The Tale of Treacherous Terry Blocker

By TheNaturalMevs on January 19, 2010

Welcome to Hideous Ballplayer Week. If you have a nomination of a ballplayer from the past who specialized in being unspectacular, tweet us the nomination or send us an email to diamondhoggers_at_gmail_dot_com. Now enjoy our next nominee, Terry Blocker.

The career of Terry Blocker was remarkably insignificant. If you blinked, you fortunately missed it. However, one of our readers was one of the unlucky few who remembers Terrible Terry.

Reader James sent us a nomination that made us chuckle:

i’m glad to see hideous ballplayer week back again. i nominate Terry Blocker. ugh. i feel dirty just saying the name. i’d better go take a shower.

Indeed, he was hideous in every sense of the word.

Blocker made his career debut in 1985 with the New York Mets, who were actually pretty good around that time. The fact that he stole 15 official at bats from everyone else on that squad is a true travesty (he collected 1 base hit).

The next time Blocker would play after that was 1988, with the Atlanta Braves. Blocker had a career year that year, hitting .212 with two homers and 10 RBI. He had 42 base knocks, including two triples and two doubles!

Blocker’s career twilight came quickly the next season in 1989, when he hit .226 in 31 at-bats with the Braves. Scouts must have decided the guy was never going to be more then a .205 hitter and the ship sailed for Terry.

It should be noted that in 1989 he actually got on the mound and threw a scoreless inning for the Braves, finishing a game. Management obviously didn’t mind blowing his arm out.

He played with teammates such as Bruce Sutter, Gary Carter, Doc Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Paul Assenmacher, and Clint Hurdle among others.

The guy was a 1st round pick (4th overall). Hideous to select a player like this that high, even back then. Hideous enough to fire an entire scouting department?