Batting champs

On June 11, 2005 (my 23rd wedding anniversary), Rob Mackowiak was hitting .358, and the Pirates utility player finally had compiled enough at-bats to qualify for the National League batting race.

His hot start had helped Pittsburgh to a 31-31 record, which was a big deal in a town where .500 baseball sounds like the Promised Land. Perhaps, some long-suffering Pirates fans though, their team finally was turning the corner, thanks to guys like Mackowiak.

June 12 was a sunny Sunday at PNC Park, a great day for baseball, as they say. The Pirates were wrapping up a three-game series vs. Tampa Bay, looking for the sweep after an 18-2 rout Saturday night. A warm cheer rose from the stands as the scoreboard listed the batting leaders, Rob Mackowiak officially among them.

He proceeded to go 0-for-5 in Pittsburgh's loss to the Devil Rays, dropping his average by nine points. The Pirates then embarked on a road trip to face other AL East teams, the Yankees (who, after a decade of interleague play, have yet to visit Pittsburgh) and the Red Sox. The Pirates dropped five out of six on the trip and had yet to reach .500 again until beating Houston in this season's opener. Mackowiak managed a total of one hit in New York and Boston, watching his batting average plunge 39 points in a week. He was below .300 by July 2, finished at .272 and was shipped to the White Sox after the season.

With the precedent set of a Pirates utility player tearing it up at the start of the season, some fans were skeptical when Freddy Sanchez followed Mackowiak's lead early in 2006. True, Sanchez had showed some promise by hitting .291 the previous season. But few folks expected him to keep it up when his '06 average rose to .358 at the start of June. That's exactly where Mackowiak had peaked the year before.

Of course, Freddy proved the doubters wrong, staying consistent enough to lead the league at .344, giving Pirates fans one of their few thrills since the days of Bonds and Bonilla.

Although posting the highest batting average doesn't carry the clout it once did -- everyone looks at home runs nowadays -- it still is quite a feat, and most of the National League leaders of the past three or so decades have been established stars: Gwynn, Bonds, Pujols, Larry Walker, Willie McGee, Bill Madlock and the like. You'd have to go back to 1974 (Ralph Garr, Atlanta, .353) to find an NL batting champ who's faded into the obscurity of baseball annals. But even Garr had posted some decent numbers for the Braves for a couple of seasons before topping the field.

Before Sanchez, probably the most unexpected NL batting champion was another member of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Mateo "Matty" Alou was one of the three Alou brothers on the San Francisco Giants in the early '60s, along with Felipe and Jesus. Matty had shown flashes of potential, but when his batting average tailed off to .231 in part-time outfield duty in 1965, he was shipped to the Pirates for a couple of warm bodies named Ozzie Virgil and Joe Gibbon.

Under the tutelage of Pirate manager Harry "The Hat" Walker, Alou upped his average to .342 in 1966, besting Felipe by 15 points in the only batting race featuring brothers finishing 1-2. Interestingly, the league's MVP that year was Roberto Clemente (.317), his only such award even though he won batting titles in four other seasons.

Walker knew something about unexpected batting champs. In 1946, playing for the World Series-winning St. Louis Cardinals, he hit .237. His average early in 1947 was .200, and the Cards packed him off to the Phillies, a team that had registered exactly one above-.500 season since 1917. Walker gave Philadelphia a rare reason to celebrate by batting .371 the rest of the way, finishing at .363 and leading the league by 46 points. He never had another season remotely approaching those numbers.

Will Freddy Sanchez at least be respectable compared with last season? He comes off the disabled list this weekend, and we'll see if he can do a Dave Parker (last Pirate to win back-to-back batting titles).

Freddy already has shown he's no Rob Mackowiak.

Trivia question 10: The 1991 American League batting champion still is active in the majors. Who is he?