Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The baseball newsletter that loves walk-off grand slams.

This one from Chase Hug was absolutely ELECTRIC.

Unfortunately, they lost the next game, but it doesn’t take away from how epic this was.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about a ballplayer who should be a Hall of Famer, but didn’t get voted in because he had a shitty personality.

Albert Belle wasn’t known for being a nice guy — pretty much the opposite.

Without a doubt, the most famous footage of him is this video where he “broke up the double play” by completely annihilating Fernando Viña.

But this wasn’t just something Albert only did to his competition — he was known to snap and often turned violent. 

In the early 90’s, he was convicted of a domestic violence-related assault stemming from an incident that happened in ‘88.

Then in ‘92 and ‘93, he was suspended for charging the mound two different times.

In ‘94, he got suspended again after the now infamous bat heist went down.

Buster Olney said Belle threw tantrums so often that the Indians used to bill him $10,000 a year for the damage he caused in clubhouses at home and on the road.

Then in ‘95, he had the season of his life.

That year he became the first player in MLB to hit 50 bombs and 50 doubles.

He also had a .317 batting average, a .690 slugging percentage, and only finished second in the MVP voting because everyone thought he was an asshole.

During the World Series that year, Belle went on a profanity-laced tirade attacking reporter Hannah Storm; that certainly didn’t help his rep.

MLB slapped him with a $50,000 fine (the biggest ever at the time) and ordered him to go to anger management courses.

Even after all of this, he signed a $55 million contract with the White Sox in the Winter of ‘96.

The next year, he admitted to losing $40,000 on sports betting and that opened a whole different can of worms.

Belle definitely had the numbers to be in the Hall of Fame, and if it wasn’t for the way he represented himself during his career, he would be.

In ‘06, the first year he was eligible to be voted into Cooperstown, he only received 7.7% of the vote.

The next year it was even worse — less than 4% — effectively guaranteeing that he would never get in.

Free Shots!

Dugout Mugs is the maker of the world famous Bat Mug.

And for those of you who like to party, they also make these knob shots.

The knob shots are on the house tonight for Dead Legends subscribers, all you gotta do is cover the shipping and handling (Only $8.95).

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

There’s never been a more American name in the history of Strange Names.

In ‘08, he won Closer of the Year for the Elizabethton Twins.

Unfortunately, Mark’s big-league career didn’t last long.

He was a September call up in ‘11, and while he did collect a W during the eight innings he pitched, he gave up four earned.

He got suspended for PED’s in 2013, and bounced around in the years after that - including a couple of stints playing in Australia.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

If you like this story, check out some of our past favorites:

• The Accident: Fleer f*cks up

• The Long Road: From prison to the big leagues

• The Fall: Hall of famer’s mysterious death is still unsolved

That's it for today. Tomorrow we're back at it like a bad habit. See ya!

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