Back in the days of Backyard Baseball 2001, Kenny Lofton was unstoppable. With his immense speed, pretty much every ball in play turned into a single, every single turned into a triple, and every ball hit vaguely in his general direction was caught. And so, when the Yankees, looking for another option in center field besides the aging Bernie Williams, signed Lofton to a two-year, $6.2 million contract, I had high hopes for the center fielder.
Needless to say, between injuries and underperformance,
Lofton didn’t meet those lofty expectations, and his Yankees career wound up being little more than a footnote in what became, by the end, a journeyman-esque career.
Kenneth Lofton
Born: May 31, 1967 (East Chicago, IN)
Yankees Tenure: 2004
Raised in East Chicago, Indiana, by his grandmother, Lofton was a star basketball player in his youth, who also pitched and played center field on his school’s baseball team. He received a basketball scholarship from the University of Arizona, where, as the backup point guard to five-time NBA champion player and four-time NBA champion coach Steve Kerr, he averaged 4.8 points and 2.6 assists per game, and set the school record for steals. In fact, he is just one of two players to play in both the NCAA Final Four (1988) and the World Series (1995, 2002) — alongside, coincidentally, fellow East Chicago Washington High School alumnus Tim Stoddard.
Despite not being recruited to play college baseball, Lofton tried out, and made, the Arizona team in his junior year. More surprisingly, despite hardly playing — he appeared in just five games and had one official plate appearance — he was taken in the 17th round of 1988 draft by the Astros, who recognized the value of his speed and agility. Although his playing time was limited at first, as he remained at Arizona through 1989 in order to finish his degree and play out his final year of eligibility, Lofton shot through the Astros system, making his Major League debut on September 14, 1991.
Lofton was traded for the first time that winter, as Houston already had a center fielder in Steve Finley. He would go on to spend the next five years in Cleveland, where he lit up the league with his speed. His numbers themselves were impressive enough — a 316/.382/.437 slash line with 325 stolen bases (an average of 65 per year!), along with Gold Glove defense. But where Lofton really made his mark was the pressure he put on defenses, with his ability to punish even the slightest mistakes — such as here, where he scored from second on a passed ball during Game 6 of the 1995 ALCS, helping to send Cleveland to the World Series for the first time in 40 years.
Ahead of the 1997 season, Lofton was traded for the second time in his career, this time to the team that beat Cleveland in ’95, the Braves, in exchange for fellow acclaimed center fielder Marquis Grissom. GM John Hart feared to lose Lofton for nothing as a free agent, but after one year in Atlanta, he returned to Cleveland on a three-year, $24 million deal (the defending AL champs subsequently dealt Grissom to Milwaukee). While Lofton’s second stint in Cleveland wasn’t quite as dominant as his early career, he remained an immensely valuable player, earning two more All-Star nods.
Starting in 2002, Lofton entered the journeyman phase of his career. He signed a one-year deal with the White Sox, believing them to be a team on the rise and Cleveland a team on the decline, but was then sent to the Giants at the Trade Deadline. He had a good run in San Francisco and got the walk-off hit in NLCS Game 5 against the Cardinals to send Barry Bonds and company to the 2002 World Series, which they lost in a seven-game heartbreaker to the Angels. Lofton then signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates for the 2003 season, and was traded to the Cubs at the deadline, reuniting with his manager in San Francisco, Dusty Baker, before experiencing more playoff disappointment.
That winter, the Yankees signed Lofton to a two-year deal, pencilling him in as their Opening Day center fielder and potential successor to Bernie Williams in center field. A hamstring injury caused him to miss time early in the season, and he never quite got going after that. Splitting the center-field job with Williams—a timeshare that neither player felt particularly comfortable in—Lofton played just 83 games, posting a .275/.346/.395 slash line while stealing a career-low seven bases. His one highlight that year came, rather poetically, against Cleveland, as he recorded his 2,000th career hit.
He made just four plate appearances in the ALDS, then went 3-for-10 in the ALCS that we don’t like to talk about here at Pinstripe Alley.
After the season, the Yankees traded Lofton to the Phillies for reliever Félix Rodríguez. In theory, that closed the door on his Yankees story. In truth, though, we almost had a coda. When CC Sabathia, who had been teammates with Lofton in Cleveland, was a free agent in the winter of 2008-09, Lofton reportedly tried to dissuade him from coming to New York, saying only bad things about his time in the organization. (For what it’s worth, getting the clubhouse back in harmony was one of the goals that Brian Cashman outlined for CC in his pitch.)
As a member of the Phillies, Lofton had a bit of a bounceback year, posting a .335/.392/.420 slash line. That winter, he signed with the Dodgers, and the following year, he inked a deal with the Rangers to set the record for most teams played for by a position player. At the Trade Deadline, he was dealt one last time, returning him to Cleveland for his third stint, where he helped lead Cleveland past the Yankees in the infamous “midges” series, before blowing a 3-1 lead to the Red Sox in the ALCS — a fitting cap to Lofton’s inability to get a World Series ring throughout his career.
Lofton wanted to play in 2008 and 2009, but went unsigned both seasons, bringing his 17-year career to an end. He was named to Cleveland’s Hall of Fame in 2010, then fell off the National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot after just one season — a result that to this day has people using Lofton as evidence for the flaws in the HOF voting process, as he debuted on a crowded ballot with 10 eventual Cooperstown honorees, plus the controversial-but-elite Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. BBWAA writers were limited to 10 names on each ballot, and Lofton fell by the wayside without earning the minimum five percent to remain under consideration.
Following his baseball career, Lofton started a television production company named FilmPool, Inc., through whom he has found himself in hot water. Four years ago, he was sued by a former employee for sending sexually explicit images to female employees and for firing an employee in retaliation for reporting the aforementioned images. As of now, the results of the case do not appear to be public.
See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.
