Joe Morgan almost told the truth!

A few weeks ago Joe Morgan told a story on Sunday Night Baseball about a Don Wilson no-hitter that was true in almost no way, shape or form. After last year’s Banks Boulevard fiasco (See below), it is well known that Morgan is prone to telling a stretcher now and again.

Last night, while the crew was talking about Ian Kinsler’s prolonged slump, Joe chimed in that he had a story that Nolan Ryan hates for him to tell. The story was about how in 1983 with the Phillies, he was going through a terrible slump, 0 for 32 or 37, he could not remember. He said that his manager told him he was still being penciled into the lineup because he was getting walks and scoring runs so he was still contributing. Either way, he broke out of the slump by taking a Nolan Ryan curveball out of the park to win the game 1-0. As with anything that comes out of Joe Morgan’s mouth, I was a little skeptical, so I decided to look up the facts.

On July 26th, 1983, the Phillies did in fact defeat Ryan’s Astros 1-0 on a Joe Morgan home run. From June 29th until July 24th, Morgan also went 0 for 36. I do not know in which at-bat he hit the home run, or during which at-bat he got his last hit before the slump, but 0 for 37 is pretty accurate. At this point you are probably saying, wait a minute, those numbers do not add up. 37 AB’s in almost a month is not playing regularly. You would be correct.

Morgan started a whopping ten out of a possible twenty-six games during this span. He also scored a grand total of five runs, so I am not sure where this whole “contributing to the team” comment came from. His twelve walks in forty-eight plate appearances is actually pretty impressive, but when you remember that he had no hits, his OBP is still a paltry .250.

I think it is fair to say that Joe was only a quarter full of it this week. Congratulations Joe!

The Banks Boulevard fiasco:

A couple of years ago Joe went on a long winded diatribe about the basket that the Cubs have that hangs over the outfield and keeps drunk fans from falling out of the bleachers and onto the field.

Joe famously said that when he was playing “everybody” in baseball referred to that basket as Banks Boulevard because Hall of Famer Ernie Banks hit “so many of his homers into that basket.”

That story, as do many of Joe’s sounded plausible. But like most of those stories, this one was pure, grade A bullshit.

Ernie Banks played for the Cubs from 1953-1971. He hit 512 homers. Of those 512, Joe thinks that a lot of them landed in the basket at Wrigley Field. He’s implying that without the basket, Ernie wouldn’t have hit so many homers.

In 1970 and 1971, Ernie only played in 111 games for the Cubs. Why is that important?

Because the basket wasn’t installed at Wrigley until May 1970. Banks hit eight home runs at Wrigley Field in those two seasons, but one of them was in April of 1970 before the basket went in.

So, of Ernie Banks 512 career homers, the most that possibly could have landed in the basket was seven. Actually, we’ve all seen the replay of his 500th homer, and he hit that on May 12, 1970 and that didn’t end up in the basket, so I guess it’s six.

Six of 512 means that a little over one percent of Ernie’s homers could have possibly ended up in the basket.

Now you can see why they called it Banks Boulevard. Can’t you? - Josh Bolan

Josh Bolan is a retired AP baseball reporter and now works as a freelance writer in Fresno California. Josh has been contributing to baseball publications as a writer since 1996.