Vada Pinson

Played For
Cincinnati Reds (1958-1968)
St. Louis Cardinals (1969)
Cleveland Indians (1970-1971)
California Angels (1972-1973)
Kansas City Royals (1974-1975)

All-Time Rankings
Vada Pinson ranks #17 among the Top 50 all-time at CF. Rankings ⇒

Best Season: 1963
Still in the prime of his career, Pinson led the NL with 204 hits and 14 triples. He batted .313 with 22 homers and 106 RBI, as he know hit third in front of Frank Robinson. Add in 37 doubles, 96 runs, 27 steals, and a .514 slugging mark, and you have a very good season all the way around. He was also one of the 3-4 best defensive outfielders in the league.

Description
Pinson played 18 seasons, from 1958 to 1975. He played in the 1961 World Series for the Reds, was a two-time All-Star, led the NL in hits, doubles, and triples twice, and retired with 2,757 hits. But his road to that hit level was spent trying to live up to the hype he had created in his first few full seasons in the major leagues.

At a time when Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, and Frank Robinson were the standard bearers for National League outfielders, Pinson was compared favorably to them when he arrived on the scene in 1958-1959. Though he often tried too hard to pull the ball and hit the longball, which made his average suffer, Pinson was a threat at the plate as well as the base paths. Five times he posted twenty homers and steals in the same season.

Early in his career he batted near the top of the lineup, but later he moved to #3 and drove in 100 runs on two occasions. Despite the low batting averages of the 1960s, in which Pinson played most of his career, he posted a .286 lifetime mark. He was tremendously durable, playing in every one of his teams games his first five full seasons. He appeared in 150 games or more every year from 1959 to 1967.

As a member of the Reds, Pinson encountered the bigotry that still existed in baseball despite Jackie Robinson’s integration more than a decade earlier. The white players on the Reds refused to mingle with the black players, and Robinson and Pinson became the leaders of the minority group who later adopted outcast Pete Rose.

Pinson had a knack for dramatic milestone hits. His 1,000th and 2,000th major league hits were home runs. In 1963 he collected his 1,000th off Milwaukee’s Claude Raymond. The previous day he had collected his 999th safety – an inside-the-park homer. In 1969, with the Cardinals, he collected hit #2,000 off Pittsburgh’s Joe Gibbon.

Pinson had poor timing. In 1959 as a rookie he had a tremendous season but the Rookie of the Year award went to Willie McCovey, who appeared in less than half as many games. Pinson left the Reds following the 1968 season, missing out on the Big Red Machine years of the 1970s. He arrived in St. Louis in 1969, one season after the Cardinals played in their third World Series in five years. And Pinson retired in 1975 with the Royals, a year before Kansas City began a stretch of post-season appearances in six years.

Born
Vada Edward (Jr.) Pinson was born on August 11, 1938, in Memphis, TN.

Died
October 21, 1995, Oakland, CA

Batted:  Left
Threw:  Left

Primary Position:  OF

Primary Team:  CIN

Major League Debut
April 15, 1958

Nine Other Players Who Debuted in 1958
Vada Pinson
Ron Fairly
Tony Taylor
Orlando Cepeda
Norm Cash
Felipe Alou
Mudcat Grant
Frank Howard
Jerry Adair

Similar Players
Cesar Cedeno, Amos Otis, Carlos Beltran

Related Players
Frank Robinson

Hall of Fame Voting Year Election Votes Pct 1981 BBWAA 18 4.5% 1982 BBWAA 6 1.4% 1983 BBWAA 12 3.2% 1985 BBWAA 19 4.8% 1986 BBWAA 43 10.1% 1987 BBWAA 48 11.6% 1988 BBWAA 67 15.7% 1989 BBWAA 33 7.4% 1990 BBWAA 36 8.1% 1991 BBWAA 30 6.8% 1992 BBWAA 36 8.4% 1993 BBWAA 38 9.0% 1994 BBWAA 46 10.1% 1995 BBWAA 32 7.0% 1996 BBWAA 51 10.9%

Post-Season Appearances
1961 World Series

Awards and Honors
1961 NL Gold Glove

Hitting Streaks
31 games (1965)
27 games (1965)
22 games (1969)

All-Star Selections
1959 NL
1960 NL

Learn More about Vada Pinson
Search Amazon.com for Books about Vada Pinson ⇒
Search for Vada Pinson at Google ⇒
View a map of his hometown at Mapquest ⇒