While waiting for Orioles baseball to return from the All-Star Break, I stumbled across the interesting story of Vic Rodriguez, who was nice enough to sign my TTM request and get it back to me in just 12 days. It's always exciting to get a card back that quickly. Vic, who is from NYC, was signed by the O's in 1977 as a free agent when he was only 15 years old; I'm not really sure how that was allowed, but I don't think you can even sign international free agents that young anymore.
Anyway, he spent the next 7 years slowly rising through the Orioles system, and finally made his MLB debut in September 1984. He played in 11 games and had 17 ABs, hitting .412 with a 1.000 OPS over that time. You'd think with amazing numbers like that he should make the '85 team out of Spring Training right? No dice, not poor Vic. He was traded to the Padres the following February and spent the next 5 seasons trying to get back to the Major Leagues. He finally made it back in 1989 with the Twins, and this time he hit .455 with a 1.091 OPS in 11 ABs over 6 games.
So did Vic ever get another crack at the Bigs? Nope, that was it. Dude has a .429 average at the Major League level but somehow never was able to stick at that level. All told, he played 18 seasons and over 1700 Minor League games, but only got 28 Major League ABs. At least he made the most of them.
Thanks for signing my card Vic!
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