Baseball Lives – Tommy Holmes
Posted by basebal5 on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Pete Rose and Tommy Holmes have one thing in common: a lengthy and productive hitting streak. We were reminded of that fact when the news came that Holmes died last Monday of natural causes:
His hitting streak occurred while he played for the Boston Braves and is the ninth-longest in major-league history. Mr. Rose broke it by hitting in 44 straight games.
In 11 years in the majors with the Braves and Brooklyn Dodgers, Mr. Holmes had a .302 batting average, 88 home runs and 581 RBIs. From 1973 to 2003, he worked for the New York Mets as director of amateur baseball relations.
His daughter, Patricia Stone, said her father loved the sport and watched games until his death. “When he played baseball, there would be days he'd leave early and he'd pass children playing and he'd stop to play with them,” she said.
His career line: .302/.366/.432. He ranked first four times in at-bats per strikeouts, with a high of 70.7 in 1945, a year in which he also finished first in total bases (367), OPS (.997) and also amassed the second most votes for the Most Valuable Player.
He played as an outfielder his entire career, recording 115 assists and only 33 errors in 1231 games played.
From his wiki page:
After the 1950 season, Holmes, 33, was named player-manager of the team's Class A Hartford farm club. On June 19, 1951, with the big-league Braves floundering in fifth place under manager Billy Southworth, Holmes was called back to Boston to manage his old team. He also remained on the active roster as a pinch hitter. It was hoped he could arouse the club, and bring fans back to Braves Field. But the team barely posted a winning record (48-47) under Holmes, and when they lost 22 of their first 35 games in 1952, Holmes was fired on May 31 and replaced by Charlie Grimm. The Braves finished seventh, drew only 281,000 fans, and left Boston for Milwaukee the following spring.
Holmes finished the 1952 season as a pinch hitter for the Brooklyn Dodgers, then managed in the Braves' and Brooklyn farm systems from 1953-57. He retired with a .302 lifetime batting average with 88 home runs in his 1,320-game, 11-year major league career, with a managing record of 61-69 (.469). He returned to the game in 1973 as director of amateur baseball relations for the New York Mets, a post he held for three decades until he retired at age 86.
In an article in 1976 in Esquire magazine, sportswriter Harry Stein published an “All Time All-Star Argument Starter,” consisting of five ethnic baseball teams. Because of space limitations, the Irish team, including Holmes as right fielder, was omitted.
