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In the game, he hit a home run that landed near the proposed location for his statue. While with Cleveland in 2011, Thome played in 22 games, predominantly hitting fifth in the batting order, and he posted a .296 batting average, with 3 home runs, and 10 RBI. Thome was the Indians' all-time leader in home runs , walks , and strikeouts . Thome made his MLB debut on September 4, 1991, as a third baseman against the Minnesota Twins.
On August 31, 2009, the White Sox traded Jim to the Los Angeles Dodgers along with financial considerations for minor league infielder Justin Fuller. He waived his no-trade clause because he thought the Dodgers could win the World Series, but his chronic foot injuries limited his mobility. By this point in Jim’s career, back pain limited him to being a designated hitter. After stints with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Minnesota Twins, he made brief returns to Cleveland and Philadelphia, before retiring with the Baltimore Orioles. Upon retiring, Jim accepted an executive position with the White Sox. May 23, 2011 Minnesota Twins activated DH Jim Thome from the 15-day disabled list.
Postseason Batting
The two met after the game and Stark received an autographed hat, bat and jersey from Thome. Much of the play-by-play, game results, and transaction information both shown and used to create certain data sets was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by RetroSheet. Baseball-Reference Bullpen 100,000+ pages of baseball information, How to Contribute, ... MLB Scores Yesterday's MLB Games, Scores from any date in Major League history, MLB Probable Pitchers, Baseball-Reference Stream Finder, ...
On August 31, 2009, the White Sox traded Thome to the Los Angeles Dodgers along with financial considerations for minor league infielder Justin Fuller. Thome waived his no-trade clause because he thought the Dodgers could win the World Series, but Thome's only appearances with the Dodgers were as a pinch hitter, due to chronic foot injuries that limited his mobility. Thome reunited with former Cleveland teammate Manny Ramirez in Los Angeles.
Is Jim Thome In The Hall Of Fame
"Welcome to the club," Mays said in a video shown on the Twins' television broadcast. The Tigers posted a congratulatory message on the scoreboard after Thome's homer, and the Twins came out to greet him at home plate. His quiet chase, which seemed to vanish from baseball's consciousness as injuries slowed him down, was finally complete. He entered the at-bat with 12 walk-off home runs, tied with Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Jimmie Foxx, Stan Musial, and Frank Robinson. The aforementioned string of home runs Thome would hit in the final June of his celebrated career would be the final one he would hit in a Phillies uniform. Thome hit his 40th home run of the season in a forgettable 8-4 loss in Pittsburgh in September.
The Hall of Famer notched his 400th homer in the first of two seasons he played for the Red Sox. Dawson became the 16th Major Leaguer with at least 2,500 hits and 400 home runs. Jones became just the second player in a White Sox uniform to hit home run No. 400, joining Thomas.
Career Regular Season
In his age-32 season, during which he hit his 400th homer, Aaron matched his career high with 44 long balls en route to 755 on his career. Williams was the first player to reach 400 homers while wearing an Athletics uniform, and only two more have followed him thus far. Sosa appropriately slammed a 2-1 Shane Reynolds pitch into the right-field bleachers at Wrigley Field in a game the Cubs ultimately lost to the Astros. Dubbed a "speed guy" as a prospect, Sheffield had never imagined reaching the 400-homer mark.
He ended the 2004 season with 42 homers, giving him 423 for his career, which placed him 35th on the career list. Fighting injuries during a frustrating season in Minnesota, Thome hasn't received nearly the amount of national publicity that his predecessors who reached the milestone did. Even Derek Jeter's accomplishment of 3,000 hits earlier this season dwarfed the attention Thome has been getting for a chase that's far more rare.
In 2011, he was ranked the sixth-best designated hitter in MLB history by Fox Sports. During his career, he compiled a .284 batting average against fastballs but compiled just a .170 batting average against sliders. On June 4, 2008, Thome hit a 464-foot home run—which at the time was the ninth-longest home run in U.S.
After attending Illinois Central College, he was drafted by the Indians in the 1989 draft, and made his big league debut in 1991. Early in his career, Thome played third base, before eventually becoming a first baseman. With the Indians, he was part of a core of players that led the franchise to two World Series appearances in three years during the mid-1990s. Thome spent over a decade with the Tribe, before leaving via free agency after the 2002 season, to join the Philadelphia Phillies, with whom he spent the following three seasons.
Upon retiring, Thome accepted an executive position with the White Sox. Thome began his career playing third base and did so until the 1997 season, when he converted to first base to make room at third after the Indians traded for Matt Williams. Injuries, however, took their toll and confined him almost exclusively to being a designated hitter in the latter stages of his career. Overall, he spent 10 separate stints on the disabled list, mostly for his back. By the end of Thome's career, his back prevented him from playing the field effectively—he played first base four times with the Phillies in 2012, which marked the first time he played the field since 2007 with the White Sox. By the end of his career, writers described him as being a "huge liability in the field".
For the season, Thome hit 42 home runs, drove in 109 runs, and hit .288, though he struck out in 30% of his plate appearances, the highest percentage in the AL. On May 1, 2006, Thome returned to Cleveland to play against the Indians in his first game as a visitor at Jacobs Field, and received an unenthusiastic reception. During the 2000 season, Thome hit .269 with 37 home runs and 106 RBIs. On June 21, he hit his 20th home run of the year against the Chicago White Sox, marking the seventh consecutive season in which he hit 20 or more home runs.
With a down-home demeanor and an uncanny ability for hitting home runs in a ballpark that has proven too big for most hitters, it hasn't taken long for Thome to reach heightened status in the Twin Cities. He dressed up as Paul Bunyan and led Babe the Blue Ox by a leash for a television commercial, and the lumberjack shirt with his No. 25 on the back is a hot item at the park. When No. 600 went over the fence, the crowd in Detroit came to its feet to applaud Thome. Only Babe Ruth needed fewer at-bats to reach 600, doing so in 6,921.
In Game 1 of the AL Division Series, Thome hit a game-tying two-run home run off of Derek Lowe that sprung Cleveland's defeat of the Boston Red Sox by a score of 3–2. However, after leading two-games-to-none, Cleveland lost the five-game series. Before their 1997 season, the Indians moved Thome, originally a third baseman, to first base after acquiring third baseman Matt Williams from the San Francisco Giants. That year, Thome helped the Indians set a new franchise single-season record for home runs , contributing 40 of them.
