Dave Orr

Dave Orr was one of the greatest hitters who ever lived, and a stroke ended his career at 31 while he was still among the best in the game. A mountain of a man at 250 pounds, he batted .342 over eight seasons, a mark that still ranks among the highest in the history of baseball, and he hit for power and average both in the rough leagues of the 1880s. He won a batting title, set records for total bases and triples, and was hitting .371 in his final season when his body simply quit on him. There was no decline, no slow fade, only a sudden and total stop. Few careers have ended so abruptly with so much still left in them.

Big Dave

Orr was born in New York City on September 29, 1859, and grew into one of the largest men in baseball, a first baseman who stood close to six feet and carried 250 pounds. They called him Big Dave, and the size was real, but so was the skill underneath it, a quick, powerful swing that produced line drives to every field. He reached the major leagues with the New York Metropolitans of the American Association in 1883 and was an immediate force at the plate. For a big man he was a surprisingly complete hitter, not a pure slugger but a batter who hit for a high average and drove the ball with power. From the start, pitchers had no good way to get him out.

One of the Great Hitters

What set Orr apart was the bat, one of the finest of the entire nineteenth century. He retired with a career batting average of .342, a figure that still ranks among the ten or so highest in major league history, level with Babe Ruth and bettered by almost no one. He slugged better than .500 for his career, the first player with a substantial record ever to do it, and he piled up extra base hits at a rate his contemporaries could not match. He was not fast and he did not walk much, but when he swung the bat the ball went a long way and often. In an age of slap hitters and place hitters, Orr simply hit it hard.

The 1884 Batting Title

Orr's breakout came in 1884, his first full season, when he led the American Association in hitting at .354. He topped the league in hits, in runs batted in, and in total bases the same year, falling just a home run or two short of a Triple Crown. It was a remarkable season for any hitter, let alone a second year man, and it announced Orr as one of the best bats in the league he would terrorize for the rest of the decade. The Metropolitans had a star, and the American Association had a problem. No one had figured out how to pitch to him, and no one really would.

Three Hundred Total Bases

Orr's finest season came in 1886, when he became the first player in major league history to reach 300 total bases in a single year. He hit .338, led the American Association in hits and total bases and slugging, and rapped out 31 triples, a number that stood as a record for a quarter century and still ranks second all time. The triples told the story of his game, a huge man hitting the ball so hard and so far that he lumbered into third before the outfielders could run it down. He was, in that season, about as productive a hitter as the era produced. The big numbers came in bunches, because Orr did not have ordinary years.

The Last Great Season

When the players broke away to form their own league in 1890, Orr went with them, joining the Brooklyn club of the Players League for what no one knew would be his final season. He hit .371 that year, the highest average of his career, and lost the league's batting title to Pete Browning by the slimmest of margins. At 30 he was not declining at all but getting better, a frightening thought for the pitchers who had to face him. It stands as one of the great final seasons any player has ever had, though no one understood at the time that it was a farewell. Orr was at the absolute peak of his powers, and then it was over.

The Stroke

In the fall of 1890, just after the Players League season, Orr suffered a stroke during an exhibition game in Renovo, Pennsylvania, and it ended his career on the spot. The stroke paralyzed the left side of his body, and a man who days earlier had been the best hitter in his league would never play another game. He was 30 years old, perhaps just turned 31. There was no warning and no recovery to speak of, only a sudden line drawn across a brilliant career. Of all the hard luck stories the 1880s produced, few cut as deep as the sight of Dave Orr stopped cold at his very best.

After the Game

Orr fought his way back to a kind of life. He recovered enough to walk on good days, and he stayed near the game that had been taken from him, umpiring a little and doing what work his body allowed. In his last years he tended ballparks in Brooklyn, a caretaker at the new Ebbets Field and a gatekeeper at a Federal League park, an old slugger watching younger men play the game he no longer could. He died in 1915 at 55. Dan Brouthers, himself a Hall of Famer, is said to have called Orr the greatest hitter who ever lived, and the numbers Orr left behind, cut off at their peak, make the claim harder to wave away than it ought to be.