In Memory of Jim Wynn

Astros great Jimmy Wynn dies at 78
Matt Wyatt
Houston Chronicle
March 26, 2020


(c) Houston Astros

Former Astros All-Star Jimmy Wynn passed away Thursday.

Wynn played 11 of his 15 MLB seasons in Houston and was named an All-Star in 1967.

At 5'9", the diminutive outfielder earned the nickname "Toy Cannon" for his powerful arm. He debuted with the Colt .45s in 1963.

Wynn finished his career with a .250 batting average, 291 homers and 964 RBIs. After his run with the Astros, he was a two-time All-Star with the Dodgers and played for the Braves, Yankees and Brewers.

His No. 24 was retired by the Astros in 2005 and in 2019 he was a part of the inaugural Astros Hall of Fame class.

Wynn was serving as a community outreach executive with the Astros at the time of his death.


Astros great Jimmy Wynn dies at 78
Alyson Footer
Astros.com
March 26, 2020

HOUSTON -- Jimmy Wynn, whose big league career began one year after Houston became a National League franchise in the 1960s, passed away on Thursday. He was 78.

Wynn, born James Sherman Wynn on March 12, 1942, grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, not far from Crosley Field, home of the Cincinnati Reds. Wynn's hometown team signed him as a 19-year-old in 1962, but the Reds left him unprotected in the Winter Draft later that year, and the expansion Colt .45s pounced at the opportunity.

Wynn debuted with the Colt .45s in the middle of the 1963 season, and soon, his star power in the Space City skyrocketed.

Before Cesar Cedeno, Richard Hidalgo and Carlos Beltrán, there was Wynn, Houston's first slugging center fielder. This was despite one major potential pitfall that could have stood in his way -- size. He was small. The Astrodome was not. Neither ended up being much of an issue.

Wynn, listed at (a somewhat generous) 5-foot-9, hit 37 home runs in 1967 and at least 20 in seven other seasons, all the while playing half his games in the cavernous, pitcher-friendly Astrodome, home of thousands of fly balls that met their demise at the warning track. Despite the Astrodome's deep dimensions of 340 feet down the foul lines, 375 to the power alleys and 406 to center, Wynn finished his career with 97 home runs in 678 games at the Dome.

"That ballpark was built for defense and speed," Wynn said during an interview with MLB.com during the Civil Rights Game festivities at Minute Maid Park in 2014. "If you hit one there, it wasn't a cheapie."

Wynn had several stunning single-game moments, but none more famous than the home run he hit on April 12, 1970, when he became the first player to hit a regular-season home run into the upper deck of the Astrodome. Nine days earlier, Doug Rader hit a ball in almost the exact same spot to become the first Astros player to reach those gold-colored seats, but that was during an exhibition game against the Yankees. Wynn's was the first when the games counted.

In those days, home runs weren't measured. But it's fair to say the ball traveled somewhere in the neighborhood of 430 feet.

To commemorate the feat, the Astros reupholstered the seat the ball hit with the image of a cannon, and when the Dome was renovated in the 1980s, the Astros gave Wynn the seat.

The combination of his short stature and herculean strength earned him the nickname "Toy Cannon," given to him by a local newspaper reporter. At first, Wynn didn't like the nickname, but after hearing fans chanting Toy Cannon, he embraced it as part of his identity as a ballplayer.

"At times, I forgot my real name," Wynn said in '14. "If I hit a ball hard -- or out of the park -- I'd go back to the bench and look out to the mound to see the pitcher saying, 'How in the world can that little man hit the ball so far and so hard?' And then I got the reputation of being a power hitter and a home run hitter, so they pitched me a lot different.

"I lifted weights without people knowing about it. I kept my upper body, my hands and my wrists strong. That's where I got my power."

Wynn hit 223 homers as an Astro, a club record until Jeff Bagwell surpassed him in 1999. Fittingly, Bagwell set the record after hitting three home runs in a single game at Wrigley Field. Bagwell and Wynn, at that time, were among only four Astros players to hit three homers in one game.

Wynn's career spanned 15 years. Following his Astros tenure, he played two seasons with the Dodgers, followed by tours with the Braves (1976), Yankees (1977) and Brewers (1977). Over 1,920 Major League games, Wynn slashed .250/.366/.436 with an .802 OPS.

The Astros retired Wynn's uniform No. 24 in 2005, at which time Drayton McLane, then the owner of the club, asked him to serve as an ambassador for the team. Wynn had been in that role ever since, as an active participant with the team's community outreach program.

"The Astros have been my life," Wynn said. "They gave me an opportunity to bring my skills out. It gave me a chance to realize my dream."

One of his final public appearances in an Astros setting occurred last season, when he was one of 16 team legends to be inducted as the inaugural class of the Astros Hall of Fame. The honor arrived 14 years after his uniform number was officially hung on the rafters among the other Astros immortals.

When Wynn would look at his jersey high atop Minute Maid Park, he'd note the warm feeling that overcomes him every time he glances in that direction.

"You know, it makes me feel I've done something in baseball and here in Houston," he once said. "As I get older, it means more to me. When I sign autographs at games, people point to that number. It's just a special feeling to be appreciated."


'Toy Cannon' Jimmy Wynn, dead at 78, stood tall with early Astros
David Barron
Houston Chronicle
March 27, 2020

In an era when Houston took pride in being the biggest and boldest in all endeavors, it also came to appreciate a more diminutive combination of grace and power in the 5-9, 165-pound frame of Astros outfielder Jimmy Wynn, the "Toy Cannon," who died Thursday at age 78.

Wynn, who had been in declining health in recent years, was last greeted by fans last season at Minute Maid Park when he was honored among the inaugural members of the Astros Hall of Fame.

He made his mark, though, at the Astrodome, where he played nine of his 11 seasons in a Houston uniform between 1963 and 1973 at a time when the arrival of Major League Baseball in Houston contributed to an era of dynamic growth and change. He hit 97 of his career 291 home runs in the cavernous Dome, where the outfield fences ranged from 340 feet down the foul lines to 400 feet in center.

The nickname Toy Cannon was bestowed on Wynn by Chronicle sports writer John Wilson, and it reflected the explosive strength of a man who is in-variably listed among the best major league power hitters under six feet tall.

Had he played on a better team, said Joe Morgan, Wynn's roommate on the road for seven years with the Astros, he had the skills to merit consideration for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

"He was a true five-tool player," Morgan said. "He had the power to hit 37 home runs in a season while playing in the Astrodome, which is almost impossible, and one year he stole 43 bases and was caught four times.

"He could run the ball down in the outfield, he had a great arm, and if he could have gone to a winning team like I did, I think he could have made the Hall of Fame. There would have been nothing to stop him."

Wynn was known for tape measure blasts, and he hit one of the most memorable in his home town of Cincinnati. On June 11, 1967, facing the Reds' Sammy Ellis, he drove the ball out of Crosley Field and onto the exit ramp of Cincinnati's Mill Creek Expressway.

"I'm just swingin' the bat," he said afterward. "and lettin' wood meet horsehide."

A month later, another tape measure job in Pittsburgh went over the 457-foot center field fence at Forbes Field. His longest Astrodome home run, in 1970, traveled more than 500 feet into the sixth row of the upper deck.

"Jimmy had such power," said Bob Aspromonte, Wynn's longtime teammate with the Colt .45s and Astros. "He had that incredible upward swing. He brought the bat through with such speed and quickness.

"We used to laugh all the time about how his hits went into the stands and mine died at the warning track. He had such ability and such talent, and he handled himself so well off the field. He was a dear friend."

Born March 12, 1942, in Cincinnati, Wynn initially was signed as a free agent by the Reds in 1962 but was selected in the postseason first-year player draft by the Colt .45s, who had just finished their first season in the National League.

He made his major league debut on July 10, 1963, and within two years was a regular in the Astros lineup, hitting 22 homers with 73 RBIs during Houston's first year in the Astrodome.

Two years later, during a season in which he made his only All-Star Game appearance in an Astros uniform, he hit 37 homers with 107 RBIs as one of the few bright spots on a ninth-place team.

Wynn also was a good baserunner, with 225 career stolen bases, and sufficient vertical hops to touch the concrete beams that stretched 11 feet above the floor of the Astros' clubhouse.

"He was a smaller version of Willie Mays," said Astros pitcher and manager Larry Dierker. "He had the same gait, he had the same uppercut swing and the same uniform number (24). He could run, and he could dunk a basketball. He could do extraordinary things on the field."

Another noteworthy element of Wynn's career was his presence in the Colt .45s and Astros clubhouses during a time when Houston and cities across the south were still coming to grips with integration in the mid-1960s.

In that vein, pitcher Jim Bouton took note in his tell-all autobiography "Ball Four" that Wynn was among the leaders among the Astros in bringing together all players from all backgrounds.

In contrast with his previous team, the doomed Seattle Pilots, where, Bouton wrote, "There was not a lot of – what to call it? – integration," he said the Astros of Don Wilson, Curt Blefary, Norm Miller, Joe Morgan and Wynn were a more harmonious group.

"It doesn't seem forced, and I think it's worth a lot to the ballclub," Bouton wrote.

Wynn remained in Houston through the 1973 season and was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, in one of a series of calamitous trades that characterized the early 1970s Astros, for minor league pitcher David Culpepper and pitcher Claude Osteen.

He prospered with the Dodgers, making the National League All-Star team in 1974 and 1975, and hit 32 homers with 108 RBIs for the Los Angeles team that lost to Oakland in the World Series.

Wynn was traded after the 1975 season to Atlanta in a trade that brought current Astros manager Dusty Baker to the Dodgers. After one season in Atlanta, he split the 1977 season between the Yankees and Brewers before ending his 15-year career.

Baker said Wynn was a valuable mentor to young players across baseball in the late 1960s, when he broke into the major leagues with Atlanta.

"On every team, there were players that took care of rookies if they thought you could play," Baker said. "It was Joe (Morgan), Toy Cannon, Don Wilson and Bob Watson that really took care, especially minority guys.

"He treated us great and gave us a sense that we belonged in the big leagues. He helped our progress."

Baker said Wynn continued in that role with the Dodgers after leaving Houston. He said his former teammate, Rick Sutcliffe, said that Wynn gave him his first pair of running shoes when he signed with the Dodgers in the mid-1970s.

Wynn's kindness, Baker said, continued years after they were traded for each other in the 1970s.

"I think he was about seven or eight years older than me. He was kind of on the decline and I was on the incline. But when I started managing, he'd always come by the clubhouse and see me, even toward the end, when he could barely walk."

But in his prime, "I remember this cat was like Mighty Mouse," Baker said. "He was 161 pounds and could hit that ball out of the Astrodome like a big man. He was a player."

Wynn finished with eight seasons of more than 20 home runs, four years with more than a hundred runs scored and two seasons in which he led the National League in walks.

While he never made it to baseball's Hall of Fame while playing most of his career with sub-.500 teams, Morgan said Wynn's desire and talent helped pave his own journey to Cooperstown.

"Jimmy wanted to be the best he could be, and he pushed me along with him," Morgan said. "Ernie Banks once said to me, 'You and Jimmy compete against each other, but not in a bad way. You want to outdo each other, and you keep pushing each other.'

"That meant a lot to me, and Ernie was right. I couldn't do the things Jimmy could. He had more power and was faster and had more skills than I did. I saw him do so many things.

"And he was an everybody person. He liked everybody. Jimmy Wynn was good people."

In retirement, Wynn remained involved with the Astros in community outreach, and the training center at the team's Youth Academy in Acres Homes is named in his honor. His uniform number 24 was retired by the ballclub in 2005.

"As an All-Star player in the 1960's and 70's, Jimmy's success on the field helped build our franchise from its beginnings," the Astros said in a statement Thursday night. "After his retirement, his tireless work in the community impacted thousands of young people in Houston.

"Although he is no longer with us, his legacy will live on at Minute Maid Park, at the Astros Youth Academy and beyond. We send our heartfelt condo-lences to his wife Marie, daughter, Kimberly, son, James, Jr., to the other members of his family and to his many fans and admirers."