Joe Morgan

Although he was no longer playing, Joe Morgan was still a regular presence at ballparks across the country, as a television announcer. In 1985 he started working as a color commentator for ESPN's broadcasts of college baseball, and joined the San Francisco Giants broadcast team from 1986 until 1990. Since then he has been a fixture on ESPN, providing some of the most intelligent, insightful baseball analysis available on any network. His television work has garnered him various awards, including the Ace Award and an Emmy.

Despite his success and visibility as an athlete and sports commentator, Morgan has on occasion come face-to-face with the grim realities of racial conflict in the United States. In 1988, at Los Angeles International Airport, he was accosted by two undercover members of the LA police department, who accused him of being a drug dealer and took him into detention while refusing to allow him to identify himself. The police eventually realized their mistake and Morgan was released. When the LAPD refused to allow Morgan to file a formal complaint, he brought a civil suit. In 1993 the Los Angeles City Council voted to pay Morgan $796,000 to end the suit. The incident brought home the situation of other black people in the United States.

In 1990, in his first year of eligibility, Morgan was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, only the seventh second baseman to be enshrined and the first in almost thirty years. When Joe Morgan retired he left the game not only as one of the greatest second basemen—some would say the greatest—ever to play the game, but as a complete player. He retired with 268 home runs—at the time the most ever hit by a second baseman—a .271 batting average, 1,133 runs batted in, 689 stolen bases and five Gold Gloves. Add to that, the fact that he was a thinking man's player and the penultimate team player, and he probably ranks as one of the greatest players in baseball history.