WashPost on former Dodgers and Senators slugger Frank “Hondo” Howard:
Former Senators shortstop Eddie Brinkman, Howard’s best friend and roommate on road trips, recalls the 15 feet of bald space where Howard paced in left field. “We had a lot of pop-ups between us,” says Brinkman, recalling the time he ran back tracking a shallow fly, expecting Howard to call him off. He kept going and still heard nothing. Finally he caught the ball five feet in front of Howard’s bare spot.
“I said, ‘Hondo, Jesus, mix in an “I got it” once in a while,’ ” Brinkman says, laughing. “He said, ‘You little [expletive]. I get paid to hit it, you’re paid to catch it.’ ”
Check the list of Hall of Famers and you won’t find Frank Howard between Rogers Hornsby and Waite Hoyt. Howard says he once watched Hall of Famer and career home run champ Hank Aaron hit batting practice. He looked over Aaron’s bat. All the ball marks were a dime apart. His own bat was marked from the handle to the fat end. “So I said, ‘Hammer, just out of curiosity, how many bats would you break in a year?’ ” Howard says. “He looked at me right in the eyes and said, ‘Big Frank, I don’t break bats, I wear ’em out.’
“Those guys are in the Hall of Fame for one reason and one reason only — they excel at a level beyond us mere mortals.”
Author John Holway once rated baseball’s greatest home run hitters by calculating what their career totals would have been with as many at-bats as Aaron had (12,364) in hitting his record 755 homers. Howard’s projected total: 728.
