Maybe not the BEST nickname, but . . . .
Maybe not the BEST nickname, but . . . .
I have to give props to my boy, Jimmy "Toy Cannon" Wynn as the Astros retired his No. 24 yesterday afternoon. The following is an exerpt from an article in today's Houston Chronicle.
A loud round of thanks to 'Toy Cannon'
By RICHARD JUSTICE
Houston Chronicle
The Astros on Saturday retired the number Jimmy Wynn never wanted in the first place. Funny how things sometimes work out.
"I found it hanging in my locker at Colt Stadium a few days before opening day (in 1964)," he said. "I pitched a fit. I didn't want anything to do with that number. I'd worn No. 18 during spring training. That's the number I wanted. They gave it to my roommate, Joe Morgan. But 24, I couldn't wear that one."
To players of Wynn's era, No. 24 belonged to just one player ? Willie Mays. To wear it was to invite comparisons with one of the greatest who ever lived.
For a center fielder to wear it, especially a 20-year-old center fielder with nothing on his r?sum? except dreams, it seemed boastful. And even now Wynn, 63, is anything but boastful.
Wait, it gets better.
"I'm a young kid, so I'm not about to complain about what number I've been given," he said. "I'm in the major leagues. What do I have to complain about? But then ( club executives) Spec Richardson and Paul Richards come to me on opening day and tell me why they've given me that number. They want me to be Willie Mays. I mean, that's a lot of pressure to put on a 21-year-old kid."
They weren't done. When the Colt .45s played the San Francisco Giants a few weeks later, they ordered Wynn to go speak to the great Mays. They told him they'd spoken to him and that Mays would be expecting him in the Giants' dugout.
"So I walk across the field, and there he is," Wynn said. "I shake his hand and tell him Spec Richardson and Paul Richards told me to ask him what I have to do to play in the big leagues. I tell him they want me to be just like Willie Mays."
Mays smiled and told him to relax.
"He told me I couldn't be Willie Mays, that I could only be Jimmy Wynn," Wynn recalled.
To a generation of Houston baseball fans, Wynn was Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle rolled into one. He hit long home runs. He stole bases. He made spectacular catches in center field.
He played with a certain flair, too. When he made the final out of an inning, he laid his bat and helmet down gently near home plate, just as Mays did. When he trotted out to center field, he stepped on first base, just as Mays did.
He became the first giant the Astros ever had.
The fact that he generated all that power, that he hit 37 home runs in 1967 and 33 in 1969, was even more special because of his stature.
He was just 5-9. And yet he used a mammoth 38-ounce bat and hit moon-shot home runs. Chronicle sportswriter John Wilson gave him a nickname that stuck: the Toy Cannon.
"He didn't just hit home runs," said Larry Dierker, a former teammate. "He hit tape-measure home runs."
He played his home games in the cavernous Astrodome. "His might have another 100 career home runs if he'd played in another ballpark," Dierker said.
Wynn hit them into the distant sections, too. Someone painted a toy cannon on a seat in the Dome's gold level after Wynn homered there.
"I didn't really like the nickname at first," he said. "You feel like you're under pressure to hit home runs. If you don't, what are you then?"
He accepts it now, saying: "It stuck. It's unique."
