100 Greatest Phillies: 76 – Bake McBride

Bake McBride
Outfielder
1977-19811

Career w/Phillies: .292 AVG / 44 HR / 258 RBI / 98 SB

Arnold Ray McBride — better known as “Bake” — came to the Phillies in a midseason 1977 trade with the Cardinals. Saint Louis received Tom Underwood, Dane Iorg and Rick Bosetti. McBride was already a pretty good player, stealing bags regularly and hitting over .300 for the Cardinals every year since his career began. With the Phils, he remained good while helping to lead the team to their first world championship. He hit his prime with the Phillies, gaining considerable power but losing a little of his singles prowess. He was among league leaders in triples in both 1979 and 1980, and his .309 clip in ’80 was fourth in the National League. Bake wasn’t a bad fielder either, throwing out 11 baserunners in ’79.

Comment: I ranked McBride 76th, then felt a nice bit of comfort after seeing he and Freddy Leach compared so closely. McBride was better with the Cardinals, but was still a good ballplayer with the Phils. His nice mix of power and speed helped fuel the Phils in ’80, as he actually got some chances to bat cleanup in a lineup featuring Mike Schmidt, Greg Luzinski and Pete Rose.

Tim Malcolm

Tim first found the Phillies as a little infant at Veteran’s Stadium, cheering on a Juan Samuel game-winning home run in his very first game. With the pinstripes in his blood, he witnessed Terry Mulholland’s 1990 no-hitter, “Steve Carlton Night” at the Vet, game three of the 1993 World Series, countless games during the charmed 2008 championship season and various road excursions. Since November 2007 Tim’s been writing about them daily at Phillies Nation, becoming one of the world’s most popular Phillies scribes. You can catch him on Twitter and Facebook, as well. When he’s not talking about the Phils he’s relaxing with a St. Bernardus ABT 12 or one of his many favored brews.