Landmark Homer Puts Murray Among The Greats

Say hello, Hank, say hey Willie, to the newest member of your exclusive club.

Eddie Murray endured three weeks of intense pressure before finally hitting his 500th career home run late Friday night. The milestone blast came off Felipe Lira in the seventh inning of the Baltimore Orioles’ rain-delayed 5-4 loss to the Detroit Tigers.

When the ball cleared the right-field wall at Camden Yards, Murray, 40, joined Hank Aaron and Willie Mays as the only players in baseball history to have at least 3,000 hits and 500 homers.

“Wow. It’s a neighborhood you don’t know if you belong in yet,” Murray said in a post-game interview that got underway around 2:15 a.m. Saturday.

“It’s hard to see yourself being mentioned in the same voice with those guys. They’re people everybody knows. You say baseball, and you say those guys.”

Now, when you say 3,000-500, you’re talking about Hammerin’ Hank, the Say Hey Kid and Steady Eddie. Murray is also one of just 15 players to hit 500 home runs, the first since Mike Schmidt did it in 1987.

Five years after he retires, Murray will join a club with many more members but a whole lot more significance.

“This puts him in the Hall of Fame as far as I’m concerned,” Orioles manager Davey Johnson said. “Five hundred homers and 3,000 hits, that’s a great achievement, something only a couple other players have done.”

Hitting the first 498 home runs took Murray the better part of 20 seasons. The next two, however, seemingly took forever.

Murray hit No. 498 on Aug. 16. He then went two weeks without another home run, including nine straight games at home. After hitting No. 499 in Seattle, he went five more games without one.

Pressure? Believe it.

“After a while, you find yourself trying to do it, and you can’t. Probably the hardest thing to do in the game is to try and hit a home run,” he said.

Murray reached the 3,000-hit milestone last season with the Cleveland Indians. But he never considered himself a home run hitter - his specialty is RBIs so hitting No. 500 was a strenuous task.

Murray wanted to get the home run out of the way in part because he didn’t enjoy all the attention his pursuit was drawing. His disdain for the media and fair-weather fans dates back to his first stint with the Orioles.

Murray averaged 28 homers and 99 RBIs in 12 years with Baltimore, but a dispute with owner Edward Bennett Williams and run-ins with the media led to his departure in 1988.

While playing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets and Indians, Murray maintained a close friendship with Baltimore shortstop Cal Ripken. They were reunited July 21 when the Orioles obtained Murray from the Indians.

Orioles pitching coach Pat Dobson, who yielded Murray’s first home run as a pitcher for the Indians in 1977, had his own plans for securing a souvenir of Friday’s big event.

“I’m thinking about getting a picture taken with the guy who hit 500 and the pitchers who gave up the first and the last of them,” Dobson joked. “Now I’ve got to see if I can get Lira to do it.”