Lou Brock

Louis Clark Brock learned what a baseball career was worth in the fourth grade, when his teacher in Collinston, Louisiana, punished him for throwing a spitball by assigning him to research the careers of Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Don Newcombe, and Jackie Robinson. When Brock discovered how much they earned, his ambitions took shape. He grew up listening to Cardinals broadcasts by Harry Caray and Jack Buck on an old Philco radio in a house without much else, stole 938 bases across 19 major league seasons, collected 3,023 hits, batted .391 in three World Series, and was traded from the Chicago Cubs to the St. Louis Cardinals on June 15, 1964, for Ernie Broglio, in a deal the Cubs have never lived down. "I was a 9-year-old in a Southern town," Brock said at his Hall of Fame induction in 1985. "Jim Crow was king. I was searching the dial of an old Philco radio and I heard Harry Caray and Jack Buck, and I felt pride in being alive. The baseball field was my fantasy of what life offered." The BBWAA elected him on his first ballot on 79.7 percent of the vote.

Collinston

Brock was born on June 18, 1939, in El Dorado, Arkansas, one of nine children. His father Maud abandoned the family shortly after Lou's birth, and his mother Paralee moved the children to Collinston, Louisiana, a town of roughly 300 people, when Lou was two. They lived in poverty in the segregated South. Brock's school lacked running water and had only one teacher, and he had to travel miles past white schools to reach it. Brock did not play organized baseball until the 11th grade, but once he started he hit .535 as a senior and earned an academic scholarship to Southern University in Baton Rouge to study mathematics.

Brock lost the academic scholarship after his first semester and earned an athletic one by trying out for the baseball team. His average jumped from .189 as a freshman to .500 the following year. Southern University won the NAIA baseball championship during his sophomore year, the first NAIA title won by a black school, and Brock was selected for the United States team at the 1959 Pan American Games. The Cubs signed him in 1960 for a $30,000 bonus.

The Trade

Brock reached the Cubs in September 1961 and showed flashes of speed and power without consistency. On June 17, 1962, he hit a home run into the center field bleachers at the Polo Grounds, one of only a handful of players to reach that distance since the park's 1923 reconstruction. But the Cubs remained unimpressed with his bat, and on June 15, 1964, GM Bing Devine of the Cardinals traded for Brock, sending Ernie Broglio, Bobby Shantz, and Doug Clemens to Chicago.

The trade looked reasonable at the time because Broglio had led the National League with 21 wins in 1960 and won 18 in 1963. It became the most famous swindle in baseball history when Broglio developed a sore arm, went 7-19 with a 5.40 ERA over three Cubs seasons, and retired after 1966. Brock, meanwhile, batted .348 with 33 stolen bases in 103 games after the trade, and the Cardinals overcame a six-game deficit to the Phillies in September to win the pennant on the final day. Manager Johnny Keane gave Brock something the Cubs never had: permission to run whenever he wanted, without waiting for a sign.

The Basepaths

Brock led the National League in stolen bases eight times in nine years between 1966 and 1974, and in 1967 he became the first player in major league history to steal 50 bases and hit 20 home runs in the same season. Brock hit .414 in the 1967 World Series against the Red Sox, stealing seven bases to set a Series record, and the Cardinals won in seven games. In the 1968 World Series he hit .464 with 13 hits, but in Game 5 he tried to score standing up on a Julian Javier single and Willie Horton threw him out at the plate. The Tigers won the Series in seven games, and the play haunted Brock.

Hearing that Maury Wills kept a notebook on pitcher habits, Brock bought an 8mm camera in late 1964 and began filming opponents' pickoff moves from the dugout. Don Drysdale objected. "I don't want to be in your goddamn movies, Brock," he said, and threw at him the next time up. Brock also developed what he called a "rolling start" technique, building momentum toward second base before the pitch rather than maximizing his lead, a method that traded a few inches of distance for a running start that defenders could not time.

On September 10, 1974, at 35, Brock stole his 105th base of the season against the Phillies to break Maury Wills' record of 104. He finished with 118 stolen bases, a record that stood until Rickey Henderson stole 130 in 1982. On August 29, 1977, Brock broke Ty Cobb's career record of 892 stolen bases against the Padres in San Diego, a mark that had been considered as unbreakable as Babe Ruth's 714 home runs. On August 13, 1979, Brock lined a ball off Cubs pitcher Dennis Lamp that hit the pitcher's hand and knocked him from the game, and Brock had his 3,000th hit. He batted .304 that year at 40, won the Comeback Player of the Year award in his final season (the first player to receive the honor in a retirement year), and left the game with a .391 career World Series average, the highest for any player with 20 or more Series games.

St. Louis

The Cardinals retired Brock's number 20 on September 9, 1979, and the fans who greeted him at Busch Stadium for years afterward developed a distinctive low chant, stretching his name across several syllables until it sounded like a foghorn. Brock worked as a broadcaster, served as a spring training baserunning instructor for four different teams (three of the four won the World Series that year), and prospered as a florist in the St. Louis area. He and his wife Jackie were both ordained ministers at Abundant Life Fellowship Church.

Brock was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes around 2000, and the disease cost him his left leg below the knee in October 2015. He returned to throw out a ceremonial first pitch the following April. In 2017 he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma but announced remission that July. Brock died on September 6, 2020, in the St. Louis area, at 81. "Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad," Brock once said, "and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time."