Joe Morgan
From Wiki Gonzalez
Joe Morgan is a former second baseman for the Reds, Astros, Phillies and other teams, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, a commentator on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, and a participant for a while on ESPN.com online chats.
As a player, Morgan is considered by experts such as Bill James to be the finest second baseman in the history of baseball. In 1976, the second of his back-to-back MVP seasons, Morgan led the NL in OBP, SLG, and stolen base percentage, and won a Gold Glove, all for a team that swept the playoffs and World Series. James cites Morgan as the best "percentage" player in baseball history, based on a formula that includes his fielding percentage (compared to the period norm for his era and position), stolen base percentage, strikeout-to-walk ratio, and absolute walk frequency. James rates Morgan as the 15th best player ever (between Lou Gehrig and Barry Bonds) in the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.
On air and in print, Morgan is a prominent exponent of "back in my day" baseball thinking; on pre-registration Primer, he was lampooned in prolix posts under his name and that of Moe Jorgan. The posts sound eerily familiar when read using Morgan's tone of voice. The irony of it all is that he is exactly the kind of player Primates would want on their team, making his inability to understand what made him a good player all the more frustrating.
His true fame on Primer comes from having created a running joke.
On July 20, 2003 Stevie Ridzik (D.C.) (aka Repoz) asked Morgan, during an ESPN chat, to reconsider a previous week's chat statement about the Blue Jays offense relying mainly on home runs, mentioning that the stats showed no such thing.
Morgan responded with the classic..."Don't put words in my mouth!"
- Listen to what I say and do not put somebody else's words in my mouth. I said they have a chance of winning because they have a great offense. I'm not sure where you got that. It seems that people want to put words in my mouth.
(He got "that" from the June 19, 2003 chat, Joe.)
In multiple ESPN chat sessions around the same time, Morgan habitually asserted Billy Beane wrote Moneyball, and criticized Beane for it. In a later chat, a link to which has not yet been found by this site's maintainers, a chat participant brought up the mistake.
Morgan famously replied: "I never said that." Even though the chat log shows that, indeed, he did say "that."
Ever since, true Primates have used "I never said that" and "Don't put words in my mouth!" as all-purpose Morganesque ripostes.
References
- Joe Morgan on baseball-reference.com
- Nail-Tinted Glasses remembers Ridzik vs Morgan -- links to chat threads
- Aaron Gleeman rant on people who think Beane wrote Moneyball -- links to chat threads
