The Porkchop Express said:
And now it's just 24 days until opening day, and it's sort of weird that #24 didn't get retired until 2005 since Jimmy Wynn wore it from 1964 to 1973. JW passed away in March 2020. Much like Jose Altuve, he did a lot with a small frame. he was just 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighed 160 pounds, giving him the name the Toy Cannon. He was drafted away from the Reds by the Colt 45s in the 1962 expansion draft.
Although he wound up in the OF, he debuted in 1963 at shortstop and was 1 for 4 with a steal. His first full year was 1965, the first year of the Astros and the dome and he played 157 games, scored 90 runs, hit 22 homers, stole 43 bases - a career high by leaps and bounds, and drove in 73.
In 1967, he set a team record that stood for 27 year by blasting 37 homers, drove in 107 runs. Two years later, he had 33 homers and led the league with 148 walks, enjoying a career best .943 OPS (.436 OBP / .507 slug). The walks record would stand for 30 years until Bagwell broke it by 1 in 1999.
Wynn was the first man to hit a home run into the upper deck of the Astrodome, doing so against Phil Niekro in 1970. This is a really cool photo of artist Oscar Torres painting the seat.
That wasn't the most memorable part of his year, unfortunately. While Cesar Cedeno was a couple of years away from probably killing his mistress, Wynn almost got killed by his own wife, who decided to stab him during an argument one 1970 December morning, as people sometimes do. According to an old news article, she got him on the left side of his abdomen with a 4-inch steak night and he was hospitalized for a week. The article also has this fantastic paragraph:
Patrolman J. A. Fortenberry said the stabbing was a result of a family quarrel and that Wynn brandished an unloaded shotgun. "She stabbed him in the left side about halfway be tween the navel and the side. He refused to file charges, say ing it was his fault," Forten berry said.
In 1973, the Astros decided to be as stupid as possible and trade him to the Dodgers for Claude Osteen (only slightly better than Joel Osteen) and David Culpepper. Osteen went 9-9 and then got traded to the Cardinals. Culpepper was a fire-ball releiver in the minors for the Dodgers, but he never made it past Triple A for the Astros.
Wynn went to the Dodgers in 1974 and had 32 HR, 108 RBI, and a huge season got to the World Series where the Dodgers lost to the A's. He was later traded to the Braves for you guessed it, Dusty Baker.
A bunch of not great players went on to wear #24, including Ty Gainey, Omar "Yes, I do like drugs" Moreno, Franklin Stubbs, and Orlando Miller, who I constantly have to remind myself, was not the same person as Ricky Guiterrez. Finally Jason Lane came along and sold his soul for that really great 2005 season in which he
hit 26 HR, drove in 78 and hit .267 in 145 games for a World Series team, then saw his average drop 66 points the next year. Does anyone find it really odd that the '05 team had these two huge power sources in Lane and Morgan Ensberg (36 HR, 101 RBI) who basically had vanished off the face of the Earth 1-2 years later?