Top 106 Baseball Players: #55 - Paul Molitor

Paul Molitor

Paul Molitor was a great hitter and baserunner for a long time, and after overcoming the injuries that slowed him early in his career, he became one of the best players in the league late in his career.

Molitor first played for the Brewers in 1978, but injuries kept him from becoming a star very quickly. Between 1980 and 1986 he spent time on the DL 6 times, mostly with elbow and hamstring injuries, but he showed great promise when healthy. In his first full healthy season in 1982, he got 201 hits and led the league with 136 runs scored, and he got the team to the World Series, where they lost to the Cardinals in 7 games, despite his .355 average.

In 1987, Molitor was in the national spotlight as he embarked on a long hitting streak, eventually hitting safely in 39 straight games, the longest by anybody since Pete Rose reached 44 in 1978, and a number no player has reached since. Late in the streak, a columnist jokingly said that the most amazing thing about the streak wasn't that he had hit in 33 straight games, but that he had played in 33 straight games.

Molitor had one of his strongest seasons in 1991, when he led the league in runs, hits, and triples, but when he hit free agency a year later, the Brewers wanted him to take a pay cut, so he left to join the defending champion Blue Jays, who offered him a nice raise.

The 1993 season was a special one for him. He led the league in hits again, with 211, but he also had 111 RBI's, making him the oldest player ever to reach 100 for the first time in his career, being 37 at the end of the season. The Blue Jays returned to the World Series that year, and Molitor had an historic series. He tied series records with 10 runs scored and a .500 average, and became the first player ever to record 2 doubles, 2 triples, and 2 homers in the Series, and he won the MVP for his efforts.

He was having a career year in 1994 before the season was cut short by strike, but struggled in 1995 when baseball returned, and he was not resigned. He joined his hometown Twins for the 1996 season, and he ended up leading the league in hits with 225, becoming only the second 40-year-old to reach 200.

Thanks to his late-career surge and that World Series MVP, Molitor was able to shake off an injury-ridden start to his career to become one of the all-time greats. He is one of only 5 players with 3000 hits, 500 stolen bases, and a .300 average, and he is the only one of those 5 to reach 200 home runs. He may have played in smaller markets and out of the spotlight for much of his career, but he deserves to be a part of this list.