Rod Carew

Rod Carew was a masterful contact hitter who won seven AL batting titles for the Twins and Angels.

Rodney Cline Carew was born on October 1, 1945, aboard a racially segregated train in Gatún, in the Panama Canal Zone. When his mother went into labor in the section reserved for non-white passengers, a doctor traveling on the same train, Rodney Cline, delivered the baby — and Carew's mother named her son after him in gratitude. Carew grew up in modest circumstances in Panama, fashioning his first bat and ball from a broomstick and bottle caps, before his family immigrated to New York City when he was 14, settling in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. Carew never played high school baseball — he didn't make his team at George Washington High School — but he was discovered playing semi-pro ball for the Bronx Cavaliers by a Minnesota Twins scout and signed as an amateur free agent in 1964. He reached the majors in 1967 and immediately won American League Rookie of the Year, the first sign of the remarkable hand-eye coordination and bat control that would define his career. Working under Twins coach Billy Martin, he refined his game at second base while developing into arguably the finest pure contact hitter of his generation. Over 19 seasons split between the Twins and the California Angels, Carew won seven American League batting titles, tying him for the second-most in AL history, and made 18 consecutive All-Star teams. His signature season came in 1977, when he flirted with a .400 batting average deep into the summer before finishing at .388 — still one of the highest single-season marks by any player since World War II — and won American League MVP honors. Carew's crouched, unorthodox stance and his ability to spray hits to any part of the field made him nearly impossible to defend or strike out. Carew retired in 1985 with 3,053 hits and a .328 career batting average, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991 with 90.5% of the vote in his first year of eligibility. Both the Twins and Angels retired his No. 29. After retiring, he became a respected hitting coach for the Angels and Brewers, mentoring future stars including Jim Edmonds and Tim Salmon, and Panama later renamed its national stadium in his honor.

Contact hitter with exceptional bat control and speed

One of the greatest contact hitters in baseball history

• AL MVP (1977)
• 7x AL batting champion
• 18x All-Star
• Hall of Fame 1991