Baseball Hall of Famer Joe Morgan dies at 77


Joe Morgan, the Hall of Fame second baseman who spent the prime of his career with the Cincinnati Reds, has died, USA Today reported Monday. He was 77.
Morgan is one of the game's all-time great players, earning two MVP awards, 10 All-Star trips, and five Gold Gloves. He was a key piece of Cincinnati's "Big Red Machine" teams alongside Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Tony Perez, and Ken Griffey, Sr, and together the group won back to back World Series titles in 1975 and 1976.
Originally signed by the then-Houston Colt .45s (since renamed the Astros) in 1962, Morgan was a solid hitter early in his career with the franchise, but he took his game to another level when he was traded to the Reds before the 1972 season.
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Morgan's career .271 batting average doesn't immediately jump off the page, but he got on-base at a .392 clip and led the league in walks and on-base percentage four times each. And once he was on, he was a premier threat, stealing at least 58 bases five years in a row between 1972-76.
After his career, Morgan spent many years as a broadcaster, teaming with play-by-play announcer Jon Miller for ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball for two decades between 1990-2010.
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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
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