiment of the organization: Dickie Thon, JR Richard, etc.

Biggio finally got recognized by the overall baseball community as one of the greatest second basemen of all time when he got to 3000 hits. If you asked the typical baseball writer who were the ten greatest second basemen, and Biggio’s name would come up more often than not.

But if you asked them to name the five greatest first basemen, Bagwell might not be as prevalent in the responses. The fact that he was so great and yet unable to get recognition of that greatness mirrors the franchise’s spectacular collections of talent over the years and its horrible luck.

I guess I just can really sympathize with Bagwell on the athlete forced out of his sport by an injury—not by his own choosing.

I guess I always try to block out the negatives with Baggie, especially the insurance money. That was really just bad.

At least, that’s the way it seems from memory. I recall in the late 90’s, when he was in his prime, he had some walk off HRs in the 9th to win games at important points in the season. In more recent years, I think about his winning hit against Billy Wagner in Philadelphia in 2005 which cemented the Asttros WC lead. Sometimes those memories are defied by the stats…so I looked at his WPA/LI at fangraphs. He only had four negative seasons out of 19, two in his first three years in the MLB and his last two seasons. So that seems to confirm my impression.