The Senator's Senator

In last night's game, Kevin Youkilis walked for the 49th time this season, tying him with Justin Morneau for most in the American League. Back when he was still in the minor leagues, he was famously referred to as the "Greek god of walks" by Michael Lewis in his book "Moneyball." Youkilis was, and still is, particularly adept at drawing walks, a statistic that is often overlooked by traditional scouts but that is nonetheless an important factor to take into consideration when evaluating a player.

With 403 walks so far, Youkilis still has a long way to go, but there are a few surprising names near the top of the all-time list of walks leaders. Barry Bonds is number one by far, with 2558. The rest of the top ten is rounded out by other predictable players who were all among the best in the game: Rickey Henderson, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Joe Morgan, Carl Yastrzemski, Mickey Mantle, Mel Ott, Frank Thomas, and Jim Thome. It's an impressive list of some of the greatest players in baseball history, but who is #11 on the list? Is it Stan Musial, Pete Rose, Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, or Hank Aaron? Or some other Hall of Famer? Nope. It's Eddie Yost.

You may ask, who is Eddie Yost? Don't worry though, because I'm sure most people would react the same way. He's not in the Hall of Fame, and he's probably not even in the top 25 third basemen of all time. In fact, with a .255 batting average and only 139 career home runs, Yost might make people scratch their heads and wonder how he managed to stick around in the majors for 18 seasons. But, this obscure Washington Senators third baseman did have one thing working very strongly in his favor; his career .394 on base percentage, which included leading the league in walks 6 times and drawing a total of 1614 in his career. In fact, he drew 151 walks in 1956, tied for the 9th most walks in a single season. Only Barry Bonds, Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, and Ted Williams have had hgher single-season walk totals.

So why exactly did Eddie Yost get walked so many times? Were the pitchers really that afraid him, a player who only once hit more than 14 home runs in a season? Or is it just that he was very patient at the plate and had great eyesight? My guess is the latter, but however he did it, he was able to get his name right up there on the records list, sandwiched in between dozens of Hall of Fame players.

Interestingly, Eddie Yost's name came up in 2004 during the presidential election. It turned out that Senator John Kerry, a professing Red Sox fan, had been asked about 10 years earlier who his all-time favorite Red Sox player was. Did he say Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Bobby Doerr, Carlton Fisk, Luis Tiant, Roger Clemens, or even Dick Radatz or Bob Stanley? Nope, he said Eddie Yost.

The only problem? Yost never played for the Red Sox.