A Little Help from My Friends

I had a great surprise in my mailbox this week - Kevin of The Card Papoy is able to avoid shipping overseas by winning U.S. based eBay auctions and shipping direct to the lucky collector! Kenny Lofton is one of my favorite players of the 1990s and early 2000s. The Twins in the latter half of the 90s was in bad shape, so by the time the playoffs rolled around, I was looking for a different team to root for.

Lofton was seemingly in the playoffs every season. He only missed the playoffs twice between 1995 and 2007, playing in 20 different playoff series. He was in the World Series twice, in 97 with Cleveland and 2002 with the San Francisco Giants. Lofton had some impressive postseason series - in the 1995 ALCS, for instance, he hit .458 including 2 triples and 5 stolen bases. In the 1998 ALDS against Boston he hit 2 homers and swiped 2 bases; and in 2003 for the Cubs against the Marlins he hit .323 scoring 8 runs in the 7 game series. Overall he had 97 hits in 95 postseason games in his career, stealing 34 bases, only being caught stealing 6 times. So all those times the Twins suffered an early exit or no appearance at all, it wasn't hard to look to Kenny Lofton to find someone to cheer for.