Baseball trivia

Interview | But chronicler Mike Robbins finds nothing trivial in its providential twists | Marvin Olasky

During the playoffs and World Series this month it's likely that some players will become stars and others goats. In Ninety Feet from Fame (Carroll & Graf, 2004), journalist Mike Robbins pulls together fascinating stories of players who came up just short of baseball glory. He relates how some messed up their lives, others were off to great starts and suffered injuries, and others made key hits in World Series but had them overshadowed by later plays. There's plenty of material for musings about providential twists.

WORLD: You write of Willie Mays Aikens and conclude, "It's certainly the furthest any near-Series hero has fallen." What happened to him?

ROBBINS: In the 1980s World Series the Royals first baseman went 8 for 20 with four homers and also six walks, but Kansas City lost to Philadelphia in six, so no one much remembers Mr. Aikens' heroics. His career continued to roll along until 1983, when at age 28 he was suspended by major-league baseball for using cocaine. He returned the next year but wasn't the same player and soon drifted out of the majors, then out of the minors. By the early 1990s he weighed over 300 pounds and was addicted to crack. In 1992, Mr. Aikens met a woman who asked him to help her get some drugs. He complied, but it turned out the woman was an undercover narcotics officer. He was sentenced to more than 20 years in jail, where he remains to this day.