Fred Lynn “Gold Dust”
It happened during the fourth inning of the one hundred and fifty-first game of their season, when the California Angels faced their division rivals, the Kansas City Royals. Just a day earlier, The Angels had taken game one of the three game series, breaking the tie between two teams battling for a spot in the postseason. The next day, however, with the score still tied zero zero, Amos Otis launched a high, deep fly ball into left center field. When the ball came off Otis’ bat, Angels’ left fielder, Brian Downing, and center fielder, Fred Lynn, both took off towards the Anaheim Stadium wall. Downing ran furiously, with determination and desperation, his bowl haircut flying in every direction. Lynn, meanwhile, glided, much faster and further from his original position, equally determined but far more confident than his teammate. And yet, initially, their efforts seemed to be in vain. Otis’ smash looked like a surefire homer.
Until it didn’t seem so sure. For a moment, it looked like Downing might actually get to the ball. He might not catch it, but perhaps he could get a glove on it and hold the Royals to a double. But then, out from center, entering the peripheral view — and then coming into focus — was Fred Lynn. Trailing right behind Lynn was the terrifying realization that if this ball didn’t leave the park — in fact, even if it did — the two outfielders were on a frightening collision course. Their paths converging, the ball just barely sinking, the absolute worst seemed inevitable. Downing was out in front, with the better angle on the ball. Lynn was moving faster, more elegantly, but just inches behind his teammate’s beat.
In a split second, it happened. Both men’s hats flew off. Both men hit the wall — hard — pushing it back more than a foot, seemingly to the brink of collapse. The exact cause and effect of the collision was unclear, but disaster appeared certain. At one point, Downing’s right leg was vertical, pointing ninety degrees up towards the sky, while his left leg pointed straight down, frantically searching for the ground. But, amid the trainwreck, some way, somehow, Fred Lynn emerged, smiling and unscathed — barely even startled — with the ball in his mitt. He’d caught it — Amos Otis was out. Just two ticks later, he noticed his teammate on the ground, looking more like Rocky in the fifteenth round of “Rocky II” than a ballplayer. The crowd was breathless for several seconds, fearing the worst, but Lynn carefully helped Downing to his feet. Both men put their caps back on and returned to the dugout, one with a skip in his feet, the other dizzy and bruised. Ninety minutes later, the Angels closed out a two to one victory, en route to a division title and their first trip to the ALCS.
Lynn’s catch itself was a miracle, a rejection of the laws of physics. It was unlike the gorgeous wall-scaling that Ken Griffey Junior was famous for. It was not unimaginable like Willie Mays’ catch at the Polo Grounds. It was the sort of thing that, if you simulated the exact scenario a hundred times with any player other than Fred Lynn, half would end with an inside the park homer and the other half would end with catastrophic injuries. I think it’s fair to say that death was a statistically plausible outcome had the center fielder been anyone other than Fred Lynn.
But the Angels’ center fielder that day was Fred Lynn. The thirty year old All Star would eventually lead his team into the postseason and go eleven for eighteen in the ALCS, batting .625 with a 1.539 OPS, en route to a series’ MVP award — which sounds both astounding and deserving until you realize that The Angels lost the series to The Brewers. It marked the first time in the history of baseball that the league championship MVP was on the losing team.
From the very start, almost everything about Fred Lynn was unprecedented. In college, at USC, where he was recruited to play football, Lynn switched to baseball and starred on national championship teams in three consecutive seasons, before turning pro, joining The Red Sox organization, and winning the minor league World Series for the team’s AAA affiliate, while barely a year out of college. That same season, when he was called up to The Big Show for a three week cup of coffee, Lynn hit .419 and slugged .698, alongside Yaz, Pudge, Dewey, The Spaceman and his minor league teammate and lifelong buddy, Jim Rice.
That was all a prelude, however, to 1975. During Lynn’s official rookie season, he led the league in runs, doubles, slugging percentage, OPS and had the highest WAR of any non-pitcher in the American League. He was the near unanimous selection for Rookie of the Year and he ran away with the MVP award, marking the first time in baseball history that a Rookie of the Year was also the league’s Most Valuable Player. On the shoulders of their two marvelous rookies, The Sox made it all the way to The Fall Classic, where they faced the Big Red Machine — a series which, according to Lynn, they could have, should have, would have won had Rice not broken his hand late in the season.
Five decades after Fred Lynn exploded onto the scene, Carlton Fisk’s Game Six game winner is baseball canon. Similarly, most middle-aged Bostonians still remember Yaz’s Triple Crown and Rice’s “monstah bombs ovah the green monstah.” However, casual fans have forgotten what Fred Lynn meant to Boston — the Gold Gloves, the Rookie of the Year and the MVP award, and the promise of a long, bright future. Throughout his twenties, Fred Lynn was racing towards Cooperstown. But as the years passed, as his injuries mounted, and as his jaw-dropping exploits faded into the rear view, many have forgotten what was once so exceptionally exceptional about Fred Lynn.
Major League Baseball is littered with phenoms who flamed out. For some, the flame burns brightly, but briefly. Herb Score, Mark Fydrich, Kerry Wood — all pitchers — dominated the game for a season or two, before succumbing to injuries. Other can’t miss rookies tailed off in their second halves on account of drugs or mental health, or both — Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden and Josh Hamilton fit that bill. Some young stars are forced to leave either the game prematurely or to gut it out as shells of their former selves — Bob Horner, Don Mattingly and Nomar Garciaparra fall into that category. Fred Lynn resembles each of these stereotypes in that he was exceptionally great, exceptionally young. But, as for his second half? There really are no comparables.
Through the first ten seasons of his career — from his 1974 stint through 1983 — Fred Lynn was considered o be among the greatest to ever play the game. In fact, in 1981, Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig included Lynn in their book, “The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time.” Lynn was the AL MVP in 1975. In 1979, he was again the best player in AL — in fact in all of baseball — despite finishing fourth in the MVP ballot. That year, Lynn led the league in batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage. He hit .333 with thirty-nine home runs, an 8.9 WAR and a Gold Glove for his play in center. By comparison, Don Baylor, the A.L. MVP, accumulated 3.7 Wins Above Replacement and boasted a solid .901 OPS, a full 158 points below Lynn. Even in 1982, during his eighth consecutive All Star season, wherein he “only” hit .299 with “only” twenty-one home runs, Lynn’s OPS+ was 143, placing him twelfth in all of baseball.
The second half of Lynn’s career — everything after the ‘82 ALCS until he retired in 1991 at the age of thirty-eight — was much less than the first half. The accumulation of injuries — shredded ankles, blown out knees, broken ribs, pain in every corner of his back — took their toll. 1984 was the last time Lynn appeared in more than one hundred and thirty games. Moreover, his performance faltered — his power dipped slightly but his average more noticeably. His speed was stripped, which impacted his ability to turn singles into doubles and doubles into triples. But more so, it limited his range — the feature he once treasured. Regression, of course, is natural. David Ortiz’s final season is the extreme outlier. Ted Williams hitting .388 at the age of thirty-eight is the miracle. Miguel Cabrera’s .675 OPS and -0.4 WAR is closer to the mean.
If Lynn’s regression was the norm, and if we take into consideration the scores of injuries, his second half could very well have been short and sad. It could have been a couple of years where he struggled to hit .230 and mustered a dozen home runs in between trips to the DL. Or maybe, in order to minimize the pain, he would have adjusted his swing and poked singles through holes to keep his average respectable while his power dissipated. Yaz. Charlie Hustle. Donnie Baseball. They all started out one way and finished very differently. Some hold on longer than others, but they all dwindle.
But Fred Lynn barely dwindled. After his otherworldly performance in that ALCS, and in spite of his physical compromise, he still hit. And he still chased down balls with grace and verve. He hit twenty to twenty-five home runs a year, in less than three quarters of a season. He walked a bunch. He kept his average on the right side of respectable. He maintained a positive OPS+, willing himself to be more productive at the plate than the league average. He did it through aches and pains and much, much worse. He did it for the Angels, and the Orioles and Tigers. He did it when most others would have bottomed out. Or retired. And he did it with flashes of his old brilliance. A couple times a year, he’d go on a tear — hitting four home runs in a series. Flagging down something in center field because he got a better jump on it and not because he outran it.
Midway through his rookie season, in a game against the Tigers, Lynn hit three homers, a triple and a single against the Tigers, and drove in ten runs. It was the most productive game of his career, but it was also the thing he did over and over again — Fred Lynn could single-handedly win ballgames. And he didn’t do it with the freakish might of Mark McGwire, or the uncanny focus of Barry Bonds, or the physical gifts of Bo Jackson. Fred Lynn’s talents were his preternatural hand eye coordination and the fearlessness with which he competed. He played like he always expected to win because — well — he was that good. And that confidence allowed him to do things that almost nobody else could. Even when he was older and compromised, he could still do things that almost nobody else could. He regressed. But not naturally.
Stan Musial hit six home runs in his twenty-four All Star Game appearances, an MLB record. Second to to Musial is Fred Lynn, who hit four home runs in nine All Star appearances — the first nine seasons of his career. That’s who Fred Lynn was — he was an all star among All Stars. His counting stats will never tell the story. And yet, he finished his career with more WAR than Hall of Famer, Tony Oliva, and just one less than Kirby Puckett. If Bryce Harper retired today, he’d have had a heck of a career. But, on the surface at least, it would resemble Fred Lynn’s, just less injury plagued and with the benefit of modern analytics.
For most of his short stint in the minors, and for the entirety of his tenure with the Red Sox, Fred Lynn played alongside Jim Rice, the dominant American League slugger of the late Seventies and the future Hall of Famer, who, in spite of his august credentials, retired with less WAR, a lower OPS+ and fewer All-Star game appearances than Fred Lynn. Together, the pair absolutely dripped potential. Sox fans were certain that 1975 was just the beginning of a new, pennant and trophy filled era. Local Boston media christened the pair “The Gold Dust Twins,” a phrase taken from an early twentieth century ad campaign for a cleaning detergent that was subsequently applied to a number of sporting duos who came up together and who were linked in their pursuit of a common goal. The nickname had previously appeared in golf (Harold "Jug" McSpaden and Byron Nelson), hockey (Gus Mortson and Jim Thomson), tennis (Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall), and football (Donny Anderson and Jim Grabowski). But, Rice and Lynn were the twins who broke the mold — they were baseball’s first and sports’ last “Gold Dust Twins.” Together, they signified boundless talent and unimaginable potential.
But in 1980, after a season wherein he missed fifty-two games and his team finished fifth in the AL East, the Red Sox traded Fred Lynn to the Angels for Joe Rudi (who proceeded to hit .180), Jim Dorsey (who won zero games and sported an ERA over 10.00) and Frank Tanana (who went four and ten in his lone season in Boston). And, for Red Sox fans at least, that was the end of Fred Lynn. That was when the gold dust disappeared.
Lynn made that one final, spectacular, if failed, postseason run in 1982. Meanwhile, Jim Rice and The Red Sox rebuilt and came an inch from history in 1986. But otherwise neither Lynn nor his former team sniffed the pennant during the Eighties. Like most twins, Jim Rice and Fred Lynn remained close throughout their lives, regardless of the logo on their jerseys or the places they called home. And like dust, they were ephemeral, swept away over time. Jim Rice has the plaque in Cooperstown. His twin, meanwhile, fell just a little bit short. But, once upon a time, it was Fred Lynn who shined the brightest. Even in the sunset of his career, when he was just a shell of himself, when the dust cleared, he could still glitter. He was the gold in the dust. He was the golden boy.