William Augustus Hatcher (born October 4, 1960) is a former left-wing player in Major League Baseball for Chicago Cubs, Houston Astros, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia Phillies and Texas Rangers, and former first base coach for Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Hatcher is currently the third base coach for the Reds.
Video Billy Hatcher
Pre-MLB career
In 1979, Hatcher graduated from Williams High School in Williams, Arizona, where he has performed 11-inning no-hitters as a junior. Hatcher then plays for Yavapai Community College in Prescott, Arizona, where he is an All-America junior college selection.
Maps Billy Hatcher
Professional playing career
Hatcher was drafted by the Cubs in the sixth round of the MLB draft in January 1981. He bounced quickly through the Cubs minor league system, playing exactly one season at every minor league level before receiving a season-ending call to the premier league club in 1984. He split the time between AAA and Cubs during the 1985 season before trading to Astros with Steve Engel for Jerry Mumphrey.
Hatcher will be Astros 'left fielder starting for the next 3 1/2 seasons and is remembered by Astros fans to hit one of the most dramatic post-season home runs ever in the 14th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 Astros' National League Championship Series vs. Jesse Orosco of New York Mets, to temporarily save Astros from elimination.
Hatcher had his best statistical season in 1987, when he opened the season with 16 match-hitting games and led Astros in a hit (.296) and had the highest career on stolen bases (53, 3 in the National League), home run (11) and RBI (63). His most dubious achievement came also in that season, as he received a 10-match suspension due to a bat suit. Hatcher later explained that he had borrowed a bat from a Dave Smith relief thrower. Hatcher broke several of his bats in the game that led to the incident, and he continued to maintain his innocence.
Toward the end of the 1989 season, Astros struggled to exchange Hatcher with Pirates for Glenn Wilson. He played only 27 games for Pittsburgh before trading to the Reds for Jeff Richardson and Mike Roesler. Hatcher had an impressive season in 1990 for the Reds when he stole 30 bases during a very tight pennanter period. On 21 August 1990, he tied a major league record against the Cubs with four doubles in one game. He eventually led the National League outfielders in a reduced percentage (.997) this season.
The best performance in Hatcher's career was timely, coming during the 1990 World Series against Oakland Athletics. During the post-season 1990 he hit, 519 overall (14-for-27), including a World Series record of.750 in four World Series games sweeping over a highly favored A. This mark broke the 62-year World Series record previously held by Babe Ruth (.625 in 1928). Hatcher also set the record for most successive hits in the series (7) and most doubles in the four-game series (4). Despite its blistering heat, Hatcher was not named the Most Valuable Player of the Series, which went to Reds pitcher José Rijo, who has an almost perfect series of his own. Hatcher finished his career with a remarkable 0.404 postseason average in 14 games.
Hatcher traded to the Red Sox for Tom Bolton in the middle of the 1992 season and, on August 3 of that season while with the Red Sox, stole home against Toronto's Blue Jays' Juan GuzmÃÆ'¡n. He was a Red Sox starter in the middle of the field for the 1993 season before ending his career as a reserve for Phillies and Rangers before retiring after the 1995 season.
Overall, Hatcher played 12 seasons in Major League. He finished his career with an average of 2,264 career averages in 1,233 games.
Train a career
In 2015, Billy Hatcher enters his tenth season as Premier League coach with the Reds organization. He works as a base-bottom, outfield, and baserunning coach. Prior to joining the Reds, he spent ten seasons at the Tampa Bay Rays organization, first as a minor-league traveling instructor (1996), then as minor league coach for 1997 champions Florida State League St. Petersburg. Hatcher spent the next eight seasons as a member of Premier League coaching staff Rays (1998-2005) as first-base coach (1998-99, 2003-05), bench coach (2001-02), and third-base coach (2000). He holds the distinction of being the only coach who works for Rays in every first eight years of club existence.
For the 2016 season, he will switch from first base coach to third base coach.
Personal life
Hatcher and his wife Karen had a son, Derek, who was the 2004 Class A Player of the Year in Florida in Berkley Prep in Tampa, Florida and then played safe for the University of Virginia football team that won the NCAA FCS National Championship 2008. The couple also had a daughter, Chelsea, who played football at the University of Tennessee from 2008 to 2011. She was selected to be the first team of All-SEC in 2010.
See also
- List of baseball Baseball league careers
References
External links
- Career and player information statistics from MLB, or ESPN, or Baseball-References, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube, or Baseball-Reference (Minors), or Retrosheet, or Pura Pelota (Venezuelan Winter League)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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