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born 1958 · South Bend by birth
Richard William Thon was born June 20, 1958, in South Bend, because his father Fred — a Puerto Rican whose own playing career in the Dodgers' organization had ended with an arm injury — was finishing a business degree at Notre Dame. Dickie Thon was raised in Puerto Rico, and South Bend's tie to him is the birth certificate and nothing more; the record prints it at exactly that strength. The Angels signed him as an amateur free agent in 1975, he debuted on September 4, 1979, and Houston traded Ken Forsch to get him on April 1, 1981. What followed, briefly, was stardom: in 1982 he hit .276 with a league-high ten triples and 37 stolen bases, and in 1983 he was an All-Star and a Silver Slugger winner — .286, 177 hits, 20 home runs, 79 runs batted in, 34 steals, seventh in the Most Valuable Player voting — the best young shortstop in the National League.
On April 8, 1984, a Mike Torrez fastball struck him above the left eye. The orbital rim was fractured, the season was over, and his vision stood at 20/300 before improving to 20/40; the depth-perception damage was permanent. Bill James ranks the beaning among the four most famous in baseball history, after Ray Chapman's, Mickey Cochrane's and Tony Conigliaro's. Thon played anyway, for a decade: the Astros through 1987, San Diego in 1988, Philadelphia from 1989 to 1991, Texas in 1992 and Milwaukee in 1993 — a career finished on damaged eyes, which is its own kind of record. He is carried in this history for the accident of his birth and the quality of his play, and the entry claims no more of him than that.
Sources
- Baseball-Reference Bullpen — the South Bend birth and the Notre Dame circumstance, the signing, the trade, the 1982 and 1983 seasons and the post-beaning career.
- National Baseball Hall of Fame, CardCorner — the April 8, 1984 beaning, the fracture and the vision record.
- Bill James, as carried in the standard accounts — the beaning's place in the game's history.