We had the same seats we usually had on June 15, 1967 at the Astrodome: Field boxes on the first base side, with a long look down the left field line. I was 12, and the Houston Astros were battling the San Francisco Giants. My family made up four of the 21,264 in attendance that Thursday night.
Jimmy Wynn, who passed away at age 78 on March 26 following a long illness, hit a home run into the left field seats that night, a solo shot in the fourth inning. Not an uncommon site from the ‘Stros’ right-handed mighty mite; in fact, he did it again in the sixth inning and again in the eighth.
I had a perfect view of the majestic trajectories of all of them. Each clobbered ball shot quickly away from me, with a remarkable speed that decades later would be dubbed “exit velocity,” and each flight had a slight leftward bend that, at the time, I found peculiar.
As the third rocket launch made its inevitable rendezvous with the Dome’s orange seats in left, Wynn had become the first Houston player to hit three home runs in a game. By that third one, I had worn out my legs hopping up and down, and for the first time, this pre-adolescent discovered what the phrase “tears of joy” meant.
Franchise’s First Power Hitter
Jimmy Wynn, all 5’9″ and 165 pounds of him, played 11 seasons in the uniforms of both the Colt .45s and the Astros (1963-1973) and hit nine homers with Colt Stadium as his home before sending some(97) of his 246 round-trippers into the vast canyon of Houston’s Eighth Wonder of the World.
Unlike Minute Maid Park’s short Crawford Boxes, the foul lines stretched 340 feet from the Dome’s home plate, with a center field fence 16 feet high and 400 breeze-free feet away.
The final four years of Wynn’s career were spent with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves, New York Yankees, and Milwaukee Brewers.
The Cincy Connection, However Brief
In 2019, Wynn was one of sixteen inaugural members of the Astros Hall of Fame. He joined fellow Colt and Astro Joe Morgan in that honor. The two similarly statured and talented spark plugs shared a Houston uniform for nine years before Morgan was traded to the Cincinnati Reds in a 1971 blockbuster trade.
That deal not only positioned “Little Joe” to help power the Redlegs to two World Championships as part of the Big Red Machine in 1975 and 1976 but punched his ticket to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990.
Coincidentally enough, Wynn was not only born in Cincinnati (March 1942), he attended Taft High School there, playing shortstop for the Senators. It was the Reds who signed him as a free agent before the 1962 season out of Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio.
He spent that season on the Reds’ Class A Tampa Tarpons, hitting .290 with 14 home runs and an .893 OPS in 524 plate appearances. Unaccustomed to pitching to a player with his unique stature, and as a nod to his increasingly obvious power, Florida State League pitchers yielded 113 walks to Wynn, while the 20-year-old phenom whiffed just 77 times.
The Colt .45s, though, convinced he was ready for prime time as a middle-of-the-order power outlet, especially on a fledgling expansion team, plucked him off the Reds’ roster that November in the first year player draft.
He made his MLB debut on July 10, 1963. Within two years, the man some called the “mini Willie Mays” was a regular in Houston’s lineup. In 1965, for the newly-christened Astros, Wynn hit 22 homers with 73 RBIs in the team’s first year in the Astrodome.
“That Ball’s in Astro Orbit!”
Just five days before the three-homer game I witnessed, Wynn clobbered a home run completely out of Cincinnati’s Crosley Field, the same stadium he frequented as a lad living mere blocks away.
It was the nightcap of a doubleheader. The Astros had already won the first game, 7-1. With the second game tied at one, Wynn faced righty Sammy Ellis and decided the pitcher’s second pitch belonged nowhere near the ballpark.
Wynn is credited with the longest ball ever hit at Crosley, a horsehide bomb sailing over a 58-foot high scoreboard in left-center field and bouncing onto I-74, an estimated 507 feet from home plate.
After a couple of visible bounces, the ball managed to roll itself down a street that sent it on its way in the direction of Wynn’s old neighborhood! For years, locals claimed the ball was eventually tracked down to Colrain Avenue, the exact street little Jimmy and his family had their house.
“I’m just swingin’ the bat,” Wynn said modestly after the game, “and lettin’ wood meet horsehide.”
The Need for Reupholstering
Nearly three years after that blast, Wynn became the first player to ever hit a home run into the upper deck of the Dome (during a regular season game), punishing a Phil Niekro pitch down the left field line.
On the back of a seat in the Astrodome, a depiction of a black cannon marked the spot where Wynn launched his moon shot some 430 feet on April 12, 1970 (gold section 738C, row 6, seat 3).
During a late-1980s Astrodome renovation, the seat was given to Wynn, who had proudly displayed it in his living room.
Just nine days before Wynn’s long-distance Dome dinger, third baseman Doug Rader (“The Red Rooster”), in an exhibition game, came within feet of the seat Wynn hit the next week. Both balls landed in the same row, just seats away from each other. Rader’s accomplishment, of course, was marked by the addition of a red rooster on the gold seat he cratered.
Wynn’s Hall of Fame Credibility
Morgan had understandably complimentary words to share about Wynn shortly after hearing of his good friend and former road roommate’s passing. Speaking with the Houston Chronicle’s David Barron, Morgan suggested Wynn would have had serious Hall of Fame consideration if he’d only have played for a good team.
Good team or no, I contend Wynn would have had similarly legitimate Hall credentials if his team was placed anywhere but in the glass canyon of the Dome.
Countless is likely the number of fly balls off his Louisville Slugger that simply ran out of gas at the track, despite his unparalleled bat speed, uppercut swing, and the strongest, whip-like wrists this side of Hank Aaron.
In fact, it was Aaron who barely edged Wynn in the 1967 NL home run race, 39-37. The legendary Hall of Famer played his home games in the Atlanta Braves’ generally smaller Fulton County Stadium, and Aaron was happy to tip his cap to Wynn at the tail end of that season.
According to Greg Lucas in his 2019 book, “Astro Legends,” “Jimmy said Aaron called him the real champ that year. Hank was well aware how much harder it was to hit homers playing in the Astrodome.”
Wynn reached the 20-homer mark in eight seasons and hit the 30-mark three times. His walk total reached 100 six times.
Astros Icons Reflect on “The Toy Cannon”
“He was a true five-tool player,” Morgan recalled fondly of the center fielder. “He had the power to hit 37 home runs in a season while playing in the Astrodome [1967, the year of his three-dinger game and only All-Star Game nod as an Astro], 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.”
“Jimmy had such power,” remembers Bob Aspromonte, Wynn’s teammate for seven years with both the Colts and Astros and fellow Astros HOF inductee last year. “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,” Aspro continued. “He had such ability and such talent, and he handled himself so well off the field. He was a dear friend.”
Former Astros pitcher and manager, Larry Dierker (another inaugural Astros HOF inductee) offered his Wynn insights to the Chronicle: “He was a smaller version of Willie Mays. 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.”
“Jimmy was a good man, great player, and a great ambassador for the game; he will truly be missed. Thoughts and prayers go out to his family.” - Baseball Hall of Famer Craig Biggio
Wynn’s number 24 was retired by the team in 2005.
“His Legacy Will Live On…”
During his retirement years, Wynn remained involved with the Astros in community outreach. In fact, the training center at the team’s Urban Youth Academy in Sylvester Turner Park is named in his honor, and he made several coaching appearances there over the years, as well.
The Astros issued an official statement late Thursday, spotlighting Wynn’s impact on the franchise: “As an All-Star player in the 1960’s and [’70s], Jimmy’s success on the field helped build our franchise from its beginnings. 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 condolences to his wife Marie, daughter Kimberly, son James, Jr, to the other members of his family, and to his many fans and admirers.”
As the Fans Wave Goodbye…
Ironic and heartbreaking, both, that Jimmy Wynn passed away just as 2020 baseball seems to be nothing more than a virus-hewn, abbreviated possibility.
But, #24 was keenly aware of how much he was loved in the city that gave him his first chance. He was also eager to embrace his role in helping power the franchise from infancy to National League credibility from the 1960s into the ’70s.
“You know, it makes me feel I’ve done something in baseball and here in Houston,” Wynn 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.”