Jim Thome: The Most Undersung Player in Modern Baseball

I remember as a kid getting Jim Thome's autograph at a Cleveland Indians fan club event. I was 12 years old and just threw it in the pile of other Indians stuff I had.

I will be turning over my parents' house when I go home for a visit.

Seven baseball players before Jim Thome have made it to the 600 Home Run club. That list includes Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ken Griffey Jr, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa.

Thome has always been known as a home run hitter. His breakout season was in 1994 when the Cleveland Indians were beginning their red-hot run in the 1990s. Since 1994 he's only had two seasons with less than twenty home runs; nine of those seasons he's had over thirty.

With a lifetime slugging percentage of .556, he ranks in at number 21 in all time slugging percentages, beating out Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle.

Almost any common American has heard of the names on the 600 list, but they don't know Jim Thome's.

He's never been voted MVP, never won a World Series, and out of 20 career seasons, he's only been to the All-Star Game five times.

Perhaps it's the fact that Jim Thome has always been trapped in the mid-market ball clubs that's kept his name out of the headlines. Or maybe it's because his climb to the top of the home run board hasn't been marred in controversy.

All the big names such as McGwire, Sosa, Bonds and former Indians teammate Manny Ramirez have been held up to public scrutiny while Thome just kept slugging away. 

To read "Jim Thome's Legacy Will Be Overshadowed by Steroids Era" by Shane MacFarland, click here.

We used to crown our Home Run Heroes as Gods, but the new way of celebrating their accomplishments is by taking them to court.

That's what makes Jim Thome's 600th Home Run so remarkable. Amidst all the steroid controversy, he's not a part of it. He's just a good old-fashioned Slugger.

During the 1990s, in Cleveland, if there was a man in scoring position and Thome came to the plate, everybody rose to their feet. It was either going to be a base hit or a strike out (usually a strike out), but when his bat connected the crowd would go nuts.

For six of his twelve years in Cleveland, he did it in front of a sold out Jacobs Field. Jim Thome was part of the reason it was hard to get a ticket to an Indians game in the late 90s.

No matter where Thome played, though, when the team was in the hunt, there was always a batter better than he was. In the 1990s with Cleveland he had Albert Belle and Manny Ramirez ahead of him. He was the batting king during his time with Philadelphia, but never made it into postseason. And the year the White Sox made it into postseason with Thome, he was overshadowed by Carlos Quentin.

In 2007 when Jim Thome hit his 500th Home Run, it was the same year the Mitchell Report on steroid use was released.

From 2005 to the time of the Mitchell Report, baseball wasn't about what was happening on field, it was about what happened off the field 10 to 20 years before then. Your 500th Home Run would at least earn you a slide on Yahoo's main page, but Thome just got a blue line in the "News" box. 

Surprisingly, on my way home from work yesterday, I was lucky enough to turn on the radio just in time to hear the play call on Thome's 600th Home Run. I thought I was listening to a replay, but when I saw two men grouped around a TV in their garage high-fiving each other, one wearing a T-C hat, I knew it was real. I honked my horn and they cheered back at me.

I live in Las Vegas, over 2,000 miles away from Minnesota or Detroit, and there was a neighborhood celebration for a Home Run King. It felt very American.      

Perhaps for Thome's 600th we will be able to provide a little more fanfare.