#Freehan77 ... Hit By Pitch

I'm continuing to post about my baseball hero, Bill Freehan, counting down the days until he celebrates his 77th Happy Baseball Birthday! ⚾🎂🎁🎉  on November 29th.

🐯⚾🇺🇸⚾🐯🇺🇸⚾🐯🇺🇸⚾🐯🇺🇸⚾🐯🇺🇸

One of the things I've always remembered about Bill was that he always seemed to get hit by pitch quite a bit.

Bill was hit 114 times in his 15 years wearing a Tigers uniform, and 42 years after he retired he's still the Tigers All-Time team leader.


Bill led the American League in hit by pitch three times, getting plunked 8 times in 1964, 20 times in '67, and 24 times in '68.

One of the great things about baseball is a stat like this.


Each baseball fan remembers the minutiae, the small things, that go mostly unnoticed, and that's a key to why we love baseball so much.

It's not just the big statistical numbers, like batting average or home runs, but also the smaller, but still important stats, like getting hit by pitch, that separates baseball from other sports.

I know there's probably a way to find out how many times after those 114 HBP that led to Bill's 706 runs career runs scored, but I haven't the patience to look that up.

Thanks for reading about my hero, it's important that I post about Bill and what he means to me.


Have a terrific night everyone...PLAY BALL!