Jesse Barfield
Encyclopedia
Jesse Lee Barfield is a former Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...

 right fielder
Right fielder
A right fielder, abbreviated RF, is the outfielder in baseball or softball who plays defense in right field. Right field is the area of the outfield to the right of a person standing at home plate and facing towards the pitcher's mound...

 who played for the Toronto Blue Jays
Toronto Blue Jays
The Toronto Blue Jays are a professional baseball team located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Blue Jays are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball 's American League ....

 (1981–89) and New York Yankees
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...

 (1989–92). He batted and threw right-handed. He lived in Tenafly, a suburb of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

Barfield was well known for his powerful, accurate throwing arm. Barfield led American League
American League
The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, or simply the American League , is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western League, a minor league based in the Great Lakes states, which eventually aspired to major...

 outfielder
Outfielder
Outfielder is a generic term applied to each of the people playing in the three defensive positions in baseball farthest from the batter. These defenders are the left fielder, the center fielder, and the right fielder...

s in assists three times (1985–87. Along with George Bell (LF
Left fielder
In baseball, a left fielder is an outfielder who plays defense in left field. Left field is the area of the outfield to the left of a person standing at home plate and facing towards the pitcher's mound...

) and Lloyd Moseby
Lloyd Moseby
Lloyd Anthony Moseby was a Major League Baseball player. A center fielder, and good all-around athlete, Moseby's nickname Shaker was said to stem from his ability to get away from or "shake" players who attempted to defend him on the basketball court.Born in Portland, Arkansas, Moseby graduated...

 (CF
Center fielder
A center fielder, abbreviated CF, is the outfielder in baseball who plays defense in center field – the baseball fielding position between left field and right field...

), Barfield starred in what many analysts considered the best all-around outfield of the 1980s.

Selected by the Blue Jays in the ninth round of the 1977 amateur draft
1977 Major League Baseball Draft
-First round selections:The following are the first round picks in the 1977 Major League Baseball draft.- Background :The White Sox raised some brows when they passed on right-handed pitcher Bill Gullickson, a native of nearby Orland Park, IL, and selected outfielder Harold Baines as the number one...

, Barfield debuted in the majors in 1981 and was a regular the following season. In 1985, he helped Toronto to reach the playoffs for the first time. He also topped 20 home run
Home run
In baseball, a home run is scored when the ball is hit in such a way that the batter is able to reach home safely in one play without any errors being committed by the defensive team in the process...

s six times, became the first Blue Jay to hit a pinch
Pinch hitter
In baseball, a pinch hitter is a substitute batter. Batters can be substituted at any time while the ball is dead ; the manager may use any player that has not yet entered the game as a substitute...

 grand slam
Home run
In baseball, a home run is scored when the ball is hit in such a way that the batter is able to reach home safely in one play without any errors being committed by the defensive team in the process...

 (1982), and the first to hit 20 homers and steal
Stolen base
In baseball, a stolen base occurs when a baserunner successfully advances to the next base while the pitcher is delivering the ball to home plate...

 20 bases in the same season (1985).

Despite the Blue Jays' failure to defend their division title from the previous year, Barfield enjoyed his best personal season in 1986. He was the 1986 Major League Homerun Champion. He collected career-highs in batting average
Batting average
Batting average is a statistic in both cricket and baseball that measures the performance of cricket batsmen and baseball hitters. The two statistics are related in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages.- Cricket :...

 (.289), RBI
Run batted in
Runs batted in or RBIs is a statistic used in baseball and softball to credit a batter when the outcome of his at-bat results in a run being scored, except in certain situations such as when an error is made on the play. The first team to track RBI was the Buffalo Bisons.Common nicknames for an RBI...

 (108), runs (107), hits (170) and doubles
Double (baseball)
In baseball, a double is the act of a batter striking the pitched ball and safely reaching second base without being called out by the umpire, without the benefit of a fielder's misplay or another runner being put out on a fielder's choice....

 (35). He also hit a career-best 40 home runs, leading the major leagues and setting a team record. In addition, Barfield was awarded the Gold Glove Award
Gold Glove Award
The Rawlings Gold Glove Award, usually referred to as the Gold Glove, is the award given annually to the Major League Baseball players judged to have exhibited superior individual fielding performances at each fielding position in both the National League and the American League , as voted by the...

 and selected to the American League All-Star
Major League Baseball All-Star Game
The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, also known as the "Midsummer Classic", is an annual baseball game between players from the National League and the American League, currently selected by a combination of fans, players, coaches, and managers...

 team.

Barfield was traded to the Yankees for pitcher Al Leiter
Al Leiter
Alois Terry "Al" Leiter is a former Major League Baseball left-handed starting pitcher. He is now a studio analyst for MLB Network, and a color commentator for the YES Network.-Early career :Leiter attended Central Regional High School....

 on April 30 . He won his second Gold Glove in 1987, but his offensive numbers declined noticeably. He hit 25 home runs for New York in 1990, but never produced like the club had hoped. Injuries and general ineffectiveness forced his retirement in 1992, at age 32, after he hit just .137 in 30 games. He played in Japan with the Yomiuri Giants
Yomiuri Giants
The are a professional baseball team based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. The team competes in the Central League in Nippon Professional Baseball, the top level of professional play in Japan. They play their home games in the Tokyo Dome, opened in 1988. The English-language press occasionally calls the...

, reuniting with Moseby, but batted just .215 in 114 games and was released.

He joined the Houston Astros
Houston Astros
The Houston Astros are a Major League Baseball team located in Houston, Texas. They are a member of the National League Central division. The Astros are expected to join the American League West division in 2013. Since , they have played their home games at Minute Maid Park, known as Enron Field...

 for spring training in , and was projected to be the opening-day right-fielder, but injuries prevented him from making the ballclub.

Throughout his career Barfield was a free swinger and racked up more than 140 strike outs in five seasons ('85, '86, '87, '89 & '90). For most of his time in the major leagues his productivity overshadowed his strikeouts, however by 1990 1 in 3 Barfield at bats resulted in a strikeout.

Barfield was a career .256 hitter with 241 home runs and 716 RBI in 1428 games. He was inducted in the Kinston Professional Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990.

His son, Josh Barfield
Josh Barfield
Joshua LaRoy Barfield is a second baseman who is currently in the Philadelphia Phillies organization. He is the son of former major league outfielder Jesse Barfield. Barfield was born in Venezuela during his mother's two-week winterball visit with his father...

, is a second baseman
Second baseman
Second base, or 2B, is the second of four stations on a baseball diamond which must be touched in succession by a base runner in order to score a run for that player's team. A second baseman is the baseball player guarding second base...

 with the Philadelphia Phillies
Philadelphia Phillies
The Philadelphia Phillies are a Major League Baseball team. They are the oldest continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional American sports, dating to 1883. The Phillies are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's National League...

 and he has another son, Jeremy Barfield, selected by the New York Mets
New York Mets
The New York Mets are a professional baseball team based in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York. They belong to Major League Baseball's National League East Division. One of baseball's first expansion teams, the Mets were founded in 1962 to replace New York's departed National League...

 during the 2006 draft. Jeremy opted to attend San Jacinto Community College instead, and was drafted in 2008 by the Oakland Athletics
Oakland Athletics
The Oakland Athletics are a Major League Baseball team based in Oakland, California. The Athletics are a member of the Western Division of Major League Baseball's American League. From to the present, the Athletics have played in the O.co Coliseum....

. He is currently playing for the AA Midland (Texas) Rockhounds

On August 22, 2006 it was reported by the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

 that Barfield's younger son, Jeremy Barfield, pushed his father down the stairs, causing Jesse to be hospitalized. The incident also resulted in Jeremy's arrest.

In June 2007, Barfield became a color commentator
Color commentator
A color commentator is a sports commentator who assists the play-by-play announcer, often by filling in any time when play is not in progress. The color analyst and main commentator will often exchange comments freely throughout the broadcast, when the play-by-play announcer is not describing the...

 for Blue Jays games on CBC
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...

.

Popular Televangelist Joel Osteen claims that he and Barfield are close personal friends [Joel Osteen Weekly Broadcast December 16, 2007]. Currently Jesse Barfield works at Competitive Edge Sports in The Woodlands, Texas.

Quotes

From the book Baseball Quotations (ISBN 0-345-38123-8) edited by David H. Nathan:

One time I dropped a fly ball in Milwaukee and, after the game, the writers asked me what happened. I told them, "Well, I was looking up and a UFO flew right across. It was weird. I never saw anything like that in my life." Man, I was only joking and they wrote it up and put it in the paper. -Jesse Barfield, Toronto Blue Jays outfielder, 1986.

See also


External links

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