Decline
Charboneau injured his back in a headfirst slide in spring training the following year. He tried to play through the pain but was hitting only .208 at the time of the 1981 Major League Baseball strike that interrupted the season. Just after the players came back in early August, though, Joe was sent to AAA Charleston, making him the first Rookie-of-the-Year to be returned the minors the following season. After 18 games with the Charlies (where he hit just .217), he returned to the big club on August 28. His final big-league numbers for 1981: .210 average, just four homers and 18 RBI in 138 at-bats. He underwent back surgery over the winter.
Things did not improve for Charboneau in 1982: after only 22 games with the Indians, Joe and his .214 average where shipped back to Charleston, then to AA Chattanooga again. Playing in the same league he had torn apart three years earlier, he could only manage a dismal .207 mark. Joe endured another back surgery after the season, but seemingly nothing could allow him to regain his timing at the plate. Finally, in 1983, when batting .200 for AA Buffalo, Charboneau gave jeering fans an obscene gesture, leading to his quick release. However, the Pittsburgh Pirates took a flyer on him in 1984, and he managed a .289 average in the Carolina League (though at 29, he was easily the oldest player in the loop). A shot with the Pirates AAA team in Hawaii ended after 15 games, and "Super Joe" retired from the game. (Joe did make one more appearance in a baseball uniform that year, but only on celluloid: he was an extra in the film The Natural, playing one of Roy Hobbs' teammates.)
Charboneau holds the record for the fewest career games played in the Major Leagues by a Rookie of the Year, with 201.
Read more about this topic: Joe Charboneau
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
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“The decline of a culture
Mourned by scholars who dream of the ghosts of Greek boys.”
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