Steve Kemp | My First Cards

# Steve Kemp

October 22, 2009 @ 1:48 pm

Seriousness, determination, and manliness, all emanate from this card. Steve Kemp put together a nice career for a few years and was one of my favorite players when I got to watch him play for the Yankees, but why do we need to check that he’s cleaned his nostrils? What photographer thought this would be ok?

Kemp was the 1st pick of the 1st round of the 1976 amateur draft. The Tigers brought him to the major leagues after only 125 games in the minors. It’s pretty surprising to me that Kemp didn’t get a single vote for Rookie of the Year in 1977 after he swatted 18 homers, drove in 88 RBI’s, slugged .422, and scored 75 runs. Compare that to Bump Wills who got four 1st place votes whacking just 9 HR’s, 62 RBI’s, and slugged .410. Steve Kemp should’ve gotten a little more attention from the start.

From 1977-1981, he was one of baseball brightest young stars. In fact, for players under age 27 during that period who had more than 2000 plate appearances, Kemp had the 9th highest OPS+ and 3rd highest RBI total, behind only Jim Rice and Eddie Murray. He also had a talent for drawing walks more than striking out, helping him to a .376 OBP.

Detroit probably thought he was fading since he only knocked in 9 HR’s in 105 games in 1981, because on November 27, Kemp was traded to the Chicago White Sox for another young star, Chet Lemon. Kemp went on to have a very good season in Chicago, his only year there.

The first full month of that season he hit .300/.388/.420, but couldn’t find his home run swing, collecting only 3. Another month passes and he still only added 1 more home run to his total. When the All-Star break hit, he only had 8 HR’s, but he had driven in 51 while scoring 35 more himself (minus the HR’s that counted as RBI’s).

His slugging rose 20 points in the second half of the season, to help him reach 19 home runs after the second game of a double header at Comiskey Park against the Mariners on Sept 27. He also drove in his 98th run that day. There were five games left, and Steve Kemp looked sure to pull off his 3rd season of 20+ HR’s and 100+ RBI’s. In those last five games though, he only hit .118 with 4 walks and struck out 5 times, falling short of the 20 HR/100 RBI mark.

After 1982, he moved on to the Yankees for a couple years and then faded out. My personal memory of Kemp is from the ’83 season, and watching him smack a big home run into the Yankees right field upper deck. I immediately went out to my backyard with my Yankees hat on and started pretending to be Steve Kemp for the rest of the afternoon. My memory might be a bit off though, because I couldn’t find a game from that year where Kemp hit a home run in the afternoon in Yankee Stadium, assuming only the weekend games were afternoon ones. So maybe it was 1984, or maybe the Yanks played a rare afternoon game during a weekday that summer.