129. George Brett: Hall of Famer

George Brett spent 21 years with the Kansas City Royals and never played a single game for anyone else — which in today's era of free agency feels almost quaint. He's the only player in baseball history to win batting titles in three different decades ('76, '80, '90), hit .390 in 1980 — the closest anyone has come to .400 since Ted Williams — and finished with 3,154 career hits before a first-ballot Hall of Fame induction in 1999. Oh, and he led the Royals to their only World Series title in 1985. Not bad for a kid from Hermosa Beach, California. Of course, if you ask most casual fans what they remember, there's a decent chance they skip the batting titles and go straight to the Pine Tar Incident of 1983 — Brett homers off Goose Gossage, the umpire calls him out, and he comes flying out of the dugout in what remains one of the greatest displays of barely-contained human rage in sports history. Frank White had warned him it might be coming, and Brett told him "if they call me out, I'll kill one of those SOB's." Less than a second later he was being physically restrained from doing exactly that to 6'5 home plate umpire Tim McClelland. Back in June of 1976, though, Brett was just 23 years old on the cover of Sports Illustrated, already flashing the talent and competitiveness that would define his career — and Kansas City was clearly building something worth watching. On Past Our Prime, Brett takes us inside all of it — how his brother Ken made him believe a big league career was possible, how rivals like Schmidt, Reggie, and Goose became close friends after years of battles including a bench-clearing brawl with another pal, Graig Nettles of the Yankees, in the '77 ALCS, and why he's called Kansas City home ever since the Royals drafted him in 1971. A Hall of Famer in every sense — George Brett on the Past Our Prime podcast. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices