Welcome to Today in Yankees History
by Kenny Rogers
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Today in Yankees History Sept 6, 2020.
Yankees lose to Baltimore 6-1, now 21-19. What's wrong with the Bronx Bombers. I think the biggest problem with the Yankees, they are to muscular!
The Yankees Hired a Hitting Coach. Her Name Is Rachel Balkovec. See below about info about her.
| 1973 | Two Alou brothers are released by the Yankees when Felipe is selected off waivers by the Expos and Matty is purchased by Cardinals. Felipe and Matty will finish the season with their new teams, retiring the following season after brief stints with the Brewers and the Padres, respectively. |
| 1981 | "I told him to quit threatening me. If he wants me to go, make the move - don't wait. I can't take it any longer" - GENE MICHAEL, speaking to the press about his relationship with George Steinbrenner. Calling it the most the ''most agonizing'' decision he has made as the owner of the Yankees, George Steinbrenner fires Gene Michael and replaces him with Bob Lemon. The former skipper's demise was prompted by his comments to the press concerning his inability to no longer tolerate the Boss's constant threats of dismissal and for his refusal to apologize for the August 28th remarks. |
| 2001 | Joining Babe Ruth (1927 Yankees), Roger Maris (1961 Yankees), Mark McGwire (1998 Cardinals), and Sammy Sosa (1998 Cubs), Barry Bonds becomes the fifth major leaguer to hit 60 home runs in a season. The 37 year-old Giant left fielder, who is the oldest to join this elite group, reaches the historic plateau the quickest, needing only 141 games to reach the milestone. |
Barry Bonds pasts Babe Ruth's 714 Homeruns
He broke the Major League Record for Homeruns 73
Barry Lamar Bonds (born July 24, 1964) is an American former professional baseball left fielder who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) with the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants. He received a record seven NL MVP awards, eight Gold Glove awards, a record 12 Silver Slugger awards, and 14 All-Star selections. He is considered to be one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
Bonds was an exceptional hitter: he led MLB in on-base plus slugging six times, and placed within the top five hitters in 12 of his 17 qualifying seasons. He holds many MLB hitting records, including most career home runs (762), most home runs in a single season (73, set in 2001) and most career walks.
Bonds was a superb all-around baseball player. He won eight Gold Glove awards for his defensive play in the outfield. He stole 514 bases with his baserunning speed, becoming the first and only MLB player to date with at least 500 home runs and 500 stolen bases (no other player has even 400 of each). He is ranked second in career Wins Above Replacement among all major league position players by both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference.com, behind only Babe Ruth.
However, Bonds led a controversial career, notably as a central figure in baseball's steroids scandal. In 2007, he was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to the grand jury during the federal government's investigation of BALCO. The perjury charges against Bonds were dropped and an initial obstruction of justice conviction was overturned in 2015.
Bonds became eligible for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2013; he has not received the 75% of the vote needed to be elected, with his highest share of the vote coming in 2020, his eighth of ten years of eligibility, when he received 60.7%. Voters of the Baseball Writers' Association of America said they did not vote for Bonds because they believe he used performance-enhancing drugs.
| MLB debut | |
|---|---|
| May 30, 1986, for the Pittsburgh Pirates | |
| Last MLB appearance | |
| September 26, 2007, for the San Francisco Giants | |
| MLB statistics | |
| Batting average | .298 |
| Home runs | 762 |
| Hits | 2,935 |
| Runs batted in | 1,996 |
| Stolen bases | 514 |
| Teams | |
| Career highlights and awards | |
MLB records
| |
Rachel Balkovec is believed to be the first woman hired as a full-time hitting coach by a major league organization.
By
As she took a morning stroll on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., this week while attending Slugfest, a three-day conference featuring top Major League Baseball hitting coaches, Rachel Balkovec paused to greet a fellow early riser.
Was she attending the conference? the woman asked.
Yes.
“Oh?” the woman replied. “Who are you married to?”
It was the kind of stereotypical response that Balkovec, 32, has been battling for years in baseball, and one that she hopes to continue to break down when she reports to Tampa on Feb. 1 to become a minor league hitting coach for the Yankees. She signed a contract on Nov. 8 and is believed to be the first woman hired as a full-time hitting coach by a big-league team.
Club officials said they had hired Balkovec based on qualifications — including two master’s degrees in the science of human movement and experience at several minor league clubs — that were a natural fit with the coaching crew being assembled for next season.
“It’s an easy answer to why we chose Rachel for this role,” said the Yankees hitting coordinator, Dillon Lawson. “She’s a good hitting coach, and a good coach, period.”
Lawson met Balkovec while they were both working for the Houston Astros in 2016, he as a minor league hitting coach and she as the team’s Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator. She had taught herself Spanish to be a more effective coach. In 2018, she became the strength and conditioning coach for the Astros’ Class AA Corpus Christi Hooks.
“Dillon was a mentor of mine with the Astros, and I consider him a visionary in the game,” Balkovec said.
She said she once saw him mic himself up to record his coaching of players so he could listen and critique himself later.
“His desire to make himself better so he could make others better has always inspired me to do the same,” she said.
Major League Baseball has been taking steps to include more women in on-field roles — as coaches, scouts, umpires and athletic trainers.
The Oakland A’s hired Justine Siegal as a guest instructor for the team’s fall instructional league in 2015, then had Veronica Alvarez as a guest catching coach in spring training this year. The Chicago Cubs hired Rachel Folden to work as the lead hitting lab technician and a “fourth” coach for their rookie-level team in the Arizona League next year. And at its winter meetings in San Diego in December, M.L.B. will host its second “Take the Field” program, designed to provide women who are interested in careers in coaching, scouting and player development with opportunities to attend panels and breakout and networking sessions.
Before her time in Houston, Balkovec, who grew up in Omaha, Neb., was the minor league strength and conditioning coordinator for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2014 and 2015; she was the first woman to hold a full-time strength and conditioning position in major league-affiliated baseball.
But being a woman has always been the biggest obstacle to her success, she said.
After her messages were not answered when she initially applied for strength and conditioning jobs in baseball, she changed her first name on her résumé and applications to “Rae” from “Rachel.”
Then the phone started ringing.
Most callers were taken aback to hear a woman’s voice on the phone, she said, and wouldn’t call back a second time. One team flat out told her it would never hire a woman.
But Balkovec had already worked for the Cardinals on a temporary contract in 2012, as a strength and conditioning coach for their affiliate in Johnson City, Tenn., where she won the Appalachian League’s strength coach of the year award.
When she was looking for a full-time job, the Cardinals remembered her skills and gave her a chance.
Balkovec, who was a catcher on the softball teams at Creighton University and New Mexico, earned a master’s degree in kinesiology from Louisiana State University in 2012. She left the Astros in the fall of 2018 to pursue her second master’s degree, in human movement sciences at Vrije University in the Netherlands, which has done advanced research in eye tracking in cricket and baseball, an area of great interest to Balkovec. While in the Netherlands, she also served as an assistant hitting coach for the country’s baseball and softball programs.
“I knew my passion was shifting from solely strength and conditioning to a more global view of the game, and I wanted to be able to have a bigger impact on player development by helping them get better from a scientific perspective,” Balkovec said. “It’s obvious the direction in which the game is headed, and I knew getting a better grasp of the research and analytics side of things would only be beneficial for my future in baseball.”
Balkovec has been working at Driveline Baseball, a data-driven performance training center in Washington State, since August, finishing her research on eye tracking for hitters and hip movement for pitchers. She is hoping to apply the research in her job with the Yankees.
“During the interview process, I was blown away by the Yankees hitting staff,” she said. “They are making aggressive operational changes to compete in the rapidly changing landscape of player development.”
And Lawson said he never gave a second thought to the fact that Balkovec is a woman.
“If you played in the big leagues for 30 years and become a coach, you’re immediately trustworthy and legitimate, but when you come from a different background, it takes more time,” Lawson said. “When you work with Rachel as a player or a coach, it’s clearly apparent that her investment in you and in her expertise in the field is only going to make you better. It may be initially different because she’s a woman, but you quickly realize that she is simply an elite coach and you see her for that.”
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